Bill’s comment inspired me to write about the provincialism of large segments of Hungarian society. For these Hungarians at least three things stop at the border: physical movement, information, and the economy.
In spite of the relative ease with which Hungarians can cross western and northern borders, most people don’t travel abroad but spend their vacations in Hungary. And, of course, a lot of people, especially people in the villages, go nowhere. I have already talked about the poor language skills of Hungarians, which may explain some of the reluctance to venture outside the country.
This lack of knowledge of a foreign language that would enable a person to read foreign news or literature also puts a damper on the flow of information. For a number of years now I have been following the growth of the internet, looking at different political forums, corresponding with people from Hungary, and I am struck by the difference in outlook between those who speak English, German, or French and those who know no language other than Hungarian. Navigating the internet itself requires some rudimentary knowledge of English, and although Hungarians are offering a lot of Hungarian-language sites, the information about a given topic in Hungarian is still poor in comparison to, let’s say, English. It is enough to mention Wikipedia’s Hungarian version. It is not really good for much. While the internet availability of Hungarian television stations is superior to English or American offerings, which is great for me, it does little to expand the horizons of those residing in Hungary. As for Hungarian coverage of foreign affairs, "foreign" often means "regional." Occasionally I can learn something that was not reported here about Serbia, Slovakia, or Romania, but news about the United Kingdom, Germany, or France is fairly sparse.
Perhaps most distressing, large chunks of the population (especially the older folks) think that the Hungarian economy exists in a vacuum, contained by the borders, and that the government controls it. So, for instance, they believe that the government is directly responsible for prices, just like in the good old days. The government can decide that as of January 1 the price of bread, potatoes, oil, what not, will go up, and of course all these prices will rise–as they did! Reinforcing this belief are such announcements as "MOL is raising the price of gasoline by X number of forints," and since MOL is a monopoly (though no longer owned by the Hungarian state) some people think that it is the government that is raising the price of gasoline or natural gas. There is another factor that may play a role in the confusion: public transportation (MÁV, BKV, Volán) is still in the hands of the central or local governments. They are the ones who raise the fares. The same is the case with "district heating," which is in the hands of the local governments. Since the price of energy is going up, the fees for district heating are also climbing. And since most of those ugly Soviet-style apartment buildings that are so badly insulated use district heating, the monthly fees are enormous. Plus there are no thermostats to regulate the heating of individual apartments. Some of the apartments are so overheated that one has to open the windows while in others people are freezing. And who is responsible for all that? Naturally, the government.
The irresponsible opposition politicians add fuel to the fire. They criticize the government, specifically the minister of finance (who is actually doing a wonderful job at reducing the deficit), because he had to upwardly revise the predictions for inflation for 2007 and for 2008. I guess he was supposed to foresee skyrocketing agricultural prices or crude oil reaching $120 a barrel. But they argue that rising inflation is the Hungarian government’s fault. Underlying this argument is an isolationist view of economics. For instance, Viktor Orbán came up with the notion of a patriotic economic policy, whatever that means. It certainly sounds isolationist. Kádár also thought that world trends could be stopped at the borders. The oil crisis of the late 1970s wouldn’t reach Hungary but, surprise, surprise, it did. Even then, when the borders had barbed wires and towers watching whether anyone tried to cross illegally. People might have been stopped leaving Hungary, but economic forces had no difficulty entering. There is no "Hungarian answer," as Orbán’s second minister of finance thought. Actually the current problems began with this finance minister’s "Hungarian answer," which based economic calculations on internal consumption. It was during his tenure, beginning in 2001, when the deficit began to spiral out of control.