Hungarian Conservative

Hungary’s place among the nations, and especially in Europe, is one of the most debated issues in Hungarian political thinking. Analysing the so called ‘kuruc–labanc’ dichotomy helps to better understand the present-day disputes between Brussels and Budapest.

A new photo and video exhibition titled Am I My Brother’s Keeper, curated by Yitzhak Mais, a prominent Israeli historian and former director of Yad Vashem’s historical museum, captures the unique moments of international cooperation to help Ukrainian Jewish refugees.

In contemporary Catholic social teaching, like Slachta’s reasoning, women are essentially other than men, and this otherness is articulated in the papal encyclicals in relation to women’s role in the family. In contrast, the Catholic nun’s view of the female otherness goes beyond this approach. Although she also emphasises the dignity of the female gender, for her, feminine otherness is the underlying motif of her thinking.

The presence of Soviet troops in Hungary was of course illegal. The Paris Peace Treaty of 1947, which ended the war, required them to be withdrawn from our country, and although the treaty allowed for the necessary number of soldiers to remain here to ‘maintain the lines of supply’, there were obviously many more than that. The ‘legalisation’ of the presence of the Soviet forces that crushed the 1956 revolution was carried out by the new, collaborationist Kádár government in 1957.

On 18 June 1868, 155 years ago today, Hungarian admiral Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya was born in Kenderes, Austria-Hungary. One of the greatest Hungarian statesmen of the 20th century served as the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary between 1 March 1920 and 16 October 1944.

What does the lower reach of the River Garam mean to Hungarians? For some, it is just a region of the Uplands, for others, a beautiful, wide, flat, and fertile valley surrounded by hills, while many people do not even know where to look on the map when they hear its name. For ethnic Hungarian local historian Gábor Juhász, it represents his homeland, a place where his ancestors had lived for hundreds of years.

The concept of the ‘Bulwark of Christendom’ appeared in all border areas where two civilisations and religions came into contact. However, the conscious and regular use of the term is linked to the Italian humanists of the 15th-century Renaissance, who greatly contributed to the formation of the modern image of Europe.

Innovation is both a fundamental human activity, and a fundamentally human activity. It is fundamental, insofar as we are compelled by the need to innovate—a need that expresses itself in various ways.

Hungary is not the only country in East-Central Europe that sees unwanted commentary and meddling by Russia with regard to interpretations of its history. The periods the evaluation of which is the most frequently contested by Russia are the Cold War era and World War II. While Russia glorifies the USSR’s effort to defeat Nazi Germany, CEE countries, including Hungary, highlight the 45 years the Red Army spent in Central Europe as an occupying force after the end of World War II.

A most typically Holy Week prayer, known as The Golden Lord’s Prayer, is one of the most beloved meditative prayers of the religious Catholic women of Hungary. In it, Jesus tells his mother, Mary what awaits him on the days of the Holy Week. As far as we know, the origin of the prayer is unclear, but it appears to have been already known by Hungary’s ethnic Germans as early as in the 15th century.

European debates tend to ignore the fact that Hungarian politics—sometimes peculiar and certainly unusual to many Western observers—is not meant to curb liberties or enable oppression but, on the contrary, to further freedom and efforts to attain it.

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s approach to the Russian-Ukraine war is not Russia-sympathetic, but Hungarian-pragmatic. He has made it clear that Hungary condemns the Russian invasion into Ukraine and stands for Ukrainian sovereignty, but not to the point that agreeing to energy sanctions would crush Hungary’s economy.

The Communists (should have) had to face up to the fact that their main supporter was the Soviet army, which had first liberated Hungary, only to then occupy it. This was particularly unpleasant in the context of 1848, since the revolution had been defeated by the troops of Tsarist Russia, which aided the Austrians, and the main demand of the revolution was that there should be no foreign troops in Hungary.

In an era of civilizational clashes, Woke multiculturalism endeavours to create a country of many civilizations, which is to say a country not belonging to any civilization and lacking a cultural core.

Beinart’s reasoning strongly echoes the views of anti-Semites, who also argue that Israel can never be a democracy because of its Jewish character. Their argument goes something like this: Jews are incapable of running a country and, because they don’t want to work, they can only survive by oppressing non-Jews. This view, incidentally, also appeared in German propaganda in the 1930s.

Life in the East was not at all easy for the newcomers, as they had to preserve their traditions while developing their identity in a completely new social and religious environment.

The importance of Nash’s book rests in its provocative attempt to revive the notion of group fellowship and apply it to the Muslim problem.

Loved and criticised, enjoyed and hated — the university experience is different for everyone. For Hungarian students, recent years have been a rollercoaster. With more changes in higher education coming, it is time for some stocktaking.

The story of the individual districts is a brief summary of the past centuries not only from the point of view of their names: if we look at them on the map, we can immediately see that the history of their establishment and development is also the history of the expansion of Budapest.

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine not only opened a new era in geopolitics but also affected the political framework for the protection of national minorities.

Hungary is an accepted partner of the Turkic world. There is no question that this will remain the case in the future. The intermediary role that Hungary holds can only be fully realized if our views and experiences are listened to at the global level.

In a referendum on 14 December 1921, the town of Sopron voted to remain part of Hungary, for which it has been celebrated as the town of loyalty and freedom ever since.

Budaváry’s biography needs to be amended to also include his actions during the Holocaust, which distinguish him from other antisemitic politicians.

Was Stepan Bandera a Nazi collaborator or a martyr of Ukrainian independence? Selective Ukrainian collective memory can hardly provide an answer.

John C. Swanson’s book Tangible Belonging provides not only a rare insight into the life of German-speaking villagers in Hungary, but also into the complexity of ethnic identity and interwar minority formation.

As a result of the discrimination by the Israeli authorities and because of Islamic oppression, the socio-cultural and spiritual connections that are the backbone of Palestinian Christians’ collective identity have been dramatically weakened.

505 years after Martin Luther published his Ninety-five Theses the Reformation remains one of the pillars of European cultures and societies.

‘1956 could teach us lessons in all these areas today. And I hope that wise Hungarian politicians, and we have always had them, will search this road.’

In order to understand where to move forward, first, we must look at our past, our history, so that we become able to identify our strengths, weaknesses and our spiritual resources.

The war in Ukraine has renewed the controversy over Communist era statues in Poland. The country is now being purged of the remaining Soviet monuments.