The Hungarians

A Thousand Years of Victory in Defeat

Paul Lendvai

• Publisher: Hurst Publishers
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781787383364
• eBook ISBN: 9781787386242
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This is a comprehensive history of a legendarily proud and passionate but lonely people. Much of Europe once knew them as 'child-devouring cannibals' and 'bloodthirsty Huns', but it was not long before the Hungarians became steadfast defenders of Christendom and fought heroic freedom struggles against the Tartars, the Turks and, among others, the Russians. Paul Lendvai tells how, despite a string of catastrophes and their linguistic and cultural isolation, the Hungarians have survived as a nation-state for more than 1,000 years. He traces Hungarian politics, culture, economics and emotions, from the Magyars' dramatic entry into the Carpathian Basin in 896 to the brink of the post–Cold War era. Lendvai brings to life the short-lived revolutionary triumphs of 1848-9 and 1918-19; the traumatic Treaty of Trianon (1920) which deprived Hungary of Transylvania and other historic Magyar lands; and the successive Nazi and Communist tyrannies. These are among the episodes that have formed the consciousness of the Hungarian people. Through anecdotes of heroes and traitors, victors and victims, geniuses and impostors, Lendvai conveys the multifaceted interplay of progressivism and economic modernisation, versus intolerance and narrow-minded nationalism, on the grand stage of Hungarian history. This work is a blend of narrative, irony and humour; of occasional anger without taboos or prejudices. It also offers an authoritative key to understanding how and why this corner of Europe has produced such a galaxy of great scientists, artists and entrepreneurs.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• 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