Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 2000 (17. évfolyam, 58-61. szám)
2000 / 58-61. szám
mortality (P. Józan) and other demographic topics. P. Demény points out that the 20^ century Hungarian experience does not support certain tenets of the transition theory and emphasizes that the secular decline of fertility (and its consequence, aging) was a success story not induced by government policies but was mainly the resultant sum of individual decisions, while Gy. Vukovich surveying some aspects of population policy argues for concrete measures to assure the level of simple reproduction. In conclusion, this is an invaluable collection of papers for anyone interested in population history, research, and the history of peoples in Central Europe. George T. F. Acsádi BOOKS (Continued) Ignác Romsics, ed., WARTIME AMERICAN PLANS FOR A NEW HUNGARY: DOCUMENTS FROM THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE, 1942-1944. Highland Lakes, N.J.: Atlantic Research and Publication; Boulder CO,: Social Science Monographs, 1992; distributed by Columbia University Press. Pp. Xvii, 328. Cloth. Soon after America’s involvement in World War II, the Advisory committee on Post-War Foreign Policy was established in Washington. By offering selections from the records of this committee and its successors, Romsics makes an important contribution to the understanding of wartime American attitudes regarding Hungary. Three problems received attention in the Committee’s deliberations as far as Hungary was concerned: the issue of Hungary’s role in the post-war international organization of Eastern Europe, the question of her post-war boundaries, and the problem of her future system of government. American decision-makers favored the creation of some kind of a supra-national state in Eastern Europe, the primary purpose of which would have been to keep German and Russian influence at bay. Two plans for the federal reorganization of Eastern Europe were brought before the Committee. One of these envisaged a federation made up of the main constituents of the former Habsburg realm, while the other called for the creation of three federations in Eastern Europe: the Polish-Baltic, the Balkan, and a Central or “Danubian." The experts made short-shrift of these plans: they favored the creation of a single, large East European federal state. Concerning territorial questions, the experts concluded that on ethnic grounds, Hungary’s post-Trianon borders warranted adjustments. In particular, they called for the adjustment of Trianon Hungary's borders in places where the majority of the population was Hungarian: along Slovakia’s southwestern border, in southern Ruthenia, and in the northernmost areas of Serbia. As for Transylvania, the Committee recommended ceding to Hungary a strip of territory along her eastern border, and granting autonomy for the Székely districts in southeastern Transylvania. On the matter of Hungary's future system of government no one of influence in Washington contemplated the survival of Hungary's wartime elite in power. What Washington hoped for, was the establishment of a democratic, pluralistic, republican Hungary. American plans for post-war Hungary disintegrated during the last year of the conflict and in the immediate post-war era. The prime cause was the attitude and predominant strategic position of the Soviets in Eastern Europe, but there were other factors as well. In the question of Hungary’s boundaries, for example, the proposed adjustments in Hungary’s favor in the north and the south were abandoned because the governments of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were opposed to them. Still Another reason for jettisoning the earlier American stand on this issue was the British government’s support for restoring Hungary's pre-1938 borders. In 1947, even the hopes for a democratic government in Budapest faded, as the Soviets embarked on the liquidation of anti-communist parties in Hungary. N.F. Dreisziger Sakmyster, Thomas. HUNGARY’S ADMIRAL ON HORSEBACK: MIKLÓS HORTHY, 1918-1944. Boulder, Co.: East European Monographs, distributed by Columbia University Press, 1994. Pp. X, 476, illustrations. Easily the most controversial statesmen in modern Hungarian history, Admiral Miklós Horthy, Hungary’s head of state from 1920 to 1944, has been denounced as a right-wing dictator by some and hailed as a national hero by others. This political biography of him is free of the emotional overtones that characterized most earlier historical assessments. Sakmyster is critical of Horthy where criticism is due, and is sympathetic where sympathy is warranted. He laments the fact that in 1919-1920 Horthy was too slow to distance himself from right-radical officers who had been responsible for the White Terror. He expresses regrets over the paucity of concern that Horthy had for Hungary's poor peasants and workers. His other shortcomings were a lack of training for statecraft, a nineteenth-century political outlook, and a tendency to make hasty decisions. But Horthy also had commendable qualities: a gentlemanly sense of honour and a determination to persevere in times of adversity. Sakmyster concludes that it was largely due to Horthy that, before its occupation by the Wehrmacht in March, 1944, Hungary was "an island in the heart of Hitler's Europe where a semblance of the rule of law and a pluralistic society had been preserved...” Interestingly enough, it was Horthy’s negative and positive qualities that combined to bring about his, and his regime's, demise in October of 1944. It was his tendency to make hasty decisions that had contributed greatly to Hungary’s 1941 involvement in the war on Germany’s side in the first place, a war from which he soon felt he had to extricate his nation. His encouragement of incessant revisionist and anti-Bolshevik rhetoric during the interwar and early war years had resulted in the fact that his military was imbued with these sentiments and, when it came to abandoning these in an instant, could not make the switch. It was Horthy’s sense of honour that told him to negotiate Hungary’s exit from the war not only with the Allies (i.e. the Soviets) but also the Nazis that made his task even more difficult. And so it was that Horthy’s faults and virtues combined to make sure that he did not succeed in his greatest and most audacious undertaking. As is known, he and his family spent the balance of the war in German captivity and he never set foot on Hungarian soil again. All this is told in a balanced and sympathetic manner in a work that will no doubt long remain the most reliable biography of Horthy. One who reads it will probably come to the conclusion that Horthy is not so much a controversial figure of Hungarian history, but a tragic one. N.F. Dreisziger PROFILES The Institute for Hungarian Studies at Rutgers University The Institute for Hungarian Studies is the center of all instructional and scholarly activities related to Hungarian society, history, culture and language at Rutgers University. Established by an agreement between Rutgers and the Ministry of Culture and Education (Continued on page 11) 10 NO. 58-61, W1NTER/SPRING/SUMMER/AUTUMN 2000, HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER
