Getting Rich as Mission
Getting Rich as Mission

Swapping Elites on a Family Basis

Author(s): István Csillag
Subject(s): National Economy, Economic policy, Economic development, Present Times (2010 - today), Post-Communist Transformation, Public Finances
Published by: Central European University Press
Keywords: Fidesz;Orbán;corruption;State Property
Summary/Abstract: The founders of Fidesz seem to have borrowed the lines from the opening sequence of Andrzej Wajda’s 1975 film The Promised Land. The film’s protagonists,three friends who have just finished high school at the dawn of capitalism, symbolically hold hands and declare on a hill towering above the smokestacks of Łódź, notorious for its textile factories: “You have nothing and I have nothing, and we’ve got just enough to set up a factory!”This slogan has guided the activities of the Fidesz founding fathers.The dormitory residents who founded Fidesz and their family members,that is, a circle of friends (the “family”), established a series of companies in 1992 and after a few years vanished with debt owed to the state.

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