How Did 1956 Revolution Become Nazi Uprising in Russian Textbooks?

"The news about the textbook came to the Hungarian media from a biased news outlet and in a deliberately distorted form, which is probably why it caused a reaction that it did not deserve,” Yevgeny Arnoldovich Stanislavov, Russia's Ambassador to Budapest, told Magyar Nemzet in a recent interview.

Yevgeny Stanislavov, Russian Federation Ambassador to Budapest (Photo: Istvan Mirko)

As for assessing the 1956 uprising in a historical context, there is an appropriate bilateral commission for this purpose. Its activities could be resumed if necessary. Among other things, such a professional and responsible conversation would make it possible to rule out the possibility of opportunistic rewriting of history, expunging inconvenient facts from it, and silencing the role of its active participants. Of course, it is impossible to avoid the topic of the new Russian history textbook with regard to its coverage of the Hungarian events of 1956. I can state unequivocally that the authors of the textbook did not and do not intend to offend Hungary. Unfortunately, the news about the textbook came to the Hungarian media from a biased news outlet and in a deliberately distorted form, which is probably why it caused a reaction that it did not deserve. However, according to the information currently available to the embassy, the author's team has taken into account the debate that its content has provoked in Hungarian society and plans to make some adjustments to the text.

Cover photo: Yevgeny Arnoldovich Stanislavov, Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Budapest (Photo: Istvan Mirko)