How Many Histories Do We Have?
How Many Histories Do We Have?

Summary/Abstract: Ágnes Losonczi: Sorsba fordult történelem (History as Turned into Personal Fate). Budapest, Holnap Kiadó, 2005, 329 pp. The first question on a recent “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” went: “When did the regime change in Hungary take place?” The usual easy warm-up question, or so the show’s host thought. The four options were 1968, 1990, 1998 and 2002. The contestant, well-dressed and well-spoken, an engineer in his forties, broke into a sweat and began to stammer, “Well, I’m not sure I know… Must have been quite recently… wasn’t it?… Maybe when the last government was elected?” The host was quite visibly taken aback but supplied a broad hint. “Come on then, you must have been a grown man at the end of the 1980s, after all… You don’t mean to say nothing changed in your life after 1990?” “That’s the God’s truth,” the man replied. “We don’t pay too much attention to politics where I come from. It’s all the same to us, more or less, no matter what goes on. We just do our job, and try to get by. We did not experience any big change back then, and we don’t now.”[...]

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