Zwickl András szerk.: Árkádia tájain, Szőnyi István és köre 1918–1928. (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2001/3)

TANULMÁNYOK - GYÖRGY SZÜCS: Among the Décor of History - Pessimism and Quests for Intellectual Paths in the 1920's

GYÖRGY SZŰCS Among the Décor of History Pessimism and Quests for Intellectual Paths in the 1920's The half-century reign of emperor Francis Joseph encouraged many contemporaries to believe that the existence of the AustroHungarian Monarchy was an everlasting condition truly "ordained by God", a stable and settled state arrangement that might need some improvement but was essentially well-balanced. The establishment mostly ignored critical voices, the radical or moderate cultural and political theories that insisted on the inner problems of the dual system in the first decade of the 20

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1 century; and though "brave outspokenness" as journalistic sensationalism and wrangling might have worked up extremes of temper, it had no influence to change the government and social system in any way whatsoever. At first, even the outbreak of the First World War seemed to occasion the adding of lustre to imperial consciousness and the bolstering of nationalism, though - we now know - it was a signal that actually called for facing the inevitable historical processes. In the few months following the assassination of Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo, few would ponder with Béla Balázs whether "war means barbarism and moral decay"

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; and if we overlook the personal motives of the aesthetician seeking experience in both his personal relations and historical traumas in order to create masterpieces, we may certainly assert that he touched upon the very issue that was to determine the thought of the coming decades. After the four short years between the death of Francis Joseph (191 a) and the signing of the Trianon Peace Treaty - years burdened by a lost war, revolutions and border changes -, in other words, after the "great tragedy", the curtain rose again in front of a debilitated and dumbfounded nation. Politicians of the official Hungary (István Bethlen), philosophers (Gyula Kornis) and historians (Gyula Szekfű) all had to find valid responses to historical challenges to be able to work out the practical solutions for resuscitating the nation after its fracturing by historical cataclysms and for restoring continuity with pre-war Hungary. Men of letters sought to explain the events, to provide grips amid the changed conditions whereby the causal relations of the desperate situation of the country could be deliberated upon in a way that would be both rationally acceptable and open to emotional identification. It is no wonder that Gyula Szekfű's Három nemzedék (Three Generations), first published in 1920, became the Bible of the period; the "Christian-nationalist order" that emerged after the revolutions heartily welcomed its originally detached and objective train of thought, Szekfű's book provided it with the historical corroboration of the idea that the liberal mentality that had prevailed in the period between István Széchenyi and István Tisza, "the greatest Hungarian of that waning age", was to be held responsible for the mournful events of the recent past: "...there is general agreement that the recent past with its liberalism was a deviant period from which we can only rise out of by organic work, by promoting truly national traditions", wrote Szekfű in his preface to the first edition." Facing up to the moral step of participating in the Károlyi revolution, Oszkár Jászi provided a contrary reading of the reasons of the collapse of the Monarchy, who, far from the genuine possibility of political action, as an American college professor, could only hope that his "political testament" would be used by future times. The English manuscript of The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy was ready for print by 1927 but was published only 19292 Jászi evaluated the operation of each of the cohesive components of the Monarchy, the dynastic government, the army, the Church, the administration, etc., and then contrasted them with the dynamics that had been concentrated on "the drama of increasing national discord" and the unresolvedness of the problem of national minorities. The conclusion he arrived at was unequivocal: the dissolution of the Monarchy was not the result of any external influence, the World War in particular, but that of an organic process that had long been evolving. In spite of all his resignation, initial unwillingness, Jászi had felt obliged to write the book not only because he had lived through the former quarter century as a history-shaping politician, but because he experienced a tendency gaining force among both victor and defeated nations that helped decrease the sense of responsibility for past events and secure momentary diplomatic advantages by revising the facts of history through connecting them with the present. "Falsified history always poisons action and piovides new possibilities for armed conflict."

4 The practical work based on national traditions that Szekfű hoped for was to be performed by Bethlen's government and his cultural minister, count Kunó Klebelsberg. Bethlen, upon being appointed prime-minister in the spring of 1921 , proclaimed "consolidation" for strengthening a dishevelled society: "I have been following the same direction in national politics for the past four years," as he was to stress his political principles in a few years time. "I proclaimed peace between social classes, denominations and Hungarians; I proclaimed that we would advance not at the price of and with the help of slogans and strife between