1989 – A sense of change

When you approach the mother of a nearly 21-year-old girl to tell you about her feelings about 1989, first you will have to go through the usual baby photos and baby stories that you have already seen and heard a hundred times (including the one about my setting fire to a dish towel). My mum claims that the biggest event for her in 1989 was my birth and all other things were dwarfed by it.

Nonetheless, I managed to get some valuable information from her. What surprised me the most was that she claimed not to have been affected too closely by all that turmoil. She grew up far from the centre of events (in a relatively small town) in a lower middle class family. This was the social layer most supported by the system, so she had many opportunities both as a child and later as an adult. All she knew was that she could go to free camps every summer, though she never understood the words of the oaths they had to take as a young scout. I think what happened to most youngsters was that they slowly gained consciousness of the silent trespassing of individual rights the system was committing.

Interestingly enough, my mother said she did not notice the whole disturbance until she heard people talk about 1956 no longer as a counter-revolution but as a revolution. This was shortly before smaller riots broke out (which she obviously missed due to living in the country). She was not among the heated young people who stormed on the streets of Budapest carrying banners and shouting “Long live the revolution”. In a sense, Hungary’s whole history was changed in the course of weeks; everything you could read in history books became political lies. I think this is what most common people – those who were not terribly wronged by the system – realised, not that ungraspable notion of “freedom”.

The change of regime was undoubtedly distant for many people but those who fought for the precious individual freedom definitely felt they achieved something historical. The question is whether we, they actual beneficiaries of this change will ever learn to appreciate it with its whole weight.