Recent Hungarian diplomatic blunders: Romania and the Czech Republic

Let’s move from domestic to foreign affairs, not because there are no interesting topics at home in spite of the silly season (cucumber season in Hungarian or Saurgurkenzeit in German) but because Romanian President Traian Băsescu made headlines today with his caustic and, according to some, threatening remarks about the Orbán government’s behavior toward his country.

Traian Băsescu was Fidesz’s favorite Romanian politician a couple of years ago, and it seemed that Viktor Orbán and the Romanian president were kindred souls who understood each other and were ready to support each other. I vividly recall when back in 2009 Zsolt Németh, Fidesz’s foreign policy expert, gave a television interview in which he emphasized the importance of Băsescu’s re-election. He considered it to be critical from Hungary’s point of view, especially after Fidesz’s electoral victory in 2010.  In 2011 Băsescu attended Fidesz’s summer camp in Tusnádfűrdő and in 2012 Orbán campaigned on Băsescu’s behalf among Transylvanian Hungarians. Well, the honeymoon is over.

When Viktor Orbán and Trajan Basescu were still friends. On the right László Tőkés at Tasnádfűrdő

When Viktor Orbán and Trajan Băsescu were still friends. On the right László Tőkés at Tasnádfűrdő

I have two versions of what Băsescu had to say this morning in Marosfő/Izvoru Mureșului in Hargita/Harghita county at another summer free university gathering. Marosfő is a village with a population of 800 which is completely balanced ethnically. The Hungarian version appeared in the Romanian Új Magyar Szó, according to which Băsescu said that “politicians of Hungary became so impertinent that it is likely that we will not approve their holding their Free University and student camp in Bálványos.” He added that “Romania is ready to accept a leading role in reprimanding Hungary because  it has recently become the center of tension in the region.” He announced that 2013 was the last year that “the whole political elite could loiter undisturbed in Harghita and Covasna.” This was the version that Hungarian papers republished without any changes.

The other version appeared in The Independent Balkan News Agency, which covers all the Balkan countries in addition to Slovenia and Cyprus. This version is more complete and explicit than the one that appeared in the Hungarian paper. Here Băsescu talks about Hungary as “a regional hotbed of instability” and warns that Bucharest could seek “to teach Hungary to know its place” and made it clear that in the future Hungarian politicians “will not be able to roam around Romania freely.” As it turns out, the Romanian original from Băsescu’s blog is “poate să se perinde” which is very close to the Hungarian “loitering” (lófrálni). * The news agency also notes that Băsescu’s outburst came only two days after Gábor Vona, the leader of Jobbik, said (also in Romania) that “Hungary should engage in a conflict with Romania in order to protect the rights of the Hungarian minority. ” Moreover, László Tőkés’s suggestion that Hungary extend “protection” to the Hungarian minority in Romania is also mentioned.

Official Hungarian reaction was slow in coming. First it was Hunor Kelemen, chairman of RMDSZ/UDMR, the major Hungarian right-of-center party in Romania, who described Băsescu’s “recent reaction to Hungary [as] over the top.” The language Băsescu used was too strong even in connection with Gábor Vona’s remarks, but “Hungary’s leaders did not warrant such a reaction from President Traian Băsescu.” Kelemen found it “unacceptable for a head of state to threaten a neighboring country with isolation.”

It was only around 7:00 p.m. that Balázs Hidvéghi, a novice Fidesz member of parliament who since 2010 hasn’t done anything notable judging from his parliamentary record, was picked to answer the Romanian president. This choice I think reflects Viktor Orbán’s  attempt to make the event seem insignificant, undeserving of a high level answer. Hidvéghi was both understanding and friendly; he emphasized that the summer camps at Tusnádfűrdő were always held with a view to furthering Romanian-Hungarian dialogue and friendship.

Magyar Nemzet looked for a Romanian politician who had condemned Băsescu and found him in Mircea Geoană, the former Romanian foreign minister. He considered Băsescu’s attack on Hungary and the Hungarian politicians part of the Romanian president’s “desperate pursuit of popularity.” Geoană expressed his fear that after such an extremist statement “there will be the danger that the world will consider Romania to be the center of instability in Europe” instead of Hungary. What Magyar Nemzet neglected to mention was that the socialist Mircea Geoană was the candidate for the post of presidency in 2009 against Trajan Băsescu. But even Magyar Nemzet had to admit that another socialist politician, Mircea Dusa, a member of parliament from Hargita/Harghita, welcomed Băsescu’s condemnation of the Orbán government’s political activities in Romania.

If that weren’t enough, Viktor Orbán made another diplomatic faux pas, this time involving the Czech Republic and the Visegrád Four. The Visegrád Four (V4), an alliance of four Central European states–the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary, was established both to further cooperation and to promote the European integration of these countries. The name of the alliance is derived from the place where Bohemian, Polish, and Hungarians rulers met in 1335. The three kings agreed in Visegrád to create new commercial routes to bypass the port of Vienna and obtain easier access to other European markets.

The Visegrád Four still exists and this year the prime minister of Hungary serves as chairman. The next summit of the four countries was scheduled to be held on August 24 in the fabulous Esterházy Palace located in Fertőd, close to the Austrian border. On August 8 the Office of the Prime Minister announced that Viktor Orbán had decided to postpone the summit due to the Czech government crisis. It was clear from the text of the announcement that the idea had originated with Viktor Orbán and that the postponement was not requested by the Czechs.

The Czech reaction was swift. Jan Hrubes, the Czech government spokesman, announced that there was no need to postpone the summit. Moreover, the Czech government learned about the change of plans only from the media. Jirí Rusnok, the current prime minister, was ready to participate in the summit. The spokesman of the Hungarian Office of the Prime Minister expressed his surprise since, according to him, the Poles and Slovaks received Orbán’s announcement. Whether the Czechs did or not is a moot point. The fact is that it is not customary in diplomacy to postpone a meeting on account of instability in one of the countries without the request of the country in question. A typical Viktor Orbán move; he behaves in international circles like a bull in a china shop.

According to observers, the real reason behind Orbán’s move can be traced to his political sympathies. The former prime minister of the Czech Republic, Petr Nečas, was a member of the right-of-center Civic Democratic Party and was an admirer of Orbán. In fact, he stood by the Orbán government at the time the European Parliament accepted the Tavares Report. He expressed his “deep disappointment” and forewarned of the grave consequences of the report for the future of the European Union. By contrast, President Miloš Zeman is a socialist and so is Jirí Rusnok, who will most likely remain at the head of the government at least until October when elections will probably be held. Tamás Rónay of Népszava suspects that Orbán’s decision to postpone the summit is a gesture to and an expression of solidarity with Nečas, who had to resign in the wake of a huge sex and corruption scandal. Just another case of diplomacy Orbán style.

*Thanks to my friends originally from Transylvania who provided me with the Romanian original.

The sources of Viktor Orbán’s ideas on the world economy

Practically everything that has aroused my interest in the last couple of days is connected in one way or the other to Tusnádfürdő/Baile Tusnad or, as the organizers call it, the “free university” Tusványos. It is a made-up word. Originally, these gatherings were held in Bálványos/Cetăţile Păgânilor, but the festivities over the years have grown so much that they had to move to Tusnádfürdő. Hence the name.

I wrote a couple of times about a commentator who calls himself Elek Tokfalvi, a mirror translation of Alexis de Toqueville. He is an erudite fellow and a sharp-eyed observer of political developments. This time Tokfalvi found a sentence in Viktor Orbán’s speech at Tusványos that prompted him to do a little research. The sentence followed Orbán’s running commentary about the great powers and their exploitation of the smaller ones on the periphery. The sentence reads: “Jenő Szűcs, an author who was very much in vogue about twenty or twenty-five years ago, wrote about this very clearly when he put together a popular treatise on the centers of the world economy and their peripheries.”

I myself didn’t catch this particular sentence when I listened to Orbán’s speech but I sure got a shock when I saw it in print. First, Jenő Szűcs was a historian of Hungarian medieval history who didn’t “put together” popular works. In fact, I clearly remember when I bought one of his works in Hungary and showed it to my father. His first reaction was that Szűcs’s style was so “scientific” that it took mental effort even for a well read and intelligent man like my father to comprehend what the slim volume was all about. I think the title itself is telling: A nemzet historikuma és a történetszemlélet nemzeti látószöge (hozzászólás egy vitához) (History of the nation and the national vision of the view of history, remarks to a debate). His works were appreciated by his colleagues but “in vogue” he was not.

Then there is the problem of dates. Jenő Szűcs died in November 1988, so he couldn’t have written anything twenty or twenty-five years ago. Orbán might conceivably have referenced an article Szűcs wrote in 1980 in the samizdat volume published in honor of István Bibó. The title of the article was “Vázlat Európa három történeti régiójáról.” A year later it also appeared in Történelmi Szemle. But the “Sketch of the three historical regions of Europe” had nothing to do with great centers of the world economy or their peripheries. It was an attempt to portray the region lying between Eastern and Western Europe as a distinct entity that has been different for at least the last thousand years. I for one don’t think that this was a revolutionary discovery, but Hungarian historical circles were impressed.

So, if Jenő Szűcs wasn’t Orbán’s source, who was? Tokfalvi suggests Immanuel Wallerstein, an American Marxist “sociologist, historical social scientist and world-systems analyst.” Apparently in the 1970s Wallerstein was not only translated into Hungarian but very much appreciated by the party leadership. He called the satellite countries “half peripheral” because he saw their centralized planned economic policies as vehicles of true convergence. Thus Wallerstein gave his stamp of approval to the totally mistaken economic policies of the socialist countries. Tokfalvi thinks that Wallerstein is the most likely candidate for Viktor Orbán’s Jenő Szűcs “in vogue.”

Over his career Wallerstein adopted some basic Marxist doctrines: the dichotomy between capital and labor and the view that world economic development is a dialectical process that goes through such stages as feudalism and capitalism. He believes in something called “dependency theory,” which leads straight to the notion that resources flow from a periphery of poor and underdeveloped countries to a “core” of wealthy states, enriching them at the expense of the poor countries. He is one of the leading figures of the anti-globalist movement.

Source: wikipedia.org

Source: wikipedia.org

It is becoming increasingly obvious that Viktor Orbán and his college friends are truly the children of the late Kádár period, together with all its ideological baggage. Orbán, when he espoused Wallerstein’s theories at Tusványos, must have noticed that he was flirting with Marxist clichés and felt compelled to preface this particular passage about “the core and the periphery” with the claim that he is not a “vulgar Marxist.” Even his stress on the value of labor that produces only tangible products is suspect. It might be a less than a perfect understanding of Marx’s labor theory. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that were the case because I know from personal experience as well as from the stories of others that Hungarian college students didn’t take their compulsory course on “political economy” very seriously.

This discussion will be a good introduction to a book review I have been planning to write on a new book by János Kornai called “Gondolatok a kapitalizmusról” (Thoughts on Capitalism). Included in this volume is an essay entitled “Marx egy kelet-európai értelmiségi szemével” (Marx through the eyes of an Eastern European intellectual.” The very last sub-chapter’s title is “Ami tovább él Marx tanaiból” (What still lives from the teachings of Marx).  Certainly not what Viktor Orbán is talking about.