Writ­ten by: Mag­yar Nemzet | Nov 2023 3. | COLORFUL

A series of his­tor­i­cal doc­u­men­taries based on the works of Zsuzsan­na Bor­vendég enti­tled Red octo­pus will be launched on the M5 cul­tur­al chan­nel on Sat­ur­day evening. The doc­u­men­tary series cov­ers the occu­pa­tion of Hun­gary, the estab­lish­ment of the com­mu­nist dic­ta­tor­ship, and the change after 56, as well as the estab­lish­ment and strength­en­ing of the for­eign search net­work. The hosts of the show are his­to­ri­an Zsuzsan­na Bor­vendég, expert, employ­ee of the Hun­gar­i­an Research Insti­tute, author of the works The Age of Impex and The Mon­ey of the Net­work, and jour­nal­ist and researcher Gábor Mező.

The pro­gram presents the struc­ture of Moscow’s net­work based on the Sovi­et mod­el, the impor­tance of the for­eign trade area, the work of trust­ed peo­ple made up of ÁVH offi­cers, and the “gates” cre­at­ed on the Iron Cur­tain that are impen­e­tra­ble to the aver­age per­son. They deal with such noto­ri­ous com­pa­nies as Inter­ag, which was run by a for­mer man of the polit­i­cal police. They reveal how Hun­gary par­tic­i­pat­ed in the sup­port of inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism, how mil­i­tary equip­ment was smug­gled from here to Arab coun­tries such as Libya. The his­tor­i­cal doc­u­men­tary series also inves­ti­gates how the leg­end of the “most fun bar­racks” was con­struct­ed in the West­ern and Hun­gar­i­an press. How did János Kádár him­self make back­ground deals with west­ern busi­ness­men such as Cyrus Eaton. Rely­ing on facts, he elab­o­rates the his­to­ry of impex com­pa­nies and how they man­aged to oper­ate con­tin­u­ous­ly at a loss, so that the alleged “ene­mies”, the big West­ern com­pa­nies, ben­e­fit from it. The series helps the under­stand­ing in an effec­tive way, some­times shock­ing, some­times sur­pris­ing, while stay­ing true to real­i­ty. Accept­abil­i­ty is also facil­i­tat­ed by the per­ma­nent loca­tions where the experts speak, and the graph­ics, which visu­al­ly help the view­er to process the many new and often not eas­i­ly digestible information.

Wine guest Zsuzsan­na expressed the most impor­tant mes­sage of the show this way:

- I am remind­ed of Atti­la József: “Tell the truth, not just the real thing.” I stick to this, and as a his­to­ri­an I fol­low a some­what unusu­al path, which many peo­ple do not even tol­er­ate with­in the pro­fes­sion, but I believe that what I do has mean­ing, since the acquired knowl­edge remains self-serv­ing if I do not share it with oth­ers. Sci­ence and research only make sense if its results become a com­mon treasure.

Gábor Mező put it this way:

– Every­thing can be writ­ten, filmed, there is no need to be afraid of taboo sub­jects. Our present is also deter­mined by what hap­pened before 1990 and then in the nineties and 2000s. — Few peo­ple know that dur­ing the time of Kádár, Hun­gary could become the “most cheer­ful bar­racks” by putting the coun­try in deep debt. János Fekete, who is cel­e­brat­ed by many to this day, was a key play­er in this, as well as the impex net­work, which we focus on in the Red Polyp.

The ten­ta­cles of the Red Octo­pus reach to this day, the eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al life is still inter­wo­ven with a thou­sand threads by the sys­tem of rela­tion­ships root­ed some­where in the days of Kadar. In order to be able to defend our nation­al inter­ests despite the pres­sure of glob­al­ism, we must reveal the coun­ter­forces oper­at­ing in the back­ground, we must point out their exis­tence, added Zsuzsan­na Borvendég.

Hun­gar­i­an Nation

Cov­er pho­to: Bor­vendég Zsuzsan­na and Gábor Mező, pre­sen­ters of the doc­u­men­tary series The Red Octo­pus (Pho­to: MTVA/Kinga Csöndör)

Source: civilek​.info/​eng