>>42173
40 years of communism complicated the matter in more than one way. The history not just had to be written along Marxist and Leninist principles but also was used to break nationalistic feelings (it's weird how some commie countries could pump nationalism up in the sky, here they organized worker brigades to beat up those who would celebrate March 15). But it had to be written not just to break nationalistic sentiments, but had to create the feeling of solidarity toward those historical figures and movements which deemed to be the predecessors of class struggle, so they created kinda proletarian heroes whom sometimes were already some kind of folk heroes (and therefore nationalistic...).
Here I want to spend a moment on something that directly related to the question presented. How we treat WWII battles. This is also a little example how we treat these topics.
During the communism there wasn't much talk about WWII, we were defeated and labeled to war criminals alongside Germany and Japan, in polticial propaganda (supported by the "objective" marxist historiography) of the Hungarian communist party and state leadership we were called the "last henchman" of Hitler and Germany. Stalin (up until 1953) and the Soviet Union and her heroes had to be praised unconditionally. If they told anything about our participation, it was bad. But was told very little, remembered even less. Only people talked in their homes, since every family had a member who participated in the war in some way, but even them the past struggle wasn't that important unless they harbored some anger due to (perceived or real) injustice.
War graves were left untended and forgotten, but there's an example when tens of thousands of WWI(!) and WWII burials were flattened and built over. Oh they issued an edict that ordered to erect monuments and memorials at the graves Red Army soldiers. Well at least they did not ban people from privately tending German and Hungarian graves if they wanted to bother with it. It's just in certain years it wasn't prudent to do that.
One of the battles Hungarians fought during WWII, was the battle at Voronezh, at the Don, about halfway between Moscow and Stalingrad. The 2nd Hungarian Army defended on he western shore of the river in January of 1943. This was a huge defeat which essentially broke the army apart. I have a book, published in 1961, about the WWII in general so the topic isn't particularly about Hungarian participation, but originally the text was aired on national radio, so it's something that an average civilian could hear, which could shape how they thought about the events. This is what's written about the battle of Voronezh:
"The Red Army achieves great results in the offensive at the Voronezh front as well, starting with January 12th: during a few days they destroy ten enemy divisions, Voronezh gets liberated, the 2nd Hungarian Army died here."
...to be continued.