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ABSTRACT
This article examines the political use of history as construction of traditions, concentrating on the identity building surrounding the National Day commemorating the Revolution of 1956 (23rd October) in Hungary. The study analyses public discourse, represented by Hungarian newspapers, related to the commemorations. Our discussion draws on three ideal types: 1996 (Hungary's new democracy), 2006 (renewal of historical conflict) and 2016 (legitimisation of the administration). We claim that the question is not merely of an invention of tradition but a separation between legacy and tradition. Whereas legacy is given, although not always remembered, traditions can be selected and commemorated.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Heino Nyyssönen (D.Soc.Sc.) is a senior lecturer and a docent in Political Science, International Relations and Contemporary History in Finland. His research focuses on politics and use of history, nationalism, citizenship and East Central Europe in particular. He is currently teaching political science at the University of Turku, Finland.
Jussi Metsälä (M.Soc.Sc.) is a Ph.D. candidate in International Relations at the University of Tampere, Finland. His research focuses on nationalism, citizenship questions and on the political uses of the past.
Notes
1 In similar vein, already when Hungary was declared a Republic on 23rd October 1989, President Mátyás Szürös declared that the new Hungary would follow in the footsteps of the earlier Republics and mentioned especially the years 1848, 1918 and 1946.
2 Likewise, the new Hungarian Constitution of 2012 takes an exceptionally strong stand on history (cf. The Fundamental Law of Hungary, preamble). In addition to identity politics, the preamble of the Constitution lists separately certain historical events and people. For example, it says that the country's self-determination – lost on 19th March 1944 – was restored on 2nd May 1990, when the new freely elected Parliament assembled for the first time. Furthermore, the preamble states ‘our current liberty was born of our 1956 Revolution’. On the other hand, there are no mentions of the Hungarian Republic, which was declared on the anniversary of the uprising on 23rd October 1989 (Bugarič, Citation2014; Csipke, Citation2011b; Dani, Citation2013; Magyarország Alatörvénye). The echoes of the past are also fervently present in Hungary's self-perceived identity as a sort of a ‘freedom fighter’ in the EU in recent years (cf. Ágh, Citation2012; Bozóki, Citation2012).
3 Here the concept of tradition can be described as those parts of the past that should be remembered, while the parts of the past that are rather not remembered – or even actively forgotten – belong to the much broader concept of legacy. Therefore, to us this distinction is quite similar to the relationship between the concepts of past and history. The past entails everything that has happened, but history is not the same thing. History consists of aspects of the past that are seen, or indeed made, relevant in the present. Interestingly, if the parts of the past which are chosen to be remembered in the present as a tradition – and also the very forms of remembering the chosen past – are understood as part of rhetoric and political thinking, their truth value might diminish but the political value increases. As Margaret MacMillan (Citation2010, p. 113) reminds: ‘[h]istory is about remembering the past, but it is also about choosing to forget’.
4 This, however, does not mean that the certain facts of the past would be altered, only the interpretations of them: even in the future (our italics) Napoleon was conclusively defeated at Waterloo, as Margaret Macmillan reminds us on the matter (MacMillan, Citation2010, pp. 38–39). Generally on the different cases of use of history, see, e.g. Black (Citation2005) and MacMillan (Citation2010).
5 The political use of history to support and strengthen certain versions of the past concerning national values – and obviously national identity – runs the risk that it ‘flattens out the complexity of human experience and leaves no room for different interpretations of the past’ (MacMillan, Citation2010, p. 114). According to Jeremy Black, there exists a ‘gap between academic and public history’, or between ‘history as questions and history as answers’ (Black, Citation2005, pp. ix, 1–2).
6 Of the Hungarian newspapers included here as the research material are the conservative (since 2006) Magyar Hírlap and Magyar Nemzet, in contrast to the more liberal and leftist viewpoints of Népszava and Népszabadság, which has been closed down since October 2016. Naturally, our reading of the source material is systematic but not without the unavoidable subjective nature of historical/social scientific research.
7 See also The New Fundamental Law of Hungary, especially article J, which defines national holidays. On remembering, discourses connected to the year 1956 and the political utilisation of it, see, e.g. Gyáni (Citation2006, pp. 1199–1208), Csipke (Citation2011a, pp. 99–128) and on significance, see Rainer (Citation2006, pp. 1189–1198).
8 On the public use of the past, see Black (Citation2005); on the relationship between historians and society, see Kalela (Citation2012) and on Hungary and 1956, see Nyyssönen (Citation2008, Citation2010).
9 In regard to Lenin's The State and Revolution, see especially chapter 3 in White (Citation1999).
10 Black (Citation2005, pp. 9–10), however, is somewhat skeptical about the division between memory and history.
11 See Wirth (Citation2000, pp. 38–48) on the several ways in which history can be used or misused.
12 As a further separation with the past, since 2011 this square, which had carried the name of the Republic since 1946, is known as the John Paul II square and subsequently as a metro station of the same name.
13 These ‘memory laws’ are a kind of tradition in the Hungarian political culture, at least since the nineteenth century. However, surprisingly many were enacted recently, i.e. after 1989 (cf. Garton Ash, Citation2015).
14 According to a survey conducted in 2000, the August holiday was the most popular and 23rd October least popular, with only six per cent of respondents considering the anniversary of the 1956 Revolution as the nation's foremost holiday.
15 One of the most heated arguments considered doing justice (igazságtétel). On this matter, the government was willing to pass ex post facto legislation, for example, for acts of treason committed between 1944 and 1990 but the Constitutional Court rejected these ideas. However, those hoping to see large-scale retribution against the proponents of the old regime were to be disappointed. This was partly a consequence of the Hungarian liberal amnesty legislation (Népszabadság 24 August 2015 & 2 April 2015). In 2012, on the initiative of the Jobbik party, the case of Béla Biszku, the Minister of Interior after 1956, was reopened again. Legal proceedings against the now 94-year-old Biszku were still underway until he died in spring 2016.
16 During the same year, two government-funded memorials were unveiled in the capital. The design for the first memorial was selected through an architectural competition. The second memorial was devised later on as an alternative to the official memorial, and was placed at the technical university to symbolise the ‘personal views’ of contemporaries.
17 During the afternoon Fidesz, the largest opposition party, had gathered at the city centre; the demonstrators driven by the police from the Parliament retreated in the same direction. In the resulting confusion, also Fidesz supporters were assaulted by the police.
18 On the text (in Hungarian) of the Declaration ratified at the official ceremony of 2006, see Magyar Nemzet (26 October 2006).
19 In the spring elections of 2014 Viktor Orbán renewed the two-thirds majority with the help of a new electoral law bringing a 45 per cent share of the votes. Soon after he stated that the country had made a transition to a kind of ‘illiberal democracy’ (cf. Zakaria, Citation1997; Legyen béke, szabadság és együttértés; Orbán, Citation2014; Magyar Nemzet 15 May 2010; Népszabadság 5 July 2010). In 2018 Orbán again renewed the same two-thirds majority by 49 per cent of the votes.
20 Under the Fidesz regime, the public commemoration has mostly followed a familiar pattern: on the eve of the 23rd there is a memorial ceremony at the technical university and a torchlight procession along the banks of the Danube, ending in Pest with the lighting of a symbolic flame. In 2010, the conservative newspapers rejoiced that for the first time in years the events were taking place in a calm and child-friendly atmosphere without any police intervention (Magyar Hírlap 22 October 2010; Népszabadság 22 October 2011; Magyar Nemzet 20 October 2012; Magyar Hírlap 20 October 2010; Magyar Hírlap 22 October 2010 & 25 October 2010; Magyar Nemzet 22 October 2012; Népszabadság 14 September 2015).