Edited version of the speech delivered by Tibor Navracsics, Minister of Public Administration and Justice on 23 August at the “Confronting the Past” international conference in Budapest, on the European Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Totalitarian Regimes.

I can clearly recall when, slightly more than a year ago, during Hungary’s EU-presidency, a working dinner of the Justice and Home Affairs Council turned into a vivid, at times heated and personal discussion on our joint initiative, shedding light on the different perceptions of how to deal with the moral and political implications of Europe’s 20th century history of dictatorial regimes, Communism and Nazism. Just recently, the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Hungary for its ban on symbols of Communist dictatorship. We have to grasp the significance of this particular decision, because it reflects a deeper concern, one that still defines Western and Central Europe’s mindsets about our recent political past.

Europe today defines itself as being democratic, and claims it promotes freedom and is against dictatorial political systems. And notwithstanding its shortcomings, of course this is true. But in our understanding, if Europe does not disapprove of all sorts of totalitarian ideologies, even in symbolic terms, this would challenge its democratic stance.

We are with Hannah Arendt who, in her famous book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, had argued that there was no fundamental difference between national and international socialism; both stand against a free society and both are inherently totalitarian. To Central European nations, many of us who were misfortunate to have had to endure both regimes for different periods of time, the similarity in the very nature of international and National Socialism is no academic or ideological question: it was day-to-day reality.  

International, as well as National Socialism used the same kind of terror, humiliation, tyranny and violence against entire populations, peoples and classes. Does it matter for the particular individual that he gets smashed because he is Jewish or ‘Kulak’? The Hungarian Penal Code prohibiting the propagation of Communist and Nazi symbols is designed to defend the victims of both regimes as well as to honor their memory. It does not matter if someone was victimized by national or by international socialism. Our concept of liberty rests on the assumption that it is in firm opposition to all kinds of totalitarianisms. If we do not hold on to that, our democracy also becomes weakened.

There is another reason why, in our understanding, commemorating the victims of totalitarian regimes requires condemning the sins committed by both the Communist and Nazi dictatorships. We believe they stem from the First World War, more precisely its consequences in Europe as a whole. After 1918, the continent’s leading nations faced an identity crisis: they no longer belonged to the league of power players as before while a new power, the United States emerged. The Russian and the Austro-Hungarian Empires collapsed, as did Prussian Germany. Europe’s great century came to a disastrous end, soon to be followed by even sadder events.

This internal collapse brought about different answers to questions about power – answers that propagated strong leadership, one that could lead the way out of the chaos; answers that tried to blame a nation’s weakness on a particular ethnic group, like the Jews, or a distinctive layer of the society, like the bourgeoisie. This, by nature, could be underpinned by scapegoating, a technique much employed later by both the communists and the Nazis.

This way, the First World War, whose centenary will be commemorated in 2014, marks a symbolic end to Europe’s dominant position in world politics and the birth of totalitarian politics. The rise of national and international socialism were fuelled by failed empires, distrusted and incompetent elites and a lost war, all of which left the ground ripe for an undemocratic era across Europe. The First World War deprived it not only of its international status but also of its democratic traditions – in a sense, if there is anything like “the decline”, it began with events that happened a century ago.

(Ministry of Public Administration and Justice)