Trianon in Popular History in Late-Socialist and Post-Transition Hungary: A Case Study

The Party and Trianon

Until the consolidation of the Kádár regime in the early 1960s, the issue of the Trianon Peace Treaty and, most importantly, its consequences with regard to Hungarian communities who became inhabitants of the neighboring countries constituted a taboo. Within literary circles, the figure of Gyula Illyés, who gradually became one of the most authoritative figures among Hungarian writers, started to pursue his own agenda of demanding a discussion about these Hungarian communities much more visibly while also trying to avoid severing ties with the leaders of cultural politics. ⁸ The state socialist leadership was also aware of the necessity to address the contemporary consequences of the Trianon Peace Treaty. The Science Policy Committee became the main actor in facilitating expert discourses on issues of national consciousness and identifying the task of scholars in mitigating societal tensions.

The Science Policy Committee was one of those expert- and cadre-mixed committees that advised the Central Committee on specific issues pertaining to science and cultural politics. It held sessions regularly four to seven times a year. Each of those ministries delegated members to the Committee who were involved in either innovation or other aspects of science as well as cultural policy (ranging from health care to construction and infrastructure). For this case study, I will briefly introduce one initiative that emerged within this body concerning popular history and the issue of Trianon. In 1979, based on the suggestion of the Agitation and Propaganda Committee, the project entitled “National Consciousness in Hungary: The National and Nationality Questions Today” was under discussion in one of the regular sessions of the Science Policy Committee. The draft listed claims and goals that can be deemed bold by any standard, demanding not only a thorough clarification of the causal chains that led to the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, but

we should discuss our national development with great care, especially in the regional context of the Danube valley, and regarding the relationship with our nationalities and with our neighbors. Moreover, when establishing the main topics for our agenda, we should take into account—as much as possible—the relevant peculiarities of historical and cultural traditions of Hungarians living beyond the boundaries of Hungary. ⁹

The explicit connection between the national and nationality question (i.e., contemporary national consciousness and minority policies affecting Hungarian communities) is a defining feature of all the documents that were prepared in the course of this research in the coming years. Despite the rather promising leading premises, the project staggered and failed to reach a broader public. Indeed, the comprehensive monograph that was supposed to be the most important outcome of the research into national consciousness remained in manuscript form, preserved by some of the authors and among the documents of the Agitation and Propaganda Committee.

At the outset, the greater public could have felt that academics had abandoned in part “the national cause,” not being aware of scholars’ attempts (or the attempts of a few) to attain greater publicity for their findings, which were to a certain extent results of research that was suggested—rather ironically—by the Agitation and Propaganda Committee itself. Despite these controversies, historical expertise and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) as a deposit of expert knowledge stood largely beyond question. Moreover, this positive reputation peaked around the time of the transition, as well as that of historical knowledge as a political credential. ¹⁰

Popular History on the Rise

Late socialism witnessed a great surge in popular historical publications. Several new outlets for popular history were established. Two book series stand out in terms of copies sold. One is Gyorsuló idő [Accelerating Time], first published in 1975, which offered the popular sciences, including history, in an interdisciplinary manner. The time span of the series ranged from ancient to contemporary history. Among the authors, we can find junior scholars as well as well-established researchers—all of them trained historians. The second series was entitled Tények és tanúk [Facts and Witnesses], published from 1974 on, featuring memoirs from the twentieth century, a genre that may be subsumed under the category of popular history. In the case of the latter, the intrusion of editors in the texts remained often painfully obvious for the educated reader. However, some controversial stories regarding partisans or the Hungarian Soviet Republic also appeared among the published materials.

The journal História was established in 1978, as the result of long negotiations with party organs, to be the flagship project of popular history in Hungary. From the very beginning, the journal was associated with Ferenc Glatz, a young party secretary at the Institute of History of HAS at the time, whose statements of purpose regarding the publication of a modern popular historical journal disclose his talent in positioning himself both as a knowledgeable cadre well versed in strategical thinking and as a historian. He framed the profile of the journal as an important means of increasing the outreach of ideology and disseminating the results of Marxist historiography while also suggesting that history (and the other social sciences) until then had failed to deliver some of those interpretations effectively to a broader audience. ¹¹

The narrative strategies of historians regarding the topic of Trianon and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy betray a historiographical terrain where maneuvering around the public scholarly discussion was rather complicated. It was unclear how Hungarian historians might have conveyed the criticism of nationalist behavior with respect to neighboring countries, ¹² adding a permanent international dimension to the topic, especially in relation to Romania, ¹³ where minority politics took an increasingly anti-Hungarian turn under the Ceauşescu regime. This contributed to the fact that up until the 1960s, little focused effort was made to investigate the peace treaty and its consequences, and those who did so resorted to the reconstruction of diplomatic acts, displaying fine examples of factography. ¹⁴

From the early 1970s on, though, we can see how the still-dominant monopoly of diplomatic history was challenged by a more diverse array of approaches. Before 1989, seventeen historians had published on these topics, almost half of them affiliated with the Party History Institute. There were certain topics that were discussed only by them, for example, the Romanian occupation of Hungary at the end of the First World War and the nationality policy of the Party of Hungarian Communists, as well as the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947. The other large group of authors was constituted by historians at the Institute of History of HAS, while a few taught at Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest (ELTE). Some of them simply translated their scholarly articles into the language of the public and added some illustrations, like Magda Ádám.

The topic of the Trianon Peace Treaty and minority Hungarians in neighboring countries appeared in the discussions about socialist national consciousness (socialist patriotism) as well, with the participation of the historians Pál Zsigmond Pach, Péter Hanák, and Ferenc Glatz. ¹⁵ In these instances, although they supported their arguments with historical examples in historical journals or Társadalmi Szemle (the main theoretical journal of the party), what these historians provided was not a historical analysis of Trianon. Within the broader theoretical experiment of elaborating a socialist national consciousness (as opposed to bourgeois nationalism), they sought to construct a discussion that could accommodate a historical reflection on the contemporary struggles of Hungarian minorities. ¹⁶ This experiment, however, did not succeed in appealing to the majority of the lay audience which was interested in the topic.

The angle that these historians chose—situating their discussion within the national–nationality question—was taken up by others, and around the confluence of népi (or agrarian populist) writers and the népi-friendly wing of the party, another discourse crystallized by the mid-1980s, one that was published on various platforms (dailies, literary and historical journals) that gradually departed from the scholarly framework, expressing their worries in relation to questions concerning the “fate of the Hungarian nation,” with an emotionally appealing undertone. Beyond other intellectual circles, historians also participated in this trend. ¹⁷ These were the available narratives concerning Trianon in the 1970s and 1980s, echoed as well as challenged by discourses that appeared in popular historical works.

História dedicated a separate column (entitled “Our Shared Concerns”) to the articles that dealt with Trianon mostly in terms of its consequences, the establishment of new states after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy as well as with other aspects of the nationality question.

Beyond these articles, the thoughts of the editor ought to be mentioned here, as they were explicitly directed at influencing the way readers interpreted the content of the journal. Ferenc Glatz was known for his aptitude for long speeches and glossaries that he wrote for about one-third of the issues of História. In them he portrayed himself as a socially engaged scholar and as an educator. He shared his thoughts on Trianon in 1982 from this position:

Trianon. The figures are well-known that display Hungary’s territorial, economical, and first and foremost, social and population losses after the First World War. Hungary lost almost 70 percent of its former territories and more than half of its population. About 40 percent of Magyars were left outside the borders of the new Hungary and became nationalities, minorities in the new states. The historian has to say this: there was no other people in history, not even before the national and state formation, which would have taken the loss of the two-thirds of its population and territory with tranquility, after two generations have passed. Our historiography and intellectual circles were ruled by incomprehension for a long time, insofar as the national shock evoked by Trianon is concerned. We were afraid of lurking nationalism even when concerns were only raised to point to the continuity and presence of the problem. Our historiography today is no longer particularly surprised that great territorial rearrangements (1920, the collapse of historical Hungary, the territorial revisions of 1938–1942, and the return of territories after 1945), the collapse of states and new settlements, evacuation of the population of entire provinces kept regional historiographies in the aura of momentary “rights,” mutually committed sins and their supporting arguments. ¹⁸

In this glossary, Glatz calls for a conciliatory tone and transcending grievance-based animosities among regional historiographies.

Political engagement on História’s behalf makes it unique in contrast to academic publications as well as other popular historical ones. With a considerably broad lay audience, the journal was able to have a broad societal impact, serving as an outlet that connected scholars and their readers, that could have been framed (and indeed was framed by Glatz) as a means of popular education. Before 1990, twenty-nine articles were published in História that, to varying degrees, engaged with Trianon, the process leading up to it, and its consequences. There was no designated special issue for the topic; however, the double issue of 1982 (4–5th volume) featured articles that focused predominantly on issues of ethnicity and the nationality question from the Middle Ages up until the post-1945 period.

The documents of the Science Policy Committee show the party’s full awareness of the need to have an opinion on Trianon; however, this never yielded a coherent politics of the past during state socialism as the concept of socialist patriotism and its offering with regard to the long-lasting consequences of the peace treaty did not appeal to the majority of the audience. Knowledge production about Trianon was institutionally conditioned but not directed while remaining an integral part of state socialist historical knowledge production.

The House of Terror and the Trianon Museum

The institutional setting of historical research did not change fundamentally in the 1990s and 2000s. Therefore, those researchers engaged in investigations into continuities and discontinuities of historiography before and after the transition, tend to emphasize the former both in terms of institutions and personnel. ²² The most important new institution of the period was the House of Terror Museum, which became important for the Trianon discourse only in an indirect way, as its establishment signaled the first attempt to institutionalize the FIDESZ party’s image of the past and gradually became the central institution for the party’s memory politics, both in opposition and in government. The public foundation behind it (Public Foundation for the Research of Eastern and Central European History and Society) is run by the prominent right-wing ideologue Mária Schmidt, and she acts as director of the museum as well. More is said about Schmidt later, as she emerged as a key figure of FIDESZ’s memory politics after 2010.

The establishment of the Trianon Museum in Várpalota (2003) is important for this case study as well, being one of the few initiatives that appear to have been organized from below. This private institution prides itself on being “the only institution within the Carpathian Basin that deals with the peace treaty that followed the First World War and its consequences that reach until nowadays; it exhibits in a structured manner the rich and shocking material and intellectual legacy of the losses of the country.” ²³ The museum’s function is purely educational, which is strengthened further by its ticket policies—it encourages student groups to visit and provides travel discounts as well. However, no systematic research takes place here. The Trianon Museum was part of a newly emerging, diverse institutional framework—including bookstores, publishing houses, festivals, and media—of an esoteric-alternative historical subculture that contributed greatly to the iconography and phraseology of Trianon discourses on the far right.

Popular Histories in the Plural

As part of the general tendency of pluralization, the 1990s brought about the expansion and diversification of popular historical journals. Some of the newly established journals proved to be short-lived but others built up a considerably broad readership. Financially speaking, multiple trajectories were available: relying on private donors, recently established foundations or state subvention, or a mixture of these. Still, in the long run no journal managed to secure its sustenance without state funding, which was mostly channeled through the National Cultural Fund. This fund was established as early as 1993 but went through considerable structural changes and gradually turned into the largest state fund supporting the cultivation and preservation of Hungarian culture as well as its dissemination nationwide and for an international audience. ²⁴ It became an outlet of the Ministry for the Preservation of National Heritage (later, the Ministry of Human Capacities); the fund engaged in support for a wide range of cultural activities ranging from artistic productions to different branches of publication.

História long remained the most successful on the market; however, in the 2000s it slowly fell behind those journals offering a fresh look, most notably Rubicon. Scholars continued to publish on the pages of História, regularly but not too often addressing the Trianon Peace Treaty and its consequences. Between 1990 and 2010, eighty-two articles dealt with some aspect of the Trianon Peace Treaty. Three issues published predominantly on the topic, and one, in 2008 (the ninetieth anniversary of the signing of the peace treaty), without being framed as a special issue, had the title of The Beginnings of Hungarian Minority Life [in the neighboring countries—R.K.]. Apart from these, História occasionally published special issues that appeared as an addition to the regular ones, and these issues were not counted among these (e.g., Special Issue 1, Special Issue 2). In 2002 one such special issue, authored by Glatz, appeared under the title The Nationality Question in Central Europe Yesterday and Today.

The research that was presented in História was far from groundbreaking and by no means brought down a taboo, as these articles continued to build on the timid but clear late - socialist legacy of the journal. The research questions posed in the articles generally followed the line of those in academic scholarship. However, the earlier observed relative openness towards new historical trends prevailed even if it was outperformed by Rubicon.

Rubicon, the main contender with História in the realm of popular history was founded in 1989 and the first issue came out in February 1990. Árpád Rácz, the founding (and current) editor-in-chief explained the name of the journal in an interview as following: “Our ancestors’ official language was Latin until 1843. Rubicon is also the motto of our regime change: “We crossed the border between the old view of history and the new we hope for.” ²⁵ Rubicon maintained an independent editorial practice, led by the vigorous Rácz, who was able to convince influential contributors and built an editorial board that featured multiple so-called ordinary members of the Academy of Sciences within its ranks.

Rubicon, in accordance with its proclaimed agenda, featured topical issues about mostly Hungarian, occasionally world, history from ancient times to the recent past. Still, a slight dominance of modern and contemporary history is to be observed. It took some time for Rubicon to become a real contender with the well-established História though. Besides showing its ability to recruit well-known scholars, it was perhaps a more youthful marketing strategy and layout that gradually made a difference.

The issues related to the Trianon Peace Treaty appeared regularly in the journal; however, they did not shape the journal’s profile fundamentally. Rubicon appeared six to twelve times a year, publishing double and special issues as well. Between 1990 and 2010, Rubicon published more than fifty contributions that discussed Trianon. Three special issues appeared, and two of them had specific Trianon-related titles (Trianon and Trianon and the Revision). The practice of recycling articles that had previously been published by Rubicon became apparent by this period and remained pertinent after 2010 as well. Excerpts from contemporary sources were published alongside scholarly contributions. Some of these articles provided anecdotes concerning the birth of the peace treaty or discussed it through the lenses of diplomatic history. However, the majority were preoccupied with the consequences, most importantly, revisionist rhetoric as well as discriminatory practices against Hungarian minorities in the interwar period and during the Second World War. The tone of these articles remained mostly detached, retaining a scholarly approach towards the subject of research.

In the course of these two decades, state-initiated as well as grassroots ambitions shaped the institutions producing historical narratives. Such bottom–up initiatives are exemplified by the Trianon Research Institute Non-Profit Foundation and the subsequent Trianon Research Institute, which was established in 2007 by a renowned far-right historian Ernő Raffay and Archimédesz Szidiropulosz, who was trained as a secondary school teacher of history and Russian language and a sociologist. The institute set a clear research agenda, focusing on the eponymous event, organizing conferences both within Hungary and neighboring countries, as well as supporting young Hungarian historians of the topic from Hungary proper and the diaspora. ²⁶ From 2009 on, the institute started to publish a quarterly (which gradually transformed into a yearbook), Trianoni Szemle. The financial background was secured by the National Cultural Fund, the support of companies, local governments, and private donors to a varying degree. Although the number of copies sold is not public, it should be emphasized that Trianoni Szemle remained confined to a small subculture, as opposed to the broad readerships of História and Rubicon.

Although the editors do not spell it out explicitly, the journal is positioned somewhere on the fringes of popular history, as the majority of the board and that of the contributors have not received a university education in history. Many of the authors do however possess a degree in history and maintain an affiliation with a museum, research institute, or university. Among faculty members and PhD students (occasionally even MA students), the share belonging to two church-run universities, the Reformed Church’s Károli Gáspár University and to a lesser extent the Pázmány Péter Catholic University, stands out. In the humanities, these faculties lag in reputation behind ELTE and arguably other, state-run non–Budapest based universities. The format of the contributions ranges from classic popular history as seen in the pre-1989 period to contemporary documents, essays, and poetry. Hence, it is no surprise that those with a degree have paid more attention to retaining both the language and the format of a scholarly publication, adding a few proper foot- or endnotes to their works. Taking a look at those notes, it becomes obvious that the majority of the authors maintain a quite narrow scholarly horizon, reading mostly Hungarian publications of often marginal (even radical) authors.

In terms of discourse, the journal offers a quite one-sided account. As the editors insist (even well into the publication of the journal), they are working to overcome the taboo of Trianon, which has existed for the past forty years (!), clearly meaning the times of state socialism but somehow overlooking the years since 1989. On that note, the overwhelming majority of the publications offers different manifestations of grievance and expresses a deep sense of injustice. Although the structure of the articles varies greatly—mostly thanks to diverse professional backgrounds (historians, literary historians, poets, writers, sociologists, engineers, etc.)—certain formulations are repeated. These concern entrenched convictions about the never-ending pain that the peace treaty brought to the Carpathian Basin, the betrayal of European powers (and US President Wilson) at the end of the Great War, as well as the aggressive neighboring states that emerged. No debate has taken place on the pages of the journal as of now; however, some members of the editorial board left a few years ago. This change was not discussed in the journal either.

Beyond the discussion of these topics, however, some loosely related issues have also been elaborated in detail. A series of articles was published with the explicit aim of contributing to the cult of Count István Tisza (1861–1918), two-time prime minister of Hungary (1903–1905 and 1913–1917) and a beloved figure of the memory politics of the right at the time. Ernő Raffay, the editor who left the board, published multiple articles about freemasonry in Hungary before and during the Great War. The conspiracy theory he advocates for—the activity of freemasons in order to undermine Hungary as a political entity, hence being among the ultimate culprits for the Trianon Peace Treaty—is shared widely among the far right. ²⁷ Szidiropiulosz, the editor-in-chief of the journal, published an edited volume on Trianon in 2003 as well. ²⁸ It was brought out by the publishing house called Institute of the Twentieth Century, which is part of the institutional framework headed by the previously mentioned Mária Schmidt. The authors are mostly recurrent contributors of Trianoni Szemle, and hence the volume can be read as an additional issue of the journal. However, this specific publisher is known for its predominantly scholarly profile; therefore the branding of the publication and the possible channels of dissemination differed greatly from that of a marginal journal. The most popular publication on the topic was, however, authored by film director Gábor Koltay about his thoughts surrounding a project that resulted in his documentary series Velünk élő Trianon (2004) and a movie version entitled Trianon (2004). Koltay, who is a central actor in producing so-called identity-building contemporary Hungarian cinema since the 1980s, launched jeremiads, and his widely screened movie together with his book started to function as a coherent guide for the iconography and general ideas about Trianon for a new generation of readers and viewers. Movie critiques of Trianon were rather underwhelming, citing its meager popular historical value, and the dubious editing principles behind the selection of interview excerpts with Hungarian authors and politicians. ²⁹ As Réka Sárközy observed in her analysis, the main purpose of Koltay’s self-defined documentary was not some kind of investigation or a search for answers. “Koltay was not drawn to research, he did not pose questions but provided ready-made answers. He has a clear concept of the past, which he wants to utilize in solving contemporary issues.” ³⁰

As a predictable outcome of the liberalization of publishing, various enterprises emerged to cater for the public’s need for historical narratives. The institutions that were inherited from before the transition maintained their previous working mechanisms and retained their reluctance to engage in daily political battles—indeed, they were hardly asked to do so. The most articulate governmental politics of the past was produced by the FIDESZ government, but it was not entirely clear whether their devotion to historical topics stopped shortly after the passing of the millennium as they had only one cycle in power in this period (1998–2002). Other governments did not show particular interest in creating a coherent politics of the past with the inclusion of the Trianon Peace Treaty, which might have coincided with the expectations of the Hungarian population at the time; however, Viktor Orbán and his advisors skillfully identified the post-2008 moment ³¹ when historicized language and an increasing “return to the past” brought a significant yield in electoral success.

Historians of the Great War and the interwar period continued to publish on Trianon in various scholarly and nonscholarly outlets and enjoyed academic freedom, which they had only recently learnt about. Popular history was not confined to self-proclaimed popular historical publications in this period; historical narratives spread over the pages of weeklies and dailies and increasingly separated themselves from scholarly discourses.

The Illiberal Turn in Memory Politics

Three major new institutions have been established since 2010 and have joined the Mária Schmidt–led foundation propagating the memory politics of the FIDESZ regime on different platforms: Veritas Research Institute for History, the Institute for National Remembrance (INR), and the Research Institute and Archives for the History of Hungarian Regime Change (RIAHHRCh). The leadership of INR and RIAHHRCh have close personal ties with Schmidt. Another indication for the close-knit fabric of these institutions is the overrepresentation of graduates and doctoral students of the Pázmány Péter Catholic University, where Schmidt is a professor of contemporary history. One should note that Veritas and INR employ to a great extent trained historians who produce scholarly work as well. Still, the credibility they represent is painfully often evoked to back political statements or to shape the remembrance of certain historical events in line with current political will. From among the above-mentioned institutions, Veritas deals most visibly with different aspects of Trianon.

Veritas has become famous for public events, where scholarly standards are often neglected for the sake of conformity with governmental past politics, as well as for giving way to an emotionally accessible discourse. Sándor Szakály, the director of the institute, is a military historian whose main interest lies in the prosopography of officers of the Hungarian army as well as military training during 1867–1945, Hungary’s participation in the Second World War, and the history of Gendarmerie in the interwar period and the Second World War. Incidentally, he headed the popular scientific subdivision of the National Cultural Fund for years. Under his leadership, Veritas recruited several former politicians (including Péter Boross, former prime minister of Hungary) and some rather marginal historians, with a few exceptions. The motto of the institute, “Thou shalt not lie,” is very telling regarding the self-perception of the institute. According to its credo, several chapters of Hungarian history are depicted in an unjust way, even falsified. Hence they promise an interpretation of the past that enables Hungarians to be proud and one that will correct the alleged mistakes past (notably, state socialist) historiography had made. Veritas’s main engagement is definitely that of popular history: public lectures are delivered regularly by the fellows all over the country. Furthermore, they are very active in organizing conferences, which are also open to the public.

The publicity of INR is much smaller; in fact, beyond some public events, their activities attract limited attention. The institution was established by a law in 2013, following a regional trend but with a considerable delay. The mission of INR is described as “the preservation of state memory of the communist dictatorship, the uncovering of working mechanisms of the dictatorship and the cooperation with the state attorney in the search for those perpetrators who committed crimes that have no statute of limitations.” ³³ The research agenda therefore emphasizes archival research; however, their role as experts at trials or enlighteners is not too specific or particularly remarkable as yet. ³⁴

Under the leadership of literary historian Zoltán Bíró, Sándor M. Kiss, the father of Földváryné, acts as the vice director of the least visible institution of the three, the Research Institute and Archives for the History of Hungarian Regime Change. Similarly to INR, it resulted from a legislative action in 2013. However, few of its prescribed tasks have been fulfilled, since the institution has yet to become a hub for transition research and subsequent educational activities. The staff shows a remarkable variety, their expertise ranging from economics to political sciences and philology. Although the institution itself has a modest list of original publications, some of the fellows are quite active in popular historiography; several of them are recurrent contributors of Trianoni Szemle.

On 1 January 2019, a fourth sizeable institution entered the scene, under the control of the government and the Ministry for Human Capacities. The Research Institute for Hungarian Studies is the pet project of Miklós Kásler, the Minister for Human Capacities, a well-regarded oncologist. Kásler has a soft spot for theories that support the kinship of Hungarians and Turkic nations, and the intersdisciplinary research institute has a definitive emphasis on archaeogenetics. Its Historical Research Center employs historians, doctoral students, and people with lower degrees in history. Those employees without a job title indicating a research position represent the institute in various public events as well. On the eve of the centennial of the peace treaty, the institute initiated roundtables and other events.

Besides establishing new, well-endowed institutions (the contrast is striking with “old” institutions), the gradual re-arrangement of the institutional landscape was complemented with other measures as well. Well-embedded older institutions like the Institute for the Study of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution or the Institute for Political History had already had to face funding cuts as well as unfavorable administrative changes. Most recently, the latter was forced out from its current location, in close proximity to the Parliament. As a consequence of current science policy, the Institute for History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS), along with other branches of the HAS, struggles financially and was subjected to arbitrary reorganizations that resulted in the separation of the research institutes from the central administration of HAS.

FIDESZ made sure that the newly founded institutions gradually gained special privileges. These privileges can be source material-related; for example, Veritas Institute was given the recently catalogued documents of Jewish and other post–Second World War restitution in 2015. In other cases, the nature of this privilege is rather of a financial nature. The Mária Schmidt–led Public Foundation for the Research of Central and East European History and Society functions as the main agency for distributing money to smaller actors of historical writing or representation. The first type of privilege interferes with several issues of academic freedom, the other has implications for direct political intervention into research agendas. Large commemoration projects—most recently, the sixtieth anniversary of the 1956 revolution and the one-hundredth anniversary of the Great War—are organized and financed through this organization. These opportunities are hotbeds for dubious projects, as investigative journalists suggest. ³⁵

Schmidt’s unchallenged role as the main distributor of funding for memory politics projects coupled with her formal and informal influence in the infrastructure of FIDESZ-endorsed institutes makes her the most potent memory entrepreneur in Hungary. A broader definition of memory entrepreneurs—focusing on the activity of narrative influencers and their ability to distribute their interpretation to an audience with an unspecified size—would allow us to list other previously mentioned actors here such as Ferenc Glatz or Árpád Rácz. However, their room for maneuver and indeed, objectives, were and are of a much smaller scale and can be seen as individual coping mechanisms.

Renewing the Ties: Popular History Wedded to Memory Politics

The 2009 financial crisis as well as the rapid growth of the Internet hit the publishing sector hard in Hungary, as well as in other parts of the region. Among others, popular historical publications long struggled for bare sustenance. Large state-funded anniversaries, like the sixtieth anniversary of the 1956 revolution or the centennial of the Great War, and cooperation with newly established, well-endowed institutions alleviated their financial strains only temporarily. Regular application to the endowment of the National Cultural Fund remains the only option for most scholarly and popular history journals. The only exception to the rule is BBC History, which launched its Hungarian edition in 2011. About half of the content comes from the original English-language issues while the other half is managed by the Hungarian editorial board. ³⁶ The journal maintains a global (though somewhat Eurocentric) outlook and features articles from historians—continuing the tradition of mainstream, research-based popular scholarship. Trianon does not feature as a key topic, which is to be expected from a journal which decidedly goes against the traditional priorities of national history.

História was forced to close down in 2012 as a result of continued financial insecurity. Rubicon thus remained the only widely read Hungarian popular historical journal. Regardless of minor changes in the editorial board, Rubicon succeeds in maintaining the profile of a popular historical journal that disseminates the work of mostly established historians. However, the influence of the National Cultural Fund, which is the main source of its maintenance, as well as strategic decisions by Rácz, the editor, brought the journal closer to the center of “official” memory politics (e.g., special issues financed from the budget of previously mentioned anniversaries or state organs, publishing works of those employed in the recently founded governmental institutions). In the course of the 2010s, the journal retained its focus on contemporary Hungarian history, often recycling articles from previous issues. Between 2010 and 2020, five designated special issues and one issue with a clear focus on Trianon were published. Two of these were either completely or overwhelmingly republished previous special issues. In addition, two of those special issues appeared in 2020, thus in the year of the centennial. The special issue titles included Trianon and Hungary in the 1920s and Trianon Trauma. Beyond these special issues, only a few articles appeared during this decade concerning Trianon.

Trianoni Szemle clearly struggles to survive, as the market of radical national history is oversupplied, and the editorial board is significantly older than most of its competitors. The National Cultural Fund and several local governments help to sustain the journal. It occasionally publishes the greetings of the Ministers of Defense in the Hungarian government or an acknowledgement of financial support from the Deputy Secretary of State’s own budget. Trianoni Szemle is clearly in a disadvantaged position compared to journals that are better embedded in the strengthening networks of the far right, most notably Carpathia Studio and its flagship journal Nagy-Magyarország [Greater Hungary], which at first sight might be difficult to tell apart from Trianoni Szemle, as the composition of its contributors and the emotional, grievance-based tone is close to identical. The claims of the publishing house, which produces book series as well as two editions of Nagy-Magyarország (Erdélyország in Transylvania) are unambiguous about their ideological ambitions: “The mission of Carpathia Studio is principle-driven knowledge dissemination and keeping traditions alive in a professional way. Our chief goal is to make the readership acquainted with the forgotten history of East Central European nations and point out the lingering distortions of Marxist historiography.” ³⁷

As there was a surge in establishing memorials to the peace treaty nationwide, and the Fourth of June gained the necessary place for annual commemoration, this depiction came to dominate the language of both local and national acts of remembrance. However, the myths that seemed to dominate public discourse about Trianon inspired some researchers to return to a popular educational agenda and dedicate publications to the questioning of these myths. The most important such work was authored by Balázs Ablonczy, and his book Legends of Trianon has already come out in two editions, pointing to the interest in a more complex depiction of the treaty than a simple tragedy that inexplicably befell the innocent Hungarian nation. ³⁸

Ablonczy’s book, sold in high numbers of copies, constitutes something of an exception among professionally authored popular works. Ablonczy, an excellent writer and much respected scholar, had already built up a broad readership by the 2000s. A conservative public intellectual with significant scholarly positions (at ELTE and the Institute of History) and a brief detour into cultural diplomacy, he continues to attract readers from across the political spectrum. In contrast to that, beyond reinvigorated, self-isolating scholarly reflexes, a conscious sidelining of historical expertise beyond the manipulation of institutional dynamics is detectable in popular history in relation to the peace treaty. ³⁹

In the course of the 2010s, as part of its larger regime consolidation, FIDESZ practically made the notion and legacy of Trianon its hostage. The establishment of alternative research institutions that would cater to the party’s immediate political needs is only one part of the system that enables the engineering of contemporary politics of memory (and not the only episode of the country’s past, for that matter). There was also a legislative drive that helped to entrench the FIDESZ views on Hungarian history including the peace treaty. The preamble of the Fundamental Law that was adopted in 2011 and entered into force on 1 January 2012 (branded by FIDESZ as the first “real” constitution since the Communist regime) shows how the government and henceforth the Hungarian state wishes to disown its past during the times of the Arrow Cross and Communist dictatorships. ⁴⁰

The Fundamental Law’s Preamble conveys a specific view of the Hungarian past, aiming to provide an unchallenged framework, which, through its legal power, prescribes the only (morally) valid outlook on Hungary’s history. As highlighted earlier, the evaluation of the twentieth century was of greatest interest, and Hungary’s role was portrayed as downtrodden, as a victim, while expressing pride concerning its achievements and vowing to preserve select traditions. This interpretation of the past, of course, is often at odds with historical scholarship, being embedded in the regionally widespread trend of memory politics that is labelled by Nielsen as collective and competitive victimhood. ⁴¹ This trend has two major negative effects: one is the utter politicization of the scarce number of historical debates that take place concerning these issues; the other is the exclusion of counter- or alternative remembrances of any kind.

The Preamble serves as a broad guideline, but more concrete legislative measures were taken with regard to specific cases, like the remembrance of the Trianon Peace Treaty. In 2010, the Fourth of June was declared to be the day of National Unity, commemorating the signing of the treaty on that day in 1920. Although it did not become a public holiday, commemorative speeches are held all over the country and primary as well as secondary school students have to attend or perform at related events. ⁴² The Trianon Peace Treaty and its place in Hungarian history, as well as the fitting way to approach it, became well-defined: no responsibility is taken for the events, and it is a part of history that is seen only in relation to the (imagined) ahistorical, ethnically homogeneous Magyars.

Epilogue

By the time of the completion of this article, the centennial of the Trianon Peace Treaty arrived (2020). As part of the grand schemes to reorganize the symbolic space in front of the Parliament, a new memorial was inaugurated on the national day of 20 August 2020, the feast day of Saint Stephen, who laid the foundations of the Christian Hungarian state. The memorial is called Nemzeti Összetartozás Emlékműve [Memorial of National Unity] and it was erected without any societal consultation. The Memorial itself is a ramp and engraved on it are the names of all localities recorded in the locality directory of 1913. This inventory was crammed with Magyarized forms of the names of localities without a Magyar majority, and the memorial only displays these Magyarized versions, which were in many cases not used by the non–Magyar-speaking communities and, indeed, caused outrage among them. ⁴⁵

A few days before the inauguration of the memorial, a historian published an anonymous critique of it (explicitly stating that they feared retaliations), addressing the lack of transparent discussions and the memorial’s questionable message on a broadly read online platform. ⁴⁶ The reply soon came from an unexpected place: the reorganized Research Centre for the Humanities (formally affiliated with the autonomous Hungarian Academy of Sciences, since 2019 under direct governmental control) and its member institution, the Institute of History. The heads of these units, two early modernists, Pál Fodor (RCH, previous head of IH) and Antal Molnár (current head of IH), and a senior researcher at IH Gábor Demeter, who had specialized in the diplomatic history, statistics, and geography of the Balkans and Hungary of the long nineteenth century, spoke in the capacity of the experts who were consulted on the project. The fact that they were involved in this process surprised even most of their colleagues. Gábor Gyáni, the recently retired head of the Department of Modern History and himself the leading expert on memory politics, claimed to have been completely unaware of the expert opinion given by his colleagues. ⁴⁷ In their reply, despite a short statement on how “the claims of the author are correct in general, their concrete examples are real and accepted by historians,” Fodor, Molnár, and Demeter essentially tried to transfer responsibility to the anonymous author for not suggesting any alternatives, only criticism, and went into painful detail about how the utilization of previous inventories would have been even more problematic. ⁴⁸

The ostentatiously tone-deaf piece by the experts remained largely unresponsive to the potentially damaging effect of such a memorial on interethnic relations while communicating a historical reality that never existed. Their reply offers a lot to unpack nonetheless. The underlying issues range from the economic utilization of expertise (surely, the IH and the broader guild of historians has within its ranks experts on nationalism, politics of memory, and minority policies), the lack of transparency around the otherwise legitimate practice of the (remnants of the) Academy lending advice to the government, and the atmosphere of suspicion that this sustains. On the other hand, it is difficult to assess what sort of agency these unit heads had in this process, and how this related to the ever-renewing governmental harassment of the Academy and the perceived “greater good” of the institutions that they are leading.