Google translate says “They’re finally heating up at Jucika’s”, but I edited it to sound more natural.
(edit: additional context in this comment below - https://sopuli.xyz/comment/23669088 - the Google translation is likely more accurate)
As always, stay tuned here on !comicstrips@lemmy.world for a slow trickle out of Jucika comics, but if you want to find more, here’s a good post with a large collection that /u/JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social posted last year: https://piefed.social/post/1258520
So some context. In communist era Hungary, a lot of the population lived - and still lives - in big prefab apartment buildings that run off central heating.
In the winter as it was getting colder, the heating would get turned on at the same time for the whole district if not the city.
The “they” in “they are finally heating at Jucika” is the government. It’s a hot topic every year when it gets turned on, as the people pay a flat rate for warmth.
Ohh, that makes the Google translation make a lot more sense.
Happy to have helped.
Means a lot to have one’s culture appreciated.
I’m honestly enjoying learning a bit about Hungary this way. The only thing I knew about it previously was that Judit Polgar and her sisters (famous chess prodigies) were from there.
I’m not sure Hungary has ever been communist, at least since the Roman Empire. Are you sure you’re not thinking of the USSR? That’s Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_People's_Republic
Right, but they were part of the USSR, an authoritarian “socialist” regime. The workers tried to rebel against the USSR, and they were put down by the Red Army. The Soviets installed Kádár as ruler of the entire country. That ain’t communism. Marx said communism was stateless, classless, and moneyless.
Oh, you’re just being intentionally dense, ok. “Communist era Hungary” is a perfectly valid way to describe the period of time in which the government of Hungary professed itself to be communist, whether or not it’s “real” communism by anyone’s definition. Also, if you want to be pedantic, they were never directly part of the USSR, at most being a puppet government propped up by the Soviets.
This is true but misleading. It’s like referring to North Korea as Democratic. By uncritically repeating government propaganda, you help to spread it. You’re both legitimising the USSR, AND poisoning people against communism.
If you want to see what actual communism looks like, take a look at the history of Australia. We had communism here for 60,000 years. To equate 50s era Hungary with Indigenous Australia via communism is an insult.
If you can’t tell the difference between calling a command economy communist (when that’s what it was historically referred to as both by allies and enemies) and calling a dictatorship a democracy, I can’t help you.
North Korea is officially called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. They call themselves democratic. The tankies on Hexbear call them democratic.
If America had never rebelled against the British empire, then in all likelihood you and I would have been inundated with decades of anti-democracy propaganda portraying authoritarian regimes like North Korea and Russia as symptoms of the evil ideology of democracy. I would be saying “Well you shouldn’t call Soviet states democratic” and you’d be saying “what’s the difference? They called themselves democratic, their enemies called them democratic, that’s democracy.”
The fact that our culture celebrates democracy and condemns communism is a pure coincidence. The dice of history just turned out that way. You shouldn’t use that as your source of truth. It’s an appeal to authority fallacy.
I suppose that’s one way of resolving the cognitive dissonance that comes with the ideal of communism and the way it was implemented in practice. Just mix the terminology enough and it’s all good again.
It’s really nothing like that
Hungary was never part of the USSR, not even in name, just occupied by it.
Hungary was never part of the USSR
I thought the USSR sent tanks in to put down the Hungarian workers’ rebellion against the USSR
They did, and we were a puppet state from then on, Warsaw Patch, but not USSR.
In general I agree, Imre Nagy’s leadership would have been much better than Mátyás Rákosi or János Kádár.