Hungarian Aperçus

The man from the Central Committee intimates that Hungary discovered glasnost when Mikhail Gorbachev was still carrying Andropov’s briefcase. (He doesn’t use those words.) And he points to the Buda hills on the far side of the Danube River, which bisects the city. Its waters on this late spring Friday sparkle in the sun. The hills are densely packed with substantial homes, marching cheek by jowl up one valley crease and down the next; most of them were built by independent carpenters, masons, plumbers, and electricians. How did this happen?

Every Hungarian, we learn, has the right to own his house or apartment, plus a “summer home.” Hungarians travel freely—U.S. officials believe there are only a handful of them who cannot get a passport. You can buy Western newspapers and magazines not only in the big tourist hotels but around the city, although distribution is slight. There’s no censorship of foreign news; in fact, Hungarian TV, which pulls down the United States Information Agency’s World net program every morning—it put up a satellite dish before the U.S. Embassy did—tapes the show and sends it across the street to the USIA library, which then plays it to a Hungarian audience that afternoon. The pedestrian mall on the Pest side of the river is crowded with stylish boutiques, bookstores whose English language offerings are not limited to Sister Carrie and The Grapes of Wrath, up-to-date electronics shops, and art galleries that compare with the best in the West. The only long line in town is outside a store that sells Adidas, much in vogue in today’s trendy Budapest.

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Priscilla L. Buckley

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The man from the Central Committee intimates that Hungary discovered glasnost when Mikhail Gorbachev was still carrying Andropov’s briefcase. (He doesn’t use those words.) And he points to the Buda hills on the far side of the Danube River, which bisects the city. Its waters on this late spring Friday sparkle in the sun. The hills are densely packed with substantial homes, marching cheek by jowl up one valley crease and down the next; most of them were built by independent carpenters, masons, plumbers, and electricians. How did this happen?

Every Hungarian, we learn, has the right to own his house or apartment, plus a “summer home.” Hungarians travel freely—U.S. officials believe there are only a handful of them who cannot get a passport. You can buy Western newspapers and magazines not only in the big tourist hotels but around the city, although distribution is slight. There’s no censorship of foreign news; in fact, Hungarian TV, which pulls down the United States Information Agency’s World net program every morning—it put up a satellite dish before the U.S. Embassy did—tapes the show and sends it across the street to the USIA library, which then plays it to a Hungarian audience that afternoon. The pedestrian mall on the Pest side of the river is crowded with stylish boutiques, bookstores whose English language offerings are not limited to Sister Carrie and The Grapes of Wrath, up-to-date electronics shops, and art galleries that compare with the best in the West. The only long line in town is outside a store that sells Adidas, much in vogue in today’s trendy Budapest.