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Huh, thanks for the explanation!
I guess I’m a tad surprised that the Hungarian Blue Tribe, presumably unlike the Red Tribe, considers itself heir to the liberal dissident opposition to Soviet rule.
I would have thought that opposition to Soviet hegemony and repression would have cut across tribal lines; if anything I would have guessed blood-and-soil type Red Tribers would be even more likely to tout their anti-Soviet bona fides, given that the Soviets forcibly suppressed all forms of ethnic and nationalist sentiment!
Alternatively, I would have guessed that, like their US counterparts, the Blues (or at least their extremists) would be sympathetic to communism and eager to be mouthpieces/useful idiots for (in this case deceased) communist regimes and their policies, with plenty of anti-US/anti-Western whataboutism thrown in for good measure (cf. Hassan Piker)
I think the situation was roughly the following throughout the Soviet Bloc, not counting the USSR as a whole but do counting the Baltics. This will not be a post that much coherent but please bear with me.
Opposition to the regime took two main forms. 1a. Nationalist/patriotic 1b. Religious 2a. Reformist socialist 2b. Reformist social liberal and economic libertarian. There was no large difference between the subgroups. Anti-Russian sentiment was almost completely concentrated in group 1, and religious groups were almost always nationalistic. Group 2 generally agreed on the necessity of liberalization to one degree or another but the dissident reformists within the ruling parties preferred maintaining one-party rule.
Subgroup 2b got the most attention in the West because they appeared to be the most sympathetic and their activists were generally educated, Westernized and presentable. That does not mean they were the most significant in number. They generally prospered after the transitions of 1989, gaining positions throughout the media and founding parties that were initially successful whereas the reformist socialists lost a lot of their relevance after one-party rule collapsed.
One defining factor in the ‘90s was that group 2b largely decided that they have a lot more in common with group 2b than with group 1 and engaged in politics accordingly. Many functionaries formerly in high positions in the media who were disproportionately Jews, were never supporters of the opposition and then successfully took part in the privatization schemes after the transition decided to ally with group 2b and started promoting themselves as left-wing liberals. To the extent that a local version of the Blue Tribe exists in Central European countries, this is their origin. And the more US cultural influence there was present (various NGOs etc.), the more similar they became to the US Blue Tribe.
Regarding group 1, whatever level of sympathy they did initially enjoy in the West largely evaporated later, as they revealed themselves to be standard ethnic nationalist authoritarians not that interested in either economic or social liberty. Apparently there was some level of disillusionment happening because many Westerners erroneously viewed the European revolutions of 1989 (to the extent that those were true revolutions) as liberal revolutions whereas in reality those were mostly nationalist revolutions.
There are other peculiarities about group 1. In Poland, Galicia / Western Ukraine and (to a lesser extent) the Baltics, where animosity towards the Russians is more or less a cultural tradition, group 1 interprets the Soviet Bloc as a manifestation of the imperialist tendencies of barbaric Muscovite orcs. In other words, not something bad that the commies inflicted on them, but something bad the Russian people inflicted on them. This is pointedly not the case in Hungary where the same ethnic nationalist tendencies are present but usually target (communist) Jews and not Russians.
It's important to point out that there is basically no political force left that has sympathy for the Soviet era. The Boomers who were still nostalgic for the old times are mostly dead by now. The opposite is happening. That is, political groups are basically competing in the creation of propaganda associating their outgroup with the evil commies of the old days.
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It's pretty common in less-religious parts of Eastern Europe for soviet nostalgia to be conservative coded. Eastern bloc regimes were socially moderate, paid their pensions on time, kept the streets clear, and made sure employment rates were high- eastern Euro boomercons mostly have not been the beneficiaries of their EU integration driven economic growth.
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