A top aide to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has drawn criticism for suggesting that his country would not have resisted a Russian invasion like Ukraine did, multiple reports said.
Balázs Orbán, the prime minister’s highly influential political director, made the remarks on the podcast of a conservative Hungarian news magazine.
Balázs Orbán, who is also an MP, is not related to Viktor Orbán.
“We probably would not have done what President Zelenskyy did two and a half years ago, because it is irresponsible, because one can see that he took his country into a war of defense,” Balázs Orbán said, the Hungarian outlet Telex reported.
Of course it’s Hungary. What a sad state of affairs for the country whose brave resistance led to the term “tankie” being coined for the pro-Russian side.
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (23 October – 4 November 1956; Hungarian: 1956-os forradalom), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was an attempted countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People’s Republic (1949–1989) and the policies caused by the government’s subordination to the Soviet Union (USSR).[nb 2] The uprising lasted 12 days before being crushed by Soviet tanks and troops on 4 November 1956. Thousands were killed and wounded and nearly a quarter of a million Hungarians fled the country.[5][6]
Consequently, Hungarians organized into revolutionary militias to fight against the ÁVH; local Hungarian communist leaders and ÁVH policemen were captured and summarily executed; and political prisoners were released and armed. To realize their political, economic, and social demands, local soviets (councils of workers) assumed control of municipal government from the Hungarian Working People’s Party (Magyar Dolgozók Pártja). The new government of Imre Nagy disbanded the ÁVH, declared Hungary’s withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, and pledged to re-establish free elections. By the end of October the intense fighting had subsided.
The term “tankie” was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.[7][8]
