Hungarian Conservative

Publication of the latest work by Attila Futaki, a comic book artist of international fame, is an important domestic event: it presents the life and career of Ferenc Puskás.

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.

The image of Dózsa in Hungary has undergone so many metamorphoses that it would be difficult to link it to a single political trend or party. He could fit the role of a national hero who took up arms against the Turks under the banner of the Cross blessed by the Pope; a ‘martyr of the proletarian movement’; and a victim warning against the retaliation after the Revolution of 1956 all at once.