Hungarian People’s Republic

Abstract

Hungary today is an industrial-agrarian country, with Budapest, the capital, as its single most important urban concentration; its most rapid phase of economic growth has been the period since 1945. However, the modern period in Hungary can be dated from 1867, the year of the Compromise (Kiegyezes, Ausgleich) between the Hungarian nobility and the Austrian court in Vienna, whereby Hungary achieved internal self-government. This ushered in the last phase of Hungary’s long relationship with the Hapsburgs, who had established their ascendancy over the crown of Hungary after the Battle of Mohacs (1526), at which the Ottoman Empire finally defeated the Kingdom of Hungary. However, the Hapsburgs only succeeded in liberating Hungary from the Turks in 1701, and then incorporated its entire area into the Hapsburg domains. The emergence of modern nationalism, the so-called ‘Reform Era’ of the early nineteenth century, led the Hungarian political elite into simultaneous conflict with Vienna and the non-Hungarian (i.e. non-Magyar) nationalities in 1848–9. Hungarian refusal to recognise the rights of the minority nationalities resulted in the eventual disintegration of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1918–20.¹ That proved to be the first of the three caesuras of twentieth-century Hungarian history.