The bearded electrician lives on the third floor. Even though he doesn’’t show it, he’s a real rocker, he owns a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and uses it to secretly listen to his rock tracks when he comes home from work. He’’s the only one on our block with a tape recorder, everyone else has just a record player, but you can’’t listen to rock music on a record player because there are no records with rock music. Rock music is banned in our city. My friend Mishi and I once went up to him and asked him to let us […]

Líbya. V sedemdesiatych a osemdesiatych rokoch v Poľsku toto slovo znelo ako zaklínadlo. Znelo ako „Sezam, otvor sa”. Muammar Kaddáfí potreboval inžinierov, technikov, robotníkov na modernizáciu krajiny. Komunistické Poľsko s ním malo dlhoročný románik, ľúbostný vzťah a posielalo tam ľudí za prácou. Revolučná a protizápadná rétorika z plukovníka robila čosi ako politického spojenca. Ale obyčajní ľudia to videli ekonomicky. Priemerný plat u nás v tom čase dosahoval ekvivalent dvadsať dolárov, zatiaľ čo plukovník platil (po odrátaní vazalskej dane pre komunistickú administráciu) aspoň pätnásťkrát viac. Na vtedajšie poľské pomery to bolo Eldorádo, úplná Kolchida. O tom, že dostanú „zmluvu v Líbyi”, […]

Representative international and Hungarian surveys leave no doubt: in no other post-communist country are people as dissatisfied, embittered, hopeless and disappointed by the outcome of the post-1989 transition as in Hungary. According to polls carried out in 2008 and 2009 (by Gallup and Pew World Polls, among other organizations) some 60 per cent of Hungarians see their country as a loser in the transition process, and three quarters of respondents claim their living conditions are now worse than they were under the communist dictatorship. Two-thirds believe the transition has only benefited the power elite. The political impact, especially on the […]

Základné prikázanie európskej politiky znie: nenechaj žiadnu krízu prejsť bez úžitku, je to príležitosť budovať politickú spoluprácu a posilniť Európu! – Toto prikázanie, ako sa zdá, momentálne nikto neberie naozaj vážne. Európa horí. Krajiny Európskej únie sa rozhodli prisunúť gréckej vláde „hasiace prístroje“  v podobe miliardových úverov. Ibaže zdrojmi finančných rizík nie sú len krachujúce štáty, ale aj nové mocenské pomery medzi štátmi. Grécko dlho striasalo zo seba nadvládu cudzích – Turkov, a teraz si pripadá podrobené „priateľskej nadvláde“ EU. Začiatkom mája v Aténach horeli banky a boli aj mŕtvi, je to trpké ponaučenie: po celej Európe sa nahromadila mohutná zlosť, ktorá sa s politikou radikálnych […]

Following the first round of Hungarian election, which ended in a clear victory for Viktor Orbán’‘s neo-conservative Fidesz and which will see the new extreme right wing grouping Jobbik take its place in parliament, a radicalization of Hungarian politics is looming, reawakening ugly memories. As I gathered with a few friends from the erstwhile democratic opposition on Sunday night, we were smiling but we were far from amused. Twenty years ago most of my friends were around forty, now they are in their sixties. I am a bit older. What was there to be happy about? The government that will emerge from this election is not […]

Hungarian democracy is in crisis. It is in crisis is because it lives in fear said political thinker István Bibó (1911 – 1979) in the summer of 1945. His aphoristic diagnosis alluded to two dangers: that of a restoration of the authoritarian pre-war regime and of the imposition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The second threat proved to be more real, not surprisingly, given the presence of the Soviet army in the country and the free world’’s acceptance of the post-Yalta world order. A few years later the Moscow-controlled communist party did away with the short-lived parliamentary democracy and […]