After World War I the price of fighting and losing on the Austrian side was the loss of two-thirds of Hungary’s lands. Important industry was lost and three million Hungarians ended up in foreign territory. During World War II Hungary joined the Axis powers, and as a reward received some of the territory it had lost, but once again a dangerous combination of inept diplomacy, internal weakness and unfortunate geography transformed Hungary and its hills into a battleground for foreign armies. Recalling the Habsburg–Ottoman wars the Zemplén, Bükk, Vértes, Bakony and Pilis became battle fronts.
Walking on Nagy-Mána, Börzsöny, Walk 5
After the war the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party eased itself into power and Hungary became a one-party state and ally of the Soviet Union. At the same time the ethnic composition of the hill villages was radically altered as large numbers of the original German and Slovak settlers were forcibly resettled and smallholders came under pressure to give up their land and join the agricultural co-operatives or work in the cities. The drama of the 1956 Revolution, when Hungarians rebelled against the Communist government and its Soviet backers, was largely an urban affair, but the conflict in Pécs spread into the Mecsek hills. Show trials, detentions, executions and mass emigration followed.
The death of Stalin and the consolidation of the post-1956 Communist state gave the new regime under János Kádár freedom for manoeuvre. Living standards improved, and from 1968 there was a good deal of political and economic liberalisation with experiments in privatisation. This softer brand of state socialism was jokingly referred to as ‘goulash communism’. In the 1980s the Soviet Empire unravelled, and Hungary played a large part in the opening up of the border between East and West. Hungary’s transition from a one-party state to a mixed-economy democracy was relatively smooth and peaceful, although there has been a social cost for hill villagers who had depended on agricultural co-operatives or mining for their livelihood.
Village Life
Without playing down the bitterness felt by better-off smallholders who were forced to collectivise, agricultural co-operatives were often very successful enterprises with profitable spin-off activities. Villagers were guaranteed work in the co-operatives or in the nearby factories and mines. After the petty restrictions of the 1950s were lifted many householders had the opportunity to grow their own produce and rear livestock with fodder provided free by the co-operative. There were other positive aspects such as weekly voluntary work commitment (társadalmi munka) involving community projects. Village children were also deployed to collect litter and clear streams.
The changes after 1989 saw many co-operatives disband and villagers gain more land to work as private holdings, but today unemployment is high in hill regions such as the Bükk, Zemplén and Mecsek. The pull of vibrant and cosmopolitan Budapest has exacerbated the problem of rural depopulation started during the Communist period. Impossibly neat peasant houses, manicured lawns and no barking dogs is usually a sign, however charming at first glance, that you are passing through a village where most inhabitants have died out and the cottages are now holiday homes.
In Budapest streets and squares have been renamed and statues removed in an attempt to erase the memory of the Communist era, but many village communities have neither the resources nor the inclination to indulge in symbolic acts. As a result many of the old street names continue to exist: Béke utca (Peace Street); Felszabadulás utca (Liberation Street); Vörös Hadsereg utca (Red Army Street); not to mention Lenin utca.
A History of Hungary’s Walking Movements
It is a mistake to view the development of recreational walking in Hungary as a harmless pastime detached from history. The growth of walking clubs followed the same pattern as the rest of Europe, members of the professional classes, who had more leisure time, taking the lead. Hungary’s first club, Magyarországi Kárpát Egyesület (MKE), Hungarian Carpathian Association, was founded in 1873 and it played a major role in the exploration of the Tatras. During the 1880s its Budapest section decided to explore the Pilis and in 1891 seceded from the MKE and set up the Magyar Turista Egyesület (MTE), Hungarian Association of Walkers. During its first two years its members had waymarked 240km (148 miles) of trails, built refuges, cleared wells and springs, and founded a magazine, Turisták Lapja. The first of the workingclass clubs, the Munkás Testedzők Turista Egyesülete (MTTE), Hungarian Workers’ Sport Walkers Association, was set up in 1908. A group of printers created the Természetbarátok Turista Egyesülete (TTE), Association of the Friends of Nature, in 1910, and another important working-class club, the Magyar Turista Szövetsége (MTSZ), Union of Hungarian Walkers, was founded in 1913. Over the next 20 years there were other clubs, adding to the confusion of acronyms. Their aim was to promote class-consciousness, healthy living and temperance, and they maintained links with the Austrian Natur Freund clubs and the wider social democratic movement. Inevitably the political affiliations of many walking clubs led to splits and mergers. After much bitter infighting the MKE, MTE and TTE merged under the MTSZ. At the Treaty of Trianon after World War I, Hungary lost the Tatras to Czechoslovakia, but as if to compensate the walking movement in Hungary expanded. Ideology continued to play a part and many clubs were aligned with rightist or leftist causes.
The growth of independent walking movements ceased in 1944 when the Germans deposed the Regent, Miklós Horthy, and handed power to the Hungarian Fascist party, the Arrow Cross. After the war the Communist regime disbanded all the pre-war walking clubs whether ‘bourgeois’, rightist (some clubs had had members active in the Arrow Cross) or socialist. A new organisation, the Magyar Természetbarát Szövetség (Union of the Hungarian Friends of Nature), was set up on the Soviet model in 1949. To add to the confusion (or perhaps encourage the idea that the new organisation was a continuation of the more politically acceptable pre-Communist Union of Hungarian Walkers with the same acronym), the Friends of Nature organisation was called the MTSZ.
Between the wars about 50 walking hostels had been built by the efforts of members of various walking clubs, but when the Communists gained power they were collectivised. This was a particularly bitter blow to the members of the disbanded working-class clubs who had struggled hard to find the resources to build the hostels. Unfortunately the state tourist agency had no long-term interest in the buildings and many hostels were neglected. In 1974 the state allocated the buildings to catering and tourism enterprises for the purpose of making a profit, but many were allowed to decay until they were unsafe and had to be demolished.
In 1987 the MTSZ became independent of the state and in 1990, a little over a hundred years after its foundation, the MTE was re-formed. Since the political transition of the late 1980s walking has, according to some Hungarians, declined, although masochistic challenge walks modelled on the Czech tradition have become popular. By the end of the twentieth century a new generation not burdened by history or ideology was taking up walking, and walking club membership was rising.
The National Blue Route
In 1938 the MTSZ set up Hungary’s first long-distance walk, the Szent István-túra (Saint Stephen’s Way). The 852km (526 mile) route started at Tapolca in the Balaton region and finished at Tokaj-hegy, the southernmost hill of the Zemplén. Its first chairman was Jenő Cholnoky, the revisionist geographer who bitterly opposed the redrawing of Hungary’s borders at the Treaty of Trianon. After World War II the route fell into disuse, but during the 1950s the Budapest railway workers’ union revived it. At first the route was managed by and for the exclusive use of railway workers. The union produced a guidebook and introduced a badge scheme for walkers who completed the whole distance. In 1961 it was taken over by the Communist MTSZ,