This
website is a forum for all those who
would like to invent themselves, their
communities, villages, cities, countries,
or their region: Central Europe.
TO REINVENT OR TO FORGET?
(Central Europe)
Did ‘Central Europe’ ever exist? Does it exist today? Do we need it at all? Are there any particularities, problems, cases, which connect, to a certain extent, the countries and citizens of this region?
Our website provides a forum to consider and discuss in what fields, if any, there could be cooperation between the countries, societies, and citizens of the region. How could they come to terms with their common past? How could they better understand each other’s lives, accomplishments and cultures? Should there be any cooperation between them as far as their future is concerned? How could they help those countries that are not yet members of the European Union?
I have been asked to produce my thoughts on this question by a Hungarian intellectual even though I am a mere visitor to Hungary. My credentials have to be found in my ancestry rather than my passport and perhaps in my obvious delight in the very concept of a coffee-house culture.
Modern IR theory has been much enlivened in the past decade by the emergence of what seems to be a new arrival in the field. This is the rise of ‘soft power’, or the rising of Venus from the waves to challenge Mars as the arbiter of international destinies.
As you all might recall, Shakespeare shows acquiescence in Caesar's death in a masterful way; still, he praises him and at the same time pays tribute to his murderer. That is the way I should like to deal with the "life-work" of our recently deceased, beloved concept, Mitteleuropa, also known as Central Europe.
While Central and Eastern Europe feel the need for re-invention, the hard-core European Union does not need reinvention, but it does need re-motivation. This is not a crime. It is natural that after so much development the EU needs to take stock and move forward in the right direction.
A choice of policy now may have quite unexpected results in ten years. It may be that Hungary's future prosperity rests on factors which are not yet taken into account. - An answer to Ferenc Miszlivetz.
The notion of public good has fallen to pieces in Hungary. In order to reestablish it, to draw up a new social contract, we need to encourage new patterns of behaviour and employ new techniques. This is the essence of the movement called 'Reinventing Central Europe'.
The English writer and wit, H.H.Munro, said about this part of the world, a hundred years ago 'The people of this region make more history than they can consume locally'. And I have a suspicion that in today's Hungary there is a tendency to relive it as well.
‘For want of a European licence, we would like to create a Visegrád licence. This way licensing and realisation could become more readily feasible for the inventors of all four countries.’ – An interview with the secretary of the Hungarian association of inventors.
The mix of economic and social solutions employed by many post-socialist countries does not lead to economic crisis, but it is vulnerable, it tips easily, and does not ensure dynamic development.
By May 1990 most former communist countries were already free, and the Age of Fear and Lies was over. We, Poles and Hungarians made the greatest contribution to winning the Cold War, without a shot being fired.
Mountains
cannot be surmounted except by winding
paths.
