Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 9:163–171.

ARNOLD SUPPAN

Die langen Schatten von Saint-Germain

Zum 80. Jahrestag der Unterzeichnung des Friedensvertrages am 10. September 1919

Der Zerfall Jugoslawiens in mehreren Bürger- und Sezessionskriegen seit 1991, die Teilung der Tschechoslowakei am 1. Jänner 1993 und die Reduzierung des europäischen Russlands auf die Grenzen Sowjetrusslands im März 1918 ließen bei vielen internationalen Beobachtern die Frage aufkommen: Warum versagte die Friedensordnung von 1919/1920? Was waren die schwerwiegenden Fehler der Friedensverträge von Versailles, Saint-Germain, Trianon, Neuilly und Sèvres?

Nach der Niederlage der Mittelmächte auf den Schlachtfeldern Nordostfrankreichs, Venetiens und Makedoniens im Herbst 1918 hatten die Alliierten in den Waffenstillständen von Villa Giusti, Compiègne und Belgrad die Räumung aller besetzten Gebiete (Baltikum, Weißrussland, Ukraine, Rumänien, Serbien, Montenegro, Albanien, Venetien, Nordostfrankreich, Belgien, Luxemburg) und die weitgehende Abrüstung der Mittelmächte durchgesetzt. Auf dem Gebiet der Habsburgermonarchie und der angrenzenden Regionen im Norden, Osten und Süden waren zwischen 28. Oktober und 1. Dezember 1918 sieben neue Staaten entstanden: die Tschechoslowakische Republik, das Königreich der Serben, Kroaten und Slowenen, die Republik Polen, Ungarn als selbständiges Königreich, die Westukrainische Republik, die Republik Deutschösterreich und das Königreich Groß-Rumänien. Jedes dieser neuen, international noch nicht anerkannten Staatsgebilde litt unter den fürchterlichen Folgen von mehr als vier Jahren Krieg. Zusammengezählt beklagten sie über zwei Millionen Gefallene, mehrere Millionen an Kriegsinvaliden, Witwen und Waisen, hunderttausende Ziviltote, Millionen an Kriegsflüchtlingen und nun – nach Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges – auch noch hunderttausende an Grippetoten.

Die alte Ordnung war in weiten Teilen Mittel-, Ost- und Südosteuropas zusammengebrochen, die Habsburgermonarchie als jahrhundertealter Stabilitätsfaktor untergegangen; als neue Ordnungsmächte traten Frankreich, Großbritannien, die USA und Italien im Westen, die bolschewikische Regierung Lenins im Osten auf den Plan. Die Westmächte organisierten einen Kongress der Sieger in Paris und waren vor allem daran interessiert, ihre strategischen, politischen und wirtschaftlichen Ziele durchzusetzen und die Unterschriften der Verliererstaaten Deutschland, Österreich, Ungarn, Bulgarien und Osmanisches Reich auf die mühsam ausgearbeiteten Friedensverträge zu bekommen. Aber das Wilsonsche Ideal der nationalen Selbstbestimmung und der Berücksichtigung der Interessen der betroffenen Bevölkerung wurde weder konsequent noch fair angewendet. Der französische Ministerpräsident Georges Clemenceau und der britische Premierminister David Lloyd George wollten vor allem die Macht Deutschlands geschwächt sehen und unterstützten die polnische, tschechoslowakische, rumänische, südslawische und griechische Friedensdelegation bei Erhebung weitgehender territorialer und finanzieller Forderungen gegenüber Deutschland, Österreich, Ungarn, Bulgarien und der Türkei. Andererseits erschien den Westmächten die Eindämmung des bolschewistischen Russlands ebenso wichtig, so dass der neue „cordon sanitaire” auch im Osten weit über die ethnischen Grenzen der Polen, Tschecho-Slowaken, Serben, Rumänen und Griechen hinausreichen sollte. Freilich sanktionierte der amerikanische Kongress diese Friedensbestimmungen nicht, so dass das gesamte französisch-britische Friedenssystem in Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa von Beginn an auf relativ schwachen Beinen stand.

Nachdem der Oberste Rat der alliierten und assoziierten Mächte Anfang Mai 1919 die österreichische Regierung zur „Prüfung der Friedensbedingungen” nach Paris eingeladen hatte, legte das Staatsamt für Äußeres – trotz weitgehender Abhängigkeit der Alpenrepublik von den Lebensmittel- und Kohlelieferungen der Entente – relativ anspruchsvolle Leitlinien fest:

1. die Berufung auf das Selbstbestimmungsrecht, aber in Verbindung mit dem Interesse an der Erhaltung eines politisch und wirtschaftlich lebensfähigen Gebildes;

2. die Gewährung des vollen Selbstbestimmungsrechtes für Deutschböhmen und das Sudetenland (= Nordmähren mit Jägerndorf und Troppau);

3. die Zugehörigkeit Deutsch-Südtirols zu Deutschösterreich;

4. die Verteidigung der Städte und der Bahnlinie Villach – Klagenfurt – Marburg; die Forderung nach Radkersburg und Pettau; die Sicherung der nationalen Rechte der Gottscheer;

5. eine Volksabstimmung für Deutsch-Westungarn;

6. das Aufwerfen der „Anschlussfrage” solle erst nach Erledigung der territorialen Fragen und der wichtigsten wirtschaftlichen Fragen erfolgen;

7. die Verantwortung für den Weltkrieg trage nicht Deutschösterreich, sondern das Regime der österreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie;

8. das Recht auf allgemeine Wehrpflicht mit Friedenspräsenz von 50.000 Mann; ein beschleunigter Rücktransport der Kriegsgefangenen aus Russland;

9. Deutschösterreich sei nicht imstande, eine Kriegsentschädigung zu bezahlen; die Liquidation des Staatsvermögens und der Staatsschuld sei auf alle Nachfolgestaaten aufzuteilen;

10. eine Vereinbarung der Verkehrs- und Handelsfreiheit mit den Nachfolgestaaten; die Internationalisierung der Südbahn und des Hafens von Triest;

11. die Abwehr der italienischen Ansprüche auf Kunstschätze.

Die in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in einigen Villen isolierte österreichische Friedensdelegation unter Führung von Staatskanzler Karl Renner erhielt am Rande von Finanzverhandlungen freilich bald ernüchternde Informationen: Ganz Südtirol werde Italien zugesprochen, der Anschluss an Deutschland verboten. Noch niederschmetternder war der am 2. Juni übergebene erste Teil der Friedensbedingungen, obwohl Renner in seiner Rede vor der Friedenskonferenz das „furchtbare Erbe des zerfallenen Reiches” eingestanden hatte. Neben Südtirol sollten auch das Klagenfurter Becken, die Untersteiermark mit Radkersburg sowie die gesamten böhmischen Länder und niederösterreichische Gebiete abgetreten werden; die Tschechoslowakei, Polen, Rumänien und Jugoslawien sollten das Recht auf Konfiskation von Vermögen österreichischer Staatsbürger erhalten, nicht zuletzt von Aktienpaketen österreichischer Großbanken. Staatssekretär Otto Bauer, der entschiedene Anschluss-Befürworter, kommentierte verbittert: Die Friedensbedingungen für Deutschösterreich seien noch viel härter als die für das Deutsche Reich, denn der neue Staat sei bei Verlust seiner wertvollsten Gebiete und eines sehr großen Teiles seiner Kapitalien als selbständiger Staat nicht lebensfähig.

Die Friedensdelegation versuchte in zahlreichen Noten und Denkschriften zu protestieren: gegen die Vermögensbeschlagnahme; gegen die Abtretung Deutschböhmens, des Sudetenlandes, des Böhmerwaldgaues, des Znaimer Kreises, Deutsch-Südtirols, des Klagenfurter, Marburger und Abstaller Beckens; gegen die einseitige Meistbegünstigungsklausel und gegen das einseitige Recht zur Benutzung der österreichischen Eisenbahn- und Postlinien. Einigen Einwendungen trug die Friedenskonferenz tatsächlich Rechnung, strich etwa die Vermögensbeschlagnahme, setzte – auch unter dem Eindruck wiederholter Kriegshandlungen – für das Klagenfurter Becken eine Volksabstimmung an und sprach Deutsch-Westungarn ohne Volksabstimmung Österreich zu. Um aber auf die „Mauer von Vor- und Fehlurteilen”, die im Ausland gegen das deutschösterreichische Volk gerichtet seien, aufmerksam zu machen, trat Bauer zurück, da er auch nicht hoffen konnte, „Vertrauen bei den französischen Machthabern zu finden, die immer noch, wie schon Marx höhnte, die Zerrissenheit des deutschen Volkes für ein Recht der französischen Nation halten”.

Tatsächlich enthielt die Begleitnote des Konferenz-Präsidenten Clemenceau zu den endgültigen Friedensbedingungen vom 2. September 1919 ein ganzes Repertoire an Revanchegefühlen und Feindbildern: Das österreichische Volk teile in weitem Umfang mit dem ungarischen Volk die Verantwortlichkeit für die Übel, unter denen Europa während der letzten fünf Jahre gelitten habe. Die frühere Wiener Regierung habe den Krieg im engen Einvernehmen mit den Machthabern Deutschlands von langer Hand vorbereitet und wollte die Unabhängigkeit des benachbarten souveränen Staates Serbien vernichten. Der Krieg sei im Augenblick seiner Erklärung in Wien stürmisch begrüßt worden, das österreichische Volk sei vom Beginn bis zum Ende sein glühender Parteigänger gewesen und habe bis zur endgültigen Niederlage auf dem Schlachtfeld nichts getan, um sich von der Politik seiner Regierung und seiner Verbündeten zu trennen. Im Übrigen sei das habsburgische „System der Herrschaft und Bedrückung” und die Hegemonialpolitik des deutschen und magyarischen Volkes über die Mehrheit der Einwohner Österreich-Ungarns eine der tiefsten Ursachen des Krieges gewesen. „Angesichts so vieler offenkundiger Beweise muss das österreichische Volk entsprechend den geheiligten Regeln der Gerechtigkeit gezwungen werden, seinen vollen Anteil an der Verantwortlichkeit für das Verbrechen, das über die Welt ein solches Unheil gebracht hat, auf sich zu nehmen...”

Aus dieser Siegerhaltung einer völlig einseitigen Schuldzuweisung konnte trotz des intensiven Notenaustausches kein Verhandlungsfrieden, sondern nur ein Diktatfrieden erließ. So hatte Österreich durch Beschreibung seiner neuen Grenzen Böhmen, Mähren und den Großteil von Österreichisch-Schlesien, dazu niederösterreichische Grenzgebiete bei Gmünd und Feldsberg an die Tschechoslowakei abzutreten, den Ostteil Teschens und Galizien an Polen, die Bukowina an Rumänien, die Untersteiermark, Krain, das Kärntner Mießtal und Seeland, sowie den Großteil Dalmatiens an Jugoslawien, ganz Südtirol, das Kärntner Kanaltal und das ganze Küstenland, sowie Zara und einige Adria-Inseln an Italien. Im Vergleich dazu verlor das alte Ungarn im Vertrag von Trianon 1920 Fiume an Italien (endgültig 1924), Prekmurje, Medjumurje, die Batschka, die südliche Baranja und das westliche Banat an Jugoslawien, das östliche Banat und Siebenbürgen an Rumänien, die Karpato-Ukraine und die Slowakei an die Tschechoslowakei und das Burgenland an Österreich. Diese territorialen Bestimmungen der Pariser Friedenskonferenz bedeuteten, dass nun nahezu die Hälfte der zwölf Millionen Deutschen der Habsburgermonarchie außerhalb der Republik Österreich verblieben, über drei Millionen Magyaren außerhalb des Königreiches Ungarn, vier Millionen Ukrainer zu neuen nationalen Minderheiten in Polen, der Tschechoslowakei und Rumänien wurden, während 500.000 Albaner in Jugoslawien und über 400.000 Kroaten und Slowenen in Italien das gleiche Los teilten. Darüber hinaus gab es auch zahlreiche jüdische, weißrussische, bulgarische und türkische Minderheiten. Die allen Nachfolgestaaten auferlegten Minderheitenschutzverpflichtungen erwiesen sich allerdings trotz Kontrolle des Völkerbundes als wenig wirksame Instrumente.

Staatskanzler Renner gestand vor der Konstituierenden Nationalversammlung den geringen Erfolg im monatelangen Ringen um das Selbstbestimmungsrecht ein, wozu nicht zuletzt alliierte Geheimverträge während des Weltkrieges beigetragen hätten. Der christlichsoziale Debattenredner Leopold Kunschak polemisierte am schärfsten gegen die Note Clemenceaus: Wer gebe den „Diktatoren von Paris” das Recht, so kategorisch Deutschösterreich die Schuld am Ausbruch des Weltkrieges zuzuschreiben? Alle Nationen Österreich-Ungarns hätten den Krieg gegen Serbien begrüßt, niemand aber habe daran gedacht, dass sich dieser Krieg auch gegen Frankreich und Russland, gegen England und Italien, schließlich auch gegen Amerika richten werde. – Kunschak übersah freilich, dass der Ballhausplatz das internationale Geflecht an Bündnissen und Verpflichtungen vor der Kriegserklärung an Serbien durchschauen hätte müssen. Nun, am 6. September 1919, blieb dem Wiener Parlament nur die Möglichkeit, Renner mit der Unterzeichnung des Friedensvertrages namens der „Republik Österreich” zu beauftragen. Am 10. September 1919, um 11 Uhr vormittags, fand die Zeremonie im Schloss von Saint-Germain statt. Zuerst musste Renner unterschreiben, dann folgten die Vertreter der alliierten und assoziierten Mächte. Nur Jugoslawien und Rumänien fehlten, da sie den von den Alliierten parallel vorgelegten Minderheitenvertrag nicht unterzeichnen wollten; nach wenigen Monaten mussten aber auch sie nachziehen.

Der Vertrag von Saint-Germain zählt mit seinen 381 Artikeln und etlichen Annexen zu den umfangreichsten Friedensinstrumenten der Weltgeschichte. Die Siegermächte versuchten Grundsätze privatrechtlicher Vereinbarungen auf den Bereich völkerrechtlicher Beziehungen zu übertragen. Dem Vertrag wurde die Satzung des Völkerbundes voran-, die Satzung der International Labour Organisation hintangestellt. In der Textierung bemühte man sich, von der Verpflichtung eines neuen Staates zur Anerkennung einer Neuordnung zu sprechen (Fritz Fellner). Auch der sogenannte „Anschlussparagraph” (Artikel 88) stellte nicht einfach ein Verbot dar, sondern verlangte die Anerkennung des neuen Status quo in Mitteleuropa. Demnach sollte die „Unabhängigkeit” Österreichs (oder Ungarns) ohne Zustimmung des Völkerbundrates „unveräußerlich” sein. Deutschland wiederum hatte im Vertrag von Versailles sowohl die Unabhängigkeit Österreichs als auch die Polens und der Tschechoslowakei sowie aller Territorien, die einst Teil des Russischen Reiches gewesen waren, anzuerkennen. Während Österreich im sogenannten „Kriegsschuldparagraphen” (Artikel 177) die rechtliche Verantwortung und Wiedergutmachung für Verluste und Schäden zu übernehmen hatte, mussten die Tschechoslowakei, Jugoslawien und Rumänien Kontributionen zu den „Befreiungskosten” für die Gebiete der Habsburgermonarchie akzeptieren. Freilich, das Vermögen des ehemaligen Kaiserreichs, alle Krongüter sowie das Privatvermögen der ehemaligen österreichisch-ungarischen Herrscherfamilie wurden auf alle Nachfolgestaaten aufgeteilt.

Die siegreichen Westmächte hatten in Saint-Germain einen Vertrag diktiert, von dem Bestimmungen bis weit in die zweite Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts in Diskussion blieben. Trotz vieler Denkschriften und Demonstrationen, trotz guter Ergebnisse der deutschen Parteien bei den ersten Gemeinderatswahlen in der Tschechoslowakei im Juni 1919 wurden alle in Böhmen, Mähren und im Westteil Österreichisch-Schlesiens gebürtigen Deutschen – insgesamt etwa 3,4 Millionen – in den neuen tschechoslowakischen Staat eingegliedert. Dieser multiethnische Staat verstand sich allerdings als Nationalstaat der tschechoslowakischen Staatsnation, der den Sudetendeutschen nur eine Minderheitenposition zugestand. Somit war ihre staatsrechtliche Position eine schlechtere als die der Tschechen im alten Cisleithanien. Freilich wäre auch ein national gerechterer, gemeinsam mit den Tschechen aufgebauter Nationalitätenstaat kein befriedigender Ersatz für den von den Westmächten 1919 verhinderten gesamtdeutschen Nationalstaat gewesen. Dass London und Paris einen solchen erst – unter Kriegsandrohung – Hitler zugestanden, leitete andererseits die Katastrophe Mitteleuropas zwischen 1938 und 1948 ein. Der sudetendeutsche Sozialdemokrat Wenzel Jaksch resümierte, dass „die Schüsse des 4. März 1919 der Ausgangspunkt des Münchner Abkommens vom 29. September 1938” gewesen seien, und: „Wer Gebiete mit Gewalt erwirbt, der muss damit rechnen, dass sie ihm wieder mit Gewalt abgenommen werden.” Dem europäischen Diktat von München folgten das deutsche Diktat von Prag am 15. März 1939 und schließlich das alliierte Diktat von Potsdam am 2. August 1945. Der Abgrenzung zwischen Tschechen und Deutschen 1938/39 und der Teilung Böhmens und Mährens folgte die Ausgrenzung der Sudetendeutschen 1945 durch Vertreibung und gewaltsame Aussiedlung. Die kommunistische Diktatur in Prag zwischen 1948 und 1989 verdrängte zwar diese nationale Frage, aber das Europäische Parlament forderte die tschechische Regierung am 15. April 1999 auf, „im Geiste gleichlautender versöhnlicher Erklärungen von Staatspräsident Havel fortbestehende Gesetze und Dekrete aus den Jahren 1945 und 1946 aufzuheben, soweit sie sich auf die Vertreibung von einzelnen Volksgruppen in der ehemaligen Tschechoslowakei beziehen”.

Ein mit den Sudetendeutschen vergleichbares Schicksal erlebten die ursprünglich etwa 100.000 Deutschen Sloweniens. Im Königreich Jugoslawien als Untersteirer und Gottscheer zur nationalen Minderheit abgestuft, hatten sie eine wesentlich härtere Minderheitenpolitik Belgrads und Laibachs zu ertragen. Für die nationalsozialistische Okkupation Sloweniens zwischen 1941 und 1945 mussten sie dann mit Flucht und Vertreibung bezahlen. AVNOJ-Beschlüsse vom 21. November 1944 hatten sie schon vorher für rechtlos erklärt und ihr gesamtes Vermögen beschlagnahmt. Der österreichische Nationalrat forderte nun am 19. Mai 1999 die Bundesregierung auf, im Rahmen der Europäischen Union sowohl auf die Aufhebung dieser AVNOJ-Bestimmungen als auch auf die Aufhebung der Beneš-Dekrete zu dringen.

Anfänglich zwar umstritten, unter dem Einfluss Italiens schließlich aber doch relativ friedlich, vollzog sich der Anschluss des für die Versorgung Wiens wichtigen Burgenlandes an Österreich. Hierbei zeigte die Volksabstimmung in Ödenburg und Umgebung, dass ethnische Zugehörigkeit und staatliches Bekenntnis nicht übereinstimmen mussten. Stimmte im Dezember 1921 ein Teil der 17.000 deutschen Bürger Ödenburgs für einen Verbleib bei Ungarn, so hatten sich schon im Oktober 1920 ein Teil der 70.000 slowenischen Bauern und Arbeiter Unterkärntens für einen Verbleib bei Österreich ausgesprochen. Blieb die neue Grenzziehung zwischen Österreich und Ungarn in der Folge im Wesentlichen unbestritten und überstand auch die nationalsozialistische sowie kommunistische Herrschaft, so entwickelte sich die Kärntner Grenzfrage – trotz des in Saint-Germain festgelegten Plebiszits – zu einem ständigen Streitpunkt zwischen Österreich und Jugoslawien. Dies hatte mit den harten militärischen Auseinandersetzungen 1918/19 zu tun, nach 1920 mit der restriktiven Kärntner Minderheitenpolitik und irredentistischen Bestrebungen in Slowenien, nach 1941 mit der NS-Gewaltpolitik im Alpen-Adria-Raum, im Jahre 1945 mit der Vergeltung seitens der Partisanen, bis zum Staatsvertrag 1955 schließlich mit der neuerlichen Öffnung der Grenzfrage. Erst die Unterstützung Österreichs für die Unabhängigkeit Sloweniens 1991 hat zu neuer Zusammenarbeit nördlich und südlich der Karawanken geführt.

Ähnlich langwierig gestaltete sich die Südtirolfrage. Italien hatte für seinen Kriegseintritt 1915 auf Seiten der Entente die Brennergrenze, im Übrigen auch das adriatische Küstenland und Dalmatien, zugesagt erhalten und in Saint-Germain nicht nur die Abtretung des italienischen Trentino, sondern auch des deutschen Südtirol mit 220.000 Deutschen, 20.000 Ladinern und nur knapp 6.000 Italienern durchgesetzt. Die Sieger-Großmacht Italien wurde nicht einmal zu einem konkreten Minderheitenschutz verpflichtet, so dass unter faschistischer Herrschaft eine scharfe Assimilationspolitik einsetzen konnte. Hitlers Anerkennung der Brennergrenze aus Gründen der notwendigen Allianz mit Mussolini mündete schließlich im Umsiedlungsvertrag vom 23. Juni 1939, der die Deutsch- Südtiroler in „Geher” und „Dableiber” zerriss. Obwohl die Wiener Regierung 1945 die Rückgabe Südtirols forderte, entschied sich die Pariser Außenministerkonferenz 1946 für die Beibehaltung der Brennergrenze, veranlasste allerdings Italien und Österreich zum Abschluss eines Autonomievertrages. Zwar durften die „Optanten” von 1939 zurückkehren, Italien verstand sich aber nicht zu einer echten Autonomie für die Provinz Bozen. So machte Österreich 1960 die Südtirolfrage vor der Generalversammlung der Vereinten Nationen anhängig, doch es dauerte nach Sprengstoffanschlägen von deutschen Südtirolern in den 1960er Jahren, bis Rom 1972 ein neues Autonomiestatut erließ. Die Festlegung eines „Paketes” und eines damit eng verbundenen „Operationskalenders” eröffnete jetzt den deutschen Südtirolern eine eigenständige nationale Entwicklung, die am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts auch die langen Schatten von Saint-Germain zum Verblassen brachte.

Das Vermächtnis der Pariser Friedenskonferenz vor 80 Jahren entsprach insgesamt weder den Intentionen ihrer Hauptakteure noch den Hoffnungen der hauptbetroffenen Völker in Mittel-, Ost- und Südosteuropa. Präsident Wilson hatte sich die Schaffung neuer demokratischer Staaten gewünscht, die sich ihre äußere Sicherheit im neuen Völkerbund wechselseitig garantieren sollten. Clemenceau und Lloyd George waren in erster Linie mit der Eindämmung des deutschen Rivalen beschäftigt, wobei die britische Diplomatie in vielen Grenzfragen immerhin zu einigen Kompromissen bereit war. Die schwere Last der Reparationen und die Zumessung der hauptsächlichen Kriegsschuld vereinigten beinahe alle Parteien in Deutschland in einem gemeinsamen Ressentiment gegen Versailles. Ähnliche psychologische Wirkungen zeitigten die Verträge von Saint- Germain, Trianon und Neuilly, während die neue Türkei überhaupt einen neuen Friedensvertrag in Lausanne abschloss. Die Siegermächte von 1919/20 hatten – besonders im Vergleich zum Wiener Kongress 1814/15 – die mögliche friedensstiftende Wirkung von ausgewogenen politischen, wirtschaftlichen und militärischen Friedensbestimmungen unterschätzt, sowie das Prinzip der Befragung der Bevölkerung in strittigen Gebieten viel zu selten angewandt. So wurde in Paris eine vielfach als ungerecht empfundene Friedensordnung etabliert. Und das Gefühl der ungerechten Behandlung betraf nicht nur die Verliererstaaten, sondern auch Siegerstaaten wie Italien, Jugoslawien und Griechenland.

Die Hauptgefahr drohte der Ordnung von Versailles jedoch aus einem Zusammengehen der beiden unterlegenen, aber nicht zerstörten Großmächte von 1918. Deutschland und Sowjetrussland verunsicherten die westlichen Großmächte schon mit dem Vertrag von Rapallo 1922, in der Folge mit dem Berliner Vertrag 1926. Als daher die beiden Gewaltherrscher Adolf Hitler und Josef Stalin am 23. August 1939 nicht nur einen Nichtangriffspakt schließen ließen, sondern in einem „Geheimen Zusatzprotokoll” auch Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa untereinander aufteilten, war das Versailler Friedenssystem endgültig zusammengebrochen. Bis Stalingrad diktierte Hitler die Neuordnung seines „Lebensraumes im Osten”, ab 1943 übernahm Stalin gemeinsam mit den USA und Großbritannien die entscheidende Initiative. Freilich war er dann 1945 allein gewillt, allen Gebieten, die von der Roten Armee erobert worden waren, das Sowjetsystem aufzuzwingen. Die Friedensordnung von Potsdam 1945 bzw. Paris 1947 verschob nicht nur die deutsch-polnische und die polnisch-sowjetische Grenze nach Westen, sondern auch die rumänisch-sowjetische und die italienisch-jugoslawische. Für Moskau strategisch wichtig war auch sein Vorrücken nach Königsberg und in die Karpato-Ukraine. Und die Breschnew-Doktrin 1968 sowie der Helsinki-Vertrag 1975 schienen die sowjetische Ordnung für Generationen abzusichern.

Trotz der von Gorbatschow forcierten „Perestroika” und „Glasnost” kam daher das Fallen des „Eisernen Vorhanges” im Sommer 1989 ziemlich überraschend. Innerhalb weniger Monate entließ das Moskauer Machtzentrum seine bisherigen Satellitenstaaten in die volle Unabhängigkeit. Und plötzlich meldeten sich nun auch weitere Kandidaten für eine staatliche Souveränität: Die baltischen Staaten, die Ukraine und die transkaukasischen Staaten erinnerten sich an 1918; Slowenien, Kroatien und Bosnien-Herzegowina konnten sich nur in von Serbien aufgezwungenen „Bruderkriegen” von Jugoslawien los schlagen; Tschechen und Slowaken trennten sich friedlich.

Seit 1. Jänner 1993 lebt jede Nationalität des alten Österreich-Ungarn in

einem eigenen Nationalstaat, und von der Ostsee bis zum Schwarzen Meer reiht sich ebenfalls Nationalstaat an Nationalstaat. Beinahe scheint das Wilsonsche Prinzip der nationalen Selbstbestimmung verwirklicht zu sein. Trotz national gerechterer Grenzen als 1919/20 leben aber nach wie vor über drei Dutzend Millionen an nationalen und ethnischen Minderheiten im mittleren, östlichen und südöstlichen Europa: Russen, Ukrainer und Weißrussen, Magyaren, Albaner, Tataren und Türken, Deutsche, Juden und Roma, Slowaken, Kroaten, Serben und bosnisch-herzegowinische Muslime. Um weitere verheerende Nationalitätenkonflikte wie im ehemaligen Jugoslawien zu verhindern, bedarf es daher einer Neukonzeption der Begriffe von Nationalstaat, Staatsnation und nationaler Minderheit. Ein neues Nationalbewusstsein sollte anerkennen, dass alle auf einem staatlichen Territorium lebenden nationalen Gemeinschaften diese gesellschaftliche und kulturelle Einheit im Sinne einer modernen Nation geformt haben. Nur ein solcher Schritt vom ethnisch bestimmten Nationalstaat zum Staatsbürger-Staat würde dann „ethnische Säuberungen” als schweren Schaden für die gesamte Staatsgesellschaft, als Schnitt ins eigene Fleisch bewusst machen.

Quellen und Literatur (Auswahl)

Außenpolitische Dokumente der Republik Österreich 1918–1938 (ADÖ). Band 2: Im Schatten von Saint-Germain, 15. März 1919 bis 10. September 1919 (hg. von Klaus Koch, Walter Rauscher und Arnold Suppan) (Wien–München 1994);

Bericht über die Tätigkeit der deutschösterreichischen Friedensdelegation in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 2, Bde. (Wien 1919);

Documents Diplomatiques Francais sur l‘histoire du bassin des Carpates 1918–1932. Vol. I: Octobre 1918–Aout 1919 (hg. von Magda Ádám, György Litván und Mária Ormos) (Budapest 1993);

Paul Mantoux: Les délibérations du Conseil des Quatre (24 mars–28 juin 1919). 2 vols. (Paris 1955);

„Saint-Germain, im Sommer 1919”. Die Briefe Franz Kleins aus der Zeit seiner Mitwirkung in der österreichischen Friedensdelegation, Mai-August 1919 (hg. von Fritz Fellner und Heidrun Maschl) (Salzburg 1977);

Nina Almond /et/ Ralph H. Lutz: The Treaty of Saint-Germain (Stanford 1935);

Fritz Fellner: Der Vertrag von Saint-Germain, in: Österreich 1918–1938. Geschichte der Ersten Republik, 2 Bde. (hg. von Erika Weinzierl und Kurt Skalnik) (Graz 1983), S. 85–106;

Arno J. Mayer: Politics and Diplomacy of Peace-making, Containment and Counterrevolution at Versailles 1918–1919 (New York 1967);

Mária Ormos: From Padua to the Trianon (New York 1990)

Saint-Germain 1919. Protokoll des Symposiums am 29. und 30 Mai 1979 in Wien (hg. von Isabella Ackerl und Rudolf Neck) (Wien 1989);

Richard Schober: Die Tiroler Frage auf der Friedenskonferenz von Saint-Germain (Innsbruck 1982);

Arnold Suppan: Jugoslawien und Österreich 1918–1938 (Wien–München 1996);

Versailles – Saint-Germain – Trianon. Umbruch in Europa vor fünfzig Jahren (hg. von Karl Bosl) (München-Wien 1971).

* Arnold Suppan ist Professor für Osteuropäische Geschichte an der Universität Wien und Präsident des Österreichischen Ost- und Südosteuropa-Instituts.

Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 9:157–161.

ALOIS RIKLIN

Der Geist der Machtteilung

Vom wahren Sinn einer Lehre Montesquieus

1748 veröffentlichte Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu, sein Lebenswerk «De l’esprit des lois». Fast zwanzig Jahre hatte er daran gearbeitet. Nachdem er zuvor mit den «Lettres persanes» (1721) und den «Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence» (1734) europaweite Berühmtheit erlangt hatte, stellte er mit dem neuen Werk die früheren womöglich in den Schatten. Innert zweier Jahre erschienen 22 Editionen. Aus dem Bestseller von damals wurde ein Longseller der Weltliteratur. Stärkste Beachtung fand seit je die sogenannte Gewaltenteilungslehre im England-Kapitel. Doch so grobschlächtig, wie diese Doktrin in Staatskunde- und Staatsrechtslehrbüchern kolportiert wird, war sie nicht gemeint.

Die landläufige Rezeption Montesquieus nimmt eine strikte Gewaltentrennung an mit der Zuweisung der gesetzgebenden Gewalt an das Parlament, der ausführenden an die Regierung und der rechtsprechenden an die Gerichte. Da hat sich doch tatsächlich in den 250 Jahren eine ganze Bibliothek über Montesquieus angebliche «séparation des pouvoirs» angesammelt, obwohl er selbst den Begriff nie verwendet hat. Ein einziges Mal, beim Postulat der richterlichen Unabhängigkeit, kommt das Adjektiv «séparé» vor. Was war dann aber das wirkliche Anliegen Montesquieus?

Gewaltenteilung

Montesquieu kombinierte in seinem Modell einer freiheitlichen politischen Ordnung drei Gewalten, drei soziale Kräfte und sieben Staatsorgane. In jedem Staat, schrieb er, gebe es die drei Gewalten der «puissance législative», der «puissance exécutrice» und der «puissance de juger». Als soziale Kräfte identifizierte er entsprechend dem englischen Vorbild das Volk, den Erbadel und den Erbmonarchen. Die sieben Staatsorgane sind das Wahlvolk, die Volkskammer des Parlaments, das Volksgericht, die Adelskammer des Parlaments, das Adelsgericht, der König und die Minister. Die drei Gewalten unterteilte Montesquieu in mehrere Kompetenzen, bündelte einzelne Kompetenzen aus zwei oder drei Gewalten und wies je ein Kompetenzenbündel den verschiedenen Organen und gesellschaftlichen Kräften zu.

Für das Zusammenspiel aller Teile lassen sich aus dem einfach scheinenden, tatsächlich aber höchst komplexen England-Kapitel die folgenden Hauptregeln des Modells ableiten.

Regel 1: Es dürfen nicht zwei und schon gar nicht alle drei Gewalten in der ausschließlichen Verfügung einer einzigen sozialen Kraft oder eines einzigen Staatsorgans sein. Obwohl das Hauptgewicht der Legislativmacht bei den sozialen Kräften Volk und Adel beziehungsweise beim Zweikammerparlament liegt, nimmt auch der König durch sein Legislativ-Veto an der Gesetzgebung teil («prend par à la législation»). Umgekehrt ist das Parlament an der Exekutivmacht beteiligt, insofern es die korrekte Ausführung der Gesetze durch die Regierung überwacht und die Minister zur Rechenschaft ziehen kann.

Regel 2: Es darf keine der drei Gewalten ausschließlich einer einzigen sozialen Kraft oder einem einzigen Staatsorgan anvertraut sein. Die Gesetzgebung ist auf alle drei sozialen Kräfte und auf drei Staatsorgane verteilt, die ausführende Gewalt ebenfalls auf alle drei sozialen Kräfte und vier Staatsorgane, die judikative Gewalt auf zwei soziale Kräfte und vier Staatsorgane.

Regel 3: Jede soziale Kraft muss an jeder der drei Gewalten angemessen beteiligt sein, sofern sie ihr unterworfen ist. Der König ist an der rechtsprechenden Gewalt nicht beteiligt; dafür ist er ihr aber auch nicht unterworfen.

Regel 4: Die Basis der Willensbildung ist nicht die Gleichheit der Individuen, sondern, ungeachtet der Zahl ihrer Mitglieder, die Gleichheit und Unabhängigkeit jeder sozialen Kraft. Der König als Einzelperson und der Adel als Minderheit können von der Mehrheit des Volkes und seiner Repräsentanten nicht überstimmt werden und umgekehrt.

Mischverfassung

Dies ist es, was Montesquieu wirklich gemeint hat. Nicht die Gewaltentrennung war sein Anliegen, sondern ein subtiles Netzwerk von Teilungen und Mischungen, Hinderungs- und Eingriffsmöglichkeiten, Veto- und Kontrollpotentialen, Gegengewichten und Gleichgewichten, checks and balances. Vorsichtig schrieb er von «une certaine distribution des pouvoirs», von «distribuer», «balancer», «arrêter», «tempérer» und «combiner les puissances». Die drei Gewalten sind in seinem Modell der gemäßigten Machtteilung teils getrennt, teils vermischt.

Das ist indessen nicht alles. Die Machtteilung ist nur der eine Aspekt des Modells. Der andere Aspekt ist die Mischverfassung. In der allgemeinsten Definition bedeutet Mischverfassung eine politische Ordnung, die unter Beteiligung verschiedener sozialer Kräfte demokratische, oligokratische und monokratische Elemente miteinander verbindet. Vom 4. Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis zum Römischen Kaiserreich und vom Hochmittelalter bis ins 18. Jahrhundert war sie in der westlichen Zivilisation die vorherrschende Idee des besten Staates.

Hannah Arendt vermutete, Montesquieu habe von der gemischten Verfassung keine Kenntnis gehabt. Dem ist nicht so. Nur ein paar Seiten nach dem England-Kapitel beschrieb er das «gotische» Regime und die Römische Republik als Mischverfassungen. In den nachgelassenen Schriften bezeichnete er Sparta, Rom und England ausdrücklich als gemischte Regime. Richtig ist, dass Montesquieu im England-Kapitel die Mischverfassung nicht ausdrücklich erwähnte; aber durch die Verteilung der Macht auf den Erbmonarchen, den Erbadel und das Bürgertum ist sie in der Gewaltenteilung inbegriffen. Die ungeschriebene englische Verfassung verstand Montesquieu als eine Erscheinungsform jenes «gotischen» Regimes, das in den germanischen Wäldern entstanden sei. Letzteres pries er sogar als «la meilleure espèce de gouvemement que les hommes aient pu imaginer».

Exakt gegen dieses aus seiner Sicht korrupte, kranke, absurde «gotische Regime» war ein knappes Jahrhundert zuvor James Harrington in der «Oceana» (1656) angetreten. Mit bitterer Ironie verhöhnte er das angebliche «Meisterwerk neuzeitlicher Klugheit» als einen ständigen Ringkampf, in dem der jeweils Stärkere obsiege. Harrington verabscheute alle monarchischen Regime seiner Zeit und lehnte insbesondere jene aus König, Oberhaus und Unterhaus gemischte Verfassung ab, die vor und nach dem Interregnum (1649–1660) in England herrschte und die Montesquieu so sehr faszinierte. In Anlehnung an die «Nomoi» von Platon und die «Politik» von Aristoteles schwebte Harrington stattdessen eine republikanische Oligodemokratie vor.

Das abweichende Mischverfassungsideal erklärt den rätselhaften Seitenhieb des Schlossherrn von la Brède auf den englischen Landedelmann: «... il a bâti Chalcédoine, ayant le rivage de Byzance devant les yeux.» Die Auflösung des Rätsels findet sich bei Herodot. Die Chalcedone seien mit Blindheit geschlagen gewesen, als sie für den Bau der Stadt Chalcedon den schlechteren Platz auswählten, obwohl der schönere, auf dem später Byzanz entstand, noch unbesiedelt war. Beide, Harrington und Montesquieu, plädierten für eine gewaltenteilige Mischverfassung, aber der erste für eine besitzständische, der zweite für eine geburtsständische. Blind war Harrington in den Augen Montesquieus, weil er die angeblichen Stärken von Erbmonarchie und Erbaristokratie nicht sehen wollte.

Selektive Rezeption

Die Rezeption geht manchmal merkwürdige Wege. Thomas von Aquin schrieb: «Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur» (Was wahrgenommen wird, wird nach der Art des Wahrnehmenden wahrgenommen). Die selektive Lesart Montesquieus begann in Nordamerika. Die amerikanischen Verfassungsväter lösten das Gewaltenteilungskonzept aus dem Zusammenhang der Mischverfassung. Die Debatte verengte sich auf die richtige Interpretation des Gewaltenteilungsaspekts. Dabei galt das England-Kapitel geradezu als Orakel der separation of powers. Der gleiche Text wurde von den einen im Sinne einer strikten Gewaltentrennung, von den andern im Sinne einer gemäßigten Gewaltenteilung gelesen.

Eröffnet wurde der Streit bereits in der Kolonialzeit, beispielsweise in anonymen Zeitungsfehden in der «Boston Gazette» 1763 und der «Maryland Gazette» 1773. Die Declaration of Rights von Massachusetts forderte 1780 die strikte Trennung von Legislative, Exekutive und Judikative. Auch Thomas Jefferson neigte zur strikten Gewaltentrennung. Der Philadelphia-Konvent einigte sich demgegenüber im Verfassungsentwurf von 1787 auf eine gemäßigte Version. Kraft des Legislativ-Vetos erhielt der Präsident einen Anteil an der Legislativmacht. Und mit dem Recht zur Wahl der Richter des Supreme Court wurde dem Präsidenten und dem Senat ein Einfluss auf die Rechtsprechung eingeräumt.

Gegen diese Gewaltenvermischung liefen einige Anti-Federalists Sturm. Centinel forderte «the complete separation», William Penn «the absolute division», und ein Countryman from Dutchess County hielt dafür, dass die drei Gewalten «entirely» getrennt sein müssten. Die Federalists sahen darin eine Missdeutung Montesquieus. Zu Recht machte James Madison geltend, Montesquieu habe nicht gemeint, dass die drei Departemente des Staates überhaupt keinen Anteil und überhaupt keine Kontrolle in Bezug auf die Entscheide der anderen Departemente haben dürften. Der wahre Sinn der Gewaltenteilungslehre Montesquieu fixiert, merkten die amerikanischen Verfassungsväter nicht, dass ihre geschriebene, republikanische und rein repräsentative Verfassung sehr viel näher bei Harrington lag.

Der falsche Montesquieu hat sich nicht nur in die Staatskunde- und Staatsrechtslehrbücher eingeschlichen. Er begegnet uns tagtäglich in der Alltagssprache. Man schlage eine x-beliebige Zeitung auf, und schon liest man von der «Exekutive», wenn die Regierung, und von der «Legislative», wenn das Parlament gemeint ist. Die Irrlehren Regierung = Exekutive, Parlament = Legislative sind anscheinend unausrottbar. Kaum glaubt man, jemanden überzeugt zu haben, verfällt er alsogleich wieder in den zur Gewohnheit gewordenen Jargon. Um Irrlehren handelt es sich, weil de facto in keiner gewaltenteiligen politischen Ordnung eine Regierung jemals die ganze Exekutivmacht und nur sie innehatte noch ein Parlament jemals die ganze Legislativmacht und nur sie versah. Die Regierung besitzt neben der ausführenden regelmäßig eine führende, staatsleitende Funktion, und sie hat bei der Gesetzesvorbereitung einen maßgeblichen Anteil an der Legislativmacht. Regelmäßig erfüllt das Parlament zusätzlich zur meist marginalen Mitwirkung bei der Gesetzgebung noch andere Aufgaben, beispielsweise die Wahl der Regierung und die Mitgestaltung der Außenpolitik; insbesondere besitzt es durch die Kontrolle der Regierung einen erheblichen Anteil an der Exekutivmacht.

An diesem Missverständnis ist Montesquieu nicht ganz unschuldig. Er vertauschte nämlich «Gewalten» und Staatsorgane ziemlich beliebig. Wortklauberische Begriffshuberei war nicht seine Sache. Seine Absicht war, «in allen bekannten Formen gemäßigter politischer Ordnungen zu untersuchen, wie es um die Verteilung der drei Gewalten bestellt ist, um daraus den Grad der Freiheit einer jeden abzuschätzen»; er wollte «einen Gegenstand nicht immer derart erschöpfen, dass dem Leser nichts mehr zu tun übrig bleibt»; es ging ihm darum, dem Leser «nicht etwas zum Lesen, sondern etwas zum Denken zu geben». Terminologische Unschärfe und aphoristischer Stil verführten seit dem 18. Jahrhundert flüchtige Leser und erst recht solche, welche von der Quelle nur aus zweiter Hand erfahren hatten, zur Verbreitung des starren Gewaltentrennungsdogmas. Die strikte Gewaltentrennung hat in der politischen Wirklichkeit nirgendwo jemals funktioniert und ist überhaupt unpraktikabel.

Viele Wege führen zum Rom der Machtteilung. Hauptsache ist, dass die Macht geteilt ist. Die konkrete Ausgestaltung ist zweitrangig. Die Machtteilung ist in der konstitutionellen Monarchie anders als in der Republik, im präsidentiellen System anders als im parlamentarischen, in der repräsentativen Demokratie anders als in der halbdirekten, in der Konkurrenzdemokratie anders als in der Konkordanzdemokratie. Neben der horizontalen Machtteilung gibt es die vertikale im Bundesstaat, die zeitliche in der personellen Rotation, die soziale zwischen den gesellschaftlichen Kräften, die kollegiale in nichthierarchischen Organen, die mehrstufige des Instanzenzuges in Rechtsprechung und Verwaltung, die wirtschaftliche und mediale in der Marktkonkurrenz, die internationale im Mächtegleichgewicht.

Bei all diesen Konkretisierungen bleibt Montesquieus Grundformel gültig: Weil der Mensch, der Macht hat, zum Machtmissbrauch neigt, wenn er nicht auf Grenzen stösst: «Il faut que, par la disposition des choses, le pouvoir arrête le pouvoir.» Der harte Kern der Machtlehre Montesquieus ist die Forderung nach Teilung und Mäßigung der Macht mit dem Zweck, Machtmissbräuche zur verhindern und eine freiheitliche politische Ordnung zu ermöglichen. Dies im Gegensatz zum tyrannischen System der Machtkonzentration und des Machtmonopols, sei es in der Hand eines Alleinherrschers oder sei es in den Händen einer Minderheit, einer Mehrheit, einer marktbeherrschenden Stellung, einer imperialen Macht oder der einzigen Weltmacht.

Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 9:143–156.

ATTILA PÓK

Eastern European Historiography in the Twentieth Century

Does historical scholarship reflect regionalism? Is it at all reasonable to speak about West-European, American, Asian, African or East European historical writings or this is not a proper approach? The organizational principles of most comprehensive historiographical surveys are in most cases different. Ideological, political, philosophical concepts, methodological principles and outstanding historian-personalities serve as structural pillars of these works. National historiographies deserve subchapters or chapters if they represent ideological, theoretical or methodological alternatives (as German historicism or French social history or the American New History). Histories of historical writing have thus their focus on Germany, France, Britain and the United States – the Soviet Union and the countries of the former Soviet bloc enter the stage generally only in connection with the presentation of Marxist historiography. If this is the case, we cannot avoid asking the very basic introductory question: once our panel will have to try to give on overall assessment of 20^th century historiography, what is the task of the “East European” expert on the panel? I thought of two issues that might have to be clarified from my perspective:

a) Is there anything like the “East European contribution” to the overall development of 20th century historiography? Once the answer is positive: is this contribution the posing of certain questions that are less or not at all relevant in other regions, some theoretical or methodological considerations or perhaps this specific contribution can be found in the field of the institutions of historical research work? The other side of this very same coin might be the “responsibility” of Eastern Europe for distortions, deficiencies in 20^th century historiography, for abuses of historical scholarship.

b) what is the peculiar, specific social, political, cultural role, function of historical scholarship in Eastern Europe in the 20th century?

This, however, is only the first set of preliminary remarks. These questions can namely hardly be answered if we are not aware of the fact that in this part of the world (much more than elsewhere) the educational and social-political representative functions of history are as important, or frequently even more important, than the scholarly, cognitive function. In other words: the craft of the Eastern European historian often embraces not only the academic, scholarly world but just as much, or occasionally even more, the public realm.¹

In this short survey my sole aim is to present a few characteristic features of East European historiography during the 20th century. My horizon is, however, quite limited: I do not include Russia and the Soviet Union (only as a major external factor) and the Baltic countries; on the other hand I rely on material also from the former German Democratic Republic. I also have to add that most – though not all – my sources are secondary², as it would be very difficult to find anyone with so much language proficiency and research time that would be satisfactory to digest the 20th century output of Eastern European historians. I have also heavily relied on my numerous personal contacts with the historians of the countries I am going to discuss: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia (i.e. the Czech and the Slovak Republics), Hungary, Poland, Romania and the territory of former Yugoslavia.

The role of historiography in East European nation making.
States and nations

It is a commonplace of East European social, political and intellectual history that the emergence of modern historical scholarship from the turn of the 18^th and 19^th centuries is an important element of “national awakening” in the region. Historical writing was charged with strengthening national identities and historians were occasionally directly involved in political developments.³ The ideas of the Enlightenment initiated an effort to try to broaden the scope of historical investigations to involve not only elites but also the entirety of the nation. In the multi-ethnic Russian and Habsburg Empires and on the Balkans where the Ottoman Empire was gradually losing ground, the first modern historians were tracing the origins of peoples, of nations and not the histories of dynasties. In other words: for them the natural framework of history was the national and not the dynastic community. Monumental works as Frantisek Palacky’s History of the Czech Nation in the Czech and the Moravian Lands, the synthetic works by Mihály Horváth and László Szalay in Hungary, Joachim Lelewel’s twenty-volume Polish history, P. Slavkov Srećković‘s less, Ilion Ruvarac’s more critical appraisals of the history of the Serbs, N. Bălcescu’s and M. Kogălniceanu’s books in Romania have greatly contributed to the formation of the national movements of the respective nations. The relationship between state territories and national homelands remained a key-issue for historians of the region in the 20^th century as well. It is namely obviously impossible to draw state-borders in this part of the world without creating complaining national minorities. Why is it practically impossible to grant self-determination for the peoples of the region and what are the “second-best” solutions? – were the great issues for politicians and social scientists especially in the aftermath of World War One. Historians had a lion’s share in coming up with possible answers concerning both former and contemporary national problems, tragedies. Who is to be blamed for the partitionings was a bone of contention in Poland between representatives of the conservative, self-critical Krakow school (as J. Szujski or M. Bobrzyńsky) and the liberal Warsaw school historians (as T. Korzon or W. Smoleński) who blamed the partitioning powers (Russia, the Habsburg Empire and Russia) for the Polish national tragedy. When the partitioning powers got into conflict with each other in 1914, the majority of Polish historians were getting closer to the optimism of the Warsaw school as far as the potentials of the Polish nation for recreating their own state was concerned.

Whereas Polish historians faced the problem of the disintegration of their state in late 18^th century, for their Hungarian colleagues this was the problem of the day after 1918–19. Who is to be blamed for the dismemberment of the Habsburg Monarchy, for losing nearly 70 % of the Hungarian state territory and about 40 % of the Hungarian population? How could the country lose some of the most important locations of its national history, Transylvania being integrated into Romania, the former capital, Pozsony (Bratislava, Preßburg) into Czechoslovakia? The Hungarian argumentation against the decisions of the Paris peace-conference was dominantly historical (though extensively drawing on economic or ethnic arguments as well). It pointed out that Hungarians had always been the most advanced political force in the Carpathian Basin and – especially after 1867 – the Hungarian political institutions gave the best possible framework for the cohabitation of the numerous national groups here. The other side of the coin was the search for the nation’s own responsibility for its fate. A bit comparable to the discussions of the responsibility for the partitionings of Poland was the debate on the in 1920 published book by Gyula Szekfű under the title “Three Generations”⁴ which blamed Hungarian liberalism as represented by the Hungarian gentry for the country’s catastrophe. Three successive generations were misled by the mirage of western liberalism that could not take root in Hungary. As a consequence, he argued, the Hungarian nobility lost positions in the emerging liberal market economy and the gaps in the system were filled by the “alien” Jewish middle and upper classes and the elite of the non-Hungarian nationalities.

For Romanians the First World War turned out to be a most decisive step towards the building of a state uniting all Romanian-inhabited territories. A major problem of romantic historiography was thus solved. Still, the attempts to prove the continuity between Dacians and Italian, Roman settlers of the first centuries A. D. in the Roman province of Dacia, and this way the historical legitimacy of the boundaries of post-World War One Romania were in the focus of the interest of Romanian historiography and archaeology (first of all Nicolae Iorga and Vasile Parvan).

Not going now into more examples, let me just raise the in my view crucial question: did this constant preoccupation with national problems enrich or decrease the value of the professional performance of East European historiographies? One possible line of argumentation is that at a time when social, cultural and economic history were coming into the foreground in West European historical scholarship, a more traditional type of political history showed a relative underdevelopment of historical scholarship. On the other hand, however, a great number of important source-publications and large-scale-monographs were motivated by this “national drive”: we probably would know much less about the history of Transylvania without the Hungarian – Romanian debates concerning the time of the arrival of Romanians there, about Macedonia without Greek-Serbian-Bulgarian debates about which national state this region should belong to, about Bessarabia without Russian – Romanian discussions about its “historically legitimate” national affiliation and about numerous other territories of the region if they had not been subjects of national-nationalist rivalries. Sometimes, however, the historical argumentation enriched historiography at large as well: the methodology of modern settlement and ethnohistory originating in the German “Volkstumkunde” reached for example an extremely high level with Elemér Mályusz and his disciples at the Péter Pázmány University of Budapest.⁵ This point, however, already takes us to the second major field of interest of 20th century Eastern European historiography.

The origins of East European backwardness, regions, the symbolic geography of Europe

Where do the internal borders of Europe run and what types of social, economic, political, cultural developmental patterns do they delineate? This is a key-issue for all the social scientists of Eastern Europe and is closely connected to the search for “scapegoats”: who are responsible for all the political and economic defeats, failures, losses of these nations? The search for these causes organized historians into “traditionalists” and “Europeanists” in Romania, “populists” and “urbanists” in Hungary, “centralists” and “decentralists” in Yugoslavia, “optimists” and “pessimists” in Poland, romantic nationalists and the followers of Jaroslaw Goll’s sober realism in Czechoslovakia. This is, of course, an oversimplification but the real crux of the matter was quite simple: is there only one standard type of social, economic and political transformation of European societies, i.e. the one shaped by the French political and British economic-industrial revolutions and the lack or belated emergence of these processes signals underdevelopment? Or this is not at all the case: there are several alternative modes of development and imposing the “Western model” onto “Eastern” societies leads to really great catastrophes?

Interest in tracing the origins of divergences, differences in European social-economic development has never been limited to the research-agenda of modern Eastern European historians. Leopold von Ranke was already very much interested in regional differences⁶ and later German, British, French scholars shed much light on the consequences of the great geographic discoveries, colonization, on the regional peculiarities of the confrontation of central royal power and the estates, on the impact of religious factors (Eastern Orthodoxy vs. Roman Catholicism, the spread of Reformation and Counter-Reformation), cultural-artistic trends (Roman, Gothic Art, Renaissance) etc. in respect of the “staying behind” of Eastern Europe. For the 20^th century Eastern European historians dealing with these issues was far from being an academic “exercise”, they were (are) searching for the numerous factors shaping their life and career possibilities as well. When – to a great extent in line with “Western” historical scholarship – 20^th century Hungarian, Polish, Romanian etc. historians looked into 16^th–17^th century European agrarian history, the historical question they were addressing was a most current, topical one. Have, namely, the international political developments (Ottoman-Turkish expansion, the growing influence of the Habsburgs in the region) and the phenomena of social-economic development (the expansion of the landlord’s manorial land at the cost of the free peasants’ plots, the strengthening of feudal bonds , the gaining ground of the “second serfdom”) of the 16–17the century been “fatal” for the region, putting it on an “eternal” “forced path” of underdevelopment OR the significance of the “deviation”, “Abbiegung” of the territories East of the River Elbe was exaggerated to a great extent as a politically motivated legitimation of 20^th century divisions of Europe? If we now ask the question whether preoccupation with these problems turned out to be a gain or a loss for historical scholarship in Eastern Europe, my answer is quite resolutely showing towards the gain. What is even more, I would go a step further: it greatly enriched the overall development of historical scholarship. Why and how? First of all because it greatly motivated serious comparative economic and – to a lesser but most significant extent – social and cultural historical investigations. My first example is Hungarian but quite honestly not because I come from there, not because I know the historiography of that region best and I am favourably biased. This example is the life-work of the in the west unfairly little known István Hajnal (1892–1956).⁷ Hajnal’s major research interest was comparative palaeography and in more general terms the impact of the rise of literary and technical progress upon historical evolution. He pointed out mediaeval Hungary’s “Western Christian” character by proving that chancelleries in Hungary issued written privileges first at exactly the same time as their counterparts in the “West” and at this time all over Europe the clergy’s most important social function was to be “custodian” of what Hajnal in his, quite complicated terminology defined as the “objective social organization”. This is in sharp contrast with the Balkans and Russia – he argued – but is far from being identical with the “Western” situation as well. An evidence for that is that in Hungary and Poland Latin is used as the language of official documents for a much longer time (up to the 19^th century) than in the “West” where the vernaculars appear in legally binding documents as early as the 12^th century. This, however, does not at all mean that in this field Hungary would share the characteristics of the “Orthodox cultural circle”. There the “dead church vernaculars” (as “ancient Slavic”) had nothing to do with the spoken national languages whereas in Hungary and Poland Latin lived in a permanent, deep-going, mutually enriching contact with the “living national language”.

I think, that this is a good case-study well reflecting the great, fundamental question that 19-20th century Czech, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Southern Slav historians, politicians have had to face: how is it that their region has essentially always been “part of the West” and still these nations have not been treated by the great powers as equals, they were economically, socially less developed and frequently fell victims of “western” great power aspirations. For Hajnal’s generation the post-World War I peace-settlement, for later generations of historians the post-World War II peace-settlement resulting in the division of Europe into the western and Soviet bloc were decisive experiences along this line.

One possible answer to this question was (and not seldom is) “victimization” i.e. the argumentation that the nations of the region have basically been always right, they have always taken their share in “western” efforts (e.g. in the fight against the Mongolians, Ottomans and other barbarians) but evil, bad-intentioned western politicians were far too egoistic and sacrificed them. The other type of answer (for which Hajnal was my first example) was trying to go deeper, looking at structural characteristics of the societies “East of the River Elbe”. Historians working in this field – with a few exceptions like Hajnal – dwelt upon these problems more on a theoretical level than working out comprehensive surveys of European history based on their unique perspectives. Three names are worth mentioning here. The first is Oscar Halecki (born in Poland, maturing into a great historian in the US) whose “Borderlands of Western Civilization” and “The Limits and Divisions of European History” postulated a fourfold division of Europe: Western, West Central, East Central and Eastern greatly challenging the cold war determined East vs. West division in the early 1950s.⁸ Jenő Szűcs published his “The Three Historical Regions of Europe”⁹ following the footsteps of Halecki on the one hand, and a Hungarian social scientist, István Bibó, on the other, in 1979. Bibó examined the possibilities (”Spielraum”) of the small nations living between Germany and Russia in a series of brilliant essays during the aftermath of World War Two arguing that ever since Charles the Great’s time (9th century A. D.) Europe was divided into “East” and “West”. The borderlines between these two regions were in a flux – up to approximately the middle of the sixteenth century this borderline ran somewhere at the Eastern border of Poland, Bohemia and Hungary. The tragedy of the Ottoman Turkish wars pushed Hungary into the East and the Habsburg rule of the 18-19^th centuries didn’t allow for a reintegration into the West either. It was only in 1945 that a most unique opportunity emerged for the “arrested socio-economic development” to return to the “Western” pattern. The two decisive peculiarities of this model, Szűcs argued, were the economic modernization disseminated through the Industrial Revolution and the representative democratic political system rooted in the French Revolution. According to this interpretation the socialist revolution (”disseminated” by the USSR) was in fact a great historical venture to try to get out of the deadlock of Eastern development. The deep-rooted historical traditions of the region should have enabled Hungarians (but Czechs and Poles as well) to carry out this “experiment” by employing the “western techniques of practicing liberty”. These views reflect the optimistic political climate of 1945–47 when a couple of really free elections were taking place in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and it was widely believed that pluralistic “Western-type” democracies can emerge in the western neighbourhood of the Soviet Union. These hopes had, of course, quickly vanished and the question that an increasing number of intellectuals in the region (and specialists of the region) started posing was more and more the one that – in my view – is topical up to the present day. Namely: was it only Soviet expansionism (motivated by Russian great power imperialism and communist ideology) and the logic of the cold war that doomed these “western” or “westernizing” aspirations to failure or deeper lying structural peculiarities were of decisive significance in this respect? This is the key-problem of Jenő Szűcs’ brilliant essay who came up with a great number of arguments concerning the existence of a third region in Europe, approximately among the Elbe region in the West, the Carpathians in the East, the Adriatic in the South, and the Baltic in the North. The region was defined both by referring to institutions that existed there but could not be found further East (autonomous towns, corporate liberties as e.g. those of the guilds, the presence of Roman and Gothic art and architecture, the influence of Reformation etc.) and by the lack of institutions that are typical of the social-economic development further West: the so called “second serfdom” instead of free peasantry, influential nobility instead of a strong burgher, later bourgeois layer. The argumentation went into numerous details of social, economic, political and cultural development and in most fields arrived at the conclusion that most of the “Western” institutions were available in this central region but in a “belated” and “distorted” form. At approximately the same time (late 1970s, early 1980s) did some Czechoslovak, Polish and Hungarian intellectuals start “propagating” the concept of Central Europe with more or less the same message. Their region (which in some statements included Croatia, Slovenia, sometimes even Austria and Northern Italy as well) might have been in many respects different from the West but it was much more different from the East i.e. from Russia and the Orthodox world in general. The Iron Curtain logic of the cold war was refuted here. Bibó and Szűcs addressed a great number of concrete issues and based their arguments on an extremely broad knowledge of respective research results; still, the genre of their works was a historical essay. The question regarding the roots of the division of Europe during the decades of the cold war, however, also resulted in large-scale monographs and synthetic works in East European historical writing.

In this short survey I can only refer to the in its choice of research subject similarly motivated economic and social history school in Poland with close connections to the Annales school (especially the works of Witold Kula), to the internationally most influential works on comparative East European economic and social history( Pál Zsigmond Pach, Iván T. Berend,György Ránki) , the comprehensive works on East European national awakening in Hungary (Endre Arató, Emil Niederhauser) and Czechoslovakia (Miroslav Hroch), to the great achievement of Romanian intellectual historians (Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran, Lucian Blaga, Henri H. Stahl).

The impact of the Soviet political system on historiography in Eastern Europe

No doubt, the most obvious argument in favour of defining Eastern Europe as an independent entity in structuring our assessment of 20^th century historiography is the fact that for four decades the region was integrated into the Soviet-dominated part of the divided world. The same political institutions were imposed on originally quite different countries, states, societies. Did this lead to some kind of a fast pace homogenization of the historiographies as well?

Before making an attempt at answering this question, I would like to emphasize the obvious point that the Marxist doctrine had a far broader impact on historiography then the “official Marxism-Leninism “of the countries of the Soviet bloc and will obviously be an item on our assessment-agenda but here my observations are limited to the historiographies of the countries of the Soviet bloc.

The peculiarities could perhaps be best summarized if we first focused on the institutional framework of research. Science, humanities, all fields of scholarship were under the tight central control of the respective departments of the Central Committees of the Communist Parties. It was believed that research could be much more efficient if it was separated from teaching, therefore (partly built on earlier beginnings) a wide network of research institutes was set up where the members were expected (at least in principle) to do nothing else but research.. These research institutes functioned within the framework of the Academies of Sciences which were stripped of their wealth and autonomy and operated as ministries of scientific research. Like all other conscientious builders of socialism, the members of the historical research institutes also prepared and sometimes even accomplished five-year plans. Emphasis was not so much on finding new primary sources, initiating new projects but on the fight against the “Front of Bourgeois Historians”, i.e. on re-evaluating in a Marxist-Leninist spirit the historical sources made accessible by the “bourgeois” predecessors. Funding was no problem if research and publications remained in this spirit. The from the point of view of these regions most sensitive historical issues, those relating to the past of the communist parties, were dealt with by special party-historical institutes within the Central Committees of the parties. The awarding of degrees, the “system of scientific qualification” was highly centralized and politically controlled. No one could become a “candidate” or a “doctor of science” in any field without being examined in the basics of Marxist-Leninist ideology. Archives were under the strict control of the Ministries of Interior and special limitations kept researchers from the so called taboo-questions i.e. anything that could have presented an even slightly negative picture of the activities of the Soviet Union and of the communist movements. If we now shift our attention from the institutions to official doctrines that served as guidelines for historians in the countries of the Soviet bloc, this was dialectical and historical materialism, a mandatory subject of study for all university graduates. This doctrine was an easy key to understanding historical processes with class struggle being the driving force of historical progress displacing less advanced social formations by more advanced ones, from the slave-holding to the feudal, from the feudal to the capitalist and finally from the capitalist to the socialist-communist formation.

The picture I drew here is, of course, extremely simplifying because in spite of the fact that the communist parties ruling the countries of the Soviet bloc exerted a very high level of control over historical research and historical publications, there were substantial differences both chronologically and regionally. Chronologically 1956, the year of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Hungarian revolution, 1968, the year of world – wide student revolts and of the crushed “Prague Spring and 1985, the year of Gorbachev’s coming to power might serve as decisive milestones. Regionally there was a huge difference between the countries led by orthodox, “hard-liner” communists in Bulgaria, and Romania or in Czechoslovakia after 1968, the more liberal Poland and Hungary and the more refined dogmatism of the German Democratic Republic. Yugoslavia with its foreign policy and centralized but still – at least until the death of Tito in 1980 – indeed federal communist power structure was a very special case.

The best way to provoke a discussion is if we are trying to set up a balance sheet about the historiographies of the countries of the Soviet bloc. Let me first try – based on a document proposed by the director of the Institute of History of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 1991¹⁰ – to give a list of the major areas where the Soviet type totalitarian system is said to have influenced historiography most unfavourably. I will immediately add certain considerations to each point.

1. Strictly limited access to archives of modern and contemporary history and consequently the presentation of a biased, inadequate, distorted picture of numerous post World War One developments. Even if specialists of the earlier periods had an easier life as far as archival research was concerned, here the sources of distortion were different, more of an ideological nature.

2. The schematic application of Marxist social doctrine, of historical materialism, especially the concepts of class and class-struggle. The artificially exaggerated role of the working-class movement and especially of the Communist Party in national histories not only falsified history but also cut it off, separated it from the main trends of national development. Still, it must not be forgotten that in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and even during the 1980s it seemed to be very much likely that the communist-ruled monolithic state-party systems would prevail in Eastern Europe for a long time. From this perspective the history of the internal life of the communist parties that had a major, decisive impact on current national and international developments was far from being unimportant.

3. The “social commissions” attached to historical scholarship which led to the categorization of historical facts into “progressive-revolutionary” and “conservative-reactionary” trends. This could lead to most conscious distortions, a most conspicuous example being when disgraced personalities were removed even from the photographs of events in which they participated. Still, quite frequently, a substantial difference existed between vulgar Marxist presentations for agitation-propaganda purposes and the way these issues were treated in the workshops of historical scholarship. Let me refer here to just one example, to the so called Erik Molnár debate in Hungary in the 1960s. Erik Molnár was a prominent figure of the Hungarian communists movement, originally a lawyer but well-trained in other social sciences as well. Besides filling numerous senior political functions he was director of the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences from 1949 to his death in 1966.

The actual starting point of the discussion (around 1960) was the evaluation of the anti-Habsburg movements in the 17^th and early 18^th centuries. Erik Molnár kept arguing that they were much more class – conflicts (between the Hungarian nobility, the Hungarian estates and the centralizing Habsburg-aspirations) than struggles for “national independence” mobilizing all layers of Hungarian society. Contrary to the – according to his view – historically unfounded argumentation, the nobility’s nationalism and a kind of “popular patriotism” in the 17^th and early 18^th h centuries were not direct antecedents of modern 19^th century Hungarian nationalism. These problems were in the foreground of the political-ideological discussions of the day: in the aftermath of the 1956 national revolution, A bit more than a year after the execution of Imre Nagy , the reform-communist leader of the revolution, the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party issued a statement on “bourgeois nationalism” and socialist patriotism” and in March 1960 a conference at the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy discussed the historical roots of nationalism. Molnár and a number of his followers argued that most Hungarian Marxist historians had that far divorced the concept of the Hungarian nation from social class and historical age. Nation and patria had not reflected the objective interests of all classes, only those of the exploiting ruling class. These were, of course, most orthodox Marxist views and could (could have been) easily interpreted as a historians’ contribution to the struggle against “reactionary nationalism” which had an important role among the causes of the 1956 “counter-revolution”. Still, the historical-political function of these views was quite different – they initiated a number of most productive research-projects on how concepts like “people”, “nation”, “patria”, “independence” were interpreted in 16–17^th century Hungary. At the same time they also initiated debates on other key issues of Hungarian history in which the representatives what is sometimes labelled as the” sociological- realistic-denationalizing and the “romantic-revolutionary dogmatic nationalist” interpretations of modern Hungary confronted each other.

The “sociological” interpretation was trying – on the basis of plenty of new basic research – to examine the objective economic-social foundations of political and ideological developments – whereas the “romantic camp”– moving the centre of the debate from early modern to more recent periods, was much more preoccupied with the “subjective” factors, the “correct” or “faulty” policies of leading personalities at major turning-points of Hungarian history. They were interested in “progressive political struggles”, whereas the “sociological” school believed as – one of its representatives, Péter Hanák put it in a later point, in 1969 – in the sources of failures.

4. The introduction of “zones of silence” which among others comprised any negative aspect of the activity of the Soviet Union, any negative aspect of the Great October Revolution, former conflicts among the countries, nations, peoples of the Soviet-led “brotherhood” of Eastern European peoples, any serious treatment of the Jewish question and the Holocaust, very often the non-communist political left, a balanced, unbiased evaluation of the interwar-leading personalities (Masaryk, Horthy, Pilsudski, Antonescu, Boris III) etc. Scholarship, of course, cannot exist with taboo topics but strangely enough it was exactly the insuppressible public will to get to know the truth about various facts of national histories and international relations that led to some of the first cracklings, fissures in the edifice of the monolithic Soviet system. Be it the secret clauses of the 1939 German – Soviet Treaty about the territorial claims of the Soviet Union, the 1940 massacre of Polish army officers in Katyn by the Soviet army, the evaluation of the Paris peace settlements after World War One, the relationship between communists and social democrats, the 1953 uprising in East Berlin or the 1956 Hungarian revolution, the balanced, scholarly evaluations here paved the way towards the transition in 1989–90. (It is perhaps not without any interest to mention here that a number of Eastern European historians were directly involved in the political transformation of the region. Between 1990 and 1994, for example, in Hungary the prime minister, the foreign minister, the minister of defence, three deputy ministers, the president of the parliament and numerous members of parliament were historians, and historians played an important role during the period of transition in Poland as well.)

Academic and non-academic historians in 20th century Eastern Europe

I assume that in Eastern Europe more than in other parts of the world the borderline between “academic” and “non-academic” historians is quite blurred. The most outstanding figures of the profession have nearly always had a manifold activity also outside their university chairs, especially journalism was extremely important for them. The best-known and most productive Romanian historian, Iorga, besides publishing more than a thousand (!) books, regularly contributed to daily papers. The essays of the most prestigious 20^th century Hungarian historian, Gyula Szekfű had a very important role in orienting Hungarian intellectuals during World War Two. This tradition was followed after World War Two – both Communists and anti-Communists among the most influential historians attached a great significance to using non-academic fora for the popularization of their views. This might be attributed to a peculiarity of political life in Eastern Europe: it is extremely “history-loaded,” i.e. when politicians are identifying their political platforms, are presenting their programs, they – much more than elsewhere – rely on historical analogies. Closely related to this peculiarity of the region is that originally scholarly exchanges about the evaluation of certain events and personalities could and can lead to passionate political debates. This is either connected to the politically most sensitive nature of the issues at stake or ––especially but not exclusively during communist times – -to the coded messages historical references carry. Let me refer to some random examples: who is to be blamed for the 1526 Turkish victory over Hungarian troops with the ensuing dismemberment of the country, the relationship among the Hussite movement, Reformation and Czech national awakening, numerous episodes of the Habsburg-Czech, Habsburg-Hungarian relationship, the relationship between Czechs and Germans in Bohemia, the debates about the theory of Daco-Romanian continuity in Transylvania, the immense political consequences of the ban on the showing of A. Miczkiewicz’s classic “anti-Russian” play, (the Ancestors) in Warsaw in March 1968. There is no space here to go into the details of the role of films and fiction in the realm of “non-academic” ways of addressing historical subjects. Forman, Jancso, Wajda, Zanussi and a great many other film-directors have become world-famous through the presentation of major dilemmas, conflicts of their national histories. Some of the writers of the stature of Sienkiewicz or Gyula Illyés did more for shaping the historical thought of their nations than generations of historians.

A peculiar significance is attached in this respect to what most recently Katherine Verdery described as the “political lives of dead bodies”, i.e. public funerals (in most cases reburials) of outstanding historical personalities.¹¹ The 1895 Budapest funeral of the leader of the 1848-49 Hungarian revolution, Lajos Kossuth after his four and a half decade exile, the reburial of the leader of the early 18th century Hungarian anti-Habsburg movement, Ferenc Rákóczi in 1906, the commemoration of the 1389 death of Prince Lazar of Serbia in 1989, the return of the heart of Bulgaria’s former Tsar Boris from his place of exile in Spain to post-communist Bulgaria, the reburial of Polish World War II generals Bor-Komorowsky and Sikorski in post-communist Poland, the return for the 1997 reburial of the corpse of Bishop Inochentie who died in Rome in 1768 etc. were all cathartic experiences of collective remembering11.

This piece being no more than a short survey offering quite arbitrarily selected examples with the sole aim of provoking discussion is hoping to pave the way towards a balanced, concise contribution to the assessment of 20th century historiography. Coming now back to the introductory questions let me restate my major points:

a) Eastern European historiography did enrich the output of 20th century historical writing not only by covering the history of the region but methodologically as well;

b) the role of historiography and of historians in Eastern European political- cultural-social life has been more decisive than in other parts of the world.

Notes

 1

William E. Leuchtenburg: “The Historian and the Public Realm” The American Historical Review, Volume 97, Number 1 (February 1992) 1–18.

 2

Two secondary sources were the most indispensable in my work: the recent synthesis by Emil Niederhauser: A történetírás története Kelet-Európában. Budapest, 1995. and the essays by Ivo Banac, István Deák, Keith Hitchins, Jiri Koralka, Maria Todorova and Piotr S. Wandycz in the October 1992 (Volume 97, Number 4) issue of the American Historical Review.

 3

Miloslav Hroch: Social Preconditions of National Revival in Eastern Europe. Cambridge, 1985. Emil Niederhauser: A történetírás szerepe a kelet-európai nemzeti mozgalomban a felvilágosodás korában. Vázlat. In: A tudomány szolgálatában – Emlékkönyv Benda Kálmán 80. születésnapjára. Budapest, 1993. 287–292. A small, “classical” piece about this topic: R. W. Seton-Watson: The Historian as a Political Force in Central Europe. An Inaugural Lecture Delivered on 2 November, 1922 as Professor of Central European History in the University of London. London, 1922.

 4

Gyula Szekfû: Három nemzedék.Budapest,1920.

 5

Cf. Steven Béla Várdy: Modern Hungarian Historiography. East European Quarterly, Boulder, 1976. 104–120.

 6

Leopold von Ranke: Geschichte der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1535. Berlin, 1824, Leipzig, 18853 V–VI. I. XV–XIX.

 7

Cf. Istvan Hajnal: Technika, művelődés. (Edited by Ferenc Glatz) Budapest, 1993.

 8

Oscar Halecki: Borderlands of Western Civilization. New York, 1952. and The Limits and Divisions of European History. New York, 1950.

 9

An English version was published in Acta Historica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 29 (1983) 2–4:131-184.

10

Quoted by Maria Todorova in American Historical Review, Volume 97, Number 4 (October 1992) 1109. A recent comprehensive introduction to the problems of historical scholarship in the Soviet system is the volume edited by Ferenc Glatz: The Soviet System and Historiography. Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Budapest. 1995 (especially the article of the editor). That is the basis of this short survey.

11

Katherine Verdery: The Lives of Dead Bodies. Reburial and Post-Socialist Change. Columbia University Press,1999.

Begegnungen
Schriftenreihe des Europa Institutes Budapest, Band 9:215–229.

ZOLTÁN TIBOR PÁLLINGER

The Hungarian Political Elite in Transition, 1985–1990

Introduction

There is no doubt about today’s Hungary: it is considered a consolidated democracy on its way to (Western) Europe. In the mid-1980s, however, things looked different when the country just started experimenting with gradual reforms. Western analysts thus wondered – with growing anxiety – on how far such reforms could go. Was the Hungarian régime just trying to stabilise its own power by initiating limited reforms or was it willing to tolerate far reaching changes?

At least in economic fields the Hungarian rulers proved to be – by socialist standards – surprisingly flexible in adjusting the country’s system to the exigencies of the world market. But it remained unpredictable how they would react in case of open defiance of the existing socialist rule. They still had the possibility – at least temporarily – to suppress democratisation by violent means. They did not. Rather they preferred to negotiate with the opposition and finally they renounced their power “voluntarily.“ It is an astonishing fact and a peculiarity of the Hungarian transition that all actors involved could always find peaceful solutions to their conflicts. Thus the question arises why and how this peaceful transition could take place. The aim of this paper is to explain the causes of the peaceful Hungarian transition.

1.1 Subject and methodology

In order to answer these questions the subject has to be narrowed down. Then the theoretical and methodological tools have to be presented. In this context it is to emphasise that this paper examines a part of the systemic change, namely the “phase of transition,“ that took place in Hungary between 1985 and 1990. Facts dating before this time are presented only if relevant for this analysis. 1985 is the starting point of this paper; it was the last “year of peace“ of the socialist system. In this year the 13th Congress of the HSWP¹ took place. The results of this congress represented clearly the inability of the régime for profound reforms. They therefore symbolise the beginning of the systemic change. This analysis ends 1990, the year of the first free elections, which concluded the transition.

The present paper is a political analysis of the subject. Other factors, i.e. economic or social, are considered only if they have political impacts. This study is concretely based on following groups of theories:

Theories of systemic change² examine the change of form of political rule, whereby they focus on the – peaceful – transition from authoritarian to democratic systems. There are principally two groups of meta-theories that are pre-eminent in this realm: system- and actor-approaches. The first ones explain the systemic change as a result of socio-economic changes (modernisation). The latter explain the transition to democracy as a result of the benefit maximising actions of political actors. The author of this study takes a mediating position and combines both system- and actor-approaches. Thus, several levels of analysis (macro, meso and micro) are taken into account, i.e. this study includes the change of structures as well as actions of individuals and groups.

Elite-theories³ assume that every society is divided by a power gap between rulers (élite) and the ruled (mass). In this context the élites are the important actors, because they make the politically relevant decisions. Thus, élite-theories explain who and what élites are and they show their functions. The author of the present study takes the position of democratic élite-theories by relying analytically on structural-functional theories. Democratic élite-theories are based on a value judgement in favour of democracy and therefore examine the “nature“ of élites in democratic system. The latter explain the change of élites by socio-political and functional elements; actually they represent a system-approach.

Thus the central perspective of this study can be summarised as follows: After a short description of the historical background the study analyses the democratic transition that has taken place between 1985 and 1990 in Hungary. Hereby special emphasis is put on the structural changes of the political system and the actions of the relevant actors (élites).

1.2 Historical Background

In Hungary a peculiar form of state socialism emerged relatively early. This country represented a special case in Eastern Europe: after the bloody suppression of the revolution of 1956 it developed in the shade of “big brother“ to the “merriest barrack in the camp.“ In concrete terms the Hungarian leadership came to the conclusion that it was not able to rule indefinitely against the will of the populace and therefore offered them the most generous possibilities of consumption in the Eastern Block in exchange for political abstinence. This strategy, called “goulash communism“ or “standard of living policy“ seemed to work: the Hungarians, eager to reap the benefits of the economical possibilities, withdrew into the realm of privacy, trying to maximise their private welfare by neglecting politics. However, the apparent success of this policy was based on hollow grounds: the régime had to “buy“ the social peace by using Western loans to subsidise consumer goods and to preserve the country’s outdated economic structures. From the mid-1970s onward this policy led to a steady expansion of the state expenditures, which got the country in to an increasing dependency upon its Western creditors. In turn for their generous credit lines the creditors demanded political concession like the observance of human rights. In the meantime the country also remained dependent on the USSR: on the one hand it covered the biggest part of the country’s needs of energy and raw material; on the other hand it was the main market for the goods – otherwise not sellable – of the Hungarian industry.

Hungary’s situation at the beginning of the 1980s best can be described with the term “double dependency.“ Coerced by this two-sided system of restrictions Budapest had to search a balance between the East and the West. Starting from this point the Hungarian leadership tried to establish the country as a “bridge“ between the blocks. In the beginning the USSR was suspicious of this policy, but after Michael Gorbachev‘s ascendance to power in 1985 the Soviet stand changed. The Eastern super-power tried itself to improve its relations with the West and pursued a policy of détente to foster inner reforms. This development led to a widening of the scope of the Hungarian (foreign) policy and further improved its relations with the West.

“Goulash communism“ represented actually a strategy of conflict avoidance and was based, as shown, on the principle of indemnifying the populace with material wealth for missing freedom. The success of this policy rested on a steady economic growth – but since the end of the 1970s the Hungarian economy was confronted with increasing problems. The growing scarcity of resources made the prospects of the “standard of living policy“ more and more dubious. It was therefore endangering the rule of the State Party. The leadership of the country reacted to this challenge in a double manner: on the one hand it tolerated the so called “second economy,“ from which the populace was able to draw income outside the official economy (“first economy“). On the other hand it liberalised and reformed the official sector. This liberal stance in economic matters was accompanied by relative tolerance in the realm of culture and politics. Thus the Hungarian people enjoyed the most generous travelling opportunities in the whole Eastern Block. Culture and science could develop relatively independently. These tendencies led to the gradual emergence of a so called “second society“ which drew its existence from the drawbacks of the “first society“ and which represented a “safety outlet“ that could compensate for the existing insufficiencies. By the mid-1980s two incompatible sets of codes of conduct existed in Hungary: whereas the rules of the planned economy persisted in the “first economy,“ free-enterprise behaviour became common in the “second economy.“ While the “first society“ was subdued to the socialist ideology, several subcultures flourished in the realm of the “second society.“ Both spheres were complementary to each other; neither could have existed without the other. But at the same time they were hindering each other’s functioning. The parallel existence of incompatible systems of behaviour for different spheres of society made consistent reform strategies impossible. Due to this fact the idea of the impossibility of changing the economy without political reforms gained ground in the circles of party reformers and the functional-élites. This realisation led them begin to foster democratic reforms.

As the replacement of the long-time Party leader János Kádár came closer, some of the successor candidates linked their career ambitions to reform postulates. At the 13th Party Congress of 1985 the elder, conservative forces prevailed over the younger reformers. But this result turned out to be a Pyrrhic victory: it made the systems’ inability to reform evident and the intelligentsia and the functional-élites turn away. A power struggle in the party began. An alliance of reform communists and radical reformers succeeded in 1988 to replace Kádár. His successor Károly Grósz, who already held the prime minister‘s office since 1987, tried to reform the system without calling in question the one party rule. But within the Party the radical reformers around Imre Pozsgay were pushing for more radical reforms. At the same time independent opposition groups were emerging and called for complete democratisation. Although the State Party was split by internal power struggles the opposition forces were not strong enough to oust the HSWP. Therefore, at the beginning of 1989 Hungary found itself in a double stalemate: within the Party there stood reformers against conservatives, outside there was the régime against the opposition. It was against this background that Imre Pozsgay, member of the HSWP’s Politburo and a radical reformer, brought to explosion a political bomb: he publicly declared on January 29, 1989, that the events of 1956 did not represent a counter-revolution but a national uprising in the proper sense of the word. By doing so he destroyed the base of the socialist rule, because until then the HSWP legitimised its rule with the assertion of having saved the “achievements of socialism“ in 1956. As a consequence of this announcement, the HSWP was forced to renounce its constitutional role of leadership and it had to accept the introduction of a multi-party system. These developments paved the way for negotiations between the régime and the opposition. After much quarrelling the so called National Round Table Talks (NRTT)⁴ began. Supposed to deal with the transition to democracy, they lasted the whole summer. They were concluded on September 18 with an agreement that laid down the principles of democratisation. The results of this treaty had to be sanctioned by the existing – socialist – parliament. Thus the Hungarian transition took place “smoothly“ within constitutional limits.

The first free parliamentary elections in spring 1990 caused a heavy defeat for the former state party and made it possible for a coalition of centre and right parties to form a new government under József Antall. Being politically inexperienced, the new rulers committed numerous mistakes. Meanwhile spiteful quarrelling took place among the political élite, taking the form of a Kulturkampf. For outside observers the intensity of these conflicts were hard to comprehend.⁵

Change of the power- and élite-structure in the communist system

The Hungarian transition to democracy developed peacefully and rather smoothly. The following section is intended to prove that this remarkable fact was possible only because there was a radical change within the ruling class well before the systemic change actually took place. This preceding change was made possible because actors with convertible knowledge came to power: they did not need political protection and thus they did not have to fear any – otherwise heavy – loss of their status in the course of the systemic change. Ultimately, the transformation of the ruling class can be attributed to the fact that since 1956 the political élites of Hungary went through a learning process which helped them to develop peaceful means of conflict resolution and which at last made possible an élite settlement.

One of the main conditions of totalitarian rule was always the control of practically all parts of public life. This in turn required a highly organised bureaucracy. In Hungary control was assured by assigning a parallel party structure to every social, political and economic structure. This parallelism has never been codified by law but derived from the – constitutionally guaranteed – leading rule of the Party. The HSWP’s claim to rule could only be realised by controlling any strategic recruitment of the country’s leadership. All important positions were laid down in so called “nomenclature lists.“⁶ Appointments to any of these posts depended on the party’s consent. At the end of the 1960s, when communist rule was most pronounced, the nomenclature list of Central Committee consisted of some 3’500 positions.⁷ Although this number was subsequently on the decrease, still the assignment to any major post remained under control of the Party. This “over- politicisation“ lead to a negative selection, since political loyalty was deemed more important than professional qualification.

From the early 1950s – as Iván Illés shows – a good part of the élite was recruited among persons in their twenties.⁸ Since they entered relatively young into high ranking positions there was no further possibility for their promotion. On the contrary, this ruling class build an obstacle for younger forces to promote into their ranks. This constellation ultimately blocked the élite circulation during a whole generation and led to a growing need for massive changes in personnel: in the mid-1980s a good part of the office-holder reached the retirement age.

Taking the nomenclature as a whole, i.e. persons holding nomenclature positions, this trend is hard to detect: the share of persons aged over 50 years just fell between 1983 and 1987 from 53 % to 47 %, whereas the share of the 40 – 49 years old grew from 31 % to 38 %. The share of the persons aged under 40 stagnated.⁹ These numbers seem to falsify Illés’ thesis of a massive need for change of leading personnel. Still, they point at another important problem: as the 13th Party Congress showed, the numerically superior block of elderly conservatives prevailed over the younger reformers. No radical reform steps were decided, which presumably would have caused a major change in staff. Frustrated by the victory of the conservative forces, the generation of young reformers lost its faith in the reformability of the system and began to look for new options. The basis for the systemic change was laid.

Since the early 1960s the Kádár régime was striving for reconciliation with the Hungarian people. This process let the systems’ responsivity to the people’s needs grow steadily. The re-formulation of communist policy diminished the predominance of politics and opened room for other sub-systems to emancipate themselves. These sub-systems started to set up their own functional coding and to function accordingly (functional differentiation).

In order to prove the impact of functional differentiation on the Hungarian leading class, it must be shown that a qualitative change has taken place in this group. In this context school qualification may serve as an indicator for professional skills. Table 1 shows that within the Hungarian élite the share of university and college graduates rose considerably between 1973 and 1983.

Table 1

To lighten this argument a more detailed analysis of the élite professionalization is needed since the different élite groups developed very differently. For instance, the evolution of the party-élite was very different from the one of the state-élite and the economic-élite, respectively. Recruiting their élite, Communist parties in general tended to discriminate members of the intelligentsia. Contrary to this, the “standard of living policy“ and the “new economic mechanism,“ introduced in 1968, soon changed the requirements for recruitment of the economic-élite, followed by the state-élite. During the 1970s the rotation in both groups was about 9.3 %. This rate accelerated rapidly during the next decade: more than 70 % of all positions were newly occupied. Obviously, qualification played in these spheres a pre-eminent role for recruitment.¹¹ (Persons with higher school degrees clearly began to dominate in both groups as can be seen in table 2.)

Table 2

There is certain logic behind the fact that the share of intelligentsia members not only started to increase first within these two groups but also that it was pronounced most prominently within these groups. They built the functional élites – in fact a crucial momentum for the functioning of the whole system: the economic-élite had to provide the economic basis for the “standard of living policy,“ and the state-élite had to ensure civil service. In the 1960s the willingness of the intelligentsia to hold élite positions was due to a general euphoria: These élites believed to be able to reform the system from within. But their professional skills correlated negatively with their decision-making competence since the dominance of the party-élite remained unchanged. This situation led to a breach between state and economic-élite on the one side and the party-élite on the other side. The intelligentsia gave up its wish to reform the HSWP – and thereby indirectly the society. Instead, it strived for complete independence in its own fields of activity. In concrete terms, the economic-élite did not accept the existing power sharing with the Party anymore, it asked for the ownership of the companies. But also the state-élite began to free itself from party tutelage. The state-élite’s emancipation started later than in the economic sphere but it was concluded earlier – already under Grósz and Németh.

In the meantime within the party-élite the share of persons with either university or high school degree did also increase from 60.3 % to 84.9 %. Still, this could not be interpreted automatically as an improvement of qualification. On the contrary: it was mainly due to an intra-generation mobility, meaning that members of the party-élite were given the opportunity to acquire university or high school degrees at the Party‘s own universities. The value of such degrees was more than doubtful and only represented a formal qualification. A look at the party-élite’s recruitment base shows clearly the persisting adversity for the intelligentsia (see table 3).

Table 3

The ideological principle of preferring the “worker cadres“ persisted until the end within the Party. Thus the intelligentsia’s share in the party-élite only rose slowly and with a considerable delay compared to the economic-élite and the state-élite. As a consequence, the qualification gap between these élites widened. (See table 4)

Evidently the Party’s leadership was better qualified than its base. The recruitment of intelligentsia members had the strongest impacts on the Party’s sub-élite, and the weakest on its base. The change of the recruitment policy led to differentiation process and decreased the homogeneity of the party-élite. In turn, conflicts of interest within the Party grew sharper because young and highly qualified cadres who entered the party-élite had a technocratic orientation and were open toward reforms.

Table 4

In comparison, differences between the three élites observed (party-, state-, and economic-élite) are biggest at in the factor “convertible knowledge.“ This factor indicates a person’s ability to find an adequate job in a free economy with no need of party protection. In other words, the “opportunity costs“ of changing the job are lower for persons with “convertible knowledge.“ Such persons are able to switch to private economy: they do not have to protect their positions by all means. In some cases they may even profit from a systemic change because their skills are esteemed rather in a market economy than in a socialist system. It is striking that the percentage of persons with convertible knowledge was highest within the state-élite. The economic-élite followed with 50 %, compared to only one third of the party-élite. This fact points at the main line of conflict: whereas the party-élite was split up on reforms, the state-élite in peculiar, but also the whole (first and second) economy took a more reformist stance. Since it was especially the base of the party-élite that could lose most in such a process, opposition to any reforms was biggest in this sub-group.

Until the mid-1980s radical opponents of the system, the so called Democratic Opposition, were insignificant. They could not really be called a counter-élite. Only after the economic situation aggravated they could raise some attention. Since most persons entering élite positions in this time came from the Budapest universities they did not differ from the rest of the intelligentsia. Due to their socialisation they had a resembling set of values and – not surprisingly – these new élite members had good connections to the rest of the intelligentsia as well as to the radical opposition. But it was only after the 13th Congress of the HSWP that these groups began to co-operate on a rather informal basis.

The Hungarian élite in Transition

Developments that could be observed from the beginning of the 1980 s onwards got more pronounced in the second half of the decade. As already shown, the party leadership got more and more heterogeneous, since the intelligentsia’s share rose at the cost of the workers. This trend could also be observed for the whole party: every third member of the intelligentsia was also member of the HSWP.

In economics, Hungary pursued an austerity policy since the beginning of the 1980s. The architects of this policy – dubbed Reform Economists or the New Technocracy – sat at the steering wheel of economy: they held high positions in the ministry of finance, in the National Bank and also in Central Committee’s department of economy. As disciples of neo-liberal concepts they wanted to free the economy from state interventions. But the 13th Party Congress’ economic program, called “acceleration,“ intended to soften this austerity, this would have endangered the country’s credibility and the reforms, the group of Reform Economists wanted to prevent such a policy. Therefore, they published a thesis paper titled “Turning Point and Reform“¹² in which they put forward the necessary measures of economic reform. Because the political dominance was hindering functional differentiation of the subsystems (and especially the economy), they concluded that a profound reform of the whole system was needed: “An economic reform is impossible without political reforms.“¹³

The Reform Economists offered their paper to different party organs, but it was much too far-reaching even for the most progressive reformers. Therefore it had to be published indirectly in some semi-official magazine. It sealed the defection of the Reform Economists from the one-party-state. Nevertheless, the authors remained in their position because they were functionally unreplaceable. Thus they became the inner opposition of the élite. At the same time also the Reform Intelligentsia distanced itself from the régime. It articulated its critique in “scientific“ terms, which served as a pretext to denounce the régime’s lack of legitimacy. Actually, these two discourses were complementary: One side offered the economic analysis, the other the philosophical one: a perfect sharing of tasks. Both of these groups were interested in liberalising the power structures. So they began to co-operate.

The New Technocrats and the Reform Intelligentsia both operated within the legal frames of the system, whereas the Democratic Opposition broke completely with the régime. Its demands were not principally different from the ones of the former’s, but they were more radical. Between these different groups a work division arrangement emerged: the Democratic Opposition attacked the régime directly, the Reform Intelligentsia took up its demands in the academic discourses, and the New Technocrats finally tried to change policy from within the régime.

In the core-élite the reformers were struggling for power with the conservatives. On the progressive side Grósz and Pozsgay were the main actors. Within the élite they relied on the New Technocrats. Because this group was gaining ground, the two politicians were able to foster their influence. Between 1985 and 1987 there was no political alternative outside the HSWP. Until then the public was not yet mobilised although the enduring economic crisis let the people’s discontent grow steadily. Oppositional groups, previously with no influence, got more and more popular. In May 1988, Grósz and Pozsgay were able to oust Kádár at the Special Congress of the HSWP, which rendered their alliance obsolete. Soon they started to struggle against each other. In this process Grósz represented the conservative and Pozsgay the reformist pole. Grósz power base was built upon those 70 % of the party-élite who did not possess convertible knowledge – and therefore were not heading for real reforms. The followers of Pozsgay represented a more heterogeneous, but also a more dynamic group: Reform Intelligentsia, New Technocrats and parts of the moderate opposition. None of the opponents dared to split up publicly because their respective strength was unknown. Grósz had more influence in the army and in the Workers Militia, but Pozsgay enjoyed more popularity. Also were his followers functionally irreplaceable.

This inner-party power struggle limited the Party’s capacity to act. Still, the functioning of the state had to be ensured. The state-élite could profit by this situation the most and freed itself from party tutelage. Also the economic-élite was able to enhance its range of action, although it could not emancipate itself totally, because the ownership rights remained in the hands of the HSWP. Still, the gradual emancipation of these two élite groups initiated a ever increasing spiral: by enhancing their range of action they weakened the State Party, thus further enhancing their own liberty.

The opposition could also profit by this situation: during the year 1988 it was able to determine the agenda setting and to push the régime on the defensive. The opposition made itself known to everybody by raining issues such as the ecological protest against the project of a hydro-electric power plant at Gabcikovo-Nagymaros, the problem of the Hungarian Minorities abroad, or the question of the legitimate representation of the country’s history. A historic moment was reached on September 3, 1988: the Hungarian Democratic Forum (HDF) openly declared itself a party. Others followed suit: within a short time literally hundreds of new parties and organisations came into existence. However, their respective bases remained uncertain, because their activists were recruited among “well known, but politically inexperienced exponents of the Reform Intelligentsia such as writers, social scientists and non-conformist technocrats“ on the one side, and “local dignitaries such as intellectuals, doctors, lawyers, teachers and so forth“¹⁴ on the other side. Although the opposition seemed to gain weight rapidly, its real strength could not be determined.

Meanwhile, Grósz resigned from his post as prime minister, but he remained secretary general of the HSWP. As his successor he appointed the young and politically unknown Reform Economist Miklós Németh. Grósz believed being able to master Németh from the background. But Németh, well acquainted with the problems of the Hungarian economy, supported radical reforms. It was under Németh that the process of the government’s emancipation from Party tutelage, already started by Grósz, was pushed forward most vigorously and finally completed.

From mid-1988 two parallel developments could be observed: The HSWP was steadily weakened while the opposition could gain strength continuously. With the “democracy package“ (demokrácia csomagterv)¹⁵ the régime committed itself to complete democratisation within two years. But major questions on how the democratic system should be shaped concretely remained extremely contested. The State Party still controlled the instruments of power, but in the meantime the opposition proved its capability to mobilise the masses. None of the actors was able to force its concepts upon the others. A double stalemate – between conservatives and reformers on one side and régime and opposition on the other – resulted, causing a power vacuum. The government tried to fill it by pushing the country towards market economy and democracy. It was the government’s goal to render the reforms irreversible by formally legalising them.¹⁶ But Prime Minister Németh had a difficult stance: his power base was the New Technocracy that pursued similar goals as the radical party reformers. Ideologically, Németh was closer to the opposition than to the conservative wing of the HSWP. As a consequence, Németh’s government found itself in a very dilemma: although its autonomy from the HSWP was steadily growing, in the eyes of the opposition it was still too dependent on the State Party.¹⁷ While the structures of the one-party-state were collapsing and the economic crisis was aggravating the government could not do much more than “crisis management“ in order the maintain the country’s functioning. The whole country was virtually deadlocked.

In the winter of 1988/89 it became evident that only negotiations between régime and opposition could end the political stalemate. During several months there was a tug of war on the terms of the talks to be held. Finally, in June 1989 negotiations on the complete democratisation started between the HSWP and the opposition (NRTT). The government however did not take part directly, but it was obliged – as agreed before by the negotiating parties – to sanction all results of the talks by passing them in the parliament. Politically important decisions were made at the NRT. Thus the real rulers of the country were the participants of the talks: Hungary’s new political élite was born at that place.

Those who participated at the NRTT formed the new élite. Therefore it is important to examine, who were actually the negotiating partners. On the one side it was the party-élite, by now dominated by reformers. On the other side it was the Opposition’s Round Table (Ellenzéki Kerekasztal – ORT), a rather loose alliance of nine organisations. Whereas the party-élite needs no further explanation, the composition of the ORT needs closer examination. By founding the ORT some groups monopolised the opposition’s representation. Only those who were admitted to this “club“ were able to become negotiating partners. The criteria of admission seemed to be accidental and arbitrary. Evidently, the oldest and best known opposition groups such as the HDF, the Alliance of Free Democrats, and the Alliance of Young Democrats were represented at the ORT. However, the presence of other groups is more difficult to explain.

Another interesting fact was the exclusion of the government from the talks. The ORT only wanted to deal with “those having power,“ therefore only the representatives of the HSWP were accepted as negotiating partners. As a direct consequence, this strengthened the HSWP because the party now was the sole representative of the régime. The most common explanation for the opposition’s refusal to negotiate with the government is that the real power still lay in the hands of the party (misconception). Others try to explain this by attributing quasi-Machiavellian malevolence to the opposition.¹⁸ In my view both explanations are insufficient, although the misconception hypothesis may claim some plausibility. The government was successful in creating its own technocratic image and in pursuing such a policy. The successful emancipation of the government from the State Party led to a depolitization of the government: it became an administration (organ of crisis management). While the government had to ensure the country’s functioning, “politicians“ were deciding on questions of power. Thus, in some sense there was a functional differentiation: the spheres of “administration“ were separated from “politics.“

The selecting criteria of the negotiating partners may not be completely explained. Nevertheless some sociological features of the actors can be shown. The reformers, that by now controlled the party, were mostly members of the intelligentsia. The oppositional groups originated from similar intellectual circles. Due to this fact some observers blamed the intelligentsia for having redistributed the power, without any participation of the populace.

The NRTT represented a transitory solution. In a situation in which neither the strength nor the legitimacy of the individual groups contending for power was known they were intended to find a peaceful way out of the stalemate. In other words, they served to prepare free and fair elections. As this goal was attained on September 18, 1989, the NRT became obsolete.

Following this the power vacuum still persisted until the elections in March/April 1990. Although the government was securing the country’s functioning, it was not able to purse an independent policy. The HSWP was dissolved, and its successor, the HSP, was only able to attract a small part of the Party members. The NRT was also dissolved, and the parties began campaigning. Concurrence replaced co-operation, and the situation grew more and more confusing. Only the elections brought relief to the over-heated political discussion. They stabilised the party system and installed democracy.

Conclusion

The developments that led to the systemic change may be demonstrated quite plausibly. The collapse of the communist system and the democratic transition happened in such a short time, that no – new – structures could evolve. The main feature of this period was uncertainty. The government was able to establish itself as the country’s power centre, as long as the stalemate between State Party and opposition persisted. But its influence was driven back, as a political solution was found. The representatives of the HSWP and the opposition, all of them belonging to intelligentsia, negotiated the peaceful transition at the NRTT. After the conclusion of these talks, from September 1989 until spring 1990, the country had no actual power centre, but only an administrative crisis management organ (government). The country was politically, but not structurally, anarchical. Those actors, who participated at NRT, emerged as the country’s new political-élite. As shown above they represented a new generation of politicians. It can be stated that the élite had already changed almost completely before the conclusion of the transition. And it was this élite change, which made peaceful transition possible.

Notes

 1

The Hungarian state party changed its name quite often. In the first post-war years it was called Hungarian Communist Party, from 1948 Hungarian Workers Party, from 1956 Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (HSWP). The party was dissolved in 1989. At its place the Hungarian Socialist Party (HSP) was founded, from which the orthodox faction split up and re-founded the HSWP.

 2

See Zoltán Tibor Pállinger: “Der Umbruch in Osteuropa und die Theorien des Sytemwechsels,” Beiträge Forschungsstelle für Internationale Beziehung ETHZ, no. 10, June 1997c.

 3

See Zoltán Tibor Pállinger: “Eliteforschung – Ein Überblick,” Beiträge und Berichte Institut für Politikwissenschaft HSG, no. 258, 1997a.

 4

Actually, these talks were called “tripartite talks”, but nowadays it is common to call them NRT. The body itself was called National Round Table (NRT). On this subject, see Pállinger (1997b), p. 192.

 5

Some of the Hungarian commentators went as far, as to depict the first post-communist government being dangerous for democracy. See Attila Ágh: “From Nomenclatura to Clientura: The Emergence of New Political Elites in East and Central Europe.” Budapest Papers on Democratic Transition, no. 68, 1993.

 6

These lists existed from March 29, 1950, until May 8, 1989. Nowadays they are accessible on CD-ROM, see András Nyirő and István Szakadat (eds.): Politika. Magyarország, Aula Kiadó, Budapest 1993 [CD-ROM].

 7

Actually, the party rule was more pronounced, because there were many other nomenclature lists besides of the Central Committee’s. In fact, every important position – from the point of view of HSWP – fell under the party’s control.

 8

Iván Illés: Nemzedékek, elitek, ciklusok, Közgazdasági és Jogi Könyvkiadó, Budapest 1991, p. 39.

 9

István Harcsa: “A közelmúlt hatalmi elitjének főbb csoportjai,” Statisztikai Szemle, vol. 71, no. 2, 1993, p. 101–117.

10

Source: István Vida: “Az állami-politikai vezető réteg összetétele az 1980-as évek elején.” Előadások a Történettudományi Intézetben, no. 18, 1992, p. 8.

11

See Ferenc Gazsó: “Elitvátás Magyarországon.” Társadalmi Szemle, vol. 48, no. 5, p. 16-26.

12

László Antal et al.: “Fordulat és Reform.” Medvetánc, no. 2, 1987, supplement.

13

Ibid.

14

Rudolf L. Tõkés: “Az új magyar politikai elit.” Valóság, no. 12, 1990, p. 1-13.

15

The parliament instructed the government to draw a plan for complete democratisation. This plan contained concrete legal measures and a time schedule for the necessary steps. See, Pállinger (1997c), pp. 178-180.

16

Kálmán Kulcsár: Két világ között. Rendszerváltás Magyarországon. 1988–1990, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 1994, p. 101.

17

This assumption was not completely wrong because the government’s leading persons (Németh, Pozsgay and Nyers) also took part in the HSWP’s leading organs. The government became formally independent on May 10, 1989, when Németh was able to oust the conservative ministers.

18

Kulcsár (1994), p. 144.

* This article summarises the results of a more comprehensive study which examines the systemic change as a whole (1985-1995) and not only the ”phase of transition” (1985-1990) in the proper sense. ”Systemic change” means the change of the manner of political ruling. In the context of this article it consists of three different phases: crises, transition, (democratic) consolidation. Whereby ”©Transition” is defined as the phase of a peaceful change from an authoritarian régime towards a more democratic, more liberal kind of régime. On this subject, cf. Zoltán Tibor Pállinger, Die politische Elite Ungarns im Systemwechsel. 1985-1995, Haupt, Bern 1997b.