In Népszabadság, Sándor Révész compares the benevolence shown by the public towards the incumbent government to the relative popularity of the Communist regime from the 1960s onwards. The majority of the population enthusiastically supported the few thousand freedom fighters during the revolutionary days of 1956, he writes, and was swiftly bullied into submission shortly after the revolution was crushed by invading Soviet troops. Later on, however, people willingly conformed to the status quo and were irritated by the Poles who openly challenged Communist rule in the 1980s. Révész believes that tradition still lives on today and this is how he explains the government’s current popularity, despite what he sees as the serious limitations it has placed on individual freedom. But the anniversary of the revolution can only be rightfully celebrated “by those who have kept the flame of freedom alive – if it might only become a national holiday one day!”, he writes in a bitter concluding remark.