Marking the day of the 1956 martyrs, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Monday that to remain free today, too, requires courage.
In a video posted on Facebook, PM Orbán referred to a speech he gave at the reburial of Imre Nagy and his fellow martyrs on June 16, 1989.
"In 1989, the Russians had to be sent home so we could be free," he declared. "It took great courage back then, and it takes courage today, too, to remain free. Empires come and go; we will not run away."
PM Orbán noted that in 1989, it had been suggested to him that, having given a big speech on March 15, he should not speak at the reburial since a political party's strength "should not depend on one person". But the confutation was that the speech may go down well in front of a crowd of 200,000-300,000 and it may be the last chance "to say important things, seriously meant, to the country and to the world".
PM Orbán said he and his companions at the time were considered young for politics. But when democracy was new, "everyone was the same age", he added.
He said the text of his planned speech was reviewed by an editor of the Szazadveg periodical who suggested Orban bow his head to the martyrs.
In the end, he said, he made a longer speech that he wrote together with Laszlo Kover, the current speaker of parliament.
PM Orbán said he refused a request by Gyorgy Litvan, a historian, to see the speech in advance, though he revealed to him his intention to urge "the Russians to go home". Litvan expressed reservations about this and wondered whether such a declaration may be premature. Also, he had problems with the speech's length of seven minutes.
PM Orbán said he then consulted with Kover, who dismissed Litvan's concerns, arguing they had written a good speech and they should just get on with it.
The prime minister noted that Imre Nagy and the other martyrs were communists, so it was necessary to explain why Fidesz were present at his reburial. In this light, the sentence in his speech on the incompatibility of democracy and communism had been necessary, he added.
After the reburial, PM Orbán organised a conversation with Janos Kis, a philosopher and founder of the Free Democrats, who argued that urging the withdrawal of the Russians had been a mistake, though in the end he conceded that Fidesz may well prove to be right so long as the Czechoslovak and East German governments were toppled in the autumn.
PM Orbán said there had been "a big communist campaign" against them because they considered the speech disrespectful.
He said that as soon as the authorities admitted they had murdered the 1956 martyrs, the communist system in Hungary fell.
It was obvious that Nagy had been a victim, he said, so Janos Kadar, who led the Communist Party later on, "was probably a murderer".
This moment, he added, was not just a regime change but the point of the system's moral failure.