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 third 2015 issue.
On the cover: János Vaszary, Soldiers in the Snow, 1916, oil on canvas. All illustrations to Mária Illyés’s essay by courtesy of the National Gallery, Budapest
The importance of the role of small magazines is featured in this issue.
In his editorial note, John O’Sullivan remarks that “small magazines are the neurons of civilization. They transmit vital messages between different cultural, academic, scientific and practical disciplines in much the same way as neurons link different parts of the brain. By this service they make a civilization from what might otherwise be mutually incomprehensible worlds: dance without music, medicine without science, history without criticism.”
Magazines such as Hungarian Review for instance “build bridges of understanding between different cultures and nations (which in recent years have corrected misunderstandings as much as fostered the mutual insights of different national cultures).”
In the ‘Current’ section, Éva Eszter Szabó’s interview with E. Sylvester Vizi, the distinguished neuroscientist and founder of the Friends of Hungary Foundation discusses the role of culture in helping a nation wounded by history to revive its national spirit through learning and work without retreating into a defensive nationalism rooted in fear and distrust of other nations.
The crisis in Ukraine and Russia as a threat to European stability still remain hot topics for the authors. In the second part of his article entitled ‘An Unsentimental Look at the Geopolitics of Central Europe’ Tamás Magyarics states that “arguably the strongest argument against bilateralising US–European relations is that such a policy may play into the hands of the Russians. If a strong Atlantic community is one of Russia’s strategic nightmares, so is an EU–Russia rapprochement for the Americans. In a broader and historical context, arguably the major geopolitical goal of the US is to prevent the emergence of a strong Eurasian competitor which would challenge American positions globally.”
The last article in the ‘Current’ section is by James Sherr entitled ‘The Kremlin’s “Civilizational” Alternative?’
The periodical then continues with an ‘Essays’ section that contains articles written by Belinda Brown: The Internal Contradictions of Feminism; Francis D. Raska: Bibles for Communist Europe – A Cold War Story – Part 1; and Norbert Haklik: A Thousand-Year-Old Brotherhood and Its Present.
The ‘Histories’ section is divided into two parts. The ‘World War II’ section contains articles by George Gömöri: A Pact That Started World War II; Charles Fenyvesi: How an Improbable Source Clinched Allied Victory in 1944; and Bill Martin: The Day the Russians Came. The ‘World War I’ section has articles by Ambrus Miskolczy: World War I: Controversies, Paradoxes, Revisions – On the Book of Lucian Boia; and Norman Stone: Recent Writings on 1914-18.
In his article on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, George Gömöri states: “It is still hard to erase the memory of the German–Soviet Pact. Once again it is in the news as ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin’s increasingly ultra-nationalistic saber-rattling grabs the headlines. Only recently Putin was asked what he thought of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. He replied with a shrug: “it was not so bad”. After all, (at the cost of millions of human lives), it allowed the Soviet Union to expand its territory almost back to the borders of Tsarist Russia in 1914.”
Finally, the ‘Arts and Letters’ section has an article by Mária Illyés who gives an excellent description on the recently held exhibition entitled ‘Arts and Artists in world War I’ at the Vaszary Villa, Balatonfüred.
Currently, twenty-six issues of the Hungarian Review (from 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015) can be ordered from Amazon, or directly from the publisher, or by calling the Coalition office in Washington.