Luxury and the Ruling Elite in Socialist Hungary

Villas, Hunts, and Soccer Games

György Majtényi, Thomas Cooper

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9780253055958
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia dell'Europa orientale

After World War II, a new community of elite emerged in Hungary, in spite of the communist principles espoused by the government. In Luxury and the Ruling Elite in Socialist Hungary, György Majtényi allows us a peek inside their affluence.

Majtényi exposes the lavish standard of living that the higher echelon enjoyed, complete with pools, Persian rugs, extravagant furniture, servants, and groundskeepers. They shopped in private stores stocked with expensive meats and tropical fruits just for them. They benefited from access to everything from books, telephone lines, and international travel to hunting grounds, soccer games, and even the choicest cemetery plots. But Majtényi also reveals the underbelly of such society, particularly how these privileges were used as a way of maintaining power, initiating or denying entry to party members, and strengthening the very hierarchies that communism promised to abolish.

Taking readers on a fascinating and often surprising look inside the manor homes and vacation villas of wealthy post–World War II Hungarians, Majtényi offers fresh insight into the realities of patriarchy, loyalty, gender, and class within the communist regime.

ONE

IN THE MANOR HOUSE

A New Elite Is Born

“THE VILLA WAS LIT WITH lanterns and decorated with colorful silk paper. To the right, in front of the entrance, stood hunters in full attire, to the left the youth of the party, garbed in blue shirts and red scarves. For the man of the day was not only a party man, but also, naturally, a hunter. To the side in the parking lot there were some American limousines, two Soviet military vehicles, several motorbikes, and some coaches. There was also a police car.”¹ In his memoir, Fülöp Merán, the scion of a family of counts, reports on an emblematic event of 1946, the birthday of the Csákberény party secretary. “On a long table there was roasted pork, caviar, turkey. And also wild boar, roasted pheasant, and stuffed goose. From crystal pitchers they pour the strong Merán wine that had been confiscated from our Csókakő and Orond vineyards. There are ladies present, some attractive and dressed according to the new fashion. The hostess is also elegant and beautiful.” Merán’s description of the party also mentions the host: “The party leader turned 40 today. He is in high spirits, and he is a rather likable character.”²

The above snapshot, which offers a rather idyllic depiction, demonstrates that there were interactions between the old and new elites in post–Second World War Hungary. Obviously, one can also envision the meeting of their two ways of life in the dynamics of cultural and social processes through which elements of a new lifestyle flow into the old one, transforming, absorbing, and overwriting old patterns of behavior. Presumably, much as some of the customs and habits of given individuals did not disappear with the change of regime and the rise of the socialist system, the customs and habits of whole social groups also did not simply vanish without a trace. Lifestyles changed only slowly. People’s habits and mentalities cannot be transformed from one day to the next. Just to mention one example, according to the recollections of one of their late descendants, members of the Zsolnay family—a traditional bourgeois family that owned and ran a ceramics factory of worldwide fame—would never have stooped to serving a meal out of a saucepan at the dinner table, even when out of necessity the head of the family was forced to work at the Nagytétény rubber factory making condoms.³

While the old social circles cultivated their traditions, new people and new groups were tending to follow or adopt the old consumer habits. Fülöp Merán does not fail to mention, in his memoir, the accordionist at the Csákberény birthday reception, who played a revisionist song titled “Prague Is Not Far from the Border.” The song tells of promises to reclaim the Hungarian territories lost after the First World War according to the terms of the Treaty of Trianon: “Although Andy [the accordionist] seemed to be on good terms with many of the people in power, on the inside he may have been ‘reactionary.’” In the discourse of the time, the term reactionary referred to adherents of the Horthy regime. Naturally, the historian cannot profess to know how Andy felt on the inside, only that he performed as a virtuoso accordionist under both regimes. He first played for József Mindszenty, archbishop of Esztergom and the Catholic prelate of Hungary, and later for Mátyás Rákosi, secretary general of the communist party—much to the delight of both.⁴

One of my intentions in this inquiry is to examine dissimilarity and analogy, new directions and continuity, the habits of the new elite that emerged after the Second World War and the perpetuation and dissolution of the lifestyle of the traditional aristocracy. I use the term ruling elite to denote a particular group distinguished by its privileges and its ruling position—a group whose lifestyle was characterized by the exploitation, to the greatest extent possible, of the prevailing power relations.⁵ In this chapter, I endeavor to gaze through the windows of the imaginary manor house in which Hungarian party leaders first learned traditional patterns of behavior and then created new ones. I also consider potential parallels and analogies to this Hungarian story and the interpretive perspectives they offer.

I examine the group of communist leaders who rose to power in the postwar era and their lifestyles through the notion of the ruling elite. Whenever a term from the social sciences is used, the point of departure of the analysis is always determined by how the category is interpreted; and vice versa, the term that is chosen determines the approach. In other words, our attitudes toward the object of our research determine this object, and the object determines our attitudes. The social science term I have chosen—the category of the elite—is rich with ambiguity from the outset. To address this ambiguity, I will begin by offering a detailed explanation of how I use this category, how my use of the term relates to other texts and interpretations, and how the object of my study is tied to these texts and interpretations by referential associations.

There are two classic works on the ruling class and the elite: Gaetano Mosca’s The Ruling Class and Vilfredo Pareto’s The Rise and Fall of Elites.⁶ Neo-elitist writers, such as Harold Lasswell, moved away from the concept of the so-called natural elite (distinguished by their personal characteristics) and connected the category to the notion of power, explaining the legitimacy of elites through the concentration of power.⁷ Accordingly, members of the elite group secure their dominance over other social groups through their power status and their use of power tactics. Therefore, the circle of the political or power elite can at least in principle be identified as those who possess the most important positions in a given society. Initially (and often later), the use of the term elite constituted a strong criticism of democracy, because it implied that in parliamentary democracies, institutions of democratic political representation and participation do not function effectively.

Historical sociological analyses classify the group coming to power not only as a ruling elite but also as a ruling class. According to Marxist class theory, the ruling class is the representative of power; several neo-Marxist authors therefore identify this class with the dominant group of modern societies: the elite.⁸ In the Marxist meaning of the concept, the ruling elite of an era cannot be described as a new ruling class with a strong class consciousness. It was, at most, a “privileged class” or social group on the basis of its way of life.⁹ I therefore do not use the term class to refer to the ruling elite of the postwar socialist era.

Several writers use the terms elite and ruling class with a critical edge when analyzing socialist systems. The mere use of the term elite and the acknowledgment of the power of the elite indicate that state socialism failed to create a socialist society based on the just distribution of goods and property and, in fact, created little more than a dictatorial regime.¹⁰ The application of the two terms implies that communist leaders deviated from the ideology on which the system allegedly rested not only in their exercise of power but also in their lifestyles. The emergence of an elite within a society is closely related to the prevailing forms of political participation. Naturally, these forms of participation are different in democracies and totalitarian dictatorships. Due to the nature of the state socialist system, the elite of the time can be studied on the basis of the operational logic of party-state institutions—in other words, control of the most fundamental positions.¹¹ Under the Soviet regime, the party headquarters theoretically supervised the channels of selection directly. They founded bureaucratic institutions such as the various local chapters of the communist party, youth organizations, trade unions, and women’s federations, which—although they seemingly represented group interests—were state-controlled establishments. Through these organizations, representatives of power selected future leaders, who also acquired most of their knowledge and experience in these groups. This is how party leaders determined their competency and tenacity.

The leading body of the party-state reserved the right to appoint candidates directly to the most important positions. This system of appointment was called the nomenclature system, and appointees on the nomenclature lists were dubbed the nomenklatura, or “nomenclature.” Based on census data, Michael Voslensky estimates that in 1959 the nomenclature included approximately 750,000 people in the Soviet Union (and the figures did not change radically between 1959 and 1970). Roughly one-third of these appointees, the apparatchik, may have been affiliated with the political leadership. The rest held important positions in the economic, academic, and cultural spheres.¹²

The most important positions were decided on by a rather narrow circle of the ruling elite. These were members of the highest political bodies: the Politburo (Political Committee) or the Central Committee and the people affiliated with them. Initially, the Politburo included only members of the most exclusive party leadership. In 1919, for example, it included Vladimir Lenin, Lev Kamenev, Nikolay Krestinsky, Joseph Stalin, and Leon Trotsky as well as Nikolai Bukharin, Grigory Zinoviev, and Mikhail Kalinin as candidate members. At the Twenty-Third Party Convention in 1966, the decision was made to limit membership in the Politburo to exactly fifteen members and six to eight candidate members. (The number of top leaders was deliberately restricted to preserve the value of these positions.) It is impossible, however, to determine exclusively by the formal hierarchy who belonged to the ruling elite at any given time. Actual decisions on several occasions were made informally (and not only on questions of personnel). In other words, decisions were made by the secretary general at the time or party leaders affiliated with him. In the Soviet Union and in other socialist countries, higher-level political bodies were formal organizations or, at best, advisory bodies of actual leaders rather than real decision-making forums.¹³ Like other communist countries, state socialist Hungary also adopted this nomenclature system.

The organization of the nomenclature, however, was unquestionably a matter of significance in the socialist countries; indeed, some people even attribute a vital role to it in sustaining the regime. According to Stephen Kotkin, the societies of state socialism were uncivil societies, since the nomenclature was the single configuration that functioned as an organized unit (in contrast with other, nonorganized groups).¹⁴ Consequently, through the organization and positions of the contemporary bureaucracy, its interests determined the dynamics of the systems of social distribution. Uncivil logic—that is, the lack of autonomy and solidarity (the practice of exerting clout and serving the interests of a particular group)—was characteristic not only of the establishment (in that it did not simply function from the top down) but rather permeated all of society (in that almost everyone had something to lose or fear). In the end, “paternalistic” policy proved successful, and, until the 1980s, there were few mass protests agai...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. In the Manor House: A New Elite Is Born
• 2. The C(adre) Line: Consumer Habits
• 3. Tradition and Innovation: The Hunt for Concordance
• 4. Meetings between the System and Its People
• 5. Luxury: Public and Semipublic Spaces
• 6. Stain on the Blue Sofa: Luxury and the Elite
• Afterword
• Bibliography
• Index
• Index of Names
• About the Author