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The Prime Minister said Brussels is not Moscow: Moscow was a tragedy; Brussels is only a badly turned-out contemporary parody.
“We were forced to dance to Moscow’s tune. Even if it is Brussels now that whistles the tune, we will dance as we want to, and if we don’t want to, we won’t dance,” Mr Orbán said in his commemorative speech. In his view, however, there is the same “lecturing from the comrades,” except it is now called a conditionality procedure, and “rather than tanks rolling in from the East, dollars are rolling in from the West to the same place and to the same people.”
He stressed the big difference was that the Soviet Union was a hopeless venture, while the European Union was not, for the time being. “Moscow was incorrigible; however, Brussels and the European Union can yet be repaired,” the Prime Minister said, reminding his audience of the upcoming elections in the European Parliament.
He said the sacrifice of the victims of 1956 can only be meaningful if we, too, protect, live in and hand down Hungarian freedom. “They didn’t die in vain if we don’t live in vain. If we give the world something that only we can give,” the Prime Minister said, taking the view that Veszprém as a European Capital of Culture is doing just that: It is showing the whole of Europe what Hungarian culture is like, what freedom is like if it is Hungarian.
The Prime Minister also highlighted that the Hungarians were a chivalrous people, even at the expense of reason, “this is why it happens to us time and again that eventually the very people that we rescued earlier or we are in the process of defending turn on us.”
“Also today, we were the first to protect Europe from migration, and we were the first to propose peace instead of war with which we could have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands,” he said.
He added that also today, Hungary is the first and only country that is seeking to prevent European nations “from marching into yet another, even bigger war out of their own free will.”
The Prime Minister said Hungary never receives words of gratitude or praise; obstruction, stabs in the back and friendly fire all the more frequently, however. This is a pattern of Hungarian fate that repeats itself from time to time.
It is cold comfort that people in the West “can now lie in the bed they made,” he observed.
For a Hungarian, fighting for freedom is not something they embrace or decide on, Mr Orbán said, adding that freedom must be protected, or else we will be lost.
This was so in 1956, in 1990, and this is so also today, he said, adding that all the old great ones – all the way from King Stephen to the heroes of 1956 – knew that.
The Prime Minister, who welcomed on the day of Hungarian freedom the entire Hungarian community in Hungary, the Carpathian Basin and around the world, recalled that while they were celebrating 23 October, in actual fact, they should have come to Veszprém a day earlier as the people of Veszprém did not wait for the people of Pest; they established their revolutionary organisations and proclaimed their demands already on 22 October.
He stressed that every city and village of Hungary had its own 1956. Each has a lesson to offer and each one is a part of “our great common 1956 freedom fight.” He took the view that, with this in mind, it is not only unfair and condescending, but nothing short of a mistake for anyone to see 1956 only as the revolution of the capital in the limelight. It is fair and just that today “we bow our heads” before the memory of the 1956 freedom fighters here in Veszprém, he added.
He recalled that according to estimates, some three thousand people died and twenty thousand were injured in the street fights, while the ensuing communist retaliation sent more than 200 people to their deaths and 13,000 to prison. Another 200,000 Hungarians fled the country.
He stressed that each and every one of the stories of those who suffered retaliation in prison or were executed is a unique, shocking and enlightening drama. He added that their diversity in itself stands as proof of the fact that 1956 was indeed the whole nation’s great common freedom fight.
“They executed priests, workers, farmers, teachers and communist party leaders alike, old people, young people, men and women, people from Budapest and people from the countryside: a whole nation stood on the scaffold,” he stated.
Mr Orbán said 1956 was the last chance of European Hungary for a long time to free itself from the world of Bolshevik socialism denying European culture, Christian civilisation and the right of nations to exist.
He said “the Hungarian revolution and freedom fight of 1956 was not an inarticulate cry, not the rage of the oppressed, not the wheeze of those panting for revenge, and not even an uncontrolled outbreak of desire for freedom.”
Despite all its breathtaking heroism and death-defying courage, the Hungarian revolution was a sober, moderate and responsible movement. The revolution was nothing other than a flash of Hungarian genius, Mr Orbán said.
He paid tribute to Árpád Brusznyai with connections to Veszprém who was executed aged 33 after the revolution despite being innocent and whose very memory was erased in the years thereafter. The Prime Minister said the story of the teacher protecting young people as well as “the marauders of the dictatorship” was a true, unadulterated embodiment of the Hungarian genius, a genuine Hungarian fate.
Mr Orbán recalled that during his years in secondary school, he had never heard the name of „Pongrátz, Ilona Tóth or Brusznyai, but had heard the names of the murderers sending them to their deaths. Old sins cast long shadows, and if a sin is committed against an entire nation, it will cast a shadow that you cannot see the end of for seven generations, he said.
In continuation, he said: “We now know who Brusznyai and the others were, but we are no longer willing to even utter the names of the murderers. Contempt and oblivion are what they deserve; admiration and eternal memory are reserved for Brusznyai and the likes. Glory to the heroes of 1956!”
The Prime Minister also said “our nation is strong enough to even face its faults, we know that traitors are also part of our nation, they, too, are in our history like ill fate in our National Anthem.” 23 October was followed by 4 November, after the judgment at first instance sentencing Árpád Brusznyai to life in prison, the county first secretary of the party asked for a harsher sentence from here, from Veszprém, he recalled, adding that “we won’t forget that either.”
He highlighted that 1956 had eventually won in 1990, “those of us who were there, who fought political battles against the Soviet Union and the communist party leadership” would not have been able to win without the legacy of 1956.
He said “we fought in the name of freedom, and those who were executed in the freedom fight gave us the most powerful weapon because those that we were up against in 1989 were raised into power by the sins committed against Hungarians in 1956,” and so their power rested on unstable foundations.
At the time of the fall of communism, the communists only stood a chance of crossing over to the era of democracy unharmed and with the glimmering hope of a political future if they first admitted their greatest sins, and as soon as they did, they lost their power, he said.
He recalled that they had had to bury the earthly remains of the victims kept in secret up until then in a public ceremony. However, as soon as their bodies had been buried, “their souls were released, and floated above the heads of the leaders of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party.”
He observed that, as is laid down in the Fundamental Law, these were criminal organisations, and their leaders owe responsibility with no statute of limitations for the crushing of the 1956 revolution as well.
He said the successor party of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party is now microscopic in size, and “the last left-wing party planned as an escape route for the last communists, too, will end up where it should according to the spirit of 1956.”
He pointed out that “in 1989 all we had to do was finish what the heroes of 1956 had started, to show” that 30 years’ enforced silence does not amount to forgiveness, and that the historical bill must be paid sooner or later.
“We only had to pluck up enough courage to point at them and to shout: the emperor has no clothes, and can’t avoid the people’s judgement” which was duly delivered – following in the footsteps of Brusznyai – in free and democratic elections in which everyone was free to run, even the communists, he recalled.
He stressed that “we freed ourselves from the Soviet occupation and sent the communists packing without a civil war in Hungary, without losing a single human life, and even if with much difficulty, we managed to avoid Hungary’s economic and political collapse.”
What is more, to this day, Hungary is the only country in Europe where in 33 years not once have we been compelled to hold early elections, “and to this day, we remain the safest and most stable country in the whole of Europe,” Mr Orbán stated.
Mr Orbán highlighted that 1956 had won, and we had rejoined the community of European nations; this, too, forms part of our historical satisfaction. It is also true, he continued, that the place – Europe – that we returned to is no longer the place from which we were once banished, and it is less and less so.
“We wanted freedom, we are free, and Europe was reunited in the spirit of freedom. At the same time, we must now face the fact that we mean different things by freedom, and also envisage the free world differently,” he underlined.
He said from our perspective it looks like people in the West see freedom as a kind of escape. “Escape from yourself, escape from that which you were born, but at least change that which you were born as. Outgrow your past like some childhood disease, change sex, change nation, but at least leave it behind. Change identity, change all the components and assemble yourself according to the latest trend, and then you will be free,” he said.
He highlighted that we here in Hungary longed for the very opposite of that; we longed to be finally allowed to be who we are. “The thought that I shouldn’t be a man, shouldn’t be Hungarian and shouldn’t be Christian either is like having our hearts ripped out,” he said, stressing that for us freedom is not some kind of escape from ourselves. On the contrary, freedom is to arrive, to find one’s way back home, to profess one’s identity. “Be who you are,” he added.
Embrace the fact that you were born Hungarian, Christian, that you were born a man or a woman, that you are the child of your mother and father, that you are the partner of your husband or wife, that you are the parent of your son or daughter. Embrace the fact that you are a friend, a son or daughter of your country, a patriot, the Prime Minister said.
“We were not prepared to surrender this in 1956 or in 1990, and neither are we prepared to do so in 2023, whether for the sake of Moscow or Brussels,” he stated, adding that for us freedom is a life instinct.
This is why the Hungarian is a freedom fighter nation, and the essence of the Hungarian nation’s life strategy lies in the very fact that we get to stand by the grave of every occupying empire, he pointed out.
He took the view that we had not lost sight of the most important law of survival: we still know that the past is not behind us, but underneath us, that is what we stand on.
“On the 67th anniversary of the 1956 freedom fight, I respectfully bow my head before the known and unknown heroes as well as before the integrity of our compatriots who have not given up despite decades of trials and suffering, and have set us all an example,” said the Prime Minister.
Long live Hungarian freedom, long live the country! “The Lord above us all, Hungary before everything. Come on Hungary! Come on Hungarians,” Mr Orbán said, concluding his speech.
