Polak, Magyar: on the special relationship shared by Poland and Hungary, 1956-2004

In Poland and Hungary, there is a saying that “the Pole and the Hungarian are two good friends, they drink and fight together.” Polish-Hungarian solidarity has served as a motivator of revolution, an incubator of national resistance against foreign occupation, and a formidable geopolitical obstacle for foreign invaders and colonisers. For over a millennium, from the logistics of medieval dynastic struggles and XVIII and XIX century nationalist uprisings to the synchronous transitions between the “East” and “West” during the past century, political and economic change in Poland and Hungary has been closely linked. Through traditions, language, customs, rituals, and legends based on experiences and perceptions of historical Polish-Hungarian solidarity, these distinct peoples have developed symbolic bonds which simultaneously acknowledge a sense of Polish-Hungarian “groupness” as well as reaffirm each people’s unique national identity and sovereignty. This thesis tests the reality of historical Polish-Hungarian solidarity and examines the ways in which this relationship has been variously institutionalised in conceptions of Polish and Hungarian nationhood during the years 1956-2004. For the purpose of demonstrating this sense of community between these different peoples, a framework is developed herein which pays due attention to the insurmountable boundary between ethnic or national groups while allowing for analyses of particular examples of symbolic and cultural links across ethnic or national boundaries. Building on the work of Ernst Gellner, Anthony D. Smith, and Rogers Brubaker, the importance of symbolic and cultural artefacts as reified examples of expressed nationalism and interpreted national identity is central to this thesis. However, the existence of such artefacts does not itself provide an explanation for Polish-Hungarian solidarity. The contingent nature of Polish-Hungarian “groupness” likewise mirrors the contingency of singular ethnic or national identification. During the period, 1956-2004, contingent Polish-Hungarian “groupness” was primarily grounded in their shared experience of “peripheral” membership in the communist Eastern Bloc and their subsequent and synchronous transition to the “West” as part of an emerging Central European bloc – the Visegrád Group. In times of crisis, during 1956 for example, symbols, traditions, and legends of Polish-Hungarian cooperation have been given new life, and contributed to patterns of ethnically- or nationally-framed interpretation and interaction. However, this pattern of perceiving historical Polish-Hungarian solidarity as significant continues even in the absence of reference to direct threats to national identity or sovereignty. Polish-Hungarian cooperation has been politically, culturally, and socially institutionalised to the point where it has become possible to speak of Polish-Hungarian conationalism, with a self-defining, ethnically- or nationally-framed group on the basis of two distinct, yet curiously symbiotic national identities.