And no one remembers that the current conservative 35 years ago was somewhat reminiscent of ours, excuse the expression, “perestroika demshizu”
Photo: EASTERN NEWS
While some “partners of Russia” are violating the agreements and calling Ukraine into NATO, others, on the contrary, are calling for the supply of weapons to kyiv to be stopped. And one of the main Eurosceptics is the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban. In almost all interviews, he, as he likes to say to Internet youth, “gives the groundwork.” That “the current type of cooperation between Ukraine and the West is a failure.” Or that before issuing another tranche to Kyiv, it would be nice to check “where the previous €70bn has gone” (a strong indication of outright corruption at Nezalezhnaya).
All this is so at odds with the general line of the “Brussels regional committee” which calls Orban “Russia’s Trojan horse in Europe.” However, his conflict with the liberal-cosmopolitan EU did not start yesterday. In 2011, at the initiative of the Prime Minister, a new constitution was adopted, where the national foundation of Hungary was defined as “God and Christianity”, and marriage as “the union of a man and a woman”.
And no one remembers that the current conservative 35 years ago was somewhat reminiscent of our, sorry for the expression, “perestroika demshizu”. He was an ardent liberal, he demanded to “drive Russian troops out of Hungary”, he received a scholarship from the Soros Foundation. [признан нежелательной организацией в РФ — ред.]
So who is he? “Kremlin agent”? “Hungarian nationalist”? Or – there are even more exotic versions – “a secret project of the Habsburgs, who dream of reviving the conservative Austro-Hungarian monarchy” (it is not for nothing that the old name “Hungarian Republic” disappeared from the new constitution of 2011 – now it is officially called simply Hungary )?
Orban was an ardent liberal
Photo: EASTERN NEWS
Bundestag deputy (from the Alternative for Germany party) Piotr Bystron, who published a documentary book entitled “Let’s make Europe great again”, tried to solve the riddle of the wolf of Budapest. Where it is stated: Orban is not a random loner, but a reflection of the “turn to the right”, which, to varying degrees, has engulfed almost every country in Europe and North America. It’s just that someone, like the loser, former US President Donald Trump, who came to power on this wave, couldn’t resist. And someone, like our hero, has been in command successfully for almost 20 years.
Mr. Bystron’s book has not yet been published in Russian: the kp.ru website publishes excerpts in its own translation.
HOW HUNGARY LEFT OUT OF THE SOCIAL FIELD
“If we trust in our own strength, we can end the communist dictatorship. If we are determined, we can force failure. [коммунистическую] party to hold free elections. If we remember the ideals [антисоветского восстания в Будапеште] 1956, we will be able to choose a government ourselves, which will begin immediate negotiations on the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops.
Viktor Orban was barely 26 years old when, in June 1989, he delivered these words during a rally in Budapest’s Heroes’ Square, which made him famous overnight throughout the country (millions heard that speech thanks to a live broadcast on television). Meanwhile, he was just a law student who had founded a dwarf political party a year earlier to challenge the communists’ monopoly on power.
That speech was prophetic. Already in the spring of 1990, democratic elections were held, where the communists lost, and on June 19, 1991, the last Soviet soldier left Hungary, as Orban predicted.
Meanwhile, in socialist Hungary, he had the most ordinary childhood. The future leader grew up in the city of Felchut (near the city of Szekesfehervar), almost in a village. There was no running water in the house, Victor and his brother were forced to work in the fields after school. His strict father was an agronomist and his mother was a teacher. He pushed the boy to study languages, he entered the English-speaking department of the gymnasium. He dreamed of being a soccer player; like everyone else, he joined the pioneers.
Now, from an early age, he is exposed as a rebel against the socialist regime: I, they say, did not study well and once flew out of school to fight. But, according to the recollections of classmates, the grades of the future leader were good, he read a lot. He wore jeans and a leather jacket, listened to western music, went to rock concerts. At the age of 16, he created a self-education circle with friends, where the boys talked without teachers and exchanged newspapers. [Прим. «КП»: «страшная коммунистическая цензура» очень многое позволяла печатать и читать между строк; кто хотел — делал нужные выводы.]
In 1981, Orban, after graduating from school, was drafted into the army for 11 months. At the same time, he started in Poland the first serious resistance to the communist regime: rallies and strikes of the Solidarity union. Hungarian youth listened to Radio Liberty [контролируется США, признано иноагентом — прим. ред.]sympathizing with the freedom fighters of Poland.
Orban and his friends sometimes said goodbye, went to contemporary music concerts in Krakow. [да-да, вот такие «ужасы тоталитаризма» — прим. ред.]. Once, after fighting with an officer, Victor hit him, for which he was sent to the guardhouse.
“He who yearns for freedom at 18 or 19 and suddenly finds himself in the worst-functioning army of the Warsaw Pact, within a year, if he is smart enough, can become an enemy of the system,” said Laszlo Köver, later an associate of Orban.
Breaking into the system was easy. In 1985, already at the university, Orban applied for the “4th regional meeting of students” – without mentioning that it would in fact be the first. The officials decided that if the event had already been “approved three times”, then it was quite reliable, and they agreed … And if Victor’s friends wanted to publish an anti-government article in the newspaper, they first coordinated a text with the officials, and then they changed it at the printer [вероятно, за небольшую мзду для верстальщиков — прим. ред.]
At one of these student meetings, on March 30, 1988, Orban and his friends were the first in Hungary to create a new independent political organization. It was called the Union of Young Democrats, abbreviated in Hungarian – FIDES. A press conference on the creation of a new political force was held in a cafe in Budapest, calling for Western journalists. Two weeks later, Orban was summoned to a conversation with the prosecution; however, they could not indicate which laws he had violated.
[Прим. «КП»: ныне ФИДЕС — правящая в стране партия.]
Knowledge and discord with Soros
Along the way, the young political activist met another “fighter for democracy” – George Soros. An American currency speculator (through his representative in Hungary) introduced his student circle to a miraculous machine, a photocopier, and helped install a telephone at his headquarters. He also sent Viktor Orban on an internship at Oxford for three months after graduating in 1988.
After the fall of the socialist camp, Orban’s movement, FIDES, entered parliament. And then, one day in the spring of 1993, Soros invited the leaders of FIDES to dinner; at that time he was promoting the creation of an alliance of liberal parties in Hungary, where he also wanted to drag Victor.
According to the memoirs, the billionaire philanthropist said then that “the West is controlled by the liberal elite.” [с намёком: и вы можете в неё войти — прим. ред.]:
“Today, the greatest danger for Hungary is fascism,” Soros argued at that meeting. — Liberal decisions and liberal ideology are universal and can be applied both in Europe and in America. If you resort to traditional values, you will be accused of nationalism and fascism…
But Orban rejected all the promises. (After all, in that historic 1989 speech, he did say: “Hungarians have always sought national independence and political freedom. Our goals have not changed to this day.”)
And surprisingly, the media, which used to praise the young FIDES rebels, immediately turned its back on them.
On his political path, the young political activist crossed paths with another “fighter for democracy” – George Soros.
Photo: EASTERN NEWS
Since then, little has changed. “There is no freedom of the press in Hungary… the torch of democracy has gone out”, and now the main Western newspapers such as the NYT or The Guardian write. Furthermore, today’s Hungarian media is full of criticism of the government. Left-liberal newspapers, for example, aggressively report on corruption scandals that embarrass the government.
Despite a pogromist media campaign against Orban (which has been going on since 1993 to this day), he was able to turn FIDES into a “middle-class party” with broad support.
“I am in favor of a sovereign citizen who does not serve the state, but whom the state is obliged to serve,” said the future prime minister. It was an attempt to restore bourgeois society, which after World War II was abolished by the communists and replaced by party organs. With such an agenda, in 1998 FIDES won the parliamentary elections for the first time. Orban became prime minister at the age of 35.
[Прим. «КП»: позже его дорожки с Соросом окончательно разошлись, деятельность многих организаций этого «любителя цветных революций» в Венгрии была запрещена.]
HIS CREED
In July 2018, speaking in the Romanian town of Baiele Tusnad, Orban delivered another speech, revolutionary and at the same time conservative, like his longstanding speech in 1989:
— I formulated five theses to build Central Europe [как отдельной геополитической общности].
The first thesis: every European country has the right to defend its Christian culture, has the right to reject the ideology of multiculturalism.
The second thesis: every country has the right to defend the traditional family model, it has the right to declare that every child has the right to a mother and a father.
The third thesis of our “Central European idea” is that each Central European country has the right to protect its sectors of the economy, which are key in terms of national strategy, as well as its markets.
Fourth thesis: every country has the right to protect its borders and has the right to reject foreign migration.
And the fifth thesis: every European country has the right to insist on the principle of “one nation, one vote”, and this right cannot be evaded even in the European Union. [где всё решают непонятно кем назначенные «еврокомиссары» — прим. ред.].
This means that we Central Europeans argue that outside of globalism there is also “life”, and globalism is not the only way to go. And the way of Central Europe is the way of the Union of Free Nations.
TOTAL
As you can see, Peter Bystron’s book is sustained in a purely laudatory spirit. Viktor Orban, father of five children, presents himself as a defender of traditional values and a supporter of “national revival”. We should also perceive him in this capacity: as a patriot, but not of Russia, Europe or the United States, but of Hungary. Somehow your interests with any of the three listed players differ, but somehow coincide (and then the “wolf of Budapest”, for example, is happy to buy Russian energy resources, which Germany or other EU countries refuse suicidally for ideological reasons).
And the most important. This small country shows that even within the West, a variety of political models can work: not just “left globalism” according to Soros, but also “right anti-globalism” according to Orban. That is, it is impossible to talk about some kind of “the only true path to democracy”, which our local liberals adore – each nation chooses this path for itself.
