Acronyms and abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Mobilizing the Nation: From War Propaganda to
Peacetime Cultural Diplomacy and Beyond
From the
Emergence of Wartime Propaganda to the Changing Nature of
International Relations
Hungarian Dreamland and Its Destruction, 1918–1920
Hungary, 1920–1927: From Turmoil to Consolidation
1927: Opening a New Phase
Stages of Traditional and Cultural Diplomacy, 1927–1941
Conclusion
Chapter 2. Defining the Nation
National
Identity before the Nation-State?
Post-World War I Crisis of Culture
Hungarian Nemzetkarakterológia
Main Themes and Topoi
Conclusion
Chapter 3. Educating International Public Opinion:
Cultural
Institutions and Scholarly Publications
Institutions
The Hungarian Reference Library
Academic Publishing and Lectures
Conclusion
Chapter 4. Showcasing the Nation: The Role of
Tourism
The Hungarian Tourist Industry and the Image
of Hungary before Trianon
“A Country without Mountains or Sea”: The Reorganization of the
Hungarian Tourist Industry after World War I
Tourism Propaganda and the Constant Problem of Image
Competing Mental and Physical Landscapes of Hungary’s Tourist
Image
1938: Hopes, Disappointments, and Change
Conclusion
Chapter 5. Becoming Audible and Visible: Radio
Broadcasting and Cinematic Production in the Service of Cultural
Diplomacy
Radio Broadcasting: Providing Voice for a
Nation
Radio: Cultural Diplomacy’s Sharpest Weapon
Domestic Challenges: The Hungarianness of Hungarian Radio
Challenges to the Radio’s Foreign Policy: From “the Battle of
Radio Armaments” to War
The Birth, Destruction, and Rebirth of the Hungarian Movie
Industry, 1896–1929
Celluloid Résumés: The Role of Kulturfilme and Newsreels
Conclusion
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Zsolt Nagy is assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN.
"Nagy’s book is a valuable first attempt to gauge the inspirations,
resources, and processes behind the Hungarian decision—in the wake
of a lost world war and a disastrous peace—to join competing
Habsburg successor states and engage in 'cultural diplomacy' with
ever more commitment. The book deserves ample praise for what its
thematic chapters accomplish: a complex reading of new dimensions
in a small nation’s external relations, constructed by an
authoritarian regime mastering the challenges of modernity with
some skill and considerable flexibility."
*American Historical Review*
"Nagy’s study is a thoughtful, well-researched contribution to the
field and will be invaluable to any scholar interested in culture,
foreign policy, or national identity in Eastern Europe after World
War I. The analysis in Great Expectations and Interwar Realities
highlights the complexities of forming strong national identities
and cohesive foreign policy agendas in the face of political
reality, particularly for small countries."
*Austrian History Yearbook*
"The prevailing view, that Hungary’s propaganda was obsessed with
denouncing the 'Treaty of Trianon,' which had affirmed the
dismantling of the country that took place at the end of the First
World War, is too simplistic. Instead, Hungarian officials were
convinced that their country’s international reputation needed to
be completely transformed. The Treaty of Trianon, they concluded,
was the unfortunate result of widespread ignorance and ingrained
inaccuracies. As this book makes impressively clear, interwar
Hungary’s efforts to remedy this problem relied on diverse and
innovative strategies, from the opening of various cultural
institutes in Europe and the United States and the targeting of
influential figures who could be persuaded to promote Hungary to
the wider world to the publication of glossy magazines promoting
the country as a tourist destination and the dissemination of
feature films and radio broadcasts."
*Journal of Modern History*
"As Nagy starkly demonstrates, there was a massive discrepancy
between government expectations and political realities, since no
amount of investment in culture, or its dissemination, could
compensate for Hungary’s geopolitical weaknesses. Indeed, cultural
production turned out to be a very ‘poor substitute for real
power’. Yet the cultural capital built up in these turbulent years
was significant, and ‘the infrastructure created for interwar
cultural diplomacy remained essential during the communist era’ and
beyond. Accordingly, the book concludes that in the long run the
propaganda drive was not ‘for naught’, as it ‘helped to legitimize
Hungary’s status as an independent state’ and to develop a ‘basic
template of Hungarian identity," which, for better or worse,
survives today’."
*Slavic and East European Journal*
"Trianon Hungary was militarily powerless, economically exhausted,
and surrounded by hostile neighbors. The popular frustration
expressed in the slogan 'nem, nem soha' (signifying 'no, no never'
will we accept this dictate) was ignored or deplored by the Great
Powers. The regime thus turned to the only option, cultural
diplomacy. In a work of high scholarly quality, Zsolt Nagy relates
the historical background, local and international context, and
political execution of this approach. Nagy concludes that all
cultural propaganda, however well-conceived and whatever its
genuine services to national pride (there is little data that might
allow the historian to propose a better-documented cost-benefit
analysis), was vitiated by a 'bad' (revisionist) foreign policy
resting on a 'mistaken interpretation of geopolitical realities'.
The truth may be somewhat simpler, if no more reassuring. Small,
defeated countries are particularly vulnerable pawns in the
turbulent world of power politics, and chess games are seldom won
by pawns."
*Slavic Review*
"This is a book that should appeal to both those historians who
tend to dwell in the realm of signs and discourses as well as those
who want to look into the machinery of state. There is something
particularly engaging about the way Nagy lets us see the
hypervigilant, even petty, one-upmanship of diplomats wrestling
over the fickle consideration of distant audiences, laboring
mightily to frame the woes of aggrieved nationalists as burdens to
be shouldered by global humanity. Similarly, another strength comes
in what Nagy is able to illuminate about the interactions among
Hungarian government agencies and other institutions, not least
because it allows him to cement his analysis of cultural discourse
onto the more concrete matter of chancellery politics."
*East Central Europe*
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