The Hungarians

A Thousand Years of Victory in Defeat

Paul Lendvai, Ann Major

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780691200279
• eBook ISBN: 9780691200286
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

An updated new edition of a classic history of the Hungarians from their earliest origins to today

In this absorbing and comprehensive history, Paul Lendvai tells the fascinating story of how the Hungarians, despite a string of catastrophes and their linguistic and cultural isolation, have survived as a nation for more than one thousand years. Now with a new preface and a new chapter that brings the narrative up to the present, the book describes the evolution of Hungarian politics, culture, economics, and identity since the Magyars first arrived in the Carpathian Basin in 896. Through colorful anecdotes of heroes and traitors, victors and victims, revolutionaries and tyrants, Lendvai chronicles the way progressivism and economic modernization have competed with intolerance and narrow-minded nationalism. An unforgettable blend of skilled storytelling and scholarship, The Hungarians is an authoritative account of this enigmatic and important nation.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Foreword to the New Edition page
• Introduction
• 1. “Heathen Barbarians” overrun Europe: Evidence from St Gallen
• 2. Land Acquisition or Conquest? The Question of Hungarian Identity
• 3. From Magyar Mayhem to the Christian Kingdom of the Árpáds
• 4. The Struggle for Continuity and Freedom
• 5. The Mongol Invasion of 1241 and its Consequences
• 6. Hungary’s Rise to Great Power Status under Foreign Kings
• 7. The Heroic Age of the Hunyadis and the Turkish Danger
• 8. The Long Road to the Catastrophe of Mohács
• 9. The Disaster of Ottoman Rule
• 10. Transylvania—the Stronghold of Hungarian Sovereignty
• 11. Gábor Bethlen—Vassal, Patriot and European
• 12. Zrinyi or Zrinski? One Hero for Two Nations
• 13. The Rebel Leader Thököly: Adventurer or Traitor?
• 14. Ferenc Rákóczi’s Fight for Freedom from the Habsburgs
• 15. Myth and Historiography: an Idol through the Ages
• 16. Hungary in the Habsburg Shadow
• 17. The Fight against the “Hatted King”
• 18. Abbot Martinovics and the Jacobin Plot: a Secret Agent as Revolutionary Martyr
• 19. Count István Széchenyi and the “Reform Era”: Rise and Fall of the “Greatest Hungarian”
• 20. Lajos Kossuth and Sándor Petöfi: Symbols of 1848
• 21. Victories, Defeat and Collapse: The Lost War of Independence, 1849
• 22. Kossuth the Hero versus “Judas” Görgey: “Good” and “Bad” in Sacrificial Mythology
• 23. Who was Captain Gusev? Russian “Freedom Fighters” between Minsk and Budapest
• 24. Elisabeth, Andrássy and Bismarck: Austria and Hungary on the Road to Reconciliation
• 25. Victory in Defeat: The Compromise and the Consequences of Dualism
• 26. Total Blindness: The Hungarian Sense of Mission and the Nationalities
• 27. The “Golden Age” of the Millennium: Modernization with Drawbacks
• 28. “Magyar Jew or Jewish Magyar?” A Unique Symbiosis
• 29. “Will Hungary become German or Magyar?” The Germans’ Peculiar Role
• 30. From the Great War to the “Dictatorship of Despair”: the Red Count and Lenin’s Agent
• 31. The Admiral on a White Horse: Trianon and the Death Knell of St Stephen’s Realm
• 32. Adventurers, Counterfeiters, Claimants to the Throne: Hungary as Troublemaker in the Danube Basin
• 33. Marching in Step with Hitler: Triumph and Fall. From the Persecution of Jews to Mob Rule
• 34. Victory in Defeat: 1945–1990
• 35. The Failure of the Democratic Experiment
• 36. Viktor Orbán’s “Führerdemocracy”
• Notes
• Index
• Plates