Hungarian Uprising. 60 years on
A woman peers out a window of a dilapidated
building that shows bullet marks from the
1956 anti-Communist uprising, with the
revolutionary flag posted on the front,
insignia removed, in Budapest, Hungary,
October 20, 2016
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RIAC Expert
Sunday, October 23rd, 2016, marks the 60th anniversary of the Hungarian Uprising. The confrontation between the socialist and capitalist blocs may be past history, but popular discontent has not gone away, it merely took on a modern form. Witness the case of Ukraine where, against the background of economic growth, the people organized an unprecedented protest movement, and uprisings or coups happening in countries with democratically elected governments.
Sunday, October 23rd, 2016, marks the 60th anniversary of the Hungarian Uprising (also sometimes referred to as the Hungarian Revolution). Because no state in Europe today espouses communist ideology, the Hungarian Uprising does not carry any valuable lessons for government leaders and ordinary people in the 21st century. However, reducing the events in October—November 1956 to the multiple abuses of totalitarianism may obscure the main message.
The confrontation between the socialist and capitalist blocs may be past history, but popular discontent has not gone away, it merely took on a modern form. Witness the case of Ukraine where, against the background of economic growth, the people organized an unprecedented protest movement, and uprisings or coups happening in countries with democratically elected governments. Corruption and abuse of power exist in every state in Europe, Asia or America, the difference being only in scale.
A promising start...
In July 1956, three months before the uprising, Matyas Rakosi, a Stalinist leader, was toppled under great public pressure in the wake of the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party which exposed the abuses of the Stalin era. At the same time the workers in Poznan, Poland staged an uprising demanding better working and living conditions. The revolt was eventually crushed by the Polish security forces. The hold on power of the then leader Erno Gero was obviously precarious and any pretext could spark mass unrest.
The revolution was triggered by the reburial of Laszlo Rajk, a prominent Hungarian Communist politician, who fought in Spanish Civil war in 1937—1939 and then was a leader of the anti-fascist front in Hungary. While staying on the post of foreign minister L. Rajk was executed in 1949 on false charges of spying for Yugoslavia. The reburial had a great symbolic message because Matyas Rakosi was implicated in the death of Rajk having actually presided over his trial. A hundred thousand people took to the streets to Rajk’s memory, which triggered stormy political discussions. It seemed that after the Stalin era people could again live freely without experiencing fear every day.
Fighters sit on top of a tank with a
revolutionary flag in Budapest at the time
of the uprising against the Soviet-supported
Hungarian communist regime in 1956.
The uprising began on 23 October with a manifesto of Budapest Technical University students which contained 16 demands, including putting the Soviet-Hungarian relations on an equal footing, withdrawal of the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary, normalisation of relations with Yugoslavia, the creation of a new government under Imre Nagy, freedom of expression, religion and the press, an end of reprisals against small-holding peasants who had not joined the collectivization drive. The student demonstration which was joined within hours by representatives of all the social strata in Budapest met with a wobbly reaction on the part of the country’s political establishment.
The uprising had a powerful anti-Stalinist thrust: after the ouster of Matyas Rakosi from the post of First Secretary of the Hungarian Working People's Party there was a sense that the time had come to openly reject repressions. On 23 October the demonstrators headed towards one of the best known places in Budapest – Heroes’ Square – and tore down an 8-metre statue of Stalin resting on a 10-metre pediment which had just been finished by December 1951. The material for the monument had been the melted down monuments to Hungarian political leaders, including Gyula Andrassy after whom the avenue leading to Heroes’ Square is named.
The revolution minimized the omnipresence of “the Father of the Peoples”: in addition to pulling down the Stalin Monument Stalin Avenue (now Andrassy Avenue) was renamed Hungarian Youth Avenue. Even the village of Stalinvaros (Stalin City) where the country’s biggest steel plant was built in the 1950s, was soon renamed The New City on the Danube (Dunaújváros). However, popular demonstrations banished not only the ghost of Stalin, but also calm in the streets. After the first clashes between the Hungarian Radio building defenders and the rebels, the city began to fill with weapons as part of the military took the side of the rebels and ammunition dumps and factories were broken into.
...and a quick end
The Hungarian uprising was not a fascist mutiny and was not inspired by a particular ideology. Undoubtedly, it manifested above all the striving of the Hungarian people for freedom – political, economic and social.
On the night of 23 October the Hungarian Communist Party leadership called on the Soviet troops stationed around the city to step in, and on 24 October Soviet tanks were already in front of the main government buildings. It is significant that in the early days of the uprising there were few clashes between the Soviet troops and the Budapest rebels whose fury was directed entirely against members of the State Protection Authority (AHV). They were beaten, hanged and lynched, sometimes with appalling violence. For example 25 people, mainly administrative staff, were killed during the siege of the Hungarian Workers’ Party headquarters on 30 October 1956.
It has to be said that growing involvement of the lower social strata of the Hungarian capital marred the initially pure image of the uprising. Hungarian school textbooks today claim that the uprising had full support of the population, which is not true. Most of the families, especially those with young children, preferred to hide and stay at home until the situation calmed down. The average citizens of Budapest did not care which side would win: all they wanted was for the unrest to end and life to go back to normal. They preferred the bleak life before the uprising to fratricidal war and total chaos.
The main slogans – restored independence, the fall of the dictatorship, political and economic reform – were put forward by Hungary’s intelligentsia while the people who fought on the barricades and in the by-streets of Budapest and later some other cities (Debrecen, Sopron, Gyor) belonged to a very different social stratum. They were mainly young people and unskilled workers. The average “revolutionary” was a working class male in the 18 to 30 age bracket. Hungary’s rural dwellers failed to respond to the uprising because, unlike the impoverished urban class, they had something to lose even though they generally resented the collectivization process.
Even so, the uprising had its political leaders, most notably Imre Nagy. Having learned Russian when he was a prisoner-of-war in Siberia (1916-1918) and later lived in Moscow for 14 years (1930-1944) during the Miklos Horthy dictatorship, Imre Nagy was an embodiment of liberal communism. As late as October 24, 1956 when he was appointed Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Hungarian People’s Republic and demonstrations had already begun, he railed against counter-revolutionaries, fascist-like reactionary elements in the streets. However, after several days of indecision and wavering, Imre Nagy took the side of the uprising.
On 27 October Imre Nagy formed a new government which, in addition to democratization in Hungary, promised an amnesty for all those who had joined the uprising. The early days of the new government saw active reorganization of the political system in Hungary and the introduction of the rebels’ demands into the government’s agenda. It has to be noted that these activities were agreed with the Soviet representatives in Hungary, with Ambassador Yuri Andropov and political advisers. The real stumbling block was the issue of Hungary’s neutral status. On 30 October the Soviet authorities were still saying they were willing to discuss troop withdrawal, but the following day the CC CPSU decided that the uprising was to be quashed as soon as possible. Most probably the scales were tipped in favour of a repeated military intervention when Imre Nagy during a meeting with A. Mikoyan and M. Suslov raised the issue of Hungary’s neutral status and withdrawal from the Warsaw Treaty Organisation.
The average citizens of Budapest did not care which side would win: all they wanted was for the unrest to end and life to go back to normal.
When he learned that a Red Army contingent was advancing Imre Nagy unilaterally, on 1 November, declared Hungary’s neutrality and withdrawal from the Warsaw Treaty. On 4 November the Soviet troops, as part of Operation Storm, moved into Budapest and established control over the capital within a week. More than 3,000 people died and some 200,000 fled (via Austria and Yugoslavia) because they were afraid of reprisals or simply did not want to live in the country on such terms. The majority of them moved to Western Europe and the USA. After a brief period of “screw-tightening” the new leader, Janos Kadar, embarked on building a regime of “gulyash communism” thus formally ending the 1956 Uprising.
The lessons of the uprising
Time Magazin - Man of the Year 1956 -
The Hungarian Freedom Fighter
Contrary to some claims, the Hungarian uprising was not a fascist mutiny and was not inspired by a particular ideology. Undoubtedly, it manifested above all the striving of the Hungarian people for freedom – political, economic and social— that merits respect, being a conscious protest against Stalinism as a form of exercising state power based on universal fear. The Hungarian uprising was not unique: the Poznan events that same year, mass unrest in Temirtau (1959), the shooting down of a demonstration in Novocherkassk (1962), etc. are all part of a string of manifestations of the disenchantment felt by the ordinary citizen in the socialist bloc counties.
Modern historians in Hungary pay scant attention to the role of the lumpen elements that took part in the 1956 uprising. On the eve of the uprising huge posters were put up all over Budapest of active non-political figures of the Revolution: Peter Mansfield, Ilona Tot, Gergely Pongracz and others. However, it is seldom mentioned that 15-year-old Peter Mansfeld who took part in the shootouts was a hoodlum who, after 1956, was a thief and a kidnaper. Ilona Tot was executed in 1957 for allegedly murdering a freight handler. Hungarian historians describe it as a show trial but they have little regard for the fact that the worker, whose name is known, was after all killed by somebody. This seems to suggest that murdering someone who served the communist authorities was something laudable.
Political elites will never be interested in an objective history of their own countries because it may mar the glorious highlights of national history. The Hungarian uprising of 1956 indeed carried a powerful charge aimed at normalising social life and ending total state control over the ordinary citizen. The feeling of frustration and discontent was articulated by the educated strata, but the intelligentsia did not take part in the fighting to which the events of October 1956 are often reduced. Who is to blame, as in the case of Ukrainian developments in 2013—2014, for the fact that the urban lumpen proletariat seized the initiative and hijacked the movement aimed at cleansing the country’s politics? Above all it is the power which tolerated the existence of these social strata.
The Hungarian Uprising of 1956 did leave a mark on the country’s history. Realising the need to improve people’s living conditions, the Communist Party of Hungary adopted a moderate form of socialism dubbed “gulyash communism.” The repressive apparatus was downsized while some social spheres –education, culture, healthcare and others – were in some ways liberalised and small private property owning was allowed. State policy issues were separated from ordinary life largely due to the pragmatism of Janos Kadar who knew that he would only last in power if he did not intrude into the personal sphere.
The 1956 Hungarian Uprising highlights the simple truth that it is impossible to ignore a nation’s desire to be independent. All the peoples are to some extent freedom-loving. And it is highly counter-productive to deprive them of a chance to give vent to their emotions even in a way that is formal and makes little difference to the political situation. At the same time it has to be remembered that an uprising cannot always be carried to its logical end, that is, improved living conditions, be it social or political. Now that all the citizens in the capitalist system have a hefty baggage of rights and duties from the legal point of view, it is much more difficult to eliminate the cause of discontent. Ukraine provides a striking illustration.
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