Orbán blasts the European Union on the anniversary of Hungary's 1956 anti-Soviet uprising
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has compared Hungary’s membership in the European Union to more than four decades of Soviet occupation
BUDAPEST, Hungary — Prime Minister Viktor Orbán compared Hungary's membership in the European Union to more than four decades of Soviet occupation of his country during a speech on Monday commemorating the anniversary of Hungary's 1956 anti-Soviet revolution.
Speaking to a select group of guests in the city of Veszprem, Orbán accused the EU of seeking to strip Hungary of its identity by imposing a model of liberal democracy that he said Hungarians reject. Brussels, the de facto capital of the EU, employs methods against Hungary that hearken back to the days of Soviet domination by Moscow, he said.
“Today, things pop up that remind us of the Soviet times. Yes, it happens that history repeats itself,” Orbán said at the event, from which all media were excluded except Hungary's state broadcaster. “Fortunately, what once was tragedy is now a comedy at best. Fortunately, Brussels is not Moscow. Moscow was a tragedy. Brussels is just a bad contemporary parody.”
The Oct. 23 national holiday commemorates the beginning of a 1956 popular uprising against Soviet repression that began in Hungary's capital, Budapest, and spread across the country.
After Hungary’s Stalinist leader was successfully ousted and Soviet troops were forced out of the capital, a directive from Moscow sent the Red Army back into Budapest and brutally suppressed the revolution, killing as many as 3,000 civilians and destroying much of the city.
Orbán, a proponent of an alternative form of populist governance that he calls “illiberal democracy,” has long used the holiday to rally his supporters. In recent years, he has used the
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