Hungarian Borderlands

Migrations and border issues are now matters of great interest and importance. This book examines the ways in which Hungary has adapted to regional and global requirements while seeking to meet its own needs. It adds to the literature a case study, the only one of its kind, showing the evolution of a single set of borders over a century in response to a wide range of internal and external forces in a regional and global context. The narrative illuminates the complexities, opportunities, and problems that face a small state that finds itself often on the edge. Twentieth century Europe's borders have repeatedly been dismantled, moved, and refashioned. Hungary, even more than Germany, exemplifies border decomposition, re-creation, destruction, "Sovietization," and resurrection in a new Central Europe. Facing one way, then the other, its past includes a conflicting self image as a bastion of the west and as a bridge between east and west, as well as a long and unwilling period as a defender of the east.