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believe that intellectuals will permanently occupy the place of man–
agers, revolutionaries, secret servicemen, bureaucrats, or priests. True,
intellectuals are the kind of people who are able to learn quickly how
to perform in all these occupations. But the professors of under–
stanQing are only masquerading in these temporary roles. All in all, I
do not believe that intellectuals will permanently remain in a posi–
tion to aspire to a decisive role either in politics or in the economy.
I could not agree more. Current events suggest that the further the
Hungarian transition proceeds, the more likely it is to trigger a massive
flight of intellectuals away from the political arena. This process has
already led some prominent intellectuals in Eastern Europe to conclude
that the "class of intellectuals" has fatally failed in its new political role.
At a June conference at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington,
Alexander Smolar, advisor to the first post-transition Polish Prime
Minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, described Mazowiecki's defeat in the
presidential elections as "the fall of the Polish intelligentsia." The
intelligentsia, he argued, could and should have performed much more
successfully if only it had been able to recognize the political realities of
post-transition Poland more clearly. Had Polish intellectuals devised a
more accurate diagnosis and a more elaborate response to Poland's
realities, they could have preserved their leading positions in the political
structure. In the absence of such a response, however, the sympathies of
the public inevitably turned towards appeals of a populist-authoritar–
ian
natur~,
represented by the political circle of Lech Walesa.
Contrasting this analysis to events in Hungary, I would put forward
a different thesis. Rather than ascribing the "fall" of the intellectuals to
mistakes in strategy, in formulating diagnoses and responses, it is possible
to see the massive withdrawal of intellectuals from politics, whether
voluntary or not, as part of a larger, regional process. Why? The case of
Hungary may provide some interesting clues.
In most accounts of the changes in Eastern Europe, Hungary is sin–
gled out for its uniquely balanced party structure: a strong government
coalition of right-of-center parties on the one hand (Hungarian Demo–
cratic Forum, Christian Democrats and Smallholders), and a strong lib–
eral opposition (Free Democrats and Young Democrats) on the other.
In the happy absence of a significant residual Communist party, it is said,
the political outcome will be dependent upon the relative strengths of
the conservatives and the liberals. Thus it seems that a peaceful and or–
derly transfer of power from conservatives to liberals or vice versa is now
at least theoretically possible. In purely technical terms, this might be a
correct description. In reality, the problem with this ideally balanced
party structure is that its constituent parts were put together behind
