Hungary’s revolution was crushed 66 years ago
November 5th, 2022Commentators on both sides of the political divide remember the Soviet invasion in 1956 with an eye on contemporary controversies.
On 4 November 1956, the Red Army launched 5 divisions against Budapest to put an end to an effort by Hungarians to achieve independence from the Soviet Union. Armed resistance ceased within a week.
In Népszava, Gábor Czene accuses PM Orbán of having forgotten the lessons of 1956. Pro-government media, he suggests, express scant solidarity with Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression, while they spread anti-EU and pro-Russian propaganda. Czene welcomes an initiative by opposition MP Ákos Hadházy who has set up a tent in front of the public media headquarters in Budapest in protest against what he calls a ‘lie factory’.
in Magyar Nemzet, Levente Sitkei pinpoints German Chancellor Olaf Scholz as someone who hasn’t learned the message of 1956. He suggests that recent remarks by the Chancellor amount to praise for China for returning to original Marxism-Leninism. (Before leaving for Beijing, Mr Scholz wrote that in the recent Chinese Communist Party Congress “avowals of Marxism-Leninism take up a much broader space than in the conclusions of previous congresses”). Sitkei warns that globalists in the West are just as enthusiastic about dismantling national borders as the communists were in their heyday.