Speaking at the inauguration of the renewed Tisza castle in Geszt, in south-eastern Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said the people of the Carpathian Basin “do not want to be dispensable pawns on the imperial chessboard, vassals that can be sent to war … for the sake of Brussels, Washington, or George Soros.” “It is Hungarians who will shout that the loudest, but we know that the others also think the same,” the prime minister added.
PM Orbán said it had become clear that “the rights of central Europe’s peoples should not be protected in a confrontation with Hungarians but in cooperation with them … they need to realise that they are companions in distress.” Peoples in the region “are not only connected through cold geopolitical necessity but shared history and some strange and inexplicably similar attitude to the world: a local, central European quality of existence. National cohesion is not only a fact but a programme, one for the integration of a nation,” PM Orbán said. “Commemorating a shared past is not enough, a shared future requires will and planning,” he added. The prime minister said those who strove to curb Hungary’s ambitions “commit a crime against the nation”. “Hungarians have homes in every country in the Carpathian Basin” and they “make the whole more than just the sum of its parts”. Hungarians must urge cooperation and solidarity over and again, and “be glad when their neighbours are successful”.
The prime minister said June 4, 1920, had been “the day of an assassination attempt against the nation”, when the country was subjected to a ruthless and unfair diktat. Millions of Hungarians became strangers in their own homelands, the best of Hungary's industry and soil, the biggest universities, the most beautiful cities, and the nation’s cultural assets were lost, he said. “One is Hungarian if their most painful wound is the one received at Trianon,” Orbán said. Looking back after so many years, it can be clearly seen that the aim of the diktat of Trianon was the death of the nation. But “the great colonising powers were unaware of the character of Hungarians”, Orbán said. “They wanted to bury us but they were not aware that we are seeds,” he added.
In the “darkest hour” of Hungary’s history the country was turned over to people “of whom, even a hundred years later, it is difficult to say whether they were a disaster because of their ineptitude or their evil intentions,” Orbán said, adding that “Tisza, the most intelligent, was murdered, while the stupidest, Mihály Károlyi, was made prime minister.”
The disaster of Trianon was brought about by a war which Tisza, then prime minister, fully objected to, but “the country had not had enough strength to stay out because it was tied to a power which reserved the right to decide on issues of war or peace,” Orbán said. Both Vienna and Budapest were “full of people inciting war, false prophets and foreign agents”, and Hungary had no choice other than to “march into a war that was forced on the country”. He added, however, that the first world war had been one “on which defeated and victorious alike made losses”. “Peace was removed from Europe on the day of the Trianon diktat, as it failed to yield peace to Europe but fear of a new war, which led to an even greater cataclysm two decades later,” Orbán said. Soon after Trianon, much greater ethnic tensions flared up than before, and “countries came into being that were even more interdependent than earlier, but because of their historical grievances they considered one another as enemies,” he said. Central Europe was occupied by Germany first then it came under Soviet control, “that is why the region cannot have enough say in today’s European Union,” he said. But those nations, Orbán added, “want to be free and sovereign despite all imperial scheming.” Orbán noted that in the wake of a destructive war, Hungary lost two-thirds of its territory and “a third of its population ended up beyond its external borders” 104 years ago, but “instead of resignation and extinction, they chose struggle and survival”.
“This nation is now able to express its unlimited desire for life and cohesion year after year, and it is finally able to express its gratitude to the family that has given so much to it,” Orbán said. The history of the Tisza family has become synonymous with the notion of a free, independent and sovereign Hungary, he said. He noted that the Tiszas participated in the struggles against the Turks, and despite their achievements on the battlefield, they had to fight for centuries to get back their ancient land. “We should not be surprised, the Western empires of old times were also among those who were not in the habit of recognising and returning what had rightfully belonged to Hungarians,” he added. Two members of the Tisza family, he said, were involved in the political leadership of Hungary and the last strong and successful era of the Kingdom of Hungary was inseparable from the family.The death of István Tisza marked not only the loss of a great prime minister but also “the painful end” of a historic era, he added.
Hungary’s national government and “the great majority and strength behind it do not facelift but restore”, he said. “We take revenge on communism by stepping over it as if it had never existed,” Orbán said. “We take revenge for the 45 years robbed from us by linking Hungary before the time of German and Soviet occupation with Hungary today, precisely the way as it is laid down in the Fundamental Law,” he said, adding that this was the original and deepest meaning of the change of the regime. Orbán said the two-thirds support he received in 2010 has been used to this end ever since. “Visitors to the castle of Geszt can see and understand what the Tiszas wanted and also what the current generation wants, he added. “Those who enter here will precisely understand what the slogan of our generation means: every match lasts as long as we can win it,” Orbán said.