From Liberal to Illiberal Crowd: 30 Years After

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
A revised version of my book, Nationalism and the Crowd in Liberal Hungary, 1848-1914, is being translated into Hungarian for publication by l'Harmattan. The original epilogue focused on 1989. The new epilogue would benefit tremendously from feedback at the NEHA conference.

The paper will follow the remolding of Hungarian politics since the end of Communism. It will use the lens of crowd politics and the new statuescape to follow the changes in political goals, national imagination, and political control. Viktor Orbán began as a student leader of Fidesz and speaker at the reburial ceremony for Imre Nagy. As the Communist era lost its historical nuance, reform communism was discredited and the celebration of 1956 has dimmed. March 15 moved from a family-friendly holiday to a caustic one inappropriate for children. Interwar leaders gained pedestals in the renewed nationalist rhetoric.
Crowd politics has been an essential element of Hungarian nationalism since the nineteenth century. Political scientists make a sharp division between crowd demonstrations and festive gatherings, between grassroots activism and government orchestrated events, but Hungarian politics invariably interconnect the two.
The opposition has at several points engaged in crowd protest. The recent crowds protesting proposed overtime work seemed to catch the government flatfooted, but Orbán's political acumen has in part been his ability to use, seize, or orchestrate both festive gatherings and politically defiant crowds for regime change or to increase his hold on power; for electoral victories or parliamentary advantage; to attract international support, or rally internally against foreign opinion.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Alice Freifeld is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Florida. She received her PhD (1992), M.A. and B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Freifeld has published Nationalism and the Crowd in Liberal Hungary, 1848-1914 (2000), which won the Barbara Jelavich Book Prize in 2001. She also coedited East Europe Reads Nietzsche with Peter Bergmann and Bernice Rosenthal (1998). She has published numerous articles and is currently working on a manuscript entitled Displaced Hungarian Jewry, 1945-48. She is former President of Hungarian Studies Association.