Transition Pains: Hungary's Uncertain Dissidents

Sara Atwood

Somewhere off a tree-lined boulevard in Budapest, Hungary, I descend into an intimate cellar café ten minutes late. Anna greets me at the gate and shakes my hand warmly. She is wearing a silver tank top, which droops fashionably over her tanned skin, set off by the diamonds around her neck. I apologize for being late, but she will hear nothing of it. "I am sitting here and just wondering to myself, 'Did I say the street so that you can understand it, or what?'" she exclaims, waving away my apologies. We sit down and she lights a long, slender cigarette.
"I am researching Hungarian democracy, you know," I begin, and ask her if she is satisfied with the state of her nation. She laughs bitterly, "This is not democracy, what we have here in Hungary." What then has been going on in the past thirteen years, if not democracy?

In the spring and summer of 2002, I addressed this and a series of related questions to the active participants, advocates, and critics of a neo-dissident movement led by former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. These interviews indicate that the answer lies not in the democracy, but in the democrats. In the confounding period of uncertainty and transition since 1990, it has become difficult for the citizens of the new democracy to separate fact from fiction, history from memory. Opportunist politicians have used this collective insecurity to further their own agendas, weakening the new democracy with nationalist rhetoric and populist promises. These "transition pains" associated with regime change become most apparent in the dynamics of Orban's controversial "Go Hungary" movement…

Sarah Atwood is a senior in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She studied in Budapest, Hungary, during Spring 2002.