Historically, prior to World War II, Hungary was mostly agrarian. Beginning in 1948, a forced industrialization policy based on the Soviet pattern changed the economic character of the country. A centrally planned economy was introduced, and millions of new jobs were created in industry (notably for women) and, later, in services. This was accomplished largely through a policy of forced accumulation; keeping wages low and the prices of consumer goods (as opposed to staples) high made it possible for more people to be employed, and, because consumer goods were beyond their means, most Hungarians put more of their earnings in savings, which became available for use by the government. In the process, the proportion of the population employed in agriculture declined from more than half to about one-eighth by the 1990s, while the industrial workforce grew to nearly one-third of the economically active population by the late 1980s. Since that time, it has been the service sector that has increased significantly.
Although Soviet-type economic modernization generated rapid growth, it was based on an early 20th-century structural pattern and on outdated technology. The heavy industries of iron, steel, and engineering were given the highest priority, while modern infrastructure, services, and communication were neglected. New technologies and high-tech industries were underdeveloped and further hampered by Western restrictions (the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls) on the export of modern technology to the Soviet bloc.
In response to stagnating rates of economic growth, the government introduced the New Economic Mechanism (NEM) in 1968. The NEM implemented market-style reforms to rationalize the behaviour of Hungary’s state-owned enterprises, and it also allowed for the emergence of privately owned businesses. By the end of the 1980s, one-third of the gross domestic product (GDP)—nearly three-fifths of services and more than three-fourths of construction—was being generated by private business. The Hungarian economy, however, failed to meet the challenge of the world economic crisis after 1973. The dramatic price increases for oil and modern technology created a large external trade deficit, which led to increasing foreign indebtedness. Growth slowed down and inflation rose, leading to a period of stagflation. After 1989 Hungary’s nascent market and parliamentary systems inherited a crisis-ridden economy with an enormous external debt and noncompetitive export sectors. Hungary turned to the world market and restructured its foreign trade, but market competition, together with a sudden and radical opening of the country and the abolition of state subsidies, led to further economic decline. Agriculture was drastically affected and declined by half. A large portion of the iron, steel, and engineering sectors, especially in northeastern Hungary, collapsed. Industrial output and GDP decreased by 30 percent and 25 percent, respectively. Unemployment, previously nonexistent, rose to 14 percent in the early 1990s but declined after 1994.
By the mid-1990s the economy was again growing, but only moderately. Inflation peaked in 1991 and remained high, at more than 20 percent annually, before dropping to under 10 percent by the early 21st century. As a consequence of unavoidable austerity measures that included the elimination of many welfare institutions, most of the population lost its previous security. In the first several years after the fall of communism, the number of people living below the subsistence level doubled, but it stabilized by the early 21st century. Observers also noted the emergence of a sector of long-term poor, a majority of whom were Roma. Despite these obstacles, adjustment to the world economy had become evident by the turn of the 21st century. Hungary’s liberal foreign investment regime attracted more than half of the entire foreign direct investment in central and eastern Europe in the first half of the 1990s. Modernization of telecommunications also began, and new industries (e.g., automobile manufacturing) emerged. Significantly, nearly one million small-scale, mostly family-owned enterprises had been established by the early 21st century. State ownership of businesses declined to roughly one-fifth. Another important contributor to economic growth was a flourishing tourist industry.
By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, however, the Hungarian government had become burdened with a spiraling debt and a deficit that the EU deemed excessive, prompting the imposition of sanctions that did not end until 2013. In the meantime, Hungary’s economy had stalled: GDP sputtered into negative growth and the unemployment rate climbed. The advent of the Viktor Orbán-led government in 2010 brought a dramatic change to economic policy. “Orbanomics” put an emphasis on competitiveness and a government-administered program called the “workfare society,” which created hundreds of thousands of menial jobs, leading to a drop in the unemployment rate from nearly 12 percent in the early part of the decade to less than 4 percent by 2018. During the 2010s, GDP again began to grow and wages increased. Some international observers hailed the recovery as an economic miracle, while others were more skeptical, questioning the utility and sustainabilty of “workfare” and arguing that the role in the turnaround played by significant monetary contributions from the EU had been underplayed. Agriculture’s role in the Hungarian onomy declined steadily in the generations following World War II, dropping from half of the GDP in the immediate postwar period to only 4 percent of the GDP by 2005. Nevertheless, agriculture remains important, and Hungary is virtually self-sufficient in food production. The Hungarian climate is favourable for agriculture, and half of the country’s land is arable; about one-fifth is covered by woods. About one-tenth of the country’s total area is under permanent cultivation. Agriculture accounted for nearly one-fourth of Hungarian exports before the economic transition of the 1990s, during which animal stocks decreased by one-third and agricultural output and exports declined by half.After the initial period of collectivization (1948–61), Hungarian cooperatives incorporated private farming. Private plots constituted roughly one-eighth of a cooperative’s land and produced about one-third of the country’s agricultural output. One-fifth of Hungarian farmland belonged to state farms. Since 1990 the land has been reprivatized. Some among the elderly agricultural population have remained in reorganized collective farms; however, private farms are the norm.
Cereals, primarily wheat and corn (maize), are the country’s most important crops. Other major crops are sugar beets, potatoes, sunflower seeds, and fruits (notably apples, grapes, and plums). Viticulture, found in the Northern Mountains region, is also significant. Cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry are raised in Hungary, but, in response to the government’s efforts to combat overproduction of animal products, substantial reductions in livestock occurred in the 1990s.Resources and power
The most important natural endowments of Hungary, particularly in its western and central areas, are its fertile soil and abundant water resources—notably Lake Balaton, a major asset for tourism. Fossil fuel resources are relatively modest. Lignite (brown coal) is mined in the Northern Mountains and in Transdanubia. Coal once satisfied half of Hungary’s energy requirements, but it now represents less than one-fifth of energy production.Oil and natural gas were discovered in the late 1930s in Transdanubia and during the decades following World War II at several localities in the Great Alföld, especially near Szeged. Their share of energy production increased from one-third to one-half between 1970 and 2000 but fell in the 2010s to less than one-fifth. Hungary is able to meet only a fraction of its oil requirements with domestic resources.
The country’s only significant mineral resources are manganese, in the Bakony Mountains, and the undeveloped copper and zinc resources at Recsk. Extraction of various metal-bearing ores increased significantly in postwar Hungary, but iron ore is no longer mined. Other minerals that are found include mercury, lead, uranium, perlite, molybdenum, diatomite, kaolin, bentonite, zeolite, and dolomite.Manufacturing
As a result of the policy of forced industrialization under the communist government, industry experienced an exceptionally high growth rate until the late 1980s, by which time it constituted about two-fifths of GDP. Mining and metallurgy, as well as the chemical and engineering industries, grew in leaps and bounds as the preferred sectors of Hungary’s planned economy. Indeed, half of industrial output was produced by these three sectors. Lacking modern technology and infrastructure, however, Hungarian industry was not prepared to compete in the global economy after the collapse of state socialism. During the first half of the 1990s, industrial employment dropped to one-fourth of the economically active population. Total output declined by nearly one-third, with output in the mining, metallurgy, and engineering industries decreasing by half. During the 1990s, engineering output dropped from nearly one-third to roughly one-fifth of the total.
As industry and the Hungarian economy in general underwent restructuring and modernization during the early 1990s (including the implementation of privatization and the improvement of the quality of goods and services), some industries adapted more successfully to new conditions. Among the industries that regressed least and showed the first signs of growth were the food, tobacco, and wood and paper industries. Of Hungary’s traditionally strong sectors, the chemical industry showed the greatest resilience, demonstrating growth again by the mid-1990s after experiencing a large drop in production early in the decade.Partly through foreign investment, the machine industry (another important component of the economy) also showed signs of improvement by the mid-1990s. By the 2010s, industry and manufacturing accounted for more than two-fifths of Hungary’s GDP and employed nearly one-third of the workforce. The automotive industry, telecommunications, computer technology, food processing, textiles, chemicals, electronics, and building materials had become the country’s principal industries.Between 1950 and 1990, electric power consumption in Hungary increased 10-fold, and by the 1990s more than one-third of industrial output was being produced by the energy sector. In the early 21st century, between one-third and two-fifths of energy consumption was derived from thermal plants burning hydrocarbons. The bulk of Hungary’s energy consumption was satisfied by imported sources. There were several thousand miles of oil and natural gas pipelines. Nuclear power accounted for more than half of Hungary’s energy production, and plans were being made for further expansion. A small percentage of power generation consisted of hydroelectricity, wind, biomass, and geothermal alternatives.Finance
Under the Soviet-style single-tier banking system, the National Bank both issued money and monopolized the financing of the entire Hungarian economy. Beginning in 1987, Hungary moved toward a market-oriented two-tier system in which the National Bank remained the bank of issue but in which commercial banks were established. Foreign investment was permitted, and “consortium” (partly foreign-owned) banks were formed. In 1990 a stock exchange, the Budapest Stock Exchange, was established. In the 2010s it had four trading sections: securities, equities, commodities, and derivatives.
In the 1990s, in the postcommunist period, the reform process continued with the founding of private banks, the sale of shares in state-owned banks (though most banks remained state-owned), and the enactment of a law that guaranteed the independence of the National Bank. The currency (forint) also became entirely convertible for business. By the turn of the 21st century, with a dramatic increase in foreign investment and in the number of commercial banks, the Hungarian banking system had been almost completely privatized. In 1986 the state-operated insurance system was split into two separate companies, and by the following decade more than a dozen insurance companies were in operation.
Year In Review 2019
Trade
Hungary was a charter member of Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance; 1949–91). Under its aegis, trade was conducted between the countries of the Soviet bloc on the basis of specialized production, fixed prices, and barter. The Soviet Union was Hungary’s most important trading partner, but, in the late 1980s and early ’90s, as Hungary became increasingly involved in the global market, less than half of the country’s trade remained with Comecon. Unprepared for the competitiveness of global market forces, Hungary accrued a large trade deficit that was covered by foreign loans. In the process the country became heavily indebted and had to use much of its export earnings for repayment.Nevertheless, by the mid-1990s three-fourths of Hungary’s trade was with market economies. Meanwhile, the proportion of Hungary’s imports from the former component countries of the Soviet Union fell from a peak of more than one-fifth in the early 1990s to less than one-tenth at the turn of the 21st century. In 1996 Hungary joined the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and in 2004 it became a full member of the European Union (EU). By the 2010s Germany had become Hungary’s most important trading partner by far, followed by Austria, Slovakia, Russia, China, Romania, and France.In the early 21st century, machinery and transport equipment were both Hungary’s leading import (comprising three-fifths of the total imports) and its leading export (comprising one-half of all exports). In particular, the country’s principal trade goods were telecommunications equipment, electrical machinery, power-generating machinery, road vehicles, and office machines and computers.Services
Throughout the last decade of the 20th century, the service sector’s portion of Hungary’s GDP rose at an annual average rate of about 0.5 percent. By the early 2010s, services accounted for between one-half and two-thirds of GDP and roughly the same proportion of the workforce. Tourism played a big role in this development as Hungary became an increasingly popular destination for travelers, especially those from Austria, Croatia, Germany, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine, most of whom arrived by car. There is also significant tourism via low-cost air carriers from western Europe as well as from the United States, Canada, and Australia.
Labour and taxation
The Soviet-style Central Council of Hungarian Trade Unions was reorganized in 1988 as the National Confederation of Hungarian Trade Unions. The largest trade union in Hungary, with some 40 organizations under its umbrella at the start of the 21st century, it became part of an even bigger organization in 2013 when it joined with the Autonomous Trade Union Confederation and the Forum for the Co-operation of Trade Unions to form the Hungarian Trade Union Confederation. That umbrella body began with some 250,000 active members and about another 100,000 pensioner members.Transportation and telecommunications
Railways have long been the centre of Hungary’s transportation system. By World War I the country had a modern network that was among the densest in Europe, and it continued to expand regularly until the late 1970s, with electrification beginning in the previous decade. When industrial production declined during the transition to a market economy, rail transport of goods dropped sharply, accompanied by significant cutbacks in government subsidies that contributed to the deterioration of the railway infrastructure. By the end of the 20th century, however, the EU had begun funding rail network improvements, as well as roadway projects.
Railway station in Battonya, Hungary.
Railway station in Battonya, Hungary.
Aspectomat
In the postcommunist era, road haulage has made up an increasing percentage of the overall transport of goods. Buses were once the main form of travel for passenger transportation, but the number of privately owned automobiles grew rapidly after the early 1980s. This growth skyrocketed following the end of the communist regime. Between 1989 and 1996, an additional 1.5 million cars were added to Hungarian roads, the majority of them Western-made. During this same period, the portion of Eastern-made cars declined rapidly.
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Road construction and upgrading increased significantly in the early 21st century, with the building of expressways (motorways) radiating out from Budapest toward Vienna, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, and Ukraine.
The Danube River, the country’s only important transportation waterway, was historically used for international shipping, via the free port of Csepel. However, as a result of the destruction of bridges in the former Yugoslavia during the intervention by NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) in the Kosovo conflict in 1999, much of the shipping came to a sudden halt. The Hungarian merchant fleet nearly vanished, reduced from about 200 vessels in 1994 to only 1 in 1999. Nonetheless, Hungary played an active role in 21st-century regional efforts to modernize, improve, and expand inland waterway traffic on the Danube.
International air travel passes through Budapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport, Debrecen Airport, and Hévíz-Balaton (Sármellék) Airport. Regional passenger air traffic serves Budapest, Pécs, Nyíregyháza, Debrecen, Siófok-Kiliti, Szeged, and Győr. Malév Hungarian Airlines, the national carrier, was founded in 1946.
Year In Review 2019
Government and society
Overview
The modern political system in Hungary contained elements of autocracy throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, but in the period between 1867 and 1948 it had a functioning parliament with a multiparty system and a relatively independent judiciary. After the communist takeover in 1948, a Soviet-style political system was introduced, with a leading role for the Communist Party, to which the legislative and executive branches of the government and the legal system were subordinated. In that year, all rival political parties were abolished, and the Hungarian Social Democratic Party was forced to merge with the Communist Party and thus form the Hungarian Workers’ Party. After the Revolution of 1956 it was reorganized as the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, which survived until the fall of communism in 1989.
Constitutional framework
In 1989 dramatic political reforms accompanied the economic transformation taking place. After giving up its institutionalized leading role, the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party abolished itself (with the exception of a small splinter group that continues under its old name) and reshaped itself into the Hungarian Socialist Party. In October 1989 a radical revision of the 1949 constitution, which included some 100 changes, introduced a multiparty parliamentary system of representative democracy, with free elections. The legislative and executive branches of the government were separated, and an independent judicial system was created. The revision established a Constitutional Court, elected by Parliament, which reviews the constitutionality of legislation and may annul laws. It also provides for an ombudsman for the protection of constitutional civil rights and ombudsmens’ groups for the protection of national and ethnic minority rights.
Parliament Building on the far side of the Danube River, Budapest.
Parliament Building on the far side of the Danube River, Budapest.
© Jan Miracky/Dreamstime.com
The 1989 constitution was amended repeatedly, and a controversial new constitution, pushed through by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s centre-right government, was promulgated in January 2012. Among other significant recent revisions of Hungarian law was a change in 2010 that allowed nonresidents to attain citizenship if they could prove their Hungarian ancestry and mastery of the Hungarian language.
Supreme legislative power is granted to the unicameral National Assembly, which elects the president of the republic, the Council of Ministers, the president of the Supreme Court, and the chief prosecutor. The main organ of state administration is the Council of Ministers, which is headed by the prime minister. The president, who may serve two five-year terms, is commander in chief of the armed forces but otherwise has limited authority. The right of the people to propose referendums is guaranteed.
Local government
Hungary is divided administratively into 19 megyék (counties), which are further split into 174 districts (járások). Budapest has a special status as the capital city (főváros), headed by a lord mayor (főpolgármester) and divided into 23 districts (kerületek), each headed by its own mayor (polgármester). There are also 23 cities and towns with county status (megyei jogú városok). Among the extensive changes to the political system introduced by the Fidesz party after its sweeping victory in the 2010 federal elections was a significant reform of Hungary’s local government structure. Changes to the system of finance and to administrative responsibilities enhanced the powers of the central government agencies and institutions at the expense of local and regional governments, whose purview was limited to providing basic services.
Justice
Justice is administered by the Supreme Court, which provides conceptual guidance for the judicial activity of the Court of the Capital City and the county courts and for the local courts. A chief prosecutor is responsible for protecting the rights of citizens and prosecuting acts violating constitutional order and endangering security. The constitutionality of the laws is overseen by the Constitutional Court, which began operation in 1990. A constitutional amendment in 1997 called for the addition of regional appellate courts, which came into force in the early 21st century.
Political process
Parliamentary elections based on universal suffrage for citizens age 18 and over are held every four years. Under the mixed system of direct and proportional representation that was revised in 2011, 106 members of the 199-seat National Assembly are elected in single-member electoral districts, and 93 members are elected as part of national party lists. Voters express their preference for both a specific candidate running in their electoral district and a national party list. In the former case, candidates must gain a plurality of the vote to be elected. Parties that receive at least 5 percent of the national aggregate of votes are proportionally allocated seats for list candidates.
About 200 political parties were established following the revision of the constitution in 1989, but only 6 of them became long-term participants in the country’s new political life after the first free elections (1990): the Hungarian Democratic Forum, Alliance of Free Democrats, Independent Smallholders’ Party, Christian Democratic People’s Party, Federation of Young Democrats (Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége; Fidesz), and Hungarian Socialist Party—the latter being the party of reformed ex-communists. The same six parties were returned to Parliament in 1994, and for the following decade most of them remained represented in the legislature. The hard-core communists reemerged in 1992 as the Workers’ Party, while the right-wing Hungarian Justice and Life Party was created in 1993 when it split from the Hungarian Democratic Forum. Fidesz appended Hungarian Civic Party (later changed to Hungarian Civic Alliance) to its name, and between 1998 and 2002 it became the dominant party and formed the government. The Christian Democrats organized the Centre Party alliance in 2002 but failed to make it into Parliament. After the 2010 election, Fidesz’s dominance of the political system was effectively unchallenged.
Security
The Hungarian armed forces consist of ground forces, air and air-defense forces, a small navy that patrols the Danube, the border guard, and police. Military service was compulsory for males over the age of 18 until 2004, when Hungary established a voluntary force. (The term of duty varies according to the branch of service but is typically less than one year.) The armed forces are not permitted to cross the state frontiers without the prior consent of Parliament. In the decade between 1989 and 1999, the armed forces declined from 155,000 members to just under 60,000, but, at the same time, they also underwent a process of modernization to prepare Hungary to join the Western military alliance NATO. Membership was finally achieved in March 1999, eight years after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, of which Hungary was a member.Health and welfare
Following World War II, health care improved dramatically under state socialism, with significant increases in the number of physicians and hospital beds in Hungary. By the 1970s, free health care was guaranteed to every citizen. Higher-quality private health care, permitted but limited before the transition period, grew in importance from the early 1990s.
A broad range of social services was provided by the communist government, including child support, extensive maternity leave, and an old-age pension system for which men became eligible at age 60 and women at age 55. This costly welfare system was a heavy burden on the country’s finances. At the end of the communist era, Hungary ranked 20th among European countries in terms of per capita GDP, but it was 12th in social spending. Social insurance expenditure, which constituted 4 percent of GDP in 1950, had risen to one-fifth of the GDP by 1990. The Hungarian system had become one of the most expensive in the world, yet there was considerable resistance to efforts to scale it back.
When health insurance was reformed in 1992, it retained its all-encompassing nature and was also made mandatory. At the same time, however, this reform required both employers and employees to contribute to the system’s upkeep as well as to pension plans. The government’s move in 2003 to privatize almost half of its health care institutions was rejected in the following year by popular referendum. The private financing of health care slowly increased with the introduction of co-payments for some prescription medications, office visits, and hospital stays.oday the health care system is financed by a national income tax along with contributions to the Health Insurance Fund. Employees pay 3 percent of their total income to the fund, and employers contribute the equivalent of 15 percent of an employee’s gross salary as well as a “health care contribution” (lump-sum tax).
Housing
Housing shortages were constant in Hungary for decades after World War II, despite the million housing units built by the state in urban centres from 1956 to 1985. In the immediate postwar period, Hungary maintained an average of three persons per room, a rate that eventually dropped to one per room by the mid-1990s. Moreover, by the late 1980s, electricity was available for nearly the entire population (it had been in fewer than half of Hungarian homes in 1949, when apartment houses were nationalized), and running water was available for more than three-fourths of homes. The construction of private homes, which had increased in the 1960s and ’70s, constituted more than four-fifths of all construction by the mid-1990s, as housing became part of the market economy.In the 1990s, as the cost of home ownership and rents soared, the housing market became increasingly polarized. The lower class continued to live in shabby, prefabricated, and often deteriorated apartments, while the upper class occupied expensive apartments or villas that approximated Western standards both in their construction and in their internal outfitting. High-quality housing was bought not only by Hungary’s nouveaux riches but also by many Westerners, among them a significant number of permanent or seasonal repatriates.
Education
General considerations
Ever since the start of obligatory universal education initiated by the Law of 1868, Hungary followed the German system of education on all levels. This included four, then six, and finally eight years of elementary schooling and—for a select few, after the first four years of this basic education—eight years of rigorous gymnasium (gimnázium) studies that prepared the students for entrance to universities. These universities were also organized along the German model, with basic degrees after four or five years, followed for those in the humanities and sciences by the doctorate based on a modest dissertation. Those wishing to become a member of the professorate also had to go through the process of “habilitation” (habilitáció), which required the defense of a more significant dissertation based on primary research.All this changed after the communist takeover of Hungary following World War II. In 1948 schools were nationalized, and the elitist German style of education was replaced by a Soviet-style mass education, consisting of eight years of general school (általános iskola) and four years of secondary education (középiskola). The latter consisted of college-preparatory high schools that approximated the upper four years of the gimnázium as well as of the more numerous and diverse vocational schools (technikumok) that prepared students for technical colleges or universities but in most instances simply led directly to mid-level jobs. This system of education survived until the 1990s, when the fall of communism resulted in a partial return to the traditional educational system. While much of the Soviet-inspired 8 + 4 system is still intact, it now competes with the 6 + 6 and the 4 + 8 systems, wherein the six- or eight-year gimnázium tries to replicate the intellectually more exclusive pre-Marxist Hungarian educational system.
During the 1990s the uniformity of the communist educational system was further shattered by the introduction of private secondary education. Nationalized religious schools were returned to churches and religious institutions, and various new private secular schools were created. Between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, the number of secondary schools increased from 561 to 887, even though the student-age population had declined from 1.3 million to just under 1 million.
Mass industrialization obliged women to take outside jobs, resulting in the creation of an extensive system of preschools and kindergartens. Attendance was not mandatory, but, given that in many homes both parents worked, most children attended. Up to the mid-1990s, education was free from the kindergarten through the university level and also obligatory from age 6 to 16. At that time a modest tuition was introduced at the state universities and a much steeper one at the increasing number of private schools and institutions of higher learning.
Year In Review 2019
Higher education
Preparation for higher education became virtually universal by the early 1980s, and by the end of that decade about one-fifth of those between ages 18 and 24 were enrolled in one of Hungary’s numerous institutions of higher learning, many of them founded or reorganized after World War II. This growth continued even after the communist regime had ended; in 1990 there were only 70,000 full-time and 100,000 part-time college and university students, but by the first decade of the 21st century the number of full- and part-time students had risen to almost 400,000.
There was a major reorganization of Hungarian higher education in 2000. Prior to then, traditional major institutions of higher learning were Loránd Eötvös University of Budapest, Lajos Kossuth University of Debrecen, Janus Pannonius University of Pécs, Attila József University of Szeged, the Technical University of Budapest, and the Budapest University of Economic Sciences. There were also dozens of specialized schools and colleges throughout the country. In 2000 most of these specialized colleges were combined with older universities or with one another to form new “integrated universities.” The result was the birth of the renewed Universities of Debrecen, Pécs, and Szeged; the reorganized Universities of Miskolc and Veszprém; and the newly created St. Stephen University, University of West Hungary of Sopron, and University of Győr. The main exception to this integration process was in the city of Budapest, where Loránd Eötvös University, Semmelweis Medical University, Budapest University of Technology and Economics (formerly Technical University of Budapest), and Budapest University of Economic Sciences and Public Administration (renamed Corvinus University of Budapest in 2004) remained stand-alone universities.
In the period after the fall of communism, several private and religious universities were established, including Central European University (CEU) of Budapest, founded by the Hungarian American philanthropist George Soros as an English-language postgraduate institution where the students are introduced to Sir Karl Popper’s idea of an “open society.” Changes to Hungarian law relating to higher education that were enacted in 2017 altered CEU’s status as a foreign-registered university. Unable to reach an agreement with the government on that status and arguing that its academic freedom was threatened, CEU responded by relocating its main campus to Vienna.The best-known religious institutions include Péter Pázmány Catholic University and Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary. In addition, some of the specialized colleges of music, fine arts, theatre, and military arts were elevated to university status.
The postcommunist period also saw the restructuring of the university diplomas. Regular degrees remained, but the university doctorate and the Soviet-inspired “candidate” (kandidátus)—a research degree offered by the Academy of Sciences—were abolished and replaced by an American-style doctorate. At the same time, the “habilitation” was reintroduced as a prerequisite for university professorships. The science doctorate (tudományok doktora), offered by the Academy of Sciences since 1950 and known as the “great doctorate” (nagydoktorátus), remained in force. But, whereas previously it was awarded on the basis of a comprehensive dissertation, it is now given in recognition of major life accomplishments by a very select group of scholars and scientists.Cultural life
Cultural milieu
The cultural milieu of Hungary is a result of the diverse mix of genuine Hungarian peasant culture and the cosmopolitan culture of an influential German and Jewish urban population. Both the coffeehouse (as meeting place for intellectuals) and the music of the Roma (Gypsies) also have had an impact. Cultural life traditionally has been highly political since national culture became the sine qua non of belated nation building from the early 19th century. Theatre, opera, and literature in particular played crucial roles in developing national consciousness. Poets and writers, especially in crisis situations, became national heroes and prophets. Governments also attempted to influence cultural life through subsidy and regulation. During the state socialist era, culture was strictly controlled; party interference was influenced by ideological principles, and mass culture was promoted.Through much of the 20th century, Hungarian cultural life was characterized by a dichotomy between rural and urban culture and subsequently between “populist” and “urbanist” culture—even though both of the latter were represented by urban-based intellectuals. These intellectuals were divided by their social origins (village versus city) and also by their disagreements about the type of culture that can best serve as the fountainhead of modern Hungarian culture. The populists were suspicious of the urbanists, many of whom were of non-Hungarian origins (mostly German and Jewish), and regarded the village as the depository of true Hungarian culture. The urbanists, on the other hand, viewed the populists as “country bumpkins” with little appreciation of real culture and looked to western European cultural centres as sources for their own version of modern Hungarian culture.
Year In Review 2019
Daily life and social customs
Genuine traditional Hungarian culture survived for a long period in an untouched countryside characterized by rootedness. Peasant dress, food, and entertainment, including folk songs and folk dances—the rituals of weddings and Easter and Christmas holidays—continued until the mid-20th century. The drastic (and in the countryside brutal) modernization of the second half of the 20th century nearly destroyed these customs. They were preserved, however, as folk art and tourist entertainment.Everyday life changed dramatically, as did the family structure. Families became smaller, and ties with extended families diminished. The culture also became less traditional. Clothing styles began to follow the international pattern, and traditional peasant dress was replaced by blue jeans. Folk songs are still occasionally heard, but in daily life they have been replaced by rock and pop music. Urban culture, especially in the capital city, is highly cosmopolitan and encompasses the tradition of coffeehouse culture. Watching television is a popular pastime.Hungary’s most traditional cultural element is its cuisine. Hungarian food is very rich, and red meat is frequently used as an ingredient. Goulash (gulyás), bean soup with smoked meat, and beef stew are national dishes. The most distinctive element of Hungarian cuisine is paprika, a spice made from the pods of chili peppers (Capsicum annuum). Paprika is not native to Hungary—having been imported either from Spain, India by way of the Turks, or the Americas—but it is a fixture on most dining tables in Hungary and an important export. Among Hungary’s spicy dishes are halászlé, a fish soup, and lecsó, made with hot paprika, tomato, and sausage. Homemade spirits, including various fruit brandies (pálinka), are popular. Before World War II, Hungary was a wine-drinking country, but beer has become increasingly prevalent. Although Hungarians were not quick to accept foreign cuisines, they appeared in Budapest in the 1990s, a sign both of the growing influence of the outside world and of the presence of increasing numbers of foreigners who have settled in Hungary.In addition to their observance of the two main religious holidays—Christmas, celebrated as a traditional family festivity, and Easter, characterized by village merrymaking—Hungarians celebrate several national holidays, including March 15 (Revolution of 1848) and August 20 (St. Stephen’s Day). After the communist takeover, these traditional national holidays were replaced by April 4 (Liberation Day), May 1 (May Day), and the transformed August 20 (Constitution Day). After 1990 these communist-inspired holidays were replaced in turn by the original national holidays, augmented by October 23, which commemorates the Revolution of 1956. All of these holidays are occasions both for solemn remembrance and for popular festivities, including folk dancing, choral singing, and the display of traditional folk arts. The Hungarian national anthem is based on the 1823 poem “Hymnusz” (“Anthem”) by Ferenc Kölcsey; it was set to music by Ferenc Erkel and officially adopted in 1844.
The arts
Traditional folk arts either have disappeared or have become mostly commercialized, and political attempts in the 1930s, ’50s, and ’70s to preserve them basically failed. National high culture emerged at the turn of the 19th century, with literature taking a central role.The first Hungarian-language newspaper, Magyar Hírmondó (“Hungarian Courier”), appeared in 1780, followed by Magyar Merkurius (“Hungarian Mercury”) in 1788, Bétsi Magyar Merkurius (“Viennese Hungarian Mercury”) in 1793, and Hazai Tudósítások (“National Informer”) in 1806. (The first non-Hungarian-language newspaper published in the country may have been the Mercurius Hungaricus [1705–10]. It was created to provide readers outside Hungary with news of the uprising of Ferenc Rákóczi II against the Habsburg rulers.)
Ferenc Kazinczy, an advocate of Enlightenment ideas, founded a movement of language reform and promoted literature through his high standard of literary criticism. In his view, literature was a nation-sustaining or even nation-creating force. This newly born literary language was cultivated by most of the contemporary authors, including Mihály Csokonai Vitéz in his rococo poetry and the brothers Károly Kisfaludy and Sándor Kisfaludy in their early Romantic poetry and plays. Modern Hungarian drama was born in the middle of the 19th century, with József Katona’s tragedy Bánk bán (1820) and Imre Madách’s Az ember tragédiája (1861; The Tragedy of Man). Among other important 19th- and early-20th-century literary and cultural figures were the poets Mihály Vörösmarty, Sándor Petőfi, János Arany, and Endre Ady; the novelists József Eötvös, Mór Jókai, Kálmán Mikszáth, and Gyula Krúdy; the historians Mihály Horváth, Sándor Szilágyi, and Henrik Marczali; and the sociologist Oszkár Jászi.During the interwar years, the traditions of these literary pioneers were continued by such poets and novelists as Zsigmond Móricz, Mihály Babits, Dezső Kosztolányi, Lajos Kassák, Frigyes Karinthy, János Kodolányi, Gyula Juhász, Dezső Szabó, Attila József, and Miklós Radnóti and such historians and literary historians as Sándor Domanovszky, Gyula Szekfű, Bálint Hóman, János Horváth, and Antal Szerb. The 1930s were witness to the emergence of the populist-urbanist controversy and the publication of a series of major sociographies about the realities of Hungarian peasant life. They were written by authors such as Gyula Illyés, Géza Féja, Ferenc Erdei, Péter Veres, József Erdélyi, Imre Kovács, and a number of others, who hailed from the countryside and sympathized with the plight of Hungary’s rural underclass.
Following World War II, the nationalist and populist tendencies of Hungarian literature and culture were expurgated and replaced by politically inspired manifestations of Socialist Realism. And this applied equally to literature as to writings in the social sciences such as history. The best of the poets, writers, historians, and social philosophers were silenced, and the rest were forced to toe the party line. In the postwar decades the literary contributions of such urbanists as Tibor Déry, Sándor Petőfi, István Vas, and István Örkény and such populists or near-populists as Gyula Illyés, László Németh, and László Nagy—some of whom had begun their careers already during the interwar years—were particularly significant, as was the work of the social philosopher István Bibó. The most notable among the writers who emerged after 1956 were András Sütő, Sándor Kányádi, György Konrád, Péter Nádas, Péter Esterházy, and Imre Kertész (who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002). The first two of these were Transylvanians who wrote great literature based on traditional literary models, while the latter four were Budapest urbanites who pursued the diverse paths of avant-garde literature. Among the other Hungarian writers who made significant literary contributions in the late 20th and early 21st century were László Krasznahorka, Magda Szabó, Árpád Kun, Zsófia Bán, and Ferenc Barnás.
Most of the important achievements in Hungarian visual arts and music emerged about the turn of the 20th century. The avant-garde painters Tivadar Csontváry-Kosztka and László Moholy-Nagy elevated Hungarian painting from traditional Romanticism and French-inspired Impressionism to greater international significance through pathbreaking stylistic innovations. Hungarian music achieved worldwide renown with the composer Béla Bartók, an exponent of modern Hungarian music that was rooted in archaic folk traditions. Bartók was a central figure of early 20th-century culture who influenced future generations of composers both at home and abroad. Bartók’s activities and compositions were paralleled by those of Zoltán Kodály and Ernst von Dohnányi. Kodály’s contributions went beyond the composition of music to the restructuring of Hungarian music education. His system of music education, the “Kodály method,” is now taught throughout the world. The activities of these serious composers were paralleled by the work of such beloved composers of light music and operettas as Jenő Huszka, Pongrác Kacsóh, Franz (Ferenc) Lehár, and Emmerich (Imre) Kálmán.In addition to composing, many Hungarian musicians gained international renown as performers. These included the conductors Fritz Reiner, George Szell (György Széll), Eugene (Jenö) Ormandy, Antal Dorati, Sir Georg Solti, János Fürst, Iván Fischer, and Adam Fischer, as well as the pianists Franz (Ferenc) Liszt, Annie Fischer, Zoltán Kocsis, András Schiff, Jenö Jandó, and Péter Tóth.Since the 1960s, Hungarian motion pictures have attracted significant international interest. In particular, the parabolic films of Miklós Jancsó and István Szabó helped establish the reputation of Hungarian cinema. Other notable Hungarian film directors included Roland Vranik, Nimród Antal, Béla Tarr, and László Nemes, the last of whose Son of Saul (Saul fia) won the 2016 Academy Award for best foreign-language film.
Year In Review 2019
Cultural institutions
Following World War II, high culture that previously had been confined to the upper classes was promoted among the masses. A highly subsidized publishing industry fostered reading: the number of books published increased 10-fold between 1938 and 1988. Reading became a regular habit for about one-third of the population, and a huge network of more than 15,000 public libraries was established. The main national collections are the National Széchényi Library, the Ervin Szabó Library, the libraries of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Hungarian Parliament, and the Central Library of Loránd Eötvös University (all in Budapest), plus the libraries of the universities of Debrecen, Pécs, and Szeged.
Among the most notable of the thousands of museums and cultural centres are the Hungarian National Museum, the Hungarian National Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Museum of Applied Arts (all in Budapest), plus the Christian Museum in Esztergom, the Déri Museum of Debrecen, the Janus Pannonius Museum of Pécs, the Ferenc Móra Museum of Szeged, and the collection of the Benedictine Archabbey of Pannonhalma. Government subsidizing of culture virtually ended with the introduction of a market system in the 1990s. The capital city is also regarded for its architectural legacy from various periods, which led to its being designated a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Teaching and scholarship are both emphasized in Hungary’s institutions of higher learning, although, following the Soviet model, scholarly research was de-emphasized in the decades after World War II. During those years, much of the research and the resulting publications moved from the colleges and universities to the several dozen research institutes of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (established in 1825) as well as to the institutes of various ministries. The academy was at the apex of Hungarian scientific and scholarly life for over four decades following its reorganization in 1949. Beginning in the early 1990s, however, it fell under persistent attack from the new political leadership, which hoped to cleanse it of its allegedly Marxist scientists and scholars, and funding and staffing dropped precipitously. This decline in numbers and funding continued even under the Socialist-Liberal regimes before and after the turn of the century. The government led by Victor Orbán in the 2010s transferred control of the majority of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ funding to the Ministry of Innovation and Technology, prompting complaints from researchers that the government was undermining academic freedom.Hungary has an international reputation for scholarship, with one of the world’s highest per capita rates of Nobel laureates. Because of a lack of funding, however, most of these prizewinners have worked in Germany or the United States. Outstanding Hungarian-born scientists included Theodore von Kármán, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Zoltán Bay, John G. Kemény, and Nobelists Eugene Wigner and Albert Szent-Györgyi. Other Nobel laureates were George de Hevesy, Georg von Békésy, John C. Harsanyi, John C. Polanyi, George Olah, and Avram Hershko.
Some of the top Hungarian social scientists included the social philosophers Karl Mannheim and Michael Polányi, the economist Karl Polanyi, and the philosopher and literary critic György Lukács. Hungarian-born mathematicians of international renown included John von Neumann, George Pólya, Gábor Szegő, Pál Turán, and Paul Erdős. Hungarian scholars also have excelled in the disciplines of linguistics, historiography, and literary history.Sports and recreation
Hungary’s most popular vacation destinations include Lake Balaton and Lake Velence in Transdanubia, the Danube Bend, and the arty Szentendre Island above Budapest, as well as the Pilis, Mátra, and Bükk mountains in the north of Hungary. Lake Balaton attracts tourists from all over central and eastern Europe. A major attraction for the inhabitants of Budapest is Margit (Margaret) Island, an urban oasis of gardens and swimming pools on the Danube River.Hungary has a tradition of success in international sporting competition. It won a number of world championships and Olympic medals even before the overpoliticization of sports in Soviet-bloc countries. Football (soccer) is especially popular, and Hungarian athletes have also enjoyed success in water polo, fencing, swimming, table tennis, track and field (athletics), rowing, weightlifting, and team handball. More recently, tennis and golf have gained in popularity, especially among the upper middle class.Hungary has a tradition of success in international sporting competition. It won a number of world championships and Olympic medals even before the overpoliticization of sports in Soviet-bloc countries. Football (soccer) is especially popular, and Hungarian athletes have also enjoyed success in water polo, fencing, swimming, table tennis, track and field (athletics), rowing, weightlifting, and team handball. More recently, tennis and golf have gained in popularity, especially among the upper middle class.
Although Soviet-type economic modernization generated rapid growth, it was based on an early 20th-century structural pattern and on outdated technology. The heavy industries of iron, steel, and engineering were given the highest priority, while modern infrastructure, services, and communication were neglected. New technologies and high-tech industries were underdeveloped and further hampered by Western restrictions (the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls) on the export of modern technology to the Soviet bloc.
In response to stagnating rates of economic growth, the government introduced the New Economic Mechanism (NEM) in 1968. The NEM implemented market-style reforms to rationalize the behaviour of Hungary’s state-owned enterprises, and it also allowed for the emergence of privately owned businesses. By the end of the 1980s, one-third of the gross domestic product (GDP)—nearly three-fifths of services and more than three-fourths of construction—was being generated by private business. The Hungarian economy, however, failed to meet the challenge of the world economic crisis after 1973. The dramatic price increases for oil and modern technology created a large external trade deficit, which led to increasing foreign indebtedness. Growth slowed down and inflation rose, leading to a period of stagflation. After 1989 Hungary’s nascent market and parliamentary systems inherited a crisis-ridden economy with an enormous external debt and noncompetitive export sectors. Hungary turned to the world market and restructured its foreign trade, but market competition, together with a sudden and radical opening of the country and the abolition of state subsidies, led to further economic decline. Agriculture was drastically affected and declined by half. A large portion of the iron, steel, and engineering sectors, especially in northeastern Hungary, collapsed. Industrial output and GDP decreased by 30 percent and 25 percent, respectively. Unemployment, previously nonexistent, rose to 14 percent in the early 1990s but declined after 1994.
By the mid-1990s the economy was again growing, but only moderately. Inflation peaked in 1991 and remained high, at more than 20 percent annually, before dropping to under 10 percent by the early 21st century. As a consequence of unavoidable austerity measures that included the elimination of many welfare institutions, most of the population lost its previous security. In the first several years after the fall of communism, the number of people living below the subsistence level doubled, but it stabilized by the early 21st century. Observers also noted the emergence of a sector of long-term poor, a majority of whom were Roma. Despite these obstacles, adjustment to the world economy had become evident by the turn of the 21st century. Hungary’s liberal foreign investment regime attracted more than half of the entire foreign direct investment in central and eastern Europe in the first half of the 1990s. Modernization of telecommunications also began, and new industries (e.g., automobile manufacturing) emerged. Significantly, nearly one million small-scale, mostly family-owned enterprises had been established by the early 21st century. State ownership of businesses declined to roughly one-fifth. Another important contributor to economic growth was a flourishing tourist industry.
By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, however, the Hungarian government had become burdened with a spiraling debt and a deficit that the EU deemed excessive, prompting the imposition of sanctions that did not end until 2013. In the meantime, Hungary’s economy had stalled: GDP sputtered into negative growth and the unemployment rate climbed. The advent of the Viktor Orbán-led government in 2010 brought a dramatic change to economic policy. “Orbanomics” put an emphasis on competitiveness and a government-administered program called the “workfare society,” which created hundreds of thousands of menial jobs, leading to a drop in the unemployment rate from nearly 12 percent in the early part of the decade to less than 4 percent by 2018. During the 2010s, GDP again began to grow and wages increased. Some international observers hailed the recovery as an economic miracle, while others were more skeptical, questioning the utility and sustainabilty of “workfare” and arguing that the role in the turnaround played by significant monetary contributions from the EU had been underplayed. Agriculture’s role in the Hungarian onomy declined steadily in the generations following World War II, dropping from half of the GDP in the immediate postwar period to only 4 percent of the GDP by 2005. Nevertheless, agriculture remains important, and Hungary is virtually self-sufficient in food production. The Hungarian climate is favourable for agriculture, and half of the country’s land is arable; about one-fifth is covered by woods. About one-tenth of the country’s total area is under permanent cultivation. Agriculture accounted for nearly one-fourth of Hungarian exports before the economic transition of the 1990s, during which animal stocks decreased by one-third and agricultural output and exports declined by half.After the initial period of collectivization (1948–61), Hungarian cooperatives incorporated private farming. Private plots constituted roughly one-eighth of a cooperative’s land and produced about one-third of the country’s agricultural output. One-fifth of Hungarian farmland belonged to state farms. Since 1990 the land has been reprivatized. Some among the elderly agricultural population have remained in reorganized collective farms; however, private farms are the norm.
Cereals, primarily wheat and corn (maize), are the country’s most important crops. Other major crops are sugar beets, potatoes, sunflower seeds, and fruits (notably apples, grapes, and plums). Viticulture, found in the Northern Mountains region, is also significant. Cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry are raised in Hungary, but, in response to the government’s efforts to combat overproduction of animal products, substantial reductions in livestock occurred in the 1990s.Resources and power
The most important natural endowments of Hungary, particularly in its western and central areas, are its fertile soil and abundant water resources—notably Lake Balaton, a major asset for tourism. Fossil fuel resources are relatively modest. Lignite (brown coal) is mined in the Northern Mountains and in Transdanubia. Coal once satisfied half of Hungary’s energy requirements, but it now represents less than one-fifth of energy production.Oil and natural gas were discovered in the late 1930s in Transdanubia and during the decades following World War II at several localities in the Great Alföld, especially near Szeged. Their share of energy production increased from one-third to one-half between 1970 and 2000 but fell in the 2010s to less than one-fifth. Hungary is able to meet only a fraction of its oil requirements with domestic resources.
The country’s only significant mineral resources are manganese, in the Bakony Mountains, and the undeveloped copper and zinc resources at Recsk. Extraction of various metal-bearing ores increased significantly in postwar Hungary, but iron ore is no longer mined. Other minerals that are found include mercury, lead, uranium, perlite, molybdenum, diatomite, kaolin, bentonite, zeolite, and dolomite.Manufacturing
As a result of the policy of forced industrialization under the communist government, industry experienced an exceptionally high growth rate until the late 1980s, by which time it constituted about two-fifths of GDP. Mining and metallurgy, as well as the chemical and engineering industries, grew in leaps and bounds as the preferred sectors of Hungary’s planned economy. Indeed, half of industrial output was produced by these three sectors. Lacking modern technology and infrastructure, however, Hungarian industry was not prepared to compete in the global economy after the collapse of state socialism. During the first half of the 1990s, industrial employment dropped to one-fourth of the economically active population. Total output declined by nearly one-third, with output in the mining, metallurgy, and engineering industries decreasing by half. During the 1990s, engineering output dropped from nearly one-third to roughly one-fifth of the total.
As industry and the Hungarian economy in general underwent restructuring and modernization during the early 1990s (including the implementation of privatization and the improvement of the quality of goods and services), some industries adapted more successfully to new conditions. Among the industries that regressed least and showed the first signs of growth were the food, tobacco, and wood and paper industries. Of Hungary’s traditionally strong sectors, the chemical industry showed the greatest resilience, demonstrating growth again by the mid-1990s after experiencing a large drop in production early in the decade.Partly through foreign investment, the machine industry (another important component of the economy) also showed signs of improvement by the mid-1990s. By the 2010s, industry and manufacturing accounted for more than two-fifths of Hungary’s GDP and employed nearly one-third of the workforce. The automotive industry, telecommunications, computer technology, food processing, textiles, chemicals, electronics, and building materials had become the country’s principal industries.Between 1950 and 1990, electric power consumption in Hungary increased 10-fold, and by the 1990s more than one-third of industrial output was being produced by the energy sector. In the early 21st century, between one-third and two-fifths of energy consumption was derived from thermal plants burning hydrocarbons. The bulk of Hungary’s energy consumption was satisfied by imported sources. There were several thousand miles of oil and natural gas pipelines. Nuclear power accounted for more than half of Hungary’s energy production, and plans were being made for further expansion. A small percentage of power generation consisted of hydroelectricity, wind, biomass, and geothermal alternatives.Finance
Under the Soviet-style single-tier banking system, the National Bank both issued money and monopolized the financing of the entire Hungarian economy. Beginning in 1987, Hungary moved toward a market-oriented two-tier system in which the National Bank remained the bank of issue but in which commercial banks were established. Foreign investment was permitted, and “consortium” (partly foreign-owned) banks were formed. In 1990 a stock exchange, the Budapest Stock Exchange, was established. In the 2010s it had four trading sections: securities, equities, commodities, and derivatives.
In the 1990s, in the postcommunist period, the reform process continued with the founding of private banks, the sale of shares in state-owned banks (though most banks remained state-owned), and the enactment of a law that guaranteed the independence of the National Bank. The currency (forint) also became entirely convertible for business. By the turn of the 21st century, with a dramatic increase in foreign investment and in the number of commercial banks, the Hungarian banking system had been almost completely privatized. In 1986 the state-operated insurance system was split into two separate companies, and by the following decade more than a dozen insurance companies were in operation.
Year In Review 2019
Trade
Hungary was a charter member of Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance; 1949–91). Under its aegis, trade was conducted between the countries of the Soviet bloc on the basis of specialized production, fixed prices, and barter. The Soviet Union was Hungary’s most important trading partner, but, in the late 1980s and early ’90s, as Hungary became increasingly involved in the global market, less than half of the country’s trade remained with Comecon. Unprepared for the competitiveness of global market forces, Hungary accrued a large trade deficit that was covered by foreign loans. In the process the country became heavily indebted and had to use much of its export earnings for repayment.Nevertheless, by the mid-1990s three-fourths of Hungary’s trade was with market economies. Meanwhile, the proportion of Hungary’s imports from the former component countries of the Soviet Union fell from a peak of more than one-fifth in the early 1990s to less than one-tenth at the turn of the 21st century. In 1996 Hungary joined the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and in 2004 it became a full member of the European Union (EU). By the 2010s Germany had become Hungary’s most important trading partner by far, followed by Austria, Slovakia, Russia, China, Romania, and France.In the early 21st century, machinery and transport equipment were both Hungary’s leading import (comprising three-fifths of the total imports) and its leading export (comprising one-half of all exports). In particular, the country’s principal trade goods were telecommunications equipment, electrical machinery, power-generating machinery, road vehicles, and office machines and computers.Services
Throughout the last decade of the 20th century, the service sector’s portion of Hungary’s GDP rose at an annual average rate of about 0.5 percent. By the early 2010s, services accounted for between one-half and two-thirds of GDP and roughly the same proportion of the workforce. Tourism played a big role in this development as Hungary became an increasingly popular destination for travelers, especially those from Austria, Croatia, Germany, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Ukraine, most of whom arrived by car. There is also significant tourism via low-cost air carriers from western Europe as well as from the United States, Canada, and Australia.
Labour and taxation
The Soviet-style Central Council of Hungarian Trade Unions was reorganized in 1988 as the National Confederation of Hungarian Trade Unions. The largest trade union in Hungary, with some 40 organizations under its umbrella at the start of the 21st century, it became part of an even bigger organization in 2013 when it joined with the Autonomous Trade Union Confederation and the Forum for the Co-operation of Trade Unions to form the Hungarian Trade Union Confederation. That umbrella body began with some 250,000 active members and about another 100,000 pensioner members.Transportation and telecommunications
Railways have long been the centre of Hungary’s transportation system. By World War I the country had a modern network that was among the densest in Europe, and it continued to expand regularly until the late 1970s, with electrification beginning in the previous decade. When industrial production declined during the transition to a market economy, rail transport of goods dropped sharply, accompanied by significant cutbacks in government subsidies that contributed to the deterioration of the railway infrastructure. By the end of the 20th century, however, the EU had begun funding rail network improvements, as well as roadway projects.
Railway station in Battonya, Hungary.
Railway station in Battonya, Hungary.
Aspectomat
In the postcommunist era, road haulage has made up an increasing percentage of the overall transport of goods. Buses were once the main form of travel for passenger transportation, but the number of privately owned automobiles grew rapidly after the early 1980s. This growth skyrocketed following the end of the communist regime. Between 1989 and 1996, an additional 1.5 million cars were added to Hungarian roads, the majority of them Western-made. During this same period, the portion of Eastern-made cars declined rapidly.
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Road construction and upgrading increased significantly in the early 21st century, with the building of expressways (motorways) radiating out from Budapest toward Vienna, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, and Ukraine.
The Danube River, the country’s only important transportation waterway, was historically used for international shipping, via the free port of Csepel. However, as a result of the destruction of bridges in the former Yugoslavia during the intervention by NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) in the Kosovo conflict in 1999, much of the shipping came to a sudden halt. The Hungarian merchant fleet nearly vanished, reduced from about 200 vessels in 1994 to only 1 in 1999. Nonetheless, Hungary played an active role in 21st-century regional efforts to modernize, improve, and expand inland waterway traffic on the Danube.
International air travel passes through Budapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport, Debrecen Airport, and Hévíz-Balaton (Sármellék) Airport. Regional passenger air traffic serves Budapest, Pécs, Nyíregyháza, Debrecen, Siófok-Kiliti, Szeged, and Győr. Malév Hungarian Airlines, the national carrier, was founded in 1946.
Year In Review 2019
Government and society
Overview
The modern political system in Hungary contained elements of autocracy throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, but in the period between 1867 and 1948 it had a functioning parliament with a multiparty system and a relatively independent judiciary. After the communist takeover in 1948, a Soviet-style political system was introduced, with a leading role for the Communist Party, to which the legislative and executive branches of the government and the legal system were subordinated. In that year, all rival political parties were abolished, and the Hungarian Social Democratic Party was forced to merge with the Communist Party and thus form the Hungarian Workers’ Party. After the Revolution of 1956 it was reorganized as the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party, which survived until the fall of communism in 1989.
Constitutional framework
In 1989 dramatic political reforms accompanied the economic transformation taking place. After giving up its institutionalized leading role, the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party abolished itself (with the exception of a small splinter group that continues under its old name) and reshaped itself into the Hungarian Socialist Party. In October 1989 a radical revision of the 1949 constitution, which included some 100 changes, introduced a multiparty parliamentary system of representative democracy, with free elections. The legislative and executive branches of the government were separated, and an independent judicial system was created. The revision established a Constitutional Court, elected by Parliament, which reviews the constitutionality of legislation and may annul laws. It also provides for an ombudsman for the protection of constitutional civil rights and ombudsmens’ groups for the protection of national and ethnic minority rights.
Parliament Building on the far side of the Danube River, Budapest.
Parliament Building on the far side of the Danube River, Budapest.
© Jan Miracky/Dreamstime.com
The 1989 constitution was amended repeatedly, and a controversial new constitution, pushed through by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s centre-right government, was promulgated in January 2012. Among other significant recent revisions of Hungarian law was a change in 2010 that allowed nonresidents to attain citizenship if they could prove their Hungarian ancestry and mastery of the Hungarian language.
Supreme legislative power is granted to the unicameral National Assembly, which elects the president of the republic, the Council of Ministers, the president of the Supreme Court, and the chief prosecutor. The main organ of state administration is the Council of Ministers, which is headed by the prime minister. The president, who may serve two five-year terms, is commander in chief of the armed forces but otherwise has limited authority. The right of the people to propose referendums is guaranteed.
Local government
Hungary is divided administratively into 19 megyék (counties), which are further split into 174 districts (járások). Budapest has a special status as the capital city (főváros), headed by a lord mayor (főpolgármester) and divided into 23 districts (kerületek), each headed by its own mayor (polgármester). There are also 23 cities and towns with county status (megyei jogú városok). Among the extensive changes to the political system introduced by the Fidesz party after its sweeping victory in the 2010 federal elections was a significant reform of Hungary’s local government structure. Changes to the system of finance and to administrative responsibilities enhanced the powers of the central government agencies and institutions at the expense of local and regional governments, whose purview was limited to providing basic services.
Justice
Justice is administered by the Supreme Court, which provides conceptual guidance for the judicial activity of the Court of the Capital City and the county courts and for the local courts. A chief prosecutor is responsible for protecting the rights of citizens and prosecuting acts violating constitutional order and endangering security. The constitutionality of the laws is overseen by the Constitutional Court, which began operation in 1990. A constitutional amendment in 1997 called for the addition of regional appellate courts, which came into force in the early 21st century.
Political process
Parliamentary elections based on universal suffrage for citizens age 18 and over are held every four years. Under the mixed system of direct and proportional representation that was revised in 2011, 106 members of the 199-seat National Assembly are elected in single-member electoral districts, and 93 members are elected as part of national party lists. Voters express their preference for both a specific candidate running in their electoral district and a national party list. In the former case, candidates must gain a plurality of the vote to be elected. Parties that receive at least 5 percent of the national aggregate of votes are proportionally allocated seats for list candidates.
About 200 political parties were established following the revision of the constitution in 1989, but only 6 of them became long-term participants in the country’s new political life after the first free elections (1990): the Hungarian Democratic Forum, Alliance of Free Democrats, Independent Smallholders’ Party, Christian Democratic People’s Party, Federation of Young Democrats (Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége; Fidesz), and Hungarian Socialist Party—the latter being the party of reformed ex-communists. The same six parties were returned to Parliament in 1994, and for the following decade most of them remained represented in the legislature. The hard-core communists reemerged in 1992 as the Workers’ Party, while the right-wing Hungarian Justice and Life Party was created in 1993 when it split from the Hungarian Democratic Forum. Fidesz appended Hungarian Civic Party (later changed to Hungarian Civic Alliance) to its name, and between 1998 and 2002 it became the dominant party and formed the government. The Christian Democrats organized the Centre Party alliance in 2002 but failed to make it into Parliament. After the 2010 election, Fidesz’s dominance of the political system was effectively unchallenged.
Security
The Hungarian armed forces consist of ground forces, air and air-defense forces, a small navy that patrols the Danube, the border guard, and police. Military service was compulsory for males over the age of 18 until 2004, when Hungary established a voluntary force. (The term of duty varies according to the branch of service but is typically less than one year.) The armed forces are not permitted to cross the state frontiers without the prior consent of Parliament. In the decade between 1989 and 1999, the armed forces declined from 155,000 members to just under 60,000, but, at the same time, they also underwent a process of modernization to prepare Hungary to join the Western military alliance NATO. Membership was finally achieved in March 1999, eight years after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, of which Hungary was a member.Health and welfare
Following World War II, health care improved dramatically under state socialism, with significant increases in the number of physicians and hospital beds in Hungary. By the 1970s, free health care was guaranteed to every citizen. Higher-quality private health care, permitted but limited before the transition period, grew in importance from the early 1990s.
A broad range of social services was provided by the communist government, including child support, extensive maternity leave, and an old-age pension system for which men became eligible at age 60 and women at age 55. This costly welfare system was a heavy burden on the country’s finances. At the end of the communist era, Hungary ranked 20th among European countries in terms of per capita GDP, but it was 12th in social spending. Social insurance expenditure, which constituted 4 percent of GDP in 1950, had risen to one-fifth of the GDP by 1990. The Hungarian system had become one of the most expensive in the world, yet there was considerable resistance to efforts to scale it back.
When health insurance was reformed in 1992, it retained its all-encompassing nature and was also made mandatory. At the same time, however, this reform required both employers and employees to contribute to the system’s upkeep as well as to pension plans. The government’s move in 2003 to privatize almost half of its health care institutions was rejected in the following year by popular referendum. The private financing of health care slowly increased with the introduction of co-payments for some prescription medications, office visits, and hospital stays.oday the health care system is financed by a national income tax along with contributions to the Health Insurance Fund. Employees pay 3 percent of their total income to the fund, and employers contribute the equivalent of 15 percent of an employee’s gross salary as well as a “health care contribution” (lump-sum tax).
Housing
Housing shortages were constant in Hungary for decades after World War II, despite the million housing units built by the state in urban centres from 1956 to 1985. In the immediate postwar period, Hungary maintained an average of three persons per room, a rate that eventually dropped to one per room by the mid-1990s. Moreover, by the late 1980s, electricity was available for nearly the entire population (it had been in fewer than half of Hungarian homes in 1949, when apartment houses were nationalized), and running water was available for more than three-fourths of homes. The construction of private homes, which had increased in the 1960s and ’70s, constituted more than four-fifths of all construction by the mid-1990s, as housing became part of the market economy.In the 1990s, as the cost of home ownership and rents soared, the housing market became increasingly polarized. The lower class continued to live in shabby, prefabricated, and often deteriorated apartments, while the upper class occupied expensive apartments or villas that approximated Western standards both in their construction and in their internal outfitting. High-quality housing was bought not only by Hungary’s nouveaux riches but also by many Westerners, among them a significant number of permanent or seasonal repatriates.
Education
General considerations
Ever since the start of obligatory universal education initiated by the Law of 1868, Hungary followed the German system of education on all levels. This included four, then six, and finally eight years of elementary schooling and—for a select few, after the first four years of this basic education—eight years of rigorous gymnasium (gimnázium) studies that prepared the students for entrance to universities. These universities were also organized along the German model, with basic degrees after four or five years, followed for those in the humanities and sciences by the doctorate based on a modest dissertation. Those wishing to become a member of the professorate also had to go through the process of “habilitation” (habilitáció), which required the defense of a more significant dissertation based on primary research.All this changed after the communist takeover of Hungary following World War II. In 1948 schools were nationalized, and the elitist German style of education was replaced by a Soviet-style mass education, consisting of eight years of general school (általános iskola) and four years of secondary education (középiskola). The latter consisted of college-preparatory high schools that approximated the upper four years of the gimnázium as well as of the more numerous and diverse vocational schools (technikumok) that prepared students for technical colleges or universities but in most instances simply led directly to mid-level jobs. This system of education survived until the 1990s, when the fall of communism resulted in a partial return to the traditional educational system. While much of the Soviet-inspired 8 + 4 system is still intact, it now competes with the 6 + 6 and the 4 + 8 systems, wherein the six- or eight-year gimnázium tries to replicate the intellectually more exclusive pre-Marxist Hungarian educational system.
During the 1990s the uniformity of the communist educational system was further shattered by the introduction of private secondary education. Nationalized religious schools were returned to churches and religious institutions, and various new private secular schools were created. Between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, the number of secondary schools increased from 561 to 887, even though the student-age population had declined from 1.3 million to just under 1 million.
Mass industrialization obliged women to take outside jobs, resulting in the creation of an extensive system of preschools and kindergartens. Attendance was not mandatory, but, given that in many homes both parents worked, most children attended. Up to the mid-1990s, education was free from the kindergarten through the university level and also obligatory from age 6 to 16. At that time a modest tuition was introduced at the state universities and a much steeper one at the increasing number of private schools and institutions of higher learning.
Year In Review 2019
Higher education
Preparation for higher education became virtually universal by the early 1980s, and by the end of that decade about one-fifth of those between ages 18 and 24 were enrolled in one of Hungary’s numerous institutions of higher learning, many of them founded or reorganized after World War II. This growth continued even after the communist regime had ended; in 1990 there were only 70,000 full-time and 100,000 part-time college and university students, but by the first decade of the 21st century the number of full- and part-time students had risen to almost 400,000.
There was a major reorganization of Hungarian higher education in 2000. Prior to then, traditional major institutions of higher learning were Loránd Eötvös University of Budapest, Lajos Kossuth University of Debrecen, Janus Pannonius University of Pécs, Attila József University of Szeged, the Technical University of Budapest, and the Budapest University of Economic Sciences. There were also dozens of specialized schools and colleges throughout the country. In 2000 most of these specialized colleges were combined with older universities or with one another to form new “integrated universities.” The result was the birth of the renewed Universities of Debrecen, Pécs, and Szeged; the reorganized Universities of Miskolc and Veszprém; and the newly created St. Stephen University, University of West Hungary of Sopron, and University of Győr. The main exception to this integration process was in the city of Budapest, where Loránd Eötvös University, Semmelweis Medical University, Budapest University of Technology and Economics (formerly Technical University of Budapest), and Budapest University of Economic Sciences and Public Administration (renamed Corvinus University of Budapest in 2004) remained stand-alone universities.
In the period after the fall of communism, several private and religious universities were established, including Central European University (CEU) of Budapest, founded by the Hungarian American philanthropist George Soros as an English-language postgraduate institution where the students are introduced to Sir Karl Popper’s idea of an “open society.” Changes to Hungarian law relating to higher education that were enacted in 2017 altered CEU’s status as a foreign-registered university. Unable to reach an agreement with the government on that status and arguing that its academic freedom was threatened, CEU responded by relocating its main campus to Vienna.The best-known religious institutions include Péter Pázmány Catholic University and Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary. In addition, some of the specialized colleges of music, fine arts, theatre, and military arts were elevated to university status.
The postcommunist period also saw the restructuring of the university diplomas. Regular degrees remained, but the university doctorate and the Soviet-inspired “candidate” (kandidátus)—a research degree offered by the Academy of Sciences—were abolished and replaced by an American-style doctorate. At the same time, the “habilitation” was reintroduced as a prerequisite for university professorships. The science doctorate (tudományok doktora), offered by the Academy of Sciences since 1950 and known as the “great doctorate” (nagydoktorátus), remained in force. But, whereas previously it was awarded on the basis of a comprehensive dissertation, it is now given in recognition of major life accomplishments by a very select group of scholars and scientists.Cultural life
Cultural milieu
The cultural milieu of Hungary is a result of the diverse mix of genuine Hungarian peasant culture and the cosmopolitan culture of an influential German and Jewish urban population. Both the coffeehouse (as meeting place for intellectuals) and the music of the Roma (Gypsies) also have had an impact. Cultural life traditionally has been highly political since national culture became the sine qua non of belated nation building from the early 19th century. Theatre, opera, and literature in particular played crucial roles in developing national consciousness. Poets and writers, especially in crisis situations, became national heroes and prophets. Governments also attempted to influence cultural life through subsidy and regulation. During the state socialist era, culture was strictly controlled; party interference was influenced by ideological principles, and mass culture was promoted.Through much of the 20th century, Hungarian cultural life was characterized by a dichotomy between rural and urban culture and subsequently between “populist” and “urbanist” culture—even though both of the latter were represented by urban-based intellectuals. These intellectuals were divided by their social origins (village versus city) and also by their disagreements about the type of culture that can best serve as the fountainhead of modern Hungarian culture. The populists were suspicious of the urbanists, many of whom were of non-Hungarian origins (mostly German and Jewish), and regarded the village as the depository of true Hungarian culture. The urbanists, on the other hand, viewed the populists as “country bumpkins” with little appreciation of real culture and looked to western European cultural centres as sources for their own version of modern Hungarian culture.
Year In Review 2019
Daily life and social customs
Genuine traditional Hungarian culture survived for a long period in an untouched countryside characterized by rootedness. Peasant dress, food, and entertainment, including folk songs and folk dances—the rituals of weddings and Easter and Christmas holidays—continued until the mid-20th century. The drastic (and in the countryside brutal) modernization of the second half of the 20th century nearly destroyed these customs. They were preserved, however, as folk art and tourist entertainment.Everyday life changed dramatically, as did the family structure. Families became smaller, and ties with extended families diminished. The culture also became less traditional. Clothing styles began to follow the international pattern, and traditional peasant dress was replaced by blue jeans. Folk songs are still occasionally heard, but in daily life they have been replaced by rock and pop music. Urban culture, especially in the capital city, is highly cosmopolitan and encompasses the tradition of coffeehouse culture. Watching television is a popular pastime.Hungary’s most traditional cultural element is its cuisine. Hungarian food is very rich, and red meat is frequently used as an ingredient. Goulash (gulyás), bean soup with smoked meat, and beef stew are national dishes. The most distinctive element of Hungarian cuisine is paprika, a spice made from the pods of chili peppers (Capsicum annuum). Paprika is not native to Hungary—having been imported either from Spain, India by way of the Turks, or the Americas—but it is a fixture on most dining tables in Hungary and an important export. Among Hungary’s spicy dishes are halászlé, a fish soup, and lecsó, made with hot paprika, tomato, and sausage. Homemade spirits, including various fruit brandies (pálinka), are popular. Before World War II, Hungary was a wine-drinking country, but beer has become increasingly prevalent. Although Hungarians were not quick to accept foreign cuisines, they appeared in Budapest in the 1990s, a sign both of the growing influence of the outside world and of the presence of increasing numbers of foreigners who have settled in Hungary.In addition to their observance of the two main religious holidays—Christmas, celebrated as a traditional family festivity, and Easter, characterized by village merrymaking—Hungarians celebrate several national holidays, including March 15 (Revolution of 1848) and August 20 (St. Stephen’s Day). After the communist takeover, these traditional national holidays were replaced by April 4 (Liberation Day), May 1 (May Day), and the transformed August 20 (Constitution Day). After 1990 these communist-inspired holidays were replaced in turn by the original national holidays, augmented by October 23, which commemorates the Revolution of 1956. All of these holidays are occasions both for solemn remembrance and for popular festivities, including folk dancing, choral singing, and the display of traditional folk arts. The Hungarian national anthem is based on the 1823 poem “Hymnusz” (“Anthem”) by Ferenc Kölcsey; it was set to music by Ferenc Erkel and officially adopted in 1844.
The arts
Traditional folk arts either have disappeared or have become mostly commercialized, and political attempts in the 1930s, ’50s, and ’70s to preserve them basically failed. National high culture emerged at the turn of the 19th century, with literature taking a central role.The first Hungarian-language newspaper, Magyar Hírmondó (“Hungarian Courier”), appeared in 1780, followed by Magyar Merkurius (“Hungarian Mercury”) in 1788, Bétsi Magyar Merkurius (“Viennese Hungarian Mercury”) in 1793, and Hazai Tudósítások (“National Informer”) in 1806. (The first non-Hungarian-language newspaper published in the country may have been the Mercurius Hungaricus [1705–10]. It was created to provide readers outside Hungary with news of the uprising of Ferenc Rákóczi II against the Habsburg rulers.)
Ferenc Kazinczy, an advocate of Enlightenment ideas, founded a movement of language reform and promoted literature through his high standard of literary criticism. In his view, literature was a nation-sustaining or even nation-creating force. This newly born literary language was cultivated by most of the contemporary authors, including Mihály Csokonai Vitéz in his rococo poetry and the brothers Károly Kisfaludy and Sándor Kisfaludy in their early Romantic poetry and plays. Modern Hungarian drama was born in the middle of the 19th century, with József Katona’s tragedy Bánk bán (1820) and Imre Madách’s Az ember tragédiája (1861; The Tragedy of Man). Among other important 19th- and early-20th-century literary and cultural figures were the poets Mihály Vörösmarty, Sándor Petőfi, János Arany, and Endre Ady; the novelists József Eötvös, Mór Jókai, Kálmán Mikszáth, and Gyula Krúdy; the historians Mihály Horváth, Sándor Szilágyi, and Henrik Marczali; and the sociologist Oszkár Jászi.During the interwar years, the traditions of these literary pioneers were continued by such poets and novelists as Zsigmond Móricz, Mihály Babits, Dezső Kosztolányi, Lajos Kassák, Frigyes Karinthy, János Kodolányi, Gyula Juhász, Dezső Szabó, Attila József, and Miklós Radnóti and such historians and literary historians as Sándor Domanovszky, Gyula Szekfű, Bálint Hóman, János Horváth, and Antal Szerb. The 1930s were witness to the emergence of the populist-urbanist controversy and the publication of a series of major sociographies about the realities of Hungarian peasant life. They were written by authors such as Gyula Illyés, Géza Féja, Ferenc Erdei, Péter Veres, József Erdélyi, Imre Kovács, and a number of others, who hailed from the countryside and sympathized with the plight of Hungary’s rural underclass.
Following World War II, the nationalist and populist tendencies of Hungarian literature and culture were expurgated and replaced by politically inspired manifestations of Socialist Realism. And this applied equally to literature as to writings in the social sciences such as history. The best of the poets, writers, historians, and social philosophers were silenced, and the rest were forced to toe the party line. In the postwar decades the literary contributions of such urbanists as Tibor Déry, Sándor Petőfi, István Vas, and István Örkény and such populists or near-populists as Gyula Illyés, László Németh, and László Nagy—some of whom had begun their careers already during the interwar years—were particularly significant, as was the work of the social philosopher István Bibó. The most notable among the writers who emerged after 1956 were András Sütő, Sándor Kányádi, György Konrád, Péter Nádas, Péter Esterházy, and Imre Kertész (who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002). The first two of these were Transylvanians who wrote great literature based on traditional literary models, while the latter four were Budapest urbanites who pursued the diverse paths of avant-garde literature. Among the other Hungarian writers who made significant literary contributions in the late 20th and early 21st century were László Krasznahorka, Magda Szabó, Árpád Kun, Zsófia Bán, and Ferenc Barnás.
Most of the important achievements in Hungarian visual arts and music emerged about the turn of the 20th century. The avant-garde painters Tivadar Csontváry-Kosztka and László Moholy-Nagy elevated Hungarian painting from traditional Romanticism and French-inspired Impressionism to greater international significance through pathbreaking stylistic innovations. Hungarian music achieved worldwide renown with the composer Béla Bartók, an exponent of modern Hungarian music that was rooted in archaic folk traditions. Bartók was a central figure of early 20th-century culture who influenced future generations of composers both at home and abroad. Bartók’s activities and compositions were paralleled by those of Zoltán Kodály and Ernst von Dohnányi. Kodály’s contributions went beyond the composition of music to the restructuring of Hungarian music education. His system of music education, the “Kodály method,” is now taught throughout the world. The activities of these serious composers were paralleled by the work of such beloved composers of light music and operettas as Jenő Huszka, Pongrác Kacsóh, Franz (Ferenc) Lehár, and Emmerich (Imre) Kálmán.In addition to composing, many Hungarian musicians gained international renown as performers. These included the conductors Fritz Reiner, George Szell (György Széll), Eugene (Jenö) Ormandy, Antal Dorati, Sir Georg Solti, János Fürst, Iván Fischer, and Adam Fischer, as well as the pianists Franz (Ferenc) Liszt, Annie Fischer, Zoltán Kocsis, András Schiff, Jenö Jandó, and Péter Tóth.Since the 1960s, Hungarian motion pictures have attracted significant international interest. In particular, the parabolic films of Miklós Jancsó and István Szabó helped establish the reputation of Hungarian cinema. Other notable Hungarian film directors included Roland Vranik, Nimród Antal, Béla Tarr, and László Nemes, the last of whose Son of Saul (Saul fia) won the 2016 Academy Award for best foreign-language film.
Year In Review 2019
Cultural institutions
Following World War II, high culture that previously had been confined to the upper classes was promoted among the masses. A highly subsidized publishing industry fostered reading: the number of books published increased 10-fold between 1938 and 1988. Reading became a regular habit for about one-third of the population, and a huge network of more than 15,000 public libraries was established. The main national collections are the National Széchényi Library, the Ervin Szabó Library, the libraries of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Hungarian Parliament, and the Central Library of Loránd Eötvös University (all in Budapest), plus the libraries of the universities of Debrecen, Pécs, and Szeged.
Among the most notable of the thousands of museums and cultural centres are the Hungarian National Museum, the Hungarian National Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts, and the Museum of Applied Arts (all in Budapest), plus the Christian Museum in Esztergom, the Déri Museum of Debrecen, the Janus Pannonius Museum of Pécs, the Ferenc Móra Museum of Szeged, and the collection of the Benedictine Archabbey of Pannonhalma. Government subsidizing of culture virtually ended with the introduction of a market system in the 1990s. The capital city is also regarded for its architectural legacy from various periods, which led to its being designated a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Teaching and scholarship are both emphasized in Hungary’s institutions of higher learning, although, following the Soviet model, scholarly research was de-emphasized in the decades after World War II. During those years, much of the research and the resulting publications moved from the colleges and universities to the several dozen research institutes of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (established in 1825) as well as to the institutes of various ministries. The academy was at the apex of Hungarian scientific and scholarly life for over four decades following its reorganization in 1949. Beginning in the early 1990s, however, it fell under persistent attack from the new political leadership, which hoped to cleanse it of its allegedly Marxist scientists and scholars, and funding and staffing dropped precipitously. This decline in numbers and funding continued even under the Socialist-Liberal regimes before and after the turn of the century. The government led by Victor Orbán in the 2010s transferred control of the majority of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ funding to the Ministry of Innovation and Technology, prompting complaints from researchers that the government was undermining academic freedom.Hungary has an international reputation for scholarship, with one of the world’s highest per capita rates of Nobel laureates. Because of a lack of funding, however, most of these prizewinners have worked in Germany or the United States. Outstanding Hungarian-born scientists included Theodore von Kármán, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller, Zoltán Bay, John G. Kemény, and Nobelists Eugene Wigner and Albert Szent-Györgyi. Other Nobel laureates were George de Hevesy, Georg von Békésy, John C. Harsanyi, John C. Polanyi, George Olah, and Avram Hershko.
Some of the top Hungarian social scientists included the social philosophers Karl Mannheim and Michael Polányi, the economist Karl Polanyi, and the philosopher and literary critic György Lukács. Hungarian-born mathematicians of international renown included John von Neumann, George Pólya, Gábor Szegő, Pál Turán, and Paul Erdős. Hungarian scholars also have excelled in the disciplines of linguistics, historiography, and literary history.Sports and recreation
Hungary’s most popular vacation destinations include Lake Balaton and Lake Velence in Transdanubia, the Danube Bend, and the arty Szentendre Island above Budapest, as well as the Pilis, Mátra, and Bükk mountains in the north of Hungary. Lake Balaton attracts tourists from all over central and eastern Europe. A major attraction for the inhabitants of Budapest is Margit (Margaret) Island, an urban oasis of gardens and swimming pools on the Danube River.Hungary has a tradition of success in international sporting competition. It won a number of world championships and Olympic medals even before the overpoliticization of sports in Soviet-bloc countries. Football (soccer) is especially popular, and Hungarian athletes have also enjoyed success in water polo, fencing, swimming, table tennis, track and field (athletics), rowing, weightlifting, and team handball. More recently, tennis and golf have gained in popularity, especially among the upper middle class.Hungary has a tradition of success in international sporting competition. It won a number of world championships and Olympic medals even before the overpoliticization of sports in Soviet-bloc countries. Football (soccer) is especially popular, and Hungarian athletes have also enjoyed success in water polo, fencing, swimming, table tennis, track and field (athletics), rowing, weightlifting, and team handball. More recently, tennis and golf have gained in popularity, especially among the upper middle class.
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