In his courtship of Russia, Orban has come full circle from his early political days when he railed against Soviet domination, in the same way that the Republican Party came full circle from its anti-Russia identity. Like Orban and the Republican Party, Putin has appealed to a particular strain of nationalism—Christianity, hostility to Muslims, subversion of the international order, the longing for an idealized past. “In the past, we Hungarians have suffered a lot under Russia,” Orban told one interviewer. “Nevertheless, it needs to be recognized that Putin has made his country great again.”
