Orbán: Hungarians ‘champions of survival’

One hundred years after Hungary’s defeat in the first world war and the post-war Trianon Peace Treaty “we Hungarians stand on the stage of European history as the champions of survival”, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said at the inauguration of the National Cohesion Memorial on Thursday.

“There is no other nation in the world that would have survived a century like this,” Orbán said at the memorial at Budapest’s Kossuth Square before a class of graduate military officers on the national holiday celebrating St. Stephen, Hungary’s first Christian king.

Hungary’s reckoning over the Trianon Treaty on the centenary of its signing this past June has allowed the nation to declare an end to “the era of Hungary’s hundred years of solitude”, the prime minister said.

After the collapse of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, Hungary became the largest economy and most populous state in the Carpathian Basin, he said, adding that “this comes with responsibilities that we can’t shy away from”.

“We cannot ignore the lessons of the past one hundred years,” the prime minister said.

Orbán said this was the reason why his government had enacted the laws of the “nation-minded policies of the new era”, declared Hungary’s interests and intention to participate in a central European alliance based on national sovereignty, freedom and common interests.

“On August 20 we must remind ourselves that independent statehood that guarantees a nation its own homeland is more of an exceptional state of being than a natural one,” Orbán said.

“A people that desires its own homeland and wants to live its life according to its own laws and customs – like the Hungarian people – must fight for its sovereignty and freedom every minute of its existence,” he added. “We must remember the strength, determination, talent, blood, sacrifices and valor required for us to be able to stand here today.”

Addressing the graduate officers, Orbán said few of them knew the role they would play in shaping the future of “a Hungary that is in the process of regaining its self-esteem, breaking free of the hundred years of captivity of Trianon . and ridding itself of the miserable gown of defeatism and subservience.”

Orbán said the “simple truth” that “life is a duty” was what would give life to the country’s economic prosperity and offer guidance to new generations.

“Selfishness has ensnared European life but those who aim to fulfil their duties will never lose their way,” he added.

Orbán said he believed that the new graduate officers embodied the “ideal of the Hungarian soldier ready to use his weapon, or if need be, lay down his life to perform his duty”.