Benjamin Novak Profile picture
used to ✍️ about Hungary for @nytimes, currently a doctoral candidate at @SAISHopkins — bnovak@protonmail.com
Feb 7, 2023 5 tweets 3 min read
THREAD

I read John Barron's 1982 piece "The KGB's Magical War for Peace" a few months ago and was surprised to see a quote from Janos Berecz, head of HU communist party's Intl Dept, boasting about the success of Soviet Active Measures... 2/ A hardline communist, Berecz joined Gyula Thurmer's Hungarian Workers' Party (the "political party" featured in the tweet above) after the transition. Berecz left the party after losing an election. Thurmer kept at.
mandiner.hu/cikk/20220707_…
Mar 15, 2022 6 tweets 3 min read
Noteworthy clips from Orban's March 15 speech

Orban: Central Europe a chessboard for great powers. They see HU as an expendable piece on the board.

US and "Brussels" can't think like Hungarians, so HU gas to represent its own interests. "We must stay out of this war."

⬇️ Orban: HU is on the frontier of worlds between E&W, N&S. Around here, wars not fought for us or in our interest. Whoever won, we lost... CE is chessboard for great powers, 4 them HU just a piece on board..If it suits their goals & if HU not strong enough, they will sacrifice HU
May 12, 2019 17 tweets 3 min read
1/ @PatrickKingsley and I unpack the Orban–Trump powwow scheduled for this coming Monday. Some stuff that didn't make it into the piece in the tweets below👇👇👇
nytimes.com/2019/05/12/wor… 2/ I spoke to a number of State Department officials to get the scoop on how they see the meeting. Their quotes to me (and published by me) here in following tweets. These officials, who asked that I not name them for obvious reasons, had this to say about the meeting: