The 'national interest' and the transformation of Hungarian foreign politics in the 1980s E-Book

Maximilian Spinner

• Herausgeber: GRIN Verlag
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2003

Beschreibung

Master's Thesis from the year 2002 in the subject Politics - Region: Eastern Europe, grade: 1 (A), University of Birmingham (Centre for Russian and East European Studies), course: East European Politics, language: English, abstract: The reformulation of the national interest in Hungarian foreign politics in the mid- and late 1980s paved the way for a domestic reform process which lead to the peaceful transition to democracy. Hungary's democratisation cannot be understood without a reference to the preceding reformulation of its foreign policy, e.g. with regard to its neighbour Romania with a large Hungarian minority. In the economic domain this process meant an opening up for Western influence and an increasing losening of Hungary's integration with COMECON and the Soviet bloc. Contemporary sources from Hungary, the Soviet Union and the West are extensively used to substantiate the findings.

Leseprobe

Table of Content

3. The crisis of the 1980s: Growing internal and external constraints

5. Conclusion

6. Bibliography

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University of Birmingham Centre for Russian and East European Studies MA thesis September 2002

The ‘National Interest’ and the Transformation of

Hungarian Foreign Politics in the 1980s

A dissertation submitted by Maximilian Spinner as part of the requirements for the degree of

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Synopsis

Hungary’s transformation to market and democracy was preceded by a transformation of foreign politics starting in the mid-1980s. Failed domestic reforms, mounting debts to western lenders and deteriorating terms of trade with the USSR under a general climate of a renewed Cold War endangered Hungary’s political stability and relative prosperity. Domestic reform debates increasingly focused on Hungary’s international role which needed to be redefined under the growing stalemate. Through the concept of a ‘national interest’ the late communist leadership justified increasingly independent policies to break out of the afore- mentioned constraints, at first only with regards to common bloc principles. Due to the increasing leeway under the impact of Gorbachev’s reforms and the demise of the Brezhnev doctrine the definition of the ‘national interest’ was extended to cover Hungarian minorities abroad and to regain Hungary’s historic Central European identity. This move achieved both real economic and political pay-offs and was aimed at satisfying popular aspirations at a time of a growing crisis of legitimacy for communism. Unlike in other elite-led transitions in Eastern Europe, such as in Romania or Serbia, the protagonists abstained from pursuing a national communist strategy. Due to Hungary’s special national legacies the Hungarian reform communists rather transfo rmed themselves into pro-European Social Democrats and thus paved the way to a smooth domestic transformation and rapid European integration.

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1.Introduction1

Hungary is widely regarded as a success-story of transformation in Eastern Europe. A stable democracy, the rule of law and a prosperous market economy contribute to make the country one of the most advanced candidates for the EU’s upcoming enlargement. Most scholars explain this favourable development with Hungary’s legacies of domestic reforms since 1968 which facilitated the ultimate transformation from communism to market and democracy in the late 1980s.

I intend to turn the focus of this paper on Hungary’s external relations in this period. In my opinion, the foreign policy debate of the 1980s is an often neglected issue in the discussion of Hungary’s transformation and deserves greater attention. In particular, the new elite that came into power in 1990 attempted to play down the impact of their predecessors foreign policy which laid the basis for Hungary’s present position in the international system already before the installation of a democratic system and a full market economy. This is a striking difference in comparison to the other transition countries where the ultimate breaking with the Soviet bloc and an unambiguous orientation towards Europe took place only after an elite change through the first free elections. Consequently, the perceptions and strategies of the late Hungarian communist leadership as the protagonist of transformation must be in the centre of analysis. For this purpose I will concentrate on the development of key issues in the Hungarian foreign policy debate in the 1980s, international reactions, and the later extension to a domestic debate with the repercussions on reform policies in the main part of this paper. This discourse analysis is important for two reasons: Firstly, it helps to understand the paradigmatic changes in thinking among the Hungarian leaders and its repercussions on

1The author thanks his supervisor Dr Judy Batt for her guidance. Many thanks also to Anna Childs, Suzanne Freegard, Christian Ganske, Catherine Laverick, Katrin Robeck and Tome Sandevski for their useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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policies at that time.2Secondly, it shows up the basic difference in quality and extent between Hungary’s re-nationalisation and westernisation and similar developments in other East European countries at that time with Hungary’s explicitly European dimension of national revival.

For the dominant role Moscow played in coordinating her satellites foreign politics the change of Soviet objectives is an important factor in the analysis. In fact, only since the mid-1980s something like autonomous Hungarian foreign policies could be observed. Furthermore, I would like to demonstrate the close interdependence of domestic reforms and foreign politics which accelerated transition under the pressure of the domestic and international crisis of communism in the 1980s and through the opportunities of Gorbachev’s ‘new thinking’. In this respect I will explain the impact of Hungary’s national legacies that led to an early breaking with the Soviet bloc and a drive towards European integration unlike other countries in Eastern Europe which chose a more cautious detachment from Moscow and different forms of ‘national communism’ in t he first phases of transition. This unique development will be illustrated by comparing the Hungarian development with other East European regimes.

This famous saying of János Kádár, when asked by a Western visitor to characterise the Hungarian model, concisely highlights the complex interdependence of domestic politics, the economy and external relations in the period after 1956. The legacies of 1956 and the Kádár

2As in all communist regimes the party Central Committee and the Politburo took all major decisions, whereas the Foreign Ministry only served for executing these policies. Therefore most of the major changes and innovations discussed in this paper were developed by party officials such as Szürös, while the Foreign Ministry did not play a significant independent role.

3R Tökés, ‘Hungarian Reform Imperatives’, Problems of Communism, Sept./Oct. 1984, p 1.

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era with Hungary’s unique situation in the Soviet bloc which will be outlined in this chapter are essential in understanding Hungary’s transformation in the 1980s. The major starting point for an analysis of developments within the Eastern bloc and Hungary as a part of it is the Soviet perspective on her interests connected with the region. For the USSR Eastern Europe was ‘the most domestic of the foreign policy issues’.4The existence and conformity of the communist states in Eastern Europe were important for the Soviet Union, for several reasons: Firstly, the East European satellites secured a buffer zone for possible confrontations with the West. Secondly, they embodied the Soviet claim to the global validity of communist ideology, particularly for the benefit of China, who was challenging Soviet supremacy. Thirdly, they enhanced the USSR’s political and military weight in international relations; and fourthly, these countries were important economic partners supplying the USSR with essential machinery and foodstuff. Thus, both basic economic and hard security needs played a role besides the less tangible importance of ideological supremacy and great power status.5Thus, especially the external relations of the East European countries were closely coordinated and monitored by the Soviet leadership making any independent initiatives of single countries virtually impossible. Eastern Europe was also a field of experiments in reform, mainly in the area of economics, on the one hand to take into account the East European ‘national peculiarities’ but on the other hand to some extent also to test different models for a general renewal of communism.6This was especially the case during the Khrushchev and Gorbachev periods.7For Hungarian reform communism, which I will outline in the following, the ‘national’ aspect

4A Pravda, ‘Soviet Policy towards Eastern Europe in Transition: the Means Justify the Ends’, in: A Pravda (ed.), The End of the outer Empire, L: Sage, 1992, p 9.

5For a detailed account of Soviet interests connected with Eastern Europe: A Korbonski, ‘Eastern Europe’, in: R Byrnes, After Brezhnev, London: Pinter, 1983, pp 301-339.

S Bialer even claims an overriding importance of communist ideology and Russian nationalism in Soviet-East European relations (S Bialer, ‘The Decline of an Empire’, in: S Bialer, S Bialer, The Soviet Paradox - External Expansion, Internal Decline, L: Tauris, 1986, p 192.).

6A Korbonski, op cit, p 322.

7A Pravda, op cit, p 6.

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was emphasised, whereas the general validity of the model was explicitly negated in order to avoid any challenge to Soviet ideological supremacy as in 1956. The experience of the 1956 national and anti-totalitarian popular uprising was the major rationale for János Kádár’s reform policies. The 1956 revolution represented merely one of many special Hungarian national legacies: The memory of the 1848 revolution, which was suppressed by Russian troops, the abortive 1919 communist Soviet Republic, the ‘trauma of Trianon’ in 1920 with the loss of substantial parts of Hungarian territory and population, and the post-war Moscow-led Stalinization of Hungary fostered the population’s traditional nationalist, anti-Russian and anti-communist feelings. Hungarians perceived their situation as a communist ally of the Soviets as a forceful integration of a culturally Western country into a backward Slavic bloc. These long-standing notions could hardly be contained under the surface of Hungary’s so-called ‘national consensus policies’ after 1956, as outlined in the following.