The 23 October is Hungary’s most important annual public holiday, as it marks the outbreak of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. It is called Nemzeti ünnep, or National Day. Each year when the date comes around, I quietly salute it. The revolution, after all, was the world event that determined the course of my life. Its crushing by the Soviet Union was the reason my family fled Hungary and why I became, in time, a British citizen and British writer. The date date is full of meaning for me, but this year its significance is greater than usual.
I’ve recently returned from Hungary, where my children’s novel – set in Budapest during the revolution – was published last month. As there has been little in the way of children’s literature on the theme of 1956, it received considerable attention.
I had always felt that the 1956 revolution would be a very good subject for a children’s novel because kids as young as 12 played a part in the conflict, fighting alongside the adult revolutionaries, blowing up Soviet tanks. Quite a few lost their lives. I was barely out of nappies at the time, so not hurling Molotov cocktails myself, but my novel is a tribute to the brave generation only slightly older than me. Its protagonists are a group of 13-year-old school friends who get involved in the uprising, a cause that even at their age they recognise as one to fight for.
I was particularly glad of the chance to speak to schoolchildren during my stay in Budapest, because I could tell them why I believe it’s important to learn about that glorious, albeit tragic, moment of their national history. Recently I’ve been wondering whether some of Hungary’s politicians have forgotten what it was that so many Hungarians – young and old, professionals and blue-collar workers – fought and died for in the autumn of 1956. Only a few weeks ago one of Viktor Orbán’s closest aides, Balázs Orbán (no relation), said that Volodymyr Zelensky was wrong to resist the Russian invasion of his country. In effect, he should have just let Putin’s army march in and take over, in order to save lives. ‘We wouldn’t have done what President Zelensky did two and a half years ago, because that was irresponsible,’ he stated. The PM slapped him down for his ill-advised comments, but the damage was done.
So it’s a good thing that Hungary has a public holiday to commemorate the heroic episode of 1956. We could really do with a similar holiday in the UK, a date for us to rally round the flag each year and remember that our nation has its historic events which deserve eternal commemoration. My proposal would be for 15 June, the date in 1215 when King John signed the Magna Carta. Yes, I know he reneged on it and it would be a few more years before it was reissued and taken more seriously. But it was the first ever document to establish the rule of law and enshrine basic rights; it laid the foundation for democracies to come. The Magna Carta, just like the Hungarian Revolution, symbolises something deep in the human soul: the yearning to be free from repression. And if it takes a public holiday to remind everyone of that, I’d be all in favour of it.
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