The Hungarians

The Hungarians is the most comprehensive, clear-sighted, and absorbing history ever of a legendarily proud and passionate but lonely people. Much of Europe once knew them as "child-devouring cannibals" and "bloodthirsty Huns." But it wasn't long before the Hungarians became steadfast defenders of the Christian West and fought heroic freedom struggles against the Tatars (1241), the Turks (16-18th centuries), and, among others, the Russians (1848-49 and 1956). Paul Lendvai tells the fascinating story of how the Hungarians, despite a string of catastrophes and their linguistic and cultural isolation, have survived as a nation-state for more than 1,000 years.

Lendvai, who fled Hungary in 1957, traces Hungarian politics, culture, economics, and emotions from the Magyars' dramatic entry into the Carpathian Basin in 896 to the brink of the post-Cold War era. Hungarians are ever pondering what being Hungarian means and where they came from. Yet, argues Lendvai, Hungarian national identity is not only about ancestry or language but also an emotional sense of belonging. Hungary's famous poet-patriot, Sándor Petofi, was of Slovak descent, and Franz Liszt felt deeply Hungarian though he spoke only a few words of Hungarian. Through colorful anecdotes of heroes and traitors, victors and victims, geniuses and imposters, based in part on original archival research, Lendvai conveys the multifaceted interplay, on the grand stage of Hungarian history, of progressivism and economic modernization versus intolerance and narrow-minded nationalism.

He movingly describes the national trauma inflicted by the transfer of the historic Hungarian heartland of Transylvania to Romania under the terms of the Treaty of Trianon in 1920--a trauma that the passing of years has by no means lessened. The horrors of Nazi and Soviet Communist domination were no less appalling, as Lendvai's restrained account makes clear, but are now part of history.

An unforgettable blend of eminent readability, vibrant humor, and meticulous scholarship, The Hungarians is a book without taboos or prejudices that at the same time offers an authoritative key to understanding how and why this isolated corner of Europe produced such a galaxy of great scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs.

Foreword to the English Edition page xi Introduction 1 1. "Heathen Barbarians" overrun Europe: Evidence from St Gallen 7 2. Land Acquisition or Conquest? The Question of Hungarian Identity 12 3. From Magyar Mayhem to the Christian Kingdom of the Arpads 27 4. The Struggle for Continuity and Freedom 38 5. The Mongol Invasion of 1241 and its Consequences 49 6. Hungary's Rise to Great Power Status under Foreign Kings 62 7. The Heroic Age of the Hunyadis and the Turkish Danger 75 8. The Long Road to the Catastrophe of Mohacs 86 9. The Disaster of Ottoman Rule 94 10. Transylvania-the Stronghold of Hungarian Sovereignty 106 11. Gabor Bethlen-Vassal, Patriot and European 114 12. Zrinyi or Zrinski? One Hero for Two Nations 126 13. The Kuruc Leader Thokoly: Adventurer or Traitor? 137 14. Ferenc Rakoczi's Fight for Freedom from the Habsburgs 145 15. Myth and Historiography: an Idol through the Ages 155 16. Hungary in the Habsburg Shadow 160 17. The Fight Against the "Hatted King" 177 18. Abbot Martinovics and the Jacobin Plot 183 19. Count Istvan Szechenyi and the "Reform Era": the "Greatest Hungarian" 191 20. Lajos Kossuth and Sandor Petofi: Symbols of 1848 206 21. Victories, Defeat and Collapse: the Lost War of Independence, 1849 222 22. Kossuth the Hero versus "Judas" Gorgey: "Good" and "Bad" in Sacrificial Mythology 242 23. Who was Captain Gusev? Russian "Freedom Fighters" between Minsk and Budapest 260 24. Elisabeth, Andrassy and Bismarck: Austria and Hungary on the Road to Reconciliation 266 25. Victory in Defeat: the Compromise and the Consequences of Dualism 281 26. Total Blindness: The Hungarian Sense of Mission and the Nationalities 299 27. The "Golden Age" of the Millennium: Modernization with Drawbacks 310 28. "Magyar Jew or Jewish Magyar?" A Unique Symbiosis 329 29. "Will Hungary be German or Magyar?" The Germans' Peculiar Role 348 30. From the Great War to the "Dictatorship of Despair": the Red Count and Lenin's Agent 356 31. The Admiral on a White Horse: Trianon and the Death Knell of St Stephen's Realm 373 32. Adventurers, Counterfeiters, Claimants to the Throne: Hungary as Troublemaker in the Danube Basin 389 33. Marching in Step with Hitler: Triumph and Fall. From the Persecution of Jews to Mob Rule 406 34. Victory in Defeat: 1945-1990 427 35. "Everyone is a Hungarian": Geniuses and Artists 466 Summing-up 504 Notes 508 Chronology of Significant Events in Hungarian History 533 Index 557