In the past 15 years, the power-mystery has deepened, at least within the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP). Having graciously given up power in 1989 and devoting themselves to business, many were surprised to see the MSZP bounce back to power so soon in 1994 under the astute leadership of Gyula Horn. “We let them out of quarantine too soon,” Viktor Orbán lamented at the time. The new entrepreneurs were invited back into power by Horn and his Budapest circle. Some accepted and even plunged a part of their new wealth back into politics, while some delayed and even refused.

New fortunes, old threads
New threads criss-crossed with old; homegrown fortunes were blended with foreign investments. New friendships and alliances were forged with generous multinationals and visiting diplomats. In a country with a plethora of politicians, but a shortage of real statesmen, those with little talent were more noticeable. Old money was not so much laundered as dry-cleaned.

Privatisation and the development of the property market also allowed new capitalists with no communist background to make fortunes overnight, with concomitant political influence. The traditional shortage of credit in Hungary turns those who have it into kings. The sudden replacement of Péter Medgyessy by Ferenc Gyurcsány as prime minister has allowed a rare chink of light into power relations within the Socialist Party. Both men are, by Hungarian standards, inordinately wealthy. But the parallel ends there. There are three main differences between them: generation, geography and, perhaps most importantly, style.

New PM’s background
Gyurcsány, at 43, was one of the last KISZ leaders – at a time when the Young Communists were abandoning the ideology of their parents. By the early 1980s, when Gyurcsány studied biology at Pécs University, KISZ was largely a source of free beer.

“If you wanted to have cheap parties in those days,” said one ex-reveller, “you joined KISZ, and got them to pay.”

The main political plank KISZ clung to in those days was their monopoly as the only permitted mass youth organisation. That was until FIDESZ was set up in March 1988 as an alternative to KISZ. Many other groups with a more-or-less political message sprang up between 1987 and 1989, but FIDESZ aspired from the start to nationwide status.

Asked about his background in KISZ and the MSZMP, Gyurcsány replied in May 2002: “It’s very difficult to speak about these issues nowadays … It’s normal human behaviour to … find a good excuse for having been a member of that party or that organisation. I am ready to accept the explanation of everybody. Do not try to judge them.”

Different takes of the story
Medgyessy is 19 years older. While the new prime minister was still at university, the outgoing prime minister was busy in Geneva as an agent for Hungarian counter intelligence. Either acquiring high-tech instruments through French business contacts, to be passed on to the Soviet Union, in contravention of NATO imposed restrictions on items which might have a military use, or helping Hungary join the IMF and World Bank against the Soviet Union’s wishes – depending on which version you believe.

There is also a big difference between the men in terms of geographical support. Medgyessy was never a strong political figure, but came to power with the clear backing of the Budapest old guard. Gyurcsány’s spectacular rise, and the astonishment it caused, can be partially explained by the fact that the power base he assiduously built lays outside the capital, in western Hungary (Győr) and the in south (Pécs). His triumph was a coup of the provinces over Budapest.

Here there’s also a fleeting parallel with Orbán, who grew up in Alcsutdoboz and went to school in Székesfehérvár. As prime minister, we can expect significant changes in the style and rhetoric of government. “We should not feel ashamed that we are Hungarian,” Gyurcsány said in a May 2002 interview with the BBC. “I think the Socialist Party has to find the way to express, to determine what is the essence of … being Hungarian.” In EU affairs, and relations with Hungary’s neighbours, we can now expect more “national” politics. As a contemporary of Orbán and the “Socialist answer” to him, Gyurcsány is almost obsessed with the FIDESZ leader.

“Orbán I think is a revolutionary. But this is not a time for revolution,” he said in the same interview. “It’s a time for peaceful development. Building up the successful nation, with a lot of compromise, with a lot of patience, with a lot of benevolence. “Orbán would always like to raise the question … of ‘Who is a good man?’ And I think that no politician has the right to raise this question. Because all of us are good men!”

Gyurcsány lists five core values he wants the present Socialist Party to represent: to be a national, civilised (polgari), democratic, social democratic and progressive party. And, he sighs, his party does not always see itself in those terms. So will it now? “It has to. It has to,” he repeated, looking out his office window toward Parliament.