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After 1945: Cold War, Cold Peace
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contribution to the launch of Mihály Fülöp’s book, The Unfinished Peace: the Council of Foreign Ministers and the Hungarian Peace Treaty of 1947 at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 3 May 2013Why did the attempts to establish...
Hány Európa, pontosan?
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Kívülről úgy néz ki, mint egy unió, mint egy szépen integrált nemzetközi szervezet, amely hűen tartja magát az „egység a sokféleségben” elvéh...
The Raven – a much maligned bird
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Human societies frequently make attributions to animals. Foxes are cunning, bears hug you, badgers badger you (for some reason), the eagle is noble, the sparrow is chirpy and so on. But it’s hard to think of another animal that has such a hard...
Serbia and Hungary
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There is an exhibition of Serbian religious art in Hungary currently at the Balassi Institute, Brussels. The opening was held on 13 February; this is an edited text of my remarks. A video version of what I said can be found here. We have bee...
Kurdish issue in Turkey
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A debate was held in the European Parliament on the 6 February to discuss the Turkish-Kurdish dialogue. This is a slightly edited version of my contribution.The Kurdish problem was built into the Turkish political system from the outset. The Kurdish...
Sándor Márai and Košice
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--> An exhibition was opened on the 4 December in the European Parliament to honour Sándor Márai, the great Twentieth Century Hungarian writer in connection with his city of birth, Košice-Kassa-Kaschau, becoming the European City of Cultu...
“The right side of history”
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--> I’ve come across this phrase twice in the last few days (here and here) and it’s a wonderful instance of a hidden normativity. First of all, it assumes that history has a purposiveness. I thought that this very Hegelian concept...
Sacred cows
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Are there sacred cows in democratic politics? Ideas, institutions, procedures that may not be questioned, criticised or challenged? The answer is yes, however surprising that may be, seeing that democracy is the grandchild of the Enlightenment and th...
Hegemony and liberalism
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There was an interesting thought in the TLS 17 & 24 August (“No cause for despair”, review by David Hawkes of Susan Hegeman, The Cultural Return, [paywall]). This is a review of culture and its development in the 20th century, and it offers t...
Nazi-Soviet collaboration
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The 23 August is the anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, signed by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in 1939. This formed the basis of the de facto Nazi-Soviet alliance on the basis of which the two totalitarian powers divided Central and Eas...
The Crisis in Europe IV
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There is one further dimension of the crisis that demands analysis and this is the European Union, together with the extent and intensity of integration and interdependence. In brief, Europe’s problem in this perspective is that integration has gon...
Bosznia-Hercegovina varázsa
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"A vallás politika, a lelkében azonban minden ember egy." Ezt a mondatot egy perzsa szőnyegkereskedő mondta, a Morica Han-ban, Szarajevóban. Hogy mennyire akart hízelegni, vagy éppen a multikulturalizmust egy mondatban minden tételében megc
Útinapló: 5 nap, 5 karika
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július 27. péntekKorahajnali indulás a Liszt Ferenc reptérről, a tömött géppel és egy ajándékba kapott órával korareggeli érkezés Lutonon. Csak találgatható, hogy az olimpiai-schengeni övezetbe való belépés előtt kígyózó mint...
The Crisis in Europe III
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Few of the assessments of the crisis look at society and the changes it has undergone in the last two decades. Occasionally mention is made of growing economic inequality, but what wider impact this might have is neglected. The proposition, that glob...
Crisis in Europe II
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A key aspect of the crisis is the weakening of self-regulation and self-limitation, both essential elements of democracy. Self-regulation is abiding by an overt set of voluntary rules, while self-limitation is the acceptance of the spirit of the rule...
Jan-Werner Müller’s latest encounter with Hungary
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Jan-Werner Müller has written a number of scholarly books and articles. I thought highly of several of his writings, but he loses all credibility when he writes about Hungary. And he does so often, it’s not going too far to suggest that he’s bec...
The Crisis in Europe Part I
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What we are looking at is far more than an economic crisis and far more than a crisis of European integration, even if much of the analysis chooses to explore it from this perspective. While the perspective is valid in itself, it has the consequence...
Genocide and Raphael Lemkin
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A Conference was held in Geneva on the 20 June 2012 to launch the Raphael LemkinInternational Prize for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities. I was asked to make a few concluding remarks. What is profoundly shocking, deeply disturbing...
A nagy álvita – avagy a Magyarországról szóló „vita” koregráfiájáról
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Amióta kirobbant a vita a magyar médiatörvényről a nemzetközi sajtóban, és amióta a Fidesz kétharmadot szerzett, több külföldön megrendezett vitán is jelen lehettem, ahol természetesen Schöpflin György is védte a mundér becsület
Transitions, some general thoughts
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The Sixth Annual Lennart Meri conference, organised by the Estonian International Centre for Defence Studies, was held in Tallinn on 11-13 May. I was asked to speak at a session entitled “Stolen Promises? Learning from the Ukrainian and Egyptian Re...
