Encyclopedia
The
1956 Hungarian Revolution, also known as the
Hungarian Uprising or simply the
Hungarian Revolt, was an anti-Soviet revolt in
Hungary lasting from 23 October to 4 November 1956. Political changes in the post-Stalinist Soviet Union, nationalist movements in the socialist parties of eastern Europe, and social unrest due to poor economic conditions created conditions for a popular uprising.
On 23 October 1956 a student march demanding liberalization of social and economic policies attracted thousands of Hungarians. The students had drawn up a list of fourteen points, which they attempted to persuade state broadcasting authorities to let them read on the air. They were admitted into the broadcasting station but, once inside, were forcibly detained and not permitted to broadcast their petition. In the ensuing protest for the students' release, the state security forces inside the broadcasting house opened fire on the unarmed crowd on the street outside.
Within days, large numbers of Hungarians were participating in or supporting the revolt. The attack on the protesters on the night of 23 October had proved the spark that ignited violent conflict between the Hungarian State Protection Authority and the revolutionaries. Soviet troops stationed in Hungary supported the in trying to supress the uprising. The collapse of the government of András Hegedus and the rapid ministerial changes this caused lead to a negotiated ceasefire between the Hungarian Freedom Fighters and the Soviet forces on 1 November. The revolt achieved control over the
Hungarian Communist Party, most social institutions and a large amount of territory. The participants began to implement their own policies, re-establishing multiparty rule and ousting the previous hard-line government ministers. Workers' councils established control over factories and mines, and assumed functions previously reserved for communist party bureaucrats. Executions of pro-Soviet communists, and ÁVH members started, especially by ultra-nationalist groups. The Hungarian Communist Party made
Imre Nagy Prime Minister. After negotiating a ceasefire with Soviet forces in Hungary, Nagy declared his intention to withdraw Hungary from the
Warsaw Pact.
The Presidium of the Soviet Communist Party became alarmed at events in Hungary, and encouraged
János Kádár to form a new pro-
Warsaw Pact government on 3 November. Nominally invited by Kádár's "Revolutionary Worker-Peasant Government", on the night of 4 November the Soviet army intervened a second time. Soviet forces unleashed an artillery barrage and airstrikes in a multi-divisional offensive against Budapest, crushing the uprising by 10 November. In the wake of the Soviet invasion, mass arrests of dissidents began, and around 200,000 Hungarians fled to Austria. By January 1957 Kádár had brought the instability to an end. The suppression of the revolution caused fractures within the communist parties of Western Europe, and some disillusioned members left or were expelled. Due to the rapid change in government and social policies, and the use of armed force to achieve political goals, this uprising is often considered a
revolution.
Prelude to the uprising
Occupation and repression
Following World War II, Hungary became part of the Soviet sphere of influence under the Potsdam Agreement. Soviet troops had remained in Hungary since 1944; first as an invading army and occupation force, then at the nominal invitation of the Hungarian government, and finally as required by their membership in the Warsaw Pact. A coalition government chosen by a free election in 1945 was forced by Soviet Marshal
Kliment Voroshilov to yield several key posts to the
Hungarian Communist Party , which had only polled 17% of the vote. Interior Minister and MKP member László Rajk established the State Protection Authority , a Hungarian secret police unit and extension of the Soviet Union's
NKVD, that suppressed or eliminated opposition religious, nationalist, and democratic groups. After this brief period of multiparty
democracy, the MKP, now called the
Hungarian Workers' Party after absorbing other political parties, ran its candidates unopposed in 1949. Hungary was transformed into a
communist state, the
People's Republic of Hungary , under the dictatorship of
Mátyás Rákosi. Controlled by Rákosi and Erno Gero, the State Protection Authority began a series of purges from 1948-1953. Dissident Party members were denounced as “
Titoists” and “western agents” and forced to recant in show trials. Thousands of Hungarians were arrested for political opposition, tortured, tried, then imprisoned in ÁVH-run
concentration camps or executed . Hatred for the ruling MDP elite, the ÁVH, and Soviet occupiers was reflected in 16 demands made by student demonstrators as the uprising erupted on 23 October, including evacuation of all Soviet troops, removal of the MDP leadership and release of political prisoners.
Economic stagnation
As an ally of
Nazi Germany, Hungary agreed to pay war reparations of about US$300 million over 6 years to the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia after
World War II, and to pay support for Soviet garrisons. Due to postwar inflation, the
Hungarian National Bank in 1946 estimated the cost of reparations at "$500 to $584 million a year, ... between 19 and 22 per cent of the present national income." Moreover, Hungary was dependent on the Soviet Union through the
COMECON , and was prevented from trading with the
West or receiving
Marshall Plan aid to revitalise the Hungarian economy. Partially due to looting and Soviet seizure of industrial assets as reparations, post-war Hungarian manufacturing output fell to one-third of pre-war levels. The Hungarian currency, the pengo, experienced substantial
depreciation, as post-war Hungary suffered the worst documented
hyperinflation in history. In the early 1950's, a Soviet-style planned economy was implemented by the Rákosi government: agriculture was collectivized, with farm profits taken to expand state-owned heavy industry. Manipulation of wage controls and different pricing systems for producers and consumers fueled discontent as foreign debt grew and Hungarians experienced shortages.
Post-Stalinist liberalization
On March 5, 1953,
Josef Stalin died, leaving a power vacuum at the top of the
Soviet Union and ushering in a brief period of
destalinization - in which some anti-Stalin sentiment was tolerated. Most European communist parties began to develop a reformist wing. Rákosi was forced to yield the position of prime minister to reformist
Imre Nagy in 1953, although Rákosi remained as General Secretary of the MKP. Rákosi's power was further undermined by a speech made by
Nikita Khrushchev in February 1956. He denounced the policies of Josef Stalin and his proteges in Eastern Europe, claiming that the show trials were unjust. On July 18, 1956, Mátyás Rákosi - "Stalin's Best Hungarian Disciple" - was forced to resign as General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party, and was replaced by Erno Gero.
In October 1956, the Polish reformist Wladyslaw Gomulka was rehabilitated and elected as head of the Polish Communist Party. Gomulka's reinstatement inspired hope in Hungary for greater reforms and increased autonomy. Support for Gomulka's new Polish regime and several weeks of student unrest in Budapest culminated in the 23 October march to the statue of the Polish general
Józef Bem, a hero from the Hungarian revolt of 1848.
International events
On 9 May 1955, the entry of West Germany into the
NATO alliance was described as "a decisive turning point in the history of our continent" by Halvard Lange, Foreign Minister of Norway at the time. Seen as a threat by the
Soviet Union, a counter-alliance, the
Warsaw Pact, was created on 14 May 1955 by the
Soviet Union and its satellite states in response. Ironically, one of the principles of this
Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance was "respect for the independence and sovereignty of states, and also ... noninterference in their internal affairs".
On May 15, 1955, the
Austrian State Treaty was signed, ending the Allied occupation of
Austria, and establishing the country as independent, and demilitarized. As a direct result, on October 26, 1955 Austria formally declared its neutrality. This treaty and declaration significantly changed the calculus of cold war military planning because they established a neutral cordon splitting
NATO from Vienna to Geneva, and increased the strategic importance of Hungary's location to the Warsaw Pact.
In July 1956, President
Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt nationalized the
Suez Canal, an oil-shipping lifeline for Western Europe and the United States, and largely owned by British banks and businesses. The British Prime Minister,
Sir Anthony Eden, claimed that a display of force was needed to prevent Nasser becoming an expansionist military threat. Between July and October 1956, unsuccessful initiatives encouraged by the United States were made to reduce the tensions. A secret alliance between Israel, France and Britain planned that Israel should invade Egypt and that Britain and France would subsequently intervene to secure the Canal. The
attack occurred on October 29, 1956, leaving the United States and other western allies limited justification in criticizing the Soviet Union's military intervention in Hungary, while not restraining the actions of two principal European allies.
Social unrest
Upon coming to power in 1949, the Rákosi government had radically changed Hungary's system of education, seeking to replace the educated class with a "toiling intelligentsia". Mandatory study of the Russian language and communist doctrine took place in schools and universities. Religious teaching in schools was denounced and church leaders were purged and replaced by those loyal to the government. In 1949 the leader of the Hungarian Catholic Church,
József Cardinal Mindszenty, was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment for treason.
After Rákosi's resignation in July of 1956, students, writers and journalists became more critical and active in politics. Students, assisted by the Writers’ Union, started so-called Petofi circles , a series of intellectual forums examining the problems facing Hungary, which grew to be attended by thousands. In October 1956, the remains of László Rajk, György Pálffy , Tibor Szonyi and András Szalai, all executed in 1949 by the Rákosi regime for treason, were reinterred with full honors. In the middle of October,
Imre Nagy had his membership in the MDP restored.
On 16 October, university students of
Szeged declared the communist DISZ to be irrelevant and re-established the MEFESZ , a democratic student organization, set up in 1946, and later suppressed by the government. Within days, the student bodies of
Pécs,
Miskolc, and
Sopron followed. Finally, on 22 October, students of the Building Industry Technological University joined in the movement, presenting sixteen demands to the government and planning a protest march to the Petofi and Bem statues in central Budapest for 23 October. By 6 p.m. between 200,000 and 300,000 people had gathered. Repeated calls for Imre Nagy eventually summoned the former minister, and he addressed the crowd briefly from a balcony of the Parliament Building.
At about 8 p.m., Erno Gero, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Workers' Party, gave a speech via radio, condemning the popular demands and dismissing the demonstrators as a reactionary mob. In an angry response, a large crowd gathered at the
Radio Budapest building, which was guarded by the Hungarian Security Police . The turning point occurred shortly after 9 p.m. As students sent a delegation into the building to negotiate with the director, tear gas was thrown from the upper windows and the ÁVH opened fire on the crowds, killing many. As a result, pretenses of moderation were dropped: police cars were flipped over and set on fire; guns were seized from gun shops and military depots, and distributed amongst the masses by arms factory and arsenal workers. The headquarters of the Hungarian Security Police was besieged by the crowd. Authorities tried to resupply ÁVH personnel with arms, hiding them inside an ambulance, but the crowd intercepted it and removed the arms within.
By 9:30 p.m., crowds tore down the statue of Stalin in central Budapest and placed the Hungarian flag in what remained of Stalin's boots. Later that evening, at the radio station in Budapest, the student organizers with the help of armed volunteers and Hungarian soldiers overran the ÁVH and captured the radio station.
23 October to 4 November
First Soviet intervention
On 23 October, the Soviet Union activated contingency plans which had existed since early October 1956 for a police action intervention into Hungary's internal situation. The Presidium of the Soviet Party had been concerned with the internal situation in Hungary from April, when they heard of
Rákosi's plans to eliminate a large number of intellectuals. Rákosi was forced to step down, but Soviet concerns grew over autumn, as Rákosi's replacement, Erno Gero, lost control of his party.
As the protests widened, Hungarian Communist Party Secretary Erno Gero and the Soviet Embassy in Budapest requested intervention by Soviet troops "to suppress a demonstration that was reaching an ever greater and unprecedented scale." With the tacit approval of the Presidium,
Georgy Zhukov, the Soviet defense minister, gave orders to occupy Budapest on 23 October, using forces already stationed in Hungary. These Soviet soldiers had become more accustomed to the Hungarian way of life. Their traditional mission was to defend the Soviet Union from
NATO invasion. This first intervention was politically confused: for example, when a column of tanks encountered a protest march on the Parliament, the tanks accompanied protesters.
On 25 October, Soviet tanks guarding the Parliament building in support of the ÁVH opened fire on unarmed demonstrators. Hundreds died, and the incident forced replacement of Erno Gero by
János Kádár as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party. Gero and the former Prime Minister, András Hegedus, fled Hungary for the Soviet Union.
Hungarian resistance fighters disabled Soviet tanks using
Molotov cocktails in the narrow streets of Budapest. All over the country, Revolutionary Workers' Councils arose and called for a general strike. Symbols such as
red stars and Soviet war memorials were destroyed. Other Communist symbols, books, and files were burned. Pro-Soviet communists, and ÁVH members were attacked or murdered, especially by ultra-nationalists such as József Dudás. While Soviet troops fought in Budapest, the rest of the country was largely quiet. Soviet commanders often negotiated local cease-fires with the revolutionaries. In some regions, the Soviet forces managed to halt revolutionary activity. In Budapest, the Soviet troops were eventually fought to a stand-still and hostilities began to wane. A ceasefire was arranged on 28 October and by 30 October, most Soviet troops had pulled out of Budapest and into the countryside.
Internal political changes
On 24 October, the Politburo of the Hungarian Communist Party met and added several new members, some of whom were openly critical of the Party, including dissenting Party members and journalists.
Imre Nagy replaced András Hegedus as Prime Minister, and appealed for order and an end to the violence. Many of Nagy's previous supporters now denounced him as a traitor, mistakenly thinking that he, not the hardline Party Secretary Erno Gero and the former Prime Minister Hegedus, had declared a state of emergency and ordered Soviet troops into action. However, it soon became clear that Nagy opposed Soviet intervention. On 27 October, Nagy formed a government, added some non-communist ministers, and abolished the ÁVH and the one-party system.
Political changes put forward during the revolution established that "democratic socialism" should be the basis of the Hungarian political structure, and that such social achievements as the land reform were to be safeguarded. Many political prisoners were released including major church figures such as
József Cardinal Mindszenty. Political parties which were banned in 1945-1949, such as the Smallholders' Party and the
Social Democrats, reappeared and joined a coalition government.
Several trade-centered worker's councils and regional national councils were formed, which were much like the independent Russian soviets of 1905 or 1917, to replace the collapsing communist party structure. Unpopular regulations such as production norms were eliminated, resented as being unfair to workers and an indication of secret trade agreements for the benefit of the Soviet Union. Without opposition, these Councils took over the various responsibilities of local government, the army, government departments, and the radio and communications operations. At industrial plants and mines their goal was to participate in managing the enterprise and protecting workers' interests. The Councils restored order and reorganized the Hungarian economy on a socialist basis, but free of rigid party control.
Soviet political reaction
On 24 October, a meeting of the Presidium of the Soviet Communist Party was held to discuss the political protests in Poland and Hungary. A report from a delegation from the Presidium visiting Budapest reported that the situation was not as dire as had been portrayed.
Khrushchev stated that he believed that the Hungarian Party's request for intervention on 23 October indicated that Nagy held the confidence of the Party, and that the Hungarian Party still held the confidence of the Hungarian public. In addition, he saw the protests not as an ideological struggle, rather because basic economic and social issues had not been resolved.
Although it is widely believed that Hungary's declaration to exit the Warsaw Pact caused the Soviet military to crush the Revolution, minutes of the 31 October meeting of the Presidium of the Soviet Party indicate that this declaration was only one of several contributing factors. Although a hardline faction around
Molotov was pushing for intervention,
Khrushchev and
Zhukov were initially opposed to intervention. After some debate, the Presidium decided not to remove the new Hungarian government.
Soon however, several key tendencies alarmed the Presidium and cemented the hardline position:
- Simultaneous movements towards multiparty parliamentary democracy, and a democratic national council of workers, which could lead towards a capitalist state. Both movements challenged the preeminence of the Soviet Communist Party in Eastern Europe and perhaps Soviet hegemony itself. For the majority of the Presidium, the instances of workers' control in Hungary were incompatible with their idea of socialism and needed to be stamped out. This policy of the Soviet Union was later explained by the Brezhnev Doctrine, which stated "When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries." It was later denounced by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988.
- With the Western powers involved in the Suez invasion, the Presidium was concerned with a perception of weakness by the Soviet Union in dealing with a regional uprising within the Eastern Bloc. Referring to France, Britain and the United States, Khrushchev reportedly stated "To Egypt, they will then add Hungary."
- Khrushchev stated that members of the Soviet party would not understand a failure to respond with force in Hungary. De-Stalinization had alienated the more conservative elements of the Party, who were alarmed at unrest in Eastern Europe. On June 17, 1953, workers in East Berlin staged an uprising, demanding the resignation of the East German Communist government. This was quickly and violently put down with the help of the Soviet military. The death toll was between 125 and 270. In June 1956, in Poznan, Poland, an anti-Communist workers' revolt was suppressed by the Polish Army with 74 deaths. Additionally, by late October, unrest was noticed in some regional areas of the European Soviet Union: while this unrest was minor, it was intolerable.
- Hungarian neutrality and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact represented a threat to the Soviet defensive and ideologic buffer zone of satellite nations. Soviet international relations in central Europe were not only dictated by a desire for empire, but by a fear of invasion from the West. These fears were deeply rooted in Soviet foreign policy: back to the civil war and the war against Poland in the 1920s. However, it was the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, when the Hungarian state was an ally of Germany's, that cemented the Soviet concept of a necessary defensive buffer of allied states in central Europe.
With this combination of political and foreign policy considerations, the Presidium decided to break the de facto ceasefire and eliminate the Hungarian revolution. The plan was to declare a "Provisional Revolutionary Government" under
János Kádár, who would appeal for Soviet assistance to restore order. According to witnesses, Mr. Kadar was in Moscow in early November and he was in contact with the Soviet embassy while still a member of the Nagy government. Delegations were sent to other Communist governments in Eastern Europe and China, and to
Tito in Yugoslavia, seeking to avoid a regional conflict, and
propaganda messages prepared for broadcast as soon as the second Soviet intervention had begun. To disguise these intentions, Soviet diplomats were to engage the Nagy government in talks discussing the withdrawal of Soviet forces. On 31 October,
Pravda was a leading newspaper [i] of the Soviet Union [i] and an official organ of the Central Committee [i] ...
announced "The Soviet Government is prepared to enter into the appropriate negotiations with the government of the Hungarian People's Republic and other members of the Warsaw Treaty on the question of the presence of Soviet troops on the territory of Hungary".
At a Cabinet meeting on 1 November, Imre Nagy received reports that major Soviet forces had entered Hungary from the east and were moving towards Budapest. Nagy sought and received assurances from
Yuri Andropov, then Soviet ambassador to Hungary, that the Soviet Union would not violently crush the revolution, although Andropov knew otherwise. The Cabinet, with János Kádár present and in agreement, declared Hungary's neutrality and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, and requested from the diplomatic corps in Budapest and the UN Secretary-General that the major powers help in defending Hungary's neutrality. Ambassador Andropov was asked to inform his government that Hungary would begin negotiations on the removal of Soviet forces immediately.
International reaction
Although US Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles recommended on 24 October that the UN
Security Council be convened to discuss the situation in Hungary, little immediate action was taken to introduce a resolution. Engaged by the looming
Suez crisis, Dulles declared on 27 October: "We do not look upon these nations as potential military allies." Responding to a request by Imre Nagy at the time of the second massive Soviet intervention on 4 November, the Security Council resolution critical of Soviet actions was vetoed by the Soviet Union. The General Assembly, by a vote of 50 in favor, 8 against and 15 abstentions, called on the USSR to end its Hungarian intervention, but the newly constituted Kádár government rejected UN observers.
Dulles and US President
Dwight Eisenhower were aware of a detailed study of Hungarian resistance, recommending against US military intervention, and policy discussions within the National Security Council in July 1956 focusing on encouraging discontent in Soviet satellite nations only by economic policies and political rhetoric. In a 1998 interview, Hungarian Ambassador Géza Jeszenszky was critical of Western inaction in 1956, citing the influence of the United Nations at that time and giving the example of
UN intervention in Korea from 1950-53.
During the uprising, the Radio Free Europe Hungarian-language programs broadcast news of the political and military situation, as well as appealing to Hungarians to fight the Soviet forces, including tactical advice on resistance methods. After the Soviet suppression of the revolution, RFE was criticized for misleading the Hungarian people that NATO or United Nations intervention would come if the citizens continued to resist.
Revolution crushed - 4 November to 10 November
A Hungarian delegation, led by the Minister of Defense Pál Maléter, was attending negotiations on Soviet withdrawal at the Soviet Military Command at Tököl, near Budapest, on the evening of 3 November. At around midnight, General Ivan Serov, Chief of the Soviet Security Police ordered the arrest of the Hungarian delegation.
The second Soviet intervention in Hungary, codenamed "Operation Whirlwind", was launched by Marshall
Ivan Konev on 1 November by redeployment of Soviet troops. The five Soviet divisions stationed in the country before 23 October were augmented for a campaign to begin 4 November by three army corps . The new Soviet troops, who shared no sympathy for the Hungarians, were allocated from Soviet national reserves as far away as Central Asia, and other Warsaw Pact countries did not supply troops. To a minor extent this Soviet intervention was assisted by the ÁVH, reorganized by the Kádár government as a militia.
This intervention, unlike the intervention of 23 October, did not rely on unsupported tank columns penetrating dense urban areas. The 4 November intervention was built around a combined arms strategy of air strikes, artillery bombardments, and coordinated tank-infantry actions by some 2,500 tanks penetrating core urban areas. Hungarian MP Imre Mécs said more tanks were used by the Soviets than the Germans used to invade the USSR in World War II. While the Hungarian Army put up an uncoordinated resistance, it was working class Hungarians, organised by their councils, who played the key role in fighting the Soviet troops. Due to the strength of working class resistance, it was the industrial and proletarian areas of Budapest which were primarily targeted by Soviet artillery and airstrikes. These actions continued in an improvised manner until the workers' councils, students and intellectuals called for a ceasefire on 10 November. 2,500 Hungarian rebels and 720 Soviet troops were killed and thousands more were wounded.
10 November onwards
Hungary
Between 10 November and 19 December the workers' councils negotiated directly with the occupying Soviet forces. While they achieved some releases of political prisoners, they did not achieve their aims of a Soviet withdrawal. Thousands of Hungarians were arrested, imprisoned and deported by Soviet troops to prisons in the Soviet Union, many without proper arrest documents or evidence that they participated in fighting the Soviet intervention. Some 200,000 Hungarians fled to Austria or Yugoslavia as mass arrests started. Approximately 26,000 were put on trial by the Kádár government, and of those 13,000 were imprisoned. CIA documents in the 1960s reported approximately 1,200 executions, although in a recent interview, Hungarian Ambassador Géza Jeszenszky estimated about 350 were executed. Although Party membership declined from 800,000 before the uprising to 100,000 by December 1956, János Kádár steadily increased his control over Hungary and neutralized dissenters. The new government attempted to enlist support by espousing popular principles of Hungarian self-determination voiced during the uprising, but a garrison of Soviet troops remained. After 1956 the Soviet Union practically
disbanded the Hungarian People's Army and reinstituted a program of purges and political indoctrination in the units that remained. In May 1957, the Soviet Union increased its troop levels in Hungary and by treaty Hungary accepted the Soviet presence on a permanent basis.
The Red Cross and the Austrian Army established refugee camps in Traiskirchen and
Graz. Imre Nagy along with
Georg Lukács, Géza Losonczy and László Rajk's widow, Júlia, took refuge in the Embassy of Yugoslavia as Soviet forces overran Budapest. Despite assurances of safe passage out of Hungary by the Soviets and the Kádár government, Nagy and his group were arrested when attempting to leave the embassy on 22 November and taken to Romania. Returned to Budapest in 1958, Nagy was executed, along with Pál Maléter and Miklós Gimes, after secret trials in June 1958, their bodies placed in unmarked graves in the Municipal Cemetery outside Budapest. In 1989, after the fall of the Kádár government, Nagy's body was reburied with full honors.
By 1963 most political prisoners from the 1956 Hungarian revolution had been released. During the November 1956 Soviet assault on Budapest, Cardinal Mindszenty was granted political asylum at the United States embassy, where he lived for the next 15 years, refusing to leave Hungary unless the government reversed his 1949 conviction for treason. Due to poor health and a request from the Vatican, he finally left the embassy for Austria in September 1971.
After the fall of the communist regime, the Republic of Hungary was declared on the 33rd anniversary of the Revolution, 23 October 1989. Today this day is a
national holiday in Hungary.
International
The events in Hungary reinforced the inability of the Western alliance to roll back Soviet domination during the height of the
Cold War, fearing retaliation by Warsaw Pact forces along their borders. Soviet action had clearly shown that, regardless of national ambitions of the
Warsaw Pact client nations, armed force would be used to maintain regimes that reflected Soviet-style communism. Heinrich von Brentano, Foreign Minister of West Germany, recommended that the people of Eastern Europe be discouraged from "taking dramatic action which might have disastrous consequences for themselves."
NATO Secretary-General
Paul-Henri Spaak called the Hungarian revolt "the collective suicide of a whole people".
At the
Melbourne Olympics, the Soviet handling of the Hungarian uprising led to a boycott by Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerland. A confrontation between Soviet and Hungarian teams occurred in the semi-final game of the
water polo tournament; the match was
extremely violent. The match was called off in the final minute to quell fighting amongst spectators. Some members of the Hungarian Olympic delegation defected after the games.
The brutal suppression in Hungary by the Soviet forces produced ideological fractures within the Communist Parties of Western Europe.
Giorgio Napolitano, elected in 2006 as
President of the Italian Republic, was a leader of the
Italian Communist Party in 1956. Napolitano wrote in his 2005 political autobiography that he regrets his justification of Soviet action in Hungary, at the time widely criticised by the PCI-dominated Italian trade unions, but he believed at the time in Party unity and the international leadership of Soviet communism. Napolitano has agreed to attend the 50 year commemoration in October 2006, resulting in protests by veterans of the 1956 anticommunist uprising. Within the
Communist Party of Great Britain , dissent that began with the repudiation of
Stalinism by John Saville and E.P. Thompson, influential historians and members of the Communist Party Historians Group, culminated in a loss of thousands of party members as events unfolded in Hungary. Peter Fryer, correspondent for the CPGB newspaper
The Daily Worker, reported accurately on the violent suppression of the uprising, but his dispatches were heavily censored; Freyer was fired and his party membership revoked upon his return. In France, moderate communists, such as historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie resigned, questioning the policy of supporting Soviet actions by the
Parti communiste français.
In December 1991, the preamble of the treaties with the dismembered Soviet Union, under
Mikhail Gorbachev, and Russia represented by
Boris Yeltsin, apologized officially for the 1956 Soviet actions in Hungary. This apology was repeated by Yeltsin in 1992 during a speech to the Hungarian parliament.
On 13 February, 2006, the
US State Department commemorated the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
Causes
Economic collapse and low standards of living provoked working class discontent, which was visible during soccer riots. Peasants were unhappy with land policies. The Communist Party was unable to unite its reformist and
Stalinist wings. Journalists and authors were upset with their working conditions, and took control of their
trade union. Students were upset with academic conditions and University entrance criteria and established independent student unions.
Nikita Khrushchev's speech on the Soviet government under Stalin caused much debate within the elite of the Hungarian Communist Party. As it was blinded by leadership debates, the population took action. istorical debate
The historical and political significance of the Hungarian revolution of 1956 is still actively debated. The main views on the nature of the revolution are:
- That it was a socialist and democratic revolution aiming to create a more open socialist society like Yugoslavia, or a social democratic
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Social democracy is a political ideology [i] that emerged in the late 19th [i] a...
society like Sweden, or perhaps a new and different kind of socialist system, a system controlled by the people and workers as it was originally intended. This view was popular among reformist communists and is popular among democratic socialists, Trotskyists and others.
- That it was a spontaneous revolution with a broad intention of establishing political self-determination within existing social contexts, particularly in terms of an alignment of Central European states. This view is popular in Hungary itself and Central Europe. This view can involve reading the Hungarian Revolution as the result of similar forces to those which lead to Wladyslaw Gomulka's rise in Poland, allowing a comparison of Soviet reaction to two similar occurrences.
- That it was a libertarian socialist and anarchist revolution aiming to create a new kind of society modelled on the Hungarian workers' councils. This view is popular amongst libertarian communists, council communists, anarchists, and some Trotskyists.
- That it was a parliamentary-democratic revolution with the key intentions of establishing political independence from the Soviet Union, a closer relationship with Western Europe and the United States, and reintroducing parliamentary capitalism in a Western European form. This view is popular in the USA, and to a lesser extent in Hungary and Central Europe. Despite this view's continued popularity with various publics, its historical credibility has waned over time, particularly outside of the USA. It has been primarily been replaced by the views detailed in the second paragraph above amongst professional historians. Much like the fifth paragraph of historiography below, this history was primarily created in a context of Cold War propaganda between the United States and the Soviet Union. The propagation of this view was heavily supported by CIA front organisations until the mid-1960s.
- That it was a clerical and fascist attempt to restore a Horthyite or Arrow Cross government and a semi-feudal capitalist economy. This view was popular with Soviet Union and Chinese aligned Communist Parties, and is present in many primary sources discussing the revolution, for example, in the Hungarian Government's White Book series . However, it has little credibility amongst professional historians in the West, primarily due to the fact that all accounts on the 1956 events were subject to censorship in Hungary continuously until 1989. Much like the fourth paragraph above, this history was a result of Cold War propaganda and was primarily supported by the institutions of Soviet-aligned states. In recent years some of the attention paid to this view to the reprisals against Stalinist Hungarians and ÁVO/ÁVH officials has received attention by serious scholars, admittedly with different conclusions.
Due to the variety of conflicting and irreconcilable historiographical positions on the Hungarian revolution of 1956, it is difficult to produce a summary account of revolutionary events. Similarly, because the revolution was short lived, it is nearly impossible to speculate on what its effects might have been, if successful.
Notes
References
- United Nations: Report of the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary, General Assembly, Official Records, Eleventh Session, Supplement No. 18 , New York, 1957
Further reading
External links
;Historical collections
- A Hungarian language site providing historical photos and documents, books and reviews, and links to English language sites.
- A Scribner research anthology of written sources on the Hungarian Revolt, edited by Richard Lettis and William I. Morris. Documents include radio broadcasts, newspaper and magazine articles, and portions of books on the revolt.
- Historic front pages from Hungarian newspapers, June to December 1956.
;Published accounts
- An eyewitness account by Peter Fryer, correspondent for the British Communist Party's newspaper, The Daily Worker.
- Andy Anderson's pamphlet, written in 1964 and originally published by Solidarity , about events of the Hungarian uprising of 1956, focusing on Hungarian demands for economic and political self-management.
- by Norma Prendiville, Militant Irish Monthly . Account of the uprising emphasizing its socialist roots and the workers' councils.
- Published in the 1980s as No.1 in a series of Council Communist pamphlets, emphasizing the events of 1956 as a Hungarian workers' uprising.
;Commemorations
- The website of the international conference to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The conference will review the events of the 1950's era, based on the personal experience of those who left Hungary after the revolution, who found a new home in other countries, and have contributed to their development.
- A resource for Hungarian-American organizations to highlight and promote their 1956 Hungarian Revolution commemoration activities, including 1956 photos, videos, resources, and events across the US.
- A multimedia project for the celebration of Hungarian life & culture with a focus on the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and its aftermath.
