The Gipper: from Hollywood Puppet to Cold War Hero

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the examination of how President Ronald Reagan was presented in the Hungarian press during his presidency (which coincided with the communist regime in Hungary) and what kind of image he had in the 1980s and has today in Hungary; how he changed in the eyes of the people from a puppet inadequate to govern to the savior of freedom and democracy in Europe, and how this road ended in the form of two statues in the capital of Hungary. As all my primary sources are articles from the Hungarian press, I needed to translate them; all the translations found in the thesis are mine, unless otherwise indicated.