MARIA M.
KovAcs
GG9
unique is that not a single member of the party was ever involved in the
pre-transition infighting of Hungarian intellectuals. In fact, in the classical
sense of the word, there is not one intellectual in the party. In 1989, the
Young Democrats grew out of a semilegal youth group of law graduates
who had to be no older than thirty, and later thirty-five, years of age in
order to belong. With this single move, they simply closed their ranks to
the bitter and at time tribal divisions within the classical intelligentsia.
Politics for the Young Democrats also means something very differ–
ent from what it means to Hungarian intellectuals. It is a pragmatic, ev–
eryday affair with very little or no millennial overtones. Unlike most in–
tellectuals of the old school, the Young Democrats are not indignant at
the banality of political processes, or about the
alltag
character of demo–
cratic politics. What they are interested in is preserving the country in
one piece until the time when politics may indeed become a routine
af–
fair, handled by professional managers, professional secret agents, and
professional bureaucrats. They anticipate a future when historians, writers,
and philosophers may, or even will be forced to, abandon their masks,
and return to their own, divisive, unambivalent and at times even creative
intellectual routine.
VLADIMIR TISMANEANU
Romania
Almost four years ago, I participated in a conference in New York City,
"Will the Communist States Survive? The View from Within." That was
in October 1987, and Gorbachev's reforms had generated a widespread
state of euphoria. The rise of a revisionist leader in the
sanctum sanctorum
of the empire seemed to justify high expectations of rapid change. It was
obvious that the margin of permissiveness or, better said, the limits of the
Kremlin's tolerance of experimentation with reform had dramatically
changed. What had been absolute heresy under Brezhnev was enshrined as
the new party line under Gorbachev. For instance, the slogan "Socialism
with a Human Face" was embraced by the Soviet General Secretary and
designated as one of the major goals of
perestroika,
yet among us at the
conference there were also some skeptics.
I remember how the well-known Soviet dissident writer and logi–
cian Alexander Zinoviev ironically titled his contribution "Crocodiles
Cannot Fly." Miklos Haraszti, the Hungarian maverick intellectual and
