Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
- Start date
While the thread is bumped, I just want to echo the praise. Fascinating timeline and wonderful writing.
Europe since 1970, part 1 of 2
Laurie Akinsanya, The European Jigsaw (London: Macmillan, 2011)
… The economic crisis of the 1970s was well under way when the formal ceremonies inaugurating the European Union took place on 1 January 1974. [1] The occasion was subdued, as befitted the times, and the cautious optimism that had prevailed when the Treaty of Andorra was signed had eroded into something like despair. The recession had already begun during the treaty negotiations, but few at that time had anticipated how deep and long-lasting it would be, or how thoroughly the rise of automation and other changes in industrial production would complicate any plan for recovery.
There had initially been hope that the union, just by existing and by integrating Europe’s economies, would help to turn things around, but the implementation of preparatory steps during 1973 had reduced that hope considerably. In some parts of Europe, the opposite was the case, as companies took advantage of new rules to close factories in the north and seek lower wages in the Balkans and Iberia. The Netherlands, the Ruhr and the Hanseatic cities were particularly hard-hit: their high-end industries and jobs survived, but the majority of their unskilled and semi-skilled workers became unemployed between 1972 and 1975.
Hard on the heels of the crisis came the revelation that the Zollverein’s regulatory agencies – which were supposed to stop, or at least control, capital flights – were the de facto puppets of its industrialists, and had in fact been so for years. [2] The German government fell in short order, as did those of several German states and other Zollverein members, and the elections of 1974 made clear that retaking the union’s administrative bodies would be an arduous struggle. This further dampened the hopes that the nascent European Union institutions would be able to do any better, and it stimulated a new crisis: a crisis of faith in internationalism.
The regulatory capture scandals, and national governments’ seeming inability to end the recession, brought on a powerful localist backlash, with many believing that only autonomy would enable them to protect their local economies. The backlash, inspired by the Second Russian Revolution [3], the Italian communes and even the Tijani-Belloist notions of communal governance that had entered Europe through Italy and France, reignited the debates that had preceded the Treaty of Andorra, spread even to countries where centralism had hitherto been unquestioned. In the 1974 election, regionalist parties in metropolitan France won seats outside Corsica and Brittany for the first time since the 1890s, and the following year, hundreds of thousands of protesters in Cardiff and Edinburgh called for independence.
In Spain, where four general elections were held between 1973 and 1977, restive provinces went further still. A meeting of mayors and rural councilors in Catalonia, where separatism had never really gone away despite the defeat of the Catalan quasi-rebellion of the 1910s and early 20s, unilaterally declared the formation of an autonomous “foral region,” and those in the Basque country did likewise. Even in the Balkans, where regionalism had until recently carried the taint of the Great War and its subsequent civil conflicts, autonomist parties made gains and provincial governments assumed regulatory powers well in excess of their constitutional authority.
Needless to say, these localist movements had little use for the European Union, and several regions unofficially withdrew from it. But by a miracle of good luck and good management, none of the state-level member governments did so. The union’s multi-tiered structure was part of the reason: several countries were able to mollify the regionalists by withdrawing to one of the outer tiers where they had more leeway to enact protectionist measures. Union authorities also winked at technical violations of the Andorra Treaty such as local restrictions on the operation of multinational companies, thus defusing what might have become constitutional crises. The “four freedoms” zone, encompassing the union’s inner and middle tiers, allowed labor to have mobility similar to capital and permitted people in depressed areas to seek jobs abroad.
But the key to the Union’s survival was that, by the later 1970s, it began to take active steps to fight the recession in ways beyond the reach of national and regional governments. In this, continental Europe followed the lead of the separate and more compact Nordic Union, which had acted quickly to maintain local investment and provide aid to depressed regions. In November 1978, prompted by another round of elections in which parties favoring withdrawal from the union gained ground, the European parliament declared that “economic defense” was an integral part of the Andorra Treaty’s defensive alliance and established a crisis committee with emergency powers. The agencies created by this committee, which were carefully structured to avoid regulatory capture, were able to regulate companies that had grown beyond effective national control, to provide aid where economic problems were acute, and to coordinate a continent-wide program of public investment. By the end of the 1970s, the Union had also made it a priority to support the alternative financial institutions that had grown up during the recession, many of them modeled after the African Labor Bank, and to follow France in shoring up the welfare systems that worker-owned companies had established for members who lost their jobs.
Ultimately, as the recession finally began to lift, the localists and unionists realized that they needed each other. The regions were too small to support modern economies on their own – those that had tried hardest to achieve autarky during the recession were slowest to recover – and, especially where they crossed national borders, they made sense as self-governing units only within the framework of the union. At the same time, without the regions, the union was too large, unwieldy and distant to govern effectively. And in time, the regions, the union and even the national governments came to see each other as critical to maintaining a balance of power. Regionalist parties remained strong in the elections of the 1980s, but with a few exceptions on the extreme right and left, they supported autonomy within the European overlay rather than complete independence.
The effects of simultaneous regionalism and integration would by no means be limited to the economy. Localist political movements had come to stay, and the number of autonomous regions and non-territorial collectives more than tripled between 1975 and 1990. The Spanish government reached a settlement with the unofficial Basque and Catalan authorities in 1984 under which their territories would become dominions of the crown of Spain, much like Cuba and Puerto Rico; the following year, the British Devolution Act saw the inauguration of Welsh and Scottish parliaments and the creation of separate Shetland and Orkney dependencies, similar to the Channel Islands, which became associate members of the Nordic Union. Poland, which had fought regionalist tendencies for decades, became a de facto federal state by 1989, granting autonomy first to the eastern voivodeships, then to all of them, and finally separating out the major cities as their own regions. Even France, which remained stubbornly centralist, granted recognition to some cross-border institutions and devolved control over many cultural matters. Much of Europe in the 1980s could fairly be described as a patchwork of regions and regions-in-being, each highly protective of its local culture.
But at the same time, the new mobility created by the Union and the demands of the economy made the local cultures increasingly cosmopolitan, and continued immigration from Africa and Asia was the least of it. The unskilled jobs and lifetime employment that had existed before the 1970s never came back, and for those who planned a career in industry, it became important to gain experience in several related fields and build skills by learning the techniques used by a variety of companies. For skilled workers, the 1980s led to a revival of the medieval Wanderjahre, with apprenticeship typically followed by a succession of journeyman jobs in foreign countries. Nor was this limited to industrial workers; it became desirable for aspiring executives or civil servants to learn the ways of living and working in regions where their company might operate or with which their agency might interact, and academics were expected to hold temporary appointments at foreign universities before finding a home. Unskilled service jobs were among the few that didn’t follow this trend, and even there, the temporary nature of many such jobs meant that workers had to be mobile.
By 1990, a near-majority of Europeans aged 18 to 25 spent at least two years working or studying abroad, most of them in more than one country, and mid-career sabbaticals were also becoming common. This meant that the local cultures of Europe were increasingly carried on by people who spoke several languages and had wide experience of cities and regions throughout the continent and elsewhere. Most Europeans who wandered did eventually come home, and local traditions were an important part of their lives, but these traditions were by no means insular: the cultures of rural Languedoc, Austria or even Romania in 1990 had changed much from 1890 in their trappings and certainly in their outlook…
… In one respect, Europe in the 1980s did become increasingly defensive, and that was in its response to Hungary. The Regency Council’s first nuclear test in 1977 had turned a long-standing nuisance into a real threat, and the neighboring governments watched cautiously as it became increasingly belligerent and paranoid. In 1992, the crisis everyone dreaded would become real…
Pietro Michelini, “The Fall of the Regents,” European Review 44:225-41 (Summer 2011)
… Hungary after the 1967 coup [4] was a nation in a permanent state of siege. The regency council was in the hands of its most extreme faction, and it moved quickly to purge any hint of dissent. The Hungarian regime had always been an authoritarian one, but now it assumed total control over almost every aspect of life, becoming something more akin to Blanco’s Venezuela or Hermann Tschikaya’s god-presidency of the Congo than anything previously seen in Europe.
The harsh repression of the late 1960s and 70s, coming after the cautious reforms of the preceding period, caused great disaffection among Hungarians, and the failing economy only made it worse. Belgium, which also kept tight control over its citizens’ movements and access to information, could at least point to its high living standard and modern amenities; Hungary’s per capita GDP, in contrast, was surpassed by Romania, then Serbia and finally Montenegro. And even that fell short of the true extent to which Hungarian living standards had fallen, because the regency council diverted an increasing part of the economy to the military. By 1975, military spending sucked up 20 percent of GDP, with most of it going to the nuclear program, medium-range missiles and the air force.
The regency council responded to falling living standards and rising discontent by cracking down further. In 1982, the regime put all churches in Hungary under state supervision and took control of the appointment of priests and bishops, eliminating the last independent institution in the country. The country’s remaining rabbis, too, were urged to join the movement of “patriotic congregations” or else forbidden to preach. Many clergymen went underground, leading house congregations and ordaining new priests in secret, but those who were caught received heavy penalties, and ordinary people were subject to increasing political surveillance and faced pressure to join and be seen at state-approved activities.
As the 1980s wore on and repression grew tighter, the regime became explicitly revanchist. The pre-1967 regency council had always claimed that it wanted to recover Hungary’s lost territories, but it had soft-pedaled the issue, preferring trade to war. The new government, which had taken power amid the humiliation caused by the loss of Croatia, moved the territorial question to the forefront, staging massive rallies in support of the reconquest of Transylvania and engaging in frequent border incidents with Croatian forces. It was a dangerous game, all the more so since little of the regency council’s massive military budget went to the common soldiers and disaffection among conscripts and even career troops was rising, but it was effective in giving the regime a veneer of popular support, and as long as the clashes were kept short of full war, the regents’ nuclear arsenal protected it from foreign intervention.
In 1992, though, a chain of events brought matters to a head. Germany and the Habsburg lands had been arming Croatia for some time, and as more border clashes began ending in Hungarian defeat, the regency council felt that it had to escalate. In the meantime, the European and Ottoman Unions jointly agreed to impose an arms embargo on Hungary, and Croatia, as a second-tier member of the European Union, began checking all shipments to Hungary for contraband. The regency council argued that this was a violation of the customs union that had persisted even after Croatia’s 1967 secession, and after an incident in which Hungarian troops overwhelmed Croatian border inspectors who were trying to search a train, Zagreb revoked all customs agreements and closed the frontier.
The decision sparked immediate protest from businesses in Croatia and the free port of Fiume, which had a large and profitable trade with Hungary, but the effect on the Hungarian side of the border was far worse. With so much of Hungarian industry tied up in military production, many of its consumer goods came through Croatia, and when the border was closed, prices for the already-strapped population rose sharply. The crisis brought latent popular discontent to the surface, and street protests against the regime occurred in nearly all major cities.
The regency council reacted in panic, especially after many of the soldiers it sent to put down the early protests threw down their arms and joined the citizens. Realizing that it couldn’t count on the army’s loyalty, the regime used party militias instead. These irregulars were little more than street thugs, and although they were able to quell the protests in smaller cities, those in Debrecen, Szeged and Budapest grew beyond their ability to crush. In desperation, the regime now turned to the air force. On July 13, 1992, the regime’s aircraft bombed and strafed a 300,000-strong protest in Budapest, killing an estimated 10,000 people, and the militias that lurked in wait for the fleeing protesters killed hundreds more. In the aftermath, the government rounded up thousands of suspected movement leaders, shooting many and putting others to torture. [5]
The St. Henry Massacre, as it became known, might have cowed the people long enough for the regime to wait out the Croatian embargo, but it had no intention of waiting, and on July 24, matters passed the point of no return. That morning, clashes erupted at several points on the border – most likely provoked by Hungary, although each side blamed the other – and shortly after dawn, Hungarian riders and troops crossed the frontier. The speed of the invasion made clear that the army had already mobilized – a move which, as the council’s documents would later show, was undertaken at least in part to get the soldiers away from centers of protest – and by the end of the day, it was advancing into Croatia on a broad front.
Nuclear arsenal or not – and it was suspected that, despite its tight budget and limited scientific resources, Hungary might have advanced to primitive fusion bombs by this time – this was something the European Union could not tolerate. By nightfall, the union as a whole, and Germany, France and Britain individually, pledged to guarantee Croatian independence, and to the surprise of many, so did Russia and the Ottoman Union. It was hoped that the regency council would back down as it had in 1967 rather than face off against five nuclear powers; in the meantime, troops throughout Europe went to full mobilization and began heading for Croatia.
But the council didn’t back down. The “humiliation of ‘67” had been part of the regime’s mythology for a generation, and by now, the regents themselves believed it. They were determined to succeed where their predecessors had failed, and continued their push toward Zagreb, hoping to present the opposing powers with a fait accompli before their troops could arrive.
The Croatian army, however, didn’t play by the Hungarian timetable. It was outnumbered, but it was well equipped, and its morale and leadership were well above that of its opponent. In several places, the Croatians were able to halt the Hungarian advance, and in others, the invaders’ progress was grindingly slow. Desertions among Hungarian soldiers rose, and on at least three occasions, entire companies or battalions overthrew their officers and surrendered to Croatian forces without firing a shot. The Hungarian army was nowhere near Zagreb by the time European and Ottoman reinforcements – including a brigade of volunteers from the Hungarian exile communities in Salonika and Stamboul – began arriving in numbers, and by the end of August, it was in full retreat across the Drava.
In the meantime, Hungary’s soldiers had found a new enemy. Once back across the border, they deserted in droves, often whole companies at a time, and linked up with the clandestine networks that the civilian underground had prepared to greet them. There were clashes between loyalist and rebel Hungarian units in the southwest, and the cities of Pécs and Kaposvár fell under effective rebel control. On September 8, a council of soldiers and underground leaders in the latter city, before a cheering crowd of thousands, proclaimed a free Hungarian government and vowed to march on Budapest.
The regency council’s answer came hours later, in the form of two aircraft carrying 80-kiloton fission bombs, one for each city. The Hungarian nuclear program hadn’t reached the fusion stage after all, but it hardly mattered: nuclear weapons had been unleashed for the first time, and the targets were the nuclear power’s own people.
The regents obviously hoped that the nuclear strikes would behead the rebellion and cow any other would-be rebels into submission, but instead, the literal firestorm begat a figurative one. That night, hundreds of thousands of people, led by deserted soldiers, overran air bases across the country, taking heavy casualties but overwhelming the defenders by sheer numbers. Some bases held out in areas where the rebellion was poorly organized, but that became a moot point in the morning when European planes took out Hungary’s air defenses and destroyed its remaining aircraft on the ground.
The end came the same day, as Budapest rose against the regime, and without the air force to protect it, the regency council was helpless. It ordered more bombardments of rebel cities as well as strikes against European capitals with missile-borne weapons, but by that time it was out of communication with most of its forces; one missile was launched toward Berlin, but it was shot down in the air. Minutes later, the rebellion overran the regents’ palace. Two members of the council had the foresight to flee; none of the other seven survived.
The ninety-five year rule of the regency council was over, but the battle for Hungary was just beginning…
_______
[1] See post 6246.
[2] See post 6434.
[3] See posts 5829 and 6145.
[4] See post 6246.
[5] See post 6467.
Laurie Akinsanya, The European Jigsaw (London: Macmillan, 2011)
… The economic crisis of the 1970s was well under way when the formal ceremonies inaugurating the European Union took place on 1 January 1974. [1] The occasion was subdued, as befitted the times, and the cautious optimism that had prevailed when the Treaty of Andorra was signed had eroded into something like despair. The recession had already begun during the treaty negotiations, but few at that time had anticipated how deep and long-lasting it would be, or how thoroughly the rise of automation and other changes in industrial production would complicate any plan for recovery.
There had initially been hope that the union, just by existing and by integrating Europe’s economies, would help to turn things around, but the implementation of preparatory steps during 1973 had reduced that hope considerably. In some parts of Europe, the opposite was the case, as companies took advantage of new rules to close factories in the north and seek lower wages in the Balkans and Iberia. The Netherlands, the Ruhr and the Hanseatic cities were particularly hard-hit: their high-end industries and jobs survived, but the majority of their unskilled and semi-skilled workers became unemployed between 1972 and 1975.
Hard on the heels of the crisis came the revelation that the Zollverein’s regulatory agencies – which were supposed to stop, or at least control, capital flights – were the de facto puppets of its industrialists, and had in fact been so for years. [2] The German government fell in short order, as did those of several German states and other Zollverein members, and the elections of 1974 made clear that retaking the union’s administrative bodies would be an arduous struggle. This further dampened the hopes that the nascent European Union institutions would be able to do any better, and it stimulated a new crisis: a crisis of faith in internationalism.
The regulatory capture scandals, and national governments’ seeming inability to end the recession, brought on a powerful localist backlash, with many believing that only autonomy would enable them to protect their local economies. The backlash, inspired by the Second Russian Revolution [3], the Italian communes and even the Tijani-Belloist notions of communal governance that had entered Europe through Italy and France, reignited the debates that had preceded the Treaty of Andorra, spread even to countries where centralism had hitherto been unquestioned. In the 1974 election, regionalist parties in metropolitan France won seats outside Corsica and Brittany for the first time since the 1890s, and the following year, hundreds of thousands of protesters in Cardiff and Edinburgh called for independence.
In Spain, where four general elections were held between 1973 and 1977, restive provinces went further still. A meeting of mayors and rural councilors in Catalonia, where separatism had never really gone away despite the defeat of the Catalan quasi-rebellion of the 1910s and early 20s, unilaterally declared the formation of an autonomous “foral region,” and those in the Basque country did likewise. Even in the Balkans, where regionalism had until recently carried the taint of the Great War and its subsequent civil conflicts, autonomist parties made gains and provincial governments assumed regulatory powers well in excess of their constitutional authority.
Needless to say, these localist movements had little use for the European Union, and several regions unofficially withdrew from it. But by a miracle of good luck and good management, none of the state-level member governments did so. The union’s multi-tiered structure was part of the reason: several countries were able to mollify the regionalists by withdrawing to one of the outer tiers where they had more leeway to enact protectionist measures. Union authorities also winked at technical violations of the Andorra Treaty such as local restrictions on the operation of multinational companies, thus defusing what might have become constitutional crises. The “four freedoms” zone, encompassing the union’s inner and middle tiers, allowed labor to have mobility similar to capital and permitted people in depressed areas to seek jobs abroad.
But the key to the Union’s survival was that, by the later 1970s, it began to take active steps to fight the recession in ways beyond the reach of national and regional governments. In this, continental Europe followed the lead of the separate and more compact Nordic Union, which had acted quickly to maintain local investment and provide aid to depressed regions. In November 1978, prompted by another round of elections in which parties favoring withdrawal from the union gained ground, the European parliament declared that “economic defense” was an integral part of the Andorra Treaty’s defensive alliance and established a crisis committee with emergency powers. The agencies created by this committee, which were carefully structured to avoid regulatory capture, were able to regulate companies that had grown beyond effective national control, to provide aid where economic problems were acute, and to coordinate a continent-wide program of public investment. By the end of the 1970s, the Union had also made it a priority to support the alternative financial institutions that had grown up during the recession, many of them modeled after the African Labor Bank, and to follow France in shoring up the welfare systems that worker-owned companies had established for members who lost their jobs.
Ultimately, as the recession finally began to lift, the localists and unionists realized that they needed each other. The regions were too small to support modern economies on their own – those that had tried hardest to achieve autarky during the recession were slowest to recover – and, especially where they crossed national borders, they made sense as self-governing units only within the framework of the union. At the same time, without the regions, the union was too large, unwieldy and distant to govern effectively. And in time, the regions, the union and even the national governments came to see each other as critical to maintaining a balance of power. Regionalist parties remained strong in the elections of the 1980s, but with a few exceptions on the extreme right and left, they supported autonomy within the European overlay rather than complete independence.
The effects of simultaneous regionalism and integration would by no means be limited to the economy. Localist political movements had come to stay, and the number of autonomous regions and non-territorial collectives more than tripled between 1975 and 1990. The Spanish government reached a settlement with the unofficial Basque and Catalan authorities in 1984 under which their territories would become dominions of the crown of Spain, much like Cuba and Puerto Rico; the following year, the British Devolution Act saw the inauguration of Welsh and Scottish parliaments and the creation of separate Shetland and Orkney dependencies, similar to the Channel Islands, which became associate members of the Nordic Union. Poland, which had fought regionalist tendencies for decades, became a de facto federal state by 1989, granting autonomy first to the eastern voivodeships, then to all of them, and finally separating out the major cities as their own regions. Even France, which remained stubbornly centralist, granted recognition to some cross-border institutions and devolved control over many cultural matters. Much of Europe in the 1980s could fairly be described as a patchwork of regions and regions-in-being, each highly protective of its local culture.
But at the same time, the new mobility created by the Union and the demands of the economy made the local cultures increasingly cosmopolitan, and continued immigration from Africa and Asia was the least of it. The unskilled jobs and lifetime employment that had existed before the 1970s never came back, and for those who planned a career in industry, it became important to gain experience in several related fields and build skills by learning the techniques used by a variety of companies. For skilled workers, the 1980s led to a revival of the medieval Wanderjahre, with apprenticeship typically followed by a succession of journeyman jobs in foreign countries. Nor was this limited to industrial workers; it became desirable for aspiring executives or civil servants to learn the ways of living and working in regions where their company might operate or with which their agency might interact, and academics were expected to hold temporary appointments at foreign universities before finding a home. Unskilled service jobs were among the few that didn’t follow this trend, and even there, the temporary nature of many such jobs meant that workers had to be mobile.
By 1990, a near-majority of Europeans aged 18 to 25 spent at least two years working or studying abroad, most of them in more than one country, and mid-career sabbaticals were also becoming common. This meant that the local cultures of Europe were increasingly carried on by people who spoke several languages and had wide experience of cities and regions throughout the continent and elsewhere. Most Europeans who wandered did eventually come home, and local traditions were an important part of their lives, but these traditions were by no means insular: the cultures of rural Languedoc, Austria or even Romania in 1990 had changed much from 1890 in their trappings and certainly in their outlook…
… In one respect, Europe in the 1980s did become increasingly defensive, and that was in its response to Hungary. The Regency Council’s first nuclear test in 1977 had turned a long-standing nuisance into a real threat, and the neighboring governments watched cautiously as it became increasingly belligerent and paranoid. In 1992, the crisis everyone dreaded would become real…
*******
Pietro Michelini, “The Fall of the Regents,” European Review 44:225-41 (Summer 2011)
… Hungary after the 1967 coup [4] was a nation in a permanent state of siege. The regency council was in the hands of its most extreme faction, and it moved quickly to purge any hint of dissent. The Hungarian regime had always been an authoritarian one, but now it assumed total control over almost every aspect of life, becoming something more akin to Blanco’s Venezuela or Hermann Tschikaya’s god-presidency of the Congo than anything previously seen in Europe.
The harsh repression of the late 1960s and 70s, coming after the cautious reforms of the preceding period, caused great disaffection among Hungarians, and the failing economy only made it worse. Belgium, which also kept tight control over its citizens’ movements and access to information, could at least point to its high living standard and modern amenities; Hungary’s per capita GDP, in contrast, was surpassed by Romania, then Serbia and finally Montenegro. And even that fell short of the true extent to which Hungarian living standards had fallen, because the regency council diverted an increasing part of the economy to the military. By 1975, military spending sucked up 20 percent of GDP, with most of it going to the nuclear program, medium-range missiles and the air force.
The regency council responded to falling living standards and rising discontent by cracking down further. In 1982, the regime put all churches in Hungary under state supervision and took control of the appointment of priests and bishops, eliminating the last independent institution in the country. The country’s remaining rabbis, too, were urged to join the movement of “patriotic congregations” or else forbidden to preach. Many clergymen went underground, leading house congregations and ordaining new priests in secret, but those who were caught received heavy penalties, and ordinary people were subject to increasing political surveillance and faced pressure to join and be seen at state-approved activities.
As the 1980s wore on and repression grew tighter, the regime became explicitly revanchist. The pre-1967 regency council had always claimed that it wanted to recover Hungary’s lost territories, but it had soft-pedaled the issue, preferring trade to war. The new government, which had taken power amid the humiliation caused by the loss of Croatia, moved the territorial question to the forefront, staging massive rallies in support of the reconquest of Transylvania and engaging in frequent border incidents with Croatian forces. It was a dangerous game, all the more so since little of the regency council’s massive military budget went to the common soldiers and disaffection among conscripts and even career troops was rising, but it was effective in giving the regime a veneer of popular support, and as long as the clashes were kept short of full war, the regents’ nuclear arsenal protected it from foreign intervention.
In 1992, though, a chain of events brought matters to a head. Germany and the Habsburg lands had been arming Croatia for some time, and as more border clashes began ending in Hungarian defeat, the regency council felt that it had to escalate. In the meantime, the European and Ottoman Unions jointly agreed to impose an arms embargo on Hungary, and Croatia, as a second-tier member of the European Union, began checking all shipments to Hungary for contraband. The regency council argued that this was a violation of the customs union that had persisted even after Croatia’s 1967 secession, and after an incident in which Hungarian troops overwhelmed Croatian border inspectors who were trying to search a train, Zagreb revoked all customs agreements and closed the frontier.
The decision sparked immediate protest from businesses in Croatia and the free port of Fiume, which had a large and profitable trade with Hungary, but the effect on the Hungarian side of the border was far worse. With so much of Hungarian industry tied up in military production, many of its consumer goods came through Croatia, and when the border was closed, prices for the already-strapped population rose sharply. The crisis brought latent popular discontent to the surface, and street protests against the regime occurred in nearly all major cities.
The regency council reacted in panic, especially after many of the soldiers it sent to put down the early protests threw down their arms and joined the citizens. Realizing that it couldn’t count on the army’s loyalty, the regime used party militias instead. These irregulars were little more than street thugs, and although they were able to quell the protests in smaller cities, those in Debrecen, Szeged and Budapest grew beyond their ability to crush. In desperation, the regime now turned to the air force. On July 13, 1992, the regime’s aircraft bombed and strafed a 300,000-strong protest in Budapest, killing an estimated 10,000 people, and the militias that lurked in wait for the fleeing protesters killed hundreds more. In the aftermath, the government rounded up thousands of suspected movement leaders, shooting many and putting others to torture. [5]
The St. Henry Massacre, as it became known, might have cowed the people long enough for the regime to wait out the Croatian embargo, but it had no intention of waiting, and on July 24, matters passed the point of no return. That morning, clashes erupted at several points on the border – most likely provoked by Hungary, although each side blamed the other – and shortly after dawn, Hungarian riders and troops crossed the frontier. The speed of the invasion made clear that the army had already mobilized – a move which, as the council’s documents would later show, was undertaken at least in part to get the soldiers away from centers of protest – and by the end of the day, it was advancing into Croatia on a broad front.
Nuclear arsenal or not – and it was suspected that, despite its tight budget and limited scientific resources, Hungary might have advanced to primitive fusion bombs by this time – this was something the European Union could not tolerate. By nightfall, the union as a whole, and Germany, France and Britain individually, pledged to guarantee Croatian independence, and to the surprise of many, so did Russia and the Ottoman Union. It was hoped that the regency council would back down as it had in 1967 rather than face off against five nuclear powers; in the meantime, troops throughout Europe went to full mobilization and began heading for Croatia.
But the council didn’t back down. The “humiliation of ‘67” had been part of the regime’s mythology for a generation, and by now, the regents themselves believed it. They were determined to succeed where their predecessors had failed, and continued their push toward Zagreb, hoping to present the opposing powers with a fait accompli before their troops could arrive.
The Croatian army, however, didn’t play by the Hungarian timetable. It was outnumbered, but it was well equipped, and its morale and leadership were well above that of its opponent. In several places, the Croatians were able to halt the Hungarian advance, and in others, the invaders’ progress was grindingly slow. Desertions among Hungarian soldiers rose, and on at least three occasions, entire companies or battalions overthrew their officers and surrendered to Croatian forces without firing a shot. The Hungarian army was nowhere near Zagreb by the time European and Ottoman reinforcements – including a brigade of volunteers from the Hungarian exile communities in Salonika and Stamboul – began arriving in numbers, and by the end of August, it was in full retreat across the Drava.
In the meantime, Hungary’s soldiers had found a new enemy. Once back across the border, they deserted in droves, often whole companies at a time, and linked up with the clandestine networks that the civilian underground had prepared to greet them. There were clashes between loyalist and rebel Hungarian units in the southwest, and the cities of Pécs and Kaposvár fell under effective rebel control. On September 8, a council of soldiers and underground leaders in the latter city, before a cheering crowd of thousands, proclaimed a free Hungarian government and vowed to march on Budapest.
The regency council’s answer came hours later, in the form of two aircraft carrying 80-kiloton fission bombs, one for each city. The Hungarian nuclear program hadn’t reached the fusion stage after all, but it hardly mattered: nuclear weapons had been unleashed for the first time, and the targets were the nuclear power’s own people.
The regents obviously hoped that the nuclear strikes would behead the rebellion and cow any other would-be rebels into submission, but instead, the literal firestorm begat a figurative one. That night, hundreds of thousands of people, led by deserted soldiers, overran air bases across the country, taking heavy casualties but overwhelming the defenders by sheer numbers. Some bases held out in areas where the rebellion was poorly organized, but that became a moot point in the morning when European planes took out Hungary’s air defenses and destroyed its remaining aircraft on the ground.
The end came the same day, as Budapest rose against the regime, and without the air force to protect it, the regency council was helpless. It ordered more bombardments of rebel cities as well as strikes against European capitals with missile-borne weapons, but by that time it was out of communication with most of its forces; one missile was launched toward Berlin, but it was shot down in the air. Minutes later, the rebellion overran the regents’ palace. Two members of the council had the foresight to flee; none of the other seven survived.
The ninety-five year rule of the regency council was over, but the battle for Hungary was just beginning…
_______
[1] See post 6246.
[2] See post 6434.
[3] See posts 5829 and 6145.
[4] See post 6246.
[5] See post 6467.
TFSmith121
Banned
Well, that's rather unpleasant...
Well, that's rather unpleasant...
I know you've building this for a while, but jeez... sort of a Yugoslav-collapse-with-nuclear-weapons.
Reads like it could have been the whole Zambia-with-nukes meme for the collapse of the USSR/RSFR/CIS/etc.
As always, nicely done.
Best,
Well, that's rather unpleasant...
I know you've building this for a while, but jeez... sort of a Yugoslav-collapse-with-nuclear-weapons.
Reads like it could have been the whole Zambia-with-nukes meme for the collapse of the USSR/RSFR/CIS/etc.
As always, nicely done.
Best,
Deleted member 14881
That's well written Jonathan. Hungary is like Yugoslavia with nukes in TTL.
Well, that was awful.
I wonder how nuclear culture has progressed in this timeline? Without the Cold War, the fear of annihilation won't be anywhere near as pervasive, but I'm guessing that after this bloody debacle the disarmament movement will instead focus on atom bombs as the ultimate weapon of the tyrant.
I wonder how nuclear culture has progressed in this timeline? Without the Cold War, the fear of annihilation won't be anywhere near as pervasive, but I'm guessing that after this bloody debacle the disarmament movement will instead focus on atom bombs as the ultimate weapon of the tyrant.
It seemed like a mix of OTL North Korea and TTL Salvador (I'm curious to see what happens here in 1956, it has been so long since I've not seen an update on that point).
Deleted member 67076
Hungary... yeesh.
Oh, forgot to respond. :O
Hmm, that's fascinating. I wonder if there'd be many English immigrants along with the Jamaicans to go along. There's already a precedent for French, Spaniards, Arabs and even Chinese to find their own commercial niche (almost certainly in the El Cibao valley) and the immigration policy has always been lax for any place with money, historically speaking.
As for the Parliamentary thing- possibly, if we're talking something like the French system where the President is more than a figurehead, than that'd be likely. The tradition for a strong presidency is one that's difficult to remove.
Oh, forgot to respond. :O
Hmm, that's fascinating. I wonder if there'd be many English immigrants along with the Jamaicans to go along. There's already a precedent for French, Spaniards, Arabs and even Chinese to find their own commercial niche (almost certainly in the El Cibao valley) and the immigration policy has always been lax for any place with money, historically speaking.
As for the Parliamentary thing- possibly, if we're talking something like the French system where the President is more than a figurehead, than that'd be likely. The tradition for a strong presidency is one that's difficult to remove.
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Reading about a crumbling totalitarian dictatorship nuking two of its biggest cities to stop the advance of an enemy army, killing several thousand of its own citizens in the process, is a great way to start the day. 
On a more serious note, you made the radioactive fall of the Hungarian regime - something that would be ASB in most timelines, and cliched in most science fiction - seem plausible; that's a feat not many writers of historical fiction could pull off convincingly. Hungary won't become much more than the ATL equivalent of OTL Albania or Moldova (at best), but I hope they won't rebuild those cities in the cheapest, least visually appealing way possible. They turned several architectural masterpieces to dust.
On a more serious note, you made the radioactive fall of the Hungarian regime - something that would be ASB in most timelines, and cliched in most science fiction - seem plausible; that's a feat not many writers of historical fiction could pull off convincingly. Hungary won't become much more than the ATL equivalent of OTL Albania or Moldova (at best), but I hope they won't rebuild those cities in the cheapest, least visually appealing way possible. They turned several architectural masterpieces to dust. Ye gods, that is a truly monstrous end to the Regency. Whither Hungary now?
Going back to the first half of the update, it makes perfect sense that TTL's EU works on a multi-tiered level, and interesting to note that it has to come to an accommodation with localists. Also, it seems Welsh independence is at least as strong a force as Scottish independence ITTL, which pleases me no end.
On a related note, what's happened to Northern Ireland? When we last left them, it seemed intervention was in the air...
Going back to the first half of the update, it makes perfect sense that TTL's EU works on a multi-tiered level, and interesting to note that it has to come to an accommodation with localists. Also, it seems Welsh independence is at least as strong a force as Scottish independence ITTL, which pleases me no end.
On a related note, what's happened to Northern Ireland? When we last left them, it seemed intervention was in the air...
JESUS EFFING CHRIST.
This is well and truly a European North Korea that you've created, Jonathan. Yet entirely believable.
Scary. very scary.
This is well and truly a European North Korea that you've created, Jonathan. Yet entirely believable.
Scary. very scary.
Wow, just read the whole TL and I am fascinated. I specially enjoyed the Portugal parts that hooked me since it's my homeland.
Thanks and please keep reading! Don't be too put off by the fact that I just blew up Hungary; the event is unlikely to be repeated.
Yugoslavia wasn't really what I had in mind: TTL's Hungary isn't a collection of more-or-less-ethnic cantons, and so its collapse won't have ethnic complications the way Yugoslavia's did. North Korea was more of a model, as was Hoxha's Albania and Ceaușescu's Romania, albeit with a "cult of the nation" in place of a cult of personality - the regents, as a collective body, weren't interested in exalting any one of their number.
The 1967-92 regime was one of the few truly totalitarian states ITTL - you'll notice that TTL's English doesn't really have a word for totalitarianism, although the concept has been theorized.
Exactly. Part of the mythology of nuclear weapons ITTL will be that they are never used between equals due to MAD, and are instead intended for use as weapons of the strong against the weak where MAD doesn't apply. The disarmament movement will portray nukes as the last resort of tyrants and bullies, while pro-nuclear groups will emphasize their role in deterring conventional warfare and point to the regents' fall as a disincentive for future tyrants to follow the Hungarian example. Whether either of them will be proven right remains to be seen.
Hungary won't become much more than the ATL equivalent of OTL Albania or Moldova (at best), but I hope they won't rebuild those cities in the cheapest, least visually appealing way possible. They turned several architectural masterpieces to dust.
I expect Hungary will do better than Moldova or Albania once it's put back together. It has an industrial base and an educated population, and while it has been subject to various forms of political misrule for a century, the regents' economic misrule lasted only 25 years. By 2015 ITTL, Hungary might be as well off as OTL Romania (which is to say, considerably behind TTL Romania) or possibly even more so.
And yes, architecture will be a major point of contention when the two center cities are rebuilt - is it more important to be quick or to be authentic, and would it really be the same to rebuild them as they were? Imagine the dispute over what to do with the World Trade Center footprint, multiplied severalfold.
The Welsh bit involved the nationalists piggybacking on opposition to centralism in general - I doubt that the devolved Wales ITTL will adopt very many of the more radical nationalist proposals, although the very fact that it exists will tend to give the national camp legitimacy.
And the Holy Romanization of the EU continues apace, although some countries, such as France, will be notably resistant to the trend.
All will be revealed in the next update - modern Europe has turned into a two-parter. Russia may also figure in the next update, or it may have one of its own.
I'd expect that there wouldn't be too many Englishmen - they have other places to go that are more familiar - although the widespread use of English in the major cities might attract a few. I do expect that a fair number of anglophone American businessmen will set up shop.
Latin America will follow right after Europe and Russia, so you'll find out soon.
And while everyone's waiting, I've finished First Do No Harm and have also written Iya-Iya, a short piece set earlier in the same universe. As always, comment and criticism are welcome - I'm certainly planning to submit First Do No Harm, so I'd like to know what works and what doesn't. And if you've learned anything about me by now, it's that I like to talk about my stories.
Looking forward to what becomes of El Salvador a couple canon posts hence, it occurred to me that two of the handfuls of hellhole regimes persisting into the late 20th century here are both in regions firmly within the Roman Catholic zone--and yet both have turned their back on the Church as a prop for their authoritarian regime. The Salvadorian elites are IRRC evangelical Protestants. One would have thought the Hungarian Regency would lean on the Church as a pillar. I suppose they did try to do just that in the earlier generations, but found the Church too subversive of the sort of tyranny they were trying to implement in the name of the nation--hence the move to nationalize it, which rather had the effect of delegitimizing it--and turning the masses, or anyway the bolder or more scrupulous among them, to underground priests instead. Priests who, when they could avoid being caught, probably preach a Word more authentically representative of the global Catholic Church than they dared to before the state seized control explicitly--before, nominally independent clergy must have been looking over their shoulders, fearful (if not for themselves, then for their congregations) of what might happen. Once it did happen--those corrupt or afraid enough to toe the Regency line stigmatized themselves; the rest were cut loose of their ties to the regime.
I expect then, that the Catholic Church, represented by the underground clergy and laity who followed and helped them, will have a strong role in the reconstruction of Hungary. I would have predicted, if you had foretold back in the post-war aftermath posts that the Regency would perish in popular uprising nearly 100 years hence, that the Church hierarchy would go down with it--but instead now I suppose these latter-day apostles are the most credible and organized movement left standing. Also they will have credibility and support from the international network of both the Church itself and strongly Catholic nations as well.
I don't suppose the situation is too closely parallel in El Salvador though. My guess is that there, the struggle is in more secular terms, with the evangelical regime discrediting religiosity as such.
I expect then, that the Catholic Church, represented by the underground clergy and laity who followed and helped them, will have a strong role in the reconstruction of Hungary. I would have predicted, if you had foretold back in the post-war aftermath posts that the Regency would perish in popular uprising nearly 100 years hence, that the Church hierarchy would go down with it--but instead now I suppose these latter-day apostles are the most credible and organized movement left standing. Also they will have credibility and support from the international network of both the Church itself and strongly Catholic nations as well.
I don't suppose the situation is too closely parallel in El Salvador though. My guess is that there, the struggle is in more secular terms, with the evangelical regime discrediting religiosity as such.
Dropping nukes on your own people???
I can see the Regents ordering it. I have more problem seeing the pilots agreeing. Sure, some would, but... I'd have bet that, say, one pilot would have defected in the air and tried to claim asylum somewhere in range.
Of course, there's only two bombs sent, and the guys who protested on the ground wouldn't have been allowed in the planes...
Once the names of the pilots get out, their surnames will become bywords for infamy like OTL's Mengele e.g.
I can see the Regents ordering it. I have more problem seeing the pilots agreeing. Sure, some would, but... I'd have bet that, say, one pilot would have defected in the air and tried to claim asylum somewhere in range.
Of course, there's only two bombs sent, and the guys who protested on the ground wouldn't have been allowed in the planes...
Once the names of the pilots get out, their surnames will become bywords for infamy like OTL's Mengele e.g.
I think it is worth considering that nobody ITTL really knows how dangerous nuclear weapons are. Up until now, they haven't been dropped on an actual target, and while there may have been tests involving model towns, that is never going to reflect the true horror of one being used on a real city. It is certainly possible that radiation being bad isn't really understood by the general public. And it is incredible what people will do if they are told to do it.
teg
But Cambodia, Haiti, Germany. Dictators ordering people to massacre loads of their own citizens happened a lot and a lot of the time those orders were carried out.
I mean Guernica was planned by spanish generals.