Habersack, Sabine - Puşcaş, Vasile - Ciubotă, Viorel (szerk.): Democraţia in Europa centrală şi de Sud-Est - Aspiraţie şi realitate (Secolele XIX-XX) (Satu Mare, 2001)
Szász Zoltán: Încercări de democratizare în Ungaria secolului XX.
încercări de democratizare Democratization Attempts in XX-th century 's Hungary In 1989, the Hungarian party, embodiment of the communist power, changed its name in Socialist Party and decided to build a society on the basis of political pluralism. By taking this decision, it was made an international significance political step. In other words, it was an attempt to conduct the country to a modernization which - with natural deficiencies - it proved itself to be normal in Occidental and Central Europe, from historical and human point of view. Since then, it passed more than a decade. The system transformation came to an end and the old system can't be restorated. But which were the trials, the democratization experiments in XX-th century, in a Hungary known from outside more as a conservative country ? There are no detailed papers in order to illustrate democratization. At the end of the 60's, the Hungarian historiography already left dogmatism, still we can offer just a pretty uncertain sketch of democratization trend. In XIX-th century, the dominant liberal concept proposed for Hungary was the helping out of the productive branches and, through flowering, the access into political life. In contrast, at the end of XIX-th century it was set up the concept of social protectionism, promoting the helping of weakened branches. This was the well known “agrarian” structure. The liberalism from 1867 brought an important economic flowering, the result of this system being the modernization of Hungary. But the development of the country wasn't well-balanced. There were stagnant social groups and the system, because of the social and national tensions couldn't make big steps on the way of democratization. In 1910 it was made a strong antidemocratic turning point: the signing of a pact between the great landowners and capital, so the party of Count Tisza erased the social politics and general suffrage. At the beginning of XX-th century there were two main trends with same purpose: the bourgeois radicals and the socialist movement. As concerns the Horthy regime, with all modernization efforts, didn't gave up its noteworthy antidemocratism. Later, the so called “popular writers” (Illyés Gyula, Németh László, Szabó Z., Veres P.) became the exponents of democratization endeavours. They were looking for “the third way” between capitalism and socialism, a way were agrarian reform and peasant democracy would dominate. In 1945 one can notice a democratical development, yet limited by several factors (there were numerous partisans of the old regime; the 43
