‘This Is How We Lived Here’: Documenting 16 Years in Hungary Under Orban

Those who stayed The vast majority, of course, stayed in Hungary and adopted different survival strategies. A journalist working for Hungary’s public service broadcaster confessed to Varadi that now he feels he was a coward. He was “only” responsible for cultural content, did not have to do political reporting, but he was one of the hundreds who helped operate what many now refer to as “a factory of lies and propaganda” on state channels. “I never crossed a professional red line myself,” he justifies in the interview, but goes on to admit that he earned a good salary that afforded him and his family a comfortable life. While many talk about intimidation, self-censorship and adaption to the system, some stories prove that courage did sometimes pay off. A man who worked on development projects in a provincial town described the mounting pressure he felt from local authorities to award projects – and the public money that came with them – to Fidesz-aligned companies. Yet he did not bow, and decided to maintain strict application criteria. He was prepared to be fired, but to his surprise nothing happened. There were no reprisals. The conversations often take a turn and raise questions about individual or joint responsibility. “Many people ask the question how could this all happen to us? And above all: why did we let it happen?” Varadi says. Did Hungarian society simply follow the century-old patterns of making compromises, adapting and succumbing to pressure in order to survive, as was done under the rule of the Turks, the Habsburgs and the Soviets? “One thing is for sure: there were no guns pointed at people’s heads,” Peter Kreko, director of the Budapest-based Political Capital, tells BIRN. Kreko, a social psychologist, finds it perhaps most surprising that Orban managed to keep his grip on power for 16 years without resorting to violence, primarily through the manipulation of information. “This was a perfect ‘information autocracy’,” he says. Kreko believes people always had a choice, and this was especially true for those working for the state media or the public administration. But many followed what historian Timothy Snyder has described as ‘anticipatory obedience’: trying to figure out what is expected of them and behave accordingly. When it comes to conformism or adaptation, Kreko says, Hungary is not very different from its regional peers, but it is certainly true that Hungarian society has a historical tendency to bow to authoritarian leaders. “What we see is that many people were afraid, felt intimidated,” is how Varadi explains it. Many feared negative consequences if they spoke up. Many sacrificed their right to free speech for their comfortable lives. And by doing so, many became accomplices of the system. Stefano Bottoni, an Italian-Hungarian historian researching Central European modern history, points to the general lack of solidarity and mistrust in Hungarian society. “There were no institutions people would have trusted. The most common channel to rebel against the system was to write angry Facebook posts,” Bottoni tells BIRN. He believes stronger trade unions, something like Solidarity in Poland in the 1980s, would have helped build critical communities, but they are virtually non-existent in Hungary. “We helped weaken the resilience of the system, believing that we don’t need those institutions, we will figure out a survival method all by ourselves,” he says. Varadi shares this analysis: “Many people felt powerless and left alone. When the teachers went on to strike there was virtually no solidarity from the society.”