Claim: The Hungarian regime change was initiated and controlled by external forces, with the help of their local agents. Budapets’s Rózsadomb neighbourhood was the regular venue for meetings to prepare for the regime change.
Rebuttal: The elements of the conspiracy theory about the pact are contradictory, its contents are completely unrealistic, and, there are no credible contemporary sources to support them.
In detail:
The most important reason for the regime change can be considered to be that the countries of the Soviet bloc “lost” the Cold War economic competition: they were unable to meet the challenges of the global economy, and as a result, these societies drifted into a serious economic and social crisis. At the same time, the framework conditions for the regime changes in Central and Eastern Europe were determined by external political movements (by major powers), and the events cannot be understood solely from the domestic political processes of the individual countries. Moreover, these conditions changed rapidly in 1989: in April 1989, the Polish opposition agreed with the ruling party on limited elections, but when these were held in June, the Hungarian opposition had already begun negotiations on multi-party free elections at the National Round Table. Not only that, but the fact that the rules of the transition were decided by the old and new political elites, and that until September 1989 the press and media reported only sparingly on the National Round Table negotiations, reinforced the belief that secret backroom deals were being made.
It is therefore not surprising that, as early as the beginning of the 1990s, theories emerged among those disappointed in the new conditions that the Hungarian regime change was not only intended to be determined from outside, but also to be diverted and even sabotaged. The idea of a “controlled transition” first appeared in a Hungarian-language newspaper published by emigrants, Amerikai-Kanadai Magyar Élet (American-Canadian Hungarian Life), on February 20, 1992. This theory, which fit well into the world of far-right conspiracy theories, was soon taken up by the weekly newspaper Szent Korona, and from then on, the pact theory spread among the Hungarian public. According to the theory, which exists in several versions, Soviet, American, and Israeli(!) secret service leaders, a Soviet general, an American diplomat, Hungarian politicians—including József Antall, Árpád Göncz and Gyula Horn—as well as representatives of the Catholic Church and Hungarian Jewry—gathered at the villa considered to be the favourite haunt of the inner circle of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party in the affluent neighbourhood of Budapest called Rózsadomb, on March 15, according to the most common version. In another version, the infamous meeting took place not in 1989, but in 1991. The 20 points defined there did not provide a detailed scenario, nor did they mention the fundamental issues of the new constitutional order or free elections, i.e., issues that were discussed by the participants of the National Round Table in the summer of 1989. However, there are numerous points about maintaining close Hungarian-Soviet relations, preserving the power of the communist elite (in the secret services, the economy, politics, and the judiciary), asserting Jewish interests (financial compensation, strong prohibition of anti-Semitism), and the restriction of the radical right (suppression of the right-wing narrative of the 1956 revolution, prohibition of contact between the government and right-wing émigré organizations, abandonment of border revision, prevention of the formation of extreme right-wing (sic!) organizations) .
The theory is untenable, if only because of the date of March 1989, since the circumstances surrounding the crystallization of the theory were projected back three years earlier: that is, the main negotiators were people who were not yet in key positions in 1989: József Antall only came to the fore within the MDF during the summer round-table negotiations, while Péter Boross would not become an influential figure until a year and a half later. Árpád Göncz, who belonged to the second tier of the SZDSZ, was more or less “discovered” by József Antall after the 1990 elections. Gyula Horn was already an influential politician in the MSZMP at that time, but not influential enough for his party to be represented by him rather than Károly Grósz, Miklós Németh, or perhaps Imre Pozsgay at such negotiations. On the other hand, if we take the 1991 date, then the whole pact becomes meaningless, since there would not have been much left to agree on by then; this is obviously why the “more credible” 1989 version became widespread in Hungary.
At the same time, the pact makes several “well-known” statements that made its existence credible to many. Of course, the various secret services – above all the KGB and the CIA – kept their eyes and ears trained on the regime changes in Central and Eastern Europe and also came into contact with those involved. The late Kádár-era political, economic, and administrative elites—technocrats, many of whom were pro-reform—participated in the negotiations and management of the transition. In this sense, the MSZP, formed in October 1989 from the MSZMP, can be considered a party of political change. The negotiated nature of the transition also meant that there were no far-reaching personnel changes in the areas listed in the “Rózsadomb Pact” (justice, secret services) or in areas such as mass communication. The greatest change in the elite took place among politicians.
As a result, many of the middle managers and experts in the state administration before 1989 remained in their positions after 1990, while others acquired wealth during privatization, not as a result of some kind of “Rózsadomb deal” or a pre-planned power transfer operation, but because the first freely elected government was unable to field a sufficient number of experts, having neither the preparation time nor the talent pool to do so. Thus, for professional reasons, they were dependent on the “operators” of the previous system. In an interview published in the December 2, 1991 issue of Magyar Hírlap, István Csurka made the now oft-quoted statement: “Overemphasizing reasons of professionalism is a tired Bolshevik trick,” which aptly expresses the political climate of the early 1990s and the internal divisions within the MDF. And, of course, it is characteristic of the hysterical public discourse of the time that Csurka’s statement was also included in the debates in an exaggerated, distorted form, as if he had called expertise itself a Bolshevik trick. However, it is a fact that the intellectual camp associated with the MDF sought to portray the SZDSZ and Bolshevik mentalities as having common roots in the run-up to the 1990 elections.
The Rózsadomb Pact is a far-right-inspired conspiracy theory, which has been refuted on right-wing television (HírTV) and in magazines (Kommentár) on professional grounds. An important study on the subject was written by historian Rudolf Paksa (The Rózsadomb Pact. In: In Search of Our Myths. Ed. Gyöngy Kovács Kiss. Cluj-Napoca, 2013. 243–263.), and reviewed the literature on the subject on the urbanlegends.hu blog. In it, Iván Marinov quotes sociologist and conspiracy theory researcher László Lakatos:
“Conspiracy theories depicting the vulnerability of small nations have always been popular in Hungary… the majority of people… see them as confirmation of their own prejudices and fears, while also making them feel privy to secret knowledge. But >the main pleasure is that someone can be blamed. That there are evil people here who are up to no good<.”
Common past: knowledge to dispel historical misconceptions – supporting the work of Slovak and Hungarian history teachers through print and online publications, professional conferences. A project of the Association of History Teachers and the Hungarian-language newspaper of the Denník N news portal.
Funded by the European Union. The information and statements contained herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the European Union or the Tempus Public Foundation. Neither the European Union nor the funding authority can be held responsible for them.
