By "premature" I mean that the Germans insisted upon recognizing
Slovenia and Croatia thus threatening the Serb status quo as the "key"
nationality in the shaky South Slav federation we call "Yugoslavia," i.e.,
South Slav lands.  Since the Serbs in Croatia (Knin area) and later in B-H
(37% of 1991 B-H population) were confronted by a Tudjman unwilling or un-
able to recognize Serbian nationality in fact and by an Alia Izetbegovic
who had authored a rather anti-multi-ethnic pro-Muslim only nationality
policy tract, the Serbs decided to act to forestall their diminution in
status.
        Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade and Radovan Karadjic in Pale were
able to "wave the bloody shirt" of chauvinist nationalism and use the JNA
which was largely officered by Serbs anxious to preserve their pre-civil
war perquisites.  Thus the Serbs had the trump card of JNA military power
which neither Tudjman nor Izetbegovic apparently perceived until too late.
        By "premature" recognition of the breakup of the Serb-dominated
Yugoslav Federation, Germany played into the hands of the Serb chauvinists
and ordinary Serbs were bamboozled into thinking of Milosevic & Co. as
patriotic supporters of the "Greater Serbia" dream.
        Had Bonn worked *with* Washington the break-up might have been
*negotiated* between Belgrade, Zagreb, and Sarajevo on terms that protected
every nationalities' true interests while permitting B-H to remain the one
multi-ethnic enclave in ex-Yugoslavia.
        As the American poet put it: "of all sad words of tongue or pen/
the saddest are these/ "It might have been."
        Thus it was German statecraft which failed under Genscher and
began the terrible slide into mass carnage in the heart of Europe.
        That's what I meant by "premature."

--
Glen D. Camp
Professor of Political Science
Bryant College
401-232-6246
>

Mark:
 Finding good Hungarian language books is not easy. I'm personally not crazy
 about Colloquial Hungarian. I prefer Hungarian-A Complete Course For Beginners
 by Zsuzsa Pontifax, NTC Publishing Group
                                            4255 W Touhy Ave.
                                            Lincolnwood,IL. 60646
Four of us here in Los Angeles are studying with a private teacher. We're
using the Foreign Service Institute manual which I believe is out of print.
Good luck.
                               Jon R

paul ) wrote:
: Be1la BATKAY wrote:

: >Jewish ancestry--why would you think so?  Finally, it may have been just a
: >typo, and it may just be my over-sensitivity, but my understanding is that
: >one does not refer to "Jew" or "non-Jew" ancestry unless one is deliberately
: >trying to be insulting.  The correct (and I don't mean "politically
correct")
: >term is "Jewish" or "non-Jewish".  They mean exactly the same thing of
course,
: >but in civilized society nuance is everything.

: Well, since Jews use the term 'Jew', I guess it's ok for anyone to use it,
:  right?
: Civility and nuance have nothing to do with each other - you must be thinking
: of politics and nuance, but then, politics has nothing to do with your
comment.

: Why would the word 'Jew' be insulting?  I must not know something you do.

: Paul

once again it is time reach for an english language dictionary.
on page 1132 of volume 1 of the third edition of the shorter oxford
dictionary printed in 1980 (with corrections) one finds the following:

"jew .....

2. transf. as a name of opprobrium or reprobation....


jew trans. Used opprobriously: to cheat, overreach; to beat down in price".

i find it easy to understand that someone may find some uses of the word
"jew" insulting. of course there are those who would feel honoured to
be insulted by those who use such words as terms of opprobrium.

d.a.

My vote for best Hungarian-language learning materials goes to
           the stuff published by Hungarolingua with the Debrecen summer s
           chool--you can contact them at  for details.  O
            course, there is always the old standby, the Banhidi book from
            decades back.  Ken N.   

On Tue, 1 Nov 1994 19:33:08 EST paul said:
>
>It is not that Americans are new creatures to whom ethnicity and national
> heritage are  irrelevent, but rather we have created a new, common
>culture and national heritage.  As an American, I feel I have more in
>common with my Italian-American, Irish-American, Polish-American, and yes,
>African-American compatriots, than to anyone in Hungary, and this only
>makes sense since I was raised here to embrace my American-ness.  Most
>European-American and African-Aamerican children are raised with their
>identity focused on their here-and-now, and not with another culture
>expected to define their identities, and this is what has produced the
>melting pot - before the rise of the horrible multiculturalism monster.
>
--Since this has little to do with Hungary, I will reply to this just
this once since I don't want to offend.  But Glazer and Moynihan's
*Beyond the Melting Pot*, which was written before the era of
multiculturalism (which is a poorly-defined term at best), carefully
documented the ethnic nature of politics in New York.  Ethnic voting
blocs are a fact of life in American politics, and always have been.
In Chicago, candidates have historically courted the "Irish" vote or
the "Bohemian" vote.  Today it may be the "African-American" or the
"Latino" vote, but ethnic politics is alive and well and is as
American as apple pie, mother, and the flag.  Second generation
immigrants often embrace "Americanness" but their children will
ask where to buy a good Hungarian grammar.  I wouldn't have used
the term "melting pot" as an analogy.  I would prefer the idea of
stew in which several still-recognizeable ingredients are combined
sharing a sauce, but still with their individual characteristics
preserved.

Charles (British-American) Atherton

P.S.  Dinna fash yoursel lang oer this, laddie.  I wush we cud
argee it out oer a haggis and some neaps and tatties.

d.a. writes:

> once again it is time reach for an english language dictionary.

Though if we can pick and choose among its rules of orthography,
it's arguable another can pick and choose among its rules of use...

Here's how Fowler addresses the question:


Hebrew, Israeli, Israelite, Jew, Semite.  Persons to whom all these
words are applicable are thought of by the modern Englishman as *Jews*;
if he uses in speech one of the other words instead of *Jew*, it is for
some reason, known or possibly unknown to himself.  He may [discard
*Jew* for variety], or for the better reason that *Jew* has certain
traditional associations, such as usury or anti-Christianity, that are
unsuited to the context.  [Or, e.g., Hebrew alone is the name of a
language.]

The fact remains that *Jew* is the current
word, and that if we mean to substitute another for it, it is well
to know why we do so.  A remark or two of the OED bearing on the
distinctions may be added: ...(on *Jew*) '...the commonest name for
contemporary or modern representatives of the race; almost always
connoting their religion and other characteristics which distinguish
them from the people among whom they live, and thus often opposed to
*Christian*, and (especially in early use) expressing a more or less
opprobrius sense'.

--Greg

Zoltan Fekete writes :

> Some bit.listserv.* suffer poor propagation - eg. a major NorthEastern
>provider does not carry b.l.hungary at all (and has inexplicable gaps
>in b.l.slovak). Try complaining to your local system administrator (and
>swear that the group is supposed to be carried ;-(). And bear in mind
>that the list is primarily LISTSERV based, the Usenet gateway is only
>secondary. The surest way to get everything is to subscribe at
 via email!

Thanks Zoli,
this is the exact answer I was waiting for. It seems you were the only
who got it ;-) .
Cheers,
Gotthard

The Debrecen materials are quite good, but noticeably sexist.  Also, they
don't have English instructions - the materials are for learning
Hungarian from any language.  They do have a workbook with
Engish/Hungarian excercises, but you must request it specially.  As far
as a good old-fashioned text book, I think the best is Erdos, Kozma,
Prileszky and Uhrman's Hungarian in Words and Pictures.  It focuses
heavily on reading and writing.  Finally, I used a cassettes and textbook
course published by the Foreign Service Department.  I got it from
AudioForum.  Part 1 is about $200, Part 2 a little more.  It was
excellent!  The first time I went to Hungary I realized that the course
had prepared me as well as anything could have for the trip.  I could
speak, knew lots of vocabulary, and people told me my pronunciation was
good too.  Well worth the money, highly recommended!  -Jennifer Thomas

The Foreign Institute Service manual is not out of print.  It is
available from AudioForum for about $200 each part (2).  I used it too
and liked it very much.  Jo szerencset kivanok nektek!

On Wed, 2 Nov 1994, Jon Rand wrote:

> Mark:
>  Finding good Hungarian language books is not easy. I'm personally not crazy
>  about Colloquial Hungarian. I prefer Hungarian-A Complete Course For
 Beginners
>  by Zsuzsa Pontifax, NTC Publishing Group
>                                             4255 W Touhy Ave.
>                                             Lincolnwood,IL. 60646
> Four of us here in Los Angeles are studying with a private teacher. We're
> using the Foreign Service Institute manual which I believe is out of print.
> Good luck.
>                                Jon R
>

Gotthard writes:
> Mark,
> I am having the same problem here, in the USA (btw. you can find the
daily postings
> of the  bit.listserv.hungary group under "*** HUNGARY *** ####" headers
in the
> soc.culture.magyar group), no postings appear in the
bit.listserv.hungary
> USENET group on my site.
> Is there anyone who reads the bit.listserv.hungary group on the USENET
rather
> than subscribing to the list ? Do you get all of the postings with no
problem?
> Take care,
> Gotthard
Same boat here. I have not seen anything on USENET from Sunday until today.
Sometimes, I wonder if my postings disappear in the great void also. Alas,
anarchism on the Internet.
Regards,Jeliko.

Andras Kornai wrote:
>George Antony writes:
>> The German orientation is necessary, as it is still the Germans who put
>> their money, at least, where their mouth is.
>Perhaps their money, but not one Pomeranian grenadier... You seem not to
>realize that Karadzic and the other thugs don't understand anything but force.

Quite the contrary, I am painfully aware of that.  On the other hand, one must
appreciate the political difficulties of employing German armed units in the
Balkans in a peacekeeeping, let alone peacemaking, role.  Just recall the
controversy surrounding the Turkish peacekeepers in Bosnia.

George Antony

Glen Camp wrote:
>        By "premature" I mean that the Germans insisted upon recognizing
>Slovenia and Croatia thus threatening the Serb status quo as the "key"
>nationality in the shaky South Slav federation we call "Yugoslavia," i.e.,
>South Slav lands.  Since the Serbs in Croatia (Knin area) and later in B-H
>(37% of 1991 B-H population) were confronted by a Tudjman unwilling or un-
>able to recognize Serbian nationality in fact and by an Alia Izetbegovic
>who had authored a rather anti-multi-ethnic pro-Muslim only nationality
>policy tract, the Serbs decided to act to forestall their diminution in
>status.
>        Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade and Radovan Karadjic in Pale were
>able to "wave the bloody shirt" of chauvinist nationalism and use the JNA
>which was largely officered by Serbs anxious to preserve their pre-civil
>war perquisites.  Thus the Serbs had the trump card of JNA military power
>which neither Tudjman nor Izetbegovic apparently perceived until too late.

Whereas in Slovenia there were no threats against other ethnicities, no
appreciable Serbian minority.  Still, the JNA did try to keep them in
the fold by force.

The withdrawal of rights of regional autonomy from the Albanians and
Hungarians was also totally unprovoked, happened well before the wars in
xYugoslavia started and must have been a salutory lesson to all other
non-Serb ethnicities.

But, yes, Tudjman's denial of Serb minority rights in Croatia was the casus
belli in that country.  I do not think, though, that anyone could serously
claim that the Serb response was proportionate.

>        By "premature" recognition of the breakup of the Serb-dominated
>Yugoslav Federation, Germany played into the hands of the Serb chauvinists
>and ordinary Serbs were bamboozled into thinking of Milosevic & Co. as
>patriotic supporters of the "Greater Serbia" dream.
>        Had Bonn worked *with* Washington the break-up might have been
>*negotiated* between Belgrade, Zagreb, and Sarajevo on terms that protected
>every nationalities' true interests while permitting B-H to remain the one
>multi-ethnic enclave in ex-Yugoslavia.

I can see a number of holes in this argument.

First, it implies that there was a cohesive and concerted effort in Washington
to negotiate the peaceful dissolution of xYugoslavia.  My impression is that
not only was there no such thing, but the Bush administration first declared
its preference for keeping xYugoslavia together and then walked away from the
whole mess when the JNA acted to restore order.

Second, it assumes that Belgrade and the Serb nationalists were/are pervious
to rational arguments and a peaceful dissolution could have been negotiated
with them, or a peaceful resolution to the armed conflict can be negotiated
with them.  This is the same error that most diplomats, from Lord Carrington
to Lord Owen, have committed.  (Cyrus Vance realized what was going on and
resigned.)  The refutation of Serb nationalists as 'fair players' has been on
our TV screens for far too long to ignore.

>        Thus it was German statecraft which failed under Genscher and
>began the terrible slide into mass carnage in the heart of Europe.

I think that German statecraft was the only statecraft then.  All others,
including the US, were hoping that the whole thing would go away, that the JNA
would get on top of everyone quickly and without too much carnage, and the
status quo would be restored.  The Germans had the audacity to tell the others
that they were wrong, and this is unforgivable, since they should have just
followed the wise Anglo-French-US lead as they have been made to since WWII.

Where the Germans were wrong was that they expected the other Western powers
to treat the newly-recognized states as truly independent, and if not quite
helping them in the face of foreign aggression at least let them defend
themselves.  Instead, the blanket arms embargo came, with US agreement, totally
ignoring the realities on the ground.  (You recall that Germany is not a member
of the UN Security Council: the US is.) Then everyone stood by as the JNA, by
then a foreign army, torched their way through a third of Croatia, starting
with the ethnic cleansing of some Hungarian villages in Eastern Slavonia as
the pilot project.  A firm 'cease and desist' from the West THEN could have
nipped the whole carnage in the bud.  It never came.

>        Tham's what I meant by "premature."

And this is what US leadership has been early in the conflict, for the Germans
to follow, presumably.  I find it difficult not to be derogatory.

George Antony

George Antony writes:

[analyis deleted]

Great stuff.  Can we please tempt you into telling us your opinion on
what should be done now, and on the consequences of following or not
following your recommended policy?

--Greg

KENNETH NYIRADY offered the Banhidi book as an option for studying the language
.
I've started with that book, and thought it was horrible as a text for those wh
o
want to use the language, but not to become language scholars.  The example I
usually give is, I can speak English pretty good (yes, I know - it was a joke),
but I don't know a thing about English grammer - I know what sounds correct.
If you just want to know how to use the language, such traditional text are
probably not the right thing to use.

As I mentioned yesterday, the Jerry Payne book is good, and I came across
 another
almost as good.  The stats on this one are:

        "Teach Yourself Hungarian", from the "Teach Yourself" series.
        author:  Zsuzsa Pontifex
        pub: NTC Publishing Group (original pub: Hodder & Stoughton Ltd)
                4255 West Touhy Ave.
                Lincolnwood-Chicago, Illinois 60646
        ISBN: 0-8442-3796-5 (dashes are important)
        cost: $14.95 printed on back cover
        copyright: 1993

Paul

You are such a blind optimist:

In article >,
 (Miklos N Szilagyi) writes:
....
>       There have been regular elections in the most undemocratic
> countries of the world, like the communist German *Democratic* Republic.
> On the other hand, Confucian China was practicing almost equal access to
> public offices for 2500 years without ever holding any elections.
This shows the follie of equalitie, for the real equalitie in China alwais has
been the lowlie equalitie of the governd, who had no sai in the governing.
The mandarinate, with the emperor at its head, alwais did that which it pleazd,
and nothing is reallie different nou and then, but that the materialists are
not restricted even by the sanction of Heaven.

> According to a 1986 Hearst Corporation poll, 45% of
> Americans believe that the communist slogan "From each according to his
> ability, to each according to his need" is part of our own Constitution.
It is not, nor can it be, for no such thing can be enforced by law--but the
onlie just societie is that wherin this is so.  In no societie but a small one,
no bigger than the North-American tribes were, can this be so.  Furthermore,
no bigger societie can be democratic.  If it is too big for communizm, it is
too big for democrasie.

>       All political offices should be accessible to every citizen who
> meets the constitutional requirements. Participation should be open to any
> qualified person. To become a candidate for elected office, one should meet
> only some elementary standards, e.g., collecting a small number of
> nominating signatures, and passing a simple examination on basic historical,
> cultural, and political issues.
Forget the examination: the pouers that be will insure that a candidate that
none of them want will fail such an examination.  This is relevant onlie
to such special offices as coronership, which is meaningless unless the
office-holder knows pathologie

>       As an additional step, the "None of the Above" option should be
> included in the election procedure. If more people vote for this option
> than for any of the candidates, new elections should be held where none of
> the rejected candidates could participate. This would be a powerful and
> simple way to remove unfit people from political office.
If we stick with the hopeless republican form of government, there is a better
scheme, calld "approval voting":  a voter votes for all the candidates that he
approves of, and none of the rest.  It naturallie follows, that the winner
gets half as manie votes as there were voters.  Therefore, it is natural to
implement this with the provizo that if no candidate gets 40% of the vote, the
election is void, and a new set of candidates is needed.  I would require that
the one who got the most be droppd, along with all others who got almost as
manie.  If the voters approved of them thei would hav gotten enough votes.

>       If none of the above proposals can be accepted, then even selection
> of office-holders by a lottery would be a better system than the existing
> one.
Tru, but one can no more trust the lot-taker than elections.  All too often
the winner of an election is the one whom the relevant pouers beforehand choze.
Corruption inheres in pouer.

>>was really initiated by a foolish German policy of premature recog-
>>nition of Slovenia and Croatia (perhaps owing to 450,000 Croatian "Gastar-
>>beiter" in the FRG) under then FRG-FM Hans Dietrich Genscher.
In principal I agree with Gencher. Every nation has a right for
selfdetermenation. Croatia was a nation, when the hungarians arrived.
With more than a 1000 year history, they have a right for independence.
(Note: I am hungarian, and historicaly ( the year of 1848 ) I cannot say
that I am prejudiced for the croats).
It is true that europe behaved shamefully.

 >>Only America can provide the moral and political and military
>>authority to do the job.  I do believe that ground troops will *NOT*
>>be needed since every time the West has seriously moved the Serbs (both
>>in Belgrade *and* Pale have drawn back.

This is true. Therefore I was hoping for Clinton's victory. (+ universal medica
l
care). I was wrong on both counts. I hope I am wrong, but America will not
 provide the moral and political and military authority. Nor will anyone else.
(It does not help, that the serbs were allies for two world war.)

Sandor.

How come that Pannon Jozsef responded to Glen's letter in the same issue of
Hungary. Telepathy? My response was in wain.

Sandor

In closing the debate about Anarchism, Jeliko wrote:

>I am sorry, what we see from the past and observing in the current is so
>different, that there is very little addition I can make to waht we are
>discussing. If the measuring stick we use, as a good anarchist would have it,
>does not have a scale marking on it, it is very difficult to have a
>discussion.
>

You are, most likely, completely right that  our differences are rooted in
fundamentaly different assumptions about the way the world is, which we
acquired on the basis of very different life experience.  Nevertheless,
since I am not writing to gather points, or win arguments, I am perfectly
willing to embark on a project of caliberation.  That is, we could
negotiate common reference points and see if we could at least understand
why we disagree.  This would, of course, be time consuming and eat
bandwidth which I, can afford right now (or else I wouldn't be writing
this), but you may not be in a position to nor want to.  Nevertheless,
before leaving off entirely, I will make a few remarks, but I will
understand if you do not choose to continue.

I challangeded your demand for facts in my argument by pointing out that
IMHO, (and many wiser heads' as well) the concept of 'fact'  is not as
solid as we tend to think it is::

>>A scientific opinion differs from a common sense
>> opinion or a personal opinion only in that it is underpinned by evidence
>> which is deemed valid by the community of scientists.

You replied:

>IMHO, scientific opinion can be very "common sense". As a matter of fact more
>often than not, it is common sense.


Now I don't know much about science, I barely passed my (american)
highschool physics and chemistry courses and that was more then thirty
years ago, and I have struggled through a few books about the philosophy of
science, namely  Thomas Kuhn's _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_
and Karl Popper's _Logic of Scientific Discovery_.   I got the impression
from these books that science was *never* just common sense, but always a
careful double checking of sensory evidence, preferably, by more than one
means, so that theories can be validated.  The disputes among various
philosophers of science  seem to concern issues like how strictly and how
long things need to be double checked before a theory can be declared a
law. Is that not so?

I also said:

>> I tend to favour the ontological and epistemological position of the
>> American Pragmatist Philosophers who point out the paradox that no
>> individual can discern the difference between illusion and what they name
>> 'fact' except in retrospect.


>Sorry, if I am mistaken but I thought "history" was in retrospect.


I think there is a misunderstanding here.  When I spoke of 'retrospect', I
was speaking in the context of an analytical definition of 'illusion', that
is to say, when a subject is under the influence of an illusion she/he
cannot distinguish reality from not reality.  This is only true because
that is what the word 'illusion' means.  If our subject could distinguish
reality while she/he also perceived  non reality, we would call that
experience something else, maybe 'mirage'.  So I used 'retrospect'  in
relation to the time after our subject has come out from under the
influence of the illusion, she/he might remark "untill now I was sure that
[x] but now I can see it is really [y]".  According to Thomas Kuhn, a
science as a whole experiences what he calls "Paradigm Shifts" , when the
way the world was formerly described is completely owerthrown and past
scientific knowledge is relegated to the status of illusion.  Examples of
this are the conversion from Aristotalian physics to Newtonian physics (In
the former it was well known that objects were static unless they were
given 'impetus')  and the rise of plate techtonics in geology (Formerly
only crackpots  like Churchward ( author of _The Lost Continent of Mu_)
believed that continents might move after the '50s it was geological
concensus that all the continents once formed a supercontinent)..

History, of course, is not a  science in the current sense of the word,
though the Germans thought of it as, 'Geisteswissenschaft'  which the
Hungarians translate litteraly as 'szellemi tudomany' and if we tried to be
as literal in english, we would come up with something like 'spiritual
knowledge craft'  or  'ghostly wisdom'.  That such literal translation
makes us want to laugh, only shows how deeply the prejudices of Positivism
are imbedded in our current version of common sense.  At any rate, history
is a 'geisteswissenschaft' (from now on G) and the status of 'fact'  is
even more fuzzy then the status of 'fact' is in science as such.

The exponents of the school of historical research known as 'historicism'
pointed out  a number of  problems unique to the  G.  Some of these are:

1.  The object of history consists of an uncountable infinity  of events,
faced with which a historian must choose what she/he considers important.
Thus with the best intention a historian's focus cannot be neutral or
objective.

2.  Historical events differ from physical events in that conscious beings
are involved who make the events *meaningful*.  Or to put it another way,
physical events can be seen as being caused by forces, human events are
*motivated* by people's intentions which are organized into meaningful
hiearchies based on the cultural values of the particular time and place
which are, in turn,  the product of previous history.

3.  Historical research depends on documentary evidence and history is
written by the winners, so all a historian can do is use hermeneutical
methods and gain documentary evidence from as many different sources as
possible.  In '1984',  Orwell depicted his hero as working in the Ministry
of Truth forging the past and obliterating documents, but this process has
gone on since humans have put stylus to clay tablet.

So, in short, historical retrospect is not the same as the retrospect I was
speaking of.



Later as we were discussing that you favour libertarianism while I favour
syndicalism I said:

>>Personally I lean
>> towards syndicalism, since I find the notion of natural property rights as
>> Ayn Rand and other libertarians conceive of it about as reasonable as the
>> concept of the divine right of kings.

And you replied:

>I presume you are responding on a community computer. :-)


Dispite the smiley, I need to clear something up which many people are
unclear about because the findings of anthropologists somehow don't seem to
make it into the public consciousness.  Or maybe it is just that the
knowledge claims of anthropologists are just seen to be more threatening to
people.  Actually,  I might be using a community computer:  our
forwardlooking University has provided CWIS (Campus Wide Information
Systems) which would allow me to use the machines on campus  (for "free"
even).  But actually, I managed to aquire a Mac Classic the last time I was
able to actually work.  But I was talking above  about a specific model of
property rights, namely Ayn Rand's conception of absolute individual
property based on some sort of 'natural rights'.  Our actual system of
property rights approximate this, except from Rand's point of view our tax
obligations are just the result of a  sophisticated protection racket some
people call the 'state'.  Ayn Rand cannot see that the redistribution of
property that the state preforms in socialy sensitive liberal democracies,
is actually the maintenance cost of property rights, which are a human
convention, a product, not as Hobbes would have it, a once-and-for-all
social contract, but a temporary agreement that is honored while those who
have the power to defy it find it at least tolerable not to.  In other
words the only thing natural about property rights is the same as what is
natural about language - all humans have a language, and all people have a
system of dividing resources, labour, and products which we can call their
property system, but how that system works can differ as widely as
languages, or better yet, games.  (BTW, I heard a rumour that a Hungarian
won the Nobel Prize for applying game theory to economics, is this true?)
So the question is not whether we have property rights or nut, but whether
the particular system of property relations we happen to have in an
historical epoch is sustainable?

Sorry, this letter got longer then I intended.  I'll just stop now.

Regards,

Tibor Benke

PS Does the fact that 'to explain' in Hungarian is 'magyarazni' (literally,
hungarianize) say something about our culture and national identity?

I thank Eva Balogh for her analysis of the historical events in question:


>Why did we have these atrocities, red or white? I think that after four years
>of a brutal war, human life became cheap and atrocities were committed
>somewhat more easily than otherwise would have been. Also, you must realize
>that, in either case, you are dealing with extremes: the extreme left and the
>extreme right. Both Kun and Szamuelly served on the Russian front and both
>were captured by 1915. They spent about two years in POW camps. Both had been
>social democratic newspapermen who sympathized with the Bolsheviks. Between
>November 1917 and November 1918 they were involved in the Bolshevik
>Revolution and the Civil War. Both kept moving further and further to the
>left, while they were being surrounded by brutality.

I am glad to see, then, that  my guesses that events during the war and in
Eastern Europe may have had something to do with it.  I was just projecting
events too specifically.  Being a left leaning person in the Zar's POW camp
for two years would make many a person bitter enough.  But this just
explains the behavior of the leaders, what of the actual individuals that
carried out the terror?

It is also interesting that you mention:


>They were extremely
>doctrinaire--much more so than Lenin, for example, who was quite willing to
>compromise as long as it ensured the survival of the Bolshevik Revolution.
>Kun and Szamuelly didn't have the flexibility of Lenin--they introduced a
>regime which was doomed to fail. And soon enough there were challenges to the
>new regime--their answer was terror.
>
>On the other side, we have a bunch of people who are also extremists. They
>are certain that all the trouble of the country originates with the left, and
>that left consists of urban, Jewish intelligentsia and their sympathizers.
>These officers also went through four years of hell at the front, where life
>was cheap. They were extremely bitter about the lost war, the lost
>territories, and brutalized by the war which just ended. Therefore, I am not
>at all surprised about the atrocities committed on either sides.

Now , following Mannheim, I am very interested in the relationship of
consciousness to being.  I've long suspected, that Hungary's misfortunes
since it joined the feudal nexus of Christendom were caused by a peculiar
feature of Hungarian identity;   is there something about Hungarian culture
that predisposes most of us to being rigid and doctrinaire?  Did we somehow
 miss out on the more subtle features of the behavior of other feudal
powers, which has always given us the feeling that we were betrayed?  Could
we have brought a different sense of honour from the east and stubbornly
stuck to it, being always suprised when others didn't act as they should
have?    Of course, I am just guessing, but I wonder what others think.

>
>Macartney's book on interwar Hungary is an excellent one. He also has a good
>book on the monarchy.
>


Yes, I've heard Macartney cited before and I've been meaning to look him
up.


Bye,

Tibor Benke

Sandor Lengyel aks:

> How come that Pannon Jozsef responded to Glen's letter in the same issue of
> Hungary. Telepathy? My response was in wain.

Well, it's elementary, my dear Sandor!  You must be reading the
once-a-day digest, while Greg and I are getting the mail individually,
as soon as it's sent.

Regards,
Joe

Tibor Benke writes:

> In closing the debate about Anarchism, Jeliko wrote:

Closing, you said, CLOSING, Tibor?

Thanks in advance,
Joe