A Fight on Two Fronts: Disability Rights and Challenging the Regime in Late 1980s Hungary

EPOCH
3 days ago
6 min read

Boglárka Kőrösi | Eötvös Loránd University

According to estimations, there are between 100,000 and 150,000 individuals with severe physical disabilities in our country. These people, like anyone else, want to pursue an education, get employment, and occasionally also need to enter bureaucratic institutions to run errands. Furthermore, these people wish to participate in cultural programmes and entertainment. In the event of illness, they also need to visit their local doctor or other health facilities. It is, however, regrettable that today very few notice the great challenges in urban environments, such as staircases and pavement edges, faced by those who permanently rely on canes, crutches, or wheelchairs.

The above quote is the opening of a petition that was proposed by the youth department of the Hungarian National Association of People with Physical Disabilities (MEOSZ) in 1989. This petition was submitted as part of a street demonstration in Budapest, which was organised with the aim of raising awareness of the specific challenges encountered by people with disabilities. A group of demonstrators and their family members gathered in the downtown area and made their way to the Ministry of Transport, Construction and Telecommunication, to present their petition to Minister András Derzsi. Tellingly, the ministry building was inaccessible from street level, so makeshift ramps awaited the demonstrators – and as the elevators were too small for wheelchairs, Derzsi met the delegation in the entrance hall.

A number of people engaging in outdoor activities in a park. Some use wheelchairs or crutches. Trees and grass in the background. — This image shows young vacationers at a summer camp in 1984 organised by Express, the tourist office of the Hungarian Young Communist League (KISZ). Due to a lack of accessible solutions, such opportunities and other leisure-time activities were centrally organised. (Fortepan / Tamás Urbán)

Street demonstrations were not uncommon in Hungary in 1989. Indeed, they proved to be a crucial element in the shifting political landscape, occurring in the broader context of changes that took place during the decay of the state-socialist regime. This period also saw the emergence of representations of previously excluded or overlooked groups, marking a great shift in social awareness. It is therefore significant that the issue of physical disability also became a topic of public protest, with those who were oppressed finding the courage to make their collective disapproval known.

In light of the above, within the context of a collapsing political regime, protests and demonstrations were a relatively frequent occurrence in larger Hungarian cities. However, the sight of people with physical disabilities on the streets was surprising for many, given their absence from society in previous decades.

A man carries a baby in a stroller down some steps in front of an apartment block. A woman stands beside him and both show stern facial expressions. — Budapest’s Astoria junction in 1985. During the discourse on barrier-free solutions in 1980s Hungary, the issue of baby strollers emerged as a recurrent theme. Therefore, the call for more accessible urban environments was not merely a demand made by physical disability advocacy groups (Fortepan / Sándor Bojár)

This level of stigmatisation and exclusion had particularly devastating consequences for those who grew up with a physical impairment, many of whom suffered from the permanent paralysing effects of the 1950s polio epidemics. They spent most of their childhood in state care facilities, with woefully limited prospects compared to their ‘nondisabled’ peers. A late 1970s estimate – in the absence of official statistical records – placed the number of people with physical disabilities under the age of thirty at approximately twenty-five thousand. Based on their successful rehabilitation, this group would be able to secure employment. However, due to the previously mentioned issues, the majority of them would be reliant on disability compensation. The same source also mentioned around five thousand young people who were permanently placed into elderly homes after completing their youth rehabilitation programs with nowhere else to go. This was primarily the case when parents resided in underdeveloped rural areas with inadequate infrastructure or in large mass housing units with limited space (not to mention the narrow elevators, like the ones in the ministry building). These details will shed light on two key points: first, the reason why the 1989 street demonstration was initiated by the youth department of the interest group, and second, the central focus on the disabling built environment in the petition, which hindered access to housing, employment, and hope for any level of self-fulfilment.

Two buses facing in opposite directions on the same road in front of a tall, imposing apartment building. Two children stand by the side of the road looking on. — Prefabricated mass housing was a key program under state-socialism, manifesting in extensive developments in suburban areas of major cities. The image, taken in 1982, also depicts the Ikarus buses that were used in public transport during that period. Like mass housing, these buses did not have barrier-free features by default. (Fortepan / Imre Prohászka)

According to newspaper reports, regardless of the surprise, passers-by expressed great sympathy with the street demonstration. Furthermore, as I will elaborate in the following sections, the issue of accessibility evolved into a symbolic element of a more progressive society. It is then considerable to look at late 1980s Hungary through the lens of physical disability, as it offers new insights into this historical transitional period until the eventual collapse of the state-socialist regime. During this phrase of transition, there were not only new ways to gain agency, but also notable shifts in attitudes and perceptions towards taboos and ‘otherness’ among ‘non-disabled’ members of society and decision makers. New discourses on normalcy emerged that called into question the previously held notions of passivity and dependence. Even though this did not result in the de-stigmatisation of bodies with differences – nor did it erase the binary categories of ‘disabled’ and ‘nondisabled’ – the changing mindset did prompt reflection on the existence and relevance of such boundaries, thereby challenging their legitimacy.

It is crucial to recognise that this late 1980s transformation in mentality was not an abrupt and stark contrast, but rather a gradual process that unfolded over time. Disability historians focusing on Eastern Europe have pointed out the seemingly contradictory relationship between socialism’s egalitarian utopia and the construction of ‘otherness’ and ‘deviance’, which had been essential in state-socialist biopower and social engineering in Hungary as well. This paradox constituted a crucial yet complex aspect of the socialist project across the entire Eastern Bloc. While, as detailed above, social isolation and neglect had been present in state practices, research on the region’s healthcare and sociopolitical issues demonstrates that socialist regimes were also willing to consider certain problems and had even established platforms for posing difficult questions to the authorities about their responsibility for often poor operations – which was true in the case of Hungary as well.

In close connection with these factors, the first Hungarian physical disability advocacy groups, such as MEOSZ, were founded during the second half of the 1970s and the early 1980s. In addition to negotiating the earliest plans for wheelchair-accessible housing and employment opportunities in the country, these groups also accessed various written resources on social inclusion through their growing international network that crossed the borders of the iron curtain. This contributed to the development of knowledge about and the discourse on social inclusion in Hungary. It is also relevant to note that Hungary participated in the 1981 UN International Year of Disabled Persons global program with a state-controlled local campaign, which had facilitated the dissemination of new ideas on ability and disability in Hungary: ideas that have influenced expert and lay opinions at the national level, as it is evidenced in archival press materials.

Furthermore, as travel to the Western Bloc became possible to a broader segment of society, travellers observed first hand the varying degrees of social inclusivity across different destinations. This phenomenon is also reflected in newspapers of the time, particularly in the reader's letter sections, where one finds non-disabled readers advocating for the local implementation of idealised practices observed during travel to the Nordic countries or West Germany. These suggestions included housing solutions that were designed to accommodate all groups, without spatially segregating wheelchair users in social care facilities or ‘special’ residential areas.

Dimly lit stairway with weathered walls and a closed door. — The elevators in residential buildings were too small to accommodate wheelchairs. Often, as seen in this image (taken in the inner city of Budapest in 1982), stairs led up to the elevator door. This was common in older structures, like the one in the image, and in newly constructed mass housing blocks as well. (Fortepan / Benjamin Makovecz)

Today, thirty-five years after the collapse of the Hungarian state-socialist regime, in trying to make sense of the transitional period that preceded the change, we might see the 1989 physical disability protest as a reflection of the myriad personal frustrations associated with the limitations imposed by physical, mental and cultural barriers at that time. As the discourse surrounding disability slowly shifted towards a human rights paradigm in Hungary, it prompted a re-evaluation of fundamental concepts such as personal autonomy and independence, leading to the proposal of a new social contract that would indeed affect the entire society. However, as we know, significant historical events, such as the fall of the Hungarian state socialist regime in 1989-90, do not necessarily correspond to actual experience: despite the positive response of Minister András Derzsi in 1989, the first legislation in Hungary ratifying accessibility standards in the built environment was not adopted until 1997.