A few days ago, I devoted a post to the departure of David B. Cornstein, Donald Trump’s close friend and appointee as American ambassador to Budapest. He was in Hungary for less than two-and-a half years, but the little time he spent there was dedicated to building friendships with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and several members of his cabinet. The result was an exceptionally close relationship between the United States and Hungary.
During the Obama administration, relations between the two countries had been strained, and Orbán made it clear from the start that he greatly prefers the Republican party over the Democrats. The first tangible sign of that affinity was the unveiling of a statue of President Ronald Reagan in June 2011 on Liberty Square. Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Secretary of State between 2005 and 2009, was the guest of honor, representing former First Lady Nancy Reagan. The statue shows Reagan on his way toward the Soviet Heroic Memorial, which was erected shortly after the liberation of Budapest by the Red Army. The placement of Reagan’s statue was meant to symbolize the president’s role in the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellites.
If Viktor Orbán could remove the Soviet Heroic Memorial, he certainly would, but “given Russia’s sensitivity and Hungary’s national interests, no relocation of the memorial is on the agenda in bilateral talks between the two countries,” said the spokesman of the Hungarian foreign ministry in 2013. Orbán’s solution was the erection of a memorial to “the victims of the German occupation,” which took place on March 19, 1944. The memorial is considered to this day to be a cheap embodiment of historical falsification. The statue is capped by a tympanum with a bronze eagle, representing Nazi Germany. Below the eagle is a statue of the Archangel Gabriel, representing “innocent Hungary,” holding an orb, representing the power of the state. In brief, the statue attempts to absolve the Horthy regime of responsibility for the deaths of about 600,000 Hungarians of Jewish heritage. After months of demonstrations, the government erected the monument in the dead of night in July 2014, but it was never officially unveiled. Once the Orbán government is gone, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that atrocity is removed.
The reader might wonder about my reason for bringing up this old story now. On October 28, I published my translation of Viktor Orbán’s commendation on the occasion of awarding U.S. Ambassador David B. Cornstein the Middle Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit with Star. What I didn’t mention was that the prime minister delivered another speech that day at the same place, at the unveiling of another statue, this time one of U.S. President George H. W. Bush (1989-1993). Bush was the first American president ever to visit Hungary while in office, in July 1989. He made a very favorable impression as he gave a speech in the pouring rain, tearing up his soaked notes and “speaking from the heart.”
The main theme of Orbán’s speech was the United States as “the land of freedom … the land that welcomed Kossuth … and the land that gave refuge to our confessor Cardinal József Mindszenty.” Expanding on the theme of freedom, he said that “at one end of the square there is a memorial to the victims of the German occupation, while at the other end there is a memorial to the victims of the Soviet occupation. This, too, sends a clear message. If you are Hungarian, you have only two options to choose from: either you side with the occupiers or you side with freedom.”
Soviet Heroic Memorial, Szabadság tér (1945)
It seems that people in Moscow were listening. Two days later, the following message was posted on the Russian Foreign Ministry Facebook page by Maria Zakharova, director of the information and press department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, who is described as one of the most influential Russian diplomats today. This is what Zakharova wrote in somewhat fractured English: “the Prime Minister of Hungary during the speech at Sabadshag Square in Budapest, the monument there, established in memory of the 80 thousand Red Army residents who died in the liberation of the Hungarian capital from fascist invaders, ‘a monument to the Soviet occupation.’ Such statements rudely pervert the historical truth and events of the Second World War, the results of which are enshrined by the respective decisions of the Nuremberg Tribune. I would like to remind you that Hortist Hungary is the nearest ally of A. Hitler, taking an active part in the section of Czechoslovakia and Hitler’s aggression against Yugoslavia, on June 27, 1941, proactively joined the attack on Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union and ‘marked’ in the occupied territories mass crimes against civilians and Soviet prisoners of war. The Red Army, saving the people of Europe from the ‘brown plague,’ brought them peace and freedom. Currently, some states are experiencing a desire to distort this fact and silence our country’s key role in the Victory over fascism, to blur the historic responsibility of individual capitals for war crime, to ‘oblige’ the Naziowns regimes. We will continue to decisively counteract such falsification.”
Neither Magyar Nemzet nor Magyar Hírlap reacted to this sharp rebuke coming from Moscow. However, Híradó, the official organ of news, did summarize Zakharova’s objections, to which Undersecretary Tamás Menczer, sidestepping the issue, responded that “both the Nazi and the communist dictatorships are terrible and inhuman and we are glad that Hungary got rid of both.” Pesti Srácok wasn’t that polite. One of their “journalists” wrote a muddleheaded article about the incident, whose only coherent part was that Russia hasn’t recognized that the Soviet Union is gone. It is an extremely dangerous position to take that today’s Russia is the heir to the former Soviet Union. Zakharova’s Facebook note is “the lowest level of diplomacy.”
This incident shows that it is not easy to be on good terms with multiple great powers. Orbán, by making gestures to the United States, managed “to wade deep into Russian sensitivity.” Critics of the Orbán regime, like György Gábor, agree with Zakharova that the prime minister’s references to the symbolism of the two statues is a “perverse lie” because he forgets about the prehistory of the Red Army’s arrival in Hungary. One cannot portray Hungary in 1945 as an innocent victim of circumstances.
There is another aspect of Orbán’s remarks on the choice between freedom and the occupiers which Péter Németh pointed out in Hírklikk. Orbán, according to him, with his “flattery intended for the Americans, not only crassly insulted the Russians, history, and truth but also some Hungarians” because, although some people didn’t look upon the Soviet soldiers as liberators, they still freed Hungary from the Germans, the Nazis, and the members of the Arrow Cross party. Orbán wasn’t particularly worried about the consequences of his remarks because, at home, they will not result in an outcry. “After all, he insulted only the memory of the Holocaust.” I’m afraid this is a sadly apt commentary.
It appears, that at this time the viktor put his foot in his mouth. I am sure Putin will assess a heavy penalty for this insult, and the Hungarian taxpayers will pay for the viktor’s huge faux pas.
Maybe little fat Viktor is trying to ingratiate himself with the Americans in case Biden wins. Wouldn’t be the first time he’s playing both ends against the middle.
But it won’t be easy for him if Trump loses. If he tries to defect, there will be repercussions. Putin will not be amused if Viktor wants to have his cake and eat it too.
Viktor Orbán is too clever by half as the British say. He only possesses a law student’s understanding of history and cherry picks anecdotes to suit his fancy. Also, Orbán indulges in worst mental habit of Hungarian chauvinism: assuming nobody else understands magyar and what should be sotto voce can be shouted from the rooftops on their home turf.
Too clever by half is not Orban. The expression is an idiotic English celebration of stupidity. It’s all far too far in the past. It was, in its heyday supposed to convey that ostentatious demonstration of cleverness was bad form,
Thank you for this well-observed and reported summary of some crass Orban-generated diplomatic embarrassment, not even generated by the usual Hungarian attack-dog, Peter Szijjarto. It all started with Orban’s unctuous praise of Ambassador Cornstein as Orban attempted to grovel at the feet of President Trump… …but then Orban is not a man of wide vision.
The Fidesz view of Hungary‘s role in World War 2 is primitive, unreal and undigested. Looks like O1G blew it, again.
“… the statue attempts to absolve the Horthy regime of responsibility for the deaths of about 600,000 Hungarians of Jewish heritage. After months of demonstrations, the government erected the monument in the dead of night in July 2014, but it was never officially unveiled. Once the Orbán government is gone, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that atrocity is removed…” – and together with this abomination the statues at the Parliament Building, another falsification of history, will also be removed when this fascist regime will bite the dust. I for one, looking forward for the results of the US elections, when if there is justice, Trump and his lawless supporters hopefully will fail in continuing their reckless domination of the American political scene that ultimately will effect the fate of the Orban-regime as well.
“Donald Trump’s close friend”? Yea, really? Why do you always have to add hogwash?
@Christopher Dias, 2:08 am
The phrase “Donald Trump’s close friend” referred to David B Cornstein and the closeness of the relationship is indisputable, Cornstein having been a generous donor to the Trump cause and they claim to have known each other for more than twenty years. What is your problem with the statement?
Anyway, if you are going to wash a hog then hogwash is a necessary part of the process. Still, you got your word in.
Of course Cornstein’s a close friend of Trump. How do you think he got the job as ambassador?
Warning! Hold your tongue
Eva is right that if Orban could he would remove the Soviet War Memorial. Earlier administrations would have done too. The difficulty with doing so is that the memorial was erected and kept in place pursuant to the provisions of the Paris Peace Treaty signed at the end of WW2. The continued presence of the memorial certainly enables Orban to make some valid points at the expense of provoking some hollow protests from Moscow. Whilst it is an undisputed fact that it was the Red Army that drove the Nazis out of Hungary, but at what cost. Their soldiers suffered losses but theIr lasting memory is somewhat less romantic. They raped and pillaged their way through our country. Instead of helping to rebuild Hungary as a civilised democracy they imposed a blood stained regime and years of terror, poverty and virtually total destruction of civilised values and standards the impact of which has lasted and will continue to be felt indefinitely.
@Aida, 3:18 am
There is a logical fracture in what you say if you assign blame for the subsequent regime post-war to the unfortunate Soviet soldiers tasked with destroying the German Nazi’s and Hungarian Nazi’s last redoubt.
“…theIr lasting memory is somewhat less romantic. They raped and pillaged their way through our country.” Ah yes that would be after the Nazi forces of Germany and Hungary “raped and pillaged their way through” their country, then, right? Despite that, I know at least one person who lived through the siege of Budapest and who found the Soviet front-line soldiers kind to children and ready to share their food with them. I wonder how many Hungarian and German Nazi soldiers were ready to do that in the USSR in the heyday of Adolf’s Blitzkrieg? And of course German and Hungarian Nazis never raped anyone.
Get friggin’ real! The great burden of winning the war and defeating the Hungarian and German Nazis fell on the shoulders of the USSR and their citizens died by the hundreds of thousands while doing so. Ms. Zakharova is right. You should have the courage and character to acknowledge that.
Bimbi, totally agree with you!
I’ve heard similar stories re the friendliness of Russian soldiers from friends who grew up in East Germany.
Of course there were also rapists and other criminals, a kind of revenge for all the Nazi atrocities – though again of course not all German soldiers were rapists, just a small number, but that was enough.
True to yourself Wolfi. You can’t be serious. Members of the Red Army were taking revenge for Nazi atrocities by hurting women who were themselves obviously victims of the same Nazis. And even if not victims the taking revenge theory is put forward by Bolsheviks and their bedfellows of whom there are quite a few on this blog. The reality was that much of the Red Army consisted of primitive savages and their officers did not even try to keep them in order.
in the small town where I lived with my parents the “heroes” stole watches and anything they could lay their hands on.
During 1956 they murdered unarmed civilians in Budapest and in the provinces. They brought murder and savagery to my country and to the Eastern part of yours. But you probably forgot that.
„taking revenge theory is put forward by Bolsheviks and their bedfellows of whom there are quite a few on this blog.“
Aida this is quite primitive but I have a thought about it. Elmedingen Germany was French occupied zone after the war it is near Pforzheim and the birthplace of my grandfather and theirs. As punishment for the war by Germany, measures were taken by the French occupying power. The area was released for 48 hours for looting and rape. After that they set fire to a house it was not allowed to extinguish the fire. As a result of the construction, the whole street burned down to the foundation walls. They were not Bolsheviks!
Don, there is revenge and revenge. In your example it lasted 48 hours. It was localised. The Red Army outrages were a moving front over 44/45 and across many countries. The perpetrators were a rabble of out of control savages. Those who make up the balls aching mitigation that they were taking revenge for Nazi crimes was made up by Bolsheviks and spread even this day by them and their rather unsavoury bedfellows.
Aida, now you’re showing your real face!
So the Nazi crimes did not exist/weren’t relevant?
They – and the Hungarians too – didn’t march through Poland into Russia, killing how many people?
And re the glorious Hungarian armies:
They took many Jewish “helpers” with them – without enough food and without enough winter clothes. I’m not sure but I remember reading of 100 000 dead Jews on the front.
PS:
Aida, seems you’re on the wrong site. Qanon would surely appreciate someone writing about “belief” and “creation”.
Totally OT, just remembered:
When asked about her beliefs my grandmother would say:
I believe that a pound of good meat makes a pot of good soup.
Wolfi, if I understand you correctly, your view is that it is O.k for squaddies to rape as an act of retribution for admittedly serious crimes committed by others, not the rape victim, The rape victims have drawn the short straw by belonging to a group which is itself the victim of the gangs that committed the atrocities against the raper’s community. Grow up.
Aida, you really are crazy!
Of course it’s not ok but the leader should have thought “oda vissza” as they say in Hungarian.
After all the atrocities that happened this was to be expected.
You are as one-sided as our trolls zoli and chris it seems.
Bollocks, the idiot English who caused the whole thing by their spinelessness did not send in their troops to revenge themselves by raping. They reciprocated for the Blitz by destroying German cities from the air. It no doubt gave Churchill and “Bomber” Harris orgasms but not the squaddies.
@Aida, 3:31 pm
You are becoming wilder with each new comment and seem to have lost the thread here and also forget that Hungary constituted Nazi Germany’s closest and most enduring ally in Europe. Aida, as well as Orban seem unable to grasp never mind absorb this stark, unpleasant fact. You know, of course, that it was Hungary, without Hitler’s urging, that declared war on the USSR. The Soviets knew who their enemy was but then you complain that Hungarians should have received gentle training and re-education to help them become good democrats.
Got to tell ya, your expectations stretch credulity just a little too far. Dream on buddy.
Anyway, thanks for the conversation.
Aida which argument moves you to state, that a different time limit plays a difference. The argument of duration and local limitation counts on both sides. It is a war crime nowadays there is a court for it. So much for the first part of your sentence.
It still remains „bedfellows of whom there are quite a few on this blog.“ is this the desire for degradation or insult?
I also grew up in the French occupied zone but have no bad memories concerning the French soldiers and my parents didn’t tell me any atrocious stories.
My favourite memories:
Once (I was in Kindergarten still) I hurt myself while playing with my friends and started to cry. A North African guy in a French uniform looked out his office (this building had been a restaurant before and became a restaurant again after the French left) and came over to me – with a banana in his hand, for me!
Much later in the 1960s regularly French soldiers came into my favourite bar selling Gauloises, sparkling wine and liquor which thye could buy duty free at the soldier shop – really good prices! 🙂
There are many more uplifting stories …
But of course there also were bitter stories – like in any war …
That’s why I am so happy for having the EU – 3 generations now in Central Europe without a war!
Of course you were ok. The French were not members of the Red Army
„Of course you were ok. The French were not members of the Red Army“ „Don, there is revenge and revenge.“ blaida?
I have some anecdotes, too.
French soldiers stole my bicycle from our backyard in the Ebertstrasse.
The French Officer Casino was a great restaurant in Tubingen on the banks of the Neckar.
Finally, please start a cease fire.
Bimbi, Aida etc. are right.
Germans are also mostly right.
The problem of this blog is not to recognize the emptiness of the words of Orban and the Russians. Please give no credit to them.
It is time to ignore them.
Their common goal is to confuse the West.
Our task is to liberate the ordinary Hungarians and Russians from such regimes.
I hate to say it but unfortunately the best way to contain 17 to 20 year old soldiers of any nations from rape and abuse of enemy civilians is by pretty harsh military justice. Unfortunately in WWII most of the US soldiers shot for raping women were African American and some of the rape cases were consensual sex between black GIs and European white women. (see https://ww2gravestone.com/the-dark-side-of-gis-in-liberated-france/ ) Many of the Russian soldiers in Hungary suffered from one form or another of PTSD, Soviet propaganda to its troops justified retribution towards the nazis for their own crimes against Russian civilians and prisoners of war. As I have indicated before in a post in 1972 I tried to stop South Vietnamese soldiers from executing wound NLF and VC soldiers outside of An Lộc yelling repeatedly: Không giết VC bị thương, họ cần phải được thẩm vấn. (Basically don’t shoot the VC they need to be questioned.) Which seemed to work. A South Vietnamese Colonel said to me in impeccable English, yes you are right after questioning then they can be shot. That Colonel shot himself in 1975, rather than surrender to the communists, I guess he assumed he would get shot… Read more »
Istvan, you would not have lasted long in the Red Army.
i do not quite follow how the rough military justice set out in your post worked because your emphasis shifted to the pc subject of racism. I would like to read some more details with the pc stripped out.
I was amazed to see archive interviews (I speak Russian) with Russian women in Stalingrad who were saying that looking at the German POWs close to death of exposure and starvation in February 1943 they couldn’t help it and gave their enemies some of the scarce food they had.
After capturing 260 k POW instead of the estimated 80-100k (the Russians greately overestimated the impact of their fire) the Soviet command ordered the rations of their already resting troops cut by half in order to keep the POW alive. Still tens of thousands died as the temperatures dropped to -44 in the almost completely destroyed city with no reserves or infrastructure.
Aida should look at this or at the Leningrad siege for suffering of civilians.
Bimbi, presumably this is the best mitigation you have been able to generate. It does not amount to a row of beans. I would just add one incident to balance your admiration for your Red Army heroes.
At Easter 1945, when a group of drunken Red Army heroes arrived at Bishop Baron Vilmos Apor’s Palace at his diocese of Gyor they sought to remove to their barracks a group of about a hundred young women who took refuge there. The Bishop feared, rightly, that they would be raped he refused their request. He was shot and killed. The Bishop who had condemned Nazism and Communism with equal force had throughout his ministry worked tirelessly to protect Jews from persecution and women from harm.
@Aida, 5:59 am Sorry, I do not see your logic. We are playing a game of “my excuse is better than your excuse” are we? OK, how about the deportation to death camps of over half a million Hungarian citizens by the Hungarian government, with the approval of Admiral Horthy to Hitler at Schloss Klessheim and the passive acceptance of the population at large? Does that trump the murder of Bishop Baron Vilmos Apor? Don’t be silly. In your earlier post, 3:18 am, you asked why the USSR forces did not “rebuild Hungary as a civilized democracy”! Always the Hungarians say, why didn’t X, Y or Z do the job for us that we should have done for ourselves? You apply it to 1944/45, it is applied to today to the responsibility for the criminal Orban regime. Why doesn’t the EU, blah, blah? Please take time to admit that non-Hungarians get tired of this line of pleading. Sorry. Hungary in the ’30s (probably spurred on by Trianon – Hitler knew what he was doing), anti-Semitic Hungary, lined up behind Adolf. In the end they got their arses kicked. War means something else beside gold braided jackets, feathered hats and polished… Read more »
Bimbi, I don’t compare one bunch of evil doers with another,
This post is about the Red Army War Memorial in Budapest and what Orban said it represents in the mind of Hungarians. The conduct of individual soldiers in the campaign raping and robbing the Hungarian population is in the view of civilised people and in law war crimes.
The murder of a Bishop protecting women in his care from being raped is further dimension of evil.
The reason why Hungarians were not able to complete the construction of a post war civilised country was not because they did not try. It is because of the Red Army and its rapist troops had installed and maintained in power a blood thirsty regime of Bolsheviks villains.
@Aida, 1:34 pm
Hell, you so right Aida: “the reason why Hungarians were not able to complete…” – right on, man, it was someone else’s fault. We should have known.
And the reason Hungary couldn’t get its act together for two decades after 1920 was also someone else’s fault, like Trianon and those awful Western Powers. And then Hungary fell into Adolf’s arms and he played tricks on us that we didn’t understand and then the Bolshies arrived and started kicking our butts. It wasn’t fair. And anyway it was someone else’s fault. Responsibility? Wazzat?
Hell Aida. You so right man.
And Hungary is singing the same song today. Why doesn’t the EU dig us out of the shit that Orban has buried us in?
Bimbi your ignorance or obstinacy is staggering. It is accepted by all that after WW2 the Hungary there was a democratically elected Parliament and Coalition government. This was replaced in a coup d’etat by the Stalinist Rakosi and his gang of Communist killers, all with the backing of Stalin with the support of the occupying Red Army. They kept those criminals in power until 1956 when we kicked them out. They were put back under Kadar by the Red Army.
That is the history of Hungary between 1945 and 1989. How could we have built a democracy under Soviet and Red Army occupation? You should apologise for you nonsense.
Aida, you’re almost funny!
Bimbi explicitly asked about Hungarian policy after 1920 ie under Horthy.
Read anything about that misogynic, antisemite, foreigners-hating class society whose peak was joining their friend Hitler?
“The difficulty with doing so is that the memorial was erected and kept in place pursuant to the provisions of the Paris Peace Treaty signed at the end of WW2.”
As I heard it, keeping the memorial was a condition that the Russians set before they would leave Hungary after the change of regime.
Yes. I agree Shoopy.
„Whilst it is an undisputed fact that it was the Red Army that drove the Nazis out of Hungary, but at what cost.“
hahahahahaha so why did Hungary have so many Nazis when the Red Army drove the Nazis out. So much for “undisputed fact”. I don’t know if the use of the word romantic is funny for such a serious topic? But following in Orbán’s footsteps to fake or bend history and posting here is really something.
Aida Your simplistic demonization of the Soviet Army’s actions is based more on greatly exaggerated myths then facts. While rape and theft/robbery certainly took place, as always in such circumstances, your position ignores the latter altogether, ie. – Hu declared war on the SU for no reason, but as an ally of Nazi Germany, which inflicted terrible suffering on the Russians, who also knew about the Nazi atrocities elsewhere incl. about the holocaust, – the Hu army committed many “small” atrocities of its own in the SU/Ukraine, incl. pillage, burning villages and mass murders (I guess rape didn’t resister on this background) – in the beginning of 1945 Hu was the last Nazi ally still fighting and – killing Russian soldiers in street fighting in Bud where with the civilian dressed fascist gangs, the distinction between military and civilians was blurred, ie. every Hun could be en enemy. Fighting a nasty enemy like that, the Russian army did not resort to leveling towns or burning villages, to indiscriminately killing/executing thousands of suspected fighters or to wholesale expropriation or destruction of infrastructure. The Huns got away with it relatively easy, also bearing in mind that the victorious SU didn’t truncate the… Read more »
I did not accuse the Red Army of committing crimes they did not commit. I find your post beyond belief. So it is OK for troops to rape? We are on a Bolshevik bedfellows blog.
Aida
Read carefully what I wrote, I’m not exonerating the Red Army of crimes they did commit, but if we talk about two warring sides the question Who hit first and like inevitably pop up. So when talking about one party “raping and pillaging its way through the country” and about “total destruction of civilized values and standards” we may consider that the other party (Nazis/Hu here) did/ tried to do much worse things, but it’s attempt was defeated.
Everything in history is in time and place context, or you have the Angel Gabriel approach.
I could care less about angels. I am concerned about laws which have for a long time forbidden, amongst other things rape by combatants. I cannot understand your desire to excuse or to mitigate conduct which is not only repulsive abuse of women but also against the law of nations.
More lessons to come from the Bolsheviks school of morality and standards? I expect so.
Ok, talking about morality and standards:
It was not the Red Army that committed these atrocities, but the war, where all did terrible things, eg. your example of Air marshal “Bomber” Harris or the Churchill’s soul wrenching decision to let the Germans obliterate Coventry.
Now, if one didn’t want such things to happen, to their own people as well (as Socrates pointed out), one shouldn’t start a war.
You also can’t do all sorts of horrible things and then be outraged (eg. your selective indignation) when the other side broke the law.
Finally, laws and conventions are a very good thing, but see “mitigating circumstances”: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/mitigating_circumstances
Don’t you know about the Angel Gab monument and it’s meaning?
I was on Szabadsag ter on October 25, 1956, 2 days after the outbreak of the October 23, 1956 anti-Communist, anti-Soviet Hungarian Revolution that we started at our 2 PM meeting at the Great Hall (Nagy Aula) of the Technical University where I was a student. Every single vestige of Communist and Russian presence MUST in Hungary be removed and destroyed forever. After all, the Russians destroyed Hungarian freedom also in 1849. No, No, Never should be the permanent Hungarian battle cry against Russian imperialism under any guise.
What you can see is that Orbán is crumbling. His lies find less and less hearing and his acceptance is very low worldwide. So much for the strong weak Hungarian leader, who was recently in a church? and above him was written in large letters “I Am the Light of the World”. Of course he had to posts that at FB … logically he is among other things also a narcissist but not a light more the darkness.
Orbàn is the gypsy horse trader telling everyone what he sees advantageous, lying his ass off without batting an eyelid. Fact is however, it works pretty well, see Trump for an extreme case of the same syndrome (Marty has a point).
Wow! Amazing that this subject should precipitate such a heated argument in here, where most discussion is reasonable and level headed, and participants see below the surface somewhat, and do not fall for the ‘instant’ understandings so typically proffered by devious political forces at work over time. Surely, it is well recorded that: a) Red Army Soviet (not only Russian) troops raped and generally behaved abysmally when they ‘liberated’ Axis territory in 1944-45. IF anything, Budapest and Hungary got off lightly – the statistics on abortions in Vienna in 1945 after these soldiers had their victory flings with the local women are horrendous. Yes, they might have shared their food with some locals – Russians and, I suspect, other Soviet nationaliities have big hearts after suffering so much themselves – but nothing can gloss over the brutality and pillage that they inflicted on ‘liberated’ nations. b) Red Army soldiers had miserable lives in the fighting, and suffered huge sacrifices. Many – thousands – exhibited extraordinary bravery and dedication to duty. But this was, in part, due to the absolute control and uncaring nature of their political system. Any doubts about continuing the fight were sorted out by NKVD death squads… Read more »
@TrianonTrianon, 7:37 am
In my next posted comment I shall explain what the Soviet Red Army was doing in the Ostmark (Wien) and why they travelled all the way from the Soviet Union to get there – just so that we “do not fall for the “instant understandings” so typically proffered…”
“WW2 was their Trianon if you like” ! No, apparently if YOU like, but what on earth do you mean by such a flippant, off-the-cuff comment?!
Eg. For the Russians WW2 or Великая Отечественная Война is still a major traumatic event, just as is Trianon for the Huns.
@Observer, 2:02 pm
Forgive me asking, but were there any nations involved for whom WW2 was NOT “a traumatic event”?
As to Trianon that was merely a just reward for the failure of corrupt Hungarian colonialism. Forget the Trianonanism, please.
Observer got my meaning, or 90% of it. Just as Horthy and now Orban leads 35% of the Hungarian public by the emotional cohonudos over Trianon, so Putin and all Soviet/Russian leaders back to Stalin used the sacrifices of the Soviet peoples in WW2 to manipulate these same people afterwards. This, despite the fact that Stalin’s ruthless leadership led to many of these deaths in the first place – not least the 1m plus Soviet victims in the brutal, totally unwarranted aggression in the Winter War against little Finland.
Bombi
Incomparable experiences, eg. on one end that of the Danes, Norwegians, Dutch, Finns (they had their 1939 war), even the Czechs and the French and on the other end that of the Yougoslavs, Poles and Russians.
Joke: Poles tour Prague on a bus and the guide points to the wartime Gestapo headquarters where, he says, more than two dozen inocent Czechs were murdered.. All the Poles start laughing.
TT
You seem to know this part of history, but for few points.
E.g. The Soviets did abide by their earlier Tehran and Yalta agreements and attacked the Japanese Kwantung army of one million man and soundly defeated them, suffering 30 k dead and wounded themselves.
It was the Nazi ideology (and the Japanese rasis Imperialism) that anointed tens of millions as Undermenschen to be enslaved or killed and they actually acted on this. While the Nazis targeted mostly other peoples, the communist regimes’ victims fell in the course of their civil wars (Russia and China) and the repressions which followed on the same road to dictatorship. I wouldn’t say the Communists were worse because we don’t know how far would a victorious Nazi regime have gone to fulfill the inhuman programs and visions they had; if they did it would have been apocalyptic for the enslaved nations eg. Jews, Slavs, Mid Asians, and maybe later Hungarians, whom Hitler considered Asians and disliked. It wasn’t apocalypse under the communist rule in E/Europe.
Thank you for your thoughtful contribution. The soldiers of the Red Army were both victims and offender. They, like all of us deserve respect, but not celebration.
They was simple potato slaves and were sent to war. They were therefore perpetrators … is that so?
Don, are you insane? Potato slave or whatever when in uniform in war is a combatant. Rape by them is war crime and against the law of nations. Potato slaves are criminals when they.rape. Being a member of the Red Army is not a defence. Why are you trying to justify the inexcusable? Is it because you are one of the resident Bolsheviks?
@Aida, 4:09 pm
“They, like all of us deserve respect…”
Oh yes, that would also include then the thousands of Hungarian petty officials and gendarmes who in 1944 enthusiastically and savagely, stripped their own citizens of their possessions, herded them into camps, forced them 70 or more at a time into cattle cars without water and shipped them off via Kassa to Auschwitz? Well, well, they would also deserve “respect, but not celebration” – a well-judged balanced view.
Do you really have shit for brains?
The Szalasi Nazi police was reformed after WW2 as the AVO with same HQ
The police and officials who carried out the Jewish roundup and deportation should have been held to account but weren’t. That was under the regime run by the delegates of Stalin.
@Aida, 2:36 am
So, like all of us, they too “deserve respect”?
[The regime “run by the delegates of Stalin” didn’t get get going until 1948.]
The Rakosi regime was built on “salami politics”. He started the demolition of his opponents in 1945 with the support of the Red Army and the political police backed by them. Please Bimbi stop writing nonsense especially as you know next to nothing. I was there at the time. Without Stalin and Red Army domination there would have been no Rakosi regime or for that matter Kadar regime.. I don’t follow why you deny to obviously undeniable? Is it just ignorance or Bolshevik sympathy?
Putting Russian objections aside, there is no iffs or buts about the historical fact, namely that those were two evil ideologies. Unfortunately one of them still lives and thrives in the form of modern Neo-Marxism. It started infecting Western society through its firm grip on the Academic institutions, which was achieved in the late 60’s. Same institutions which for many decades now have been indoctrinating our teachers, lawyers, judges, business elites, journalists and so on, to the point where there is no more room for dissent. Those who still do are increasingly met with the weaponized mob that hunts people down online and pushes for them to be fired from their jobs and so on. In other words, we are seeing acts of persecution. And the last remnants of journalistic dissent are being silenced when it counts, as we saw with the NYP stories on the Biden laptop, where it emerged more clearly than ever that the powerful social media platforms are now acting as the private sector version of the ministry of truth.
@Zoli, 10:02 am
“…two evil ideologies. Unfortunately one of them still lives and thrives in the form of modern Neo-Marxism.”
Yes OK, that’ll be the evil ideology led by Viktor Orban, right? After all, he is “modern”, “contemporary” indeed, “neo”- he boasts of it himself and “Marxist” certainly – once a Commie, always a Commie, as we both recognize.
Not much more to be said on that topic except to ask the question how Hungary is going to get rid of the thieving criminal!
Good to hear from you Zoli.
Inside Eva’s echo chamber, any flimsy argument will fly as long as ideologically correct. Even the one you just composed.
@Zoli, 11:50 am
Since you are well known to be a poster of flimsy arguments in your comments, Zoli, we are familiar with your tactics as your comment of 10:02 am bears clear witness.
It might be apropriate to apply some (for want of a better word) Kremlinology here.
It is possible this was not a ‘gaff’ at all but quite deliberate.
Relations between Russia and the Turkic states, especially Turkey, are very strained at the moment. They Russo-Turkish tensions are being played out by Armenia v Azerbijhan (actual conflict) and Cyprus v Turkey/ TRN Cyprus.
Viktor is increasingly aligning himself with the Turkey/the Turkic states. See for e.g. the MASSIVE advertising campaign in Budapest in support of the new Maafif foundation school.
Viktor tweaking the nose of the Russian bear like this might just be going through the motions to please his allies or ‘balancing’ between power blocs. On the other hand he might think that tieing himself more to Turkic Council states more definitely represents a way of getting out from under the bear’s paw.
Looking at the Paks, subway cars, IIBank, etc projects, the opposition to sanctions, etc, I’m convinced Putin has Orbàn by the ba..s, no tweaking here. Yours is a very brave suggestion…
Oh I think your right *actual* disentanglement from Russia is not really feasible. That is why I mentioned ‘going through the motions’ first.
Also bearing in mind Hungary-Russian co-operation over Ukraine (as highlighted by Eva) this spat might all just be for show anyway. Viktor is very prone to using cultural stuff as decoy material re strucutual and strategic objectives. Provoking a tweet from the Russian Embassy no.2 in the context of the Bush Memorial speech is not the same as taking Sergai Lavrov off speed dial. However it usefully confuses Right leaning American observers/ sympathisers.
Slovakia tested 2/3 of the entire population last weekend.
They found 1.06% of this large sample (38,359 out of 3,625,332) to be asymptomatic carriers. [The number of newly symptomatic carriers is about 17,000 a week]
It should probably be noted that the testing was made using “instant” test methods without laboratory analysis.
these tests have a wider margin of error.
Orban has appointed his cousin to be the Hungarian ambassador to Colombia.
Will the banana and cocaine import improve?
https://index.hu/kulfold/2020/11/02/kulugyibizottsag-nagykovetek-czukor_jozsef-vitezyzsofia/
Much of today’s discussion exposes combined national failures to achieve a focused way into the necessary (inescapable) determined to persuit of an acceptable course, which would eventually lead to a coming to terms with the tumultous recent history.
Yes, the problem is with many people especially governments that they can’t say:
Yes, we or rather our fathers and grandfathers did a lot of bad deeds. Now let’s worktogether and make the best out of it.
That worked quite well in Western Europe – but in the East?
my wife says this is typical Fidesz: It’s always someone else’ fault!
Very precisely put!
Orbán and other public speaker’s rhetorical contortions and convulsions are painful to listen to! Even for countries like Spain, Portugal and Greece.