16 November marks the day when Rear Admiral, and later Regent, Miklós Horthy marched into Budapest in 1919, symbolically ending the Hungarian Soviet Republic. This remains a controversial event to this very day: while on the one hand, it ended a period of chaos and dictatorship, on the other hand, it bolstered the so-called White Terror.
‘What will determine whether the situation plays to Hungary’s favour or not will be the ability of its leaders to balance the concerns of its security partners with the benefits it gains from its economic ones. With its society becoming more dependent on cyber infrastructure, what is undeniable is the necessity to protect it from hostile foreign influence and manipulation. Its western allies offer the greatest opportunity to accomplish that but would likely come at the cost of its Chinese-built infrastructure.’
While Turkish–Hungarian relations are based on mutual interests, Ankara regards Hungary as a strong ally, and a country that is linked to Turkey by a sense of kinship, according to Turkish Ambassador to Hungary Gülşen Karanis Ekşioğlu.
The following is Part II of a three-part analysis that sets out to illustrate the three fault lines that are about to redraw the geostrategic map of the Old World.
The events of the 1956 Revolution are quite well-known, at least in Hungary, as far as the beginning of it and the period of its brief triumph are concerned. What is less known is that the revolution was not fully suppressed on the day of the Soviet invasion on 4 November. Active, armed resistance lasted until 11 November, and civil disobedience, as well as sporadic outbursts of rebellion kept the Soviets from stabilizing their rule until the late spring of the next year.
As Kenneth M. Pollack phrased in his The Hill article, ‘a ceasefire now would only lead to more war and more killing in the future.’ Pollack added that ‘when you reward an aggressor and prevent the attacked from fighting back, you simply encourage that aggressor to attack again, and encourage other would-be aggressors to do the same.’
When the Soviet intervention against the Hungarian Revolution was placed on the agenda of the UN Security Council, the Soviets immediately vetoed it: their argument was that it was no more than a ‘reactionary uprising’ supported by the US. The French, meanwhile, were of the view that not only the UN Charter had been contravened in Hungary, but also the Paris Peace Treaties, and even the Warsaw Pact that served the legal foundation for the invasion. On the other hand, the United Kingdom questioned whether the use of Soviet military forces stationed in Hungary under a valid treaty and at the behest of the Hungarian government could even be called an intervention at all.
‘The speed and eagerness with which Hungarian clubs sought to return to their old identities, with all the loyalties and connections they represented, demonstrated the power of these emotional and social meanings. And it was just as clearly a mark of the utter failure of the Party to co-opt and utilise the power of football for its own purposes. The Party abandoned the micro-management of football, paralleling its wider realisation after 1956 that, while its authority was still non- negotiable, it could and would not protect and justify it through the politicisation of society or the ideological mobilisation of the people.’
‘Hamas’ 7 October attacks have nothing to do with the grievances of the average Palestinian. Rather, it is part of their jihad (holy war) that is sponsored by the theocracy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which must be stopped…peace can only come after the Hamas terrorists are eliminated and Iran is properly dealt with.’
‘It is one of history’s great ironies that Budapest, from which hundreds of thousands of European Jews were shipped to their deaths by the Nazis and their Hungarian collaborators, Jews can walk the streets this dreadful autumn without fear. This is an achievement for which Hungarians can and should be proud. Don’t expect European leaders to give Orbán credit. In fact, they will probably increase their public odium directed at him.’
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.