Népszava (Hungary), 27.05.2010 The parliament in Budapest decided last week that Hungarians living abroad are eligible for Hungarian passports. Slovakia reacted promptly with a law stripping all those who accept Hungary’’s offer of their Slovakian passports. The press calls the dispute an anachronism, and sees Hungary’’s move as interference in Slovakia’’s election campaign. The left-leaning daily Népszava suspects that the current tensions between Hungary and Slovakia are a diversionary tactic orchestrated by their respective governments. Ferenc Kepecs reports: It’’s a commonplace that the nationalists of one country can’’t get along without the nationalists of another despite the fact that they spend […]

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 […]

Začalo to nejdřív u mě. Z ničeho nic jsem u sebe asi před pěti lety zpozorovala slabost pro nábytek z mědi. Z materiálu, který mi ještě chvíli předtím připadal odporný. Začaly se mi líbit takové ty malé servírovací stolky na kolečkách s pozlacenou konstrukcí a skleněnými deskami (většinou dvěma) na odkládání nádobí. Nebo půvabné stojany na noviny z téhož materiálu umně zohýbaného, s držadlem z bambusu či omotaným provázkem z umělé hmoty. Moje malá soukromá fifties Dnes stojí v mém bytě už tři odkládací stolky na kolečkách, v každé místnosti jeden. A také dva stojany na noviny, jejichž zakřivené tvary […]

The communist party officials regarded all their subjects as an undifferentiated gray mass: the people, a collective noun, like the herd. The officials liked to flaunt their Soviet people, their Czechoslovak people. Everything they did was on behalf of the people and for their benefit, and all their decisions were ostensibly based on the will of the people.  Weighing and measuring the will of the people was, of course, impossible, but that’’s what we had the officials for, so that they could predict it in retrospect and interpret it. The mantra of our present-day politicians and their election slogans is […]

„Premiér ma chce umlčať, ale o klanoch nebudem mlčať nikdy.“ „Je absurdné preferovať mlčanie, nech sa Silvio Berlusconi ospravedlní obetiam.“ Pán premiér Silvio Berslusconi, píšem Vám po jednej Vašej tlačovej konferencii, kde som bol obvinený, či lepšie povedané, moja kniha bola obvinená zo zodpovednosti za „podporu propagácie mafiánskych skupín“. Naša vec Tieto obvinenia nie sú pre mňa ničím novým. Som na ne zvyknutý už roky: zamyslite sa na chvíľu, čo ste vlastne povedali. Spomeňte si na tých, ktorí takto riskovali a stále riskujú, a predsa ich obviňujú, že sú prisluhovačmi zločineckých organizácii, a to len preto, že o nich chceli hovoriť. Lebo podľa vášho […]

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 […]

My first wife Wiesława, who is Polish, called me thirty minutes after the disaster, relieved to have received the news that her brother Damian – a cameraman with Polish TV – was alive, since Kaczyński had not taken any journalists on board. I was happy for Damian. I did not check the information regarding journalists. Damian could not have perished anyway since he’’d gone to Katyń with Tusk and stayed there… But now Katyń has claimed fresh victims from Poland. There is a monstrous, mystical sense in this bloodthirstiness that reflects a fatalist consciousness which is characteristic of the Russian […]

70 years ago, on 5 March 1940, Lavrentii Beria, the USSR People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs sent a memo to comrade Stalin regarding the more than 25,000 Poles held in Soviet prisoner of war camps and NKVD prisons, justifying the necessity of executing the Polish prisoners. The memo was signed by the Soviet Union’s leaders: Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov and Mikoyan; a note on the margin said that comrades Kalinin and Kaganovich also agreed with this solution. On the same day Beria received the decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union giving its approval to […]

This is the greatest tragedy that has befallen our country since General Władysław Sikorski perished in an air crash. We share the pain of the nearest and dearest of the President and his wife, as well as of the nearest and dearest of all the victims of this appalling tragedy. Our grief must be communal, non-partisan and non-political. Our joint responsibility for Poland, too, must be non-partisan and non-political. Poland must remain stable and secure. Lech Kaczyński has left an indelible mark on Polish history. Historians will take stock of his achievements. Today is not the time for making nuanced judgements. […]