The image of Hungary as an enemy in the minds of Soviet citizens during the Great Patriotic War

The article examines the image of the Hungarian enemy during the Great Patriotic War in the minds of the citizens of the USSR from the standpoint of historical imagology. Based on documents from the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Military Archive, and the materials of the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) from 1942 through 1945, the formation and evolution of this image are shown both among the Red Army soldiers and among the civilian population who survived the occupation regime of Hungarian troops in the territory occupied by the enemy. The evidence of the brutal occupation policy and punitive actions of the Hungarian occupiers against peaceful Soviet citizens and prisoners of war is given. The article examines the attitude of the Soviet political and military leadership, as well as the Red Army soldiers to the Hungarians after entering their territory and during the battles for Budapest. The study traces the changes in the approaches of Soviet propaganda to the depiction of Hungarians at the final stage of the war aimed to completely isolate Hitler’s Germany, cutting it off from its last ally that continued to fight against the advancing Soviet troops. The article demonstrates the hostile behavior of the Hungarian population, which continued to provide assistance to Hungarian and German soldiers and officers who did not want to lay down their arms and were hiding from captivity, as well as the influence of these and later events on the preservation of the “image of the enemy” in the Soviet mass consciousness and historical memory.