The Change of the System and Myths in Hungarian History in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

This article is an outsider’s attempt to understand and even to reconsider the multifarious aspects of myths concerning the twentieth-century history of Hungary, created and subsequently dismantled and busted from the change of the system in 1989/1990 to around 2004, the period when myth-building appears to have been a vogue. Most examples come from Ignác Romsics’s 2002 Mítoszok, legendák, tévhitek a 20. századi magyar történelemről [Myths, Legends, and Misconceptions about Hungary’s Twentieth Century History], the articles of which tackle the issue with a keen historical-analytical grip. In reassessing them, here “myth” is defined as an untrue or fallacious everyday story (legend), belief, or misconception. In history writing also, they are often strongly value-laden, stereotypical, or imaginary representations of an important event, process, phenomenon, or personality, and in times of radical political change, ductile amateurish historians can manipulate them to promote their political ends. Using this definition, the article also aims to show that in the processes of myth-building in Hungarian history writing there have been misguided historians and public history-mongers at work who first gained ground and then became the object of serious scholarly criticism by academic historians, who defended a realist interpretation of certain key moments in Hungarian history. The contention between these two “parties” lingers on.