History
Hungary has long been an integral part of Europe -- first as a monarchy for nearly 1,000 years, then as a Communist state, and finally a democracy. Its constitutional system preceded by several centuries the establishment of Western-style governments in other European countries.
The region that now comprises Hungary was once part of the ancient Roman province of Pannónia. Situated on the periphery of the Roman Empire, the region was among the first to fall to the Germanic tribes that began to seize the Roman dominions in the closing years of the 2nd century AD. The Germanic tribes were later driven from the region by the Huns.
Numerous warring tribes occupied the region for hundreds of years until a new era began with the first millennium and Stephen I, the founder of the Árpád Dynasty , who was granted formal recognition as king of Hungary by Pope Sylvester II in 1001 or 1002. Christianity became the official religion, paganism was suppressed, royal authority was centralized, and the country was divided into counties for administrative purposes. The non-Magyar sections of the population were treated as inferior and were forced to shoulder a disproportionate burden of labor and taxation for many centuries. When Stephen died in 1038 the country was left without a direct heir to the throne.
In the 14th century Hungary was considered an important market in European trade. At the same time it was one of the most stable countries in Europe, because the rifts characteristic of a feudal society did not lead the country to long-standing disintegration of its territory. The Árpád kings (up till 1301), the Anjou dynasty (1308-1387), the Luxembourg dynasty (1387-1437), the Habsburg dynasty (1437-1458), the house of Hunyadi (1458-1490) and the Jagello dynasty (1490-1526) all strove to preserve the primus inter pares situation.
The Mongolian invasion (1241-1242) - the Mongols swept through Europe in the last wave of the Great Migrations - was the first serious disaster for Hungary. The healthy development spurred by the rebuilding of the country after the Mongol invasion was brought to an end by the advance of the Ottoman Turks into Europe. From the 15th century they threatened Hungarian territory, and for centuries Hungary fought battles with the Turks. In 1526 at the Battle of Mohács the independent Hungarian State was destroyed, and in 1541 the royal seat of Buda fell. The country was split into three parts: the territory under Habsburg rule, the part conquered by the Turks and the Princedom of Transylvania. The 150 years of Turkish occupation drastically curtailed the country's development and caused severe loss of both material goods and human life.
After the Turks were driven out (in 1686), Hungary came under Habsburg rule. As a result, for several hundred years neither the royal court nor the central administration operated on Hungarian soil. Foreign settlers were moved into the country to swell the dwindling population and this meant that the previous ethnic unity of the country was disrupted. The uprising of Ferenc Rákóczi against Habsburg rule (1703-1711) was the first attempt to win back the country's independence since the expulsion of the Turks. In contrast to the trend in Western Europe in the 18th century, here the privileges of the nobility and the second wave of serfdom hindered modernization.
Throughout the tumultuous period following the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, the overwhelming majority of the Hungarian population remained loyal to Austria.
However, years later, the progressive political groups of Hungary won a decisive victory in the legislative election of 1847. At first the Austrian government ignored the voters' mandate, but when threatened by revolution in Vienna the following year, it yielded to Hungarian nationalist demands and authorized the formation of a Hungarian ministry. A nationalistic struggle followed until World War I, when Hungarian political leaders supported the Austrian war effort largely because they feared that a Russian victory would lead to the defection of Hungary's Slavic minorities and the dismemberment of the country. On June 4, 1920, the Hungarian government accepted the Treaty of Trianon, which was part of the World War I peace settlements. The treaty stripped about two-thirds of Hungary's territory, including Transylvania, Croatia, and Slovakia.
The 19th Century. The revolution of March 15, 1848 was a milestone in the history of revolutions in Europe. Bowing to pressure from the masses, the Hungarian Diet accepted most of the revolutionaries' demands, including the liberation of the serfs, equality before the law, freedom of the press and an independent Hungarian government. In September 1848 the imperial Austrian government launched an armed attack on Hungary in order to crush the revolution and do away with its achievements which had earlier been approved by the emperor. The independent Hungarian army succeeded in holding off the attack, and only surrendered when the Austrians sought help from the imperial Russian troops.
The years of oppression were followed in 1867 by a Compromise, as a result of which the legislation and government of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy were separated, and only the ministries of foreign affairs, defense and finance were run jointly. Although vestiges of feudalism were still present, a capitalist economic structure developed and significant foreign capital was invested in Hungary.
The World Wars. In the wake of defeat in the First World War (1914-1918), the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy came to an end. In Hungary a short-lived communist council republic followed a bourgeois democratic revolution. After its collapse, the new government was forced to sign the Trianon Peace Treaty in 1920. Since the pens of the negotiators were guided by military-strategic considerations when they drew the borders of the successor states, two thirds of the Hungarian nation found itself outside the borders of the country. With this loss of territory (Hungary had a renounce 70 per cent of its former land) it was also deprived of access to its raw materials. These historical facts had a commanding influence on the policies of Regent Miklós Horthy. His authoritative, conservative government misjudged the balance of power: though not Fascist, the Hungarian government sided with Hitler in the hope of regaining some of the territory lost after the First World War.
Between 1938 and 1941 this policy was partly successful, but Hungary entered the Second World War on the side of the Axis powers. In 1944 German forces occupied the country and, after an unsuccessful attempt to pull out of the war, in October 1944 the extreme right wing Arrow-Cross Party came to power. Hungary had reached low ebb in its history.
In 1944 a new Hungarian government was formed in Debrecen, a town in the Eastern part of the country which had by this time been liberated. In February 1946 a republic was proclaimed and a year later in February 1947, representatives of the Hungarian government signed the Paris Peace Treaty, which effectively restored the 1938 Trianon borders.
Communist Takeover
The provisional government, dominated by the Hungarian communist party (MKP), was replaced in November 1945 after elections giving majority control of a coalition government to the Independent Smallholders' Party. The government instituted a radical land reform, and gradually nationalized mines, electric plants, heavy industries, and some large banks. The communists ultimately undermined the coalition regime by discrediting leaders of rival parties and through terror, blackmail, and framed trials. In elections tainted by fraud in 1947, the leftist bloc gained control of the government. Postwar cooperation between the U.S.S.R. and the West collapsed, and the Cold War began.
Forced industrialization and land collectivization soon led to serious economic difficulties, which reached crisis proportions by mid-1953, the year Stalin died. Hungary joined the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact Treaty Organization in 1955, but pressure for change reached a climax on October 23, 1956, when security forces fired on Budapest students marching in support of Poland's confrontation with the Soviet Union. The ensuing battle quickly grew into a massive popular uprising.
The Beginning of a Movement for Independence
Faced with reports of new Soviet troops pouring into Hungary despite the Soviets' assurances to the contrary, on November 1, 1955 Hungary declared neutrality and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. The UN and the West failed to respond, and the Soviet Union launched a massive military attack on Hungary on November 3. Some 200,000 Hungarians fled to the West. Imre Nagy, Hungary's communist leader at the time, and his colleagues took refuge in the Yugoslav Embassy. Despite a guarantee of safety, Nagy was arrested and deported to Romania. In June 1958, the government announced that Nagy and other former officials had been executed. Over the next two decades, relative domestic quiet reigned, as the new government responded to pressure for political and economic reform. By the early 1980s, it had achieved limited political liberalization and pursued a foreign policy which encouraged more trade with the West. Nevertheless, the "New Economic Mechanism" led to mounting foreign debt incurred to share up unprofitable industries.
A Bold Transition to Democracy
Hungary's transition to a Western-style parliamentary democracy was the first and the smoothest among the former Soviet bloc, inspired by a nationalism that long had encouraged Hungarians to control their own destiny. By 1987, activists within the party and bureaucracy and Budapest-based intellectuals were increasing pressure for change. Civic activism intensified to a level not seen since the 1956 revolution.
In 1988, reform communist leader Imre Pozsgay was admitted to the Politburo. That same year, the Parliament adopted a "democracy package," which included trade union pluralism; freedom of association, assembly, and the press; a new electoral law; and a radical revision of the constitution, among others. A Central Committee plenum in February 1989 endorsed in principle the multiparty political system and the characterization of the October 1956 revolution as a "popular uprising," in the words of Pozsgay, whose reform movement had been gathering strength as communist party membership declined dramatically. Kádár's major political rivals then cooperated to move the country gradually to democracy. The Soviet Union reduced its involvement by signing an agreement in April 1989 to withdraw Soviet forces by June 1991.
National unity culminated in June 1989 as the country reburied Imre Nagy, his associates, and, symbolically, all other victims of the 1956 revolution. A national roundtable, comprising representatives of the new parties and some recreated old parties - such as the Smallholders and Social Democrats - the communist party, and different social groups, met in the late summer of 1989 to discuss major changes to the Hungarian constitution in preparation for free elections and the transition to a fully free and democratic political system.
In October 1989, the communist party convened its last congress and re-established itself as the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP). In a historic session an October 16-20, 1989, the Parliament adopted legislation providing for multiparty parliamentary elections and a direct presidential election. The legislation transformed Hungary from a people's republic into the Republic of Hungary; guaranteed human and civil rights; and created an institutional structure that ensures separation of powers among the judicial, executive, and legislative branches of government. But because the national roundtable agreement was the result of a compromise between communist and noncommunist parties and societal forces, the revised constitution still retained vestiges of the old order. It championed the "values of bourgeois democracy and democratic socialism" and gave equal status to public and private property. Such provisions were erased in 1990 as the need for compromise solutions was obviated by the poor performance of the MSZP in the first free elections.
Free Elections and a Democratic Hungary
Demands for a multi-party system were gaining strength and the collapse of the one-party state became inevitable. On June 16, 1989 a huge crowd gathered to witness a fitting reburial for the martyrs of the 1956 revolution. On October 23, 1989 Hungary was renamed Republic of Hungary. The first free parliamentary election, held in May 1990, was a plebiscite of sorts on the communist past. The revitalized and reformed communists performed poorly despite having more than the usual advantages of an "incumbent" party. Since then, four coalition governments have led the country through fundamental structural, economical and social changes which resulted in the establishment of the firm democratic Hungary of today. Further, Hungary regained its active leadership role in the Central Eastern European region. In 1999 Hungary became a member of NATO. Hungary successfully concluded its accession negotiations with the European Union at the end of 2002, and became a member of this organization on May 1, 2004.
Hungary has long been an integral part of Europe -- first as a monarchy for nearly 1,000 years, then as a Communist state, and finally a democracy. Its constitutional system preceded by several centuries the establishment of Western-style governments in other European countries.
The region that now comprises Hungary was once part of the ancient Roman province of Pannónia. Situated on the periphery of the Roman Empire, the region was among the first to fall to the Germanic tribes that began to seize the Roman dominions in the closing years of the 2nd century AD. The Germanic tribes were later driven from the region by the Huns.
Numerous warring tribes occupied the region for hundreds of years until a new era began with the first millennium and Stephen I, the founder of the Árpád Dynasty , who was granted formal recognition as king of Hungary by Pope Sylvester II in 1001 or 1002. Christianity became the official religion, paganism was suppressed, royal authority was centralized, and the country was divided into counties for administrative purposes. The non-Magyar sections of the population were treated as inferior and were forced to shoulder a disproportionate burden of labor and taxation for many centuries. When Stephen died in 1038 the country was left without a direct heir to the throne.
In the 14th century Hungary was considered an important market in European trade. At the same time it was one of the most stable countries in Europe, because the rifts characteristic of a feudal society did not lead the country to long-standing disintegration of its territory. The Árpád kings (up till 1301), the Anjou dynasty (1308-1387), the Luxembourg dynasty (1387-1437), the Habsburg dynasty (1437-1458), the house of Hunyadi (1458-1490) and the Jagello dynasty (1490-1526) all strove to preserve the primus inter pares situation.
The Mongolian invasion (1241-1242) - the Mongols swept through Europe in the last wave of the Great Migrations - was the first serious disaster for Hungary. The healthy development spurred by the rebuilding of the country after the Mongol invasion was brought to an end by the advance of the Ottoman Turks into Europe. From the 15th century they threatened Hungarian territory, and for centuries Hungary fought battles with the Turks. In 1526 at the Battle of Mohács the independent Hungarian State was destroyed, and in 1541 the royal seat of Buda fell. The country was split into three parts: the territory under Habsburg rule, the part conquered by the Turks and the Princedom of Transylvania. The 150 years of Turkish occupation drastically curtailed the country's development and caused severe loss of both material goods and human life.
After the Turks were driven out (in 1686), Hungary came under Habsburg rule. As a result, for several hundred years neither the royal court nor the central administration operated on Hungarian soil. Foreign settlers were moved into the country to swell the dwindling population and this meant that the previous ethnic unity of the country was disrupted. The uprising of Ferenc Rákóczi against Habsburg rule (1703-1711) was the first attempt to win back the country's independence since the expulsion of the Turks. In contrast to the trend in Western Europe in the 18th century, here the privileges of the nobility and the second wave of serfdom hindered modernization.
Throughout the tumultuous period following the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, the overwhelming majority of the Hungarian population remained loyal to Austria.
However, years later, the progressive political groups of Hungary won a decisive victory in the legislative election of 1847. At first the Austrian government ignored the voters' mandate, but when threatened by revolution in Vienna the following year, it yielded to Hungarian nationalist demands and authorized the formation of a Hungarian ministry. A nationalistic struggle followed until World War I, when Hungarian political leaders supported the Austrian war effort largely because they feared that a Russian victory would lead to the defection of Hungary's Slavic minorities and the dismemberment of the country. On June 4, 1920, the Hungarian government accepted the Treaty of Trianon, which was part of the World War I peace settlements. The treaty stripped about two-thirds of Hungary's territory, including Transylvania, Croatia, and Slovakia.
The 19th Century. The revolution of March 15, 1848 was a milestone in the history of revolutions in Europe. Bowing to pressure from the masses, the Hungarian Diet accepted most of the revolutionaries' demands, including the liberation of the serfs, equality before the law, freedom of the press and an independent Hungarian government. In September 1848 the imperial Austrian government launched an armed attack on Hungary in order to crush the revolution and do away with its achievements which had earlier been approved by the emperor. The independent Hungarian army succeeded in holding off the attack, and only surrendered when the Austrians sought help from the imperial Russian troops.
The years of oppression were followed in 1867 by a Compromise, as a result of which the legislation and government of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy were separated, and only the ministries of foreign affairs, defense and finance were run jointly. Although vestiges of feudalism were still present, a capitalist economic structure developed and significant foreign capital was invested in Hungary.
The World Wars. In the wake of defeat in the First World War (1914-1918), the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy came to an end. In Hungary a short-lived communist council republic followed a bourgeois democratic revolution. After its collapse, the new government was forced to sign the Trianon Peace Treaty in 1920. Since the pens of the negotiators were guided by military-strategic considerations when they drew the borders of the successor states, two thirds of the Hungarian nation found itself outside the borders of the country. With this loss of territory (Hungary had a renounce 70 per cent of its former land) it was also deprived of access to its raw materials. These historical facts had a commanding influence on the policies of Regent Miklós Horthy. His authoritative, conservative government misjudged the balance of power: though not Fascist, the Hungarian government sided with Hitler in the hope of regaining some of the territory lost after the First World War.
Between 1938 and 1941 this policy was partly successful, but Hungary entered the Second World War on the side of the Axis powers. In 1944 German forces occupied the country and, after an unsuccessful attempt to pull out of the war, in October 1944 the extreme right wing Arrow-Cross Party came to power. Hungary had reached low ebb in its history.
In 1944 a new Hungarian government was formed in Debrecen, a town in the Eastern part of the country which had by this time been liberated. In February 1946 a republic was proclaimed and a year later in February 1947, representatives of the Hungarian government signed the Paris Peace Treaty, which effectively restored the 1938 Trianon borders.
Communist Takeover
The provisional government, dominated by the Hungarian communist party (MKP), was replaced in November 1945 after elections giving majority control of a coalition government to the Independent Smallholders' Party. The government instituted a radical land reform, and gradually nationalized mines, electric plants, heavy industries, and some large banks. The communists ultimately undermined the coalition regime by discrediting leaders of rival parties and through terror, blackmail, and framed trials. In elections tainted by fraud in 1947, the leftist bloc gained control of the government. Postwar cooperation between the U.S.S.R. and the West collapsed, and the Cold War began.
Forced industrialization and land collectivization soon led to serious economic difficulties, which reached crisis proportions by mid-1953, the year Stalin died. Hungary joined the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact Treaty Organization in 1955, but pressure for change reached a climax on October 23, 1956, when security forces fired on Budapest students marching in support of Poland's confrontation with the Soviet Union. The ensuing battle quickly grew into a massive popular uprising.
The Beginning of a Movement for Independence
Faced with reports of new Soviet troops pouring into Hungary despite the Soviets' assurances to the contrary, on November 1, 1955 Hungary declared neutrality and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. The UN and the West failed to respond, and the Soviet Union launched a massive military attack on Hungary on November 3. Some 200,000 Hungarians fled to the West. Imre Nagy, Hungary's communist leader at the time, and his colleagues took refuge in the Yugoslav Embassy. Despite a guarantee of safety, Nagy was arrested and deported to Romania. In June 1958, the government announced that Nagy and other former officials had been executed. Over the next two decades, relative domestic quiet reigned, as the new government responded to pressure for political and economic reform. By the early 1980s, it had achieved limited political liberalization and pursued a foreign policy which encouraged more trade with the West. Nevertheless, the "New Economic Mechanism" led to mounting foreign debt incurred to share up unprofitable industries.
A Bold Transition to Democracy
Hungary's transition to a Western-style parliamentary democracy was the first and the smoothest among the former Soviet bloc, inspired by a nationalism that long had encouraged Hungarians to control their own destiny. By 1987, activists within the party and bureaucracy and Budapest-based intellectuals were increasing pressure for change. Civic activism intensified to a level not seen since the 1956 revolution.
In 1988, reform communist leader Imre Pozsgay was admitted to the Politburo. That same year, the Parliament adopted a "democracy package," which included trade union pluralism; freedom of association, assembly, and the press; a new electoral law; and a radical revision of the constitution, among others. A Central Committee plenum in February 1989 endorsed in principle the multiparty political system and the characterization of the October 1956 revolution as a "popular uprising," in the words of Pozsgay, whose reform movement had been gathering strength as communist party membership declined dramatically. Kádár's major political rivals then cooperated to move the country gradually to democracy. The Soviet Union reduced its involvement by signing an agreement in April 1989 to withdraw Soviet forces by June 1991.
National unity culminated in June 1989 as the country reburied Imre Nagy, his associates, and, symbolically, all other victims of the 1956 revolution. A national roundtable, comprising representatives of the new parties and some recreated old parties - such as the Smallholders and Social Democrats - the communist party, and different social groups, met in the late summer of 1989 to discuss major changes to the Hungarian constitution in preparation for free elections and the transition to a fully free and democratic political system.
In October 1989, the communist party convened its last congress and re-established itself as the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP). In a historic session an October 16-20, 1989, the Parliament adopted legislation providing for multiparty parliamentary elections and a direct presidential election. The legislation transformed Hungary from a people's republic into the Republic of Hungary; guaranteed human and civil rights; and created an institutional structure that ensures separation of powers among the judicial, executive, and legislative branches of government. But because the national roundtable agreement was the result of a compromise between communist and noncommunist parties and societal forces, the revised constitution still retained vestiges of the old order. It championed the "values of bourgeois democracy and democratic socialism" and gave equal status to public and private property. Such provisions were erased in 1990 as the need for compromise solutions was obviated by the poor performance of the MSZP in the first free elections.
Free Elections and a Democratic Hungary
Demands for a multi-party system were gaining strength and the collapse of the one-party state became inevitable. On June 16, 1989 a huge crowd gathered to witness a fitting reburial for the martyrs of the 1956 revolution. On October 23, 1989 Hungary was renamed Republic of Hungary. The first free parliamentary election, held in May 1990, was a plebiscite of sorts on the communist past. The revitalized and reformed communists performed poorly despite having more than the usual advantages of an "incumbent" party. Since then, four coalition governments have led the country through fundamental structural, economical and social changes which resulted in the establishment of the firm democratic Hungary of today. Further, Hungary regained its active leadership role in the Central Eastern European region. In 1999 Hungary became a member of NATO. Hungary successfully concluded its accession negotiations with the European Union at the end of 2002, and became a member of this organization on May 1, 2004.