Since ascending to the office of prime minister for a second time in 2010, Mr. Orban has sought to remake Hungarian society through what European Union leaders have described as sweeping anti-democratic changes: rewriting the national constitution, reshaping the judiciary and shifting the electoral system to favor Fidesz.

The far-right leader is also reshaping Hungary’s cultural and civil society, and its education system. He has used the Hungarian-American Jewish philanthropist George Soros as a foil, accusing him of seeking to undermine Hungary’s sovereignty, and Parliament approved legislation to force the closing of a university founded by the financier. This year, Mr. Soros’s Open Society Foundations, under increasing pressure, left Hungary.

“The government’s goal,” Laszlo Miklosi, president of the Association of Hungarian History Teachers, has said, “is to create a version of history preferable to Orban.”

Mr. Nagy, who during the revolution broke with the Warsaw Pact and called on the West to recognize Hungary as a neutral state, was executed for treason in 1958. He and other leading figures in the uprising were buried in Budapest under fake names, as the government sought to erase the memory of 1956, and he came to symbolize the Soviets’ oppression of Hungary for generations.

Hungary, an ally of Nazi Germany during World War II, became a satellite state of the Soviet Union after the war. A Soviet-backed puppet government was installed, and authorities violently clamped down.

The 1956 uprising was set off by university students, who demanded, among other things, a free press, free and fair multiparty elections, just compensation of workers, and freedom of expression, all things that resonate with many of Mr. Orban’s opponents.

“He was a part of Hungarian history and they shouldn’t remove him from it by removing this statue,” said Marta Karpeta, 65, a retiree. “He took a stand against what was happening, and he took the lead when it mattered. And because of this he died the death of a martyr. He had to die for what he believed in.”