Hey! :) Complex questions. From what I can tell, Hungarians are westoids in general. I know that a large majority of Hungarians voted for joining NATO in a referendum in 1997, against Russian objections. Historical ties are much stronger with Western Europe (Germany mainly), than they are with Russia. Cultural and economic ties with the USSR and the Warsaw pact were fostered during the socialist era, but after the fall of the socialist system, the new right-wing government did their damnedest to break them and reorient the country towards the West. Economical ties lean that way too, I know a lot of the preexisting economical ties with Russia were severed after the 1998 financial crisis. Then there were the EU sanctions after 2014. So the average Hungarian these days has little to do with Russia I think. Orbán did try to strengthen these ties, but it seems that the Hungarian people were not with him on that one. I think a significant part of Orbán's election loss was the opposition's ability to frame the election as an East vs. West referendum.
There is little nostalgia for the socialist era that I can see. I think the fact that Hungary has seen significant GDP growth in the last few decades, and on average, people's living standards have improved noticeably, made it easier to forget about all the people whose lives have gotten worse as a result of a transition to capitalism. There is little support for actual leftist parties. I voted for the Worker's Party candidate in my district, she received like 100 votes out of tens of thousands.
Orbán is an interesting figure. He was a liberal who rebranded as a nationalist conservative for the 1998 election, then lost in 2002 because people quickly got tired of his shit. Hungarians are not all right-wingers, or at least I'd like to think so. It took a major economic clusterfuck of the center-left coalition government between 2002 and 2010 (not helped by the 2007/8 financial crisis) for him to win again. Even then, people didn't want him in charge so much as they wanted the other guys out I think. Then ofc they slowly soured on him again after 2010, when there was little economic growth, and a growing sense of bad governance, with the public sector (the social safety net, education and healthcare) decaying noticeably.
I think he had the right idea when he started saying things that amounted to, the West is declining and the East is rising, let's have friendly ties with both. But I think it just resulted in him being seen as a traitor by the West and an opportunist by the East. Most importantly, it wasn't the economic success story that we all hoped for. He also had the right idea when he started suggesting the primacy of international capital was part of the problem. Of course his solution was "let's strengthen national capital instead". I guess the idea was that then the wealth would have an easier time trickling down, but of course we all know how the trickle-down story works out. All in all, I think Hungarians were willing to put up with him as long as the checks were coming. But that's just it, they weren't. Inequality was rising, Orbán's cronies became billionaires, the working class got diddly squat. People finally had enough of him. The guy who comes after him, he's a conservative too, but at least he makes some of the right noises about progressive taxation and investment into public services. Guess that's enough to win a landslide victory these days. Bleak indeed.
