Adress by the President of the Slovak Republic for the publication on the 50th anniversary of the 1956 revolution in Hungary, 20. 9. 2006

The anniversary of such an important event in the modern history of the Republic of Hungary, whose semi-centennial we are commemorating together with the citizens of Hungary, calls on all of us to feel deeply again the tragedy of those days and to grave in our minds the respect for heroics of all those who had enough courrage to rise up against totality.

In that autumn of 1956, from the territory of neighbouring Slovakia, signals were leaking to Hungary, expressing identical concerns with the destiny not only of courageous individuals in Hungary but also the whole country and the whole Central European region. We namely lived here in Slovakia in fatefully equal conditions of the unfair post-war arrangement and totoalitarian oppresion when we watched the chance of freedom and democracy to move away rather than get closer.

Within the reach of the rebel Hungarian radio broadcasting in Slovakia, the courrage of Hungarian revolutionists – in direct succession of increasingly fearless manifestations of civil disobedience in Poland and the former German Democratis Republic – would bring a kind of inspiring air also to our country. Later our own history experienced a similar civilian resistance against totality within the territory of the former Czechoslovakia.

Not vainly I want to mention in this place that our contemporaries of your risers were symptomatically called in Slovakia „the lost generation“. No wonder we perceive these events of the Hungarian autumn of 1956, irrespective of their far distance in time, with a lot of respect and recognition as a direct signal and proof of a possibility to change a totalitarian regime. Nothing is changed by the fact that it took as long as four decades of fight for true, freedom and democracy in the circumstances and atmosphere of hard confrontation of the Cold War.

Today our life in freedom and democracy has a number of unforgettable tragic milestones. The Hungarian autumn of 1956 is undoubtedly one of them. Therefore, it is a categorical imperative for the contemporaries not to betray its ideas. On behalf of citizens of the neighbouring Republic of Slovakia as well as on my own behalf I take this occasion to give the Republic of Hungary, our ally and partner in the international democratic community, such a promise writing it down in this memorial publication.

Bratislava, September 20, 2006