Preface – A Time for Turning? 1989-2009: Above and below are photos, taken between 1989 and 2009, by Lobenwein Tamás. In June 1989, Viktor Orbán returned to Hungary from his Soros-sponsored sojourn at Oxford to secure his leadership of Fidesz, then a radical liberal youth party, in advance of the first free elections in 1990.Continue reading “Is Hungary finally moving on from the ‘illiberalism’ and ‘Christian Nationalism’ of the Orbán Years of 2010-2025?”
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The Illusion of ‘Illiberal’ Democracy in Hungary & Russia’s Imperial War in Ukraine, 2010-23.
Welcome Back, Comrades! ‘Farewell, comrades!’ A poster from the first Hungarian free elections in 1990. When I returned to Hungary in 2011 to live after a gap of fifteen years in the UK (including a year in the South of France), it was as a husband to a Hungarian citizen with family responsibilities back homeContinue reading “The Illusion of ‘Illiberal’ Democracy in Hungary & Russia’s Imperial War in Ukraine, 2010-23.”
Ukraine from Askold to Zelensky: Language, Culture, Art & Architecture, 862-2022.
“The British have not forgotten how the Nazis wiped out Coventry, … bombed forty-one times. They have not forgotten the Luftwaffe’s so-called ‘Moonlight Sonata’, in which the city was under contant air-raids for eleven hours. They have not forgotten how Coventry’s historic centre, how its factories, how St Michael’s Cathedral were destroyed. When they see the missiles hit Kharkiv and damage its historic centre, its factories and the Assumption Cathedral, they remember. … when they recall how Birmingham was bombed, and they see its sister city Zaporizhia under attack, they remember.”
