The Hungarians is the most comprehensive, clear-sighted, and absorbing history ever of a legendarily proud and passionate but lonely people. Much of Europe once knew them as "child-devouring cannibals" and "bloodthirsty Huns." But it wasn't long before the Hungarians became steadfast defenders of the Christian West and fought heroic freedom struggles against the Tatars (1241), the Turks (16-18th centuries), and, among others, the Russians (1848-49 and 1956). Paul Lendvai tells the fascinating story of how the Hungarians, despite a string of catastrophes and their linguistic and cultural isolation, have survived as a nation-state for more than 1,000 years.
Lendvai, who fled Hungary in 1957, traces Hungarian politics, culture, economics, and emotions from the Magyars' dramatic entry into the Carpathian Basin in 896 to the brink of the post-Cold War era. Hungarians are ever pondering what being Hungarian means and where they came from. Yet, argues Lendvai, Hungarian national identity is not only about ancestry or language but also an emotional sense of belonging. Hungary's famous poet-patriot, Sándor Petofi, was of Slovak descent, and Franz Liszt felt deeply Hungarian though he spoke only a few words of Hungarian. Through colorful anecdotes of heroes and traitors, victors and victims, geniuses and imposters, based in part on original archival research, Lendvai conveys the multifaceted interplay, on the grand stage of Hungarian history, of progressivism and economic modernization versus intolerance and narrow-minded nationalism.
He movingly describes the national trauma inflicted by the transfer of the historic Hungarian heartland of Transylvania to Romania under the terms of the Treaty of Trianon in 1920—a trauma that the passing of years has by no means lessened. The horrors of Nazi and Soviet Communist domination were no less appalling, as Lendvai's restrained account makes clear, but are now part of history.
An unforgettable blend of eminent readability, vibrant humor, and meticulous scholarship, The Hungarians is a book without taboos or prejudices that at the same time offers an authoritative key to understanding how and why this isolated corner of Europe produced such a galaxy of great scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs.
Foreword to the English Edition page xi
Introduction 1
1. "Heathen Barbarians" overrun Europe: Evidence from St Gallen 7
2. Land Acquisition or Conquest? The Question of Hungarian Identity 12
3. From Magyar Mayhem to the Christian Kingdom of the Árpèds 27
4. The Struggle for Continuity and Freedom 38
5. The Mongol Invasion of 1241 and its Consequences 49
6. Hungary's Rise to Great Power Status under Foreign Kings 62
7. The Heroic Age of the Hunyadis and the Turkish Danger 75
8. The Long Road to the Catastrophe of Mohács 86
9. The Disaster of Ottoman Rule 94
10. Transylvania-the Stronghold of Hungarian Sovereignty 106
11. Göbor Bethlen-Vassal, Patriot and European 114
12. Zrinyi or Zrinski? One Hero for Two Nations 126
13. The Kuruc Leader Thüküly: Adventurer or Traitor? 137
14. Ferenc Rákóczi's Fight for Freedom from the Habsburgs 145
15. Myth and Historiography: an Idol through the Ages 155
16. Hungary in the Habsburg Shadow 160
17. The Fight Against the "Hatted King" 177
18. Abbot Martinovics and the Jacobin Plot 183
19. Count István Széchenyi and the "Reform Era": the "Greatest Hungarian" 191
20. Lajos Kossuth and Sándor Petőfi: Symbols of 1848 206
21. Victories, Defeat and Collapse: the Lost War of Independence, 1849 222
22. Kossuth the Hero versus "Judas" Gðrgey: "Good" and "Bad" in Sacrificial Mythology 242
23. Who was Captain Gusev? Russian "Freedom Fighters" between Minsk and Budapest 260
24. Elisabeth, Andrássy and Bismarck: Austria and Hungary on the Road to Reconciliation 266
25. Victory in Defeat: the Compromise and the Consequences of Dualism 281
26. Total Blindness: The Hungarian Sense of Mission and the Nationalities 299
27. The "Golden Age" of the Millennium: Modernization with Drawbacks 310
28. "Magyar Jew or Jewish Magyars" A Unique Symbiosis 329
29. "Will Hungary be German or Magyars" The Germans' Peculiar Role 348
30. From the Great War to the "Dictatorship of Despair": the Red Count and Lenin's Agent 356
31. The Admiral on a White Horse: Trianon and the Death Knell of St Stephen's Realm 373
32. Adventurers, Counterfeiters, Claimants to the Throne: Hungary as Troublemaker in the Danube Basin 389
33. Marching in Step with Hitler: Triumph and Fall. From the Persecution of Jews to Mob Rule 406
34. Victory in Defeat: 1945-1990 427
35. "Everyone is a Hungarian": Geniuses and Artists 466
Summing-up 504
Notes 508
Chronology of Significant Events in Hungarian History 533
Index 557
Lendvai's thousand-year history of Hungary and the Magyar people is presented more as a collection of important episodes in Hungarian history than as a smooth narrative, so there are some odd jumps here and there - but overall the book is highly informative, very detailed, if a bit dry. It's hard to convey the passion and emotion tied to the historic events related here in this kind of text, but the feeling comes through in parts.
Lendvai works a bit too closely to the idea of "national characteristics" for my taste, I suppose that's somewhat understandable given the purpose of the book but I think it can mask motives and discount individual personalities.
Anonymous
Posted March 13, 2009
No text was provided for this review.
Anonymous
Posted March 1, 2010
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Anonymous
Posted April 10, 2009
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Overview
The Hungarians is the most comprehensive, clear-sighted, and absorbing history ever of a legendarily proud and passionate but lonely people. Much of Europe once knew them as "child-devouring cannibals" and "bloodthirsty Huns." But it wasn't long before the Hungarians became steadfast defenders of the Christian West and fought heroic freedom struggles against the Tatars (1241), the Turks (16-18th centuries), and, among others, the Russians (1848-49 and 1956). Paul Lendvai tells the fascinating story of how the ...