Hungarian Conservative

92 years ago today, Hungary’s first freely elected prime minister in the post-communist era, József Antall, was born. His legacy continues to wield significant influence in Hungarian politics today.

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 The Paris Peace Treaty of 1947, which ended the war, required them to be withdrawn from our country, and although the treaty allowed for the necessary number of soldiers to remain here to ‘maintain the lines of supply’, there were obviously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.