[2] Spanning much of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and Slovenia to the southwest, and Austria to the west.

[18] Austria-Hungary collapsed after World War I, and the subsequent Treaty of Trianon in 1920 established Hungary's current borders, resulting in the loss of 71% of its historical territory, majority of its economy, 58% of its population, and 32% of its ethnic Hungarians.

[19][20][21] Reeling from the aftermath of the war, Hungary endured turmoil in the early interwar period, culminating in the nationalist conservative regime of de facto ruler Miklós Horthy.

[73] Between 1703 and 1711, there was a large-scale war of independence led by Francis II Rákóczi, who after the dethronement of the Habsburgs in 1707 at the Diet of Ónod, took power provisionally as the ruling prince for the wartime period, but refused the Hungarian crown and the title "king".

A remarkable upswing started as the nation concentrated its forces on modernisation even though the Habsburg monarchs obstructed all important liberal laws relating to civil and political rights and economic reforms.

Because of external and internal problems, reforms seemed inevitable, and major military defeats of Austria forced the Habsburgs to negotiate the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, by which the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary was formed.

After the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Prime Minister István Tisza and his cabinet tried to avoid the outbreak and escalating of a war in Europe, but their diplomatic efforts were unsuccessful.

Following the First World War, Hungary underwent a period of profound political upheaval, beginning with the Aster Revolution in 1918, which brought the social-democratic Mihály Károlyi to power as prime minister.

During the rule of Károlyi's pacifist cabinet, Hungary lost control over approximately 75% of its pre-war territories (325,411 square kilometres (125,642 sq mi)) without a fight and was subject to foreign occupation.

The new government worked quickly to normalise foreign relations while turning a blind eye to a White Terror that swept through the countryside; extrajudicial killings of suspected communists and Jews lasted well into 1920.

The initial years of the Horthy regime were preoccupied with putsch attempts by Charles IV, the Austro-Hungarian pretender; continued suppression of communists; and a migration crisis triggered by the Trianon territorial changes.

Horthy's nationalist agenda reached its apogee in 1938 and 1940, when the Nazis rewarded Hungary's staunchly pro-Germany foreign policy in the First and Second Vienna Awards, peacefully restoring ethnic-Hungarian-majority areas lost after Trianon.

Despite early success at the Battle of Uman,[89] the government began seeking a secret peace pact with the Allies after the Second Army suffered catastrophic losses at the River Don in January 1943.

In imitation of Stalin's KGB, the Rákosi government established a secret political police, the ÁVH, to enforce the regime; approximately 350,000 officials and intellectuals were imprisoned or executed from 1948 to 1956.

Although the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party began Round Table Talks with various opposition groups in March 1989, the reburial of Imre Nagy as a revolutionary martyr that June is widely considered the symbolic end of communism in Hungary.

In 2006, major nationwide protests erupted after it was revealed that Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány had claimed in a closed-door speech that his party "lied" to win the recent elections.

Since 2010, Hungary has accused to undergone a democratic backsliding and has been variously characterized by its critics as an illiberal democracy,[115]: 95  hybrid regime, kleptocracy, dominant-party system, and mafia state.

Past and ongoing areas of conflict include LGBT rights, which the Orbán government has restricted;[122] migration, especially in the context of the 2015 migrant crisis, when the Hungarian government unilaterally built border barriers on the Croatian and Serbian borders and criticized EU migration policy;[123][124] the lex CEU, which made Central European University's US-accredited part continued operation in Budapest impossible;[125] Hungary's decision to also authorize the use of Russian and Chinese vaccines during the coronavirus pandemic due to EU’s slow rollout of Western jabs;[126][127] and Western sanctions against Russia in retaliation for Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which Hungary has continuously opposed expanding.

Amendments generally require a two-thirds majority of parliament; the fundamental principles of the constitution (as expressed in the articles guaranteeing human dignity, the separation of powers, the state structure, and the rule of law) are valid in perpetuity.

The president is invested primarily with representative responsibilities and powers: receiving foreign heads of state, formally nominating the prime minister at the recommendation of the National Assembly, and serving as commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

The current political landscape in Hungary is dominated by the conservative Fidesz, who have a near supermajority, and three medium-sized parties, the left-wing Democratic Coalition (DK), the far-right Our Homeland Movement and liberal Momentum.

The role of the counties are basically administrative and focus on strategic development, while preschools, public water utilities, garbage disposal, elderly care, and rescue services are administered by the municipalities.

[citation needed] Hungary is an OECD high-income mixed economy with a very high human development index and skilled labour force with the 16th lowest income inequality in the world.

[160] Major industries include food processing, pharmaceuticals, motor vehicles, information technology, chemicals, metallurgy, machinery, electrical goods, and tourism (with 12.1 million international tourists in 2014).

[168] Hungary maintains its own currency, the Hungarian forint (HUF), although the economy fulfills the Maastricht criteria with the exception of public debt, but it is also significantly below the EU average with the level of 75.3% in 2015.

The transition to statehood occurred at the turn of the 1st to 2nd millennium when the federation of Magyar tribes was transformed into the Kingdom of Hungary, and Western Christianity, specifically Roman Catholicism, was adopted as state religion.

Turning away from the style of Lechner, yet taking inspiration from his approach, the group of "Young People" (Fiatalok), which included Károly Kós and Dezsö Zrumeczky, used the characteristic structures and forms of traditional Hungarian architecture to achieve the same end.

The Sezession from Vienna, the German Jugendstil, Art Nouveau from Belgium and France, and the influence of English and Finnish architecture are all reflected in the buildings constructed at the turn of the 20th century.

After the establishment of a music academy led by Liszt and Ferenc Erkel, Broughton claims that Hungary's "infectious sound has been surprisingly influential on neighboring countries (thanks perhaps to the common Austro-Hungarian history) and it's not uncommon to hear Hungarian-sounding tunes in Romania, Slovakia and Poland".

Desserts include the iconic Dobos torte, strudels (rétes), filled with apple, cherry, poppy seed or cheese, Gundel pancake, plum dumplings (szilvás gombóc), somlói dumplings, dessert soups like chilled sour cherry soup and sweet chestnut puree, gesztenyepüré (cooked chestnuts mashed with sugar and rum and split into crumbs, topped with whipped cream).