Invited by Babeș–Bolyai University, I was in Cluj, the capital of Transylvania on the 20-21st of November. Andrea Pető and I presented our work titled Viktor Orbán’s Affairs with Women. No, the book is not a juicy political pulp fiction. It is an analyses of the past 15 years of Hungarian society through the lens of its female population, written deliberately in an easy-to-access way for everyone to become a beneficiary. Fun fact: at the English-language lecture, the audience was roughly half Hungarian and half Romanian. I’ve been unable to stop myself thinking since the event: what might be the reason behind the fact that only the Romanians dared to ask questions? The memory of the Securitate can’t still be so vivid that the Hungarians present—whose lives the topic presumably affects more directly than those of the Romanians—didn’t dare speak up for fear of who might be watching…?

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The practice of the historical churches in twenty-first-century Hungary bears no resemblance whatsoever to the example set by Saint Elizabeth of Hungary — or any of the Saints of Hungary for that matter. I am not a Catholic; I have always had difficulties with accepting or even understanding the cult of saints. My deeply religious grandmother — a stubborn Calvinist who sent her children to Sunday school even in the years of state socialism — had me baptised in secret in order to avoid the wrath of my fiercely atheist father. Sunday school was most certainly out of the question, which, ironically, had its toll on my future to come.

Right after the fall of communism, it was just as difficult to find a proper school for secondary education in Eastern Hungary as it is today. Even a bit more difficult, perhaps, owing to the fact that no rankings existed to inform about the performance of the schools. My mother, who had learnt enough from both the stubbornness and the Sunday school, decided upon a well-known historical school of the Calvinist church in Debrecen.

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“Hungarian society will not give up its relative prosperity for the sake of any revolutionary fervor. In 1989 everyone made peace with one another, no one even got slapped, and the same is to happen now. As long as there is food, drink, and women, everything will go on as before. Hungarians are not starving like Romanians did in 1989. Hungary is fat, wealthy, and its economy is booming. Those who possess material wealth and power — the middle class and the upper strata — are doing fine, and they do not want any upheaval. If necessary, even if reluctantly, they may even make smaller sacrifices,” said Gábor Vida, a Hungarian national living in Transylvania, Romania in an interview. Is he right? I don’t know. But as Hungary is getting closer to the 2026 elections where a huge fraction of those eligible to vote hope to remove Viktor Orbán from his long-lasting power, a lot of my own thoughts are reflected in his thoughts.

“I honestly think there is not one single child in Hungary who is not reached by family support (…). Let’s take it out but we should look at the breakdowns - what the case actually looks like. Where does it stand geographically. Where does it stand ethnically. Are we talking about Roma children, or Hungarian children, kids from Budapest or from the countryside?” - are the questions by Egon Rónai addressed to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán batted away, somewhat timidly. The subject of child poverty arose on TV after sixteen uninterrupted years in power, on the 11th of November, 2025. There was a moment of hesitation before Rónai remarked, “Roma children are also Hungarian children.”

This was my very first post on the 8th of Novermber, 2025, though it was never meant to be so. As it happened, Andrea Pető, a renowned historian and gender scholar and myself wrote a book together. We began working on our joint work in early 2024. The subject is strikingly topical; the text, while being rigorously documented and thoroughly well-researched, is designed to be quite easily accessible to anyone interested. The title - by my journalistic instincts - is inviting, catchy even. The cover -owing to the work of the brilliant graphic designer - is eloquent and multilayered. I hope Andrea would not mind me saying this, but the book in every sense turned out to be a piece of science storytelling. And yet the road to publication proved rougher than expected.