Echoes of 1956: How Hungarians Finally Turned on Orbán |
On Saturday night, one day before the elections, thousands of Hungarians chanted in the streets of Budapest: “Russians Go Home.” It was once a slogan directed at Soviet tanks, but now it was aimed at the man who had built his career defending the nation against foreign reach.
In the end, Viktor Orbán did not simply lose an election. He lost the story he had told Hungarians about themselves for nearly two decades. For years, Orbán cast Brussels as the primary threat to Hungarian sovereignty. Yet many Hungarians draw a distinction between voluntary integration within the European Union and the far more unsettling political alignment with Russia, which they see as a threat to their sovereignty.
Alongside figures like Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, Orbán positioned himself within a political camp that many Hungarians came to see as detached from their daily realities. This alignment was not merely ideological; it became a material burden. As Orbán’s project of “strategic autonomy” deepened, Hungary faced mounting economic strain, including persistent inflation, eroding purchasing power, and uncertainty about European Union funding.
Over time, this economic discontent was reinforced by another, more corrosive perception: entrenched corruption and state capture. The accumulation of wealth among politically connected elites came to be seen not as an unintended side effect of governance,........