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A crowd of protesters waves flags showing Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, beside President Vladimir Putin of Russia at a rally in Budapest. Orban announced later dropped a proposed tax on Internet usage that angered thousands, who felt that the tax was an attempt to cut off one of the few sources of information not controlled by Orban's allies. Photo: New York Times

Budapest:A quarter-century ago, as Hungary helped ignite the events that would lead to the collapse of Communism, the ferment produced a new political star.

Viktor Orban was 26 then and a long-haired law graduate. In June 1989, five months before the Berlin Wall came down, he lit up a commemoration of the failed 1956 revolt against Moscow with a bold call for free elections and a demand that 80,000 Soviet troops go home.

Now, days after the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Hungary is a member of NATO and the European Union and Mr Orban is in his third term as Prime Minister. But what was once a journey that might have embodied the triumph of democratic capitalism has evolved into a much more complex tale of a country and a leader who in the time since have come to question Western values, foment nationalism and look more openly at Russia as a model.

Looking east: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Photo: AFP

After leading his right-wing party Fidesz to a series of national and local election victories, Mr Orban is rapidly centralising power, raising a crop of crony oligarchs, cracking down on dissent, expanding ties with Moscow, and generally drawing uneasy comparisons from Western leaders and internal opponents to President Vladimir Putin.

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"He is the only Putinist governing in the European Union," said Joschka Fischer, the former German foreign minister.

Some other Eastern European countries, especially Poland, have remained oriented toward the West and still harbour deep suspicions of Russia long after the Cold War ended.

But Hungary is one of several countries in the former Soviet sphere that is now torn between the Western ways that appeared ascendant immediately after the fall of the Soviet Union and the resilient clout of today's Russia. Money, culture and energy resources still bind most regional countries to Russia as tightly as to Europe. Mr Putin's combative nationalism is more popular here than what many see as Western democratic sclerosis.

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Putin protege Viktor Orban spreads his wings in Hungary