ABSTRACT
For long periods of its history Hungary was an almost indistinguishable part of great empires that dominated its land, integrated its national institutions to a greater or smaller extent, or exported their political-ideological system to the country. In recent times, if the country was remembered in the world, it was for the Hungarian revolution in 1956, an important sign of cleavage within the Soviet block, and a heroic but failing attempt to establish national independence. (Others may remember its famous soccer team almost winning the World Cup in 1953.) In a closer look it is clear that struggles for lost national independence and heroic defeats are the most luminous, celebrated times in Hungarian national remembrance since the middle ages. An empathic analyst of the Hungarian national identity, George SchOpflin (2000), fmds it important to emphasize that today Hungary is a 'kin-state' with sizeable numbers of co-ethnics just across the border living as citizens of neighbouring states. Similarly, another recent analysis (Haynes 1995) starts from an argument hat Hungarian national identity resembles to that of the mid-war German national identity.' Thus, from a comparativeregional perspective one of the most important issues is the great number (over tow million) of minority Hungarians in neighbouring countries, and the necessary contemplation on the historic chain of events that ended in this situation. From inside (as attribution theory points out in social psychology) it is the situation, the accommodation to the changing international context and the integration of different social impulses, that is at the forefront.
