Saturday’s seminar on the Hungarian economic and social system at Jungmann National Academy answered many questions I had been asking myself for a long time. It is fascinating and in a way sad. Because you realise how much of the Czech opposition supports Viktor Orbán because they are impressed by his power and his hostility towards the EU. But they have no idea what his model is based on, what he stands for and why he is so successful. It is therefore surprising that Viktor Orbán is the biggest proponent of vaccination and the biggest friend of Israel in Europe.
The Hungarian model is the answer to the question of how to run a successful national economy, support domestic companies, protect the domestic market and at the same time be involved in the global economy and reap all the benefits.
But the most interesting question for me was that of the elites. In Hungary in the 1990s – as in the Czech Republic during the Klaus transformation – a group of magnates (I avoid the misleading term “oligarch”) emerged who are liberal in orientation. Their main goal is to join the global elite. Their ticket to this elite is to plunder their own country. These are the various Bakals, Sekirovs, Dedeks, Lukačovics, but also the Kellners (although Petr Kellner was considered a conservative for completely incomprehensible reasons).
Of course there are exceptions. But this is the vast majority. The Czech aristocracy fits into this group perfectly, having proved to be a class of unscrupulous swindlers, ready at any moment to throw away their own family traditions and embrace Anglo-Saxon liberalism (as if their only family tradition was “steal what you can”).
It was no different in Hungary. So for 2010, the regime decided to cultivate new economic magnates. People who would be patriotic, help their own country, live relatively modestly (certainly not ostentatiously) and not elevate themselves above their less fortunate fellow citizens. These people were perfectly selected and supported through government contracts and various opaque operations. But today this class has been created, it supports the regime and it works. Whether it will work in the next generation is anyone’s guess.
But I fear that it will not be repeated.
