Those who control Hungary’s past control its future! Those who control its present, control its past!

Preface – Nineteen Eighty-Four & the ‘House of Terror’: On my second visit to Hungary in July 1989, I visited Lake Balaton with my then fiancée (now my wife of thirty-six years) and a Catholic priest. He asked me if I had read George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. I replied that I had first read itContinue reading “Those who control Hungary’s past control its future! Those who control its present, control its past!”

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.”

Orbán’s Hungary – a member of NATO or Putin’s Fifth Column?: Hungarian Foreign Policy and Euro-Atlantic Integration, 1989-2019.

Springtime in Brussels and Budapest, 1999: In 1999, during the first government of Viktor Orbán, when Hungary became a member of NATO, his foreign minister, János Martonyi wrote of the change in the country’s system of government that had begun with the mandate received from the first free elections, which had replaced the one-party-state system.Continue reading “Orbán’s Hungary – a member of NATO or Putin’s Fifth Column?: Hungarian Foreign Policy and Euro-Atlantic Integration, 1989-2019.”