Ronald Reagan statue erected in Budapest

According to an article by journalist András Dési posted Sept. 27 on its website by the right-wing weekly Human Events, “The Hungarian capital is the first city in the former Soviet bloc countries to honor the 40th U.S. President with a statue.” The bust of Ronald Reagan was unveiled at a ceremony in Budapest City Park on Sept. 22. Among those attending was U.S. ambassador to Hungary April Foley. “Ronald Reagan understood that the people of Central and Eastern Europe yearned for freedom,” she was quoted as saying.

Also attending the ceremony was Péter Zwack, a prominent Hungarian businessman and descendant of a famous

Budapest bust of imperialist, Ronald Reagan.

liquor-producer family. “If Reagan had not been in the White House … I never would have come back to Hungary and never would have served as the first ambassador of the democratic Hungary to Washington,” he said. Zwack went on to praise Reagan for pushing the Soviet Union into an arms race that brought about the collapse of the “evil empire. 

Zwack and his family “fled to America in 1948 after the Hungarian Communist Party came to power,” according to Dési.

The bust of Reagan, made from bronze by the Hungarian sculptor Gábor Veres, was equally funded by Zwack and the Budapest City Council.

“Reagan’s bust in Budapest is only a few steps from the statue of another outstanding statesman of the 20th Century, Winston Churchill,” Dési reports. He quotes Budapest mayor Gábor Demszky as telling the crowd of 60, “President Reagan wished to be a second Roosevelt, but we can credit him as a second Churchill.”  

Edwin Meese III, who was U.S. attorney general during the Reagan administration and deeply involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, sent a congratulatory message to the ceremony addressed to “the people of Budapest.” He particularly commended the former publisher of the Budapest Business Journal for initiating the statue project.

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