Hungary’s long rebellion against the West

Hungary’s 2026 election is not only about policy, but competing interpretations of history. Through this struggle, we glimpse a broader western crisis over sovereignty, belonging and memory. The East-West dichotomy has haunted Hungarian leaders since the Middle Ages, a dilemma rooted largely in the country’s geopolitical position. Indeed, many have asked, is Hungary fundamentally a western state that periodically doubts itself?

The Battle of Mohács is considered a central trauma point in Hungarian history. On 29 August 1526, the army of Suleiman I, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, crushed the Christian forces at Mohács in the southern part of the Kingdom of Hungary. This decisive defeat ultimately brought an end to the kingdom’s medieval political and economic significance, led to its partition, ushered in a century and a half of partial Ottoman rule, and facilitated the gradual expansion of Habsburg influence. The House of Habsburg eventually came to dominate the entirety of the former Hungarian territories, ruling over them until the end of the First World War. Consequently, Mohács has long been interpreted as marking the collapse of Hungary’s medieval grandeur and the beginning of centuries of ‘foreign’ domination.

Contemporary memory politics surrounding Mohács remains highly controversial. Hungary’s medieval role as antemurale Christianitatis (the bastion of Christendom) has been projected onto its opposition to illegal migration, often illustrated through images depicting refugees from predominantly Muslim countries. Nonetheless, the country’s observer status as the only Christian member state in the Organisation of Turkic States (OTS) suggests a more complex narrative. In May 2025, Hungary became the first observer state to organise an informal summit for the OTS, with the stated aim of strengthening its role as a mediator between East and West and further ensuring the security of its energy supply.

In Hungarian memory, the First World War is inseparable from the internationally lesser-known term Trianon. Signed on 4 June 1920, the Treaty of Trianon formally ended the war for Hungary, dismantling its half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and stripping the country of roughly two thirds of its territory and one third of its Hungarian-speaking population.

The treaty did more than redraw borders: it embedded a narrative of collective victimhood and injustice at the heart of modern Hungarian identity. In the interwar period, this narrative fuelled revisionist ambitions to reclaim lost lands, drawing Hungary into the Tripartite Pact in November 1940 and into war against the Soviet Union in June 1941. Trianon illustrates, therefore, how historical trauma, when internalised as national destiny, can shape foreign policy choices and strategic alignments. The later trope of ‘abandonment by the West’ – retrospectively linked to Mohács – further reinforced a pattern in which external alliances are judged less by pragmatic calculation than by their perceived loyalty to Hungarian sovereignty. This legacy remains politically potent.

By granting citizenship to ethnic Hungarians abroad after 2010, Orbán transformed a historical grievance into a durable electoral and geopolitical instrument. The policy symbolically transcends Trianon’s borders while materially reshaping Hungary’s electorate. That Hungarian citizens in neighbouring states can register to vote by mail in national elections since 2011, while many Hungarian labour migrants in Western Europe can only vote in person, underscores how memory politics intersects with institutional design. Trianon is therefore not only commemorated – it is operationalised.

In today’s context, the most consequential reinterpretation of history concerns Hungary’s nearly 45 years of state socialism. The Hungarian People’s Republic, established in 1949, was a Soviet-backed one-party dictatorship that crushed the 1956 revolution with military force. Yet from the early 1960s until 1989, it evolved into a comparatively moderate and consumer-oriented authoritarian regime (the so-called ‘goulash communism’), trading political conformity for rising living standards and limited economic liberalisation. After 1989, this past was widely understood as a period of lost sovereignty, reinforcing the aspiration of ‘returning to Europe’, institutionalised through NATO membership in 1999 and EU accession in 2004.

What is striking today is not the memory of communism itself, but its inversion. Once a staunch anti-communist who built his early political identity on opposition to Soviet domination, Orbán has gradually reframed Hungary’s post-1989 trajectory. Since 2010, and particularly following his rapprochement with Vladimir Putin, the language of empire has shifted westward: Brussels, rather than Moscow, is cast as the primary threat to Hungarian sovereignty. In this narrative, the European Union assumes the role once assigned to the Kremlin, while Russia is recast as a defender of national identity and Christian civilisation. Orbán declared in February 2026 that ‘those who love freedom should not fear the East, but Brussels. The “Putin, Putin, Putin” mantra is crude and unserious; but Brussels is a tangible reality, and a direct source of danger.’ In doing so, he was not merely repeating his long-standing criticism of EU institutions. He was relocating the historical memory of subjugation. By redirecting the symbolism of 1956 away from Moscow and toward Brussels, he transforms the foundational trauma of Soviet domination into a justification for resistance against Western integration.

Euroscepticism has united right-wing leaders across Europe and beyond, with Hungary’s 16-year model serving as a template. Figures such as Giorgia Meloni, Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, Santiago Abascal, Benjamin Netanyahu and Javier Milei have publicly praised Orbán for defending national sovereignty and cultural roots, while international events, including the repeated presence of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Budapest, reinforce his visibility on the global stage. These endorsements demonstrate how Hungary’s domestic political strategy has become a reference point for a transnational populist network, positioning the country as a prism through which debates over Europe’s and the West’s future are refracted.

Yet despite this global attention, over 70 per cent of Hungarians support EU membership, reflecting both their cultural belonging to Europe and economic dependence. Orbán, alongside his nationalist allies, frames his ‘rebellion’ as an effort to reform the Union rather than exit it, balancing nationalist ideology with pragmatic engagement, including reliance on EU funding. This combination of symbolic sovereignty and material interdependence highlights the complex interplay between domestic politics and transnational influence.

For western audiences, Hungary’s story raises urgent questions: How resilient are supranational norms when confronted with politicised memory, and how should integration accommodate persistent historical grievance? Orbán’s image as a defender of European culture, built on a selective use of historical memory, illustrates the broader challenges facing liberal democracy, multiculturalism and national sovereignty, showing how historical grievance can be mobilised to shape contemporary politics.

While Hungary’s current anti-western rhetoric has drawn international attention, it is increasingly contested among the country’s intellectuals. In February 2026, a volume of essays addressing Hungary’s present condition and future prospects brought together 26 prominent scholars and public thinkers, who offer proposals on the economy, healthcare, education, memory politics, foreign affairs and environmental policy. Ignác Romsics, a co-editor and distinguished historian, framed the issue bluntly, describing what he sees as Hungary’s ‘pointless battle against the European Union’ and its simultaneous role as a ‘supporter of aggressive Russian foreign policy’. The collection signals that, despite Hungary’s outsized international profile – driven in large part by the prime minister’s active engagement with global politics and diplomacy – this foreign-oriented strategy is increasingly questioned at home, particularly by those who see the manipulation of historical grievances as a constraint on meaningful domestic reform.

In the parliamentary elections scheduled for 12 April 2026, Orbán’s main challenger is the centre-right, pro-EU and Atlanticist Tisza Party, led by Péter Magyar – once closely affiliated with Orbán’s regime and now his most promising opponent. While Magyar shares certain conservative and nationalist values with the governing Fidesz party and frequently invokes historical references in his rhetoric, he pursues a distinctly different diplomatic orientation. He has announced that, if elected, his first official visit will be to Poland in the name of the ‘thousand-year Polish–Hungarian friendship’, followed by trips to Vienna and Brussels.

Whoever comes to power in April 2026 will inherit a national consciousness shaped by victimhood and defiance. Without critically engaging with this past, Hungary risks letting historical grievances continue to define both its future and its place within the broader tensions of the West.