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Those were
the days  The results
of a poll last week suggest that more than half of Hungarians preferred life
under the old communist dictatorship to that in the new millennium.
In a
telephone survey of 1,000 people conducted by market researcher Gfk Piackutató,
62% of respondents said that they were happiest in the period before the change
of system that swept across the region after the Berlin Wall was breached in
1989. This compares with a figure of only 51% in a similar poll in 2001.
The
proportion saying that the communist era was the worst time of their lives fell
from 20% to 13% over the same period, though this could be partly explained by
demographic changes. Only 14% of respondents said they have been happiest since
1990.
Elderly most nostalgic
Unsurprisingly,
elderly respondents were more likely to look back with nostalgia at life under
the old regime, particularly the less educated.
About 80%
of over-50s say they were happiest under János Kádár’s communist dictatorship,
while three-quarters of those in their forties agree. Even 55% of those who
were students or young adults during the dying days of the regime say they were
happiest before capitalism engulfed the region.
The
youngest group polled – the 15- to 29-year-olds – were, unsurprisingly, less
inclined to be nostalgic for a past they either did not experience or cannot
remember. Still, a quarter of this group believe life was better in the days of
the Pioneers, May Day parades and when the Russians were “the Friends”.
Some 80% of
those 50 years of age or older consider the time before the change of regime
happier. Nearly 75% of those aged 40-49, and 55% of those who were students and
young adults during the late 1980s concur, whereas only 24% of those aged 15-29
agree.
There was
even an elderly group – making up 11% of the sample – who believe that life was
most beautiful before the Second World War.
The results
of the poll are in line with the findings of other countries that were once
part of the Warsaw Pact that buffered the Soviet Union
from the “imperialist” West. The phenomenon of East Germans hankering for the
past – known as Ostalgia – was highlighted by the 2003 German film Goodbye
Lenin. It tells the story of two East Berlin
teenagers who, fearing the shock will kill her, recreate the socialist world to
pretend to their sick mother, who emerged from a coma after the change of
system, that the Wall is still up and nothing has changed.
A poll in
2003 on the fiftieth anniversary of his death showed that more than half of
Russians believe the once dreaded Joseph Stalin’s contribution to their
country’s history to have been positive. A fifth of them went so far as to
agree that the arch tyrant was “wise and humane”. Tellingly, his popularity is
particularly strong amongst those who are too young to remember him.
In Hungary,
Kádár’s “if you’re not against us, you’re with us” regime allowed a degree of
economic freedom that provided – albeit rudimentary – universal healthcare and
full employment. Its society was far freer than the monolithic “normalised”
states of East Germany or Czechoslovakia, and certainly the tyranny over
the border in Ceaucescu’s Romania.
This earned the Magyar nation the moniker “happiest barracks in the communist
camp”.
Hungarian
film maker Róbert Koltai has been churning out winsomely nostalgic films about
life in 1960s Hungary
for years. Television series from the 1980s such as the concrete housing estate
soap Neighbours and Linda, about a pint-sized karate-kicking girl detective,
are regularly repeated. There is even a website – retronom.hu – where people
can post pictures of Lake Balaton in the 1970s and trade communist-era
artifacts such as toasted sandwich makers, Trabant cars and Tisza
shoes.
Disappointment
Pundits
quoted by the daily Népszabadság last week said the poll’s findings reflect a
yearning for a sense of security. Pál Tamás, a sociologist from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences research department,
told the paper that the results are not due to nostalgia for the old political
system.
“Generally,
the region was less happy in the 1990s than Western Europe,”
he said, adding that an East German worker was typically less happy than a West
German on the dole. Tamás explained the resurgence in Ostalgia since the regime
change as a reflection of a widespread feeling that, “I was promised a lot but
received little.”
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