Uzay Bulut
December 24, 2025
Soviet tank attempts to clear a road barricade in Budapest, Hungary, October 1956
CIA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The nations that make up the majestic Christian civilization “from the Atlantic to the Urals” (in Charles de Gaulle’s words) are intertwined by invisible threads. Alas, chauvinism—nationalism’s ugly twin—is breeding discord among peoples destined by God to live in peace. Most often, chauvinism emerges where spiritual life was previously uprooted by atheistic regimes, the curse of the 20th century. This is particularly acute in the post-Soviet space today.
The year 1956, when the Hungarian National Revolution, or War of Independence, took place, is the most complex aspect of modern Russian-Hungarian relations. The Hungarian view of these events is well known: the blood of the heroes of October-November 1956 nourishes the tree of Hungarianness, rooted in ancient times. But what about the Russian view?
Based on the Kremlin’s historical lectures to the ‘collective West,’ it’s entirely reasonable to believe that Moscow views the Soviet occupation forces’ entry into Budapest as the ‘suppression of a fascist, CIA-inspired rebellion.’ A controversial passage from a Russian textbook that portrayed freedom fighters as “CIA-backed Nazi elements” encapsulates the essence of Putin’s Russia’s memory politics. This shameful passage was deleted after a resolute protest from Budapest, and Putin was soon forced to acknowledge the Soviet invasion of Hungary as a mistake. Nevertheless, the question of the fundamental incompatibility of the two countries’ historical narratives remains: on the one hand, an organic, national liberation, Christian-conservative vision (Hungary); on the other, an eclectic ‘national-Bolshevik’ one, in which Stalin, the greatest murderer of all time, is blasphemously married to the Orthodox Church (Russia).
The mutually beneficial economic cooperation between Budapest and Moscow remains disconnected from the obvious contradictions in the politics of memory. Liberal and pro-Brussels forces are cleverly exploiting this fact to discredit the Hungarian government and the Fidesz party. To counter the anti-communist and nationalist interpretation of the 1956 revolution, Viktor Orbán’s opponents are trying to promote an alternative myth of a leftist revolution in the name of ‘non-authoritarian socialism’ and ‘Soviet democracy.’
Instead of Cardinal Midszenty and Görgey Pongratz, who symbolize the uncompromising struggle for the Hungarian soul against the red beast, the leftists promote the controversial figures of György Lukács and Imre Nagy, who became oppositionists in 1956 without breaking with communist ideology.
The foreign policy of modern Hungary is thus slyly presented by leftists as a ‘betrayal of the spirit of ’56,’ an immoral compromise with those whose tanks drenched Corvin Passage in blood.
Undoubtedly, Russia’s lingering communist past, both secretly and openly, poisons relations between the two countries, hindering any sincere (and not merely mercantile) unity between Moscow and Budapest on the platform of defending traditional values from the liberal-globalist onslaught. The problem exists, but it must also be understood and, sooner or later, overcome. It’s time to finally reflect on the difficult legacy of Russian post-communism, not simply to curse Moscow’s pseudo-imperial ressentiment once again, but also to offer a Russian perspective on 1956—a Russian anti-Bolshevik perspective.
The interaction of the Russian White émigrés with Hungary—where Admiral Miklós Horthy led his White Movement—must be counted from 1919. The defeat of Béla Kun’s forces and Horthy’s triumphant entry into Budapest delighted Russian patriots, who desired a similar future for their country. In 1921, General Alexei von Lampe, a military agent for the commander-in-chief of the Russian Army, General Pyotr Wrangel, was dispatched to Budapest. His goal was to obtain permission from the Hungarian authorities to station Russian anti-Bolshevik troops, evacuated from Crimea in November 1920 to the Gallipoli Peninsula, in Hungary. Von Lampe and Horthy had a conversation during which mutual sympathy was established, but permission to relocate the Russian troops was not granted due to fears of a reaction from the Entente.
The Russian monarchist movement, aware of the strong monarchist consciousness of the Hungarian people, also viewed the Horthy regime as a potential ally in the fight against Bolshevism. The famous monarchist political figure, writer, and historian Nikolai Talberg, who worked in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire before the 1917 revolution, recalled,
I twice had the honor of being received by Regent Admiral Horthy. He expressed great goodwill toward the true Russia and hatred for its oppressors. He sympathized with our monarchist work. I was deeply touched by the warmth with which he spoke of Emperor Nicholas II… Horthy expressed hope that perhaps the rumors then circulating that the Tsar had managed to escape would be confirmed.
Along with the state authorities of Bavaria, where the Soviet Republic had also just been liquidated, Hungary was the country most favorably disposed toward Russian monarchist circles.
The 1950s were not the best time for Russian émigrés. Hopes for a return to Russia during World War II were dashed: the Nazis feared Russian nationalists even more than they feared Stalin and only authorized the formation of full-fledged military units of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (abbreviated as Russian: КОНР, KONR) under the command of former Soviet General Andrei Vlasov in late 1944, when the outcome of the war was already decided. Russian émigré colonies in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and Poland were destroyed as a result of the Soviet occupation of these countries. Therefore, Russians outside the USSR enthusiastically embraced the Hungarians’ struggle, seeing it as a light at the end of the tunnel and a chance to create a stronghold against international communism in the heart of Europe.
Russian communities abroad have joined the campaign to aid Hungarian refugees. One of the many examples of this Russian behavior is cited by the San Francisco newspaper Russian Life (Russkaia zhizn’), which reports on a fundraising effort by Russians in the Monterey Peninsula (California) to donate to the Red Cross. It was reported that a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (formed from exiled Orthodox hierarchs who refused to compromise with the godless regime) held a prayer service for the salvation of the “valiant fighters against the communist dictatorship.”
Russian Americans mourned the Hungarian people’s Golgotha. On November 17, 1956, a Mass for the Hungarian martyrs was celebrated at St. Elizabeth (Patroness of Hungary) Catholic Church in Oakland, with the participation of Father József Jaszovszky, secretary to Cardinal Midszenty. About 50 representatives of the Russian community in California attended the service. They laid a funeral wreath of chrysanthemums and gladioli at the foot of St. Elizabeth’s statue, tied with the Russian white-blue-red and Hungarian red-white-green flags.
The White movement’s worldview did not allow for any compromise with the Soviet system, so the events in Hungary were perceived not through the pseudo-patriotic prism of “an uprising by Hungarian fascist rebels against the Russian Soviet army” (as is the case with the Putin regime’s court historians), but as a clash between a brave and unbroken Christian nation and the servants of Satanic darkness. In fact, in the fighting on the streets of Budapest, veterans of the armies of Denikin and Kolchak heard echoes of their own civil war. Nikolai Talberg wrote,
Now, in these terrible weeks for Hungary, I am constantly transported with great sorrow to its capital, where the Soviet hordes rage and where the people, despite utter hopelessness, offer heroic resistance. One can so clearly imagine individual places in Budapest where almost unarmed patriots courageously fought against the Red monsters.”
One of the organizations that enthusiastically supported the Hungarian Revolution was the National Labor Union (abbreviated as Russian: НТС, NTS). Founded in 1930, it was conceived as the vanguard of Russian émigré youth, who would continue the work of their fathers—the fighters of the White Movement—while taking into account all the changes that had occurred in the world and in Russia since 1917. Rejecting naked counterrevolution, the NTS adopted the ideology of solidarism (the solidarity of all classes within the nation) and set as its goal the advancement of a national revolution in the USSR that would overthrow the tyranny of the hammer and sickle. Hungary was of particular interest to the NTS as the latest example of a national anti-communist revolution carried out by all classes.
NTS members entered Hungary through the Austro-Hungarian border, which was poorly controlled by the regime. There, they met with rebels, delivered aid, and gained experience. The radio station Free Russia was launched, broadcasting around the clock for Soviet soldiers and officers. As a sign of friendship, Hungarian fighters presented NTS members with one of their battle flags, which was transported to NTS headquarters in Frankfurt am Main.
Russians, like Hungarians, have always been a history-centered nation, and so they too were concerned with the retrospective of Russo-Hungarian relations. A problematic aspect was the comparison of the Soviet intervention in 1956 with the Russian Empire’s intervention on the side of the Habsburgs against Hungarian revolutionaries in 1849.
Naturally, the right-wing monarchist wing of Russia Abroad objected to the declaration of Emperor Nicholas I as the predecessor of communist leaders. It was emphasized that while in 1849, St. Petersburg fulfilled its alliance obligations to Austria, assumed within the framework of the Holy Alliance of Christian Monarchies, the USSR illegally occupied independent Hungary, violating international law and moral norms. Moreover, in addition to the dominant national-liberal myth of the 1848-49 revolution, there is an alternative royalist tradition of skepticism towards the anti-Habsburg uprising, which was, in particular, defended by the Hungarian philosopher László András (a follower of the ‘Danube Guénon,’ the founder of the Hungarian school of traditionalism, Béla Hamvas), who argued that during the Second World War and then in 1956, “Hungary was not at war with the Tsarist Russian Empire, but with the most vile nightmare and most horrible counter-empire in world history.”
In his series of essays, “Emperor Nicholas I and Hungary,” published in the New York newspaper Russia (Rossiia), Nikolai Talberg emphasized the chivalrous character of the opponents in the 1849 campaign and the respectful attitude of Russian generals and officers toward their Hungarian adversaries. Clearly, the Hungarian military leader, General Artúr Görgei, who was greeted with honors by Russian General Ivan Paskevich, was a more sympathetic figure to the monarchist émigrés than the radical revolutionary Lajos Kossuth. Citing Hungarian sources, Talberg asserted that the Russian government’s actions lacked any pan-Slavic tendencies and that the decision to aid Vienna was based on monarchist legitimism and also out of concern about contacts between Hungarian revolutionaries and their Polish comrades.
The execution of the Hungarian military elite in Arad by the Austrians on October 6, 1849, in violation of Paskevich’s word of honor, evoked the bitter contempt of Russian officers for their Austrian allies. In Count Nesselrode’s report on the fate of the “Arad Martyrs” on October 17, Nicholas I wrote that “punishment against those who surrendered to our army is a disgrace and an insult to us. I am deeply offended by this.” It should be noted that in Russian thought, there is a strong consensus on the uselessness of the Hungarian campaign of 1849, since the Habsburg Empire, saved from collapse by the Russian army, took a position of hostile neutrality towards Russia during the Crimean War of 1853-1856.
Today, Hungary skillfully utilizes soft power in several areas. The country attracts conservatives and nationalists from around the world, offering them a clear example of a non-utopian right-wing alternative to a depleted liberal democracy. In the regional context of the Carpathian Basin, Hungary is a key member of the Visegrád Four—Budapest’s leading role offsets the trauma of the Hungarian Crown’s territorial losses under the Treaty of Trianon of 1920. Developed relations with Serbia and the Republika Srpska (Bosnia and Herzegovina) indicate expanding influence in the Balkans. Thus, one can speak of Viktor Orbán’s government inheriting the geopolitical legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Finally, the Turanian aspect of Hungarian identity is manifested through active participation in the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) and interactions with Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan. In this regard, it is appropriate to ask: will contacts between Budapest and Moscow be limited to the current framework of energy cooperation, or can Hungary, as a right-wing conservative power, influence the ideological climate in Russia in a way that is beneficial to itself and the world?
The answer to this question is not at all simple, especially given the specific nature of Russia’s political structure, which is not susceptible to outside influence. Yet the very problem of Hungarian ‘spiritual intervention’ aimed at correcting Russian ‘national Bolshevism’ is worthy of reflection. Theoretically, Hungary has the moral right to push the Putin regime to abandon its most abhorrent, neo-communist, anti-European, and essentially anti-Russian practices—in the realm of historical policy. History, in turn, constitutes realpolitik. For example, by restoring the memory of the anti-Bolshevik cooperation between Miklós Horthy and the Russian White movement, Hungary will be able to win something more than the purely utilitarian favor of the Kremlin—namely, the sympathy of the Russian national-minded intelligentsia, which clearly recognizes Russia as an integral part of Europe and does not accept Soviet ideological filth.
The tragic autumn days of 1956 created the image of Hungary as the ‘Christ of Europe.’ Christ, as we know, suffered utter defeat in his earthly life but triumphed on a cosmic scale. Defeated on the battlefield, Hungarian fighters laid the foundations of a New Hungary, which was resurrected after the collapse of the socialist system. But the final, universal victory of the ideals of 1956 will only occur when these ideals are transferred to the place from which tanks with an ugly red star once crawled to Budapest. One day, in Russia, including in the ancient homeland of the Hungarians—the steppes of the Volga region and the mountain valleys of the Urals (Magna Hungaria)—the Russian people will realize that in 1956, the Hungarian rebel shed his blood not only for Hungary, but also for the true Russia. For anyone who has absorbed Russian culture, a culture that demands to live not by lies, this is an obvious truth. The spirit of Hungary’s 1956 is also the spirit of the White movement, the spirit of Russian peasant uprisings against Red tyranny, the spirit of Russian White émigrés, and the spirit of Russian anti-Soviet dissidence. This knowledge will never die as long as the angels of the Hungarian and Russian peoples live.
