Crises and emotions

The wounds dividing Hungarian society have grown deeper over the past 16 years, with no sign of their healing. Does this mean that the regime change has not yet come to an end? Do we need a new revolution?

© Dudás Szabolcs

The people who participated in those "regrettable events" commemorating the 50th anniversary of the earlier "regrettable events" of 1956 are convinced that there was no genuine regime change in 1989-1990. A new revolution is needed, they argue, or at the very least a lengthy period of Fidesz government. There has been talk of an 'incomplete regime change' since the very beginning, though at first the thought was more characteristic of radical Free Democrats, before becoming the property of the Far Right.

The radicalism of the Free Democrats stemmed from two experiences.

First, the first coalition, led by the Hungarian Democratic Forum, employed the most pathetic post-Kadar rhetoric, trying to obscure the parlous state of the country's economy. The other factor was the way that functionaries of the Kadar regime continued to rule in the government offices and the factories. As chairman of the Free Democrats, Janos Kis said: "We were the regime's opposition, and now we are the government's opposition." He was trying to put an end to his supporters' dangerous impatience. But the radical dissatisfaction chimed well with a sense of disappointment in the country - which was reflected in very low turn-out rates of around 40 per cent in the local elections of that period, from which the governing coalition emerged seriously wounded.

It took just one lie - raising the price of petrol despite earlier promises - for a taxi blockade to bring the country to a standstill in just a couple of hours. Ivan Peto directed the taxi drivers by mobile phone from the Free Democrat headquarters, legend later claimed, although mobile phones had not yet arrived in Hungary in 1990. The taxi drivers communicated with each other via CB radio. It was this technical advantage that allowed them to get organized so quickly.

Events surprised the Free Democrat leadership just as much as everybody else. In the middle of the crisis, senior party officials called for people to refrain from violence and advocated negotiations with the taxi drivers, though they also called for three ministers to be sacked.

But the party's voters and activists, like most of society, saw the civil disobedience movement as a reflection of their own desires and expected it to deliver miracles - the fall of the government, a swift, radical, genuine regime change. Yet the local elections had seen many of the old village council chairmen elected mayors, proving that voters were less obsessed with getting shot of the communist leaders than party activists.

The Free Democrat elite was not expecting a miracle, but they found it almost unbearable that, despite losing to the MDF by only a hair's breadth, the party was able to postpone economic reform, slow privatization and re-establish the institutions of the Horthy regime.

In December 1990, Tamas Bauer wrote that there was a political crisis in Hungary. "The government has lost not its parliamentary majority but the acquiescence of society." He called for a government of national unity that would be composed of expert ministers who would run the country for a year or 18 months until early elections were called. The message was clear: József Antall must go. Gaspar Miklos Tamas gave the government the same amount of time. The MDF had lost public trust, he said, which could only be restored by calling elections for 1991 or 1992. A party congress was held on 30 November 1990, at which many delegates expressed their impatience, calling for immediate change. But it soon became clear that there would be no repetition of the taxi blockade.

The street can make demands in a parliamentary democracy, but it can solve very little. There were problems with the demands themselves, as well. Beyond the demand that petrol prices should not rise, the general sense of dissatisfaction to which the taxi drivers were giving voice could not be shaped into genuine constitutional demands. The government did not fall, and the radicals left the Free Democrats, starting on their rightward journey. Istvan Csurka once said that his Hungarian Truth and Life Party (MIEP)'s reserves consisted of disillusioned Free Democrats. Since then, the MIEP has also been assimilated, but right-wing radicalism is stronger than ever. (But the shriveling of the Free Democrats cannot be explained by the radicals' departure. From 1994 onwards, many left the party who believed the Free Democrats to be the true party of the regime change. But this is another story).

There are striking parallels between the crises of autumn 1990 and autumn 2006. But there are also important differences. The taxi drivers' violence was passive. In 1990, the government gave in to pressure from the Free Democrats and the President, and did not seek confrontation with the police. People liked the police, and the police enjoyed being liked. This shored up a movement which in any case enjoyed broader public support and isolated government supporters who wanted to see a more heavy-handed response. The blockade was not intended to support political goals, and the opposition did not tie it to political rallies. On the contrary: the Free Democrats emphasised throughout that petrol price increases were unavoidable.

By contrast, on 18 September, the day after the prime minister's Oszod speech leaked out, it was not just right-wing columnists but Zoltán Pokorni, Fidesz's vice-chairman, who said Ferenc Gyurcsány had lost his moral authority. Then, two opposition parliamentary group leaders said the government should resign. A smaller group was protesting on Kossuth tér on the evening of 17 September, but the mass rally that gathered on the square the following day supported the opposition's political goals. Then, Viktor Orbán called on his supporters to gather for daily mass rallies before Parliament. The demonstrations became violent, with supporters forcing their way into the closed area in front of the parliament building.

The street protests were highly divisive, as well: scenes of violence drove away many potential backers. It was only the police's vengeful brutality after the Szabadsag tér fiasco that allowed the opposition to regain control of events, drawing attention away from their failure to bring down the government. This is why it was a political error for Gabor Kuncze, Free Democrat chairman, and Gabor Demszky, the mayor of Budapest, to support the national police chief.

The opposition gave the protesters a slogan: Gyurcsany must go! But what brought them to the streets? It wasn't just moral outrage at Gyurcsany's lies, since Fidesz's campaign was also built on lies ("we are worse off than four years ago"). Gyurcsany's brutal frankness may even have evoked a degree of sympathy. The outrage had deeper roots.

One of the most interesting disputes in the history of the Free Democrats concerned the afterlife of the taxi blockade. It took place in 1991 at a meeting of the Free Democrats' parliamentary group. Gyula Teller, a Free Democrat MP, claimed regime change had only occurred at the top, at the level of the political elite. He said: "The groups who ruled in the Kadar regime are still in place in the world of academia, in the armed forces and in our reformed public administration. They are still there in our companies and cooperatives and in public interest groups and in the mass media, in local civil society." Every party had promised a "spring clean" before the elections, but the two main parties, the MDF and the Free Democrats, had come to those same old groups for support. The Free Democrats had to turn to the lower strata of society, which had an interest in seeing change. "We must lead them in a fight against these ossified structures." The silent majority needed to be freed from its passivity and educated out of seeing salvation in "a gigantic father figure."