- Hubert Walas
Greater Hungary?
The Russian Federation, the People's Republic of China or the Republic of Turkey - all three countries are more or less betraying their goals of changing the current international order, which includes seeking to change borders and incorporate foreign territory. Moscow is waging a campaign to conquer Ukraine, Beijing has made no secret of similar plans for Taiwan. Ankara, meanwhile, is making claims to the Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, which Athens received on the back of the Treaty of Lausanne.
It is no coincidence that Viktor Orban's Hungary is also in close, even friendly relations, with the aforementioned three. This fact alone by no means makes Budapest, a priori a centre of world order revision. However, "Hungarian irredentism" is not a phenomenon entirely out of the blue. The trauma of the Treaty of Trianon, which deprived Hungary of more than 60 per cent of the territories previously belonging to it, remains deeply rooted in the mentality of many Hungarians. This includes the highest representatives of the state. Is Hungary a revisionist country?
Hungary's funeral
"We, the members of the Hungarian nation, promise to preserve the intellectual and spiritual unity of our nation torn apart in the storms of the last century. " - this is one of the first sentences of the Hungarian constitution, and it clearly points to a specific event.
Grand Trianon. It was in this palace belonging to the Versailles complex that the "funeral of Hungary" took place on June 4, 1920. This is how the treaty concluded there at the time is often referred to in Hungary. The Entente states that won World War I, including the United States, Great Britain, and France, recognized that the Kingdom of Hungary, as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, had to suffer the consequences of losing the war.
Although more than 100 years have passed since this event, the discussion of modern Hungary and Budapest's potential revisionism cannot begin other than with the "Trianon Dictate" - as the Versailles arrangements are also called by Hungarians today. This is not an entirely unjustified term - for these, were imposed on Hungary, without negotiation.
The repercussions of losing the war were draconian indeed. Hungary's territory shrank by ⅔ - from over 300,000 square kilometers, to less than a hundred. The population decreased by more than half - from about 20 million, to less than 8. Of these 12 million people, more than 3 million were ethnic Hungarians.
Hungary lost more than 100,000 km2 and more than 5 million inhabitants to Romania - primarily historic Transylvania, as well as parts of Banat, Krishan and Marmaraş.
More than 60,000 square kilometers and more than 4 million inhabitants fell to the newly established kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
Areas of similar size - called "Upper Hungary" by Hungarians, namely Slovakia and Transcarpathian Ruthenia - fell to Czechoslovakia. Much smaller portions also fell to Austria, Poland and Italy. The Italian slice, however, was important insofar as there was a port in Fiume (today's Croatian Rijeka) where the Hungarian royal navy was stationed.
Thus, the country, from once being one of the larger, European powers, has become an insignificant landlocked microstate. Hungary has lost many resource-rich areas, modernizing cities and industrial centers.
Among other things, 89% of the country's iron ore production, 84% of its forests, ⅓ of its lignite, copper ore and salt mining were outside the country. Budapest also had to pay war reparations for a while.
Hungarians have never come to terms with the Trianon arrangements for good. This is all the more so because in the last 30 years the topic has somewhat resurfaced. During the Communist era, the issue was top-down normalized by the Soviet Union - the guarantor of the system at the time. Moscow did not want any dissension between, after all, brotherly nations.
It was only after the fall of the Soviets that the old rifts returned and began to affect the daily reality of Hungary increasingly.
Yet for the record - the discourse over Trianon was never the core of public debate, nor is it now. If it had been, after the collapse of the Soviets, Budapest would not have become associated with the West and therefore the "status quo" countries. Hungary entered the structures of NATO and the European Union - which was a form of political acceptance of reality as it was. Trianon remained only reverberating somewhere in the background, a song of lost identity.
This song, however, was yet to resonate inside Budapest's beautiful parliamentary building.
A leader for troubled times
Since breaking out of Moscow's sphere of influence, Hungary - like other post-communist countries - still experienced the chaos of breaking away from its recent patron for quite some time. In the 1990s, Communist dignitaries staged a soft landing for themselves in the new system, and the country experienced a difficult collision with the capitalist economy. High inflation and unemployment are invariably associated with this period.
However, the economy shot up when Hungary shook off its post-communist lethargy. This came during the first term of the Fidesz government, and in the following years under the left-liberal coalition of the Hungarian Socialist Party and the Union of Free Democrats. The economy grew at a great pace, up to 5% year-on-year, helped by its entry into EU structures in 2004.
Yet the financial crisis of 2008, and even the two years preceding it, saw a massive collapse of the Hungarian economy. It shrank by nearly 8%, GDP per capita fell by 6.5%, public debt soared, and the stock market collapsed. Hungary was in real danger of bankruptcy and was bailed out by IMF support.
This was compounded by a 2006 scandal involving then Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány. At the time, tapes recorded him saying "we lied morning, night and evening," which caused massive riots in the country. In the following three years, Hungary was stuck in political and economic limbo.
The remedy for this marasm was to be brought by one man - Viktor Orban.
Orban, once a liberal, took up a George Soros-funded scholarship at Oxford in his youth. This shows the extent of Orban's transformation. The same Soros - an American financier - is today a symbol of all that is wrong, of the moral perversion of the West that Orban's Hungary is fighting against. Orban, like his Fidesz party, has undergone a transformation from a radical liberal party to a conservative nationalist one.
Orban and Fidesz began to shape the country according to their vision during their first government in 1998-2002. On the agenda was, among other things, the eradication of communist influence in the country and the continuation of the process of integration with the European Union, because despite today's dispute, Orban was a supporter of integration with Brussels, and during his government the most important arrangements were made behind the scenes. The same was true of NATO accession, which took place in 1999, a year before the millennium of Hungary's baptism.
During Fidesz's first term, another important issue was raised, one that has been a very important part of the construction of the Hungarian archetype - namely, support for the Hungarian minority outside the country. In a way, the embodiment of this new approach was the change of the flag variant to the one that exposed the coat of arms. If you look at it, you will see that the right side of the Hungarian emblem is decorated with three green hills. They symbolise the historical mountain ranges of the Kingdom of Hungary - the Tatras, Fatra and Matra. As a result of the Treaty of Trianon, the Hungarians no longer have the first two hills within their borders.
In addition to the new variant of the flag, the flags of Székely Land - the area dominated by the Hungarian community, living in present-day Romania - also appeared on government buildings.
But Orban's government lasted only one term, after which the left and the liberals returned to power. Orban was furious, but he did his homework. He cited the lack of his own media as one of the reasons for his defeat. When he returned to power in 2010, the Hungarian politician had already ensured that the "fourth estate" was on his side.
Fidesz won the elections in 2010, as it did in 2014, 2018 and 2022 - almost 14 years of rule. Does this mean that Fidesz is the best internal administrator with an unassailable public mandate?
Indeed, Hungary did well in the last decade - cumulative GDP growth was over 30%. Hungarians got richer while public debt remained at similar levels. But overall, this was a common feature across the region.
And so the undisputed mandate for Fidesz is not based on economic performance, but on the fact that Fidesz and Orban have been able to create a system that serves not so much Hungarians as the ruling party to win successive elections.
"A peculiar method of exercising power has been created, which in itself serves to stabilise and strengthen the position of the Fidesz-KDNP alliance. In order to achieve this goal, the nature of the Hungarian political system has been changed. An element of authoritarianism has appeared both in the way power is exercised and in the relationship between the state and citizens. In 2011, there was no referendum on adopting a new constitution because the prime minister believed that his mandate was so strong that Hungarians would simply accept what he proposed to them." says Dominik Hejj, a Hungarian analyst.
Orban has created new elites. They are personified by Lorinc Meszaros - the mayor of the provincial town of Felcsút and a former gas collector who has become the richest Hungarian in less than a decade. How did he do it? By being a loyal follower of Viktor Orban. The new Hungarian oligarchs brought capital and means into the system in return for lucrative contracts and access to power.
This was accompanied by the media takeover. The Origo website was taken over by forces loyal to Orban after it wrote about trips to London by the head of Orban's chancellery, Janos Lazar, in 2014. The website itself went from being neutral and balanced to pro-government overnight. When Nepszabadsag newspaper described the luxurious travels of the so-called 'propaganda minister' Anatal Rogan, the newspaper was shut down shortly afterwards.
Hungary democratic, yet illiberal
The mandate Orban is using to reshape Hungary is the so-called NER - The System of National Cooperation. The NER is the new social contract, the de facto political programme of Fidesz, which the party wrote into law as soon as it came to power. The law was passed in one of the first sessions of the new parliamentary term. The document obliged all state institutions, as well as all top-level officials, to work according to the recommendations of the NER. The president, the head of the Supreme Audit Office, the central bank, judges and prosecutors were all subject to Viktor Orban's political will.
Acting against the NER became illegal. Any opponent of the NER became at the same time an opponent of the state, and the NER itself provided an unlimited mandate - among other things, Fidesz amended the constitution.
The legal framework that Fidesz had built up over the years by passing thousands of laws in its favour, interpreting the law as it wished, and changing the electoral law and the constitution, gave Orban the freedom to rule and reshape Hungary. A kind of manifesto of this way of exercising power was Orban's speech from Băile Tuşnad, a small town in present-day Romania, later christened as a tribute to "illiberal democracy".
"We needed to state that a democracy is not necessarily liberal. Just because something is not liberal, it still can be a democracy. [...] we want to organize a workfare state, that will undertake the odium of expressing that in character it is not of a liberal nature. "Orban said at the time. What does it even mean? What are the liberal values that Orban is arguing against?
Liberalism is defined, among other things, by freedom and individual rights, the rule of law and equality before the law, the separation of powers, the market economy or political pluralism. Orban argues that liberal values do not work in the current era and that they do not protect the interests of the state, which is the highest value for the Hungarian. This, he says, can be seen in the example of the United States:
"The strength of American “soft power” is deteriorating, because liberal values today incorporate corruption, sex and violence, and with this liberal values discredit America and American modernization.".
With rejecting the West, Orban presents as an alternative a Hungary that protects the institution of the family, traditional lifestyles and the Hungarian diaspora. Christianity plays a vital role in this model, which Fidesz's uses as an essential tool for legitimisation.
In Budapest's narrative, Christian Hungary is the bulwark against Islam coming from southern Europe and stands in opposition to the amoral, pro-immigrant, multicultural, secularised West. Incidentally, this is a paradox, because Orban's Hungary speaks of the trauma of Trianon, which in practice made Hungary mono-ethnic. Before that, Hungary was a mosaic of cultures, faiths and nationalities - that is what Orban is against today.
So if Orban rejects Europe and the United States, claiming that they are in a state of moral and economic decline, where should Hungary look for its future?
Opening to the East
Words and, more importantly, deeds, show that for Orban's Hungary, there are essentially three such places. The first is the Russian Federation. The second is the People's Republic of China. The third is the Republic of Turkye or, more broadly, the Organization of Turkic States.
The plan for the so-called "Opening to the East" (hun. "Keleti Nyitas") was presented by Fidesz already in the first year of its rule in 2010. It assumes that due to the regression of the Western world, Hungary should look for ways to develop in the East - in Moscow, Beijing and Ankara. Hungarian think-tanks already established under Fidesz and financed with government funds often promote the vision of a so-called "Eurasian Era" to replace the "Atlantic Era."
So what does Hungary's opening to the East look like in practice?
Let's start with China. Budapest is an active promoter of the 16+1 format, a platform for cooperation between Central and Eastern European countries and China. The flagship project of this format is the Belgrade-Budapest railway. And its status somewhat reflects the state of cooperation between China and Hungary. The project involves a 350-kilometre high-speed rail link between the Hungarian and Serbian capitals, which shall eventually connect Budapest with the Chinese port of Piraeus in Greece. The investment is being carried out by Lorinc Meszaros - Orban's aforementioned loyal buddy. But almost 10 years later, construction is still going through a rough patch. The latest chapter in the never-ending saga is that the Hungarians have decided to reallocate some of the resources earmarked for the project to the renovation of the Budapest-Gyor line. In response, the Chinese have withheld funding and their workers have stopped work. The almost €2 billion investment was to be covered 85% by Chinese loans and 15% by Hungarian funds. Today, the cost of the investment is said to have risen by up to 40% due to inflation. According to optimistic forecasts, construction is expected to be completed in 2025, but this is unlikely.
Most interesting, however, are the profitability analyses. Independent Hungarian rail market experts say the line will pay for itself in…2,400 years.
Another idea for cooperation with the Chinese dragon was to set up a branch of Shanghai's Fudan University in Budapest. This, too, would cost almost $2 billion, 80 per cent of which would be financed by Chinese loans. However, the centre, which would most likely serve as a covert headquarters for Chinese intelligence in Europe, was quickly protested by Budapest residents - most of whom are in opposition to Fidesz. The scale of the protests was such that Orban backed away from the idea for the time being.
What’s more, Hungary's main partner in the 5G network rollout remains Huawei, despite widespread suspicions in the West about how the company's technology works. As a result, the company itself has been excluded from the race to build 5G infrastructure in many European countries.
Still, one cay say that Xi Jinping has finally rewarded Orban for his loyal commitment to promoting China's vision of the world.
In 2022, the Chinese company CATL announced plans to build a battery factory for electric cars near the Hungarian city of Debrecen. The project is worth a bagatelle €7.3 billion - three times more than the previous largest investment in Hungary.
Descendants of Attila
Orban's Hungary approach to Turkey is different. In relations with Ankara, Budapest is not necessarily looking for investments- after all, the Turks are mired in their own economic problems. Orban in Turkey, or rather Turanism, is looking for the roots of Hungarian power. Turanism - this in many ways pseudoscientific theory - revolves around the connection between the Hungarian nation and the Turkic peoples of Central Asia.
"People can only be strong if they are proud of their origins" Orban said in Kyrgyzstan in 2018. Three years earlier, in Kazakhstan, he said: "In Kazakhstan, we feel at home, unlike in the European Union, where we feel like strangers. In Kazakhstan, we have relatives, in Brussels we don't." Orban's flattery have had an effect, because in 2018 Hungary has been granted a permanent observer seat at the Cooperation Council of the Organisation of Turkic States, a de facto Turkish platform for extending its influence deeper into Central Asia, but apparently also into Europe.
Turanism, as Dominik Hejj writes, serves to create a 'new Hungarian identity' and to bind Hungary to the East. Inevitably, Ankara's aggressive policies and Recep Erdogan's authoritarian tendencies, which are in line with the standards of illiberal democracy that Viktor Orban admires, are also a factor. Budapest, for example, continues to copy Ankara's efforts to block Sweden's accession to NATO, which is basically motivated by nothing more than demonstrating its veto power within the alliance.
"Turanism has provided a convenient ideological basis for turning away from the EU and promoting closer ties with authoritarian regimes in Central Asia and with Turkey" writes Katia Patin for coda magazine.
Incidentally, both Fidesz and Orban see no dissonance in the rapprochement between Hungary - let’s remember the defender of Christianity - and Turkey, which wants to be the leader of the Muslim world.
But the controversy over Budapest's growing ties with Ankara, or even Beijing, pales in comparison to the Hungarians' policy towards Moscow.
Russian bridgehead in Europe?
"NATO is expanding eastwards, and Russia is becoming increasingly uncomfortable with this. The Russians made two demands: that Ukraine declare its neutrality and that NATO not accept Ukraine. The Russians did not get these security guarantees, so they decided to take them by force. The vision of Russia's security policy is that it must be surrounded by a neutral zone in order to feel secure".
Is that a quote from RIA Novosti? No, it's Viktor Orban's statement to the Mandiner portal on 3 March 2022. A week after the Russian attack on Ukraine.
Orban Hungary's approach to the war in Ukraine was tendentious from the start and was a de facto duplication of the Kremlin's narrative justifying the attack on Ukraine. Hungarian politicians and domestic media repeatedly echoed Kremlin propaganda and blamed the West for the war. By the way, this behaviour did not start in February 2022.
"Russia did not act as many predicted and did not attack Ukraine, but entered the territories of the newly formed people's republics at their request to conduct peacekeeping activities" - says a 2014 statement by Hungarian Defence Minister Tibor Benko.
Orban supported stopping military aid to the Ukrainians. He opposed imposing restrictions on Patriarch Kirill, who calls for the extermination of Ukrainians. After all, a few years ago Orban admitted that Hungary and Russia belong to a common Christian civilisation.
He has also opposed the imposition of further rounds of economic sanctions against Russia, claiming that they would hurt the West more than Russia. Although this is yet another example of the Kremlin's distortion of reality, the Hungarian prime minister would be somewhat correct, if he included Hungary with the West. Indeed, Hungary's critical dependence on Russia makes it possible for sanctions to hurt Hungary.
The rapprochement with Russia did not begin with the Fidesz government, but was already underway under the left-liberals. At the time, the ruling coalition sold a 49% stake in the now-defunct state-owned airline Malev to the Russian bank Vneshekonomabank. Russian oligarchs also bought more than 20% of the shares in the Hungarian oil conglomerate MOL.
However, it is only since 2010 and the beginning of Fidesz's domestic dominance that relations with Russia have taken on a fully institutional dimension. Even a cursory analysis of Russian penetration in Hungary is enough to make your hair stand on end.
Any country's energy security independence is a priority for any government. While Hungary's dependence on Russia in this area is multidimensional and almost total. Orban himself estimated this dependence at up to 85%.
Natural gas? 85% import dependence on Russia. Oil? 80% import dependence on Russia. Gas flows mainly through TurkStream and later through Serbia's South Stream. Some gas was also supposed to flow to Hungary through Nord Stream 2, another facilitator of Russian aggression, the construction of which Budapest supported. Even after 24 February 2022, Budapest signed a new contract with Gazprom to increase gas supplies to Hungary. Oil, on the other hand, flows mainly through the Druzhba pipeline, which crosses Ukraine.
Nuclear energy? Again Russia. In 2014, already after the first act of Russian aggression against Ukraine, Hungary contracted Russia's Rosatom to build two new units of the Paks nuclear power plant using Russian VVER technology, without a public tender. By the way, who is one of the subcontractors for this investment? You guessed it - the ubiquitous Lorinc Meszaros. Who supplies the nuclear fuel for the Hungarian reactors? Yes, you guessed it again - Russia.
But the Russian infiltration of Hungary is not limited to the energy sector. In 2019, Fidesz allowed the Russian International Investment Bank, a relic of the communist era that once provided cover for KGB officers, into Hungary. It opened a new headquarters in Budapest, with diplomatic status for its employees - and Schengen access for Russian intelligence officers. Budapest decided to suspend the bank's operations only under the threat of US sanctions. Today’s Hungary is one of the main hubs of Russian intelligence in Europe.
The Fidesz government's merits for Russia are so great that the Kremlin felt obliged to decorate its top dignitaries. And so, exactly 57 days before Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine on 30 December 2021, the Russian defence minister Sergiej Lavrov honoured his Hungarian counterpart, Peter Szijjarto, with the Russian Order of Friendship, which the latter proudly accepted.
Fidesz's information campaign is having an effect because as many as 62% of Hungarians believe that Russia poses no threat or, if it does, a small one. As many as 92% of Hungarians believe that sanctions on Russia should not be increased.
Of course, Hungary, under pressure from others, was eventually forced to back down at many points - as in the case of the bank or sanctions. The Hungarians themselves also took in many Ukrainian emigrants fleeing the war. But when we evaluate the central government's policies and its actions, it must be said that Budapest's policy was in line with Moscow's and favoured it as much as the geopolitical framework allowed the Fidesz camp.
Dream of Greater Hungary
All this does not answer the question posed in the title. However, it was required to mention all these issues in order to consider the question of Hungarian revisionism seriously.
"Let's have strength first and then be right, not the other way around. There are 15 million of us around the world. " said Viktor Orban in an address to the nation on March 15, 2022.
There might not be anything surprising in this sentence, were it not for the fact that Hungary's population is less than 10 million. Orban, therefore indirectly acknowledges that he is also the leader of Hungarians who do not live in Hungary. The then Prime Minister Jozsef Antall made similar statements in 1990. They will inevitably be associated with Hungarian revisionism, the spectre of Trianon.
The pro-Russian approach in the context of aggression against Ukraine is primarily motivated by fear of the consequences of Hungary's strong dependence on Russia, but its narrative dimension is the issue of the Hungarian minority in the so-called Transcarpathia. This is the westernmost region of Ukraine. For 900 years, it belonged to Hungary, after World War I and Trianon, it fell to Czechoslovakia, then the USSR and finally Ukraine. Today, a sizable diaspora of Hungarians lives there. It once numbered 150,000; today, it probably does not exceed 100,000. Budapest's dispute with Kyiv is based on Ukrainian directives restricting the freedom to teach in a language other than Ukrainian. That law, introduced in 2017, already in the wake of the Russian onslaught, mainly targeted the Russian language, but also hit the Hungarian minority.
Much larger, exceeding one million people, is the Hungarian diaspora in Szekely Land in today's Romania. 6% of the entire Romanian population. The Hungarian minority is located in Transylvania, practically in the centre of the country. There is no shortage of symbols that Budapest has not forgotten Szekely Land, and these constantly cause tensions and accusations of Hungarian irredentism from Bucharest. Hungarian politicians are constantly arranging trips to the region. In contrast, the real catalyst for tensions was the 2020 law that would make Szekely Land an autonomous region. It would then have its own president, Hungarian would be the official language, and state symbols would be de facto Hungarian. The project was initiated by a Hungarian party in Romania. Romanian President Klaus Iohannis called the bill a plot to hand over Transylvania - as the region is called by Romanians - to Hungary.
During a meeting with young Hungarians on Romanian territory, Orban suggested that Szekely Land had never been a "Romanian territorial unit". At the same festival, Hungary also took aim at Slovakia, which he described as a "detached territory" and called "Felvidek" - that's what the northern part of the Kingdom of Hungary used to be called. Although the Hungarian diaspora in Slovakia is smaller than in Romania at less than half a million people, it represents a higher percentage of the Slovak population at more than eight per cent. Nearly 200,000 Hungarians also live in Serbia, but relations with the state ruled by another quasi-autocrat, Aleksandar Vucic, remain good, so revisionist verbal excursions remain limited.
And all this is wrapped up in the omnipresent revisionist symbolism.
In 2020, Orban unveiled a monument at the Hungarian Calvary in the town of Satoraljaujhely. It depicts the Turul bird - a cultural symbol of Hungary - looking towards Slovakia and Ukraine' s Transcarpathia. "The pennant on a huge pedestal proclaims to the neighbouring nations that Hungary will be one again," says the town's website. At the unveiling of the monument, Orban spoke of Hungarian steadfastness and seclusion. "Only the state has borders, the nation does not," he said. The whole city is an open-air museum of nostalgia for the Trianon, dressed up in Christian symbolism.
Orban constantly surrounds himself with the symbolism of Greater Hungary. This was the case, for example, in November 2022, when he wore a scarf depicting the territory of Greater Hungary. It was the same in 2018, when he presented Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki with a map of Greater Hungary. And it wasn’t any different in 2020 when he uploaded a globe showing Hungary's historical borders - on the centenary of the Treaty of Trianon.
Revisionist Hungary
Orban's Hungary rejects the status quo and the Western order and seeks its future with revisionist states - the Russian Federation, China or Turkey. More importantly, they are not just talking the talk, but walking the walk. Today, Budapest of its own will is an energy hostage to Moscow. Economically, this process is also progressing with Beijing.
On closer inspection, particularly interesting is Hungary's approach to the Ukrainian question and Transcarpathia. The anti-Ukrainian rhetoric and the pro-Russian interpretation are not new in Hungary. Yet the behaviour of the Hungarians after 24 February is particularly puzzling. All other states of the broader Western structure that border Ukraine or Russia felt deeply threatened and strongly supported Ukraine, militarily, economically and verbally— even Slovakia, where Russian influence is also not insignificant. Hungary has broken away from this line.
But if Ukraine were to fall quickly - which was not an abstract scenario - Russian troops would also be on Hungary's border, forcing the withdrawal of all treaties that move the "Atlantic world" eastwards - certainly NATO, and perhaps the EU treaty as well. Would Orban be counting on Putin to be merciful to Hungary in such a case, since Hungary has been a loyal vassal up to now? Or would the Russian autocrat give away the lost Transcarpathia in a gesture of goodwill to Orban? Or perhaps he would quickly strip Viktor Orban of all influence and turn him into a de facto puppet government. Given that the Kremlin's tentacles already run deep in Budapest, this would not be an overly long process. Or maybe he was hoping for another period of chaos in Europe - because that is the only way to reverse the Trianon decisions?
Budapest remains within the structures of the Western world - mainly NATO and the European Union. But in rhetoric and action, it is increasingly distancing itself from them. A lot of water has flowed down the Danube in the last 20 years since Hungery united with the West. Now it is blocking Sweden's accession to NATO for no logical reason. On the other hand, it remains in an endless dispute with the Union, and Orban recently compared the organisation itself to the Soviet Union.
Contrary to what the Hungarian leader says, Orban's Hungary policy does not make Hungary more independent and does not serve the country's interests. In reality it puts the country at the mercy of the superpowers, whose history of dealing with small political entities like Hungary is clearly negative. Orban and Fidesz condemn Moscow's crushing of the 1956 anti-communist uprising, but conveniently avoid any links between the Soviets and today's Russia. Vladimir Putin has a different opinion, and openly admits that the collapse of the USSR was the greatest tragedy in history and that Russia is the heir to the Soviets.
Whether Viktor Orban is driven by personal motives and autocratic visions, a desire to restore Greater Hungary, or is genuinely guided by Hungary's national interest, Fidesz's policies on the international stage are putting Hungary at risk. As opposed to what Viktor Orban may imagine, decisions concerning Hungary in a period of chaos, as in the case of Trianon, will once again be taken without Hungary's participation. This is how decisions are made in a system where the strongest decides everything, which impresses the Fidesz leader so much.
And it wouldn't be the first time Hungary found itself on the wrong side of history. The alliance with Putin's Russia and Communist China is reminiscent of the inter-war years, when Hungary, seeking revenge for Trianon, signed a treaty with fascist Italy, later the Anti-Comintern Pact and the Tripartite Alliance with the Third Reich, and then fought in the Second World War on the side of Hitler's Germany. Hungary temporarily regained some of its lost territory during the war, but ended it with even less territory and even more humiliation.
In 1932, Hungarian Prime Minister Gyuola Gombos became the first world leader to pay a congratulatory visit to a triumphant Adolf Hitler. On 17 October 2023, Viktor Orban became the first EU leader to meet Vladimir Putin since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for him, and the second, after the Austrian chancellor, to meet him since the outbreak of the war.
So is Orban's Hungary a revisionist state? It would be public suicide to admit such ambitions outright. However, it is reasonable to conclude that Budapest indirectly supports a revisionist world order, through close relations with the main revanchist powers of the current decade and through subtle negations with its neighbours.
