Dozens of world leaders were set to join Hungarians to mark the 50th anniversary of the anti-Soviet uprising, as bitter domestic political divisions threatened to overshadow the celebrations. The main right-wing opposition party, the anti-communist Fidesz, was to boycott commemorations attended by the governing Socialist party, which was the successor to the Communist party after transition to democracy in 1989.

The move torpedoed efforts to use the 50th anniversary to unite the country in the spirit of the 1956 uprising, when a peaceful student protest spontaneously turned into a mass upheaval against Stalinist oppression.

But on hand to remember the uprising were 18 European presidents and two prime ministers, the kings of Spain and Norway, and the heads of the European Commission and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.