Hungary
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Official Name: Republic of Hungary |
Flag
The flag is composed of three equal horizontal bands of red, white, and green. The current flag of Hungary was officially adopted on October 1, 1957, but it was first used in 1848. The overall design is modeled after the French Tricolore. Red is said to symbolize strength, green hope, and white faithfulness.
Hungary
Hungary was part of the polyglot Austro-Hungarian Empire, which collapsed during World War I. The country fell under Communist rule following World War II. In 1956, a revolt and announced withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact were met with a massive military intervention by Moscow. Under the leadership of János Kádár in 1968, Hungary began liberalizing its economy, introducing so-called "Goulash Communism". Hungary held its first multiparty elections in 1990 and initiated a free market economy. It joined NATO in 1999 and the EU in 2004.
In the closing years of the 9th century, a confederation of seven nomadic tribes, numbering perhaps a few hundred thousand people in all, crossed into the Carpathian Basin from the east, impelled to do so, if indirectly, by Byzantine foreign policy. Finding it well-suited to their pastoral-agricultural lifestyle and sparsely populated, they rapidly occupied all of it, to settle there for good, marking a complete change in the history of the region.
Contemporaries -- in the mistaken belief that they were descendants of the Huns, who had occupied the region in the 5th century -- came to refer to the new people as Hungari, and soon the entire Carpathian Basin came to be known as Hungaria, giving rise to the still-current words Hungary and Hungarian. From Arabic sources of the time, which refer to them as majjar or madjar, it would appear that they already called themselves magyar (pronounced "muh-jor"), a variation on Megyer, the name of one of the seven tribes which had by then asserted its supremacy over the ohers.
One important trait, however, distinguished the magyar from the other peoples who came and settled in Europe at the same time. The others were, for the most part, speakers of either a Germanic or a Slavonic language, both Indo-European. The Hungarians, in contrast, brought with them a tongue of Finno-Ugric origin, enriched with traces of Turkic and Iranian influences, entwined with a distinctive outlook, folklore, and music.
Information and maps above taken from Library of Congress Country Studies and the CIA World Fact Book. Unless otherwise specified, images sourced from Wikimedia Commons.
Hungarian Internet Sources
This section contains convenient starting points for exploring web sites related to Hungary. To make this page easier to load and use, we generally have limited the list to those sites which contain substantial collections of links to information on these subjects. The views reflected on any web site linked below do not necessarily reflect the views of the Inner Asian and Uralic National Resource Center. We provide these links as a service to the public.
Amnesty International Report 2007: Hungary documents human rights issues in 2006.
CIA World Factbook: Hungary provides a general country overview and statistical data from the CIA.
Hungarian Embassy in Washington, D.C. has a comprehensive web site, which is unfortunately rather slow to load.
Hungarian Homepage provides links to Internet services in Hungary. Includes an interactive map listing Internet services by region and links to general information on Hungary.
Hungarian Museum of Ethnology in Hungarian, English and German includes exhibit previews and virtual exhibits.
Hungarian National Libraryin Hungarian, English and German, lists collections and publications and has a search function.
The University of Texas Austin's Russian and East European Network Information Center: Hungary page lists links by subject.
Hungary: A Country Study from the Library of Congress provides country overview information.
Hungary Today from Central Europe Online is an online newspaper focusing on events in Hungary.
The UCLA Language Materials Project has information and links about language resources.
Links to Legal Sites about Hungary is maintained by the Law Library of Congress.
Military Analysis Network: Hungary and NATO links to news and other informational sites with publications on NATO expansion and Hungary. It has not been updated since 1999.
US State Department Human Rights Report 2006: Hungary analyzes human rights practices in the country.