On Christmas Eve in 1944 the Soviet troops encircled Budapest, and the siege commenced a few days later, on 30 December. The fighting that went on for months caused enormous suffering and destruction, and became part of Hungary’s collective memory forever.
Pál Teleki, prime minister of Hungary in the interwar era, was probably one of the most tragic figures of twentieth century Hungarian history. He was torn between his conscience and geopolitical reality, a tension he could only resolve by ending his own life as a shocking act of protest.
István Bethlen was a dominant figure in early twentieth-century Hungarian politics. Contemporary conservatives have much to learn from him regarding consolidation, pragmatism, and opposing radicalism.
While resistance to Hitler and Nazism is widely researched and celebrated, those who opposed National Socialism from the right are often forgotten. Zoltán Pető therefore attempts to shed light on a lesser-known chapter of anti-Nazi resistance.
Today, confirmed anti-Semites may be the ‘great friends of the Jews’, but members and sympathisers of the government that proclaims ‘zero tolerance’ regarding anti-Semitism at all international and domestic fora, and which unequivocally stands by and up for Israel, can be labelled as the ‘new anti-Semites’. Israelis cannot invoke the Holocaust as an argument of her legitimacy and a historical event of her people, because the ‘new Jews’ are Palestinians and migrants. Now ‘Nazi’ apparently denotes a right-wing Jew in some circles, while Nazis seem to be the ‘guests of honour’ at seder tables.
A major problem with the structure of the EU is that it is not fully based on representative democracy. A case in point, notwithstanding the fact that EU Parliament members are elected by the citizens of the member states, EU leaders picked Ursula von her Leyen to replace Jean-Claude Juncker as the leader of the European Union’s executive branch behind closed doors.
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.
Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political, philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective.