Just across the border from Estonia on Russian territory stands a very visible sign with a simple statement, “Russia knows no borders,” a characteristically Russian self-indulgent bravado meant to intimidate a smaller nation that has stood firmly with Ukraine in its current war with Russia; a war by which Russia has made clear that it has no regard for the borders of sovereign nations. It stands as warning to any nation in its proximity – the Baltic states, Finland, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia.
A mounting concern has also gripped Europe from within in the form of right-wing populist sentiment expressed in some eastern European nations, in particular. The example here is Hungary, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European Union (EU), where an illiberal governance has given way to a de facto authoritarian rule and drifted into the pro-Putin camp. Despite having experienced the devastation of past aggressions by neighboring authoritarian regimes, notably Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, the ruling political regime of Hungary has chosen to follow a path aligning its nation more closely with a criminal regime that threatens again the welfare of the continent. It seems that humanity indeed appears incapable of teaching subsequent generations about the harm brought about by authoritarian leadership, choosing to behave by its own rules rather than those of a prevailing wisdom in governance. It calls to mind an all-too-common refrain, “It should not have come to this . . . yet we let it happen.”
Right-wing populist ideology, apart from its social and fiscal conservatism, identifies with neo-nationalism. It tends toward restrictive immigration policies and uses indigenous religious and cultural overtones to reinforce its populist platform that often promotes an overzealous need for racial purity. The movement gains favor through anti-establishment rhetoric, manufactured anti-elitist sentiment and opposition to outside influence. The extremist wing employs public disinformation to support its agenda and subversion of democratic government with the aim of creating distrust in its institutions. The danger comes when the movement gains the power of government and transforms into an authoritarian regime, doing so either from the outset in response to a manufactured threat, as was the case of the 1933 burning of the Reichstag in Nazi Germany, or methodically as in an illiberal democracy that gradually undermines established institutions meant to temper the improper use of such power.
The methods are familiar. Public news and opinion are restricted to state-owned media and reliable outlets, public or private, committed to supporting government propaganda. The judiciary is subordinated through appointment of party loyalists. Governmental legislative authority is weakened by restricting the number of seats while populating those remaining with ruling party members through electoral malfeasance. A state security organization is reconfigured and made into an instrument serving the needs of the government executive rather than an agency committed to public and national welfare. Finally, ultimate authority is granted to a highly centralized government executive through constitutional reform thus establishing legal attribution.
Hungary’s Viktor Orbán is an intriguing example of political transformation when circumstances force changes in platform to better suit one’s ascent to power. It is the will to power that too often supersedes the desire to serve, replacing it with the desire to be served. When that power becomes absolute, it quickly proceeds to erode the foundation of proper governance and, with it, the welfare of society. The history of the 20th century provides us the several examples that demonstrate the point, from Mussolini, Stalin, Tojo and Hitler to Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and now Vladimir Putin in this new millennium.
Orbán landed on the political scene in 1989 as a member of Fidesz (“Alliance of Young Democrats”), an anti-communist liberal student organization, when the country was still held within the Soviet yoke as a Warsaw Pact nation. A defiant speech calling for Soviet troops to leave the country in a call for greater self-determination brought Orbán to public notice. In 1992, he became Vice Chair of Liberal International, a global organization of liberal political parties founded in 1947. In 1993, he rose to become President of Fidesz and went on to chair the Committee on European Integration Affairs from 1994 to 1998. Orbán was intent on closer affinity with the West at the time, seeking to move away from the repressive Russian sphere of influence. In 1996, he became Chair of the Hungarian National Committee of the New Atlantic Initiative (NAI), an organization based within the American Enterprise Institute and committed to strengthening democracies spanning the Atlantic.
The 1994 parliamentary elections in post-Soviet Hungary proved a turning point for Orbán’s democratic party when it finished third and saw the Hungarian Socialist Party (Magyar Szocialista Part; MSZP), a former communist entity under Gyula Horn, return to power. The result prompted Orbán and Fidesz to adopt a more centrist right-wing conservative platform. Distrust in Horn’s socialist government due to unpopular fiscal and pension reforms, brought success to Fidesz in the 1998 election. Having gained only 148 of the 386 seats in the National Assembly, Fidesz united with the Independent Smallholder’s Party that took 48 seats and the Hungarian Democratic Forum with 17 seats to form a majority coalition government.
Administrative changes ensued under Orbán’s leadership in the absence of any real partisan agreement resulting in a reduction of the number of sessions that could be held by the National Assembly, the nation’s legislature. This came despite accusations that the move would lessen the parliament’s legislative efficiency and its oversight of government actions. Beyond this,
Orbán consolidated greater power within the office of the Prime Minister and attempted to replace parliamentary procedure requiring a two-thirds majority vote with one requiring a simple majority. The latter was overturned by the Constitutional Court. In short order, the bureaucracy had become politicized with greater centralization of control and appointment of party loyalists to key administrative positions. Early signs of Orbán’s intentions in government and his penchant for executive power were already unfolding at the turn of the millennium.
In 1999, Hungary along with Poland and the Czech Republic joined NATO. In 2000, Fidesz broke with Liberal International and joined the European People’s Party (EPP), a transnational center right political party founded in 1976 which, by 1999, had become the largest party in the European Parliament. In the meantime, minor scandals were unfolding within the Fidesz-led government involving bribery schemes related to a military contract and questionable business practices leading to a breakup of the ruling coalition. Orbán’s government was also accused of using its control over the National Radio and Television Board to advance its political agenda and bullying independent broadcasters. By the 2002 election, the coalition led by Fidesz was overtaken by the MSZP which still had sufficient pull with the media at the time. The MSZP would go on to retain a coalition government rule in the subsequent election of 2006 as well.
A 2003 national referendum during the MSZP-led administration voted in favor of joining the EU. Hungary gained admittance within the EU the following year completing its integration finally within the European community both economically and militarily. In 2003 also, Fidesz allied with the right-wing, conservative Christian Democratic Party (Kereszténydemokrata Néppárt; KDNP) to become Fidesz-KDNP to better suit its revised party platform. In the 2004 European Parliamentary elections, Fidesz-KDNP actually won 47.4% of the vote with 12 of its candidates elected as members of the European Parliament (MEPs), a sign of its resilience still within Hungary.
A seminal geopolitical moment in the European landscape came when the 2008 NATO Bucharest Summit Declaration announced that both Georgia and Ukraine would be considered for membership, a matter that disturbed Vladimir Putin and prompted Russia’s intrusion upon Georgia the same year. The Russo-Georgian war broke out when Russia opened direct relations with separatist leadership in the self-proclaimed independent republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia within Georgia, both of which were unrecognized as such by the international community. Orbán denounced the Russian aggression although it was not long afterward that his attitude toward Russia and the East would change markedly, leaving many to sort out the mystery behind the transformation.
The 2008 global financial crisis that originated in the United States (U.S.) altered the geopolitical landscape creating doubts about the West’s financial stability and caused some like Orbán to turn toward the East and Russia, in particular. At the time, Orbán’s economic adviser, György Matolcsy, was said to have convinced him that the 2008 global financial crisis would lead to a shift in the world economy from West to East. Prior to the 2008 crisis, Russia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) had increased 6.4% in 2006 and then, in 2007, reached its highest percentage increase of 8.1% since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and then grew another 5.2% in 2008.
Orbán seemed particularly enamored with Putin’s control over the business elite of his country. He traveled to both Russia and China late in 2009, immediately prior to the upcoming parliamentary election in Hungary, to meet with Putin and Jinping, respectively, and was greeted warmly by both despite being only an opposition leader at the time.
A step back at this point is necessary to take note of an incident that occurred in 1994 in post-Soviet Hungary when Fidesz was seeking greater relevance in the political arena. The event may have been the origin of a set of events that would come to have some bearing on Orbán’s attitude toward Russia in 2008. A well-known Russian mafia figure and political influencer, Simeon Mogilevich, arranged for the delivery of a large amount of cash to an operative in Budapest. The intermediary responsible for the transfer was a member of Mogilevich’s network and, himself, a suspected arms and drug trafficker, Dietmar Clodo. Video footage of the cash delivery into the hands of Viktor Orbán was captured unbeknownst at an indoor location and was delivered to Mogilevich for safe-keeping. As is typical in such circles, a possession of this sort would be seen to be useful should the owner require it as leverage to extricate himself from a yet unknown precarious situation.
So, it was in 2008 that just such an occasion arose when Mogilevich found himself in serious legal jeopardy charged for tax evasion in Russia. In exchange for his freedom, he was said to have disposed of the compromising video footage into the hands of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and, hence, into the possession of Putin. Despite the detail provided, the incident remains to be validated by currently inaccessible archival evidence within the FSB. Otherwise, an affidavit signed by Clodo attesting to the handover of cash has been made available in the West.
The relevance of such information implicating Orbán in a transactional arrangement with the Russian mafia appears as perhaps only one of a number of vulnerabilities ostensibly documented by Russian intelligence and at Putin’s disposal. Others appear possibly to expose Orbán and his father-in-law, István Levai, as informants for Hungarian state security when Hungary was under Soviet influence. In all, the existence of such compromising intelligence in Putin’s hands presents a problem for Orbán when factored into his regime’s alignment with Russia that occurred somewhat abruptly in 2008-2009. The series of events should be regarded in the full context of other notable events that were in flux at the time and that may have influenced the shift eastward.
The Hungarian public, by the time of the 2010 election, was also tiring of the ruling MSZP-led government and its prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsány, who resigned in 2009 amid scandal over the mishandling of the nation’s economy. Orbán’s Fidesz-KDNP returned to power now winning a constitutional majority in Parliament. His 2010 “hate campaign,” as it has been termed, had little to do with a policy agenda but rather was marked by xenophobic rhetoric related to immigrants, racist slurs, homophobic slogans and calls for the reinstatement of the death penalty, features that stirred public sentiment. From the start of his regime, Orbán eschewed the economic policies of the EU and adopted positions favored in Hungarian nationalist circles which had long held resentment toward Europe for the implementation of the 1920 Treaty of Trianon that concluded hostilities between Hungary and the Allies following World War I.
The treaty substantially reduced Hungary’s pre-war territory, ceding Slovakia and Ruthenia to Czechoslovakia, Croatia to the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later to become Yugoslavia in 1929, and Transylvania to Romania, creating an irredentist sentiment among many nationalists.
It was during this second term that Orbán announced his intentions to not only forego implementation of the West’s economic ideology but to emulate and advance ties with those of Russia, Turkey and China. The new economic plan entailed a reduction of the budget deficit through taxation and a restructured pension plan. A bank levy on total assets was introduced and a significant nationalization of the banking sector was undertaken to reduce dependence on foreign banks. Such state-owned banks in a politically dominated government, however, had the likelihood of directing lending to those entities favored by the regime. Likewise, strategic assets such as oil would begin to be nationalized and then channeled to preferred private entities. National monopolies were established in some sectors, undermining competition as with the creation of a new network of tobacco shops that would allow for family-run business opportunities. As might have been expected, Fidesz-KDNP party loyalists were preferentially awarded tobacco concessions and those with opposition ties, expressly excluded from consideration. A “Funding for Growth Scheme” (FGS) was introduced providing government credit to ease the accumulated debt burden on small businesses brought on by the 2008 recession.
Economic growth ensued with a 3.5% increase in GDP by the first quarter of 2014 alongside a significant reduction in the budget deficit below 3% of GDP by 2013, the lowest in Hungary’s post-communist history. Another election victory in 2014 provided Orbán with a further political mandate to continue with his economic policy extending his FGS to include a partial takeover of credit risk by the central bank and provide debt assistance for vulnerable household borrowers. Public works programs created employment opportunities for less-educated workers.
A further drift toward Russia became evident through a substantial strategic partnership to expand a nuclear facility with a loan extended from Russia amounting to $13.9 billion that amounted to 12% of Hungary’s GDP. The plant with its four reactors would come to provide 40% of Hungary’s electrical needs. A 2022 agreement with Russia under similar conditions is for the construction of two new reactors within Hungary. Natural gas delivery from Russia into southeast Europe, including Hungary, comes via the newly built TurkStream pipeline that circumvents Ukraine denying it the transit payments that previously had accrued through passage via a previously operational pipeline. Of concern for Hungary now is the reliance upon Russia for its energy needs both through the delivery of fossil fuel and technological support for its nuclear industry.
With his newly established and protracted legislative power over succeeding electoral cycles and successes in the 2014, 2018, and 2022 elections, Orbán altered the nation’s constitution to his advantage and markedly reduced the number of parliamentary seats to ensure retention of his party’s electoral supermajority much as have been similar intentions in Putin’s Russia. Antisemitism has crept into the ongoing political rhetoric along with Orbán’s objection to western European lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) “propaganda” and xenophobic attitudes regarding immigrants. He has also now earned himself the attribution “press freedom predator” for his repressive attitude toward an independent media, having built a state-owned media empire responsive to the “truth” as interpreted by the party. Control of 80% of Hungary’s media is in the hands of the ruling party while other private media sources have been silenced outright. The dissemination of any “false” information has been criminalized and independent journalists have been wiretapped and harassed.
Apart from Orbán’s opposition to providing aid to Ukraine, his refusal to adhere to EU sanctions on Russia and open support of Putin’s justification for an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation, he participated in Europe’s ongoing migrant problem by promoting the flow of illegal migrants from Hungary into neighboring territories of Ukraine and Serbia. The creation of border crises by facilitating mass migration of peoples from conflict-ridden zones toward Europe and the U.S. is one of Putin’s more favored schemes of hybrid warfare meant to destabilize nations through the creation of social discord. Such was the case when his other regional puppet, Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko, attempted to force the passage of Muslim migrants at the Belarus-Poland border in 2021 on the eve of the invasion of Ukraine.
Of further concern has been the potential for exposure to Russian intelligence of confidential EU and NATO correspondence when placed into the hands of a Putinist like Orbán. Orbán’s regime, in 2013, began allowing “residency bonds” to be purchased by foreigners for 300,000 euros. These, in turn, gave opportunity to purchase one of Hungary’s “golden visas” for another 60,000 euros to gain entry within the EU’s Schengen Area. The program would have ostensibly allowed agents of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service to acquire the cover of a foreign country to gain entry within the EU. The program came into effect in 2013 and ended four years later only after objections raised by the EU but not before some 41 million euros had been earned by companies closely associated with Orbán’s Fidesz Party. Budapest, otherwise, appears to have become a regional logistics hub for Russian intelligence with Hungary’s national security agency seemingly not overly concerned about evidence of Russian hacking of its own Foreign Ministry since 2012.
What is to be said of where Hungary finds itself after 13 consecutive years of authoritarian rule under Orbán’s regime? According to Transparency International, Hungary is now perceived to have the worst public sector corruption record in the EU. Not surprisingly, Russia, known for its absence of government accountability, is ranked still considerably worse than Hungary with one of the lowest results in Eastern Europe. Orbán’s 2011 constitutional changes have centralized executive power, weakened the Constitutional Court lessening its authority over the government executive, curtailed civil liberties, restricted freedom of speech and, in particular, suppressed the independent press.
A frightening example of authoritarian leadership was made evident by the mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic when, after first ignoring the problem, Orbán’s penchant for lack of transparency allowed him to undermine the proper process of monitoring the spread of the disease. By doing so, he hampered the ability to judge the effectiveness of health regulatory requirements and the capacity of health resources needed to tackle a mounting crisis. He then managed to profit from the situation by recruiting a long-time friend and former gas and water pipe-fitter, Lorinc Mészáros, as a third-party, to take charge of ordering the ventilators, test kits and mask-making machinery from China that would support efforts to combat the pandemic. The Fidesz Party reported a cost for these necessities of 210 million forints ($684,000 USD) while neighboring countries managed to pay only the equivalent of 21 million forints, purchasing from the same source. This occurred in the context of the EU providing considerable funds to Hungary in support of its economy during the pandemic and the necessary purchases that were entailed to combat it.
To compound the problem further, testing for COVID was mandated to be performed only when clinical signs were already undeniable thus preventing a true estimate of the actual number of people infected and continuing to spread the disease. Whereas the Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimated that only 0.5% to 1% of infected persons would die, a consequence of Hungary’s reported numbers now were indicating that 5% to 50% of those infected were dying. When the pandemic appeared more of a threat than was realized, Orbán’s Fidesz-controlled parliament voted in favor of passing legislation creating a state of emergency allowing him to rule by decree. Just as had been the case for Putin, the pandemic was seen to be an easy route to further consolidate power. This gave Orbán the authority to suspend parliament if he thought it necessary and to imprison anyone disseminating information deemed to be false by the regime. Moreover, it provided Orbán the opportunity to implement restrictions on asylum, to interfere with independent media, discriminate against the LGBTQ community and undermine women’s rights. A new law was passed 2.5 months later ending the state of emergency but also provided the government the ability to reintroduce rule by decree whenever it declared a state of public health emergency. The vagueness of the legislation has naturally raised the potential for government overreach and abuse of power.
With COVID cases climbing as would be expected in the absence of adequate tracking of the pandemic, Orbán closed Hungary’s borders in September 2020, citing foreign contamination as the cause rather than admitting to his own mismanagement of the situation. In doing so, he stifled the tourist industry that particularly benefited Budapest for little reason other than to perhaps punish its mayor, Gergely Karacsony. In 2019, Karacsony unexpectedly beat the incumbent Fidesz politician in the mayoral race, overcoming the methods habitually used by Fidesz to ensure its ongoing influence over the capital city. A border lockdown likewise served Orbán’s desire to once more restrict asylum for foreigners within Hungary, skirting again the rule of law established by the EU.
Orbán’s plan to exert increased governmental control over the economy has included a substantial nationalization of the banking sector raising the spectre of politically influenced lending practices benefiting the ruling party. Such arrangements typically overlook proper regulatory procedures leading to overt and habitual corruption. The EU invested considerable funds to resuscitate the moribund economies of Eastern European nations to create self-perpetuating enterprises capable of competing regionally and globally. Unfortunately, the effort opened opportunities for a corrupt regime such as Orbán’s to divert monies to better its own situation and that of its individual members and loyalists rather than to afford meaningful continued growth within the nation. Such has been the case in Orbán’s Hungary where almost 70% of GDP growth has come about from EU funds.
The regime has made particular use of infrastructure projects, inflating the price of materials and worker salaries to defraud the EU of 30% to 40% of the money received. Again the name Lorinc Mészáros, close friend of Orbán, comes to the fore as the fortunate beneficiary. The former pipefitter metamorphosed to become the owner of a construction company and to come in possession of the rights to 486 billion forints ($2.43 billion USD) of public contracts between 2010 and 2017, 83% of which came from the EU.
A notable year in Mészáros’ fortunes came in 2018 when over 245 billion forints ($906 million USD) in contracts were awarded, more than 90% of which was EU-funded. To put this into some perspective, larger and much more experienced contractors in Western Europe would be expected to make the equivalent of 300 million forints with the same opportunities. With a salary amounting to 30 billion forints ($84 million USD) per year over the course of a decade, Mészáros became one of the two wealthiest men in Hungary. A company owned by his offspring has also been awarded contracts for public infrastructure projects, one without tendering from a football foundation headed by Mészáros himself. Otherwise, the company has had remarkable, some would say unnatural, success for winning high-value public tenders earning daily profits of more than 3,000 euros.
Orbán’s son-in-law, István Tiborcz, a co-owner of a company specializing in street lighting technology (Elios Innovativ Zrt) came under investigation in 2016 by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) for a number of irregularities and “conflict of interest” in contracts for 35 public lighting projects funded by the EU. Several of these projects awarded between 2011 and 2015 had just a single bidder and the bids appeared arranged in a way that allowed the company to win. The EU has continued its probe after Hungary itself dropped its investigation despite the OLAF report giving strong evidence of “fraudulent irregularities” regarding misuse of EU funds.
No one is more worthy of universal condemnation, moreso criminal prosecution, than Vladimir Putin. Several members of his regime including the Russian military, the actual violators of the conventions of war and perpetrators of atrocities in Ukraine and Syria, deserve similar reckoning of the sort carried out by the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremburg trials of 1945-1946. Aside from Russia, those nations now also under de facto authoritarian leadership which have aligned themselves in support of Putin’s enterprise are proving themselves to be much the same sort by how they conduct themselves domestically and by their actions geopolitically. Equally telling is the attraction of some populist movements elsewhere, including the U.S., Canada and Europe, which have become enamored with the attributes of authoritarian rule. Their arguments create the illusion that an all-powerful central executive governmental authority has greater capability of providing solutions to common societal grievances with greater and more immediate efficiency. Some of this may be true but certainly not all of it and the path forward rarely bodes well in the end for that society and its nation.
Bolshevik Russia’s descent into its distorted version of communist rule in the 1920s and 30s succumbed to a Stalinist dictatorship and did not fare that much better under Soviet rule afterward until the Soviet Union’s inevitable collapse in 1991. The infatuation with communism became evident not only in China but throughout the West including the U.S. where Walter Duranty of the New York Times reported on Stalin’s success story while Soviet-ruled Ukraine suffered a 1932-1933 famine that killed millions on his watch. And so it seemed with Italy’s Benito Mussolini and his fascist lot in the 1920s-1930s when he initially brought about change that seemed to provide what populist sentiment had promised. Italy would come to find itself aligning with Nazi Germany and stepping into the abyss of World War II. Its retribution would come with the very public execution of Mussolini in 1945. The 1920s-1930s also found Germany in the throes of a nationalist populist movement carrying forth societal grievances for which it seemed to have a ready solution in Hitler’s Nazi doctrine. In a similar way, the Nazi ideology sparked movements in the U.S. and Britain giving impetus to the notion that authoritarian ideals promised better outcomes than what the respective nation in its current state was providing.
A hundred years have passed since the origins of the aforementioned ill-fated political movements, and we have arrived at another war in Europe perpetrated by another Russian authoritarian ruler who happens to be a product of a prior Soviet malignancy. Hate-filled rhetoric, corruption, disinformation, betrayal, belligerence and death follows in the wake of these regimes that hold to power for too long, enough to hold back the promise of a better life for generations that follow. Viktor Orbán’s desire to play the West while siding with the East is all too evident and will force his nation into dependency upon a yet more corrupt Russian regime that will have no regard for its welfare in the end.
Copyright @Kost Elisevich, MD, PhD 2024. All rights reserved. Any illegal reproduction of this content will result in immediate legal action.
