Ivan Berend remains deeply connected to his native Hungary,
though he has made a life for himself in Los Angeles, teaching and
studying European economic history at UCLA.
He still has an apartment in Budapest and tries to visit each
year. He serves on a council that advises the Hungarian government
on social-economic and other issues.
Berend says being away from the sometimes petty problems of
everyday life there helps him see trends in the way the country has
changed.
One year after the European Union admitted Hungary and other
so-called post-communist Eastern and Central European states,
Berend believes his nation’s transition from a state-owned
economy to a market system has been largely successful.
After Communist parties across the region collapsed or started
sharing power in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the EU began using
the promise of membership to encourage nations there to maintain
peace and pursue capitalist policies.
“I’m really following closely,” Berend said.
“If you talk to people there, they are complaining and
complaining.”
Still, “it takes time,” he said. “We should
indeed be satisfied with the progress.”
Reflecting on the recent past, Berend and other Hungarians at
UCLA say while their native country has joined the EU and coped
successfully with many challenges, obstacles remain planted clearly
in the future.
Day-to-day change
Physics Professor Karoly Holczer was in Hungary last summer for
three days. Before that, he hadn’t visited for four
years.
He has a mother and brother there, but finds little other reason
to go back to the place where he was born. Life and work have
naturally taken him in other directions, across an ocean and a
continent.
Hungary has changed a lot over the past few decades, Holczer
says ““ it’s like any other foreign country now, except
he speaks the language.
Still, he follows the news by reading the Hungarian papers
online.
Holczer says he has never been a supporter of Hungary’s
Communist party, but adds that the dualistic portrayal of Communism
in some American textbooks does not address the complexity of the
system’s effect on everyday life.
The shift to capitalism means while one segment of the
population gains, another inevitably loses, Holczer said.
“I walked up and down Budapest for 28 years without ever
needing to step over a homeless lying in the street,” he
said. “This is no longer the case.”
Along with the Berlin Wall, the quality of education in Hungary
has fallen, Holczer added.
His family lost property under Communism when he was one week
old, but he still became one of 30 people in his class to study
physics at the university years later.
“Yes, my family lost a lot of wealth,” he said.
“Surprise, surprise, I got a good education.”
The speed of economic change in Hungary and across Central and
Eastern Europe led to a rapid decline in living standards of many,
Berend said.
Though academics usually apply the term “shock
therapy,” indicating a more rapid transition to capitalism,
to a few Central and Eastern European nations, every state in the
region but Slovenia utilized the method, he said.
Hungary privatized its agricultural sector “from ear to
ear” in three years, causing the collapse of that industry. A
huge group of people dropped into poverty as a result, Berend
said.
Berend chaired a committee in 1989 that drafted a plan for the
Hungarian government regarding the transformation of the
country’s economy.
He says he believes the changes Hungary pursued in the beginning
of that process were too extreme, causing a sharp decline in the
nation’s income that could have been softened.
Even so, progress has been laudable, Berend said.
But problems remain, especially given that Hungary’s
movement toward democracy has been tied to its economic
transition.
In the disorganized brawl to rapidly privatize property and
goods, politicians became entrepreneurs, pocketing their
country’s wealth. People at the top of government exchanged
their power for actual capital, Holczer said.
“The structure of the power did not really change,”
Holczer said, calling the corruption “a nasty process and a
little bit unavoidable.”
He remembers watching television while visiting Hungary before
long-awaited elections there 15 years ago.
A man at a political event stood up and said two members of the
Communist party beat him in front of his family in 1951 because he
refused to join their organization, Holczer said.
“He said, “˜In 1956, I went and found them.’
… He went and killed these two people,” Holczer said.
“And the 50,000 people listening to him were starting to
cheer. And this to me was frightening.”
Holczer says he doesn’t like to talk about disappointment.
History is the only reality, so people must work with what they
have, he said.
He believes the EU’s greatest contribution to Central and
Eastern Europe is its stabilizing effect on an area brimming with
volatile emotions.
Of culture and hopes
As its contact with Western Europe increases, Hungary’s
culture is flourishing, says Johanna Domokos, a Hungarian lecturer
and writer. Imre Kertész, a Hungarian, won the Nobel prize for
literature in 2002.
“If the borders wouldn’t have been opened and Mr.
Kertész couldn’t have traveled in West Europe, then we
wouldn’t have this Nobel prize,” Domokos said.
Writers, artists and scientists all suffered under the closed
nature that marked Central and Eastern Europe following World War
II, she said.
Like Berend, Domokos retains close ties to Hungary. She was born
in Transylvania, a part of Romania with a large Hungarian minority,
and became a citizen of Hungary 15 years ago.
“It’s very, very important for me to know
what’s happening there and to read in my own language,”
she said. “These are like water and air, and the Hungarian
language is the basis of my existence. So it doesn’t change
that I am here in America.”
Anita Cservenka, a first-year undeclared student who was born in
Hungary and spent her elementary school years there, is one member
of a Hungarian club formed on campus a few months ago.
She says the group meets often to talk about politics or watch
old Hungarian films and reminisce about life overseas.
Cservenka keeps her culture alive by speaking with her parents
in their mother tongue, and stays up to date on her native country
by reading Internet publications. Sometimes she listens to
Hungarian radio in her dorm room.
When Cservenka tells people she is originally from Hungary, some
relate stories about their Hungarian friends, but others are less
informed.
“Some people have never heard of it,” she said.
“A lot of the times they question whether it’s in
Europe.”
Berend says when he was invited to join UCLA’s faculty a
decade and a half ago, the choice to leave Hungary was not an easy
one to make.
Now that he’s settled, he says he sees teaching about
Central and Eastern Europe as a mission.
Hungary and its neighbors lie in a region of the world often
left out of textbooks, and being at UCLA gives him the chance to
help students understand the area’s complexity, he says.
“I hesitated for a few months before I decided to
come,” Berend said. “I never regretted it.”