At 05:10 PM 10/7/96 -0400, Zoltan Szekely wrote:

>Yeah, America is amazing! And I just love it.
>
>I sang the world famous American song, Amazing Grace, together with thousands
>of people in the weekend. Everybody was so happy that it is hard to express.
>This is the real American spirit, the spirit of freedom and love.In my opinion
>this is the best American song ever written. (Everybody knows the musics of
>this song in Hungary too, but they don't know the words. They don't know, that
>it is a beautiful Christian song. Why? Because you sell them America without
>the real content, without the real American spirit, which is so intimately
>related with God through love.)
>
>  "I once was lost
>   Now am free,
>   Was blind
>   But, now I see."
>
>In his weekend sermon Father Kennedy spoke about the "new kind of men", a
>fabrication of the communists by their utterly atheistic and antihuman
>philosophy. This kind of "new man" was completely revealed in the guards of
>the GULAG. He spoke about the "unspeakable sufferings" e.g. woman prisoners
>had to endure in GULAG at the hands of these guards. Their acts were the acts
>of the cruelest kind of men in the history of the mankind. (You may also read
>about this in the special report about the GULAG killing techniques of the
>Beszelo, an SzDSz related organ, which appeared a couple of years ago.)
>
>Father Kennedy was completely right. This man knows what he is talking about.
>You can not be renewed without God.
>
>Billy Graham had his Carolina crusades in Charlotte, NC. At the evening I
>atteneded, I listened to him surrounded by a cheering crowd of 72,000 people.
>(Of course, you say, 72thousand 'extreme rightwinger fundamentalists'... ;-)
>Now, this was the famous American spirit!! That is why we call America an
>amazing country! You have these guys as Billy Graham, and more like that,
>people are busy listening to them. .............

OK!  Enough already!  Where do I send my financial contributions?

Joe Szalai

At 04:01 PM 06/10/96 -0600, you wrote:

First of all - welcome back - "crutches" and all.

>I thank the member who shared with us the joke about the little boy
>and politics. I deleted already the entire posting, so I don't
>remember who it was, but I did enjoy it.
So did I enjoy it.  (Not to mention my son).

<snip>
Secondly - This is not with intent to have a field day with your thoughts
.... but ...

>Still, beware of idealists,
>political, religious, or any other kind.  They will never realize that
>harmony in the world can only be achieved without the human race.
>
I certainly hope that you will eventually be proved wrong here.  I would
like to blindly hope that there is a world down the road, where our children
or even theirs would have learned from all the mistakes of the previous
generations enough, to be able to actually apply their knowledge
intelligently towards a better existance for all concerned.

Best regards,
Aniko

PS - I liked your quote also!

 wrote on Sat Oct  5 08:45:06 EDT 1996 in HUNGARY #809:

>O far I am concerned, a fertilized egg is not a chicken.
>
>Agnes

Neither is a child a man.  Nor is your body a corpse.

But it is only a matter of time...

Ferenc

At 07:37 PM 10/6/96 GMT, Bandi Rozsa (who should fix his signature file)  wrote
:

>Can someone offer a DISpassionate summary on whether this man is
>friend or foe, and to whom?

I don't know if this is the straight poop or not, but this is what I know:

Soros gave away millions of his own money to (in my opinion) very laudable
causes in Central and Eastern Europe. This was in the form of cash,
scholarships, books, computers. The money's distribution was usually
controlled by local people, hired by Soros. The honesty of those people
cannot be questioned.

Soros and his activities were attacked by extremists from the left and from
the right. Those from the left attacked him because he supported democracy,
those form the right for the same reason and because he was Jewish (the
attacks were not straight as I worded them, but were done with all kind of
pseudo-reasons, such as Soros is a CIA agent, he is only interested in
buying up the country, etc.). Some of the most virulent attackers of Soros
are familiar names to the Hungary list: Csurka, Meciar, Tudor and Funar.

Gabor D. Farkas

Eva Balogh - At 07:22 PM 06/10/96 -0400, you wrote:
>At 11:46 AM 9/29/96 -0700, Akos wrote in connection with the Swimming
>Association scandal:
>
Dear Eva:

I have been following this thread with incredible amazement and sadness.
There are some aspects, which still bother me.  The Olympic Association puts
forth some serious and astringent guidelines, with respect to qualifying for
Olympic Events.  These guidelines as so strickt, that many sport affiliates
in the past have been sued for by not adhering to.  In some cases, the
lawsuits have been initiated by the athletes themselves against their own
organizing body, for having been mistrialed for the occassion.

So, for anyone to state, that "no one cared" leaves me greatly bothered.  I
am sure, that for one, the Olympic Association cares.  But even more
important than that are the ones who were left behind.

To prepare for the Olympics, in any sport, takes incredible dedication and
self sacrifice.  In some cases, over ten years' worth.  Surely those, that
were left behind in this instance, care.  If their voices are not heard,
that is indeed sad; for they each likely have given up a tremendous amount
if not their entire youth, in order to train for a chance to qualify for
this last Olympic Games on their own merits.  (and believe me, when I mean
train, I mean train - I don't think that the general public out there has
even as much as a remote clue of what these kids actually go through, in
order to train for a national, international, let alone an Olympic event in
any sport).

If this fraud was well known and publicized in Hungary prior to the
Olympics, then the only deduction that would possibly come to mind, would be
one of an autonomous leadership - who could well jeopardize the future
entries of Olympic events for swimming for Hungary.  Which would not only be
heartbreaking for the kids who are training - but also for Hungary.  And it
really and truly amazes me, that any one person would knowlingly dare to
jeopardize such.
>
>        Why shouldn't have they accepted the results? Eleven young swimmers
>qualified this way and were allowed to travel to Atlanta for a little
>"international experience," as Gyarfas and Co. called the trip. Apparently,
>such an international experience gives the youngsters confidence and thus
>they did well on some European meet.
>
National meets, championships are held annually - to give these youngsters
experience and confidence.  Those who excell, become eligible for junior
worlds and senior world championships, generally organized for all sports on
an annual bases leading up to the Olympic year - basically to give this
olympic hopefulls international experience and confidence.  Then, after all
this, comes the Olympic trials.  Those who have excelled in previous years,
have obviously gained ample international experience and confidence with
which to attack a National trial with.

Never, have I heard such ludicrous a comment within the realm of high
performance sports, that any sport body would even as much as consider
sending their team to an Olympic event for "international experience".

Reading that, was when I lost it ...

>        Sorry, but all this is unacceptable as far as I'm concerned, but
>perhaps I am a purist. I don't like fraud; I don't like cheating; I don't
>like the idea that people can "order" articles.
>
Hear, hear! - and here's to hoping that no one has read this thread, that
understands English - from the Olympic Associations' governing body!  For
the Hungarian Swimming Associations' sake.

Regards,
Aniko.

Ferenc Novak wrote:

>  wrote:
> >Real US
> >conservatives are true capitalists, unlike the confused Hungarian pseudo-
> >conservatives who prefer a coctail of religious extremism and the purest
> >of anticapitalist corporatism and statism that would make Mussolini
> >and Khrushchev proud even though their religions were a little different.
>
> Statements like this I find objectionable because they imply the
> superiority of one nation over another.  Why do you need to add national
> labels?

Apologies for the wording that implied broad generalization, even to the
extent that you find justifiably objectionable.  It appears that I ought
to have restated the circle of people I meant in my post from the post
before and should not have relied on the continuity of the thread to do
it for me.

As for the justification of national labels, albeit on a more limited
scale than apparent from my post, I am grateful for Eva Balogh's concise
description of the issue that is better than what I was about to write.

George Antony

In article >,
 says...
>On Mon, 7 Oct 1996, Peter A. Soltesz wrote:
>> <<<<< Mark, think of the bible as not only a historical document
>> describing many of the sins of the Jews, et al, but also as some of the
>> inspired laws.  The ten commandments are just those...they are not the
>> ten suggestions!!!

>  As far as I understand, no respectable Bible scholar accepts the
>  Bible as history or a historical document any more.

You might be surprised to know how many *respectable* Bible scholars
who do...Years ago, my own investigations began with Albert Schweitzer's
*The Quest of the Historical Jesus* (which critically reviewed the extant
research up to his time). There are many subsequent works on this theme
from various authors (too many for me, since life is too short and, anyway,
I no longer need to prove anything to myself on this matter).

--
George Szaszvari, DCPS Chess Club, 42 Alleyn Park, London SE21 7AA, UK
Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy ** Commodore=64...ICPUG ** NW London CC

Are you aware that Soros has set up in Califirnia a 1.5 billion dollar
philanthropic foundation? It will be the largest private foundation in
California. How does this compute for you?

In article >,  says...
>
>For years I have been reading about this fellow George Soros who SEEMS
>to be doing an incredible job at sharing his wealth, especially with
>Eastern and Central European countries of the old COMECOM block (tsk,
>tsk, I know....).
>
>Now I read that Soros has offered $US 50 million to help lawful
>newcomers to the shores of the States. These immigrants  would be
>"hurt" by the new  "mean-spirited" Congressional law that would deny
>them food stamps, and other federal aid. (This is another topic...let
>it be, please).
>
>So, (he asks naively) what IS the straight dope on George Soros. Every
>time I asked in the past I got deadly silence, but from articles I see
>flying by on the Usenet, it appears that opinions are strongly
>polarized.
>
>Can someone offer a DISpassionate summary on whether this man is
>friend or foe, and to whom?
>
>I would love to brag about him, IF I could.
>
>Bandi
>=============================================================
>      Andrew J. Rszsa - Birmingham, Alabama, USA
>                 <mailto:>
>-------------------------------------------------------------
>          Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
>=============================================================
>
>
>

At 04:41 PM 10/7/96 -0400, "Peter A. Soltesz" wrote:

<snip>
><<<< It is unfortunate that you have yet to learn to think well enough to
>keep up with most of us on the net..your quotes are great for someone
>that cannot generate original thinking. Perhaps parroting is one way they
>teach some to learn in the hopes that stuff will stick (eventiually).

I sure hope so.

><<<<<<<< Have a nicedreamday Joe. I do hope that maybe you can do my
>thinking for me...after all that is what liberals are all about!

Yes.  It's the least we can do for you.

Joe Szalai

"I use quotes so that people will think that I'm sharper than I am."
             Joe Szalai

I agree and thank you, it was the time.

Albert Albu


Zoltan Szekely wrote:
>
> Yeah, America is amazing! And I just love it.
> ......

An excellent reading, thanks for posting it.
It also contains an answer to the seeds of the Holocaust.



Ten Untaught Lessons about Central Europe

An Historical Perspective

by Charles Ingrao


<http://h-net2.msu.edu/~habsweb/occasionalpapers/untaughtlessons.html>;




Albert Albu

In article >, Zsargo Janos
> writes:

>Comm'n, you did not have questions, you have biased wiews and simple
>wanted to publicate them. You don't care much with facts and answers.
>Otherwise you would not write such things:

It's "views", Janos, "views" not "wiews." So curiosity is evidence that
one does not care for facts and answers? Wow, quite the Socratic genius
you turned out to be. What this really means is that I'm challenging your
little cartoon nationalist view of the world and you don't like it. Too
bad.

>
>>were even tempted to make your first claim. I am granting the
possibility
>>that there is some objective, normative definition of "deportation" that
>>makes what happened prior to the German occupation in March, 1944,
unequal
>>to or incomparable to what occurred after that date.
>
>According P.Hidas's datas:
>
>18,000 jewish refugees (i.e they were not hungarian citizens!) were
>deported Galicia and 16,000 were killed by the SS. That is probable
>Kamenetsk-Podolsk that you was talking about.
>Let's say: 18,000 deads
>
>In Ujvidek 4,000 people mainly Serbs (1,000 jewish) were killed.
>Let's say: 4,000 deads
>
>60,000 jewish men served in labour battallion. !5,000 died before 1944
>and a further 10,000 after. 25,000 died in the hand of the Soviets.
>Let's say: 60,000 deads
>
>Copper mines in Bor. ?????? No related data.
>Let's say: 100,000 deads
>
>Total:
>182,000 deads. And I have the 'sanda gyanu' that I slightly overestimated
>it. (I guess the real number for what the hungarian authorities are
directly
>responsible is around 30,000.)
>If you think this number is impressive for a small country, just make a
>library search with the subject 'ustashi'.
>
>So 182,000 killed jews/ 4years  versus 437,402/ 4months (1944
March-June),
>and how, before 1944 some difficult 'tricky' methods, after 1944 railway
>connection to the gas chambers. Maaan, you must be very kind to the
>hungarians
>to grant them that 'possible difference' .

Judging from what you've posted so far, the difference I asked Dr. Hidas
about, then, comes down to one of raw numbers -- it is substantially more
acceptable to decimate one's Jewish community than to eradicate it
entirely, root and branch. Is that all your argument boils down to?
>
>Also you wrote:
>
>>to or incomparable to what occurred after that date. The only difference
I
>>can see is that the Nazis were more thorough and efficient than the
>>homegrown Hungarian effort.
>
>This basicly summarizes your opinion about Hungary (Hungarian History,
>hungarians) and also about Europians (the last is only my deduction).
>Now everybody can see why I was accusing you arrogancy and Hungary
>(and Europe) 'bashing'. I don't say that the hungarians was not
responsible
>for the events of WWII, but if someone writes something like you did s/he
>is either stupid or 'igen vastag a bor a pofajan'.

It's "arrogance," not "arrogancy." You have a couple of other mispellings,
but be that as it may. The arrogancy, in my point of view, lies in the
hearts of those who think they can dance this Holocaust thing around so
that the only people responsible for it are the Germans and Sza'lasi and a
handful of his followers. You convince only yourself. And let me get this
right -- you're upset because I'm implying that the Hungarians were
somewhat less efficient than the Germans in obliterating the Jewish
community?  Your excessive nationalist zeal is leading you into the
thickets of lunacy.
Sam Stowe

P.S. -- Either call me names in your broken English or don't bother
calling me names at all. I'll be damned if I'm going to waste time
thumbing through my Magyar-Angol Szo'ta'r trying to figure out what some
peckerwood college kid called me. Besides, you need the practice. Your
English skills have been slipping since you went back to Hungary.
>
>J.Zs
>
>



"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, of course, it's too dark to read."
-- Groucho Marx

On Mon, 7 Oct 1996, aheringer wrote:
<SNIP>
> Peter, you are quoting the wrong person.   I didn't write the above.
> However, yes, I wrote that a fertilized egg is not a chicken.  And, for
> your information, if I would not be here, it wouldn't be such a big loss
> - so far I am concerned.
>
> Agnes
<<<<<< Agnes, Sorry...I was trying to catch up with all the mail. But
thanx for your comment as well.
Peter>

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  Send mail to  for more info.

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 IAA03485; Tue, 8 Oct 1996 08:05:16 -0400
Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1996 08:05:15 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Peter A. Soltesz" >
To: , 
Subject: Mr. NAGY Szabolcs of FIDESZ
Message-ID: >
MIME-Version: 1.0
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THE COMMITTEE FOR DANUBIAN RESEARCH,
the AMERICAN HUNGARIAN FEDERATION of
METROPOLITATION WASHINGTON, DC,
and the
HUNGARIAN REFORMED FEDERATION OF AMERICA

present,

MR. NAGY SZABOLCS, MEMBER OF FIDESZ,

on Tuesday, October 8, 1996 at  6:30 pm.
Address: Kossuth House,
2001 Massachusetts Avenue, NW,
Washington, DC 20036.

You are all cordially invited.
<><><><><><><><><><><>

Submitted by Peter Soltesz


--IAA03493.844776317/cap1.CapAccess.org--

Peter Soltesz wrote:

> >if you are aginast the rules of God. Whether or not you like it.
> >How would you feel if your mother was playing the chicken and the egg
> >game with you?  I guess you would not be here now perhaps>????
>
Agnes replied:

 Peter, you are quoting the wrong person.   I didn't write the above.
> However, yes, I wrote that a fertilized egg is not a chicken.  And, for
> your information, if I would not be here, it wouldn't be such a big loss
> - so far I am concerned.
>
> Agnes
>
Dear Agnes,

One thing is for sure: if you were not here, it would be a big loss to us. I
really enjoy a lot of your postings.  Like I said yesterday, playing the 'if'
game (What if your mother...) does not make any sense.  It's just like "What
if Hitler or Stalin were aborted..." or "What if Superman worked for the Axis..
.

Anyway, I even hope to see you around for a while yet. (If you want a good
laugh, re-read Joe Szalai's comments on brain death from yesterday. That really
had me howling. It's original and funny.)

Best wishes,
Mark

I am pleasantly surprised at the fact that more and more Hungarians in
Hungary are learning English (I guess a once shunned language).

Yet, I am more amazaed at the number of English words that Hungarians use
without their understanding of the origins of the word(s).

During the Communists era, there was an open effort to Hungarianize
everyone and everything. This included names, etc. An example:
you had to CHANGE your name from Victor to Gyozo and many others.

Yet the language still has things like LIFT, SWEATER, COMPUTER, pulover,
PLAFON(french), etc.  The roots of many in use words in Hungary come form
the English language.

How many can you find????? Look and you will be quite amazed!

The information herein is presented to those of Hungarian
origins who may not read the specialty magazines such as
The Economist so that we can get a better perspective of
one of the many talented Hungarians in this world.

Obituary of Paul ERDOS
+++++++++++++++++++
Taken from THE ECONOMIST October 5th, 1996, page 83.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
-
 --

If Martians had made contact with earth during the lifetime of Paul Erdos
he would have made a good choice as this planet/s ambassador.
The aliens would have appreciated his unearthly intelligence.
He spoke the universe/s common tongue, the theory of numbers,
with fluency and wit.  Importantly, Mr Erdos would never have missed
the trappings of this world.  He had no children, no wife, no house,
no credit card, no job, no change of shoes, indeed nothing but a
suitcase containing a few clothes and some notebooks.
Neither was he fussy about food, as long as he had coffee.
A mathematician, he said, // is a machine for converting coffee
into theorems //.  Mr Erdos/s life was streamlined for mathematics.

Mathematics?  For many it is the most baffling of sciences.
Most people with a bit of education can follow an explanation of, say,
the Big Bang or genetics, but limit their interest in mathematics to
sorting out the intricacies of their bank statement.  To mathematicians,
though, their science is the purest creation of the human mind,
and for many Mr Erdos was supreme exponent this century.

Typically, he would arrive in a city where he was to lecture,
ring up a fellow mathematician, and announce // My brain is in town. //
He sounds like a guest from hell, but to his hosts his brain was a
shared treasure and their collective responsibility.  They would lodge
him, feed him, launder his clothing.

Paul Erdos was a constantly wondering Jew.
For much of his life in Hungary, his homeland, was run by dictators.
Many members of his family were murdered by the Germans during
the Hitler period.  In return for the comfort of friends who took care of
perfunctory needs, Mr Erdos would cut gems of elegance from
numbers, graphs and logic.  His problems were often simple to pose,
yet offered room for creativity and surprise.  Suppose an infinite
number of dots are painted on an infinite canvas in such a way that
the distance in inches between any two dots is a whole number.
What would the painting look like?  Mr Erdos/s brow would furrow
as he showed that the result could only be a straight row of dots.
But don/t ask for an explanation of his elegant proof unless you
are interested in conic sections.

IN HIS PRIME

Paul Erdos/s parents were math teachers, sop they presumably looked
at him fondly when, at four, he said he had discovered negative numbers.
While in his late teens he made discoveries about prime numbers.
A number is // prime // if it cannot be divided by any smaller number
except one.  Example of prime numbers are 1913, the year in which
Mr Erdos was born, and 83, his age when he died of a heart attack at
a mathematics conference in Warsaw.  Mr Erdos helped to recast a
theory about prime numbers made by an earlier mathematician,
pursuing a more elegant approach.  This, it was said, was analogous
to creating the Panama Canal for shipping that previously went
around South America.

Elegant indeed, but were Mr Erdos/s 1,000 or more published papers
of any practical value?  He made no claim for their practicality.
It was enough, he said, that a proof was // very nice //.  Yet mathematics,
however pure, has a way of turning up in useful places.
// Combinatorics //, a branch of maths explored by Mr Erdos, can be
used to calculate the number of tiles needed to pave an irregular space.
His work on graphs has been applied to the design of communications
networks.

The extraordinary left side of his brain was put at the service of
numerous young mathematicians at the start of their careers.
To him a mathematician of promise was an epsilon, the Greek letter
used by mathematicians to describe a small quantity.  To an epsilon
he was // Uncle Paul //.   He sat them problems, paying them rewards
of a few hundred dollars if they came up with solutions, giving away
much of his modest income from lectures and prizes
(among them the Wolf Prize, an Israel-based sort of Nobel Prize).
A colleague likened Mr Erdos to a honeybee: an industrious creature
who buzzed about the world and pollinated the filed of mathematics.

He was compared to Leonhard Euler (1707-83), an awesome Swiss
regarded as the most prolific mathematician who ever lived.
It is hard to exaggerate Mr Erdos/s passion.  For 19 hours a day,
seven days a week, simulated by coffee, and later by amphetamines,
he worked on mathematics.  He might start a game of chess, but
would probably doze off until the conversation returned to maths.
To find another life this century as intensely devoted to abstraction,
one must reach back to Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951),
stripped his life bare for philosophy.  But whereas Wittgenstein
discarded his family fortune as a form f self-torture, Mr Erdos gave
away most of the money he earned because he simply did not need it.
// Private property is a nuisance, //   he would say.  And where
Wittgenstein was driven by near suicidal compulsions, Mr Erdos
simply constructed his life to extract from his magnificent obsession,
the maximum amount of happiness.

<< Submitted by Peter Soltesz >>

On Mon, 7 Oct 1996, Eva S. Balogh wrote:

> At 09:00 AM 10/4/96 -0400, Amos wrote:
>
> >  Hungary had one of the highest, if not the highest, suicide rate
> >  way before the communists. Stop avoiding reality!
> >
>         Quite! Perhaps one of the problems is that Hungarians tend to set
> impossible goals for themselves. You may have noticed that even the most
> reasonable correspondents on this list steadfastly refuse to believe that
> Hungary has been considerably behind in economic development for centuries.
> Pointing out this historical fact seems to be the greatest insult one can
> hurdle at Hungarian pride. And if you say so, you are not a patriot, you are
> anti-Hungarian, and altogether a terrible person. Yet, I can assure
> everybody on this list that East-European backwardness, in comparison to
> western Europe, is of long standing, perhaps as far back as the Roman
> Empire. One reason for the extremely pessimistic view of current economic
> difficulties is that an overwhelming majority of the population believed
> that "catching up to," for example, Austria, would be simply question of a
> few years. And, of course, the process would be utterly painless. When it
> turned out to be otherwise, the reaction was understandably violent.

at the risk of sounding relativistic, why do we use the term backwardness?
I mean, wen we blanket whole countries like that, we don't really paint a
realistic picture. Hungary was peripheral to the industrial revolution and
thus many areas of so called "modern" europe were bacwards for centuries
as well (See Sweden as a prime example). Perhaps I really don't like that
damning phrase since I hail from a state that is often labled as such.


>
>         By the way, here are a few numbers here considering mental health in
> Hungary from the September 28 issue of HVG. While in 1988 only 3% of the
> adult population was considered to be seriously depressed (sulyos
> depresszio) today the figure is 7%. While in 1988 4.5% of the adult
> population suffered from middling sort of depression (kozepes depresszio),
> the figure today is 6.5%. While in 1988 the figure for mild depression
> (enyhe depresszio) was 16.8% it is 17.1% today. First of all, that means
> that 30.6% of the population suffers from some kind of depression! It would
> be very interesting to compare these figures with statistics from other
> countries. It sounds awfully high to me and, of course, a lot depends on the
> methods of ascertaining what serious, middling, and mild depression is.
>
No stats to help your argument here, but i would hazard a guess taht
Ukraine and Russia are seeing similar depression levels, based on the lack
of childbirths (reflecting optimism in these countries, or lack thereof).

Darren Purcell
Department of Geography
Florida State University

On Mon, 7 Oct 1996, S or G Farkas wrote:

> At 07:37 PM 10/6/96 GMT, Bandi Rozsa (who should fix his signature file)
 wrote:
>
> >Can someone offer a DISpassionate summary on whether this man is
> >friend or foe, and to whom?
>
> I don't know if this is the straight poop or not, but this is what I know:
>
> Soros gave away millions of his own money to (in my opinion) very laudable
> causes in Central and Eastern Europe. This was in the form of cash,
> scholarships, books, computers. The money's distribution was usually
> controlled by local people, hired by Soros. The honesty of those people
> cannot be questioned.
>
> Soros and his activities were attacked by extremists from the left and from
> the right. Those from the left attacked him because he supported democracy,
> those form the right for the same reason and because he was Jewish (the
> attacks were not straight as I worded them, but were done with all kind of
> pseudo-reasons, such as Soros is a CIA agent, he is only interested in
> buying up the country, etc.). Some of the most virulent attackers of Soros
> are familiar names to the Hungary list: Csurka, Meciar, Tudor and Funar.
>
> Gabor D. Farkas
>
Gabor, don't forget the neighbor to the south, Serbia and Milosevic, who
banned Soros educational funding for any exchange projects, and who had
many faculties in Serbia denouncing soros as the CIA operative
extraordinaire. (i was in Ujvidek/Novi Sad when this started in 1995)

Darren Purcell
Department of Geography
Florida State University

On September 11, Eva Balogh posted a review of Gyula Horn's autobiography.
The review was interesting and informative and I thank her for it.  I
learned more about Horn than I otherwise would have.  I also learned
something rather important about Eva Balogh.

In her review, she tells us that Horn came from a "dirt-poor family".
Horn's father was involved with the communist party during the Hungarian
Soviet Republic in 1919 and, after it's fall, he was arrested and sentenced
to four years in prison.  Afterwards, his father was in and out of prison,
with or without reason.  His father was uneducated and worked as a moving
man (tro'ger) until 1919 (sic) when the Germans arrived, took him prisoner,
and forced him to dig his own grave.  Horn's mother had twelve children but
only seven survived.

She then tells us that Horn had a grade 5 education, and with help from the
family's connection to the communist party, he finished the next three years
in one year and was then taken into a programme that allowed him to finish
four years of high school in one.  A year later he was studying in Rostov.

At this point, Eva Balogh writes:

>        And here one ought to pause a little bit especially when one comes
>to Horn's description of what Rostov was like in those days. Miserable,
>especially after 1952! People were starving, including the students. Yet,
>after spending four years in Rostov he returned to Hungary and merrily
>embarked on building socialism the Soviet way. It is so hard to follow the
>thinking of people like Horn. Surely, he saw everything which was bad in
>Stalinist Russia and yet he didn't seem to have any doubts, or if he had any
>they didn't interfere with his future career in the party and in the
>government before and after 1956.

Up to this point I was learning about Gyula Horn.  When I read the above I
realized that I was learning about Eva Balogh.

Why does she find it "so hard to follow the thinking of people like Horn"?
I really don't understand her difficulty.  Is she incapable of putting
herself in other people's shoes?  I think that must be it.  In any case, if
she can't follow his thinking, that becomes her problem and not his.  I
don't come from a dirt poor family and my mother didn't have 12 children but
I can understand why Horn would follow an ideology that offered a better
future.  What he had, and where he came from offered nothing and I can't
understand why Eva Balogh would just assume that that is the better path to
follow.  Understanding why he would follow certain ideologies is not an
endorsment of that ideology but lets not complicate the issue.  Eva Balogh
can't empathize with Horn.  And a lack of empathy means a lack of
understanding.  And a lack of understanding presents it's own problems.

Now that I know what I know about Eva Balogh I don't feel annoyed that she
no longer wants to discuss issues with me.  At least I know that I won't be
missing out on some deep, perceptive insight.  As for raw historical data,
any historian, or researcher for that matter, can supply them.

Joe Szalai

"Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.
A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life
when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats."
              George Orwell

Another comment on Ingrao's "Ten Untaught Lessons", forwarded from the
Habsburg list.

Hugh Agnew

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
      Putting the Central European Toothpaste back in the Habsburg Tube:
                     Comments on Charles Ingrao,
    "Ten Untaught Lessons about Central Europe: An Historical Perspective"
           by Gale Stokes, Rice University >

The hope that Charles Ingrao expresses in his fascinating think-piece,
"Ten Untaught Lessons about Central Europe," is that somehow the Central
European toothpaste can be squeezed back into the Habsburg tube.  Arguing
that the Habsburg empire "was far from dysfunctional," he proposes that
the best solution for the conflicts and controversies swirling around
Central Europe would be to create modern equivalents of the multinational
Habsburg realm by bringing Croatia, Bosnia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania
into one multinational state, and perhaps Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Albania
into another.  Ingrao recognizes that such a political constellation faces
obstacles that "are almost certainly insurmountable" (by leaving Serbia
out of his proposal he makes the project even less likely), but he puts
his ideas forward less as practical guide for public policy than as what
he hopes will be the beginning of a public dialogue on the fate of Central
Europe.

         One can only admire the scope, the synthetic power, and the daring
of Ingrao's initiative.  Few persons have the background and the courage
to put forward a discussion piece of this kind.  Nevertheless, in my view,
Ingrao's argument has several flaws that go beyond its admitted
impracticality.  The first of these is the contradiction between his view
that "the current crisis stems in great part from the West's imposition of
its own values and solutions" and his desire to impose his own vision of a
multinational superstate in Central Europe.  Few will argue with his major
premise that multiethnicity (he does not use the term "multiculturalism")
is a positive feature of most of the history of East Central Europe, or
that the creation of nation states did in the Habsburg empire.  But his
contention that the West, particularly the United States, can somehow
impose a multiethnic solution in Eastern Europe not only flies in the face
of the current fate of the Dayton Accords, but is inconsistent with the
principles of democracy, freedom, and self-determination that he
presumably favors.

        A second deficiency lies in his argument that the United States,
acting from a lack of knowledge of the region, has failed at least three
times to achieve a proper balance of forces there.  These were at the end
of World War I, when President Wilson concentrated too much on the Treaty
of Versailles and not enough on the other four treaties; the beginning and
mid-point of World War II, when the United States did not accept various
plans that emphasized action in Southeastern Europe and the creation of a
larger, multinational state there; and the end of World War II, when the
desire to concentrate on the final defeat of Hitler led to the re-creation
of the prewar nation- states in the region rather than a multinational
state.  (One might note that Churchill himself, the author of the Adriatic
plan that Ingrao apparently favors, was the co-author, essentially, of the
percentages agreement that confirmed the salience of nation-states.)

        The question that occurs to one is why the United States, in
particular, should be responsible for Central Europe?  Americans properly
can be proud of their principles of democracy, equality before the law,
pluralism, and the like, values shared with many developed countries
around the world.  We can say with some degree of confidence that whatever
the faults of societies organized around these principles, and there are
many, they produce fairer, more prosperous, and more peaceful societies
than states organized around the principles of Hitler or Stalin.  But this
does not imply that we have the right or duty to impose these principles
everywhere in the world.  In the last decade, we have successfully
intervened militarily outside of our own hemisphere in only two places --
Iraq and Bosnia.  In both cases the reasons were complex but, in the final
analysis, fundamentally strategic: in the first instance the underlying
issue was oil, and in the second our main goal was preserving our
leadership of the European alliance.  Once we became involved in these
regions on behalf of strategic goals, we have tended to justify the
interventions on the basis of high principles, such as defending Kuwaiti
independence and self-determination, or preserving a pluralistic Bosnia.
But lacking a strategic interest, we do not intervene militarily.  We do
not stop religious warfare in the Sudan, defend the oppressed Tamils,
promote democracy in Kashmir, or fight the cruelties of Pol Pot.  The
counterexample that proves the point is Somalia, where we attempted
nation-building with disastrous results (although our intervention there
did accomplish its humanitarian goal of saving tens of thousands of
lives).  Today, as earlier, we have little strategic interest in Eastern
Europe, except in two areas of concern: keeping the Russians from even
thinking about using its nuclear weapons, and sustaining the European
alliance in its military (NATO) and economic (European Union) forms.

        The experience of two European wars in this century confirms that
it is vital to our security that the accommodations achieved after World
War II be sustained, and even extended to Eastern Europe.  Herein lies a
third problem with Ingrao's proposals -- they completely ignore the
successful multinational community that actually exists in Europe today,
the European Union.  In comparison to creating reborn Habsburg realms
along the Danube and in Southeastern Europe, the path to full membership
in the European Union, which will be extremely difficult even for the most
likely candidates, is child's play.  Ingrao is surely right that the
creation of nation states in Central Europe was enormously costly for the
people of the region.  A creative and relatively stable society shattered
into squabbling and economically weak neighbors, creating a power vacuum
that first Hitler and the Stalin filled.  But these states exist.  Any
solutions for the region will have to take that fact into account, which
is where the European Union comes in.  Even though the EU has taken over a
few of the prerogatives normally associated with national sovereignty, the
foundation of its success is the full acceptance of the sovereignty of its
members. The EU is a voluntary organization whose member states act in
accordance with their own varied democratic rules.

        Indeed, if one looks to the historical record, the creation of two
new multinational states in Central and Southeastern Europe would stand a
good likelihood of recreating some of the less positive aspects of
nineteenth century central European life that Ingrao does not mention.
Primary among these, in all likelihood, would be a competition among the
four basic units (EU, Russia, Danubian state, and Southeast European
state) that would approximate the struggles among the German, Russian,
Austrian, and Ottoman Empires.  History does not repeat itself, and in
developed states economic interests have become more important than
territorial ones, but a very long history of warfare among the four
empires at least suggests the possibility that the creation of new
multiethnic states would be a more contentious solution than the extension
of the European Union.

        Finally, a word about Bosnia.  I agree wholeheartedly with
Ingrao's emphasis on the importance of the War Crimes Tribunal.  The
tribunal may be the only positive institutional development to grow out of
a war with no winners.  But, unfortunately, the principle of state
organization that Ingrao correctly champions, multiethnicity, will almost
certainly go down to defeat in Bosnia.  In a recent op-ed piece Henry
Kissinger argues that perhaps the time has come to recognize the
inevitable and simply secure a small Muslim state, essentially permitting
the Serbs and Croats their own enlarged states.  In my view, the time when
a multiethnic Bosnia can be sustained is over.  This is tragic; I do not
like it; I find it depressing;  and I am not sanguine about the future of
homogeneous, ethnically cleansed national entities.  Nevertheless, there
it is.  Eventually, despite the good intentions and best efforts of the
American government, which has tried very hard in the past year or so to
produce a Bosnia such as Ingrao would want, the Bosnian Humpty Dumpty can
not be put together again.  This failure, if it be so, is not one of
western policy, despite the numerous and well chronicled mistakes that
have been make.  We do not have the power to impose solutions, as the fate
of both Stalin's and Hitler's full scale attempts to do so demonstrate.
Rather we are enmeshed in the working out of a twentieth century process
to which Ingrao properly calls our attention: the creation of ethnically
homogeneous nation-states.

Peter:I will not trying to change your mind,nor your beliefe,nor your
education,nor your mental ability.And most off all I do not wish to put you
down.
I respect your belief in religion,your ultra conservative outlook on life.It
definitly your privilegd.
It is magnificent to live in a free country,where you can do and say
practicaly evrithing you belive in,as long as you pay your taxes.
At the same time,I would like you,as a good christian,to try to understand
other people beliefs,and convictions.You shouldn't in my humble oppinion,use
selective
statement,since probaly us canadians are not all liberals.But even if we all
are,you should not put us under one hat.We are just as proud than the
americans,except we might be more tolerant,and forward looking instead of
looking back thousand of years and find the awnsers there.
If you call somebody "canadian liberal"today,you might call somebody bloody
Jew tommorrow since he does not agree with you.
It is very nice to listen to Sunday morning sermons on television,and I
suppose,after you heard something interresting there you take yourself,and
your family to church.This is very commendable.But did you ever talk to your
priest,and brought up subject wich are bothering you?Did you discuss this
with him?
By the way,please tell me why is the Catholic Church against women priest?
Do you think they are inferior,to do this job?
Are women equal in religions.As far as I know they are not.I am thinking in
this respect of the orthodox Jews,whose wife is not much more,then a baby
machine,and is restricted to very strict laws.How about if a Jewish man
doesn;t want to give a Get,wich is divorce,the women is tied to him for
ever.But can he remarry?Is he restricted?Yes I know I talk about my own
religion,maybe I will get punished for this too,but what I want to bring out
that in most religions there are very orthodx,and ancient customs,wich in
the modern world very few wish to cultivate.
I think you heard about I believe Afganistan,where the Islamic Muslims took
power,and what happens to those women.Wait and see.
Peter:like I said,your life,is yours to live.I wish you wouldn't try to
change other people belief,if they be punished,that is there problem.As long
as you do as you feel doing,well like I said that is your privilege.
Yes America was founded on religous grounds,but the politician have seen
realy what the people,most of them want.That some of them turned completly
against the law and order,is not all of the liberals fault.
I could go on,but ....
Regards:Andy.

O.K. call Father Kennedy a religious extremist. Don't bother
yourself that national television airs him all around the
country as main line evangelical preacher..

But you can not call the Beszelo (an SzDSz related organ) a
religious extremist journal. It would be very (EXTREMELY!!! :-)
funny... This liberal newspaper supports every word Father
Kennedy had to say about the GULAG.

As about the 'unspeakable sufferings' of women who were
handled as 'enemy of the people' in the GULAG, a very cruel
artificial abortion method was developed by the GULAG guards.
I don't want to talk about it too much (you find the details
in the Beszelo), just mention that it was related to a bunch
of fire ants, a plastic pipe and the woman sitting there with
tied hands and legs. It is unspeakable, indeed.

By the way, I have to ask a question if you still have idealism
about the methods developed by communists against the 'enemy':
why did not have Kadar Janos children?
                                                    Sz. Zoli

Further crossposts from Habsburg list on the discussion over Ingrao's
"Ten Untaught Lessons"...

Hugh Agnew 
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
        How to Learn from Charles Ingrao's "Untaught Lessons"
                                by
         Istvan Deak, Columbia University >

Charles Ingrao has presented us with a wonderfully stimulating piece; we
Central Europeanists need precisely this type of writing to start a good
discussion. I agree with most of what Charlie says yet my enthusiasm will
not stop me from contradicting, in proper Central European fashion, some
of his essential statements.

        First, let me praise a number of arguments as, for instance, that
ethnic cleansing has had a long history in our region, witness the massive
expulsion and/or flight of Orthodox people from the Balkans to the
Habsburg lands late in the eighteenth century; the thorough cleansing of
Muslims, and of all remnants of Islamic culture, in many territories
reconquered from the Ottomans in the nineteenth century, and the ferocious
Bulgarian-Turkish and Greek-Turkish population exchanges both before and
after the First World War. Yet, we must ask ourselves, do such things
truly set our area apart from, let us say, France where the Albigensian
crusades of the thirteenth century marked the deliberate destruction, by
the North, of Provencal culture, and where the Jacobins led a bloody
campaign, during the Great Revolution, against the "reactionary,
aristocratic-infested" Bretons and other non-French speaking people?

        Ingrao is, of course, also right when he compares favorably the
ethnic and religious tolerance built into the Ottoman millet system with
the intolerance of Western Christianity and when he points out that the
millet system pre-empted the evolution of a sense of statehood stemming
from a common language or ethnicity. Hence today's cultural and religious
war between the Orthodox, the Catholics, and the Muslims in Bosnia, all of
whom speak the same language.

        I admire the argument, in Lesson #5, that the nation state was and
is the problem, not the solution, in Central and Southeastern Europe, and
that the multinational Habsburg Monarchy was far from dysfunctional.
Surely, this Lesson will meet with many, perhaps even furious, objections.
I doubt however that, had young Francis Joseph understood the call of the
Zeitgeist, he would have experimented with real democracy in his realm
thereby securing its future. As an old man, Francis Joseph did actually
experiment with democracy when he allowed the introduction, in 1907, of
universal adult male suffrage in the Cisleithanian half of the Monarchy.
Yet the reform did not improve parliamentary conditions in Vienna and was
thus even less efficient than the semi-liberal Ausgleich of 1867 which, at
least, allowed the Monarchy to survive for another half a century. In
general, the Habsburg tactic (the Habsburgs had no strategy) was to make
so few concessions as possible to the prevailing political fashions; it is
difficult to say whether any other policy than the one pursued would have
been more successful. After all, as Ingrao himself writes, reform and the
spread of education, fostered from above, allowed the diverse ethnic
groups to prepare themselves for future independence.

        Can there be any doubt that political independence was the final
goal of the Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, and all the other peoples, or at
least of their mostly self-appointed political leaders?  Even large
segments of the German-Austrian middle class saw their future within a
Greater Germany that would be free of the burden of Slavs and Hungarians.
It is true that the immediate, verifiable cause of the Dual Monarchy's
collapse was that Germany had lost the Great War, but it must also be
acknowledged that the creation of nation states has been so much a part
of modern European history as to allow us to call it inevitable. Neither
the Habsburgs, nor the Ottomans, nor the Russian and Soviet empires, nor
finally the Yugoslav Communist regime was able to stop the region's march
toward ethnic and cultural partitioning and mutual exclusivity. The
burned out mosques of Bosnia mark the latest stage on a long road that has
been marked by mountains of corpses, rebaptized cities, renamed streets,
and destroyed monuments. The fact that Czech nationalist leaders proceeded
to the destruction of the symbolic monuments of Habsburg Catholicism well
before the Bosnian Serbs would have thought of tearing down Muslim
monuments, does not make the actions of the Czech nationalists any less
reprehensible. Nor is the murder and expulsion of the Bosnian Muslims any
more of a criminal act than was the murder and expulsion of the Sudeten
Germans, both being based on the monstrous principles of collective
responsibility and preventive action.

        Let me disagree, at this point, with Charlie's argument that the
trouble with the Americans is their lack of understanding of the problems
of Central, East Central and Southeastern Europe, and that our task is to
teach them to know better. In my opinion, there was no lack of American
familiarity with the problems of the area in 1918, in 1945, in 1956, or at
any other time of crisis within the twentieth century. The British
politician Harold Nicolson describes in his evocative but quite racist
_Peacemaking, 1919_ how the good ship George Washington, which brought
President Wilson and his party over to Europe in 1919, creaked and groaned
under the weight of the documents and other proofs of accumulated
knowledge that the Americans were taking with them to Paris. Nor were the
American leaders less well informed by their academic advisers about the
problems of our region during and after World War II. The trouble was,
rather, that the American leaders were made powerless by domestic con-
siderations as well as by the selfishness, shortsightedness, and
imperialistic ambitions of the French after the First World War, and the
similar follies of the Soviet Union after the Second World War. Nor should
we forget how the British and French political delegates and military
commanders scuttled every move in recent times aimed at stopping Serbian
aggression in Bosnia. At last, very late in the game, a US president had
the political courage to order a few air attacks, which stopped the war,
at least for the time being.

        Does all this exculpate the Americans for whatever happened in our
region? Not at all, I would argue in contradistinction to Gale Stokes, for
while they mostly refused to intervene forcefully, the American
political leaders seldom shied away from inciting the East Europeans to
action. Witness the encouragement that President Wilson gave to the idea
of national self-determination in Central Europe but when, after the war,
national self-determination turned into Czech, Serbian, and Romanian
imperialism, the US leadership was nowhere to be seen. Or witness, as an
another example, the Americans' incitement, by radio, of the Hungarians to
forceful action before and during the Hungarian revolution in 1956. That
the US Congress repudiated Wilson's policy after 1919, and that Eisenhower
and Dulles would not even think of coming, at least politically, to the
aid of the Hungarians in 1956, confirms the overall impression, current in
our region, of American irresponsibility. The pro-American Kurds in
northern Iraq are now being served a lesson that the peoples of our region
were served from time to time in our century. It is also true, however,
that without the more steadfast and circumspect American policy during
and after 1968, and especially in the 1980s, the peoples of our region
would have had a much harder time in achieving the freedoms they are
enjoying today.

        I fully agree with Charlie Ingrao when he decries the Paris peace
treaties of 1919-1920 which, among many other bad things, created a three
tier system of peoples. In it, those of Tier II and Tier III, such as the
Croats and the Hungarians, would ally themselves even with the devil, i.e.
Nazi Germany, in order to exchange places with those in Tier I.
Furthermore, Charlie is very right in stating that the Jews were the first
victims of the system of nation states, which reminds me of Theodor
Csokor's rather neglected drama, "3. November 1918." In it a bunch of
wounded Austro-Hungarian officers, mostly reservists, experience the end
of the war in a mountain sanatorium. All the officers accept the changes
rather willingly because they see their place as secure in the new nation
states. Only two officers despair, a career colonel who is now losing his
regiment, the only fatherland he has ever known, and a Jewish reserve
officer who senses that there will be no real home for him in the
chauvinistic nation states. I would add to this that the rise of
anti-Semitism in our region during the interwar period was due not only to
dire economic conditions, as Charlie rightly explains, but also to the
political leadership's vicious propaganda associating all Jews, and not
only some individuals, with the Bolshevik revolution. Furthermore, in such
places as Hungary the Jews were no longer needed to tip the ethnic scale
on behalf of the state-forming nation.

        I too would love to turn back the clock and recreate a multi-
national state in the region, a buffer between Germany and Russia, a
place where all could try to live in harmony. But I must agree with Gale
Stokes that this is so unlikely as to perhaps not even warrant a
discussion. A multinational state made up, as Ingrao suggests, of the
former eastern half of the Habsburg Monarchy, would have been totally
unviable even in the nineteenth century, when the exiled Lajos Kossuth
dreamed of such a thing and when no one would listen to him in his own
country. After all, what kept Slovaks, Hungarians, Serbs, Croats,
Bosnians, and Romanians halfway in line in Transleithania or the Lands of
the Hungarian Holy Crown was that they derived great benefits from their
region's association with the Western, Austrian half of the Monarchy.
Ingrao himself counts out the Austrians, Czechs, Slovenes, and Poles from
his calculation, that is all those who once lived in Cisleithania.
Furthermore, what chance is there for the creation of a second
multinational state made up of the "leftovers," i.e. Bulgaria, Macedonia,
and Albania? Certainly, no one would want to bind Europe's three worst
basket cases together. It seems rather that every East Central European
state wishes to enter the European Union on its own, hopefully by leaving
all the others behind.

        One must agree with Gale Stokes that the European Union is the
best hope today for the peoples of our region, even though the prospects
are still rather bleak for many of the eastern and southeast Europeans.
Incidentally, the problem is very well discussed by Tony Judt in the July
11, 1996, issue of "The New York Review of Books."

        Finally, I too would love to see justice done and to have the
murderous Serb leaders as well as the only slightly less murderous
Croatian leaders imprisoned. Unfortunately, there is virtually no chance
that those who incited to murder and those who ordered murder, such as
Milosevic and Karadzic, will ever be tried in the Hague. It is true that a
war crimes trial would be a realistic antidote to the persecution complex
now plaguing so many Serbs and Croats, but in order to have a true war
crimes trial one must first defeat and capture the enemy as was done to
Germany and Japan in 1945. So long as this does not take place, the best
the Hague court can achieve is to molest the murderers. This, in truth, is
better than nothing.

        I realize that my comments and those of Gale mark only the
beginning of a long series of debates. I am grateful to Charlie Ingrao for
having reminded us that we have more and greater responsibilities than
merely to teach and to write things that mostly no others but members of
our group read.
























































-

Re: the English influence in Hungarian

I always found the words farmer (meaning bluejeans) and forszizolni (?) for
to force and very funny.  I still use sza'mi'to'ge'p for computer, though.

I think (at least among kids) you can say sza'mi'to'ge'pezni, but can use say
ge'pezni or komputerozni?

A viszonti'ra'sra,
Mark

In article >,
 says...
>
>At 04:01 PM 06/10/96 -0600, you wrote:
>
>First of all - welcome back - "crutches" and all.
>
>>I thank the member who shared with us the joke about the little boy
>>and politics. I deleted already the entire posting, so I don't
>>remember who it was, but I did enjoy it.
>So did I enjoy it.  (Not to mention my son).
>
><snip>
>Secondly - This is not with intent to have a field day with your
thoughts
>.... but ...
>
>>Still, beware of idealists,
>>political, religious, or any other kind.  They will never realize that
>>harmony in the world can only be achieved without the human race.
>>
>I certainly hope that you will eventually be proved wrong here.  I would
>like to blindly hope that there is a world down the road, where our
children
>or even theirs would have learned from all the mistakes of the previous
>generations enough, to be able to actually apply their knowledge
>intelligently towards a better existance for all concerned.
>
>Best regards,
>Aniko
>
>PS - I liked your quote also!

You are an optimist, Aniko.  Unfortunately, history of humankind teaches
us the otherway.

Agnes

Dear Andy:
I decided to SNIP all of the text to save time. thank you for writing.
I agree that there are lots of problems with organized religion a(per
your comment on women priests, etc.). I do not knwo exactly who or why
but in the old days it was acceptable for priests to marry and have
children. Of course this does make sense -- after all they are supposed
to counsel you with /about wife and children -- I find it a bit difficult
to understand how they might know better than me about kids when they did
not go through the s same processes.

Also, I agree that women are mistreated in many religions -- I do not agree
with that it should be that way!

I did not mean to (and I am sorry if it came across that way) to lump ALL
Canadians under one liberal umbrella. -- in fact I do believe thta one of
my previous posts I Clearly state that there are good and bad,
conservative, liberal, etc. in all peoples. It just seemed to me that the
people who are on this list who repsonded were mostly liberals and were
from Canada.

I disagree with your definition of forward looking (I rather have human
looking).  Sorry for the typos but this system is hiccuping once in a while.

Thanx. Peter

At 11:46 AM 10/8/96 -0400, Joe Szalai wrote in connection with my review of
Horn's autobiography:

>At this point, Eva Balogh writes:
>
>>        And here one ought to pause a little bit especially when one comes
>>to Horn's description of what Rostov was like in those days. Miserable,
>>especially after 1952! People were starving, including the students. Yet,
>>after spending four years in Rostov he returned to Hungary and merrily
>>embarked on building socialism the Soviet way. It is so hard to follow the
>>thinking of people like Horn. Surely, he saw everything which was bad in
>>Stalinist Russia and yet he didn't seem to have any doubts, or if he had any
>>they didn't interfere with his future career in the party and in the
>>government before and after 1956.
>
>Up to this point I was learning about Gyula Horn.  When I read the above I
>realized that I was learning about Eva Balogh.
>
>Why does she find it "so hard to follow the thinking of people like Horn"?
>I really don't understand her difficulty.

        Joe Szalai simply shows his ignorance of Stalinism when he comments
on my text in this manner. The Soviet Union in 1950 when Horn arrived in
Rostov was worse off economically than Hungary ever was under Horthy's
governorship. More important, Stalin's Russia was the most frightening
totalitarian dictatorship which had ever existed on the face of the earth up
to that point. It was the time of Gulag and other sweet and wonderful
things. You had to be blind and deaf not to realize that something was
amiss. Four years spent in Stalin's Soviet Union should warn you that
something is very wrong here. It is hard to imagine that with this kind of
experience behind you you come back to your country and build socialism the
Soviet way without at least questioning the premises.

>Eva Balogh
>can't empathize with Horn.  And a lack of empathy means a lack of
>understanding.  And a lack of understanding presents it's own problems.

        Eva Balogh was not trained as a psychiatrist but a historian. She is
not supposed to empathize but to analyze.

        Eva Balogh

At 12:03 PM 10/8/96 -0400, Zoltan Szekely wrote:

<snip>
>By the way, I have to ask a question if you still have idealism
>about the methods developed by communists against the 'enemy':
>why did not have Kadar Janos children?

Because he was a man.

Joe Szalai

At 08:42 PM 10/7/96 -0400, Joe Szalai wrote:

>OK!  Enough already!  Where do I send my financial contributions?

Try Jim Bakker. He just got out of jail and needs it to restart.

Gabor D. Farkas

Here are a few more:
kardigan -cardigan
pulover - pull over
trafik - (traffic) for tobacconists, etc.
telefon -- telephone
televizio - television
manadzser - manager
dzsungel - jungle
kapacitor - capacitor
komputer - computer
frekvencia - frequency
platform - ditto
lift - ditto
ultra - ditto
reflektor - reflector
disk - ditto
akkumlator - accumulator (as in battery)
strategia - strategy
analizis - analysis
intelligens - intelligent
programm - ditto
szoftver - software
hardvare - hardware
modositas - modification (mod)
informatika - informatics
trendek - trends
projekt - project
civil - ditto
informalis - informal
deconcentralt - deconcentrated
koordinacio - coordination
integracio - integration
ombudsmanok - ombudsmen
formalis - formal
szfera - sphere
cetralizas - centralize
totalis - total
koncepcio - concept
autonom - autonomy
liberalis - liberal
konkret - concrete
program - ditto
szuper - super
szia - see ya!
 (except in this case they got it backwards)
problema - problem
radikalis - radical
pszeudo - pseudo
privatizacio - privatization
regionalizmus - regional
koalicio - coalition

I guess this ought to give you some examples of Hungarians using English!
Peter Soltesz

Agnes - At 04:03 PM 08/10/96 GMT, you wrote:

>You are an optimist, Aniko.  Unfortunately, history of humankind teaches
>us the otherway.
>Agnes

Hi there!

You're bang on with your observation.

I believe that the key word above is "history".  I choose to continue my
blind hope aiming to that of "tomorrow".  Whenever that tomorrow may come, I
hope that the upcoming generations will continue to learn from history in
order to keep up the progess  ... little by little ... to the point when
humankind will have something truly worthwhile to share with, and, brag
about to their great-grand-children:).

Best regards,
Aniko

At 12:03 PM 10/8/96 -0400, Sz. Zoli wrote:

>O.K. call Father Kennedy a religious extremist. Don't bother
>yourself that national television airs him all around the
>country as main line evangelical preacher..

So, now the liberal, anti-religious, etc. national television is relevant.
Or is it?

>But you can not call the Beszelo (an SzDSz related organ) a
>religious extremist journal. It would be very (EXTREMELY!!! :-)
>funny... This liberal newspaper supports every word Father
>Kennedy had to say about the GULAG.

I fail to understand the logic here. OK, a liberal journal describes the
realities of the Gulag, and so does this Father Kennedy. So what? What is
the relationship between this and all the other stuff about the schools
where they supposedly teach children to do this and that?

>As about the 'unspeakable sufferings' of women who were
>handled as 'enemy of the people' in the GULAG, a very cruel
>artificial abortion method was developed by the GULAG guards.
>I don't want to talk about it too much (you find the details
>in the Beszelo), just mention that it was related to a bunch
>of fire ants, a plastic pipe and the woman sitting there with
>tied hands and legs. It is unspeakable, indeed.

Again, what is this stuff doing here? What is its relationship with a thread
called Amazing America?

>By the way, I have to ask a question if you still have idealism
>about the methods developed by communists against the 'enemy':
>why did not have Kadar Janos children?

At least Joe Szalai gave an intelligent answer to this question.

Gabor D. Farkas

At 08:56 PM 10/8/96 -0400, Peter Soltesz wrote:
<SNIP>

>I guess this ought to give you some examples of Hungarians using English!

Or rather some examples of the common Greek and Latin origins of some
English and Hungarian words (although a few of the examples are indeed valid).

Gabor D. Farkas

According to tomorrow's Nepszabadsag there are 30,000 homeless in Hungary.
This corresponds 750,000 in the US (proportionally), a number close to the
real numbers (according to some). Here is an area where, sadly, Hungary
caught up with the US.

Gabor D. Farkas

Some more of the discussion on the "Ten Untaught Lessons" thread, from
the Habsburg list.

Sincerely,

Hugh Agnew

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 20:04:26 -0600 (MDT)
From: Helen Liebel-Weckowicz >

Charles Ingrao has joined Michael Howard in looking for some lessons in
history, and lessons associated with diplomatic history and nationalist
ideology.  [See Michael Howard, _The Lessons of History_ (Oxford: OUP,
1991, ppb 1993)].  The Balkans have always posed a problem to Western
Europe, at least since the conquest of the Byzantine Empire. They do not
belong to Central Europe as such and Balkan historians like L.S.
Stavrianos do not use the concept of Central Europe at all. Supported by
Russia, Serbia confronted the decaying Habsburg Monarchy at the end of the
nineteenth century and worked within annexed Bosnia-Herzegowina to gain
control of that region.

     Before this century trade with the Balkan part of the world, and the
rest of the Ottoman Empire, made for rivalry between the French and
English for the Levant trade. In the nineteenth century the British tended
to support the Ottoman sultan in Stambul while the Russians and Austrians
vied for hegemony in the Balkans.  But here East and West meet at an
interface, and the adage that East is East and West is West does not
really apply. The basic religious schism between the eastern and western
forms of Christianity goes back over a thousand years and complicates the
language issue and sense of national identity.  The communist dictatorship
of Tito may have plastered over the cracks because he had some support
from the British who considered the Adriatic region one of their spheres
of influence and still had the naval power to back it up, while Stalin did
not.  All of that has changed.  The neutrality of Austria, anchored in the
1955 peace treaty, led to the development of some discomfort in Austria at
the time of Tito's demise. There was a fear that unrest in the Balkans
would lead to a Soviet intervention with tanks, as in 1956 in Hungary, and
that those tanks would have to go via neutral Austria.  But that scenario
did not develop because the UN was able to maintain peace keeping forces
in the Balkans and ensured the mostly peaceful emergence of national
states, all republics.  Bosnia proved to be an exception. The breakup of
the Soviet Union produced enough dislocation in the greater Russian region
to bring about Russian and Ukrainian cooperation in the UN effort. But the
Russians do tend to support the Serbs as in the past and have said that
war crimes trials do not serve any useful purpose.

     Wilson's idea (Fourteen Points) of the self-determination of peoples
has become an acknowledged right in international law. Short of brutal
conquests, hardly any of the Balkans peoples would willingly accept
another multi-national empire. American policy has long been open to the
influence of some of the huddled masses who came through Ellis Island.
These do include Serbs, Croats, Slovenians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Poles,
Austrians. The nationalist movements in Europe have their voice in the
American ethnic press (which most historians who do not have such
background cannot read). (I remember that one of my profs used to pay $5
for translations from Serb books).  In consequence of the political
influence of the ethnic vote, American policy cannot always mesh with that
of the British who do not take in millions of immigrants and who do not
sympathize with the peoples involved.

      While the Germans were thinking of which German princely house to
set upon a Polish, a Lithuanian, and a Finnish throne, Paderewski played
for Wilson in the White House and Czech leaders like Thomas G. Masaryk got
a sympathetic hearing. It has always served US interests to support
"democratic", at least republican, independence movements, a system that
began with US independence and with the Latin American rebellions in the
nineteenth century.

      Before the strong military intervention in 1995, no cease fire
(before Carter's) lasted more than a few days, at most a month.  One
wonders whether the current election result will stabilize the situation
and what will develop after the peacekeeping troops depart. The
multi-ethnic, supranational stabilizing force today lies not in imposed
solutions, rather it depends on international law and whatever
international peacekeeping powers,the UN included, can do to achieve a
long and enduring peace.

Helen Liebel-Weckowicz
History and Classics
University of Alberta
Canada

Here's another comment on the "10 Untaught Lessons", from the Habsburg
list.

Sincerely,

Hugh Agnew

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
                     Comments on Charles Ingrao,
   "Ten Untaught Lessons about Central Europe: An Historical Perspective"
         by Solomon Wank, Franklin and Marshall College (Emeritus)
                      ,fandm.edu>

Historians of Central Europe are indebted to Charles Ingrao for his
trenchant synthesis of the deeper historical currents that lay behind the
horrible splintering of Yugoslavia. My admiration for Ingrao's
intellectual daring is in no way lessened by my disagreement with him on
the relevance to Central Europe of the supranational Habsburg experience.
My comments are taken from a forthcoming essay by me: "Some Relections on
the Habsburg Empire and Its Legacy in the Nationalities Question," in
_Austrian History Yearbook_ 28 (1997).

        I don't think that the Habsburg legacy can, in practical terms,
help us very much.  The Habsburg imperial ideology was indeed explicitly
supranational, but it was rooted in feudal, dynastic and Catholic
universalistic concepts, that are quite different and distant from modern
ideas of international organization and those of a federation or
confederation composed of free and equal states and peoples. In any event,
the Habsburg Empire, after 1867, hardly was a supranational state; in
fact, if not in theory, the Habsburg elite was basically national in
character, defending German-Magyar rule as the foundation for maintaining
the Empire's position as a Great Power.  Moreover, the political structure
did not conduce to settling the differences between nationalities in ways
that would allow them to live together. According to Gerald Stourzh, the
noted historian of Austrian nationalities law, the net result of
government tactics and court rulings in cases involving nationality rights
in Cisleithania was the alienation of the nationalities from one another
and from the idea of the unified state, and the ethnicizing of Austrian
politics.  Thus, Emperor Franz Joseph, in his efforts to preserve as much
as possible of the imperial structure in the face of forces eroding it,
contributed, against his will, to the strengthening of the national
consciousness of the various nationalities.  Even the renowned Moravian
Compromise of 1905 was not a compromise at all, but a separation of Czechs
and Germans -- pacification by separation as it were.  Not only were
individuals compelled to choose a Czech or German national identity, but
inclusion in one or the other national registry was not a matter of
individual decision: nationality was determined by imperial authorities on
the basis of "objective" criteria. That practice had terrible
consequences, especially for Jews, in post-1918 Austria and Centreal
Europe.  Such were the contradictions of Habsburg supranationalism.

        Ingrao does not mention the European Union, but it strikes me that
that political organization, lying between the nation-state and the
multinational state, is a more relevant model. I agree with Gale Stokes
that the appropriate solution for the lands of the European center must
ultimately be an enlarged European community. Ingrao proposes the creation
of Danubian and Southeast European states.  Wouldn't that recreate the
cramped existence and rivalries that have been the experience of Central
European societies in the past?  Wouldn't it be better for them to add
their rich literary and cultural traditions to Europe's wider diversity?
Isn't it time to say goodbye to Mitteleuropa and hello to Europe?

        I also disagree with Ingrao, and with Deak, that the Habsburg
Empire was not dysfunctional.  Deak points out that most of the
nationalities of the Empire desired independence. It follows that none of
them was prepared to identify themsleves with the existing Habsburg state.
That seems to me to describe a pretty dysfunctional state.  What gave the
empire a measure of stability and held its decline in check was a foreign
policy compulsion to preserve it. That compulsion derived from a strong
Germany committed to the political status quo in Austria-Hungary and its
preservation as a Great Power, and from the view of the other powers,
especially, England, that the Dual Monarchy's continued existence was
necessary to the proper functioning of the balance-of-power system.  World
War I undermined both of these conditions. The Allies, haunted by the
specter of German dominated Mitteleuropa, began to think seriously of a
"new" East Central European order as early as 1916, and Germany was
defeated.  But for the alliance with Germany and the "sheltered" position
that the Habsburg Empre had in the international system, Austria-Hungary
would have fallen victim to its many enemies cxonsiderably sooner than
1918.

        With regard to the Treaty of Versailles, I find it somewhat
contradictory that Ingrao urges journalists and statesmen to eschew
oversimplified explanations of the Bosnia crisis while at the same time
citing the Versailles treaty as the source of all of the international
calamities since 1919.  Were there no other historical forces at work?
And were the Versaille treaty and the Paris Peace conference complete
failures? With all of its strains, the order in Central Europe legitimized
at Paris still endures. Indeed, one could say that it has been extended by
the declarations of independence of "second tier" states such as Croatia,
Slovenia and Slovakia.  The delayed and frequently interrupted (mainly by
the imposition of empires) process of nation-state formation in Central
Europe is nearing its belated end. Nothing much will be gained by the
European Union and the United States thwarting the process once again by
forcing Serbs and Croats to live in a Bosnian state against their will.
Nation-states are historically contigent phenomena; they will not last
forever. Developments in Western Europe appear to herald their
approaxching decline as the basis for a modern polity.  But developments
in Central Europe point to their continued existence in a period of
transition, that is until the European Union says, "Come on in.".

The "world famous American song" is a church hymn,  not American, but
British, written by John Newton, Anglican vicar,  in 1779; it has nothing
to do with the American "spirit of freedom" Zoltan Szekely sees in it, and
the connection,  with Rev. Kennedy's sermon seems far-fetched. John Newton
had been a "guard" in the British Gulag of his days: he was a slaver, i.e.,
worked on ships in the slave trade; "once an infidel and a libertine, a
servant of slaves in Africa," as he wrote of himself, "[who] was by the
rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ preserved, restored,
pardoned, and appointed to preach the Faith he had long labored to
destroy." (from his tombstone). At the age of 40, he was ordained, and
dedicated himself to quiet parish work in and around London. The first two
lines of the hymn, which Szekely does not quote:

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!

show tha kind of contrition that is all too rare among those Christians who
would rather revel in hatred than follow the plea from the Cross: "Father,
forgive them...."

Louis Elteto


>At 05:10 PM 10/7/96 -0400, Zoltan Szekely wrote:
>
>>Yeah, America is amazing! And I just love it.
>>
>>I sang the world famous American song, Amazing Grace, together with thousands
>>of people in the weekend. Everybody was so happy that it is hard to express.
>>This is the real American spirit, the spirit of freedom and love.In my
>>opinion
>>this is the best American song ever written. (Everybody knows the musics of
>>this song in Hungary too, but they don't know the words. They don't know,
>>that
>>it is a beautiful Christian song. Why? Because you sell them America without
>>the real content, without the real American spirit, which is so intimately
>>related with God through love.)
>>
>>  "I once was lost
>>   Now am free,
>>   Was blind
>>   But, now I see."
>>
>>In his weekend sermon Father Kennedy spoke about the "new kind of men", a
>>fabrication of the communists by their utterly atheistic and antihuman
>>philosophy. This kind of "new man" was completely revealed in the guards of
>>the GULAG. He spoke about the "unspeakable sufferings" e.g. woman prisoners
>>had to endure in GULAG at the hands of these guards. Their acts were the acts
>>of the cruelest kind of men in the history of the mankind. (You may also read
>>about this in the special report about the GULAG killing techniques of the
>>Beszelo, an SzDSz related organ, which appeared a couple of years ago.)
>>
>>Father Kennedy was completely right. This man knows what he is talking about.
>>You can not be renewed without God.
>>
>>Billy Graham had his Carolina crusades in Charlotte, NC. At the evening I
>>atteneded, I listened to him surrounded by a cheering crowd of 72,000 people.
>>(Of course, you say, 72thousand 'extreme rightwinger fundamentalists'... ;-)
>>Now, this was the famous American spirit!! That is why we call America an
>>amazing country! You have these guys as Billy Graham, and more like that,
>>people are busy listening to them. .............
>
>OK!  Enough already!  Where do I send my financial contributions?
>
>Joe Szalai

Further discussion of the "10 Untaught Lessons" from the Habsburg list.

Sincerely,

Hugh Agnew

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 17:03:36 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jeremy King >

I will join in the admiring chorus, however briefly, in order to state my
general agreement with Prof. Wank, but my specific disagreement on
an important point.

Yes, the Moravian Compromise of 1905 constituted a lurch forward into the
national problem, not a sidestepping of it. Yes, Stourzh is superb. Yes,
Hungary after 1867 greatly resembled a nationalizing nation-state.

But Austria as a land ruled over by Germans? ("in fact, if not in theory,
the Habsburg elite was basically national in character, defending
German-Magyar rule as the foundation for maintaining the Empire's position
as a Great Power.") I see no Austro-Hungarian symmetry here at all, and
disagree with Prof. Wank most emphatically. The 1867 Compromise was not
between Hungarians and Austro-Germans, but between Hungarians (or a
self-appointed Hungarian elite) and the House of Habsburg. To see matters
otherwise would be akin to falling for the old error of seeing Joseph II's
linguistic Germanification efforts as national in inspiration. True,
German-speakers and even Germans generally stood closer to the levers of
power in the Austrian half of the Dual Monarchy than did Czechs, Slovenes,
and others (national, supranational, subnational, etc.). But this pattern
became _less_ typical with the passage of time rather than _more_ so, and
in any case, closeness is quite different from possession.  (Possession,
in turn, is 90% of ownership -- here I join Prof. Wank in looking more to
the facts of the 1867 Compromise than to the theory:  Hungarians, whatever
the letter of the law might have read, ran the show inside Hungary.)

The outcome in both halves of the Monarchy was more or less the same:
nationalization of the entire population. But the dynamics differed
greatly. In Hungary, one nation controlled the state (except, of course,
for foreign policy, the joint army, etc. -- significant exceptions indeed)
and used it to great effect in struggles against other nations and against
non-nations. In Austria, _no_ nation controlled the state. Or at least no
nation controlled any particular organ of the state throughout the land.
Rather, Czechs held Town Hall A, Germans Town Hall B, etc., and
imperial-royal officials presided over the whole crypto-democratic,
anger-filled mess.

Arguably the second model was the more lethal one: nations, more evenly
matched, could flay one another all the better; and Jews, rather than
having a clear target toward which to assimilate for a long sweep of time,
ended up falling (or being pushed) between the national stools.  More Jews
survived the Holocaust in Hungary than in Bohemia perhaps because in the
former place, they were _Hungarian_ Jews, while in the latter, they were
simply Bohemian ones -- rather than Czech or German. By saying this, I by
no means intend to whitewash the record of Hungarian oppression -- or
anti-Semitism, for that matter! The only thing more tragic than the
Hungarian embrace of the inevitable (the saturation of Central Europe with
the national idea) was the Habsburg resistance to it.

To sum up: the Habsburg Monarchy, after 1867, presents two faces to the
world. It is my understanding of Prof. Ingrao's essay that, when he writes
of tolerance, supra-national institutions, and the like, he refers to the
pre-1867 whole or the post-1867 Austrian half (plus the joint institutions
and, from 1878, the jointly administered Bosnia-Herzegovina). That half
most certainly was not run by or for Germans!

Jeremy King
Mount Holyoke College

Dear P.Soltesz,

I guess there are some problems with your list of English words in Hungarian.
Some of them actually latin or greek originally and transfered to the English
and Hungarian language independently or first to the English and then from
the English to the Hungarian.

telefon -- telephone
televizio - television
kapacitor - capacitor  *
frekvencia - frequency *
ultra - ditto          -
akkumlator - accumulator (as in battery)
analizis - analysis    -
intelligens - intelligent -
szfera - sphere -
autonom - autonomy -
liberalis - liberal
pszeudo - pseudo -
privatizacio - privatization
regionalizmus - regional -
koalicio - coalition

*: means I am not sure about its origin
-: means clearly latin or greek origin

J.Zs