For me, Victory Day represents a watershed in European history. In essence, the history of wars came to an end in 1945. Until then wars, along with other activities, were regarded as man’’s natural pursuit, his natural need, and the pacifist critique of war was considered a marginal and weak-willed phenomenon. Warrior man was a social and gender model. Surpassing all imagination, the horrors of World War II produced an unprecedented humanist syndrome in post-war Europe, completely shattering the positive image of war as such. It became obvious that war cannot be considered a continuation of politics by other means, […]

A typical Hungarian joke goes like this: How are you? – Thanks, fine.  –  Can you elaborate?  Well, actually, things are not that good.  Over the past few years the Hungarians have discovered things are not good at all and they have voiced their frustration in the recent election, giving Viktor Orbán and his party Fidesz more power than any other politician in Europe (Belarus’s Lukashenka aside) currently enjoys – a constitutional majority in parliament. The state of the Hungarian economy is well known: last year the International Monetary Fund had to rescue the country from bankruptcy, to which it […]