Paul Lendvai46 from one o the most promising defend-
ers o Hungarian democracy into the
chie author o its demise. As Hun-
gary’s prime minister during the past
decade, Orban has systematically
dismantled the country’s democratic
institutions, undermined the rule o
law, eliminated constitutional checks
and balances, hobbled independent
media, and built a kleptocratic system
that rewards cronies while sidelining
critics. His government does not
depend on naked oppression. Rather,
through the distribution o sinecures,
he has assembled around himsel an
army o devotees, one that extends far
beyond the administration, the police,
the secret services, and the military.
Today, Hungary is at best an “illiberal
democracy”—a term Orban has used to
describe his vision for the country.
Others argue that the country has left
democratic governance behind alto-
gether and is now a crude autocracy.
Looking back, it appears that the
young man whose rhetoric stirred Hun-
garians in 1989 was no idealist; he was,
rather, a budding opportunist getting an
early taste o power. No great trauma or
upheaval can easily account for his whole-
sale ideological turnaround in the years
that followed: it seems to have simply
been the result o an extended series o
shrewd political calculations. Far from
fullling the will o Hungary’s revolution,
as he exhorted his fellow Hungarians to
do in 1989, Orban has instead fullled
only his own will to power.A PORTRAIT OF THE AUTOCRAT AS
A YOUNG LIBERAL
Orban was born in 1963 in the tiny village
o Alcsutdoboz, not far from Budapest.
Initially, he, his parents, and his youngerbrother lived in the cramped house o
his paternal grandparents. When Viktor
was ten, as a consequence o arguments
between his mother and grandmother,
the family moved to a dilapidated house
at the end o the main street in the
somewhat larger village o Felcsut. The
circumstances in which he grew up were
orderly but without doubt very poor.
Orban has recalled how hard he and his
siblings had to work in the elds as
young children: pulling beets, sorting
potatoes, feeding the pigs and chickens.
The house had no running water. Years
later, Orban described the “unforget-
table experience” o using a bathroom for
the rst time, at age 15, and getting hot
water by simply turning on a faucet.
His family’s fortunes improved in the
1970s and 1980s, as his father completed
a university degree and climbed the
ranks o the ruling Socialist Workers’
Party. Orban was a bright student, and
his parents sent him to a selective
grammar school. But years later, he
described himsel in an interview as an
“unbelievably bad child. Badly misbe-
haved, cheeky, violent. Not at all likable.”
He added: “At home, I had constant
problems with discipline; my father beat
me once or twice a year.” Throughout his
youth, his brie compulsory stint in the
military, and his university years, his
maxim remained unaltered: “I I’m hit
once, then I hit back twice.”
One o Orban’s favorite lms is Once
Upon a Time in the West, a 1968 spaghetti
Western directed by Sergio Leone, which
arrived in Hungary only in the 1970s,
when Orban was a teenager. The plot
involves the slaughter o a family; in the
end, an avenging angel character, played
by Charles Bronson, shoots the leader o
the gang behind the killing. Justice08_Lendvai_pp_Blues.indd 46 7/22/19 5:50 PM