In the annals of the courageous struggles of the people of central and eastern Europe for democratic rights and against Soviet rule, the Hungarian revolution which flared brilliantly and was brutally crushed 60 years ago this month stands out above all. Some 2,500 Hungarians died on the barricades and in the streets resisting the tanks and the 100,000 troops that Russia and the Warsaw Pact countries threw against them.
Thirteen thousand of them would be jailed and several hundred were executed, including their leader and prime minister Imre Nagy, because they dared to believe in Hungarian independence and that most dangerous idea, that socialism could be constructed with a human face. Some 200,000 Hungarians fled as refugees and were welcomed with open arms. They were resettled from Austria and Yugoslavia to a total of 37 different countries – the first 100,000 of them in under ten weeks.
Over last weekend EU member state Hungary remembered and celebrated the rising, but the commemorations led by PM Viktor Orban were awash with bitter irony.
After all, it is Orban who is strenuously resisting attempts by fellow EU members to share the burden of today's repeat of Hungary's refugee crisis – the exodus from Syria. Because, he argues, they are not Christian and will dilute European values.
“As heirs to 1956, we cannot allow Europe to cut the roots that made it great and helped us survive the Soviet suppression. There is no free Europe without nation states and thousands of years of wisdom from Christianity,” he told the commemoration on Sunday, adding outrageously that: “People who love their freedom must save Brussels from Sovietisation”.
And yet it is Orban who is Vladimir Putin's greatest champion in the EU Council just as the West confronts and sanctions Moscow for its aggression in Ukraine and its atrocities in Syria; Orban who boasts that he hopes to turn Hungary into what he calls an "illiberal state" modelled on Russia. Those who died in 1956 deserve better. Viktor Orban is no Imre Nagy.