MARIA M. KovAcs
667
closed doors, in almost secrecy during the short months preceding the
roundtable negotiations in the spring of 1989. Even the desperate in–
fighting between the outgoing communists and the incoming opposition
took place in the total absence of mass publicity, not to speak of mass
mobilization. This was the trade-off - arguably an acceptable one - that
Hungary made for its uniquely peaceful, orderly, and smooth transition.
This lack of mass mobilization has led to a paradoxical situation.
It
was precisely the absence of mass politics, of a large social movement, of
unrest that gave various groups inside the intellectual opposition the
freedom to literally dream up a diversified party structure, one that could
in the future comfortably accommodate many shades of political
opinion. It gave them the freedom to mastermind an exemplary,
pluralistic framework. However, the same absence of mass participation
allowed Hungarian intellectuals to construct a multi-party system that
reflected predominant divisions not within society at large but within the
intelligentsia itself. As a result, Hungary's new pluralistic party system is
largely an outcome of the pluralism among the intellectuals and reflects
the special concerns of intellectuals. For example, there are
anticommunist cosmopolitan intellectuals in one party, anticommunist
populist intellectuals in another; anticommunist intellectuals with histories
of active dissent in one party, anticommunist intellectuals with passive
resistance records in another; Jewish intellectuals in one party, non-Jewish
intellectuals in another. And bordering on the comical, there are
historians in one party and philosophers in another.
The party structure created by this peculiar class of intellectuals has
already been put to the test. The balance sheet for its first year is, at best,
uneven. To its credit, the ruling conservative-populist coalition is defi–
nitely moving in a pragmatic direction in its economic policies. On the
other hand, it is desperately trying to preserve and inflate the political
value of the most divisive intellectual issues to which it owes its very
existence. This coalition is also working to increase the symbolic, ideo–
logical distance between itself and the liberal opposition. The ritual in–
vocation of controversial prewar symbolism attached to the intellectual
traditions of the political right, the partisan identification of such sym–
bolism as the only legitimate framework of Hungarian national identity
and culture, are just two of those emotionally overcharged issues. Such
divisions have already, in one year alone, made communication and
compromise between the two major groups, the Forum and the Free
Democrats, virtually impossible. This stalemate between the major parties
does not bode well for the prospect of a flexible realignment of coali–
tions in Hungary's emerging five- or six-party system.
The ambiguity of the public toward this peculiar political class of
intellectuals is revealed by some puzzling features that have emerged from
