Hungarians are rightfully indignant about the latest superpower triumph. Once again the hopes and dreams of a small, proud country have been steamrollered by an unstoppable behemoth. Michael Phelps, the Olympic champion swimmer, won three gold medals by beating László Cseh, Hungary's great Olympic hope, into second place.

As for the other small country currently being flattened, Georgia's fate has aroused only a fraction of the passion inspired by the Olympics, even though Hungary's heroic 1956 uprising against the Soviets, when teenagers fought Russian tanks with Molotov cocktails, is one of the defining events of Hungarian history.

It is less than two years since the 50th anniversary of the uprising was commemorated in Budapest by world leaders including President Bush. So I had expected that the Russian onslaught on Georgia would trigger anger and solidarity here, as Hungarians showed their support for a nation invaded by Russia just as Hungary was in living memory.

Imre Nagy, the leader of the 1956 revolution, was arguably the precursor of Georgia's media-savvy President, Mikhail Saakashvili. The crackly recordings of Nagy's poignant calls for help on Hungarian radio as the Russian tanks rolled in still resonate today - nowhere more so than in Tbilisi. In the Baltic states, Poland and Ukraine, the Russian incursion has triggered solidarity visits to Georgia, furious denunciation of Russia imperialism, numerous protests and widespread anxiety about who will be next.

But I was wrong. Most Hungarians have simply shrugged their shoulders. There is no sense of widespread outrage. A few hundred attended a single demonstration in Budapest.

Still, comparisons between Georgia now and Hungary in 1956 are a sensitive point. When I called the foreign ministry to ask about Hungary's response to events in Georgia, its spokesman swiftly arranged a telephone interview with the foreign minister, Dr Kinga Göncz, who had just stepped out of the Nato foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels on Tuesday. I asked her why Hungary had not sent its President, László Sólyom, to Tbilisi to show solidarity with its besieged neighbour. “The most important thing is to have a strong, unified European Union visibility and presence,” Dr Göncz told me. “That helps more than individual acts.”

I think that she is wrong. It is individuals who take decisions, individuals who shape policies, and “individual acts” that can set the agenda. By visiting Tbilisi, the Polish President, Lech Kaczynski, keeps the pressure on the European Union policymakers and acts as a brake on France, Germany and Italy's appeasement of Moscow.

Neither is “strong and unified” the first phrase that springs to mind when describing the EU's response. (To be fair, Dr Göncz also said that the Russian response was disproportionate and Georgia's territorial integrity must be respected.)

The real reason for Budapest's tepid diplomacy, of course, is energy supplies - Hungary is reliant on Russia for its gas. The Socialist Prime Minister, Ferenc Gyurcsány, a former communist youth leader-turned-multimillionaire, makes sure to keep good relations with the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, who also visited in 2006.

The triumph of realpolitik is no surprise, but the sympathy for Russia among some Hungarian nationalists is. Why would right-wing anti-communists support Moscow? Here in the topsy-turvy world of post-communist Eastern Europe, this, too, can be explained. Just as in Russia, collective memories of social order under communism have fused with an angry patriotism to produce a longing for a strong leader. For some, Putin fits the bill, says Gergely Böszörményi Nagy, of the Perspective Institute, a think-tank.

At the same time, Hungary's far-Right movement is fiercely anti-globalist. Nowadays its fury is focused not on Moscow but the United States and Israel. Georgia is friends with the United States and Israel, this argument goes, so Russia should be supported.

Old irredentist dreams may also be at work. Five million ethnic Hungarians live in neighbouring countries after Hungary lost two thirds of its territories at the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. Even today, numerous cars have a Hungarian emblem showing “Greater Hungary”. If Russia can invade Georgia to protect its nationals (never mind that most are not even ethnically Russian), then that sets a most useful precedent for Hungarian interference in Romania or Slovakia, according to this way of thinking.

It is left to Viktor Orbán, the leader of Fidesz and a former Prime Minister, to draw the parallel. “What the Russians are saying now is not at all different from what they said about Hungary in 1956. The simple fact is that foreign troops are deployed in the territory of another country, bombing cities and killing civilians.” In response, Igor Savolski, the Russian Ambassador to Hungary, denounced Mr Orbán as a “liar” and lackey of the neo-conservatives, and said that Georgia started this war - an interpretation that also finds support across the political spectrum.

Orbán certainly has no love of the Russians. He shot on to the national stage back in 1989, when he told a crowd of 250,000 mourners at a ceremony in Budapest marking the reburial of Imre Nagy that the Soviet troops should go home. Now, after several years of dismal relations with the United States, he is courting Washington and the Republican Party. Hungary will probably hold its next election in the spring of 2010, and the polls give Fidesz a double-digit lead over the Socialists. Should Orbán become Hungary's next Prime Minister, then Moscow's onslaught on Georgia will have succeeded in driving another former Soviet bloc state more firmly into Washington's embrace.

Adam LeBor reports on Central Europe for The Times. His latest book is Complicity with Evil: The United Nations in the Age of Modern Genocide

Times Recommends

• We have kit and leadership. Let’s go
• Behind the scenes at the biggest deal
• Conferences — what a waste of money