There are two questions that I am most asked when I say that I am (half) Hungarian and spend a lot of time in Budapest. The first is: Why on earth is Hungary so pro-Russian?
The country, after all, has a long and fabled history of resisting Moscow’s rule.
In 1956, Hungary became the first country to rise in full-scale revolt against the Soviet hegemon. My father, and many thousands like him, took up arms and tried, unsuccessfully, to free themselves from the Russian yoke.
The revolution was crushed by the Kremlin’s tanks, but in 1989 it was once again Hungarians who were in the vanguard of the anti-Soviet movement. That spring, they began to dismantle the Iron Curtain. Free elections followed, and the Red Army was sent packing.
The short answer to the question is that Viktor Orbán, who ironically was one of the stars of the anti-Soviet show back then, saw populism as a more successful political strategy than liberalism.
Many Hungarians had grown disillusioned with their neo-liberal post-communist leaders. Instead of national growth, they saw their young people emigrating to the West, and Brussels urging them to take in thousands of non-white migrants in their stead.
So when Orbán began tub-thumping about Hungarian greatness and Christian values and railing against what he termed effete pro-Western liberals, he found a ready audience.
The second question is: How has Orbán stayed in power for so long?
To put it simply, Orbán didn’t give Hungarians much choice. Having been ousted from office after his first term, which ended in 2002, he swore he would never let that happen again.
After a sweeping victory in 2010, he moved to cement his position for good.
He took control of the courts, state businesses, and television, and rewrote the constitution. Then he created a wealthy new elite that syphoned off state funds and promised fealty. Well-funded, applauded by an increasingly pro-government media, and playing to his socially conservative non-urban heartlands, he won election after election.
But even strongmen who run roughshod over the rule of law need popular backing. And Orbán, after years of presiding over a stagnating economy and endemic corruption, has now seen his support tumble.
So what if the opposition does win?
All else being equal, the opposition leader, centre-right Péter Magyar of the Tisza party, who is currently leading by between 10 and 20 percentage points, would become the new prime minister. But, of course, all else is not equal.
In recent years, Orbán has gerrymandered, decreasing the representation given to more liberal Budapest and increasing the seats in the more conservative countryside. There are also credible allegations that he is trying to buy votes with cash. He is certainly using the state budget to sway the outcome, handing out the equivalent of 2% of GDP to voters in recent months.
He has spent heavily on social media to try to engender a sense of imminent threat to Hungary from Ukraine. And of course, he controls all the levers of state.
While it is highly unlikely that Orbán will once again win two-thirds of the seats in parliament — a supermajority which under the Hungarian constitution allows for sweeping powers — it is possible that he will come out on top.
More likely, Tisza will take the majority of seats in the new parliament. But given Orbán’s stranglehold over the prosecutor’s office and important financial committees, that may not be the end of the story.
He could simply instruct his placemen to block Magyar’s attempts at economic and political reform.
Furthermore, the economy is set to go from bad to worse, and that could bring a rapid drop in Magyar’s popularity, if indeed he does become prime minister. That would prepare the ground for an early return to power for Fidesz.
A third scenario is that, given that Orbán has become so unpopular — some polls give him only 6% support among younger Hungarians — it will be Magyar’s party Tisza that wins a two-thirds majority.
If Magyar then decides to apply the law vigorously, some of Fidesz’s key figures — particularly in business circles — could go to prison.
It is this last scenario and the chance of a fresh beginning that many Hungarians are thirsting for. They would like nothing more than to see Orbán’s regime swept away.
But this scenario carries with it risks.
If Orbán thinks he will lose everything, he may, perhaps with US and Russian backing, simply refuse to go. It would then be up to the Hungarian people to try to dislodge him.
If the opposition takes to the streets, he could try to use force.
The Hungarian riot police, however, are underpaid and mostly demoralised. The army is chock full of Atlanticists who are furious about increasingly autocratic rule, government purges, and the country’s drift into Moscow’s orbit.
Even secret service officers and section heads have been reaching out to the opposition in the hope that they can, if not keep their jobs, at least avoid prosecution if Magyar wins.
The only unit that is sufficiently trained and equipped to smash protesting heads is Orbán’s counter-terror force known as TEK. But there are only 2,500 of them, and even among their ranks, there are rumblings of discontent.
I have long defended Orbán against those in Europe who equate him with the likes of Lukashenko of Belarus or Erdogan of Turkey. Hungary, after all, has no political prisoners, and Hungarians are free to express themselves as they will.
But authoritarian regimes tend to become more authoritarian with time.
You only have to look at Russia, Georgia, or indeed the US to realize that the zeitgeist is currently on the side of populist hardmen.
In the last decade, Orbán has led Hungarians away from their hard-won democratic freedoms and back towards Moscow’s autocratic orbit.
This shift has enriched a few but left most Hungarians impoverished and bitter. It has also marked a significant foreign policy victory for the Kremlin in its war against the West.
Whatever the result of the election, the road ahead will now be hard for Hungary.
But on March 15, hundreds of thousands marched through central Budapest in a clear sign that they want change. They at least believe they can buck the global trend, draw inspiration from their revolutionary past, and finally break free of Orbán’s grip on power.
Julius Strauss is a former foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph who writes and reports on Russia, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and the Balkans in his newsletter Back From the Front, where a version of this article was first published. For 15 years, he worked full-time as a foreign and war correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. He has covered Ukraine and Russia extensively, as well as the Bosnian war, the Kosovo war, the Iraq war, the Afghan war, the Chechen war, and multiple uprisings, revolutions, and coups.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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