What do you mean so often. I guess you mean XXth century.
It started with Austria Hungary. After the compromise of 1867 Hungary became a nearly equal part in the Monarchy next to Austria. But it wasn’t fully equal, e.g. there were Hungarian National Bank, Ministry of Justice and several institutions you would expect from a sovereign state but a lot of things were still managed from Vienna, e.g. army, navy was common, Foreign Ministry and everything related to diplomacy. Very good article on Wikipedia how the government of the dual monarchy worked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_Austria-Hungary
Also before the compromise every nations living in Hungary were suppressed equally, and now Hungarians became the ruling class overnight. This obviously angered everyone else (Romanians, Slovaks, Serbs, Croatians, etc.).
Than came WWI and the collapse of the Monarchy. The angered nations wanted revenge. At the Paris peace conference it didn’t helped that Hungary didn’t have separate foreign relations with anyone, for the aforementioned reasons. Nation states were the new goal from a multi national monarchy, at first they wanted to draw the new borders according to Wilsonian principles. The new borders somewhat followed the boundary of nations, but they also considered economic and defense reasons. The new borders were so against Hungarians, that 30% of all Hungarian were outside the new borders of Hungary. More info on wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Trianon
Basically that was the reason Hungary sided with the Nazis in WWII. The only foreign policy of the interwar period was to do anything to get back some territories of the former kingdom, and Hitler was happy to help with that via the Vienna Awards
From there Hungary was occupied by the Soviets, so it wasn’t their choice which side to choose. They tried to choose their side once but it was crushed by tanks.
So as I see this is the first time they (we?) deliberately choose the wrong side. During WWI Hungary wasn’t fully independent, WWII was the consequence of the messed up peace treaty at the end of WWI (from Hungarian point of view), and we didn’t choose the Soviets, but they choose us.
I wonder to what extent the western powers in Trianon were also motivated to punish the experiment with communism during summer of 1919 ? And how memory of this continues to influence modern views?
Later, the Soviet union extracted products and resources cheaply from its satellites - did this contribute to resentment of Ukraine as the transit country (I heard similar from Romanians)?
Today, the rural - urban political divide is similar in many other corners of europe, or even usa. I just wonder why the power balance in this case seems to be skewed away from the younger educated ‘city people’ in Budapest - maybe also specific demographics relating to those borders ?
The soviet republic collapsed in 1919 August, Horthy took power in Budapest in 1919 November, and the treaty was signed in 1920 June, so they already knew the communist rule was over. So I don’t think so.
And how memory of this continues to influence modern views?
As 30% of Hungarians were affected someway, nearly everyone has some family story. One of my great grandparent was living in what is nowadays Slovakia, and he moved to Hungary because he doesn’t wanted Czechoslovak nationality. There are still around a million Hungarians live in Romania, several hundred thousand in Slovakia and a smaller community in Serbia and Ukraine.
Nowadays only the most far right wingers are on this topic though, from all nations, e.g. Romanian nationalists destroy sometimes old Hungarian cemeteries, Hungarian assholes say stupid things all the time, and calling someone Romanian is still a bit degrading term in Hungary (e.g. if you call someone an Romanian asshole is more terrible than calling it simply asshole)
Most of us all in the EU so it doesn’t really matter.
Later, the Soviet union extracted products and resources cheaply from its satellites - did this contribute to resentment of Ukraine as the transit country (I heard similar from Romanians)?
The border between Ukraine and Hungary is so small, so it didn’t have as much effect on us than on Romanians, so I don’t know about this. There is only one or too big border station at all.
Today, the rural - urban political divide is similar in many other corners of europe, or even usa. I just wonder why the power balance in this case seems to be skewed away from the younger educated ‘city people’ in Budapest - maybe also specific demographics relating to those borders ?
There is one different thing, Hungarian is not an Indo-European language. If you heard about how hard is to learn Hungarian, for us every other language is that difficult, so that’s a huge reason why only 28% of Hungarian speaks at least one foreign language. And a lot of people who can speak languages just simply leave the country to Western Europe.
Fidesz owns nearly every Hungarian speaking media. So if you can’t speak any other language, the chance to get real news of the world is really small, unless you specifically reach out to the remaining few free Hungarian news sources.
The urban rural divide exists here as well, but this language barrier skews this. At the 2022 election Fidesz got 40% even in Budapest, while it got 50-55% on the rural parts.
Interesting - especially regarding the linguistic isolation factor, making it easy to dominate media.
Although even among many similar slavic languages, I wonder how many people are listening to other country’s media.
And if we look at other isolated languages in Europe, eg. Finland, Basque, Albania, it’s hard to see a pattern in political consequences.
As the grandson of Hungarian immigrants, why the hell is Hungary so often on the wrong side of history?
Bonus points for their child (my father) being a lifelong republican.
What do you mean so often. I guess you mean XXth century.
It started with Austria Hungary. After the compromise of 1867 Hungary became a nearly equal part in the Monarchy next to Austria. But it wasn’t fully equal, e.g. there were Hungarian National Bank, Ministry of Justice and several institutions you would expect from a sovereign state but a lot of things were still managed from Vienna, e.g. army, navy was common, Foreign Ministry and everything related to diplomacy. Very good article on Wikipedia how the government of the dual monarchy worked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_of_Austria-Hungary
Also before the compromise every nations living in Hungary were suppressed equally, and now Hungarians became the ruling class overnight. This obviously angered everyone else (Romanians, Slovaks, Serbs, Croatians, etc.).
Than came WWI and the collapse of the Monarchy. The angered nations wanted revenge. At the Paris peace conference it didn’t helped that Hungary didn’t have separate foreign relations with anyone, for the aforementioned reasons. Nation states were the new goal from a multi national monarchy, at first they wanted to draw the new borders according to Wilsonian principles. The new borders somewhat followed the boundary of nations, but they also considered economic and defense reasons. The new borders were so against Hungarians, that 30% of all Hungarian were outside the new borders of Hungary. More info on wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Trianon
Basically that was the reason Hungary sided with the Nazis in WWII. The only foreign policy of the interwar period was to do anything to get back some territories of the former kingdom, and Hitler was happy to help with that via the Vienna Awards
When Horthy saw that the Nazis will loose the war, he tried to do a separate peace with the Soviets in 1944, but he was overthrown by the Hungarian Nazis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_Cross_Party#Arrow_Cross_rule
From there Hungary was occupied by the Soviets, so it wasn’t their choice which side to choose. They tried to choose their side once but it was crushed by tanks.
So as I see this is the first time they (we?) deliberately choose the wrong side. During WWI Hungary wasn’t fully independent, WWII was the consequence of the messed up peace treaty at the end of WWI (from Hungarian point of view), and we didn’t choose the Soviets, but they choose us.
I wonder to what extent the western powers in Trianon were also motivated to punish the experiment with communism during summer of 1919 ? And how memory of this continues to influence modern views?
Later, the Soviet union extracted products and resources cheaply from its satellites - did this contribute to resentment of Ukraine as the transit country (I heard similar from Romanians)?
Today, the rural - urban political divide is similar in many other corners of europe, or even usa. I just wonder why the power balance in this case seems to be skewed away from the younger educated ‘city people’ in Budapest - maybe also specific demographics relating to those borders ?
The soviet republic collapsed in 1919 August, Horthy took power in Budapest in 1919 November, and the treaty was signed in 1920 June, so they already knew the communist rule was over. So I don’t think so.
As 30% of Hungarians were affected someway, nearly everyone has some family story. One of my great grandparent was living in what is nowadays Slovakia, and he moved to Hungary because he doesn’t wanted Czechoslovak nationality. There are still around a million Hungarians live in Romania, several hundred thousand in Slovakia and a smaller community in Serbia and Ukraine.
Nowadays only the most far right wingers are on this topic though, from all nations, e.g. Romanian nationalists destroy sometimes old Hungarian cemeteries, Hungarian assholes say stupid things all the time, and calling someone Romanian is still a bit degrading term in Hungary (e.g. if you call someone an Romanian asshole is more terrible than calling it simply asshole)
Most of us all in the EU so it doesn’t really matter.
The border between Ukraine and Hungary is so small, so it didn’t have as much effect on us than on Romanians, so I don’t know about this. There is only one or too big border station at all.
There is one different thing, Hungarian is not an Indo-European language. If you heard about how hard is to learn Hungarian, for us every other language is that difficult, so that’s a huge reason why only 28% of Hungarian speaks at least one foreign language. And a lot of people who can speak languages just simply leave the country to Western Europe.
Fidesz owns nearly every Hungarian speaking media. So if you can’t speak any other language, the chance to get real news of the world is really small, unless you specifically reach out to the remaining few free Hungarian news sources.
The urban rural divide exists here as well, but this language barrier skews this. At the 2022 election Fidesz got 40% even in Budapest, while it got 50-55% on the rural parts.
Interesting - especially regarding the linguistic isolation factor, making it easy to dominate media.
Although even among many similar slavic languages, I wonder how many people are listening to other country’s media. And if we look at other isolated languages in Europe, eg. Finland, Basque, Albania, it’s hard to see a pattern in political consequences.
When they stopped invading Christians and became Christians, fucking cringe.