19 June is a reminder of the hard-earned freedom and independence of Hungary – between 19 March 1944 and 19 June 1991, for 47 long years, Hungary was occupied for foreign powers.
According to Tarasevich and other experts, the dramatic experience of starvation in Russia had been part and parcel of Russian existence for centuries.
Although it always comes as a shock for people from Central Eastern Europe who lived through state socialism, nowadays in the West there are increasingly more young people who identify as Marxists or even Communists.
Given the increasingly widespread appeal of Marxist beliefs in Western academia, it is important to remind ourselves of what really happened under Soviet-type planned economies.