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“Even if Brussels whistles, we will dance as we want, and if we do not want to, we will not dance,” Prime Minister Viktor Orbán emphasized at a commemoration ceremony held in Veszprém (western Hungary) on Hungary’s national holiday on Monday, October 23.
The prime minister said that the big difference is that the Soviet Union was hopeless, but the European Union is not yet hopeless. “Moscow was beyond repair, but Brussels and the European Union can still be repaired,” he noted, recalling the upcoming European Parliament elections. He stressed that
the sacrifice of the ’56ers would only be meaningful if we too defended, lived, and bequeathed Hungarian freedom. “They did not die in vain if we do not live in vain.”
Viktor Orbán also pointed out that Hungarian people are chivalrous, even at the expense of reason, “which is why it happens to us again and again that those we have saved or are protecting end up attacking us.”
Today, we were the first to protect Europe from migration and the first to propose peace instead of war, that could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives,”
he said. He added that Hungary was still the first and only country that wanted to keep the peoples of Europe from “marching willingly, singing their song, into another, even bigger war.”
The prime minister, who greeted the Hungarians of Hungary, the Carpathian Basin, and the whole world on the day of Hungarian Freedom, reminded everyone that they were celebrating October 23, but they should have come to Veszprém a day earlier, because the people of Veszprém did not wait for the people of Budapest, but founded their revolutionary organizations independently on October 22 and shouted their demands to the world.
Veszprém during the commemoration. Photo via MTI/Koszticsák Szilárd
He stressed that every town in Hungary has its own 1956, and each of them is part of “our great common fight for freedom in 1956.” He added that it was therefore not only unfair and patronizing, but downright wrong to see 1956 only as the revolution of the capital. He recalled that
some 3,000 people are believed to have died and 20,000 were wounded in street fighting and firing, while communist reprisals sent more than 200 people to their deaths, 13,000 to prison, and 200,000 Hungarians fled the country.
Orbán said that 1956 was the last chance for a long time for European Hungary to tear itself away from the world of Bolshevik socialism, denying European culture, Christian civilization, and the right of nations to exist. As he put it, “the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was not an inarticulate howl, not the rage of the oppressed, not the panting of those who sought revenge, and not an unbridled outburst of the desire for freedom.”
For all its breathtaking heroism and death-defying courage, the Hungarian Revolution was a sober, measured, and responsible movement. The revolution itself was a flash of Hungarian genius,
Orbán highlighted.
He also commemorated Árpád Brusznyai, a man with ties to Veszprém, who was innocently executed at the age of 33 after the revolution, and whose memory was persecuted. The prime minister said that the story of the teacher, who protected young people and even “the martyrs of the dictatorship,” was the true, unadulterated, dagger-cut embodiment of Hungarian genius, a true Hungarian destiny.
He stressed that
1956 finally won in 1990, “we who were there, who fought the political battles against the Soviet Union and the communist party leadership” could not have won without the legacy of 1956.
He said that “all we had to do in 1989 was to finish what the ’56ers had started, to show” that 30 years of enforced silence were not the same as forgiveness and that the historical bill would have to be paid sooner or later.
He stressed that “we liberated Hungary from Soviet occupation and replaced the communists without a civil war, without a single human life lost, and avoided, albeit painfully and bitterly, the economic and political collapse of Hungary.”
In fact, Hungary is still the only country in Europe that has never had to hold an early election in 33 years, “and we are still the safest and most stable country in the whole of Europe,”
Orbán said.
The prime minister emphasized that 1956 was a victory, and “we have rejoined the community of European nations, which is also part of our historical satisfaction.” It is also true, he continued, that the place, Europe, to which we have returned is no longer the place from which we were excluded, and it is less and less so.
“We wanted freedom, we are free, and Europe is united in freedom, but now we have to face up to the fact that we have a different understanding of freedom and a different vision of a free world,” he said.
He assessed that we have not lost sight of the most important law of survival: we still know that the past is not behind us, but beneath us, we are standing on it. “On the 67th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, I salute the heroes, known and unknown, and the honor of our compatriots who, despite decades of hardship and suffering, did not give up and who set an example for us all,” the Prime Minister underlined. Long live Hungarian freedom, long live the homeland! “God is above us all, Hungary above all. Go, Hungary! Go, Hungarians!”, Orbán concluded his speech.
Via MTI, Featured image via MTI/Koszticsák Szilárd
