New Books In Eastern European Studies

"Who knows the name of the Czech prime minister, the name of the head of the Romanian or even the Polish executive branches? Yet, today everyone knows the name of the Hungarian leader: Viktor Orbán. To have a leader known outside the country's borders is a first for Hungarians. Some are frustrated by this: Hungary, they say, isn't just Viktor Orbán". In La Hongrie sous Orban: Histoires de la Grande Plaine (Plein Jour, 2022), Corentin Léotard - together with Hélène Bienvenu, Thomas Laffitte, Joël Le Pavous, Jehan Paumero and Daniel Psenny - tell a series of stories about what else Hungary is but all under the shadow of Orbánism. Among these are tales of the origins and corruption of Fidesz through the eyes of disillusioned co-founder József Kardos, of the power and inconvenience of national myth-making through the hunt for archaeological evidence of the "the battle that saved civilization” in Szigetvár, and of poverty in the borderlands offset by EU transfers in a pervasive environment of euroscepticism. Hélèn