The Hungarians: A Thousand Years of Victory in Defeat

by Paul Lendvai

Book Overview

The Hungarians is the most comprehensive, clear-sighted, and absorbing history ever of a legendarily proud and passionate but lonely people. Much of Europe once knew them as "child-devouring cannibals" and "bloodthirsty Huns." But it wasn't long before the Hungarians became steadfast defenders of the Christian West and fought heroic freedom struggles against the Tatars (1241), the Turks (16-18th centuries), and, among others, the Russians (1848-49 and 1956). Paul Lendvai tells the fascinating story of how the Hungarians, despite a string of catastrophes and their linguistic and cultural isolation, have survived as a nation-state for more than 1,000 years.

Lendvai, who fled Hungary in 1957, traces Hungarian politics, culture, economics, and emotions from the Magyars' dramatic entry into the Carpathian Basin in 896 to the brink of the post-Cold War era. Hungarians are ever pondering what being Hungarian means and where they came from. Yet, argues Lendvai, Hungarian national identity is not only about ancestry or language but also an emotional sense of belonging. Hungary's famous poet-patriot, S?ndor Petofi, was of Slovak descent, and Franz Liszt felt deeply Hungarian though he spoke only a few words of Hungarian. Through colorful anecdotes of heroes and traitors, victors and victims, geniuses and imposters, based in part on original archival research, Lendvai conveys the multifaceted interplay, on the grand stage of Hungarian history, of progressivism and economic modernization versus intolerance and narrow-minded nationalism.

He movingly describes the national trauma inflicted by the transfer of the historic Hungarian heartland of Transylvania to Romania under the terms of the Treaty of Trianon in 1920--a trauma that the passing of years has by no means lessened. The horrors of Nazi and Soviet Communist domination were no less appalling, as Lendvai's restrained account makes clear, but are now part of history.

An unforgettable blend of eminent readability, vibrant humor, and meticulous scholarship, The Hungarians is a book without taboos or prejudices that at the same time offers an authoritative key to understanding how and why this isolated corner of Europe produced such a galaxy of great scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691119694
• ISBN13: 9780691119694
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 572 Pages
• Weight: 1.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Excellent History book that reads like a novel.

I have been studying Hungary for over a decade and this book was still able to introduce new insights to me. An easy read and it came off more as a novel than a history book. It just flowed. What's more, I know some Hungarian historians and I found the book excellent fodder for cocktail conversations.

Harm not the Magyars! (Zrinyi)

I often wondered why Hungary and Hungarians have such poor public relations, particularly in the US. Unfortunately, this book fails to answer that question. It is a fascinating read, if only because it gives, (in parts) a refreshingly different perspective. In others, unfortunately, the Communist-era interpretation of the author's sources is painfully evident. The many details in the narrative are interesting, partly because the selection of the details reveals the author's biases. There are a number of translation errors I found in the book which naturally led to faulty conclusions. P.e. "Honved"(seg)(hon=home, vedni=to defend) is not the militia, it's the standing army. "Nemzet orseg," (nemzet=nation, orseg=guard) is the militia. All in all however, it was worthwhile to read through the book. It will lead those, who are not familiar with the Magyars to some understanding of the background of this nation although will leave them feel shortchanged in understanding their psyche. I sent a copy of the book to both of my (adult) children together with a 16 page commentary.It is a laudable effort on the part of author Lendvai and by and large I believe it will benefit the Hungarians' image as well.

A comprehensive focus on the Hungarian people

Hungarian history is largely omitted from college-level courses, at least as a focus on its own: European journalist and television commentator Paul Lendvai corrects this omission with The Hungarians: A Thousand Years Of Victory In Defeat, a comprehensive focus on the Hungarian people once known in Europe as 'huns'. Hungarians became defenders of the Christian West and fought many freedom battles: The Hungarians traces their many achievements, their country's changing history, and how the Hungarians have survived as a people against all odds.

Engaging history on this people

Well written, detailed, and fascinating history of this often beleaguered but important people and country. My interest is mostly in Ural-Altaic linguistics, which includes Hungarian, which belongs to what is called the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic sub-family, which contains Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian, but I also found I enjoyed picking up some history about the Hungarians and their culture, too. I already had the basics and knew about when they'd first arrived in eastern Europe, and about their later wars with the Tatars, Turks, and Russians, but I learned quite bit more about it from this book.A little aside here, Hungarians have contributed disproportionately, relative to their numbers, to modern math, physics, and other areas of science. They include greats like mathematician Paul Erdos, who founded the area of discrete mathematics, worked in many areas of pure math, and may have been the most prolific mathmematician who ever lived, with 1500 papers; John von Neumann, who developed game theory and was the inventor of the electronic computer; Edward Teller, the "father of the H-Bomb," and Bela Julesz, a mathematical psychophysicist and researcher in the field of visual perception, and recipient of the prestigious MacArthur "Genius Award." And last but not least, Andy Grove, the former President and CEO for 20 years of Intel Corporation, the famous computer chip-maker, was Hungarian also.Interestingly, although I'm not Hungarian myself, I have a few connections to some of the above. I'm related to Ernest Lawrence, who invented the cyclotron, or atom smasher, which made possible critical technology for the building of the atom bomb, without which there wouldn't have been the later hydrogen bomb. Lawrence won the Nobel Prize in 1939 for his invention. I worked at Intel for several years, and met Andy Grove. And my immediate boss at Intel was Hungarian too, and he and I used to discuss Hungarian history and culture occasionally, which he used to get a kick out of, since I was the only non-Hungarian he knew with any interest in it.I also had the pleasure of travelling around Hungary and most of the eastern-bloc countries back in the early 80s, before the wall came down, and found the Hungarian people both worldly and hospitable. It's said that because of their turbulent history, Hungarians approach life realistically and without illusions, and I think I can say this is certainly true based on my own experience.But getting back to the present book, I wanted to mention one other interesting fact about the Hungarians, which is that they are most closely related to the Ostyak tribes of Siberia. The Ostyaks have the distinction of being the only tribes and villages the Communists couldn't take over and subjugate, and their villages remained politically independent of Moscow throughout the entire communist period.

Readable, Reliable History of a Little-Known Country

This is an outstanding, very easy to read, history of a little known and understood country and people, the Hungarians, who are NOT slavs nor to be confused with the Huns. I heard the author give a talk at a dinner in Washington, DC, which prompted to read his book. I have not been disappointed. On the contrary, this is the most readable, entertaining history that I've read in years. Lendvai makes David McCullough look like an amateur, in terms of the scope of the years covered and the masterful way in which he writes, displaying a command of significant details and telling anecdotes. Even those with no particular interest in Hungary or eastern Europe would enjoy this book for its style of writing alone. This should be must reading for anyone planning a trip to Hungary.