Jobbik cube

The right-wingers who will lead Hungary after the April 11 elections do not like Russia. But the ultra-right, claiming second place, adore her

He asks to call himself Uncle Potka. Dressed in all black, except for a neckerchief in the colors of the Nilashist flag - the Hungarian fascists of the Second World War, he commands two stunted men in the military uniform of the banned organization "Hungarian Guard". They guard the stage of a small House of Culture on the outskirts of Budapest.

On stage is Cristina Morvai, MEP and Hungarian presidential candidate for the far-right Jobbik party, which could win around 20% of the vote in the April 11 elections. The center-right party FIDES will win the election, according to all polls. It is supported by about 60% of Hungarians. The country's political landscape will change drastically, especially from Moscow's point of view: the weak "Russophile" socialist government will be replaced by a strong "Russophobic" FIDES government. However, a new force will also come to parliament, which has the most tender feelings for Russia. This is Jobbik.

Uncle Potka is a professional nationalist. “Grandfather taught me this when I was like this,” Uncle Potka lowers his palm to the level of his knee. “After all, this is the highest feeling that a person can have - to love his country.” He fought with the Soviet troops in 1956, was forced to flee the country and settled in Canada. But after the fall of communism, Uncle Potka returned to his homeland, and in 2006 - on the 50th anniversary of the uprising - he again participated in the riots in Budapest.

“He has had a bullet in his head since 1956,” explains the passionarity of a party comrade, the talkative security guard of Christina Morvai. Opponents call this interesting blonde Nilash-Barbie. She says that she is proud of such a nickname.

When she is given the floor, Morvai descends from the podium - closer to the people. A little copying the "heartfelt" manner of Sarah Palin, she begins to talk about the suffering that the working people endured after the fall of communism. Turning to the transnational corporations that "occupied Hungary," she draws a parallel with the Middle East. Like, they do the same with the Hungarians as with the Palestinians. And the same Israelis.

But there are people all over Europe who disagree, she says. “Western liberal press will surely call them fascists,” Morvai turns his gaze to the Newsweek correspondent, causing the entire audience, including several skins and a frail bespectacled man with the number 88 on a T-shirt (a coded Nazi salute), to look indignantly in my direction.

• EU, USA, Russia, Israel - which of them poses the greatest threat to Hungary? I ask Morvai after the event.
• Well, of course, those who say they are buying up our country and whose military aircraft fly in our airspace, she replies.

Morvai is referring to a blunder by Israeli President Shimon Peres at an economic forum in Tel Aviv. Boasting about the success of Israeli businessmen during the economic crisis, he said that they were buying up Manhattan, Hungary and Poland. The scandal with Israeli planes on a training flight over Eastern Europe flared up shortly before the elections.

Jobbik foreign minister candidate Marton Dendeschi says Hungary's foreign policy needs to be balanced. “For 45 years it was determined by Moscow, and now we have turned around 180 degrees. Therefore, our politicians simply copy the position of Washington - for example, on the conflict in Georgia or in Tibet, ”he explains to Newsweek. In his opinion, the Hungarians did not need to support Georgia, because the Georgian president studied in America, and, according to him, two ministers are Israeli citizens. And in general, continues Dendeshi, all color revolutions in the post-Soviet space were inspired by the CIA. Hungarians, he said, need to remember their Asian - "Turanian" - roots and cooperate more with Russia, Kazakhstan and China.

The leader of Jobbik and the founder of the Hungarian Guard Gabor Vona, who visited Moscow in December 2008, tried to establish cooperation with Russia. According to a posting on the party's website, he spoke to members of the mysterious organization European Scholars for the Consolidation of National Traditions, led by a certain Vasily Podvoisky. The meeting was attended by a representative of United Russia, according to the report. Newsweek was unable to find any trace of the aforementioned organization and its leader. The Hungarian media has been filled with speculation in recent months that Jobbik is funded by Russia. These messages did not contain any specifics.

MARCH RIGHT

To prevent the "liberal press" from once again calling her a fascist, Morvai introduces me to Peter Reiner. A Budapest Jew, he was born in 1944, when the "Nilashi" carried out a general cleansing of the Jewish ghetto. Father died in Auschwitz. But Reiner defines his national identity as "firstly - a Hungarian, secondly - a Hungarian, thirdly - a Hungarian, fourthly - a Jew."

“I joined the guard because I wanted to overcome my fear,” he explains his motivations. "I believe that Hungarian Jews should have very high standards of courage." Respecting these high standards, Reiner filed a lawsuit with the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights demanding that the ban on the activities of the Hungarian Guard be lifted.

Further more. In the conversation, it turns out that the son of a Holocaust victim, dressed in the uniform of "nilashists", along with other guardsmen, was marching through the gypsy villages. These marches were perceived in Hungary as acts of intimidation. “When it comes to Jobbik's anti-Semitism, it usually doesn't go beyond rhetoric,” says Andras Kovacs, an expert on political extremism. “But in the Roma issue, the rhetoric turns into politics – for example, into demands to cut subsidies to ethnic minorities.” Marches are also not rhetoric. “We were not protesting against gypsies, but against crime,” Reiner justifies himself.

The leader of the National Organization for the Protection of Roma, Aladar Horvath, whose father was drowned by the Nazis in an ice storage pit, is unlikely to believe such an explanation. He is running for parliament in the town of Edelen in northeastern Hungary. Gypsies in the city area - about 30%. Supporters of "Jobbik" among ethnic Hungarians are many times more than the national average. The northeast is the realm of the extreme right.

In the gypsy village of Sendre, 61-year-old Anna-Kalla Daniel stands out for her fair skin and European features. “I had a Russian grandmother,” she explains, picking up a photo. “Her name was Alexandra Uporova.” Anna-Kalla's grandfather brought a Russian girl from the eastern front during the First World War. When it turned out that the betrothed was not a Hungarian count from the castle, but a village gypsy, the grandmother tried to escape. But she only got to Budapest, and then returned back. So she lived for 55 years among the gypsies.

Her granddaughter is nostalgic for the old days, when she and her husband worked at a factory and did not really need anything. “The Russians came, gave everyone a job, and threatened the idlers with prison,” Anna-Kalla recalls the social system of those times. The factory and work are gone, and the €200 that they receive from the state for two with their husband Adam is almost entirely spent on medicines. Anna-Kalla suffers from severe asthma, and Adam is paralyzed on the right side of his body after a heart attack. There is no help from seven children, they themselves barely make ends meet, and the youngest daughter Anna has to be fed - she is still a schoolgirl.

At school, the girl says, Hungarian and Gypsy children were divided into classes. There are schools where Roma are not accepted at all - they refuse under the pretext of lagging behind the program. For the same reason, a significant proportion of Roma children are sent to schools for the mentally handicapped.

The unemployment rate in Edelen, according to Horvath, is 30–40%, among Roma it is 80–90%. The Hungarian proletariat considers gypsies parasites and criminals. The mayor of Edelen, who was a member of the FIDES party, publicly stated that pregnant gypsy women beat their bellies with rubber hammers to give birth to cripples who will earn money by begging. FIDES had to expel him from the party. Gypsies also do not like the local socialist deputy, because he constantly voted for the reduction of subsidies to national minorities. But all this is no longer important, because the representative of the Jobbik party will most likely become the new deputy from Edelen.

HUNGARY TO THE LEFT

A socialist election event in the town of Szekszárd, 150 kilometers south of Budapest, opens with a clip from Monty Python's Life of Brian. Members of the Jewish "secret committee" convince ordinary Jews that the Romans did not give them anything good. They timidly answer: “Well, what about - and the roads, but the culture ...” Only in the translation of the Romans were they replaced by socialists.

Following the clip, the new face of the party, Attila Mešterhazy, addresses the audience. He has just opened a new autobahn from Budapest to Szekszard. He is only 36. The leader's speech ends with a peppy rock composition "Europe to the Left". And then a lively pop group takes the stage. At this stage, old men and women with red balloons in their hands rush to the exit. The hall remains almost empty.

• What, are you trying to reformat on the go into a young opposition party? I ask Mesterhazy over the Billie Jean cover.
• Well, let's see about the opposition on April 11, - the leader of the socialists answers, apparently not really believing his words. - But yes, we are trying to change during the campaign, because after these elections we will definitely have to build a new left force in Hungary.

Mesterházy has replaced the Kremlin's great friend Ferenc Gyurcsany, whose government was swept away a year ago by the global economic crisis. It is on the crisis that socialists, as a rule, blame their current failure. However, Mesterhazy admits, corruption scandals have also caused serious damage to the party.

FIDES also put spokes in the wheels. “For the past eight years, they have only said 'no, no, no',” Mesterházy complains. “You can’t build anything if you reject absolutely all the actions of the government.” He himself promises that the socialists will be a constructive opposition. But the right won't need it - they may get more than two-thirds of the seats in parliament, which will allow them to change the constitution. This they will probably do.

FIDES OF DULICIUS

The luxurious hall of the Budapest Academy of Music is filled with luxuriously dressed bourgeois audience. An orchestra plays classical music, and champagne froths on the buffet tables in the lobby. The FIDES party is celebrating its 22nd birthday. During this time, from a dissident hangout in a university hostel, it has grown into a solid organization that likes to call itself a liberal-conservative.

One of those former party-goers, MEP Tamas Deutsch, stands out in the crowd of associates with a height of six feet, shoulder-length curls and no tie.

• Are you going to change the constitution? - I hint at the desire of a number of FIDES members to give citizenship and the right to participate in elections to hundreds of thousands of ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia, Romania and Serbia. This will ensure that FIDES remains in power for the next few decades.
• We want to give them Hungarian citizenship, but without the right to vote,” Deutsch replies.

Former and future FIDES Foreign Minister Janos Martoni sees things differently. "As far as voting rights are concerned, we haven't decided yet," he told Newsweek. “But Russians living abroad have the right to vote, don’t they?”

The views of party comrades on the issue of Russian gas, which is sore for Hungary, also differ somewhat.

• We want peaceful and correct relations with Russia, Deutsch says.
• Does Correct Relations Mean South Stream or Nabucco?
• "Nabucco", - the founder of FIDES confidently supports the "anti-Russian" gas project.

And the future Foreign Minister says that FIDES supports both projects. “Nabucco allows you to diversify gas sources, while South Stream only diversifies supply routes,” says Martoni. “It’s more important for us to diversify sources, but having new routes is also good.”

Political scientist Zoltan Biro notes the dramatic change in FIDES rhetoric towards Russia. "Martoni even talked about friendship in a recent interview," Biro said. In a conversation with Newsweek, the future Foreign Minister used the expression "our Russian friends." Both FIDES leader Viktor Orban and Martoni himself have recently visited Russia. But if communication with the new Hungarian government on gas issues still promises to be difficult, support for far-right opposition to the Kremlin is assured. "Jobbik" - with two hands for the "South Stream".