HWNSNBM will be listening to The Degner Defection on BBC iPlayer on 2nd January 2099, even though there is no BBC, no internet, no electricity and no Western society (which, in 2012, includes Hungary).
In fact, I suspect if HWNSNBM had been around before 1981, the Hungarian anti-Soviet revolution in the 1950s would have been successful, and Imre Nagy would have lived to see an old age where he could despair at the continuing terrible state of the rest of Eastern Europe. Maybe HWNSNBM could have nipped next door to East Germany and Czechoslovakia when they were also having their revolutions, and helped them out as well. Or, had he been around in 1945 at the Yalta Conference...
Michael Palin wrote:Behind all the conviviality and the toastings and the mutual back-slapping, one inescapable fact hung over all their discussions. The Red Army already occupied all of Eastern Europe. Because of their vast resources of men and materials, Stalin wasn't prepared to give an inch. That was, until the invasion of the conference by an unknown Hungarian, apparently without a name. Whispering something in Stalin's ear, the Soviet dictator immediately signed over Hungary to the West - followed by East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and all the others - including the de-annexation of the three Baltic States. Churchill could barely believe what he was hearing, and within three months, the ailing President Roosevelt had recovered, Churchill had kicked the cigars, and Stalin had retreated to live on a small farm just outside Tblisi. Gulags were shut, Pravda actually reported the truth instead of propaganda, colour returned to Moscow, the people of Eastern Europe had proper cars, nobody ever heard of Nicolae Ceausescu, and there was much rejoicing. Still, though, nobody ever worked out who the Hungarian hero's name was...