Budapest | Iron Curtain memories | The Economist

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Budapest
Iron Curtain memories
Jan 28th 2009From Economist.com
Celebrating twenty years since communism's fall
NOW that Russia has turned the heating back on, central Europe can start planning its celebrations for the twentieth anniversary of the collapse of communism.Moscow’s shadow remains long, but the region has cause for joy. Hungary is a democracy, a member of the European Union, NATO and the Schengen Zone, whichallows visa free travel across the continent.
I live in Hungary, and whenever I travel to Austria I marvel at the open border. It seems incredible that just two decades ago, Hungarians could not travel,speak, or even meet freely, for fear of the secret police, imprisonment or worse. Part of me even misses the frisson of cold stares from the border guards,brusque orders to open the car boot and the delicious relief when the ink-stamp came down on passport paper and the red-striped barrier was finally lifted(although it was rather less fun for citizens of communist countries).EPA
Gabor Demszky, the mayor of Budapest and himself a former dissident, likes to show visitors a large, grainy black and white photograph of plainclothes secret-policeagents tailing him during the last years of the regime. The agents do not look especially thuggish or stupid. I wonder what was going through their headsas they traipsed across the city after Mr Demszky and his (rather small) group of fellow free-thinkers.
Did they really believe that the workers' and peasants’ state was built on such shaky foundations that a few sheets of mimeographed samizdat could bringit down? Perhaps they did, for by then, most of the party leadership knew that Karl Marx was wrong, and it was only a matter of time before not capitalismbut communism collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions. All those five-year plans must bring some sense of perspective.
The images of crowds hacking at the Berlin Wall in November 1989 while bemused East German border guards watch helplessly are now iconic. But it’s oftenforgotten that the Iron Curtain was first physically breached not in Berlin, but just outside Sopron, Hungary, on the Hungarian-Austrian border in thesummer of 1989. As tens of thousands of fleeing East Germans poured in to Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the pressure built and built until it could no longerbe contained.
When you cannot dam a wave, it’s better to try and ride it. Which is why in June 1989 Gyula Horn, the Hungarian foreign minister, travelled to the borderwith Alois Mock, his Austrian counterpart. They brought a large pair of wire-cutters and started snipping (pictured above).
By then the Hungarians had been working with the West Germans against their supposed comrades in hard-line East Germany for years. The wily Magyars hadjoined the International Monetary Fund as early as 1982. One western official involved in negotiations between Budapest and Bonn told me how, as the oneparty state began to collapse, the Hungarian communist leadership would even travel to Germany with lists of reformist candidates for the Germans’ approval.
It’s hard to say what exactly was the tipping point that made the Communists realise that the game was truly, finally, over. The most likely event was theJune 1989 reburial of Imre Nagy, the leader of the failed 1956 revolution. Nagy was arrested by the Soviets and executed two years later after a show trial.He was buried in an anonymous plot known as “Section 301” of a Budapest cemetery. (Ironically, historians such as Johanna Granville and Charles Gati arguethat Russian archives show Nagy had been an informer or agent for the Soviet secret police, known as “Agent Volodya” during his time in Moscow in the 1930s.Others argue the documents are fake.)
Over 200,000 people attended the formal ceremony in Budapest’s Heroes’ Square. There a firebrand young dissident called Viktor Orban called for democraticelections and for the Russians to go home. Nine years later Mr Orban was the youngest prime minister of Hungary, at 34.
There is no doubt that cutting the border wire took some political courage. But few were more adept than the Hungarian communists at reading the politicalrunes, and a finely calibrated self-interest undoubtedly played an important role. The “handshake transition” to democracy was peaceful and smooth. Sosmooth, say Magyar cynics, it also allowed the former communist nomenklatura to keep control of its immense economic empire—and massively expand it duringthe first years of freedom, known as vad kapitalizmus (wild capitalism). So they too, will be celebrating.
Tuesday
IT MAY take a glass or two of Unicum, Hungary’s bitter national digestif, but even the most ardent Magyar patriot will likely eventually admit that theymiss one thing about life under communism: the jokes. Which is not to say that communism itself was funny, because it was not. But the ceaseless tensionbetween rulers and ruled, the arbitrary decision-making and the fantastic claims of non-existent progress made for a rich harvest of humour.
Sometimes laughter was the only remedy for life in “Absurdistan”, as the Soviet bloc was often called. For George Orwell, political jokes were “tiny revolutions”.The fact that telling a joke might lead to arrest, and perhaps worse only added to the forbidden thrill. George Mikes, a Hungarian humour writer, claimedthat the secret police actually invented jokes themselves, so as to better control popular sentiment. Some political jokes even reflected the ideologicaldifferences between communist regimes: Hungarian and Polish political leaders liked to collect jokes about themselves, where East Germans liked to collectthe people who told them.AFPHave you heard the one about me?
But few of the former Soviet bloc countries had better jokes than the Hungarians. After all, several of their national characteristics—quick intelligence,mordant wit and an eye for the main chance—are summarised in the now legendary humorous definition of a Hungarian: “Someone who enters a revolving doorbehind you but comes out in front”.
My two favourites are set in the time immediately after the 1956 revolution:
In the first, Comrade teacher announces the day’s lesson in School Number One, Budapest: Marxist criticism and self-criticism.
“Istvan, please stand up and tell us what Marxist criticism and self-criticism means,” she instructs.
The little boy stands up. “Comrade teacher, Marxist criticism is how we must view my parents, who joined the reactionary counter-revolutionary forces whosought to destroy our heroic workers’ and peasants’ state, and then fled to the imperialist, capitalist west, to continue their intrigues against the Socialistregime.”
“Excellent, Istvan. And what is your Marxist self-criticism?”
“I didn’t go with them.”
The second is set on May Day in Budapest, as the Hungarian armed forces parade past the communist leaders. There is an impressive array of tanks, missiles,armoured cars, and soldiers marching in their best uniforms.
The communist leaders stand impassively as the soldiers and their vehicles pass by. Then, right at the end comes a battered old open truck, sputtering exhaustas it carries three fat middle-aged men in badly fitting grey suits. An apparatchik turns to the defence minister and asks, “Who are they?”
“That’s our secret weapon,” says the minister. “Economists from the Ministry of Planning.”
The Hungarian communists’ chameleonic qualities have also spawned quips such as this one about Ferenc Gyurcsany (pictured above, with Vladimir Putin), Hungary’scurrent prime minister. Mr Gyurcsany is a former leader of the communist youth organisation who is now one of the richest businessmen in the country.
Question: “Who would be prime minister if communism had not collapsed?”
Answer: “Ferenc Gyurcsany.”
Hungary’s humorists have also adapted their jokes for the rigours of governmental austerity plans.
Ferenc Gyurcsany dies and goes to the gate of heaven, where he is met by St.Peter. Peter tells Mr Gyurcsany that he cannot enter, but he can choose betweentwo hells.
They travel down to take a look. The first is full of pretty girls, fabulous food and drink, and every comfort. The second is full of spouting fires, vatsof boiling oil, and monsters.
“I’ll take the first please,” says Mr Gyurcsany. He has a wonderful time, but after a few days he is called up to St.Peter.
“I’ve got bad news for you, Ferenc,” he says. “You are going to the second hell.”
“Why? What did I do wrong?” he asks plaintively.
“Nothing. But that was the electoral campaign hell. Now comes the reform package hell.”
Nor does Viktor Orban, the leader of Fidesz, the main opposition party, often criticised for opaque economic policies that seem to promise all things toall men, escape humorous censure.
Mr Orban walks into a house and sees a young boy with a litter of new born kittens.
“This one is Fidesz, this one is Fidesz, and this one is Fidesz,” the boy says, counting them carefully.
“Very good,” says Mr Orban, and pats the boy on the head.
But when he goes back the following week it’s a different picture:
“This one is Socialist, this one is Socialist and this one is Socialist,” says the little boy.
“What happened?” asks Mr Orban indignantly, “last week they were all Fidesz.”
“Yes, but now they have opened their eyes,” says the little boy.
And it seems that jokes are not the only thing Hungarians miss about Communism. Despite the Socialist party’s current dismal showing in the opinion polls,there remains a surprisingly widespread nostalgia for the certainties of life under the one-party system, when work, housing and holidays were all guaranteedby the state. A survey in May 2008 showed that 62% of Hungarians were happier before 1990—up from 53% in 2001. Just 14% said that the period since 1990was their happiest, while 60% said it was their least happiest. Communists, it seems, get the last laugh after all.
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Wednesday
NYUGATI train station stands on the Great Boulevard, right in the heart of Budapest, just a few minutes’ walk from the Gothic extravaganza of the HungarianParliament, the five-star hotels along the Danube riverbank and downtown’s swish $50-a-head restaurants. Nyugati is one of Budapest’s landmarks—a soaringextravaganza of steel and glass, designed by engineers from Gustav Eiffel’s studio in the 1870s. The passageways underneath, however, are another world.Harsh neon lights illuminate a scene you won’t find on Budapest’s tourist trail.
Homeless men and women huddle in acrylic blankets, sleeping on a few sheets of cardboard and scraps of foam rubber. Grimy drifters sell yesterday’s newspapers.Warm, stale air gusts up from the Metro, mixing with the smell of kebabs and urine. A group of leather-jacketed men hanging around the Metro entrance lightanother cigarette and watch us warily as we walk towards them.Roma police officer Gyorgy Makula
It’s ten o’clock on a Friday night and I’m on patrol with the Budapest Police’s Crime Prevention Unit, under the command of Captain Gyorgy Makula. Gyorgyhas even assigned me a bodyguard, a chic plainclothes female officer named Aniko Ongar. It’s a nice gesture, though Nyugati’s underpasses are more smellythan dangerous, and I doubt I’ll get my pocket picked in present company.
Gyorgy is a rarity among Budapest police officers: a Roma (Gypsy) who also speaks fluent English. The Roma make up perhaps 8% of Hungary’s 10m people. Especiallyoutside Budapest, the Roma often live in conditions of extreme poverty, in shanty towns without proper sewage, water or electricity.
Many Roma lost their jobs after the change of system in 1989. As the recession bites harder, especially in the construction trade, the Roma are slidinginto the kind of poverty usually seen in the developing world, not contemporary Europe. Nobody knows exactly how many Roma there are, because many do notadmit their ethnic origin. That’s never been an issue for Gyorgy, despite widespread prejudice against Roma in Hungary (and the rest of central and easternEurope). “A lot of Roma have identity issues. They say they are not Gypsies, but they are. It’s unhealthy to live like that, to be a Gypsy at home butnot at work.”
Gyorgy, 29, grew up in poverty in Jaszkiser, a small village in northern Hungary. He could not afford to go to university. When he enrolled in the policeacademy his family raised a collection to pay for his train ticket to Budapest. The Soros Foundation supported him through secondary school and the policeacademy, then sent him to Budapest’s Central European University to learn English.
The first few weeks at the police academy were difficult, he admits. When an instructor at the police academy told a racist joke about Gypsies, Gyorgy protested,while two other Roma cadets kept silent. There were times Gyorgy felt like leaving. “I thought maybe this is not for me,” he recalls. “But the other studentsgave me such support, even those who did not know me, and so I stayed.”
The British and American embassies recently launched a poster campaign to change stereotypes and persuade more young Roma to join the police. “The radicalright is always talking about Gypsy crime. But crime is not ethno-specific, it depends on your position in society,” says Gyorgy.
We walk over to the group loafing by the metro entrance. Gyorgy and his colleagues ask for their identity documents. They produce Romanian papers. The policeradio headquarters; everything is in order.
We move into the passageways leading to the West End shopping mall. Its glitzy shops offer a world of plenty far out of reach for those slumped semi-consciousagainst the wall, their faces swollen with the signs of advanced alcoholism.
Gyorgy and his colleagues check the sleeping vagrants to see that they are breathing (every year several die on the streets of cold and illness) and towake them. The police offer help and information about the city’s network of shelters but these people, like many other homeless, refuse to go. They fearthat the shelters are insecure and their meagre possessions will be stolen. Or perhaps they just prize their independence.
It’s not easy being a Roma cop. Some Roma police are much harsher toward Roma than other criminals, overcompensating to show they are not soft on theirfellow Gypsies. And some Roma criminals appeal to shared ethnicity. “They say who are you to arrest me?” Gyorgy explains. “You are the same as me. Butyou have to stay professional, so the person being arrested feels this is real, and official. It doesn’t matter what your ethnic origin is.”
After eight years on the job, Gyorgy is realistic about both the prospects and difficulties for Roma police. Of about 38,000 Hungarian police officers,perhaps 200 are Roma. Gyorgy is one of the founders of the European Roma police association, which is building links with Roma officers in the neighbouringcountries. “They will meet some prejudice. They will have to learn to deal with the situation, to not be aggressive, but to draw a very clear line. Theywill need a strong personality, and self-control. And then they can have an excellent career.”