It All Boils Down to Whom Do You Trust - Viktor Orban Steers Hungary Toward Russia 25 Years After Fall of the Berlin Wall

Hungarian Revolt Against Soviets 1956

The perception is Obama is totally unreliable. m/r

Viktor Orban Steers Hungary Toward Russia 25 Years After Fall of the Berlin Wall - NYTimes.com

By RICK LYMAN and ALISON SMALE NOV. 7, 2014

The head of a Stalin statue is laying on the streets in Budapest during the
Hungarian Revolution of 1956 that started today 58 years ago.

BUDAPEST — A quarter-century ago, as Hungary helped ignite the events that would lead to the collapse of communism, the ferment produced a new political star.

Viktor Orban was 26 then and a longhaired law graduate. In June 1989, five months before the Berlin Wall came down, he lit up a commemoration of the failed 1956 revolt against Moscow with a bold call for free elections and a demand that 80,000 Soviet troops go home.

Now, as the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is commemorated Sunday, Hungary is a member of NATO and the European Union and Mr. Orban is in his third term as prime minister. But what was once a journey that might have embodied the triumph of democratic capitalism has evolved into a much more complex tale of a country and a leader who in the time since have come to question Western values, foment nationalism and look more openly at Russia as a model.

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