Hungarian Revolution of 1956
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The Hungarian Revolution of 1956
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (Hungarian: 1956-os forradalom) was
a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the Stalinist government of the
People's Republic of Hungary and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting
from 23 October until 10 November 1956.
The revolt began as a student demonstration which attracted thousands
as it marched through central Budapest to the Parliament building. A
student delegation entering the radio building in an attempt to
broadcast its demands was detained. When the delegation's release was
demanded by the demonstrators outside, they were fired upon by the State
Security Police (ÁVH) from within the building. The news spread quickly
and disorder and violence erupted throughout the capital.
The revolt spread quickly across Hungary, and the government fell.
Thousands organized into militias, battling the State Security Police (ÁVH)
and Soviet troops. Pro-Soviet communists and ÁVH members were often
executed or imprisoned, as former prisoners were released and armed.
Impromptu councils wrested municipal control from the ruling Hungarian
Working People's Party and demanded political changes. The new
government formally disbanded the ÁVH, declared its intention to
withdraw from the Warsaw Pact and pledged to re-establish free
elections. By the end of October, fighting had almost stopped and a
sense of normality began to return.
After announcing a willingness to negotiate a withdrawal of Soviet
forces, the Politburo changed its mind and moved to crush the
revolution. On 4 November, a large Soviet force invaded Budapest and
other regions of the country. Hungarian resistance continued until 10
November. Over 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet troops were killed in the
conflict, and 200,000 Hungarians fled as refugees. Mass arrests and
denunciations continued for months thereafter. By January 1957, the new
Soviet-installed government had suppressed all public opposition. These
Soviet actions alienated many Western Marxists, yet strengthened Soviet
control over Central Europe, reinforcing perceptions[attribution needed]
that communism was both irreversible and monolithic.
Public discussion about this revolution was suppressed in Hungary for
over 30 years, but since the thaw of the 1980s it has been a subject of
intense study and debate. At the inauguration of the Third Hungarian
Republic in 1989, October 23 was declared a national holiday.
Prelude
After World War II, the Soviet military occupied Hungary and
gradually replaced the elected coalition government led by the
Independent Smallholders, Agrarian Workers and Civic Party with a
Hungarian Communist Party dominated government. Radical nationalization
of the economy based on the Soviet model produced economic stagnation,
lower standards of living and a deep malaise. Writers and journalists
were the first to voice open criticism, publishing critical articles in
1955. By 22 October 1956, Technical University students had resurrected
the banned MEFESZ student union, and staged a demonstration on 23
October which set off a chain of events leading directly to the
revolution.
Postwar occupation
After World War II, Hungary fell under the Soviet sphere of
influence and was occupied by the Red Army. By 1949, the Soviets had
concluded a mutual assistance treaty with Hungary which granted the
Soviet Union rights to a continued military presence, assuring ultimate
political control.
Hungary began the postwar period as a free multiparty democracy, and
elections in 1945 produced a coalition government under Prime Minister
Zoltán Tildy. However, the Soviet-supported Communist Party, which had
received only 17% of the vote, constantly wrested small concessions in a
process named "salami tactics", which sliced away the elected
government's influence.
After the elections of 1945, the portfolio of the Interior Ministry,
under which the Hungarian State Security Police (Államvédelmi Hatóság,
later known as the ÁVH), was forcibly transferred from the Independent
Smallholders Party to a nominee of the Communist Party. The ÁVH employed
methods of intimidation, false accusations, imprisonment and torture, to
suppress political opposition. The brief period of multiparty democracy
came to an end when the Communist Party merged with the Social
Democratic Party to become the Hungarian Working People's Party, which
stood its candidate list unopposed in 1949. The People's Republic of
Hungary was then declared.
Political repression and economic decline
Hungary became a communist state under the severely authoritarian
leadership of Mátyás Rákosi. The Security Police (ÁVH) began a series of
purges of more than 7000 dissidents, who were denounced as "Titoists" or
"western agents", and forced to confess in show trials, after which they
were relocated to a camp in eastern Hungary.
From 1950 to 1952, the Security Police forcibly relocated thousands
of people to obtain property and housing for the Working People's Party
members, and to remove the threat of the intellectual and 'bourgeois'
class. Thousands were arrested, tortured, tried, and imprisoned in
concentration camps, deported to the east, or were executed, including
ÁVH founder László Rajk. In a single year, more than 26,000 people were
forcibly relocated from Budapest. As a consequence, jobs and housing
were very difficult to obtain. The deportees generally experienced
terrible living conditions and were impressed as slave labor on
collective farms. Many died as a result of the poor living conditions
and malnutrition.
The Rákosi government thoroughly politicized Hungary's educational
system in order to supplant the educated classes with a "toiling
intelligentsia". Russian language study and Communist political
instruction were made mandatory in schools and universities nationwide.
Religious schools were nationalized and church leaders were replaced by
those loyal to the government. In 1949 the leader of the Hungarian
Catholic Church, Cardinal József Mindszenty, was arrested and sentenced
to life imprisonment for treason. Under Rákosi, Hungary's government was
among the most repressive in Europe.
The postwar Hungarian economy suffered from multiple challenges.
Hungary agreed to pay war reparations approximating US$300 million, to
the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, and to support Soviet
garrisons. The Hungarian National Bank in 1946 estimated the cost of
reparations as "between 19 and 22 per cent of the annual national
income." In 1946, the Hungarian currency experienced marked
depreciation, resulting in the highest historic rates of hyperinflation
known. Hungary's participation in the Soviet-sponsored COMECON (Council
Of Mutual Economic Assistance), prevented it from trading with the West
or receiving Marshall Plan aid. Although national income per capita rose
in the first third of the 1950s, the standard of living fell. Huge
income deductions to finance industrial investment reduced disposable
personal income; mismanagement created chronic shortages in basic
foodstuffs resulting in rationing of bread, sugar, flour and meat.
Compulsory subscriptions to state bonds further reduced personal income.
The net result was that disposable real income of workers and employees
in 1952 was only two-thirds of what it had been in 1938, whereas in
1949, the proportion had been 90 per cent. These policies had a
cumulative negative effect, and fueled discontent as foreign debt grew
and the population experienced shortages of goods.
International events
On 5 March 1953, Joseph Stalin died, ushering in a period of
moderate liberalization during which most European communist parties
developed a reform wing. In Hungary, the reformist Imre Nagy replaced
Mátyás Rákosi, "Stalin's Best Hungarian Disciple", as Prime Minister.
However, Rákosi remained General Secretary of the Party, and was able to
undermine most of Nagy's reforms. By April 1955, he had Nagy discredited
and removed from office. After Khrushchev's "secret speech" of February
1956, which denounced Stalin and his protégés, Rákosi was deposed as
General Secretary of the Party and replaced by Ernő Gerő on 18 July
1956.
On 14 May 1955, the Soviet Union created the Warsaw Pact, binding
Hungary to the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Central and
Eastern Europe. Among the principles of this alliance were "respect for
the independence and sovereignty of states" and "noninterference in
their internal affairs".
In 1955, the Austrian State Treaty and ensuing declaration of
neutrality established Austria as a demilitarized and neutral country.
This raised Hungarian hopes of also becoming neutral and in 1955 Nagy
had considered "...the possibility of Hungary adopting a neutral status
on the Austrian pattern".
In June 1956, a violent uprising by Polish workers in Poznań was put
down by the government, with scores of protesters killed and wounded.
Responding to popular demand, in October 1956, the government appointed
the recently rehabilitated reformist communist Władysław Gomułka as
First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party, with a mandate to
negotiate trade concessions and troop reductions with the Soviet
government. After a few tense days of negotiations, on 19 October the
Soviets finally gave in to Gomułka's reformist demands. News of the
concessions won by the Poles—known as Polish October—emboldened many
Hungarians to hope for similar concessions for Hungary and these
sentiments contributed significantly to the highly charged political
climate that prevailed in Hungary in the second half of October 1956.
Social unrest builds
Rákosi's resignation in July 1956 emboldened students, writers
and journalists to be more active and critical in politics. Students and
journalists started a series of intellectual forums examining the
problems facing Hungary. These forums, called Petõfi circles, became
very popular and attracted thousands of participants. On 6 October 1956,
László Rajk, who had been executed by the Rákosi government, was
reburied in a moving ceremony which strengthened the party opposition,
and later that month, the reformer Imre Nagy was rehabilitated to full
membership in the Hungarian Working People's Party.
On 16 October 1956, university students in Szeged snubbed the
official communist student union, the DISZ, by re-establishing the
MEFESZ (Union of Hungarian University and Academy Students), a
democratic student organization, previously banned under the Rákosi
dictatorship. Within days, the student bodies of Pécs, Miskolc, and
Sopron followed suit. On 22 October, students of the Technical
University compiled a list of sixteen points containing several national
policy demands.[39] After the students heard that the Hungarian Writers’
Union planned on the following day to express solidarity with pro-reform
movements in Poland by laying a wreath at the statue of Polish-born
General Bem, a hero of Hungary's War of Independence (1848–49), the
students decided to organize a parallel demonstration of sympathy.
Soviet tanks in Budapest, 1956
Revolution
First shots
On the afternoon of 23 October 1956, approximately 20,000
protesters convened next to the Bem statue. Péter Veres, President of
the Writers’ Union, read a manifesto to the crowd, the students read
their proclamation, and the crowd then chanted the censored "National
Song", which refrains: "We vow, we vow, we will no longer remain
slaves." Someone in the crowd cut out the communist coat of arms from
the Hungarian flag, leaving a distinctive hole and others quickly
followed suit. Afterwards, most of the crowd crossed the Danube to join
demonstrators outside the Parliament Building. By 6 p.m., the multitude
had swollen to more than 200,000 people; the demonstration was spirited,
but peaceful.
At 8 p.m., First Secretary Ernő Gerő broadcast a speech condemning
the writers' and students' demands. Angered by Gerő's hard-line
rejection, some demonstrators decided to carry out one of their demands
- the removal of Stalin's 30-foot (9.1 m) high bronze statue that was
erected in 1951 on the site of a church, which was demolished to make
room for the Stalin monument. By 9:30 p.m. the statue was toppled and
jubilant crowds celebrated by placing Hungarian flags in Stalin's boots,
which was all that was left of the statue.
At about the same time, a large crowd gathered at the Radio Budapest
building, which was heavily guarded by the ÁVH. The flash point was
reached as a delegation attempting to broadcast their demands was
detained and the crowd grew increasingly unruly as rumors spread that
the protesters had been shot. Tear gas was thrown from the upper windows
and the ÁVH opened fire on the crowd, killing many. The ÁVH tried to
re-supply itself by hiding arms inside an ambulance, but the crowd
detected the ruse and intercepted it. Hungarian soldiers sent to relieve
the ÁVH hesitated and then, tearing the red stars from their caps, sided
with the crowd.[43][47] Provoked by the ÁVH attack, protesters reacted
violently. Police cars were set ablaze, guns were seized from military
depots and distributed to the masses and symbols of the communist regime
were vandalised.
Fighting spreads, government falls
During the night of 23 October, Hungarian Working People's Party
Secretary Ernő Gerő requested Soviet military intervention "to suppress
a demonstration that was reaching an ever greater and unprecedented
scale."[35] The Soviet leadership had formulated contingency plans for
intervention in Hungary several months before.[49] By 2 a.m. on 24
October, under orders of the Soviet defence minister, Soviet tanks
entered Budapest.
On 24 October, Soviet tanks were stationed outside the Parliament
building and Soviet soldiers guarded key bridges and crossroads. Armed
revolutionaries quickly set up barricades to defend Budapest, and were
reported to have already captured some Soviet tanks by mid-morning. That
day, Imre Nagy replaced András Hegedűs as Prime Minister. On the radio,
Nagy called for an end to violence and promised to initiate political
reforms which had been shelved three years earlier. The population
continued to arm itself as sporadic violence erupted. Armed protesters
seized the radio building. At the offices of the Communist newspaper
Szabad Nép unarmed demonstrators were fired upon by ÁVH guards who were
then driven out as armed demonstrators arrived. At this point, the
revolutionaries' wrath focused on the ÁVH; Soviet military units were
not yet fully engaged, and there were many reports of some Soviet troops
showing open sympathy for the demonstrators.
On 25 October, a mass of protesters gathered in front of the
Parliament Building. ÁVH units began shooting into the crowd from the
rooftops of neighboring buildings. Some Soviet soldiers returned fire on
the ÁVH, mistakenly believing that they were the targets of the
shooting. Supplied by arms taken from the ÁVH or given by Hungarian
soldiers who joined the uprising, some in the crowd started shooting
back.
The attacks at the Parliament forced the collapse of the government.
Communist First Secretary Ernő Gerő and former Prime Minister András
Hegedűs fled to the Soviet Union; Imre Nagy became Prime Minister and
János Kádár First Secretary of the Communist Party. Revolutionaries
began an aggressive offensive against Soviet troops and the remnants of
the ÁVH.
As the Hungarian resistance fought Soviet tanks using Molotov
cocktails in the narrow streets of Budapest, revolutionary councils
arose nationwide, assumed local governmental authority, and called for
general strikes. Public Communist symbols such as red stars and Soviet
war memorials were removed, and Communist books were burned. Spontaneous
revolutionary militias arose, such as the 400-man group loosely led by
József Dudás, which attacked or murdered Soviet sympathizers and ÁVH
members. Soviet units fought primarily in Budapest; elsewhere the
countryside was largely quiet. Soviet commanders often negotiated local
cease-fires with the revolutionaries. In some regions, Soviet forces
managed to quell revolutionary activity. In Budapest, the Soviets were
eventually fought to a stand-still and hostilities began to wane.
Hungarian general Béla Király, freed from a life sentence for political
offenses and acting with the support of the Nagy government, sought to
restore order by unifying elements of the police, army and insurgent
groups into a National Guard. A ceasefire was arranged on 28 October,
and by 30 October most Soviet troops had withdrawn from Budapest to
garrisons in the Hungarian countryside.
Interlude
Fighting had virtually ceased between 28 October and 4 November,
as many Hungarians believed that Soviet military units were indeed
withdrawing from Hungary.
The New Hungarian National Government
The rapid spread of the uprising in the streets of Budapest and
the abrupt fall of the Gerő-Hegedűs government left the new national
leadership surprised, and at first disorganized. Nagy, a loyal Party
reformer described as possessing "only modest political skills",
initially appealed to the public for calm and a return to the old order.
Yet Nagy, the only remaining Hungarian leader with credibility in both
the eyes of the public and the Soviets, "at long last concluded that a
popular uprising rather than a counter-revolution was taking place".
Calling the ongoing insurgency "a broad democratic mass movement" in a
radio address on 27 October, Nagy formed a government which included
some non-communist ministers. This new National Government abolished
both the ÁVH and the one-party system. Because it held office only ten
days, the National Government had little chance to clarify its policies
in detail. However, newspaper editorials at the time stressed that
Hungary should be a neutral, multiparty social democracy. Many political
prisoners were released, most notably Cardinal József Mindszenty.
Political parties which were previously banned, such as the Independent
Smallholders and the National Peasants' Party, reappeared to join the
coalition.
Local revolutionary councils formed throughout Hungary, generally
without involvement from the preoccupied National Government in
Budapest, and assumed various responsibilities of local government from
the defunct communist party. By 30 October, these councils had been
officially sanctioned by the Hungarian Working People's Party, and the
Nagy government asked for their support as "autonomous, democratic local
organs formed during the Revolution". Likewise, workers' councils were
established at industrial plants and mines, and many unpopular
regulations such as production norms were eliminated. The workers'
councils strove to manage the enterprise whilst protecting workers'
interests; thus establishing a socialist economy free of rigid party
control. Local control by the councils was not always bloodless; in
Debrecen, Győr, Sopron, Mosonmagyaróvár and other cities, crowds of
demonstrators were fired upon by the ÁVH, with many lives lost. The ÁVH
were disarmed, often by force, in many cases assisted by the local
police.
Soviet perspective
On 24 October, the Presidium of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (the Politburo) discussed the
political upheavals in Poland and Hungary. A hard-line faction led by
Molotov was pushing for intervention, but Khrushchev and Marshal Zhukov
were initially opposed. A delegation in Budapest reported that the
situation was not as dire as had been portrayed. Khrushchev stated that
he believed that Party Secretary Ernő Gerő's request for intervention on
23 October indicated that the Hungarian Party still held the confidence
of the Hungarian public. In addition, he saw the protests not as an
ideological struggle, but as popular discontent over unresolved basic
economic and social issues.
After some debate, the Presidium on 30 October decided not to remove
the new Hungarian government. Even Marshal Georgy Zhukov said: "We
should withdraw troops from Budapest, and if necessary withdraw from
Hungary as a whole. This is a lesson for us in the military-political
sphere." They adopted a Declaration of the Government of the USSR on the
Principles of Development and Further Strengthening of Friendship and
Cooperation between the Soviet Union and other Socialist States, which
was issued the next day. This document proclaimed: "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." Thus for a brief moment it looked like there
could be a peaceful solution.
On 30 October, armed protestors attacked the ÁVH detachment guarding
the Budapest Hungarian Working People's Party headquarters on
Köztársaság tér (Republic Square), incited by rumors of prisoners held
there, and the earlier shootings of demonstrators by the ÁVH in the city
of Mosonmagyaróvár. Over 20 AVH officers were killed, some of them
lynched by the mob. Hungarian army tanks sent to rescue the party
headquarters mistakenly bombarded the building. The head of the Budapest
party committee, Imre Mező, was wounded and later died. Scenes from
Republic Square were shown on Soviet newsreels a few hours later.
Revolutionary leaders in Hungary condemned the incident and appealed for
calm, and the mob violence soon died down, but images of the victims
were nevertheless used as propaganda by various Communist organs.
On 31 October the Soviet leaders decided to reverse their decision
from the previous day. There is disagreement among historians whether
Hungary's declaration to exit the Warsaw Pact caused the second Soviet
intervention. Minutes of the 31 October meeting of the Presidium record
that the decision to intervene militarily was taken one day before
Hungary declared its neutrality and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact.
However, some Russian historians who are not advocates of the Communist
era maintain that the Hungarian declaration of neutrality caused the
Kremlin to intervene a second time. Two days earlier, on 30 October,
when Soviet Politburo representatives Anastas Mikoyan and Mikhail Suslov
were in Budapest, Nagy had hinted that neutrality was a long-term
objective for Hungary, and that he was hoping to discuss this matter
with the leaders in the Kremlin. This information was passed on to
Moscow by Mikoyan and Suslov. At that same time, Khrushchev was in
Stalin's dacha, considering his options regarding Hungary. One of his
speechwriters later said that the declaration of neutrality was an
important factor in his subsequent decision to support intervention. In
addition, some Hungarian leaders of the revolution as well as students
had called for their country's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact much
earlier, and this may have influenced Soviet decision making.
Several other key events alarmed the Presidium and cemented the
interventionists' 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 pre-eminence of the
Soviet Communist Party in Eastern Europe and perhaps Soviet hegemony
itself. For the majority of the Presidium, the workers' direct control
over their councils without Communist Party leadership was incompatible
with their idea of socialism. At the time, these councils were, in the
words of Hannah Arendt, "the only free and acting soviets (councils) in
existence anywhere in the world".
The Presidium was concerned lest the West might perceive Soviet weakness
if it did not deal firmly with Hungary. On 1956-10-29, Israeli, British
and French forces invaded Egypt. Khrushchev reportedly remarked "We
should reexamine our assessment and should not withdraw our troops from
Hungary and Budapest. We should take the initiative in restoring order
in Hungary. If we depart from Hungary, it will give a great boost to the
Americans, English, and French—the imperialists. They will perceive it
as weakness on our part and will go onto the offensive... To Egypt they
will then add Hungary. We have no other choice."
Khrushchev stated that many in the communist 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 threats to Soviet influence in Eastern Europe. On 17 June 1953,
workers in East Berlin had staged an uprising, demanding the resignation
of the government of the German Democratic Republic. This was quickly
and violently put down with the help of the Soviet military, with 84
killed and wounded and 700 arrested. In June 1956, in Poznań, Poland, an
anti-government workers' revolt had been suppressed by the Polish
security forces with between 57 and 78 deaths and led to the
installation of a less Soviet-controlled government. Additionally, by
late October, unrest was noticed in some regional areas of the Soviet
Union: while this unrest was minor, it was intolerable.
Hungarian neutrality and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact represented a
breach in the Soviet defensive buffer zone of satellite nations. Soviet
fear of invasion from the West made a defensive buffer of allied states
in Eastern Europe an essential security objective.
The Presidium decided to break the de facto ceasefire and crush 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, Kádár 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, 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.
According to some sources, the Chinese leader Mao Zedong played an
important role in Khrushchev's decision to suppress the Hungarian
uprising. Chinese Communist Party Deputy Chairman Liu Shaoqi put
pressure on Khrushchev to send in troops to put down the revolt by
force. Although the relations between China and the Soviet Union had
deteriorated during the recent years, Mao's words still carried great
weight in the Kremlin, and they were frequently in contact during the
crisis. Initially Mao opposed a second intervention and this information
was passed on to Khrushchev on 30 October, before the Presidium met and
decided against intervention. Mao then changed his mind in favor of
intervention, but according to William Taubman it remains unclear when
and how Khrushchev learned of this and thus if it influenced his
decision on 31 October.
On 1 November to 3 November, Khrushchev left Moscow to meet with his
East-European allies and inform them of the decision to intervene. At
the first such meeting, he met with Władysław Gomułka in Brest. Then he
had talks with the Romanian, Czechoslovak, and Bulgarian leaders in
Bucharest. Finally Khrushchev flew with Malenkov to Yugoslavia, where
they met with Tito, who was vacationing on his island Brioni in the
Adriatic. The Yugoslavs also persuaded Khrushchev to choose János Kádár
instead of Ferenc Münnich as the new leader of Hungary.
International reaction
Although the United States Secretary of State recommended on 24
October that the United Nations Security Council convene to discuss the
situation in Hungary, little immediate action was taken to introduce a
resolution. Responding to the plea by 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 Soviet Union to end its Hungarian
intervention, but the newly constituted Kádár government rejected UN
observers.
The U.S. President, Dwight Eisenhower, was aware of a detailed study
of Hungarian resistance which recommended against U.S. military
intervention, and of earlier policy discussions within the National
Security Council which focused upon 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
to 1953.
During the uprising, the Radio Free Europe (RFE) 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 having misled the Hungarian
people that NATO or United Nations would intervene if the citizens
continued to resist.
Soviet intervention of 4 November
On 1 November, Imre Nagy received reports that Soviet forces had
entered Hungary from the east and were moving towards Budapest. Nagy
sought and received assurances from Soviet ambassador Yuri Andropov that
the Soviet Union would not invade, although Andropov knew otherwise. The
Cabinet, with János Kádár in agreement, declared Hungary's neutrality,
withdrew from the Warsaw Pact, and requested assistance from the
diplomatic corps in Budapest and the UN Secretary-General to defend
Hungary's neutrality. Ambassador Andropov was asked to inform his
government that Hungary would begin negotiations on the removal of
Soviet forces immediately.
On 3 November, a Hungarian delegation led by the Minister of Defense
Pál Maléter were invited to attend negotiations on Soviet withdrawal at
the Soviet Military Command at Tököl, near Budapest. At around midnight
that evening, General Ivan Serov, Chief of the Soviet Security Police (NKVD)
ordered the arrest of the Hungarian delegation, and the next day, the
Soviet army again attacked Budapest.
This second Soviet intervention, codenamed "Operation Whirlwind", was
launched by Marshal Ivan Konev. The five Soviet divisions stationed in
Hungary before 23 October were augmented to a total strength of 17
divisions. The 8th Mechanized Army under command of Lieutenant General
Hamazasp Babadzhanian and the 38th Army under command of Lieutenant
General Hadzhi-Umar Mamsurov from the nearby Carpathian Military
District were deployed to Hungary for the operation. Some rank-and-file
Soviet soldiers reportedly believed they were being sent to Berlin to
fight German fascists. By 9:30 p.m. on 3 November, the Soviet Army had
completely encircled Budapest.
At 3:00 a.m. on 4 November, Soviet tanks penetrated Budapest along
the Pest side of the Danube in two thrusts: one up the Soroksári road
from the south and the other down the Váci road from the north. Thus
before a single shot was fired, the Soviets had effectively split the
city in half, controlled all bridgeheads, and were shielded to the rear
by the wide Danube river. Armored units crossed into Buda and at 4:25
a.m. fired the first shots at the army barracks on Budaõrsi road. Soon
after, Soviet artillery and tank fire was heard in all districts of
Budapest. Operation Whirlwind combined air strikes, artillery, and the
coordinated tank-infantry action of 17 divisions. The Hungarian Army put
up sporadic and uncoordinated resistance. Although some very senior
officers were openly pro-Soviet, the rank and file soldiers were
overwhelmingly loyal to the revolution and either fought against the
invasion or deserted. The United Nations reported that there were no
recorded incidents of Hungarian Army units fighting on the side of the
Soviets.
At 5:20 a.m. on 4 November, Imre Nagy broadcast his final plea to the
nation and the world, announcing that Soviet Forces were attacking
Budapest and that the Government remained at its post. The radio
station, Free Kossuth Rádió, stopped broadcasting at 8:07 a.m. An
emergency Cabinet meeting was held in the Parliament building, but was
attended by only three Ministers. As Soviet troops arrived to occupy the
building, a negotiated evacuation ensued, leaving Minister of State
István Bibó as the last representative of the National Government
remaining at post. He wrote For Freedom and Truth, a stirring
proclamation to the nation and the world.
At 6:00 am on 4 November, in the town of Szolnok, János Kádár proclaimed
the "Hungarian Revolutionary Worker-Peasant Government". His statement
declared "We must put an end to the excesses of the
counter-revolutionary elements. The hour for action has sounded. We are
going to defend the interest of the workers and peasants and the
achievements of the people's democracy." Later that evening, Kádár
called upon "the faithful fighters of the true cause of socialism" to
come out of hiding and take up arms. However, Hungarian support did not
materialize; the fighting did not take on the character of an internally
divisive civil war, but rather, in the words of a United Nations report,
that of "a well-equipped foreign army crushing by overwhelming force a
national movement and eliminating the Government."
By 8:00 am organised defence of the city evaporated after the radio
station was seized, and many defenders fell back to fortified positions.
Hungarian civilians bore the brunt of the fighting, as Soviet troops
spared little effort to differentiate military from civilian targets.
For this reason, Soviet tanks often crept along main roads firing
indiscriminately into buildings. Hungarian resistance was strongest in
the industrial areas of Budapest, which were heavily targeted by Soviet
artillery and air strikes. The last pocket of resistance called for
ceasefire on 10 November. Over 2,500 Hungarians and 722 Soviet troops
had been killed and thousands more were wounded.
Soviet version of the events
Soviet reports of the events surrounding, during, and after were
remarkably consistent in their accounts, more so after the Second Soviet
intervention cemented support for the Soviet position amongst
international Communist Parties. Pravda published an account 36 hours
after the outbreak of violence, which set the tone for all further
reports and subsequent Soviet historiography:
On 23 October, the "honest" socialist Hungarians demonstrated against
mistakes made by the Rákosi and Gerő governments.
Fascist, Hitlerite, reactionary, counter-revolutionary hooligans
financed by the imperialist west took advantage of the unrest to stage a
counter-revolution.
The honest Hungarian people under Nagy appealed to Soviet (Warsaw Pact)
forces stationed in Hungary to assist in restoring order.
The Nagy government was ineffective, allowing itself to be penetrated by
counter-revolutionary influences, weakening then disintegrating, as
proven by Nagy's culminating denouncement of the Warsaw Pact.
Hungarian patriots under Kádár broke with the Nagy government and formed
a government of honest Hungarian revolutionary workers and peasants;
this genuinely popular government petitioned the Soviet command to help
put down the counter-revolution.
Hungarian patriots, with Soviet assistance, smashed the
counter-revolution.
The first Soviet report came out 24 hours after the first Western
report. Nagy's appeal to the United Nations was not reported. After Nagy
was arrested outside of the Yugoslav embassy, his arrest was not
reported. Nor did accounts explain how Nagy went from patriot to
traitor. The Soviet press reported calm in Budapest while the Western
press reported a revolutionary crisis was breaking out. According to the
Soviet account, Hungarians never wanted a revolution at all.
In January 1957, representatives of the Soviet Union, Bulgaria,
Hungary and Romania met in Budapest to review internal developments in
Hungary since the establishment of the Soviet-imposed government. A
communiqué on the meeting "unanimously concluded" that Hungarian
workers, with the leadership of the Kádár government and support of the
Soviet army, defeated attempts "to eliminate the socialist achievements
of the Hungarian people".
Soviet, Chinese and other Warsaw Pact governments urged Kádár to
proceed with interrogation and trial of former Nagy government
ministers, and asked for punitive measures against the“counter-revolutionists”.
In addition the Kádár government published an extensive series of "white
books" (The Counter-Revolutionary Forces in the October Events in
Hungary) documenting real incidents of violence against Communist Party
and AVH members, and the confessions of Nagy supporters. These white
books were widely distributed in several languages in most of the
socialist countries and, while based in fact, present factual evidence
with a colouring and narrative not generally supported by non-Soviet
aligned historians.
Aftermath
Hungary
In the immediate aftermath,many thousands of Hungarians were
arrested. Eventually, 26,000 of these were brought before the Hungarian
courts, 22,000 were sentenced, 13,000 imprisoned, and several hundreds
executed. Hundreds were also deported to the Soviet Union, many without
evidence. Approximately 200,000 fled Hungary as refugees. Former
Hungarian Foreign Minister Géza Jeszenszky estimated 350 were executed.
Sporadic armed resistance and strikes by workers' councils continued
until mid-1957, causing substantial economic disruption. By 1963, most
political prisoners from the 1956 Hungarian revolution had been
released.
With most of Budapest under Soviet control by 8 November, Kádár
became Prime Minister of the "Revolutionary Worker-Peasant Government"
and General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party. Few Hungarians
rejoined the reorganized Party, its leadership having been purged under
the supervision of the Soviet Presidium, led by Georgy Malenkov and
Mikhail Suslov. Although Party membership declined from 800,000 before
the uprising to 100,000 by December 1956, 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 Soviet troops
remained. After 1956 the Soviet Union severely purged the Hungarian Army
and reinstituted 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. Losonczy died while on a hunger strike in prison
awaiting trial when his jailers "carelessly pushed a feeding tube down
his windpipe." The remainder of the group was returned to Budapest in
1958. Nagy was executed, along with Pál Maléter and Miklós Gimes, after
secret trials in June 1958. Their bodies were placed in unmarked graves
in the Municipal Cemetery outside Budapest.
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. Because of poor
health and a request from the Vatican, he finally left the embassy for
Austria in September 1971.
International
Despite Cold War rhetoric by the West espousing a rollback of the
domination of Eastern Europe by the USSR, and Soviet promises of the
imminent triumph of socialism, national leaders of this period as well
as later historians saw the failure of the uprising in Hungary as
evidence that the Cold War in Europe had become a stalemate. The 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." The Secretary-General of NATO called the
Hungarian revolt "the collective suicide of a whole people". In a
newspaper interview in 1957, Khrushchev commented "support by United
States ... is rather in the nature of the support that the rope gives to
a hanged man."
In January 1957, United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld,
acting in response to UN General Assembly resolutions requesting
investigation and observation of the events in Soviet-occupied Hungary,
established the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary. The
Committee, with representatives from Australia, Ceylon (Sri Lanka),
Denmark, Tunisia and Uruguay, conducted hearings in New York, Geneva,
Rome, Vienna and London. Over five months, 111 refugees were interviewed
including ministers, military commanders and other officials of the Nagy
government, workers, revolutionary council members, factory managers and
technicians, communists and non-communists, students, writers, teachers,
medical personnel and Hungarian soldiers. Documents, newspapers, radio
transcripts, photos, film footage and other records from Hungary were
also reviewed, as well as written testimony of 200 other Hungarians. The
governments of Hungary and Romania refused the UN officials of the
Committee entry, and the government of the Soviet Union did not respond
to requests for information. The 268-page Committee Report was presented
to the General Assembly in June 1957, documenting the course of the
uprising and Soviet intervention, and concluding that the Kádár
government and Soviet occupation were in violation of the human rights
of the Hungarian people. A General Assembly resolution was approved,
deploring the repression of the Hungarian people and the Soviet
occupation, but no other action was taken.
Time magazine named the Hungarian Freedom Fighter its Man of the Year
for 1956. The accompanying Time article comments that this choice could
not have been anticipated until the explosive events of the revolution,
almost at the end of 1956. The magazine cover and accompanying text
displayed an artist's depiction of a Hungarian freedom fighter, and used
pseudonyms for the three participants whose stories are the subject of
the article. Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány referred to this
famous Time Man of the Year cover as "the faces of free Hungary" in a
speech to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1956 uprising. Prime Minister
Gyurcsány, in a joint appearance with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair,
commented specifically on the TIME cover itself, that "It is an
idealised image but the faces of the figures are really the face of the
revolutionaries"
At the Melbourne Olympics in 1956, the Soviet handling of the
Hungarian uprising led to a boycott by Spain, the Netherlands and
Switzerland. At the Olympic Village, the Hungarian delegation tore down
the Communist Hungarian flag and raised the flag of Free Hungary in its
place. A confrontation between Soviet and Hungarian teams occurred in
the semi-final match of the water polo tournament. The match was
extremely violent, and was halted in the final minute to quell fighting
amongst spectators. This match, now known as the "blood in the water
match", became the subject of several films. The Hungarian team won the
game 4-0 and later was awarded the Olympic gold medal. Several members
of the Hungarian Olympic delegation defected after the games.
The events in Hungary produced ideological fractures within the
Communist parties of Western Europe. Within the Italian Communist Party
(PCI) a split ensued: most ordinary members and the Party leadership,
including Palmiro Togliatti and Giorgio Napolitano, regarded the
Hungarian insurgents as counter-revolutionaries, as reported in l'Unità,
the official PCI newspaper. However Giuseppe Di Vittorio, chief of the
Communist trade union CGIL, repudiated the leadership position, as did
the prominent party members Antonio Giolitti, Loris Fortuna and many
other influential Communist intellectuals, who later were expelled or
left the party. Pietro Nenni, the national secretary of the Italian
Socialist Party, a close ally of the PCI, opposed the Soviet
intervention as well. Napolitano, elected in 2006 as President of the
Italian Republic, wrote in his 2005 political autobiography that he
regretted his justification of Soviet action in Hungary, and that at the
time he believed in Party unity and the international leadership of
Soviet communism. Within the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB),
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;
Fryer resigned from the paper upon his return, and was later expelled
from the communist party. In France, moderate communists, such as
historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, resigned, questioning the policy of
supporting Soviet actions by the French Communist Party. The French
philosopher and writer Albert Camus wrote an open letter, The Blood of
the Hungarians, criticizing the West's lack of action. Even Jean-Paul
Sartre, still a determined communist, criticised the Soviets in his
article Le Fantôme de Staline, in Situations VII.
Commemoration
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
Fiftieth anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. US Secretary of
State Rice commented on the contributions made by 1956 Hungarian
refugees to the United States and other host countries, as well as the
role of Hungary in providing refuge to East Germans during the 1989
protests against communist rule. US President George W. Bush also
visited Hungary on 22 June 2006, to commemorate the fiftieth
anniversary.
On June 16, 1989, the 30th anniversary of his execution, Imre Nagy's
body was reburied with full honors. The Republic of Hungary was declared
in 1989 on the 33rd anniversary of the Revolution, and 23 October is now
a Hungarian national holiday.
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