News | Press Releases 2018

Hungarian Review Publishes Fourth Issue in 2018

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 fourth issue for 2018.

On the cover: The Line. Threshold Theatre, 1983. Photo by Ruben Jara.
© Anna Sebők Páskándi.

According to John O’Sullivan, the contributors to this issue deal with the grand concepts of patriotism, cosmopolitanism and democracy in sober but brilliant reflections on their current and recent interactions. In addition to these themes, you can also read about the anti-corruption measures of the Hungarian government, the tragic fate of a Hungarian American and her husband in Soviet Ukraine, and possible scenarios for the future of the European Union.

In his editorial note entitled “In Defence of Noticing the Obvious”, John O’Sullivan recommends: “György Schöpflin delineates clearly the ways, both subtle and blatant, in which the legal and political cosmopolitanism of Brussels has intruded on the democratic practices and liberal freedoms of nation states. Nicholas T. Parsons reviews and confirms the conclusions of a best-selling book by Douglas Murray that uncontrolled migration flows in time of war and revolution will likely overwhelm the life and identity of a people as well as the democracy of its state. Gyula Kodolányi revives the memory of dissident Hungarian writer Géza Páskándi who emerged from years in a brutal Romanian prison camp to mock the ruling ideas as well as the rulers who kept him there in plays that together make a serial dramatized documentary of the Absurd. In a lecture originally delivered in honor of the late Robert Conquest in Budapest on the hundredth anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution, Robert Service, Emeritus Professor of Russian history at Oxford, makes the same point as the satirical dramatist in a more straightforward yet equally indignant way. (…) Professor Service adds to the indictment of Lenin’s vanguard Communism that the only real innovation that this progressive philosophy gave to the world was a Hungarian one: the Rubik Cube. It is not a bad metaphor for the difficulty of getting out of a system that was a maze without exits.”

First, the ‘Current’ section contains the following articles: György Schöpflin (“Dethroning Reason: Europe in Mid-2018”); Krysztof Dzczerski (“The Three Seas Initiative”); an interview with István Fodor on Transparency International Hungary’s 2017 Report (“The Report and the Facts – and Professionalism”) and Nicholas T. Parsons (“Douglas Murray on the Strange Death of Europe”).

The periodical then continues with an ‘Essays’ section with contributions by Robert Service (“Robert Conquest and the Understanding of World Communism”) and David A. J. Reynolds (“Contemporary Assessment of the 1968 Prague Spring in the Eastern Bloc – Part I”).

The ‘Essays’ section is followed by the ‘Histories’ section which includes articles by Gordon McKechnie (“In the Footsteps of Patrick Leigh Fermor – Reviewing Michael O’Sullivan’s New Book”); Mary Halász (“From America with Love – Excerpt”); Tony Reevy (“Thirteen Revisited”) and Norbert Haklik (“Singing Mansards, or the Reclaimed Life of Miedzianka”).

Finally, ‘The Arts and Letters’ section features articles by Gyula Kodolányi (“Surviving with Honor” – Notes about Géza Páskándi”); Géza Páskándi (“A Moment in Sincerity; The Line”) and Anikó Katona (“Hungarian Art Deco Posters”).

Currently, 45 issues of the Hungarian Review from 2010 through 2018 can be ordered from amazon.com, or directly from the publisher, or by calling the Coalition office in Washington.

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