The Iron Curtain by now was gone, fallen in 1989 when Hungarians opened their border to Austria. There were many other changes. For the last 10 years, Hungary has moved in an entirely new direction. Political parties left and right compete in free elections. Newspapers no longer are state-owned.
Hungarian currency is convertible.
More than 70 percent of the nation s businesses have been privatized and, remarkable for a country whose economic connection to the Soviet Union was very close for more than four decades, in the country s free economy only 4 percent of Hungary s business today is tied to Russia. Once part of the Warsaw bloc, communist-ruled and a puppet of Moscow, the country now is part of the West, a fact noted by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on May 1 when she declared, A few short years ago, Hungary could be seen as a student in the school of democracy. Today it has graduated with high honors to become a valued partner for the United States and NATO and a source of security and economic stability throughout central Europe. Not everything I saw in the new Hungary was good, but most was, and it certainly was a far more exciting place than the country in which I lived three decades ago, simply because far more is happening. Three decades ago, cynical friends told me that the communist government continually boasted that important changes were taking place, but that nothing ever changed.