Történelem, politika és nemzeti habitus

In his paper, the author reflects on Mikós Hadas’ keynote essay, acknowledging its merits on several points while arguing with certain elements of the keynote essay’s approach, as well as several of its claims. First, it acknowledges that it makes sense to operate with such – seemingly uncertain – concepts as the deep past in the analysis of our times. We have forgotten this concept in the past thirty years, however it makes sense to use it and the expression has interpretative power. The author however argues with the deep past interpretation of Hadas on several points perceiving it in these cases to be somewhat one-dimensional. It is quite disturbing that at times Miklós Hadas diverges from the objective process-analysis of the first part of his essay to a rather one sided interpretation of the present in the second part, instead of focusing on the complexity of his own past interpretation. This can be seen especially in two cases: in the description of Fidesz and the so called “communities of hate” that span across systems. The author holds these two strands of the keynote essay to be less successful. In the last part of his study the author outlines the three key areas of an alternative interpretation of the present and in this context formulates three strong propositions. 1. Hungarian development is not a dead-end; 2. The recurring problem of Hungarian politics is the restoration following regime changes – we need to get to know this system-logic much more thoroughly than we do today; 3. Fidesz’s steps and politics can not be evaluated by themselves, that is, any interpretative attempt that examines Fidesz detached from its rivals will have limited explanatory power.