Washington, DC – The “Hungarian Review”, the English-language affiliate of the bi-monthly journal Magyar Szemle, edited by Gyula Kodolányi and John O’Sullivan, has published its fifth issue for 2020.

On the cover: Imago pietatis (Man of Sorrows). A detail of Johannes de Rosenau’s fresco in the choir of the Nagyszeben (Sibiu, Hermannstadt, Romania) Lutheran church, 1445. © Géza Entz

In the past few months, the COVID-19 pandemic shook the world and all countries are facing unprecedented challenges created by the coronavirus. As in the case of the previous issue, reflections on these trying times are still dominant in the
current journal. The ‘Current’ section contains two articles on this topic by Zsolt Németh (“Hungarian Foreign Policy After The Coronavirus”); and Ágnes Zsófia Magyar (“President Macron’s Management Of The Coronavirus Crisis And His Political Future”); while the “Essays’ section also has one article dealing with the consequences of the pandemic written by David Martin Jones (“Pandemania or a Short History of the Medicalisation of Life – Thoughts in Times of Coronavirus – Part I”).

In his article, Zsolt Németh analyzes the pandemic’s effect on Hungarian foreign policy and he aims to answer the following questions in light of the Hungarian government’s foreign policy strategy: ““What is the trend and magnitude of the changes Hungarian foreign policy will be forced to implement as the world emerges from the coronavirus crisis? Are we going to be compelled to make any radical changes at all? Or is it rather the case that the pandemic merely amplifies already existing trends in foreign policy, in turn forcing the actors of international affairs to adopt speedier and more efficient measures in response?.”

In his essay, David Martin Jones writes: “In an atmosphere of media hysteria governments reinforced the sense of impending doom, embracing and epidemiological prediction of death rates of one per cent of the West’s population unless they locked down the economy, quarantined households and suspended all non-essential activity. A rationalist preoccupation with a very short view of the past and a much longer view of the future informs this, otherwise perverse, neglect of past pandemic events and the manner in which Western governments and society have historically responded to them. Ironically, this nescience is one of the few things that are unprecedented about the current crisis. How, we might wonder, have society reacted to pandemics in the past? Are there psychological, social, political and economic responses in the past that repeat themselves in the present, or, alternatively, might past practice offer insight into our current predicament?”

The ‘Current’ and the ‘Essays’ sections have other contributions by Boris Kálnoky (“The Rule Of Law Debate – Can Germany Get Hungary off the Hook?”); Dániel Oláh (“The Commission’s EU Budget Proposal Has Been Overruled”); Soma Hegedős (“Legal and Ideological Dilemmas Regarding the Istanbul Convention”); and David A. J. Reynolds (“Our Old Königliche Heimat – On the Europeanism of Englishness”).

The ‘Essays’ section is followed by the ‘History’ section with articles by Anna Wellisz (“Pope John Paul II and the Theology of the Nation”); Nicholas T. Parsons (“DeGaulle and Churchill – Political Conflict in a Common Endeavour”); Antal Babus (“A Clear-eyed Poet in the Land of the Soviets – A Background to Gyula Illyés’s Russia – Part II”); and John O’Sullivan (“After She Lost, Did Margaret Thatcher Win?”).

Finally, the ‘Trianon’ section features articles by Tamás Barcsay (“Trianon: A Nation’s Tragedy – Part I”); and György Csóti (“Mother Tongue Rights in the Carpathian Basin – A Hundred Years After Trianon – Part I”).

Currently, 56 issues of the Hungarian Review from 2010 through 2020 can be ordered from amazon.com; or directly from the publisher; or by calling the Coalition office in Washington.