Post #1114373

2026-04-13 02:06 UTC

It was almost as if the country had gone into a deep sleep for decades, and then blinked hard at a very bright light. Of course Hungary had always been the most "Western" of the Eastern bloc, but that was still a pale shadow of what was happening in the West. ↵

Replies (2)

@shriramk@mastodon.social 2026-04-13 02:06

It's also important to remember that while some countries were regaining autonomy, Hungary has a very long history of NON-autonomy. Even the Austro-Hungarian empire was A-H in name; the real power was in Vienna. The Hungarians had a definite inferiority complex about it, knowing they were second. ↵

Open ##1114372
@tealeg@mastodon.online 2026-04-13 05:41

@shriramk Hungary was “open” even in the Soviet era. In 1988 I joined an Esperanto club at school. I was terrible at languages, but that club took an annual trip to Budapest. Sadly, my year never got to Budapest because our teacher got arrested entering the DDR - the stasi having grown suspicious of his annual transit through eastern Germany and Czechoslovakia to Hungary. It never occurred to me to wonder why he took that route rather than going through Austria.

Open ##1570632