Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)
Pest-Buda from 1686 to 1849
The Centre of Political Life In addition to its leading role in the cultural life of the country, and partly as a result of it, the capital became the centre of political life from about 1830 onwards. Although Pozsony continued to be the seat of the Diet, the political attitude of its deputies was determined by the counties, and so the county assemblies became important political forums. The central political role of Pest was considerably strengthened by the fact that the general assemblies of Pest County, in the forefront of the struggle for social change, were held in the city itself. A form of organization which would extend political discussion and activity beyond the limits of the Diets and county assemblies, which would provide a meeting place for the supporters of reform among the nobility, the intellectuals and the bourgeoisie, was introduced by the initiator of the liberal reform movement, Count István Széchenyi, through the foundation in 1827 of the Nemzeti Kaszinó (National Club) in Pest after the English model. Following the establishment of this exclusive club, societies and political circles and clubs came into existence in quick succession ; the National Circle, the Pest Circle, the Opposition Circle, and the Society of the Ten, or Young Hungary, the group of young people gathering around the revolutionary poet Sándor Petőfi. The search for political structures reached its apex between 1840 and 1850 with the foundation of the two basic political parties, the Conservative Party and the Opposition Party. The National Club, the other clubs and circles, and the party quarters all provided convenient locations for the politicians of the capital to exchange ideas with their political friends up from the country for the great fairs or on private business, and to organize through them political movements in the countryside. In the development of Pest as the centre of political life even more important than these comings and goings was the fact that Pest was the place of origin and focal point of political journalism. The first important example of the Hungarian political press was the Pesti Hírlap, published from 1841 on, and founded by Lajos Kossuth, the leader of the struggle for national independence and social change. It was the newspaper with the largest circulation, and generated the main principles governing the nation-wide struggle for the transition to a bourgeois society and for national freedom and independence. In the footsteps of Pesti Hírlap followed the newspapers and press set up by the various political movements and parties, and it was through this political press, teeming with the most diverse ideas, that the city developed from the intellectual centre for the discussion and formulation of political ideas, into the centre of national political activities. Certainly, the prime movers of politics in Pest were not the citizens of the two towns themselves. The leaders of the political campaigns continued to be the nobility, and the champion of progressive ideas the gentry, and to an increasing extent the intellectuals of noble, bourgeois, and even lower-class origin, including the young students gathered round Sándor Petőfi, who campaigned for a transformation of society going far beyond the reform programme of the nobility. But the clashes between the various political trends, groups and parties were not only reflected in the press and did not only occur in the Diet and county assemblies or within the walls of the party precincts or clubs. The discussions of the young people advocating radical change, for instance, could also be heard at the Pilvax Café, which was also frequented by well-to-do citizens, and the young often expressed their likes or dislikes of certain politicians through noisy demonstrations, torch-light processions, or catcalls, down the streets of the city. 34
