CENTRAL EUROPE: HUNGARIAN PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

In the last decade, Central Europe has awakened from a long period of ‘suspended animation’. Until 1989-90, the phrase ‘Central Europe’ could scarcely be heard from any politician. It existed only in the conceptual armamentarium of historians, art historians and literary scholars. The prevailing opinion among politicians, especially in the US, was that the region of the Danube and the Vistula was part of the immense political unit of Eastern Europe that started somewhere at the Brandenburg Gate and ended at Vladivostok. It was identified with the Soviet sphere of influence. Scarcely no distinction was made between the particular sections of the Soviet region, thus blurring the borderlines between Silesia and the Ural region, or between Budapest, Prague and Warsaw, on the one hand and Moscow, on the other. However, those familiar with nineteenth and twentieth century history know that Central Europe is a highly distinctive European region which, because of the balance of forces that emerged at the end of World War II, came under Soviet domination and it only managed to extricate itself as late as 1990-91