Hungary

**Hungary** is vastly different in the Jade Lensky Universe from the nation known to our timeline as a bastion of cozy conservative individualistic pacifism. This land is the polar opposite of that in every sense: recklessly globalist & progressive but also highly regimented & extremely militaristic, having spearheaded the entire Soviet war machine in every major conflict of the 20th century on every continent.

## Society

Hungary's population is more than 38 million as of 2018, largely because of massive waves of immigration combined with extremely pervasive ManProm policies. English is spoken as a common language of average working people while Hungarian, though known on a strong basic level by almost everyone, is used regularly only by the elites. This has made their version of the language sound rather archaic or even snobbish to Hungarians in our timeline, full of Russian & German loanwords instead of English. Uppity Hungarians are thus expected to speak at least four languages, or much rather five since Latin is also mandatory in larger schools.

Hungarian society, like we said, is very liberal but also highly militaristic: pretty much like Israel in our timeline, but on a much higher level. The deliberately provocative advertising slogan of all armed forces & security personnel, "Ours Is The Holy War" is displayed (as such in English, since 1953 a national language) in copious amounts everywhere, always directed towards religious fundamentalist forces harbored by the enemies of International Socialism.

The nation is nonetheless globally considered a Mecca of weirdos where all sorts of eccentricity are, though highly regulated, nonetheless very strongly encouraged. Hungarians tend to enjoy many civil & social rights, the welfare state is very robust due to the labor force being extremely productive and relatively young. LGBT culture is flamboyantly visible everywhere, so is the Social Justice crowd, all sorts of drugs can be legally purchased in all sorts of places, not only Budapest but also the 7 major cities with populations above a million people are full of hipsters.

Listed clockwise from the north-west, they are:

1. Pressburg (Bratislava, Pozsony)
2. Kaschau (Kosice, Kassa)
3. Clouge (Clausenburg, Cluj-Napoca, Kolozsvár)
4. Temeshwar (Temesvár)
5. Aegopol (Kecskemét)
6. Sophiane (Pécs)
7. Triest

## Politics

The whole country is highly saturated with a kind of left-liberal jingoism that feels so paradoxically alien to the Hungarians of our timeline that even my former drinking buddies are mostly unable or unwilling to comprehend it despite massive Soviet efforts being taken to create an overarching narrative of interstellar Hungarian brotherhood.

Consider for example the patriotic Soviet nu-metal & electro-pop songs constantly playing on loudspeakers, or the ultra-modern electronic billboards always displaying the latest propaganda slideshows about domestic as well as international affairs: public debates, policy reforms, economic trends, national security directives, supreme court decisions... And of course military campaigns, last but not least! All public places are full of this: shopping malls, metro stations, train & bus stations, schools & universities, factories, office buildings, airports, hotels, cruise ships, trains, toilets, elevators etcetera - it is literally everywhere!!!

The main political faultline lies between the fervently progressive socialist hawks and the moderately conservative pro-western doves. The doves want more laid-back policies both domestic & foreign, with closer relations to the European Union and other great capitalistic powers. The hawks are of course relentlessly nationalistic, determined to preserve Hungary's position of leadership within the Soviet Union as well as the global supremacy of Socialism over Capitalism.

## Economy

The country's GDP per capita adjusted to purchasing power is the 2nd highest in the world around 300 thousand international dollars, which is worth roughly a hundred thousand USD in our timeline, almost exactly 3 times the PPP-adjusted per capita GDP of our world's Hungary. The absolute size of "their" Hungarian economy is thus nearly twelve times the size of "ours" since they have more than 38 million people while we have less than ten.

The amount of private consumption per capita is notoriously low compared to this colossal figure: it's not significantly higher per capita than that of Hungarians in our timeline, with luxury consumption being significantly lower because of exorbitant taxes levied on it. The amount of private investment, however, is extremely high due to its very low taxes as long as all profit is re-invested into productive assets.

Misusing corporate property for private ends, however, is severely prosecuted & in some notorious cases it can be punished even by the death penalty. Nearly a hundred people are executed every year by the way, Soviet citizens as well as foreigners. Thanks to extremely large amounts of social mobility, everyone has become replaceble.

Rich people are thus also heavily reliant on vast networks of public infrastructure heavily subsidised by the military-industrial complex. This complex itself is also heavily subsidized by hundreds of billions pouring in every year from all over the Soviet Union as well as friendly nations where the Hungarian army was previously involved in a regime change. Yeah, well, I guess everything revolves around the military here!! Speaking of which...

## Military

Okay, let's see the wildest number upfront: nearly 15% of the nation's economy is controlled by military organizations. That is roughly equivalent to the share of military spending within the GDP of Nazi Germany before the onset of the 2nd world war in our timeline. Let that just sink in! Like we said, Liberal Fascism is not a joke in this world. The combined grand total of the budgets of Hungarian DefCom & NavCom & ExCom is more than 1.7 trillion international dollars, equivalent to 570 billion of our US dollars. For reference, this is roughly 73% of the US defense budget in our timeline. Let that also sink in!

For example, the Hungarian navy operates a fleet of four *Queen Charlotte class* (HU: Sarolt Fejedelemasszony) nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, each being nearly 3 times the size of a Nimitz class vessel in our world. The runway alone is more than 600 meters long on this massive leviathan. Together they are serving nearly a thousand modern Soviet war planes as big as for example a mid-range stealth bomber capable of deploying an entire night hawk unit of 5 fully equipped operatives via wingsuits & parachutes. As of 2018, these thousand airplanes are operated by as many as 26 different member states of the Soviet Union.

The youngest of these vessels, the legendary Izabel Lensky, was named after Jade herself in 1998, in the heat of the Second American Civil War in which she took part as a night hawk operative of Hungarian ExCom. She became a folk heroine for the entire nation, quickly establishing a massive cult of personality due to the numerous Hungarian connections of the Lensky family. She was in fact born & raised for more than 10 years in the city of Triest where the Hungarian NavCom admirality is located. The ship's older sisters are named Queen Charlotte, Pax Hungarica and Rosa Luxemburg. They entered service in 1992, 1994 and 1996 respectively.

During the late 90's there were more than 2 and a half million Hungarian soldiers & sailors & ExCom agents on active duty, the vast majority of them deployed to faraway locations all around the world. The length of mandatory military service was 5 years for everyone including women back then. By the year 2022 the 2.5 million figure is expected to be reached once again despite the length of mandatory service being only 3 years for lower ranks, due to millions of interstellar immigrants scheduled to continuously arrive from our planet Earth since the merger of our timelines.

The nation's economy has to also provide for the basic needs of a fluctuating number of foreign civilians that can be as few as 5 million or as many as 80 million, all sorts of people living under the ever-changing conditions of Hungarian military rule. This investment is however usually paid off by massive concessions kept by Hungarian companies in all these formerly war-torn regions for decades.