Hungary, caught in history
On March 12, Hungary, along with Poland and the Czech Republic, formally joined NATO, the Western alliance that kept the peace during the Cold War. On March 24, NATO began its air campaign against Yugoslavia, and Hungary finds itself aT war's doorstep
Barry Shlachter
May 2, 1999
SZEGED, Hungary - "Every night I hear the NATO planes," said Gizella Kery, who sells guidebooks and postcards inside the towering Votive Catholic Church in this university town just three miles from Yugoslavia. "Everyone has Yugoslav friends and relatives, which makes it all the worse."
No NATO country is closer to the conflict over Kosovo than Hungary, the only NATO member that shares a border with Yugoslavia. It is one of the alliance's three new Central European members, along with the Czech Republic and Poland. The three joined NATO on March 12, all eager to be part of the European mainstream. Twelve days later, the alliance launched its first airstrikes against Belgrade.
Not surprisingly, no one is more uneasy about the war than the Hungarians.
"After years of trying, we finally become part of the world's strongest alliance, and then the alliance starts a war," said Imre Molnar, a Budapest patent attorney. "This was a big shock. But it's in keeping with the traditional bad luck of the Hungarians."
Szeged, 100 miles southeast of Budapest and famous for its pork sausage and spicy catfish soup, provides a front-row view of Hungary's efforts to balance its new obligations to NATO and its relations with its southern neighbor.
"Hungary's geopolitics changed radically when we joined NATO," said Andras Balogh, a former diplomat who now heads the Hungarian Institute of International Relations. "But the geography remains the same. The Serbs were our neighbors for centuries before NATO and they will be neighbors centuries after people have forgotten NATO."
In Szeged, the war is as close as the nearest lamppost adorned with tear-away advertisements in Serbo-Croatian offering apartments in Budapest, the Hungarian capital. The border with Yugoslavia is open, and five trains a day arrive in Szeged from the nearby Yugoslav town of Subotica. They disgorge passengers who inquire at Hungarian banks about cash remittances from relatives working in Western Europe who can't easily wire money to Yugoslavia.
In the first month since NATO airstrikes began March 24, 1,004 Yugoslavs requested asylum in Hungary. More than 44,000 others are staying as "tourists".
Szeged itself is host to an estimated 500 recent arrivals from Yugoslavia, and Belgrade license plates are common on the broad boulevards of this planned city. Some are visiting relatives, others are waiting out the war here, and a few are doing both. Motorists fill up with gasoline which, even before the air campaign and rationing, cost half as much as in Yugoslavia.
Uppermost in Hungarian minds is the fate of the 300,000 to 350,000 ethnic Hungarians who live in the Vojvodina region of northern Yugoslavia and who could become targets of Serbian nationalist wrath. An ethnic Hungarian church was firebombed in the Szabadka area of Vojvodina, and there have been numerous reports that Serbs in Subotica have threatened to drive some ethnic Hungarians from their homes.
"Hungary is taking its NATO pledge very serious," said a Western diplomat in Budapest who spoke on condition of anonymity. "At the same it's walking a very fine line, recognizing there are potentially 300,000 `hostages' in Yugoslavia.
"If Milosevic loses Kosovo, where will he turn next? Montenegro or Vojvodina?" the diplomat said, referring to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Gabor Horvath, spokesman for the Hungarian foreign ministry, said, "If the Yugoslav leadership is allowed to drive out the Kosovar Albanians, the Vojvodina Hungarians will be the last remaining ethnic minority, and they could be the next target."
Nevertheless, 54 percent of Hungarians support the NATO air war, compared with about 31 percent of Czechs, according to a public opinion survey published last week. Despite the jitters, support is even stronger in Szeged and other southern border areas, where 62 percent of the people support the air campaign, according to Szonda-Ipsos, a Budapest polling firm whose telephone survey was published April 23.
Budapest's loyalty to the alliance has been tested, though. Serb demonstrators smashed windows at the Hungarian embassy in Belgrade; Yugoslav MiG-29 jet fighters entered Hungarian airspace briefly on April 4; and Milosevic has denounced Hungaryas a "tool of fascist NATO aggression."
Although Hungary has urged NATO restraint when targeting towns such as Novi Sad and Subotica that have sizable ethnic Hungarian populations, Budapest has allowed NATO to use its airspace and air bases. In addition, it cut an oil pipeline to Yugoslavia (while British and Greek companies were reportedly still shipping petroleum products).Hungary also refused to permit armored trucks and some fuel tankers that were part of a Russian relief convoy to cross the border.
On the other hand, Hungary has said it will not commit any of its 24,000 troops to any NATO ground action and won't permit an invasion to be launched from Hungarian soil, Horvath said. This is bad news for NATO's strategists, because the southern Hungarian plains offer a far better jumping-off point than the rugged terrain of Albania and Macedonia.
And as strange as it might sound, along with maintaining an open border with Yugoslavia, Budapest has worked out an understanding with Belgrade that ethnic Hungarians drafted into the Yugoslav army will generally not be sent to fight in Kosovo, Horvath disclosed.
"We expect them to keep the Vojvodina Hungarians away from what we consider an `ethnic' conflict between Serbs and Albanians," he explained. "So far, there have been only two reported deaths of Yugoslav Hungarians."
During the past decade, Hungary had worked to improve relations with Yugoslavia, said Gyula Kodolanyi, a poet, writer and former national security adviser to the government.
"Now, decades of tension might follow," Kodolanyi said. "Still it's better to be in NATO than out - simply because Milosevic is so unpredictable."
Yet Kodolanyi and others say that the polls don't adequately sum up Hungarian opinion. There is a word in Hungarian, honfibu, that roughly translates as "patriotic pessimism," he said. Many say such collective doldrums are ingrained in the national character.
It stems from Hungary's historical bad luck, having been invaded and conquered by the Turks, then by the Austrians. In the 20th century, Hungary was on the losing side in both world wars, and again in the Cold War. Its heroic 1956 uprising against the Soviet Union was crushed.
Barry Shlachter
May 2, 1999
SZEGED, Hungary - "Every night I hear the NATO planes," said Gizella Kery, who sells guidebooks and postcards inside the towering Votive Catholic Church in this university town just three miles from Yugoslavia. "Everyone has Yugoslav friends and relatives, which makes it all the worse."
No NATO country is closer to the conflict over Kosovo than Hungary, the only NATO member that shares a border with Yugoslavia. It is one of the alliance's three new Central European members, along with the Czech Republic and Poland. The three joined NATO on March 12, all eager to be part of the European mainstream. Twelve days later, the alliance launched its first airstrikes against Belgrade.
Not surprisingly, no one is more uneasy about the war than the Hungarians.
"After years of trying, we finally become part of the world's strongest alliance, and then the alliance starts a war," said Imre Molnar, a Budapest patent attorney. "This was a big shock. But it's in keeping with the traditional bad luck of the Hungarians."
Szeged, 100 miles southeast of Budapest and famous for its pork sausage and spicy catfish soup, provides a front-row view of Hungary's efforts to balance its new obligations to NATO and its relations with its southern neighbor.
"Hungary's geopolitics changed radically when we joined NATO," said Andras Balogh, a former diplomat who now heads the Hungarian Institute of International Relations. "But the geography remains the same. The Serbs were our neighbors for centuries before NATO and they will be neighbors centuries after people have forgotten NATO."
In Szeged, the war is as close as the nearest lamppost adorned with tear-away advertisements in Serbo-Croatian offering apartments in Budapest, the Hungarian capital. The border with Yugoslavia is open, and five trains a day arrive in Szeged from the nearby Yugoslav town of Subotica. They disgorge passengers who inquire at Hungarian banks about cash remittances from relatives working in Western Europe who can't easily wire money to Yugoslavia.
In the first month since NATO airstrikes began March 24, 1,004 Yugoslavs requested asylum in Hungary. More than 44,000 others are staying as "tourists".
Szeged itself is host to an estimated 500 recent arrivals from Yugoslavia, and Belgrade license plates are common on the broad boulevards of this planned city. Some are visiting relatives, others are waiting out the war here, and a few are doing both. Motorists fill up with gasoline which, even before the air campaign and rationing, cost half as much as in Yugoslavia.
Uppermost in Hungarian minds is the fate of the 300,000 to 350,000 ethnic Hungarians who live in the Vojvodina region of northern Yugoslavia and who could become targets of Serbian nationalist wrath. An ethnic Hungarian church was firebombed in the Szabadka area of Vojvodina, and there have been numerous reports that Serbs in Subotica have threatened to drive some ethnic Hungarians from their homes.
"Hungary is taking its NATO pledge very serious," said a Western diplomat in Budapest who spoke on condition of anonymity. "At the same it's walking a very fine line, recognizing there are potentially 300,000 `hostages' in Yugoslavia.
"If Milosevic loses Kosovo, where will he turn next? Montenegro or Vojvodina?" the diplomat said, referring to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Gabor Horvath, spokesman for the Hungarian foreign ministry, said, "If the Yugoslav leadership is allowed to drive out the Kosovar Albanians, the Vojvodina Hungarians will be the last remaining ethnic minority, and they could be the next target."
Nevertheless, 54 percent of Hungarians support the NATO air war, compared with about 31 percent of Czechs, according to a public opinion survey published last week. Despite the jitters, support is even stronger in Szeged and other southern border areas, where 62 percent of the people support the air campaign, according to Szonda-Ipsos, a Budapest polling firm whose telephone survey was published April 23.
Budapest's loyalty to the alliance has been tested, though. Serb demonstrators smashed windows at the Hungarian embassy in Belgrade; Yugoslav MiG-29 jet fighters entered Hungarian airspace briefly on April 4; and Milosevic has denounced Hungaryas a "tool of fascist NATO aggression."
Although Hungary has urged NATO restraint when targeting towns such as Novi Sad and Subotica that have sizable ethnic Hungarian populations, Budapest has allowed NATO to use its airspace and air bases. In addition, it cut an oil pipeline to Yugoslavia (while British and Greek companies were reportedly still shipping petroleum products).Hungary also refused to permit armored trucks and some fuel tankers that were part of a Russian relief convoy to cross the border.
On the other hand, Hungary has said it will not commit any of its 24,000 troops to any NATO ground action and won't permit an invasion to be launched from Hungarian soil, Horvath said. This is bad news for NATO's strategists, because the southern Hungarian plains offer a far better jumping-off point than the rugged terrain of Albania and Macedonia.
And as strange as it might sound, along with maintaining an open border with Yugoslavia, Budapest has worked out an understanding with Belgrade that ethnic Hungarians drafted into the Yugoslav army will generally not be sent to fight in Kosovo, Horvath disclosed.
"We expect them to keep the Vojvodina Hungarians away from what we consider an `ethnic' conflict between Serbs and Albanians," he explained. "So far, there have been only two reported deaths of Yugoslav Hungarians."
During the past decade, Hungary had worked to improve relations with Yugoslavia, said Gyula Kodolanyi, a poet, writer and former national security adviser to the government.
"Now, decades of tension might follow," Kodolanyi said. "Still it's better to be in NATO than out - simply because Milosevic is so unpredictable."
Yet Kodolanyi and others say that the polls don't adequately sum up Hungarian opinion. There is a word in Hungarian, honfibu, that roughly translates as "patriotic pessimism," he said. Many say such collective doldrums are ingrained in the national character.
It stems from Hungary's historical bad luck, having been invaded and conquered by the Turks, then by the Austrians. In the 20th century, Hungary was on the losing side in both world wars, and again in the Cold War. Its heroic 1956 uprising against the Soviet Union was crushed.
