Fight, flight or surrender? Ukraine 2022 and Hungary 1956
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Balazs Orban, an adviser to (but no relation of) the Prime Minister of Hungary, Victor Orban, claimed in a recent interview that it was irresponsible of the Ukrainians to resist the Russian onslaught in 2022, because it would lead to many casualties. Eventually, they were likely to lose against a much stronger adversary. So, what was the point? He went on to argue that if, at some time in the future, Hungary were to find itself in a similar situation, it would surrender, thereby avoiding casualties.
My first comment is that Mr Orban was probably not aware that his idea was unoriginal. Mogens Glistrup, a Danish politician, came to the same conclusion some fifty years ago. He proposed abolishing the Danish Ministry of Defence and replacing it with a tape recorder programmed to keep on saying, “We surrender”. Mr Glistrup had other ideas as well. He wanted to abolish income tax. He founded a political party to propagate these ideas. In the 1974 elections, the “Progress Party” became the second biggest one in the Danish Folketing. Of course, reality eventually caught up with him. The party disappeared as quickly as it had risen.
The likelihood is that Mr Balazs Orban will not fare better than Mr Glistrup. Let me analyse the implications. I start with the animal world. It is well known that if a challenger appears who wants to change the power relations in a herd the one challenged has two courses of action: fight or flight. You fight if you think you have a good chance to overpower the challenger, otherwise you flee. In the human world, the response to the challenger can be more varied: for example, one might call friends to help, or move quickly to a fortified place. There is also an entirely new possibility, i.e. to surrender, which means accepting the superiority of the challenger and agreeing to absolute obedience.
When instead of individuals we talk of nations, the above arguments still hold. Let us discuss the relationship between Russians and Hungarians in these terms, in the year 1956. The Soviet Army occupied Hungary in 1945 and showed no inclination ever to leave. This was the military situation in 1956 where the story begins.
The 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party took place in January of that year under the leadership of Nikita Khruschev. He demonstrated that Stalin, who had been elevated to divine heights, was a criminal responsible for millions of deaths. Russians, Hungarians, all the satellite countries and, in fact, the whole world were shocked. A process started which everyone who ever read the works of Alexis de Tocqueville could have predicted. Those works were not widely read in the Soviet Union, nor in Hungary. According to Tocqueville, revolutions occur not when oppression is at its height, but when the rulers introduce reforms to make the system of government more palatable to the citizens.
So, what happened in Hungary? Stalin’s choice for the leader of the Hungarian Communist Party, Mathias Rakosi, had to resign, and so did his second in command, Erno Gero. The new Prime minister, Imre Nagy, a reform Communist, wanted to cut all ties with the Soviet Union. He decided that Hungary should leave the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet-built alliance of the East European satellite countries. He further demanded the withdrawal of all Soviet forces.
Not surprisingly the Russian leaders did not like the turn of events. They prepared the wholesale invasion of Hungary, but before they did so they played a little game. They invited Pal Maleter, the Commander of the Hungarian Army, to discuss the withdrawal of Russian forces. When Maleter appeared at the Russian headquarters he was unceremoniously arrested and later executed. Imre Nagy was also executed the following year. Following Maleter’s arrest, the Russian invasion started. The precise strength of the Soviet army is not known. Some estimates made it around 50,000 personnel, and a thousand tanks. A determined minority of the Hungarians decided to fight. They did not have a chance. It was rifles against tanks. 2,500 Hungarians died. All these stories are well known, told by Hungarian émigrés who escaped to the West. The reason for retelling it in this essay is Balazs Orban’s interview, in which he drew parallels between Hungarian fighters of 1956 and the Ukrainian resistance of 2022.
There is here a contradiction, in fact more than one contradiction. There is no agreement about what caused the uprising of 1956. The Soviet media depicted it as a fascist counter-revolution. Sixty-eight years after the uprising, the Russian media still talk about Hungarian fascists in 1956. Let me quote from one of the articles on the Russian internet: “Supporters of the fascist Arrow Cross Party created underground organisations that carried out subversive work against the Communist regime.”
This is pure invention. The Russian-imposed government after the suppression of the Revolution was unable to find a single example of a fascist underground organisation. All the Hungarian governments ever since the fall of Communism in 1989 have celebrated the uprising as a National Revolution: those fighting against Russian aggression are called freedom fighters and the fallen are regarded as martyrs. There is an obvious contradiction, because no event can be described both as a counter-revolution and as a genuine revolution.
Cue Balazs Orban, who calls those resisting powerful aggressors irresponsible, and we have another contradiction. Can there be a category of irresponsible freedom fighters or irresponsible martyrs? The anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution, 23rd October, is close. I wonder whether Prime Minister Victor Orban will comment on the contradiction. Will he ask President Putin what caused the Hungarian Revolution? Who invented the fascist underground organisations?
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