President Tamás Sulyok has attended the commemorations of the 70th anniversary of the 1956 anti-communist Poznan Uprising at the invitation of his Polish counterpart, Karol Nawrocki. The joint event could be a sign that after a long pause following a dispute over the conflict in Ukraine, the Polish right is waking up to the reality of traces of authoritarianism emerging in Hungary after the April elections.

The Hungarian President wrote on his social media page that “at the invitation of Polish President Karol Nawrocki, we are commemorating today the 1956 Poznań workers’ uprising which is rightly viewed as one of the precursors to the Hungarian Revolution 70 years ago.

At the invitation of Polish President Karol Nawrocki, we are commemorating today the 1956 Poznań workers’ uprising which is rightly viewed as one of the precursors to the Hungarian Revolution 70 years ago.

President @NawrockiKn and I also had the opportunity to discuss the… pic.twitter.com/J63niyet0R

— Dr. Tamás Sulyok (@DrTamasSulyok) June 28, 2026

In his speech during the 70th anniversary commemorations President Nawrocki said that “our identity, built also on the experience of Poznań 1956, is not a burden. It is a great asset we received thanks to our heroes, and which we are able to turn into an even better, more beautiful future in the 21st century for our nations, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, and my homeland, Poland.” He continued by saying that after the 1953 death of Joseph Stalin some thought that the communist system could be liberalized, that it could be made less totalitarian.

But the totalitarian communist system cannot be reformed — it must simply be abolished. It must be fought,”

President Nawrocki said in his address. 

As history teaches us, sometimes ordinary people who never thought that their names would be written in golden letters in the National Chronicle bring about a breakthrough. It is enough, dear ladies and gentlemen, to have attachment and readiness for values, courage in defense of sovereignty, and above all human dignity — because this was a protest in defense of human dignity, which turned into the Poznań anti-communist uprising, the Polish President concluded.