VIDEO Viktor Orban wore a scarf with the map of Great Hungary, the symbol of historical revisionism

The Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, published video images on his Facebook account on Monday in which he appears wearing a scarf with a stylized map of Greater Hungary, which also includes a piece of Transylvania.

The symbols of revisionism are increasingly used by Hungarian officials, led by Viktor Orban.

In May 2022, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said in a radio interview that parts of the Adriatic coast had been cut off from Hungary and that “those who have a sea and ports therefore are able to bring oil on tankers”, statements that have were harshly criticized by Croatian officials.

In May 2020, Orban posted on his Facebook account an image of the globe before Trianon, on which appears the map of Greater Hungary, which also included Transylvania. The post is accompanied by a text that refers to the students’ history exams.

Also, the Hungarian government runs several public policies that try to recover the “Hungarian nation”. A recent reform of the subject matter taught in Hungarian schools presents, deeply ideologically, Transylvania as the home of the Hungarians.

Hungarian government officials have been using this map consistently for several years. In June 2019, Romania and Slovenia condemned the publication on the website abouthungary.hu, managed by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s office, of a map representing “Greater Hungary” from which the neighboring states each “tear off” a piece, Romania being represented as taking Transylvania. In December 2019, Viktor Orban drew the ire of Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković after the Hungarian leader chaired a FIDESZ meeting with a map of Greater Hungary in the background. The space of historical Hungary also included pieces of present-day Croatia, and this message sent indirectly by the leader from Budapest was categorized as “a challenge” by his counterpart from Zagreb. At the end of April 2020, a Hungarian minister gave an interview to the BBC with the same map in the background.

Symbolic calls for revisionism are also boosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who started the war in Ukraine with the aim of occupying territories in the east and south of this country.

Orbán frequently presents himself as the leader not only of Hungary’s nearly 10 million inhabitants, but also of the “millions” of ethnic Hungarians living in neighboring countries to whom his government has granted citizenship and the right to vote. He rejects, however, the criticism that he has territorial ambitions over other states.