We must finally give the Hungarian countryside what it deserves - declared Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at the opening ceremony of the Tokaj-Hegyalja University on Saturday in Sárospatak.
In his speech, the prime minister highlighted: the task of the Hungarian countryside is to ensure the natural and healthy state of Hungarian existence. It is time to finally settle Hungary's debt to the countryside, the dignity and strength that were taken away from the Hungarian countryside must be restored, he said.
He emphasized: the inauguration of a university is an extraordinary event in itself, but it is also at least as uplifting, "if we can finally settle an old debt in a satisfactory way". Now "we are also inaugurating a university and settling debts," he added.
"What a thing it is that an independent university is only now being established in the place that was once referred to as Athens on the Bodrog coast; "It's almost a crime, even a mistake, that until now there has been no independent university in the city where the Hungarian spirit has found its home for so long," he said.
He explained: the reasons for the accumulation of debt must be sought in the past. It all started with the lost world war and Trianon, then the forced industrialization of communism and socialist urbanization took place at the expense of the countryside , villages were depopulated, soaring intellectual centers became provincial. For the communists, the country was synonymous with the capital, and the countryside was seen as second-rate Hungary, he said.
He noted that the regime change did not remedy this historical injustice either, the national ideal and the countryside were never important to "the communists who returned twice" , the secession of the countryside did not stop after the regime change, but continued.
Viktor Orbán pointed out that for the national Christian Democratic governments, however, the countryside is "not the edge, the periphery of something, but the center, the core of something ". "In our eyes, the capital and the countryside form a unity," he added.
According to the prime minister, the fact that a university teaching the craft of winemaking, pedagogy and cultural heritage protection is being established here by a freedom fighter Christian Democratic government is the very embodiment of necessity.
He elaborated: big things will soon happen in the region beyond the university, road improvements, city reconstruction, tourism, agricultural and industrial investments will start. A level of development is beginning that has not been seen in the last hundred years.
Source: MTI
