ANDREW HIGGINS2026年4月14日匈牙利凯斯特海伊市，一张维克托·欧尔班的竞选海报被人用喷漆涂上了“黑手党”。 Akos Stiller for The New York TimesPrime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary was for years Europe’s pre-eminent political wizard, a leader endowed with uncanny insight into his people’s desires and fears and the ability to steer political tides.匈牙利总理维克托·欧尔班多年来一直是欧洲首屈一指的政治巫师，这位领导人仿佛拥有看穿民众欲望与恐惧的超凡洞察力，还能精准操控政治风向。He won four thumping election victories in a row — more than any other current European Union leader — and declared liberal democracy passé long before President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia pronounced it finished, in 2019, or President Trump first won the White House, in 2016.他连续四次赢得压倒性选举胜利，次数超过任何一位现任欧盟领导人。早在2019年俄罗斯总统普京宣称自由民主已终结、2016年特朗普首次入主白宫之前，他就早已断言自由民主已然过时。On Sunday, it became clear that Mr. Orban had lost his magic.然而周日，欧尔班的魔力显然消失了。Peter Magyar, the opposition leader whose Tisza party scored a crushing victory in Hungary’s general election, told cheering crowds that they had ushered in “regime change.”反对党领袖彼得·毛焦尔带领其蒂萨党在匈牙利大选中取得碾压性胜利，他对欢呼的人群表示，他们迎来了“政权更迭”。“You have worked a miracle,” he said. “Hungary has written history.”“你们创造了奇迹，”他说。“匈牙利书写了历史。”What had really happened, however, was that Mr. Orban had failed to rewrite a basic rule of politics, particularly for populists: You have to be popular to win elections.但真正发生的是，欧尔班未能改写一条最基本的政治法则——对民粹主义者而言尤其如此：要赢得选举，你必须得民心。The result on Sunday did not represent an ideological earthquake or a sudden swerve among Hungarians from right to left, but rather something highly personal. Voters toppled a strongman leader who, increasingly cocooned in the flattery of sycophants and the praise of a sprawling propaganda machine, had lost his touch.周日的选举结果并非意识形态的大地震，也不是匈牙利民众突然从右翼转向左翼，更多是出于个人化的因素。选民推翻了这位强人领导人：他日益被阿谀奉承者的吹捧和庞大宣传机器的赞美层层包裹，早已失去了对民意的感知。“The fall of the Orban regime feels as sudden and cataclysmic as the collapse of communism in 1989,” said Imre Karacs, a veteran journalist who covered the unraveling of communist governments at that time.“欧尔班政权的倒台感觉和1989年共产主义的崩溃一样突然、一样具有颠覆性，”资深记者伊姆雷·卡拉奇说，他当年曾报道过各国共产党政府的垮台。“But both events seemed inevitable to people who dared to believe,” he added.“但对于那些敢于相信的人来说，这两件事似乎都是不可避免的，”他还说。反对党领袖彼得·毛焦尔领导的蒂萨党在匈牙利大选中取得了压倒性胜利，图为他于3月在凯斯特海伊参加竞选集会。Mr. Orban’s spell was broken by Mr. Magyar, a conservative former Orban loyalist who shares many of the departing prime minister’s views on matters like immigration. But Mr. Magyar offered a less pugnacious, less divisive style, promising a “humane” Hungary at peace with itself and the European Union.打破欧尔班魔咒的毛焦尔本身是一名保守派，曾是欧尔班的忠实支持者，在移民等诸多问题上与即将卸任的总理观点一致。但毛焦尔展现出一种更温和、不那么分裂的风格，承诺打造一个与自身及欧盟和平共处的“人性化”匈牙利。Tisza won 138 seats in Parliament — more than two-thirds of the total — and left Mr. Orban’s Fidesz party a shellshocked rump with just 55. The win delivered a slap in the face to President Trump, Vice President JD Vance and right-wing Europeans like Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, all of whom had enthusiastically endorsed Mr. Orban and jumped into Hungary’s election campaign on his behalf.蒂萨党赢得了议会138个席位——超过总席位的三分之二，而欧尔班的青民盟惨败，仅获得55席，沦为元气大伤的少数派。这场胜利对于特朗普总统、副总统万斯以及荷兰的海尔特·维尔德斯等欧洲右翼人士来说无疑是一记耳光，他们都曾热情支持欧尔班，并且为他在匈牙利的竞选造势。In the end, Hungary’s pioneer of right-wing populism stopped being popular. The same had happened earlier to Janez Jansa, a three-time prime minister in Slovenia and a fervent admirer of Mr. Orban who in 2022 lost a parliamentary election.最终，这位匈牙利右翼民粹主义的先驱失去了民心。同样的命运此前也降临在斯洛文尼亚三度担任总理的亚内兹·扬沙身上，他是欧尔班的狂热崇拜者，在2022年输掉了议会选举。Mr. Orban and other right-wing populists who have floundered in office ignored the Russian maxim that politics always involves tension between “the television” — propaganda — and “the refrigerator” — people’s lived reality.欧尔班和其他在任期间陷入困境的右翼民粹主义者都忽略了一句俄罗斯政治格言：政治永远是“电视”（即宣传）与“冰箱”（即民众现实生活）之间的博弈。It was a message reinforced on Monday by Mr. Magyar, who said “for years, Viktor Orban has paid no attention to the problems affecting Hungarians.”毛焦尔周一也重申了这一点，他说：“多年来，维克托·欧尔班从未关注过匈牙利民众面临的实际问题。”“We have never heard him speak about health care, education or cost-of-living issues,” he said. “He was playing a kind of five-dimensional chess game. And this, among other things, was likely one of the reasons for his defeat.”“我们从没听过他谈论医疗、教育或生活成本问题，”毛焦尔说。“他一直在下所谓的五维国际象棋。而这，加上其他因素，很可能就是他败选的原因之一。”Mr. Orban put all his chips on the television, deploying a vast apparatus of Fidesz-friendly media outlets to vilify his opponents. Mr. Magyar was variously presented as a crook, as a Ukrainian puppet, as a sex maniac with a taste for teenagers and as an abusive husband, while President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was demonized as an existential menace who would bring war to Hungary if Mr. Magyar won.欧尔班把所有筹码都押在“电视”上，动用庞大的亲青民盟媒体机器抹黑对手。毛焦尔被描绘成骗子、乌克兰傀儡、嗜好未成年少女的性变态和家暴丈夫；乌克兰总统泽连斯基则被妖魔化为致命威胁，欧尔班声称，如果毛焦尔当选，泽连斯基就会把战争带到匈牙利。After Mr. Orban’s landslide election victory in 2022, he promised a “golden age” for Hungary’s economy. But, deformed by corruption, the country tipped into recession. Although slightly less sickly now, Hungary still has the slowest growth in the region. Unemployment is at a 10-year high.2022年欧尔班以压倒性优势连任后，曾承诺为匈牙利经济带来“黄金时代”。但在腐败的侵蚀下，该国陷入了经济衰退。尽管如今略有好转，匈牙利仍是该地区经济增长最慢的国家，失业率也创下了10年来的新高。“The gap between the television and the fridge becomes unbridgeable,” said David Pressman, a former U.S. ambassador to Hungary under the Biden administration and a frequent target for Mr. Orban’s propaganda machine.“电视与冰箱之间的鸿沟已经变得无法逾越，”拜登政府时期的前美国驻匈牙利大使戴维·普雷斯曼说，他本人也是欧尔班宣传机器的频繁攻击目标。周日，布达佩斯庆祝蒂萨党取得压倒性胜利的人群。Even some of those sympathetic to Mr. Orban had voiced dismay before the election that he was paying so little attention to the economic woes of ordinary Hungarians, including dilapidated schools and hospitals without toilet paper. At a panel discussion last week organized by the Danube Institute, one of a galaxy of government-funded think tanks set up to sing Mr. Orban’s praises, premonitions of the approaching defeat filled the room.甚至一些原本同情欧尔班的人在选举前也对他漠视普通匈牙利人的经济困境表示失望——包括破败的学校，以及连卫生纸都供应不足的医院。上周，由政府资助、专门为欧尔班唱赞歌的众多智库之一多瑙河研究所举办了一场小组讨论会，现场弥漫着败选将至的预感。John Fund, a writer for National Review, complained that Mr. Orban was “fighting the last war,” referring to the 2022 election campaign, which Fidesz won by stoking fears that Hungary would be dragged into the Ukraine war if Mr. Orban was not in charge.《国家评论》撰稿人约翰·范德抱怨欧尔班在“打上一场战争”，他指的是2022年大选，当时青民盟煽动“欧尔班下台就会把匈牙利拖入乌克兰战争”的恐惧情绪，从而赢得了选举。“This is not what most people will be voting on. They will be voting on whether their lives will get better,” Mr. Fund said. “The average Hungarian has been standing still.”“这根本不是大多数选民关心的问题，他们投票看的是自己的生活会不会变好，”范德说。“普通匈牙利人的生活水平一直停滞不前。”Mr. Orban blamed Hungary’s economic troubles on Ukraine and the European Union, as did Mr. Vance, who visited Budapest last week in a last-ditch effort to lift the Hungarian leader’s fortunes. “Brussels bureaucrats,” Mr. Vance said, standing next to Mr. Orban, had “tried to destroy the Hungarian economy” to sway the election on Sunday “because they hate this guy.”欧尔班将匈牙利的经济困境归咎于乌克兰和欧盟，上周前往布达佩斯、试图在最后关头帮这位匈牙利领导人扭转选情不利局面的万斯也持同样观点。万斯站在欧尔班身边说：“布鲁塞尔的官僚们试图摧毁匈牙利经济”，以便影响周日的选举，“只因为他们恨这个人。”Most officials in Brussels and European leaders didn’t like Mr. Orban, but the bigger problem was that neither did many Hungarian voters, including onetime supporters who tired of his fear mongering about Ukraine and who grew frustrated by the country’s grandiose corruption — the worst in the European Union, according to Transparency International — and by his claims that life was getting ever better.布鲁塞尔的大多数官员和欧洲领导人确实不喜欢欧尔班，但更大的问题是，许多匈牙利选民也不再喜欢他了——包括曾经的支持者。他们厌倦了他无休止地渲染乌克兰威胁，对匈牙利触目惊心的腐败（据透明国际组织统计，该国的腐败情况是欧盟最严重的）感到愤怒，更对他声称生活越来越好的说法忍无可忍。For many voters, Mr. Magyar’s biggest asset was not his policies on education, health care or the European Union, which he never elaborated on in any detail, but that he was not Mr. Orban.对许多选民来说，毛焦尔最大的优势并非他从未详细阐述过的教育、医疗或欧盟政策，而是因为他不是欧尔班。工作人员为毛焦尔于周一在布达佩斯举行的新闻发布会做准备。Mr. Orban even had what some called a “Ceausescu moment,” a reference to December 1989, when the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu realized in disbelief that a crowd gathered to cheer him was actually booing. Opposition-friendly news media published photographs and videos of Mr. Orban looking stunned — and then very angry — when people started booing him at a campaign rally in the western city of Gyor.欧尔班甚至经历了被一些人称为“齐奥塞斯库时刻”的瞬间，这指的是1989年12月，罗马尼亚独裁者尼古拉·齐奥塞斯库难以置信地发现，原本应该聚集起来为他欢呼的人群，其实是在嘘他。亲反对党的媒体发布了照片和视频，显示在匈牙利西部城市杰尔的一场竞选集会上，当民众开始发出嘘声时，欧尔班先是一脸错愕，随即勃然大怒。Mr. Orban was never a dictator — he conceded defeat on Sunday with grace and dignity — but he did undermine democratic norms.欧尔班从来不是独裁者——周日，他体面而有尊严地承认了败选，但他确实破坏了民主规范。During his 16 years in power, he remade Hungary in his own image, eliminating many checks and balances by stacking the judicial system and nominally independent agencies with Fidesz loyalists, and taking control of most news outlets. In 2014, he gave this construct a name: “an illiberal state, a non-liberal state.”在16年的执政生涯中，他按照自己的形象重塑了匈牙利：在司法系统和名义上独立的机构中安插青民盟亲信，从而废除了诸多权力制衡机制，并掌控了绝大多数新闻媒体。2014年，他将这种体制命名为“非自由派国家，非自由主义国家”。It was a model he sought to export but, according to a pre-election analysis by the Cato Institute, an American research group, “Far from being a model, Orbán’s Hungary is a cautionary tale of what results from an unrestrained executive with strongly centralized power, crony capitalism and the systematic dismantling of the rule of law.”他曾试图将这一模式输出到全世界，但美国智库卡托研究所的选前分析指出：“欧尔班治下的匈牙利绝非什么典范，而是一个警示故事，它揭示了行政权力的不受约束和高度集中、裙带资本主义和对法治的系统性破坏会带来怎样的后果。”Until 2024, Mr. Magyar was part of this system, and, Mr. Karacs, the journalist, said that his views were “not that distant from mainstream Fidesz apparatchiks — which is what he was just two years ago.”直到2024年，毛焦尔还是这个体制的一部分。记者卡拉奇说，他的观点“与青民盟主流官僚相去不远——两年前他本人就是其中一员”。Leftists and liberals, Mr. Karacs added, had “swallowed their misgivings for the sake of the cause: Get rid of Orban.”卡拉奇还说，左翼和自由派人士“为了推翻欧尔班这个共同的目标，都咽下了自己的疑虑”。Lili Rutai对本文有报道贡献。Andrew Higgins是《纽约时报》东欧和中欧分社社长，常驻华沙。翻译：晋其角点击查看本文英文版。