Sándor Petőfi Street inaugurated in Kazakhstan

Despite all the pressure, Hungary and Kazakhstan continue preserving their own culture and national characteristics which makes both countries strong and enables their survival during crises, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in Astana on Thursday.

The ministry cited Szijjártó as stating that a street had been named after Hungarian 19th century reform poet Sándor Petőfi in the Kazakh capital which he said was another expression of respect by the Kazakhs towards Hungary and Hungarian culture. We wrote about Petőfi’s life in details HERE.

“These days international politics are mostly characterised by condemning, lecturing and criticising one another,” he said.

“We would like international politics to return to the grounds of mutual respect,” Szijjártó said. “But mutual respect can be demonstrated only by countries that are self-assured, and have rich and respectful culture,” he added.

“We are proud to have both and we insist on all of this despite the pressure put on us to get rid of our culture, heritage and national characteristics,” he said.

“We will always insist on our culture, and we will protect it because this culture and national heritage is what makes us strong,” the minister said.

He also said that there were only 13-14 million Hungarian speakers in the world and Hungarian is a difficult language so it requires great effort from any foreigner who wants to read Hungarian literature in the original.

He welcomed the recent publication of a collection of 196 poems by Petőfi translated to Kazakh.

Read also:

• Millions of Chinese know the works of this Hungarian poet by heart – click for more and chech out our video HERE