Hungarian Conservative

The unique exhibition presents the memory of witnesses, with most of the works created between 1944 and 1947.

József Mindszenty is often commemorated as one of the first victims of the Rákosi regime. However, his 1949 arrest and show trial were not the last stage of his ‘white martyrdom’: he spent one and a half decades as an asylee at the US Embassy in Budapest, only to be exiled from the country for good in 1971.

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.

This piece provides an overview of the ‘Goulash communism’ times of Hungarian history, while attempting to answer the question: why do some Hungarians appear to be nostalgic about the Kádár era?