Volume 41, Number 14 · August 11, 1994
Post-Post-Communist Hungary
By Istvan Deak
'The Socialists might as well nominate Caligula's horse for a seat in Parliament. It would still be elected,' a fellow passenger told me as we traveled by train from Vienna to Budapest shortly before the first round of the Hungarian parliamentary elections on May 8. We were at the border station between Austria and Hungary, where only a few years before soldiers carrying submachine guns would surround every train; stony-faced border guards would order you to stand up, to make sure that you were not somehow hiding a spy or a dissident, and passport control was a lengthy and carefully designed ritual of intimidation. A woman's voice on the loudspeaker would welcome 'our dear guests to the Hungarian People's Republic.' Some years before the Communist collapse, Ihad sensed that the system was breaking down when a border guard sauntered over to the open train window to ask for a cigarette. Today there are no armed guards near the train, and a single policeman stamps your passport with scarcely a glance at the document or its owner. Watching him, I could not help wondering whether, following the electoral victory of the Socialist Party—a party largely made up of former Communists—he would not again become more vigilant.
Feature, 7311 words
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