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The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (23 October – 10 November 1956; hu, 1956-os forradalom), also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was a countrywide revolution against the government of the
Hungarian People's Republic
The Hungarian People's Republic ( hu, Magyar Népköztársaság) was a one-party socialist state from 20 August 1949
to 23 October 1989.
It was governed by the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, which was under the influence of the Soviet Uni ...
(1949–1989) and the Hungarian domestic policies imposed by the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
(USSR).
The Hungarian Revolution began on 23 October 1956 in Budapest
Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...
when university students appealed to the civil populace to join them at the Hungarian Parliament Building
The Hungarian Parliament Building ( hu, Országház , which translates to "House of the Country" or "House of the Nation"), also known as the Parliament of Budapest after its location, is the seat of the National Assembly of Hungary, a notable l ...
to protest against the USSR's geopolitical domination of Hungary with the Stalinist government of Mátyás Rákosi
Mátyás Rákosi (; born Mátyás Rosenfeld; 9 March 1892
– 5 February 1971) was a Hungarian . A delegation of students entered the building of
– 5 February 1971) was a Hungarian . A delegation of students entered the building of
Hungarian Radio Hungarian may refer to:
* Hungary, a country in Central Europe
* Kingdom of Hungary, state of Hungary, existing between 1000 and 1946
* Hungarians, ethnic groups in Hungary
* Hungarian algorithm, a polynomial time algorithm for solving the assignm ...
to broadcast their sixteen demands for political and economic reforms to the civil society of Hungary, but they were instead detained by security guards. When the student protestors outside the radio building demanded the release of their delegation of students, policemen from the ÁVH ( Államvédelmi Hatóság) state protection authority shot and killed several protestors.
Consequently, Hungarians organized into revolutionary militia
A militia () is generally an army or some other fighting organization of non-professional soldiers, citizens of a country, or subjects of a state, who may perform military service during a time of need, as opposed to a professional force of r ...
s to fight against the ÁVH; local Hungarian communist leaders and ÁVH policemen were captured and summarily killed or lynched
Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an ex ...
; and anti-communist political prisoners were released and armed. To realize their political, economic, and social demands, the local soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...
s (councils of workers) assumed control of municipal government from the Hungarian Working People's Party
The Hungarian Working People's Party (, abbr. MDP) was the ruling communist party of Hungary from 1948 to 1956.
It was formed by a merger of the Hungarian Communist Party (MKP) and the Social Democratic Party of Hungary (MSZDP).Neubauer, John, a ...
(). The new government of Imre Nagy
Imre Nagy (; 7 June 1896 – 16 June 1958) was a Hungarian communist politician who served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers (''de facto'' Prime Minister) of the Hungarian People's Republic from 1953 to 1955. In 1956 Nagy became leader ...
disbanded the ÁVH, declared the Hungarian withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact (WP) or Treaty of Warsaw, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republic ...
, and pledged to re-establish free elections. By the end of October the intense fighting had subsided.
Although initially willing to negotiate the withdrawal of the Soviet Army
uk, Радянська армія
, image = File:Communist star with golden border and red rims.svg
, alt =
, caption = Emblem of the Soviet Army
, start_date ...
from Hungary, the USSR repressed the Hungarian Revolution on 4 November 1956, and fought the Hungarian revolutionaries until 10 November; repression of the Hungarian Uprising killed 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet Army soldiers, and compelled 200,000 Hungarians to seek political refuge abroad.
Background
Second World War
During theSecond World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
(1939–1945), the Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed for nearly a millennium, from the Middle Ages into the 20th century. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the coronation of the first king Stephen ...
(1920–1946) was a member of the Axis powers
The Axis powers, ; it, Potenze dell'Asse ; ja, 枢軸国 ''Sūjikukoku'', group=nb originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis, was a military coalition that initiated World War II and fought against the Allies. Its principal members were ...
– in alliance with Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
, Fascist Italy, the Kingdom of Romania
The Kingdom of Romania ( ro, Regatul României) was a constitutional monarchy that existed in Romania from 13 March ( O.S.) / 25 March 1881 with the crowning of prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen as King Carol I (thus beginning the Romanian ...
, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria
The Tsardom of Bulgaria ( bg, Царство България, translit=Tsarstvo Balgariya), also referred to as the Third Bulgarian Tsardom ( bg, Трето Българско Царство, translit=Treto Balgarsko Tsarstvo, links=no), someti ...
. In 1941, the Royal Hungarian Army
The Royal Hungarian Army ( hu, Magyar Királyi Honvédség, german: Königlich Ungarische Armee) was the name given to the land forces of the Kingdom of Hungary (1920–1946), Kingdom of Hungary in the period from 1922 to 1945. Its name was inher ...
participated in the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia
The invasion of Yugoslavia, also known as the April War or Operation 25, or ''Projekt 25'' was a German-led attack on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers which began on 6 April 1941 during World War II. The order for the invasion was p ...
(6 April 1941) and in Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named after ...
(22 June 1941), the invasion of the USSR. In the event, by 1944, the Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...
were ''en route'' to the Kingdom of Hungary, after first having repelled the Royal Hungarian Army and the armies of the other Axis Powers from the territory of the USSR.
Fearful of the Red Army's occupation of the Kingdom of Hungary, the royal Hungarian government unsuccessfully sought an armistice with the Allies, to which betrayal of the Axis, the Nazis launched Operation Margarethe
Operation Margarethe (''Unternehmen Margarethe'') was the occupation of Hungary by German Nazi troops during World War II that was ordered by Adolf Hitler.
Course of events
Hungarian Prime Minister Miklós Kállay, who had been in office from ...
(12 March 1944) to establish the Nazi Government of National Unity
A national unity government, government of national unity (GNU), or national union government is a broad coalition government consisting of all parties (or all major parties) in the legislature, usually formed during a time of war or other nati ...
of Hungary; despite those politico-military efforts, the Red Army defeated the German and the Hungarian Nazis in late 1944. On 10 February 1947, a Paris peace treaty
The Paris Peace Treaties (french: Traités de Paris) were signed on 10 February 1947 following the end of World War II in 1945.
The Paris Peace Conference lasted from 29 July until 15 October 1946. The victorious wartime Allied powers (princi ...
confirmed the military defeat of Nazi Hungary and stipulated the USSR's right to a military occupation of Hungary.
Soviet occupation
At the end of the Second World War (1939–1945), the Kingdom of Hungary was in the geopoliticalsphere of influence
In the field of international relations, a sphere of influence (SOI) is a spatial region or concept division over which a state or organization has a level of cultural, economic, military or political exclusivity.
While there may be a formal al ...
of the USSR. In the political aftermath of the War, Hungary was a multiparty democracy
In political science, a multi-party system is a political system in which multiple political parties across the political spectrum run for national elections, and all have the capacity to gain control of government offices, separately or in coal ...
, in which the 1945 Hungarian parliamentary election
Parliamentary elections were held in Hungary on 4 November 1945. Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) ''Elections in Europe: A data handbook'', p899 They came at a turbulent moment in the country's history: World War II had had a devastating imp ...
produced a coalition government composed of Independent Smallholders, Agrarian Workers and the Civic Party, headed by Prime Minister Zoltán Tildy
Zoltán Tildy (; 18 November 1889 – 3 August 1961), was an influential leader of Hungary, who served as prime minister from 1945 to 1946 and president from 1946 until 1948 in the post-war period before the seizure of power by Soviet-backed com ...
. Nonetheless, on behalf of the USSR, the Hungarian Communist Party
The Hungarian Communist Party ( hu, Magyar Kommunista Párt, abbr. MKP), known earlier as the Party of Communists in Hungary ( hu, Kommunisták Magyarországi Pártja, abbr. KMP), was a communist party in Hungary that existed during the interwar ...
continually used salami tactics
Salami slicing tactics, also known as salami slicing, salami tactics, the salami-slice strategy, or salami attacks, is the practice of using a series of many small actions to produce a much larger action or result that would be difficult or unlawf ...
to wrest minor political concessions, which continually diminished the political authority of the coalition government – despite the Communist Party only having received 17 percent the votes in the parliamentary election of 1945.UN General Assembly ''Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary'' (1957)
After the election in 1945, control of the State Protection Authority
The State Protection Authority ( hu, Államvédelmi Hatóság, ÁVH) was the secret police of the People's Republic of Hungary from 1945 to 1956. The ÁVH was conceived as an external appendage of the Soviet Union's KGB in Hungary responsible ...
(''Államvédelmi Hatóság'', ÁVH) was transferred from the Independent Smallholders Party of the coalition government to the Hungarian Communist party. The ÁVH repressed non‑communist political opponents with intimidation
Intimidation is to "make timid or make fearful"; or to induce fear. This includes intentional behaviors of forcing another person to experience general discomfort such as humiliation, embarrassment, inferiority, limited freedom, etc and the victi ...
and false accusations, imprisonment and torture
Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. Some definitions are restricted to acts c ...
. The brief, four‑year period of multi-party democracy ended when the Hungarian Social Democratic Party
The Social Democratic Party of Hungary ( hu, Magyarországi Szociáldemokrata Párt, MSZDP) is a social democratic political party in Hungary. Historically, the party was dissolved during the occupation of Hungary by Nazi Germany (1944–1945) ...
merged with the Communist Party and became the Hungarian Working People's Party
The Hungarian Working People's Party (, abbr. MDP) was the ruling communist party of Hungary from 1948 to 1956.
It was formed by a merger of the Hungarian Communist Party (MKP) and the Social Democratic Party of Hungary (MSZDP).Neubauer, John, a ...
, whose candidate stood unopposed in the 1949 Hungarian parliamentary election
Parliamentary elections were held in Hungary on 15 May 1949. Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) ''Elections in Europe: A data handbook'', p899 The Hungarian Independent People's Front, an umbrella group created that February to replace the Na ...
. Afterwards, on 20 August 1949, the Hungarian People's Republic
The Hungarian People's Republic ( hu, Magyar Népköztársaság) was a one-party socialist state from 20 August 1949
to 23 October 1989.
It was governed by the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, which was under the influence of the Soviet Uni ...
was proclaimed and established as a socialist state, with whom the USSR then concorded the COMECON
The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (, ; English abbreviation COMECON, CMEA, CEMA, or CAME) was an economic organization from 1949 to 1991 under the leadership of the Soviet Union that comprised the countries of the Eastern Bloc along wi ...
treaty of mutual assistance, which allowed stationing troops of Red Army soldiers in Hungary.
Based upon the economic model of the USSR, the Hungarian Working People's Party established the socialist economy
Socialist economics comprises the economic theories, practices and norms of hypothetical and existing socialist economic systems. A socialist economic system is characterized by social ownership and operation of the means of production that may t ...
of Hungary with the nationalization
Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately-owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to pri ...
of the means of production
The means of production is a term which describes land, labor and capital that can be used to produce products (such as goods or services); however, the term can also refer to anything that is used to produce products. It can also be used as an ...
and of the natural resources of the country. Moreover, by 1955, the relatively free politics of Hungary allowed intellectual
An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection about the reality of society, and who proposes solutions for the normative problems of society. Coming from the world of culture, either as a creator or a ...
s and journalists to freely criticise the social and economic policies of the Rákosi government. In that vein of relative political freedom, on 22 October 1956, students from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics
The Budapest University of Technology and Economics ( hu, Budapesti Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem or in short ), official abbreviation BME, is the most significant university of technology in Hungary and is considered the world's oldes ...
had reestablished the MEFESZ Students' union
A students' union, also known by many other names, is a student organization present in many colleges, universities, and high schools. In higher education, the students' union is often accorded its own building on the campus, dedicated to social, ...
, which the Rákosi government earlier had banned for their politically incorrect politics.Crampton, R. J. (2003). ''Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century–and After'', p. 295. Routledge: London. .
Stalinist Hungary
Initially, theHungarian People's Republic
The Hungarian People's Republic ( hu, Magyar Népköztársaság) was a one-party socialist state from 20 August 1949
to 23 October 1989.
It was governed by the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, which was under the influence of the Soviet Uni ...
was a socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
state headed by the Communist government of Mátyás Rákosi
Mátyás Rákosi (; born Mátyás Rosenfeld; 9 March 1892
– 5 February 1971) was a Hungarian (r. 1947–1956), a
In 1949, the Rákosi government arrested, tortured and convicted Cardinal
". The Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution (2003). Retrieved 27 August 2006. Besides paying for the Red Army occupation of socialist Hungary, the Hungarians also paid
Economic Policy and Performance, 1945–1985
Retrieved 27 August 2006.
– 5 February 1971) was a Hungarian (r. 1947–1956), a
Stalinist
Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory o ...
who was beholden to the USSR. To ensure ideological compliance within his Stalinist government, Rákosi used the ÁVH (State Protection Authority
The State Protection Authority ( hu, Államvédelmi Hatóság, ÁVH) was the secret police of the People's Republic of Hungary from 1945 to 1956. The ÁVH was conceived as an external appendage of the Soviet Union's KGB in Hungary responsible ...
) to purge 7,000 politically incorrect " Titoists" and "Trotskyists
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a re ...
" from the Communist Party of Hungary
The Hungarian Communist Party ( hu, Magyar Kommunista Párt, abbr. MKP), known earlier as the Party of Communists in Hungary ( hu, Kommunisták Magyarországi Pártja, abbr. KMP), was a communist party in Hungary that existed during the interwar ...
, for being "Western agents" whose participation in the Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...
(1936–1939) interfered with Stalin's long-term plans for world Communism
World communism, also known as global communism, is the ultimate form of communism which of necessity has a universal or global scope. The long-term goal of world communism is an unlimited worldwide communist society that is classless (lacking ...
.Tőkés, Rudolf L. (1998). ''Hungary's Negotiated Revolution: Economic Reform, Social Change and Political Succession'', p. 317. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Among the Stalinist governments of the Eastern Bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
, the Rákosi government of the Hungarian People's Republic was most repressive of political, sexual, and religious minorities.
In 1949, the Rákosi government arrested, tortured and convicted Cardinal József Mindszenty
József Mindszenty (; 29 March 18926 May 1975) was a Hungarian cardinal of the Catholic Church who served as Archbishop of Esztergom and leader of the Catholic Church in Hungary from 1945 to 1973. According to the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', ...
in a show trial for treason
Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...
against Hungary, for collaboration
Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most ...
with Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
in the Holocaust in Hungary
The Holocaust in Hungary was the dispossession, deportation, and systematic murder of more than half of the Hungarian Jews, primarily after the German occupation of Hungary in March 1944.
At the time of the German invasion, Hungary had a Jewis ...
– the religious persecution of Hungarian Jews, and the political persecutions of Hungarian communists and of Hungarian anti-Nazis.
Political repression
In the 1950–1952 period, the ÁVH forcibly relocated more than 26,000 non-communist Hungarians, and confiscated their housing for members of the Communist Party of Hungary, and so eliminate the political threats posed by the nationalist and anti-communistintelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the in ...
s and by the local bourgeoisie
The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. They ...
. According to their particular politics, anti-communist Hungarians were either imprisoned in concentration camps
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...
or were deported to the USSR or were killed, either summarily or after a show trial
A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal the presentation of both the accusation and the verdict to the public so th ...
; the victims included the communist politician László Rajk
László Rajk (8 March 1909 – 15 October 1949) was a Hungarian Communist politician, who served as Minister of Interior and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was an important organizer of the Hungarian Communists' power (for example, organizi ...
, the minister of the interior who established the ÁVH secret police. Gati describes "the most gruesome forms of psychological and physical torture... The reign of terror f the Rákosi government
F, or f, is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ef'' (pronounced ), and the plural is ''efs''.
Hist ...
turned out to be harsher, and more extensive than he reign of terror
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
in any of the other Soviet satellite ountriesin Central and Eastern Europe." In the post-communist period, the fact-finding commission, ''Törvénytelen szocializmus'' (Lawless Socialism), reported that "between 1950 and early 1953, the courts dealt with 650,000 cases f political crimes of whom 387,000 or 4 percent of the population were found guilty." (Budapest, Zrínyi Kiadó/Új Magyarország, 1991, p. 154).
The Rákosi government politicised the education system with a ''toiling intelligentsia'' who would assist in the Russification of Hungary; thus the study of Russian language and communist political instruction were mandatory at school and at university; religious schools were nationalized and church leaders replaced with communist officials.
Economic decline
In the early 1950s, the Rákosi government's socialist economics increased the per capita income of the Hungarian people, yet their standard of living diminished because of the compulsory financial contributions towards theindustrialisation
Industrialisation ( alternatively spelled industrialization) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial society. This involves an extensive re-organisation of an econo ...
of Hungary, which reduced the disposable and discretionary income
Disposable income is total personal income minus current income taxes. In national accounts definitions, personal income minus personal current taxes equals disposable personal income. Subtracting personal outlays (which includes the major c ...
of individual Hungarian workers. That poor economy was further diminished by the bureaucratic mismanagement of resources, which caused shortages of supplies, and the consequent rationing of bread and sugar, flour and meat, et cetera. The net result of those economic conditions, was that the Hungarian workers' disposable income in 1952 was two-thirds of the disposable income of Hungarian workers in 1938.Transformation of the Hungarian economy". The Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution (2003). Retrieved 27 August 2006. Besides paying for the Red Army occupation of socialist Hungary, the Hungarians also paid
war reparations
War reparations are compensation payments made after a war by one side to the other. They are intended to cover damage or injury inflicted during a war.
History
Making one party pay a war indemnity is a common practice with a long history.
R ...
(US$300 million) to the USSR, to the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, ČSSR, formerly known from 1948 to 1960 as the Czechoslovak Republic or Fourth Czechoslovak Republic, was the official name of Czechoslovakia from 1960 to 29 March 1990, when it was renamed the Czechoslovak ...
, and to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, commonly referred to as SFR Yugoslavia or simply as Yugoslavia, was a country in Central and Southeast Europe. It emerged in 1945, following World War II, and lasted until 1992, with the breakup of Yug ...
. In 1946, the Hungarian National Bank
The Hungarian National Bank ( hu, Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB)) is the central bank of Hungary and as such part of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). The Hungarian National Bank was established in 1924 and succeeded the Royal Hungarian St ...
reported that the cost of war reparations was "between 19 and 22 per cent of the annual national income" of Hungary, an onerous national expense aggravated by the hyperinflation
In economics, hyperinflation is a very high and typically accelerating inflation. It quickly erodes the real value of the local currency, as the prices of all goods increase. This causes people to minimize their holdings in that currency as t ...
consequent to the post-war depreciation
In accountancy, depreciation is a term that refers to two aspects of the same concept: first, the actual decrease of fair value of an asset, such as the decrease in value of factory equipment each year as it is used and wear, and second, the a ...
of the Hungarian pengő
The pengő (; sometimes written as ''pengo'' or ''pengoe'' in English) was the currency of Kingdom of Hungary (1920–46), Hungary between 1 January 1927, when it replaced the Hungarian korona, korona, and 31 July 1946, when it was replaced by the ...
. Moreover, participation in the Soviet-sponsored Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON
The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (, ; English abbreviation COMECON, CMEA, CEMA, or CAME) was an economic organization from 1949 to 1991 under the leadership of the Soviet Union that comprised the countries of the Eastern Bloc along wi ...
) prevented direct trade with the countries of the West, and also prevented the Hungarian People's Republic from receiving American financial aid through the Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe. The United States transferred over $13 billion (equivalent of about $ in ) in economic re ...
(1948). Socially, the imposition of Soviet-style economic policies and the payment of war reparations angered the peoples of Hungary, whilst the cumulative effects of economic austerity fuelled anti-Soviet political discontent as the payment of foreign debt took precedence over the material needs of the Hungarian people.Library of Congress: Country Studies: Hungary, Chapter Economic Policy and Performance, 1945–1985
Retrieved 27 August 2006.
International events
De–Stalinization
On 5 March 1953, the death ofStalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...
allowed the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) to proceed with the de-Stalinization
De-Stalinization (russian: десталинизация, translit=destalinizatsiya) comprised a series of political reforms in the Soviet Union after the death of long-time leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, and the thaw brought about by ascension ...
of the USSR, which was a relative liberalisation of politics that afterwards allowed most European communist parties and the communist parties of the Warsaw Pact to develop a reformist wing – within the structures of the Philosophy of Marxism and orders from Moscow. Hence, the reformist communist Imre Nagy
Imre Nagy (; 7 June 1896 – 16 June 1958) was a Hungarian communist politician who served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers (''de facto'' Prime Minister) of the Hungarian People's Republic from 1953 to 1955. In 1956 Nagy became leader ...
became prime minister (1953–55) of the Hungarian People's Republic, in replacement of the Stalinist Mátyás Rákosi
Mátyás Rákosi (; born Mátyás Rosenfeld; 9 March 1892
– 5 February 1971) was a Hungarian (1946–56), whose heavy-hand style of communist government had proved counter-productive to the interests of the USSR in Hungary. Despite not being prime minister of Hungary, Rákosi remained politically powerful as the General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party, and so undermined many of the Nagy government's political and socio-economic reforms; by 18 April 1955 Rákosi had so discredited Nagy that the USSR deposed Nagy as head-of-state of Socialist Hungary. Three months of plotting and conspiring rid Rákosi and the Hungarian Communist Party of Imre Nagy, who was reduced to a political non-person. On 14 April Prime Minister Imre Nagy was stripped of his Hungarian Communist Party offices and functions, and was sacked as prime minister on 18 April. Despite having been out of political favour with the USSR since January 1955, Nagy had refused to perform the requisite communist penance of ' self criticism', and refused to resign as PM of Hungary. In February 1956, as the First Secretary of the CPSU, Nikita Khrushchev initiated the
Sixteen Political, Economic, and Ideological Points, Budapest, 22 October 1956
Retrieved 22 October 2006. The
p. 145, para 441. Retrieved 11 April 2007.
At 20:00 hrs, the first secretary of the Hungarian Working People's Party,
"New Evidence on Soviet Decision-making and the 1956 Polish and Hungarian Crises" (PDF)
, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, p. 368.The Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution: Part 3
/ref> The anti-communists killed more than 20 ÁVH officers and ÁVH conscripts; the head of the Budapest party committee, Imre Mező, also was killed. Within hours, news reportage and filmed scenes of the Hungarian anti-communist revolt that occurred in Republic Square were broadcast in the USSR; and the CPSU made propaganda of the images of the communist victims of the Hungarian Revolt. The leaders of the Hungarian Revolution condemned the attack upon the ÁVH headquarters and asked the protestors to cease and desist from mob violence. On 30 October, at Budapest,
. Retrieved 6 December 2008. * Simultaneous political movements towards multi-party, parliamentary democracy, and a democratic national council of workers might "lead towards a capitalist state" in Hungary and Poland, each movement challenged the authority of communist parties in eastern Europe. * The militarists in the CPSU would not understand the USSR's failure to intervene in Hungary. That destalinisation, de-Stalinisation had alienated the hardline members of the CPSU, for whom anti-communist protests threatened Soviet hegemony in eastern Europe. That the workers' uprising in East Germany (17 June 1953) – the repression of which killed 84 protestors and produced 700 anti-communist prisoners – required a new Communist government for the
On 24 October 1956, U.S. Secretary of State
Cold War Chat (transcript)
Retrieved 8 November 1998. Moreover, the study ''Hungary, 1956: Reviving the Debate over U.S. (In)action During the Revolution'' confirms that the Eisenhower government did not intervene to the Hungarian Revolution – which occurred in the Soviet sphere of influence – because the USSR would have responded with a nuclear war.
Communiqué on the Meeting of Representatives of the Governments and the Communist and Workers' Parties of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and the Soviet Union
(Budapest, 6 January 1957), Retrieved 7 December 2008 The Soviet, Chinese, and Warsaw Pact governments urged Kádár to proceed with the interrogation and trial of the ministers of the Nagy government, 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'') that documented real incidents of violence against Communist Party and ÁVH members and the confessions of Nagy's supporters. The "white books" were widely distributed in several languages in most socialist countries and, while based in fact, they present factual evidence with a colouring and narrative that are not generally supported by non-Soviet-aligned historians.
British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reports on Nagy reburial with full honors. Retrieved 13 October 2006. During the November 1956 Soviet assault on Budapest,
Online
* Gyáni, Gábor. "Memory and discourse on the 1956 Hungarian revolution". ''Europe-Asia Studies'' 58.8 (2006): 1199–1208. * Gyáni, Gábor. "Revolution, uprising, civil war: the conceptual dilemmas of 1956". ''European Review of History'' – ''Revue européenne d'histoire''. 15.5 (2008): 519–531
Online
* Heller, Ágnes, and Ferenc Fehér. ''Hungary 1956 Revisited: The Message of a Revolution-a Quarter of a Century After'' (George Allen and Unwin, 1983). * Mark, James. "Antifascism, the 1956 Revolution and the politics of communist autobiographies in Hungary 1944–2000". ''Europe-Asia Studies'' 58.8 (2006): 1209–1240
Online
* Nyyssönen, Heino, and Jussi Metsälä. "Building on legacy and tradition: commemorations of 1956 in Hungary". ''National Identities'' 21.4 (2019): 379–393
Online
In the Line of Fire: New Archival Evidence on the Soviet Intervention in Hungary, 1956
''Carl Beck Paper'', no. 1307 (1999). * Haraszti-Taylor, Eva, ed. ''The Hungarian Revolution of 1956: A Collection of Documents from the British Foreign Office'' (Nottingham: Astra Press, 1995). * Michael Korda, Korda, Michael. ''Journey to a Revolution: A Personal Memoir and History of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956''. Harper Perennial (2006). * Lasky, Melvin J. ''The Hungarian Revolution; a White Book: The Story of the October Uprising As Recorded in Documents, Dispatches, Eye-Witness Accounts, and World-Wide Reactions'' (Books for Libraries Press, 1970). * Lomax, William, ed. ''Hungarian Workers' Councils in 1956'' (East European Monographs, 1990). * Nagy, Imre. ''On Communism: In Defense of the New Course'' (Praeger, 1957). * * United Nations: ''Report of the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary'', General Assembly, Official Records, Eleventh Session, Supplement No. 18 (A/3592), New York, 1957
"The Hungarian Revolution-Uprising, Budapest 1956"
1956 Hungarian Revolution Collection
of the
Institute of Revolutionary History, Hungary
A Hungarian language site providing historical photos and documents, books and reviews, and links to English language sites.
OSA Digital Archive
Videos of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
Universal Pictures and Warner Pathé newsreels regarding the revolution
"On this day 4 November 1956: Soviet troops overrun Hungary"
(Accessed 12 October 2006) – BBC reports on the first day of the second Soviet intervention and the fall of the Nagy government.
at marxists.org
Hungary '56
Andy Anderson's pamphlet, written in 1964 and originally published by
The 1956 Hungarian revolution and the Soviet bloc countries: reactions and repercussions
(MEK)
Hungary, 1956: Reviving the Debate over U.S. (In)action during the Revolution
published by the
''Freedom's Fury''
The 2005 documentary film depicting events surrounding the Hungarian–Soviet confrontation in the Olympic water polo tournament, now known as the "blood in the water match". Narrated by Mark Spitz, produced by Lucy Liu and Quentin Tarantino.
''Torn from the flag''
Documentary film 2007. The significant global effects of the Hungarian revolution of 1956.
''Freedom Dance''
Multi award-winning animated documentary produced by Steven Thomas Fischer and Craig Herron. The film retells the escape of Edward and Judy Hilbert from Communist Hungary during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The film is narrated by Golden Globe-winning actress
The 1956 Portal
– 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 United States
– personal stories of survival and escape from participants in the revolution
1956 Hungarian Memorial Oral History Project
– multicultural Canada oral history collection of revolution refugees in Canada
From the noon bell to the lads of Pest
{{authority control 1950s conflicts 1950s in Budapest 1956 in international relations 20th-century revolutions Anti-communism in Hungary Articles containing video clips Cold War military history of the Soviet Union Cold War rebellions Communism-based civil wars Communism in Hungary Conflicts in 1956 Eastern Bloc Hungarian People's Republic Hungary–Soviet Union relations Invasions by the Soviet Union Massacres in Hungary November 1956 events in Europe October 1956 events in Europe Protests in Hungary Revolutions in Hungary Soviet military occupations Urban warfare Wars involving Hungary Wars involving the Soviet Union
– 5 February 1971) was a Hungarian (1946–56), whose heavy-hand style of communist government had proved counter-productive to the interests of the USSR in Hungary. Despite not being prime minister of Hungary, Rákosi remained politically powerful as the General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party, and so undermined many of the Nagy government's political and socio-economic reforms; by 18 April 1955 Rákosi had so discredited Nagy that the USSR deposed Nagy as head-of-state of Socialist Hungary. Three months of plotting and conspiring rid Rákosi and the Hungarian Communist Party of Imre Nagy, who was reduced to a political non-person. On 14 April Prime Minister Imre Nagy was stripped of his Hungarian Communist Party offices and functions, and was sacked as prime minister on 18 April. Despite having been out of political favour with the USSR since January 1955, Nagy had refused to perform the requisite communist penance of ' self criticism', and refused to resign as PM of Hungary. In February 1956, as the First Secretary of the CPSU, Nikita Khrushchev initiated the
de-Stalinization
De-Stalinization (russian: десталинизация, translit=destalinizatsiya) comprised a series of political reforms in the Soviet Union after the death of long-time leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, and the thaw brought about by ascension ...
of the USSR with the speech ''On the Personality Cult and its Consequences
"On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" (russian: «О культе личности и его последствиях», «''O kul'te lichnosti i yego posledstviyakh''»), popularly known as the "Secret Speech" (russian: секре ...
'', which catalogued and denounced the abuses of power committed by Josef Stalin and his inner-circle protégés, in Russia and abroad. Therefore, the de-Stalinization of Hungarian People's Republic featured Rákosi's dismissal as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Hungary, and his replacement by Ernő Gerő
Ernő Gerő (; born Ernő Singer; 8 July 1898 – 12 March 1980) was a Hungarian Communist leader in the period after World War II and briefly in 1956 the most powerful man in Hungary as the second secretary of its ruling communist party.
Ear ...
, on 18 July 1956.
From the Western perspective, the countries of western Europe co-operated with the CIA's propaganda radio network, Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is a United States government funded organization that broadcasts and reports news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Caucasus, and the Middle East where it says tha ...
, to broadcast the speech ''On the Personality Cult and its Consequences'' to the countries of eastern Europe, expecting that, as Secretary of the CPSU, Khrushchev's anti–Stalinist speech would substantively contribute to the destabilisation
The word destabilisation can be applied to a wide variety of contexts such as attempts to undermine political, military or economic power.
Psychology
In a psychological context it is used as a technique in brainwashing and abuse to disorient a ...
of the internal politics of the Warsaw Pact countries.
Warsaw Pact established
On 14 May 1955, with the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, the USSR established the Warsaw Pact with seven countries of theEastern Bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
, including the Hungarian People's Republic. The geopolitical principles of the Warsaw Pact defence treaty included "respect for the independence and hesovereignty of he memberstates" and the practise of "non-interference in their internal affairs". Then, on 15 May 1955, a day after the USSR established the Warsaw Pact, the Austrian State Treaty
The Austrian State Treaty (german: Österreichischer Staatsvertrag ) or Austrian Independence Treaty re-established Austria as a sovereign state. It was signed on 15 May 1955 in Vienna, at the Schloss Belvedere among the Allied occupying p ...
established Austria as a neutral country in the geopolitical cold war between the US and the USSR. Austria's declaration of geopolitical neutrality allowed the Communist government of PM Nagy to publicly consider "the possibility of Hungary adopting a neutral status on the Austrian pattern".
In June 1956, the Polish Army
The Land Forces () are the land forces of the Polish Armed Forces. They currently contain some 62,000 active personnel and form many components of the European Union and NATO deployments around the world. Poland's recorded military history stret ...
violently repressed the workers' uprising at Poznań against the economic policies of the Polish People's Republic
The Polish People's Republic ( pl, Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL) was a country in Central Europe that existed from 1947 to 1989 as the predecessor of the modern Republic of Poland. With a population of approximately 37.9 million nea ...
. In October, the Polish government appointed the politically rehabilitated, reform communist Władysław Gomułka
Władysław Gomułka (; 6 February 1905 – 1 September 1982) was a Polish communist politician. He was the ''de facto'' leader of post-war Poland from 1947 until 1948. Following the Polish October he became leader again from 1956 to 1970. Go ...
as First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party
The Polish United Workers' Party ( pl, Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza; ), commonly abbreviated to PZPR, was the communist party which ruled the Polish People's Republic as a one-party state from 1948 to 1989. The PZPR had led two other lega ...
to deal with the USSR, and, by 19 October 1956, Gomułka had successfully negotiated greater trade agreements and fewer Red Army troops stationed in Poland. The USSR's concessions to Poland – known as the Polish October
Polish October (), also known as October 1956, Polish thaw, or Gomułka's thaw, marked a change in the politics of Poland in the second half of 1956. Some social scientists term it the Polish October Revolution, which was less dramatic than the ...
– emboldened Hungarians to demand from the USSR like concessions for the Hungarian People's Republic, which much contributed to the Hungarians' greatly idealistic politics in October 1956.
Uprising and Revolution
Political discontent
On 13 October 1956, a group of 12 students from the university faculties inSzeged
Szeged ( , ; see also #Etymology, other alternative names) is List of cities and towns of Hungary#Largest cities in Hungary, the third largest city of Hungary, the largest city and regional centre of the Southern Great Plain and the county seat ...
met to play cards, and snubbed the DISZ, the official communist student union, by re-establishing the MEFESZ (Union of Hungarian University and Academy Students), the democratic student union banned by the Stalinist Rákosi government. The MEFESZ students distributed hand-written notes in classrooms to inform faculty and students of the time and place for the meeting on 16 October 1956. A professor of law was chairman of committee who formally reestablished the MEFESZ student union, with the proclamation and publication of a twenty-demand manifesto, ten demands about the MEFESZ, and ten anti-Soviet demands, e.g. free elections and the departure of Soviet troops from Hungary, etc.; days later, the university students at Pécs
Pécs ( , ; hr, Pečuh; german: Fünfkirchen, ; also known by other #Name, alternative names) is List of cities and towns of Hungary#Largest cities in Hungary, the fifth largest city in Hungary, on the slopes of the Mecsek mountains in the countr ...
, Miskolc
Miskolc ( , , ; Czech language, Czech and sk, Miškovec; german: Mischkolz; yi, script=Latn, Mishkoltz; ro, Mișcolț) is a city in northeastern Hungary, known for its heavy industry. With a population of 161,265 (1 Jan 2014) Miskolc is the ...
, and Sopron
Sopron (; german: Ödenburg, ; sl, Šopron) is a city in Hungary on the Austrian border, near Lake Neusiedl/Lake Fertő.
History
Ancient times-13th century
When the area that is today Western Hungary was a province of the Roman Empire, a ...
followed suit.
On 22 October, at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics
The Budapest University of Technology and Economics ( hu, Budapesti Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem or in short ), official abbreviation BME, is the most significant university of technology in Hungary and is considered the world's oldes ...
, one of the law students from the original group of twelve students, announced that the MEFESZ student union was again politically active, and then proclaimed the Sixteen Political, Economic, and Ideological Points against the USSR's geopolitical hegemony upon Hungary.Internet Modern History Sourcebook: Resolution by Students of the Building Industry Technological UniversitySixteen Political, Economic, and Ideological Points, Budapest, 22 October 1956
Retrieved 22 October 2006. The
Hungarian Writers' Union The Hungarian Writers Union (also known as The Free Union of Hungarian Writers) was founded in 1945 at the end of World War II. Initially the union was intended to be an organizational body through which the interests of writers in Hungary could be ...
ceremoniously proclaimed Hungary's anti-Soviet political solidarity with anti-communist reformers in Poland when they laid a commemorative wreath at the statue of the Polish hero Gen. Józef Zachariasz Bem who also was a hero of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848
The Hungarian Revolution of 1848 or fully Hungarian Civic Revolution and War of Independence of 1848–1849 () was one of many European Revolutions of 1848 and was closely linked to other revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas. Although th ...
; likewise, the MEFESZ student union held a parallel demonstration of Hungarians' political solidarity with the Poles.United Nations Report of the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungaryp. 145, para 441. Retrieved 11 April 2007.
Initiating gunfire
In the afternoon of 23 October 1956, approximately 20,000 protestors met beside the statue of GeneralJózsef Bem
József () is a Hungarian masculine given name. It is the Hungarian name equivalent to Joseph.
Notable people bearing this name include:
* József Braun (also known as József Barna; 1901–1943), Hungarian Olympic footballer
* József Cserm ...
, a national hero of Poland and Hungary. To the amassed crowd of protestors, the intellectual Péter Veres, the president of the Writers' Union (''Írószövetség''), read a manifesto demanding Hungarian independence from all foreign powers; a democratic socialist
Democratic socialism is a left-wing political philosophy that supports political democracy and some form of a socially owned economy, with a particular emphasis on economic democracy, workplace democracy, and workers' self-management within a ...
political system based upon land reform
Land reform is a form of agrarian reform involving the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution, generally of agricultural ...
and (public) state ownership
State ownership, also called government ownership and public ownership, is the ownership of an industry, asset, or enterprise by the state or a public body representing a community, as opposed to an individual or private party. Public ownershi ...
in the economy
An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with the ...
; Hungarian membership to the United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...
; and all freedoms and rights for the citizens of Hungary. After Veres proclaimed the manifesto demanding Hungarian sovereignty, the crowd chanted the Hungarian patriotic poem National Song (''Nemzeti dal''), which the Soviet-controlled Rákosi government of Hungary had banned from public performance; the crowd repeatedly chanted the refrain: "This we swear, this we swear, that we will no longer be slaves."
At 20:00 hrs, the first secretary of the Hungarian Working People's Party, Ernő Gerő
Ernő Gerő (; born Ernő Singer; 8 July 1898 – 12 March 1980) was a Hungarian Communist leader in the period after World War II and briefly in 1956 the most powerful man in Hungary as the second secretary of its ruling communist party.
Ear ...
broadcast a hardline speech condemning the political demands of the intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the in ...
and of the university students.UN General Assembly ''Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary'' (1957) Angered by Gerő's rejection, some protestors realised one of their demands, and demolished the Stalin Monument in Budapest, which had been erected in place of a razed church, in 1951; and, by 21:30 hrs – an hour and a half later – the nationalist and anti-communist protestors had destroyed the eight-metre-tall statue of Josef Stalin.
Also at 20:00 hrs, a crowd of nationalist and anti-communist protestors had gathered outside the Magyar Rádió
Magyar Rádió (MR, ''The Hungarian Radio Corporation'', also known internationally as ''Radio Budapest'') is Hungary's publicly funded radio broadcasting organisation. It is also the country's official international broadcasting station.
Dome ...
building, which was guarded by the ÁVH secret police. Violence soon occurred between the sides when the protestors heard rumours of the arrest and detainment of a delegation of students who had entered the radio station in effort to broadcast their political demands to the entire country. The situation escalated after protestors heard rumours that the ÁVH had killed their delegation of comrades sent to broadcast the anti–Soviet message. In response, from the windows of the building, the ÁVH threw tear gas grenades at and fired upon the many anti-communist and nationalist protestors assembled outside the Magyar Rádió building, and soon required resupply and reinforcement.UN General Assembly ''Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary'' (1957)
In suppressing the Hungarians' anti-government protestations, the ÁVH smuggled weapons and ammunition in an ambulance for delivery to them at the Magyar Rádió building, but the protestors hijacked the ambulance and the weapons for themselves. The Hungarian Army sent soldiers to support the ÁVH policemen defending the Magyar Rádió building, but some of the soldiers tore off the red-star insignia on their caps and joined the side of the anti-government protestors. ÁVH policemen used guns and tear gas, while the protestors set police cars afire and distributed weapons captured from the military and police forces, and acted on their anti–Soviet politics by destroying the symbols of Russian communism in Hungary.
Deposing the communist government
On 23 October 1956, the Secretary of the Hungarian Working People's Party, Ernő Gerő, asked for the USSR's military intervention in order "to suppress a demonstration that was reaching an ever-greater and unprecedented scale", which threatens the national security of theHungarian People's Republic
The Hungarian People's Republic ( hu, Magyar Népköztársaság) was a one-party socialist state from 20 August 1949
to 23 October 1989.
It was governed by the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, which was under the influence of the Soviet Uni ...
. To that end, the USSR already had planned the invasion and occupation of Hungary, and the political purging of Hungarian society. At 02.00 hrs., on 24 October 1956, Soviet defence minister Georgy Zhukov
Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov ( rus, Георгий Константинович Жуков, p=ɡʲɪˈorɡʲɪj kənstɐnʲˈtʲinəvʲɪtɕ ˈʐukəf, a=Ru-Георгий_Константинович_Жуков.ogg; 1 December 1896 – ...
ordered the Red Army to occupy Budapest – the capital city of a Warsaw Pact country.
By 12.00 hrs of 24 October, Red Army tanks were stationed outside the parliament building, and Red Army soldiers held the bridges and crossroads that controlled access to Budapest, while Hungarian revolutionaries barricaded streets to defend their city from the Red Army. Also on that day, Imre Nagy became prime minister in place of András Hegedüs
András Hegedüs (; 31 October 1922 – 23 October 1999) was a Hungary, Hungarian Communist politician who served as Prime Minister of Hungary, Chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1955 to 1956. He fled to the Soviet Union on 28 October, ...
. In a national radio broadcast, PM Nagy asked a ceasefire
A ceasefire (also known as a truce or armistice), also spelled cease fire (the antonym of 'open fire'), is a temporary stoppage of a war in which each side agrees with the other to suspend aggressive actions. Ceasefires may be between state act ...
between the Red Army and the Hungarian Revolutionaries, and agreed to initiate postponed political reforms decided in 1953. Despite the pleas of PM Nagy, groups of revolutionaries in Budapest armed themselves and continually fought the Red Army.UN General Assembly ''Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary'' (1957)
At the offices of the communist newspaper ''Szabad Nép'', the ÁVH guards fired upon unarmed protestors; in turn, anti-communists attacked and drove out the ÁVH policemen from the newspaper building. The Hungarian revolutionaries then avenged themselves against the ÁVH policemen. On 25 October, a crowd gathered in Kossuth Square in front of the Hungarian parliament
The National Assembly ( hu, Országgyűlés, lit=Country Assembly) is the parliament of Hungary. The unicameral body consists of 199 (386 between 1990 and 2014) members elected to 4-year terms. Election of members is done using a semi-propo ...
building, which was a mixed group of civilian demonstrators including women, children, and elderly. Most of them came from the mass demonstration outside the Astoria, accompanied by three Soviet tanks, which the demonstrators climbed on, fraternising with the crews. At the same time a column of Soviet tanks carrying two delegates of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) sent to Hungary, Politburo members Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan (; russian: Анаста́с Ива́нович Микоя́н; hy, Անաստաս Հովհաննեսի Միկոյան; 25 November 1895 – 21 October 1978) was an Armenian Communist revolutionary, Old Bolshevik an ...
and Mikhail Suslov
Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov (russian: Михаи́л Андре́евич Су́слов; 25 January 1982) was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1965, and as uno ...
, as well as KGB Chairman Ivan Serov
Ivan Alexandrovich Serov (russian: Ива́н Алекса́ндрович Серóв; 13 August 1905 – 1 July 1990) was a Russian Soviet intelligence officer who served as the head of the KGB between March 1954 and December 1958, as well as h ...
and Mikhail Malinin
Mikhail Sergeevich Malinin (russian: Михаи́л Серге́евич Мали́нин; in Polutino, Kostroma Governorate, Russian Empire – 24 January 1960 in Moscow, Soviet Union) was a Soviet general.
Biography
Early years
Mikhail M ...
, commander-in-chief of the Soviet forces in Hungary were on their way to the headquarters of the Hungarian Workers' Party (MDP) on Akadémia Street, where they were to attend a meeting of the Central Executive Committee (CEC), which was to begin at 10 a.m. Under pressure from the Soviet delegates, the CEC relieved Ernő Gerő of his position as party leader and elected János Kádár
János József Kádár (; ; 26 May 1912 – 6 July 1989), born János József Czermanik, was a Hungarian communist leader and the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, a position he held for 32 years. Declining health le ...
in his place. Meanwhile, the crowd demonstrating at Kossuth Square elected a delegation to deliver their demands in the Parliament, but government guards and a company of the Ministry of Defence's armoured regiment, backed by seven Soviet T-54 tanks lined up in front of the Parliament, kept the demonstrators away from the building. The events at Astoria were repeated, with demonstrators trying to make friends with the Soviet soldiers, handing out bilingual leaflets and some climbing on top of the guard tanks. At a few minutes after 11 a.m., General Serov decided to inspect the situation on Kossuth Square, accompanied by several Soviet and Hungarian officers and a tank. Seeing several Soviet soldiers fraternising with the demonstrators, Serov ordered the firing of warning shots, which caused a mass panic on the square. In the ensuing confusion, the Soviet tanks lined up in front of the Parliament building responded by targeting the buildings on the other side of the square. Another Soviet tank coming from a nearby street fired aimed shots at the demonstrators trying to take cover. This action claimed the most lives. The number of the dead is still disputed, with estimates ranging from 75 to 1000.
According to another version of the events, which already appeared during the revolution, but still unproven, the ÁVH policemen and/or communist partisans fired into the assembled protestors from the roof of the building of the Agricultural Ministry.UN General Assembly ''Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary'' (1957) In the fog of war, some Red Army soldiers mistakenly returned the fire towards the roof, having mistakenly believed themselves the targets. The Hungarian revolutionaries armed themselves with weapons captured from ÁVH policemen and with weapons donated by anti-communist soldiers who had deserted the Hungarian Army for the Hungarian Revolution against the USSR; from amongst the crowd outside the parliament, the armed revolutionaries shot at the roof-top ÁVH policemen.
Meanwhile, nationalist and anti-communist loyalties had fractured the chain of command of the Hungarian Army
The Hungarian Ground Forces ( hu, Magyar Szárazföldi Haderő) is the land branch of the Hungarian Defence Forces, and is responsible for ground activities and troops including artillery, tanks, APCs, IFVs and ground support. Hungary's ground ...
in response to the communist government's order to militarily repress the popular demonstrations against the Soviet control of Hungary. The Hungarian Army units in Budapest and in the countryside remained uninvolved in the Revolution, because local commanders avoided politics in order to avoid repressing the revolutionaries. Order was restored in the 24–29 October period after the Hungarian Army had fought 71 firefights with the nationalist and with the anti-communist revolutionaries in fifty communities. On 26 October, in the town of Kecskemét, outside the office of State Security and the local jail, Hungarian Army's Third Corps, led by Major General Lajos Gyurkó
Lajos () is a Hungarian masculine given name, cognate to the English Louis. People named Lajos include:
Hungarian monarchs:
* Lajos I, 1326-1382 (ruled 1342-1382)
* Lajos II, 1506-1526 (ruled 1516-1526)
In Hungarian politics:
* Lajos Aulic ...
, shot seven anti-communist protestors and arrested the organizers of the anti-Soviet protest. On Gyurkó's order Hungarian Air Force fighter planes shot up demonstrators with cannon fire in various towns (see :hu:Tiszakécskei_sortűz), earning the praise of János Kádár after the defeat of the "counter-revolution" as "the only division commander who, at the call of the party organisation, swept the Danube-Tisza Interfluve six times, smashing everything".
As Hungarian revolutionaries fought the soldiers and tanks of the Red Army with small arms and Molotov cocktail
A Molotov cocktail (among several other names – ''see other names'') is a hand thrown incendiary weapon constructed from a frangible container filled with flammable substances equipped with a fuse (typically a glass bottle filled with flamma ...
s in the streets of Budapest, throughout Hungary, revolutionary workers' council
A workers' council or labor council is a form of political and economic organization in which a workplace or municipality is governed by a council made up of workers or their elected delegates. The workers within each council decide on what thei ...
s assumed government power and called general strike
A general strike refers to a strike action in which participants cease all economic activity, such as working, to strengthen the bargaining position of a trade union or achieve a common social or political goal. They are organised by large co ...
s to halt the economy and the functioning of civil society. In ridding Hungary of the influence of and control from the USSR, the revolutionaries destroyed the symbols of Communism, such as the red star
A red star, five-pointed and filled, is a symbol that has often historically been associated with communist ideology, particularly in combination with the hammer and sickle, but is also used as a purely socialist symbol in the 21st century. I ...
and Red Army monuments, and burned communist literature. Moreover, Revolutionary militias, such as the 400-man militia led by József Dudás
József Dudás (22 September 1912 – 19 January 1957), a Hungarian politician and resistance fighter, was born in Marosvásárhely (in Romanian: Târgu Mureş) in Austria-Hungary (today in Transylvania, Romania).As a very young man, he joined the ...
attacked and murdered pro-Soviet Hungarians and ÁVH policemen. The Hungarian Army armoured division stationed in Budapest, commanded by Pál Maléter
Pál Maléter (4 September 1917 – 16 June 1958) was the military leader of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
Maléter was born to Hungarian parents in Eperjes, a city in Sáros County, in the northern part of Historical Hungary, today Prešov ...
led the Hungarian Revolution against the USSR's control of Hungary, and negotiated ceasefire agreements with the revolutionaries; nonetheless, the Hungarian Revolution took many communist prisoners who were registered to lists that identified the prisoner either for summary execution or as an enemy of the people
The term enemy of the people or enemy of the nation, is a designation for the political or class opponents of the subgroup in power within a larger group. The term implies that by opposing the ruling subgroup, the "enemies" in question are ac ...
.
In the Csepel
Csepel (german: Tschepele) is the 21st district and a neighbourhood in Budapest, Hungary. Csepel officially became part of Budapest on 1 January 1950.
Location
Csepel is located at the northern end of Csepel Island in the Danube, and covers ...
area of Budapest, 250 communists defended the Csepel Iron and Steel Works, and, on 27 October, the Hungarian Army restored order in Csepel; two days later, the Hungarian Revolutionaries recaptured Csepel after the Hungarian Army's withdrawal on 29 October. In the Angyalföld
Angyalföld (german: Engelsfeld; literally: "Angel's Field or Angel Land") is a neighbourhood in Budapest, Hungary. Administratively it belongs to the 13th district of Budapest, 13th district. The traditionally working-class neighbourhood went thr ...
area of Budapest, the communists and 350 armed workers and 380 communist soldiers defended the Láng factory. Anti-fascist Hungarian veterans of the Second World War participated in recapturing the offices of the ''Szabad Nép'' communist newspaper. At the town of Szarvas
Szarvas (; sk, Sarvaš; german: Sarwasch) is a town in Békés County, Hungary.
Name
Placename Szarvas originated from the old Hungarian word ''szarvas'', which means deer. Deer also can be found in the coat of arms of the town.
Locati ...
, armed guards defended the Hungarian Communist Party and the communist government of Hungary. In the event, the Revolutionaries' successful attacks upon the Parliament collapsed the communist government of Hungary; and First Secretary Ernő Gerő and ex-PM András Hegedüs fled Hungary to the USSR; Imre Nagy became prime minister, and János Kádár became the first secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party.
The Nagy government freed the political prisoner General Béla Király to restore order to Hungary with a National Guard force composed of policemen, soldiers, and Revolutionaries loyal to Hungary. (pp. 176–177) On 30 October 1956, Gen. Király's National Guard attacked the building of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Communist Party and killed every pro-Soviet officer of the Hungarian Communist Party, ÁVH policeman, and pro-Soviet Hungarian soldier they encountered; and most Red Army troops withdrew from Budapest to garrisons in the Hungarian countryside.
Interlude
Fighting ceased between 28 October and 4 November, as many Hungarians believed that Soviet military units were withdrawing from Hungary. According to post-revolution communist sources, there were approximately 213 Hungarian Working People's Party members lynched or executed during the period.New government
The new communist government of Prime Minister Imre Nagy was surprised by the rapidity with which the Hungarian Revolution extended from the streets of Budapest to all of Hungary, and the consequent collapse of the old Gerő–Hegedüs communist government. As head of government, PM Nagy asked every Hungarian to exercise political forbearance in order to restore civil order to Hungary. As the only Communist Hungarian leader with political credibility among Hungarians, the political actions of the Nagy government allowed the USSR to view the Hungarians' anti-Soviet protests as a popular uprising, rather than as an anti-communistcounter-revolution
A counter-revolutionary or an anti-revolutionary is anyone who opposes or resists a revolution, particularly one who acts after a revolution in order to try to overturn it or reverse its course, in full or in part. The adjective "counter-revoluti ...
. On 28 October 1956, the Nagy Communist government announced the ceasefire among the nationalist, the anti-communist, and the Communist Hungarians, and that, to resolve the national crisis, PM Nagy would:
* consider the revolt as a "great, national and democratic event", and not an anti-communist counter-revolution
* effect an unconditional ceasefire and grant political amnesty for the revolutionaries
* negotiate with the revolutionaries
* disband the ÁVH security police
* establish a national guard for Hungary
* arrange the immediate withdrawal of the Red Army from Budapest and from Hungary
On 1 November, the Nagy government formally declared Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Pact (WP) or Treaty of Warsaw, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republic ...
and Hungary's international status as a politically non-aligned country. Because of being in power for only ten days, the National Government did not explain their policies in detail; however, contemporary newspaper editorials stressed that Hungary should be a multiparty social democracy
Social democracy is a Political philosophy, political, Social philosophy, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports Democracy, political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocati ...
uninvolved in the Russo–American Cold War. About 8000 political prisoners were released, most notably Cardinal József Mindszenty
Cardinal or The Cardinal may refer to:
Animals
* Cardinal (bird) or Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds
**'' Cardinalis'', genus of cardinal in the family Cardinalidae
**''Cardinalis cardinalis'', or northern cardinal, t ...
. Banned political parties, such as the Independent Smallholders and the National Peasant Party ("Petőfi Party"),Vincent E McHale (1983) ''Political parties of Europe'', Greenwood Press, p. 508 reappeared to join the coalition.
In 1,170 communities in Hungary, there were 348 cases of revolutionary councils dismissing the local administrators; 312 cases of revolutionary councils sacking the bosses; and 215 cases of the locals burning the communist administrative records of their communities. In 681 communities, anti-communist and nationalist Hungarians damaged and destroyed symbols of the hegemony of the USSR, such as the Red Star, and statues of Josef Stalin and of Lenin; 393 communities damaged Soviet war memorials; and 122 communities burned the books of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin.
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.UN General Assembly ''Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary'' (1957) By , the 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
A workers' council or labor council is a form of political and economic organization in which a workplace or municipality is governed by a council made up of workers or their elected delegates. The workers within each council decide on what thei ...
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 while protecting workers' interests, establishing a socialist economy free of rigid party control. Local control by the councils was not always bloodless; in Debrecen
Debrecen ( , is Hungary's second-largest city, after Budapest, the regional centre of the Northern Great Plain region and the seat of Hajdú-Bihar County. A city with county rights, it was the largest Hungarian city in the 18th century and i ...
, Győr
Győr ( , ; german: Raab, links=no; names of European cities in different languages: E-H#G, names in other languages) is the main city of northwest Hungary, the capital of Győr-Moson-Sopron County and Western Transdanubia, Western Transdanubia ...
, Sopron
Sopron (; german: Ödenburg, ; sl, Šopron) is a city in Hungary on the Austrian border, near Lake Neusiedl/Lake Fertő.
History
Ancient times-13th century
When the area that is today Western Hungary was a province of the Roman Empire, a ...
, Mosonmagyaróvár
Mosonmagyaróvár (; german: Wieselburg-Ungarisch Altenburg; also known by other alternative names) is a town in Győr-Moson-Sopron County in northwestern Hungary. It lies close to both the Austrian and Slovakian borders and has a population ...
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.
In total, there were approximately 2,100 local revolutionary and workers councils with over 28,000 members. The councils held a combined conference in Budapest that decided to end the nationwide labour strikes and to resume work on 5 November, with the more important councils sending delegates to the Parliament to assure the Nagy government of their support.
Soviet perspective
On 24 October 1956, the Politburo of the USSR discussed how to resolve the political revolts that had occurred in Warsaw Pact countries, specifically thePolish October
Polish October (), also known as October 1956, Polish thaw, or Gomułka's thaw, marked a change in the politics of Poland in the second half of 1956. Some social scientists term it the Polish October Revolution, which was less dramatic than the ...
and the Hungarian Revolt. Led by Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov. ; (;. 9 March Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates">O._S._25_February.html" ;"title="Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O. S. 25 February">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dat ...
, the hardline faction of the CPSU voted for military intervention, but were opposed by Khrushchev and Marshal Georgy Zhukov
Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov ( rus, Георгий Константинович Жуков, p=ɡʲɪˈorɡʲɪj kənstɐnʲˈtʲinəvʲɪtɕ ˈʐukəf, a=Ru-Георгий_Константинович_Жуков.ogg; 1 December 1896 – ...
who sought a political resolution to the Hungarian revolt. In Budapest, the Soviet delegation reported to Moscow that the Hungarian political situation was less confrontational than reported during the revolt proper. In pursuit of political resolution, Khrushchev said that Ernő Gerő's 23 October request for Soviet intervention indicated that the Hungarian Communist Party retained the confidence of the Hungarian people, because the Hungarians were protesting unresolved socio-economic problems, not ideology. Meanwhile, in the West, the concurrent Suez Crisis
The Suez Crisis, or the Second Arab–Israeli war, also called the Tripartite Aggression ( ar, العدوان الثلاثي, Al-ʿUdwān aṯ-Ṯulāṯiyy) in the Arab world and the Sinai War in Israel,Also known as the Suez War or 1956 Wa ...
(29 October – 7 November 1956) of the French and the British empires' seizure of the Suez Canal
The Suez Canal ( arz, قَنَاةُ ٱلسُّوَيْسِ, ') is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia. The long canal is a popular ...
from Egypt voided the political possibility of Western military intervention to Hungary. On 28 October, Khrushchev said that Soviet military intervention to Hungary would be a mistaken imitation of the Anglo–French intervention to Egypt.
In Russia, on 30 October 1956, the Presidium of the CPSU decided to not depose the new Hungarian government. Marshal 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". The Presidium then adopted and published the ''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 said that "The Soviet Government is prepared to enter into the appropriate negotiations with the government of the Hungarian People's Republic, and ith
The Ith () is a ridge in Germany's Central Uplands which is up to 439 m high. It lies about 40 km southwest of Hanover and, at 22 kilometres, is the longest line of crags in North Germany.
Geography
Location
The Ith is immediatel ...
other members of the Warsaw Treaty, on the question of the presence of Soviet troops in the territory of Hungary."
In Hungary, on 30 October, consequent to hearing rumours of that the secret police had anti-communist prisoners, and rumours of the ÁVH shooting anti-communist demonstrators in the city of Mosonmagyaróvár
Mosonmagyaróvár (; german: Wieselburg-Ungarisch Altenburg; also known by other alternative names) is a town in Győr-Moson-Sopron County in northwestern Hungary. It lies close to both the Austrian and Slovakian borders and has a population ...
armed protestors attacked the ÁVH detachment guarding the headquarters building of the Hungarian Working People's Party in Köztársaság tér (Republic Square), in Budapest.Mark Kramer"New Evidence on Soviet Decision-making and the 1956 Polish and Hungarian Crises" (PDF)
, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, p. 368.The Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution: Part 3
/ref> The anti-communists killed more than 20 ÁVH officers and ÁVH conscripts; the head of the Budapest party committee, Imre Mező, also was killed. Within hours, news reportage and filmed scenes of the Hungarian anti-communist revolt that occurred in Republic Square were broadcast in the USSR; and the CPSU made propaganda of the images of the communist victims of the Hungarian Revolt. The leaders of the Hungarian Revolution condemned the attack upon the ÁVH headquarters and asked the protestors to cease and desist from mob violence. On 30 October, at Budapest,
Anastas Mikoyan
Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan (; russian: Анаста́с Ива́нович Микоя́н; hy, Անաստաս Հովհաննեսի Միկոյան; 25 November 1895 – 21 October 1978) was an Armenian Communist revolutionary, Old Bolshevik an ...
and Mikhail Suslov
Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov (russian: Михаи́л Андре́евич Су́слов; 25 January 1982) was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1965, and as uno ...
spoke with Prime Minister Imre Nagy who told them that Hungarian geopolitical neutrality was a long-term political objective for the Hungarian People's Republic, which he wanted to discuss with the presidium of the CPSU. Khrushchev considered the geopolitical options for the USSR's resolving the Hungarian anti-communist revolution, but Nagy's declaration of Hungarian neutrality decided his dispatching the Red Army into Hungary. The USSR invaded the Hungarian People's Republic, because:Cold War International History Project: Working Notes from the Session of the CPSU CC Presidium on 1 November 195. Retrieved 6 December 2008. * Simultaneous political movements towards multi-party, parliamentary democracy, and a democratic national council of workers might "lead towards a capitalist state" in Hungary and Poland, each movement challenged the authority of communist parties in eastern Europe. * The militarists in the CPSU would not understand the USSR's failure to intervene in Hungary. That destalinisation, de-Stalinisation had alienated the hardline members of the CPSU, for whom anti-communist protests threatened Soviet hegemony in eastern Europe. That the workers' uprising in East Germany (17 June 1953) – the repression of which killed 84 protestors and produced 700 anti-communist prisoners – required a new Communist government for the
German Democratic Republic
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
. That the workers' protests at Poznań (June 1956) – the repression of which killed 57–78 anti-communist protestors – created the Polish October
Polish October (), also known as October 1956, Polish thaw, or Gomułka's thaw, marked a change in the politics of Poland in the second half of 1956. Some social scientists term it the Polish October Revolution, which was less dramatic than the ...
movement, which installed a Polish Communist government less dependent on orders from Moscow.Paczkowski, Andrzej. ''Pół wieku dziejów Polski'', Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warszawa 2005, , p. 203Ł. Jastrząb, "Rozstrzelano moje serce w Poznaniu. Poznański Czerwiec 1956 r. – straty osobowe i ich analiza", Wydawnictwo Comandor, Warszawa 2006 Wójtowicz, Norbert. ''Ofiary "Poznańskiego Czerwca"'', Rok 1956 na Węgrzech i w Polsce. Materiały z węgiersko–polskiego seminarium. Wrocław październik 1996, ed. Łukasz Andrzej Kamiński, Wrocław 1996, pp. 32–41.
* Hungarian geopolitical neutrality and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact breached the buffer zone
A buffer zone is a neutral zonal area that lies between two or more bodies of land, usually pertaining to countries. Depending on the type of buffer zone, it may serve to separate regions or conjoin them.
Common types of buffer zones are demil ...
of satellite states
A satellite state or dependent state is a country that is formally independent in the world, but under heavy political, economic, and military influence or control from another country. The term was coined by analogy to planetary objects orbitin ...
by which the USSR protected themselves from invasion.
In the People's Republic of Hungary, the anti-communist militants concluded that "the ungarian CommunistParty is the incarnation of bureaucratic despotism
The term bureaucracy () refers to a body of non-elected governing officials as well as to an administrative policy-making group. Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments staffed with non-elected offi ...
" and that "socialism can develop only on the foundations of direct democracy." For the anti-communists, the struggle of the Hungarian workers was "for the principle of direct democracy" and that "all power should be transferred to the Workers Committees of Hungary." In response, the Presidium broke the ''de facto'' ceasefire and repressed the Hungarian Revolution. The Soviet Union's plan was to declare a "Provisional Revolutionary Government" led by János Kádár, who would appeal for Soviet assistance to restore order to Hungary. Kádár was in Moscow in early November, and was in communication with the Soviet embassy whilst still a member of the Nagy government. The USSR sent diplomatic delegations to other communist governments in Eastern Europe and to the People's Republic of China in effort to avoid misunderstandings that might provoke to regional conflicts, and broadcast propaganda explaining their second Soviet intervention to Hungary. The Soviet diplomats disguised their intentions by engaging the Nagy government in talks about withdrawing the Red Army from Hungary.
Moreover, Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...
influenced Khrushchev's decision to repress the Hungarian uprising. The deputy chairman of the Chinese Communist Party
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victoriou ...
, Liu Shaoqi
Liu Shaoqi ( ; 24 November 189812 November 1969) was a Chinese revolutionary, politician, and theorist. He was Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee from 1954 to 1959, First Vice Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party from 1956 to 1966 and C ...
, pressed Khrushchev to militarily repress the Hungarian Revolution. Although Sino–Soviet relations were unstable, the opinion of Mao carried great weight among the members of the Presidium of the CPSU. Initially, Mao opposed a second intervention, which was communicated to Khrushchev on 30 October, before the Presidium met and decided against a Hungarian intervention; later, Mao changed his mind and supported intervention to Hungary.
In the 1–3 November 1956 period, Khrushchev informed the USSR's Warsaw Pact allies of his decision to repress the Hungarian Revolution. Khrushchev met with the Polish communist politician Władysław Gomułka
Władysław Gomułka (; 6 February 1905 – 1 September 1982) was a Polish communist politician. He was the ''de facto'' leader of post-war Poland from 1947 until 1948. Following the Polish October he became leader again from 1956 to 1970. Go ...
in Brest, Belarus; and then spoke with the Romanian, Czechoslovak, and Bulgarian leaders in Bucharest, Romania. Finally, Khrushchev went to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, commonly referred to as SFR Yugoslavia or simply as Yugoslavia, was a country in Central and Southeast Europe. It emerged in 1945, following World War II, and lasted until 1992, with the breakup of Yug ...
and spoke with Tito ( Josip Broz) who persuaded Khrushchev to install János Kádár
János József Kádár (; ; 26 May 1912 – 6 July 1989), born János József Czermanik, was a Hungarian communist leader and the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, a position he held for 32 years. Declining health le ...
as the new leader of the People's Republic of Hungary, instead of Ferenc Münnich
Ferenc Münnich (; 18 November 1886 – 29 November 1967) was a Hungarian Communist politician who served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the People's Republic of Hungary from 1958 to 1961.
He served in the Austro-Hungarian Army i ...
. Two months after the USSR repressed the Hungarian Revolution, Tito told Nikolai Firiubin, the Soviet ambassador to Yugoslavia, that " oliticalreaction raised its head, especially in Croatia
, image_flag = Flag of Croatia.svg
, image_coat = Coat of arms of Croatia.svg
, anthem = "Lijepa naša domovino"("Our Beautiful Homeland")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, capit ...
, where the reactionary
In political science, a reactionary or a reactionist is a person who holds political views that favor a return to the ''status quo ante'', the previous political state of society, which that person believes possessed positive characteristics abse ...
elements openly incited the employees of the Yugoslav security organs to violence."
Polish response
The events in Hungary were met with a spontaneous reaction inPoland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
. Hungarian flags were displayed in many Polish towns and villages. After the Soviet invasion, the help given by the ordinary Poles to Hungarians took on a considerable scale. Citizen organizations and self-acting aid committees were established throughout Poland to distribute aid to the Hungarian population, e.g. the Social Civic Committee of Creative Associations (Bydgoszcz), the Student Committee for Aid to Hungarians (Kraków
Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...
), the Society of Friends of Hungarians (Tarnów), the Committee to Aid the Hungarians (Lublin), and the Committee for Aid to Hungarians (Człuchów). In addition to the official support coordinated by the Polish Red Cross, one convoy was dispatched – one organized by the Student Aid Committee for Hungarians from Kraków
Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...
. Other such initiatives were prevented.
By 12 November, over 11,000 honorary blood donors had registered throughout Poland. Polish Red Cross
Polish Red Cross ( pl, Polski Czerwony Krzyż, abbr. PCK) is the Polish member of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Its 19th-century roots may be found in the Russian and Austrian Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwea ...
statistics show that by air transport alone (15 aircraft), 44 tonnes of medication, blood, and other medical supplies were delivered to Hungary. Assistance sent using road and rail transport was much higher. Polish aid is estimated at a value of approximately US$2 million in 1956 dollars.
International perspective
On 24 October 1956, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
John Foster Dulles (, ; February 25, 1888 – May 24, 1959) was an American diplomat, lawyer, and Republican Party politician. He served as United States Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959 and was briefly ...
(r. 1953–1959) recommended that the United Nations Security Council
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is one of the Organs of the United Nations, six principal organs of the United Nations (UN) and is charged with ensuring international security, international peace and security, recommending the admi ...
convene to discuss the USSR's invasion and occupation of the Hungarian People's Republic, without decisive result, because, despite the Protocol of Sèvres
The Protocol of Sèvres (French, ''Protocole de Sèvres'') was a secret agreement reached between the governments of Israel, France and the United Kingdom during discussions held between 22 and 24 October 1956 at Sèvres, France. The protocol c ...
(22–24 October 1956), the Anglo–French intervention to Egyptian politics – the Suez Crisis
The Suez Crisis, or the Second Arab–Israeli war, also called the Tripartite Aggression ( ar, العدوان الثلاثي, Al-ʿUdwān aṯ-Ṯulāṯiyy) in the Arab world and the Sinai War in Israel,Also known as the Suez War or 1956 Wa ...
caused by Britain and France seizing the Egyptian Suez Canal
The Suez Canal ( arz, قَنَاةُ ٱلسُّوَيْسِ, ') is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia. The long canal is a popular ...
– prevented the West from criticizing the imperialism of the USSR; the U.S. said that: "We couldn't, on one hand, complain about the Soviets intervening in Hungary, and, on the other hand, approve of the British and the French picking that particular time to intervene against amal Abdel Nasser." Despite earlier demands for the rollback
In political science, rollback is the strategy of forcing a change in the major policies of a state, usually by replacing its ruling regime. It contrasts with containment, which means preventing the expansion of that state; and with détente, w ...
of communism and of the leftist
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...
liberation of eastern Europe, Dulles told the USSR that: "We do not see these states ungary and Polandas potential military allies."
On 4 November 1956, the USSR vetoed the Security Council's resolution criticising the USSR's invasion of Hungary, and, in its stead, passed United Nations Security Council Resolution 120
United Nations Security Council Resolution 120, adopted on November 4, 1956, considering the grave situation created by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the suppression of the Hungarian people in asserting their rights, and the lack of u ...
, which charged the General Assembly to demand that the USSR withdraw the Red Army from Hungary. Despite 50 votes for withdrawal, 8 votes against withdrawal, and 15 abstentions from the matter, the communist Kádár government of Hungary rejected the presence of UN observers in the Hungarian People's Republic.
In the U.S., two facts determined the inaction of the Eisenhower government: (i) the U.S. Army study, ''Hungary, Resistance Activities and Potentials'' (January 1956), which recommended against U.S. military intervention to Hungary on the side of the Hungarian revolutionists; and (ii) the secret warfare of the National Security Council that encouraged anti-communist political discontent in the Eastern Bloc only through psychological warfare
Psychological warfare (PSYWAR), or the basic aspects of modern psychological operations (PsyOp), have been known by many other names or terms, including Military Information Support Operations (MISO), Psy Ops, political warfare, "Hearts and Mi ...
, sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. One who engages in sabotage is a ''saboteur''. Saboteurs typically try to conceal their identitie ...
, and economic warfare
Economic warfare or economic war is an economic strategy utilized by belligerent nations with the goal of weakening the economy of other states. This is primarily achieved by the use of economic blockades. Ravaging the crops of the enemy is a cl ...
.
According to A. Ross Johnson in the '' International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence'': "Contrary to allegations that continue to this day, RFE Hungarian broadcasts did not foment revolution, urge Hungarians to fight the Soviets, or promise Western assistance. They did criticize would-be reform leader Imre Nagy in personally vituperative terms and contained emotional bombast that Hungarian listeners could easily have interpreted as indicating Western solidarity and support." After the USSR defeated the anti-communist Hungarian Revolution, the revolutionists criticised the CIA and its RFE network for having deceived the Hungarians into believing that the West—NATO and the US—would expel the USSR from the Hungarian People's Republic. Although incitements to violence were officially against RFE policy, an internal analysis by RFE adviser William Griffith found, as summarized by the National Security Archive
The National Security Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located on the campus of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1985 to check rising government secrecy. The Nat ...
at George Washington University
, mottoeng = "God is Our Trust"
, established =
, type = Private federally chartered research university
, academic_affiliations =
, endowment = $2.8 billion (2022)
, preside ...
, that "RFE broadcasts in several cases had implied that foreign aid would be forthcoming if the Hungarians succeeded in establishing a 'central military command'" and "appealed to the Hungarians to 'continue to fight vigorously'". Griffith himself wrote that "There were relatively few real policy violations"—specifically four out of more than 300 broadcasts under review—but conceded that "summaries often failed to reflect the content of the program as it was finally written (this is not the case only with programs where policy violation occurred; the summaries during the period under review in many other cases proved to be very inaccurate descriptions of the programs finally produced)." László Borhi, writing in the ''Journal of Cold War Studies
The ''Journal of Cold War Studies'' is a quarterly Peer review, peer-reviewed academic journal on the history of the Cold War. It was established in 1999 and is published by MIT Press for the Harvard Project on Cold War Studies. The journal is issu ...
'', states that the RFE broadcasts sanctioned by CIA official Cord Meyer
Cord Meyer Jr. (; November 10, 1920 – March 13, 2001) was a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official. After serving in World War II as a Marine officer in the Pacific War, where he was both injured and decorated, he led the United World Fe ...
were often "incautious, even reckless" and undermined parallel efforts by the Eisenhower administration to negotiate Hungarian independence in a framework similar to Finlandization
Finlandization ( fi, suomettuminen; sv, finlandisering; german: Finnlandisierung; et, soomestumine; russian: финляндизация, finlyandizatsiya) is the process by which one powerful country makes a smaller neighboring country refrai ...
: "These contradictory policies sabotaged the overall approach. The harder the insurgents fought, the less chance there was for a negotiated settlement. But the unwillingness of the United States to counter Soviet military action meant that the Hungarian quest for liberation was suicidal."
In 1998, the Hungarian ambassador Géza Jeszenszky
Géza Jeszenszky (born 10 November 1941) is a Hungarian politician and associate professor, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and a former ambassador to the United States. He was ambassador of Hungary to Norway and Iceland from 2011 to 2014.
Fa ...
criticised Western inaction in 1956 as disingenuous, recalling that the political influence of the United Nations readily applied to resolving the Korean War
, date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...
(1950–1953).CNN: Géza Jeszenszky, Hungarian AmbassadorCold War Chat (transcript)
Retrieved 8 November 1998. Moreover, the study ''Hungary, 1956: Reviving the Debate over U.S. (In)action During the Revolution'' confirms that the Eisenhower government did not intervene to the Hungarian Revolution – which occurred in the Soviet sphere of influence – because the USSR would have responded with a nuclear war.
Soviet invasion
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, which proved to be false, from Soviet AmbassadorYuri Andropov
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov (– 9 February 1984) was the sixth paramount leader of the Soviet Union and the fourth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. After Leonid Brezhnev's 18-year rule, Andropov served in the po ...
that the Soviet Union would not invade. 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 Dag Hammarskjöld
Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld ( , ; 29 July 1905 – 18 September 1961) was a Swedish economist and diplomat who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 196 ...
, UN Secretary-General, to defend Hungary's neutrality. 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 Defence Minister Pál Maléter
Pál Maléter (4 September 1917 – 16 June 1958) was the military leader of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
Maléter was born to Hungarian parents in Eperjes, a city in Sáros County, in the northern part of Historical Hungary, today Prešov ...
was invited to attend negotiations on Soviet withdrawal at the Soviet Military Command at Tököl
Tököl ( sh, Tukulja) is a town in Pest County, Hungary.
Demography
The majority of residents are Hungarians, with a minority of Bunjevci.
Hungarian Uprising
An Budapest-Tököl airfield (47 20 35 N / 18 59 20 E) was built during World War ...
, near Budapest. At around midnight that evening, General Ivan Serov
Ivan Alexandrovich Serov (russian: Ива́н Алекса́ндрович Серóв; 13 August 1905 – 1 July 1990) was a Russian Soviet intelligence officer who served as the head of the KGB between March 1954 and December 1958, as well as h ...
, Chief of the Soviet Security Police (KGB
The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...
) ordered the arrest of the Hungarian delegation, and the next day, the Soviet army again attacked Budapest.
The second Soviet intervention, codenamed "Operation Whirlwind", was launched by Marshal
Marshal is a term used in several official titles in various branches of society. As marshals became trusted members of the courts of Medieval Europe, the title grew in reputation. During the last few centuries, it has been used for elevated o ...
Ivan Konev
Ivan Stepanovich Konev ( rus, link=no, Ива́н Степа́нович Ко́нев, p=ɪˈvan sʲtʲɪˈpanəvʲɪtɕ ˈkonʲɪf; – 21 May 1973) was a Soviet general and Marshal of the Soviet Union who led Red Army forces on the E ...
.UN General Assembly ''Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary'' (1957) The five Soviet divisions stationed in Hungary before 23 October were reinforced; Soviet forces soon reached a total strength of 17 divisions. The 8th Mechanized Army under command of Lieutenant General Hamazasp Babadzhanian russian: Амазасп Хачатурович Бабаджанян
, native_name_lang =
, image = Hamazasp Babadzhanian 4.jpg
, image_size =
, alt =
, caption =
, birth_date =
, death_date =
, birth_place = ...
and the 38th Army under Lieutenant General Hadzhi-Umar Mamsurov from the nearby Carpathian Military District
The Red Banner Carpathian Military District (, ) was a military district of the Soviet Armed Forces during the Cold War and subsequently of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the early Post-Soviet period.
It was established on 3 May 1946 on the ...
were deployed to Hungary for the operation. Some rank-and-file Soviet soldiers reportedly believed they were being sent to East Berlin
East Berlin was the ''de facto'' capital city of East Germany from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as ...
to fight German fascists. By 21:30 on 3 November, the Soviet Army had completely encircled Budapest.UN General Assembly ''Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary'' (1957)
At 03:00 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 into two, controlled all bridgeheads and were shielded to the rear by the wide Danube River. Armoured units crossed into Buda
Buda (; german: Ofen, sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Budim, Будим, Czech and sk, Budín, tr, Budin) was the historic capital of the Kingdom of Hungary and since 1873 has been the western part of the Hungarian capital Budapest, on the ...
and, at 04:25, fired the first shots at the army barracks on Budaörsi Road. Soon, Soviet artillery and tank fire were heard in all of the districts of Budapest. Operation Whirlwind combined air strikes, artillery, and the co-ordinated tank–infantry action of 17 divisions. The Soviet army deployed T-34-85 medium tank
A medium tank is a classification of tanks, particularly prevalent during World War II which represented a compromise between the mobility oriented light tanks and the armour and armament oriented heavy tanks. A medium tank's classification is ...
s as well as the new T-54s, heavy
Heavy may refer to:
Measures
* Heavy (aeronautics), a term used by pilots and air traffic controllers to refer to aircraft capable of 300,000 lbs or more takeoff weight
* Heavy, a characterization of objects with substantial weight
* Heavy, ...
IS-3 tanks, 152mm ISU-152
The ISU-152 (russian: Самоходная установка на базе танка ИС с орудием калибра 152мм, ИСУ-152, Samokhodnaya Ustanovka na baze tanka IS s orudiyem kalibra 152mm, meaning " IS tank based self-prope ...
mobile assault gun
Assault gun (from german: Sturmgeschütz - "storm gun", as in "storming/assaulting") is a type of self-propelled artillery which uses an infantry support gun mounted on a motorized chassis, normally an armored fighting vehicle, which are designed ...
s and open-top BTR-152
The BTR-152 is a six-wheeled Soviet Union, Soviet armored personnel carrier (БТР, from Бронетранспортер/''BTR (vehicle), Bronetransporter'', literally "armored transporter"), built on the chassis and drive train of a ZIS-151 uti ...
armored personnel carriers.
Between 4 and 9 November, the Hungarian Army
The Hungarian Ground Forces ( hu, Magyar Szárazföldi Haderő) is the land branch of the Hungarian Defence Forces, and is responsible for ground activities and troops including artillery, tanks, APCs, IFVs and ground support. Hungary's ground ...
put up sporadic and disorganised resistance, with Zhukov reporting the disarming of twelve divisions, two armoured regiments and the entire Hungarian Air Force. Hungarian fighters continued their most formidable resistance in various districts of Budapest (most famously the Battle of the Corvin Passage
The Battle of the Corvin Passage ( hu, Corvin közi csata) was a battle fought in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. It proved to be one of the most important battlegrounds during the war. A statue can be found at Corvin köz, near Corvin–negye ...
), in and around the city of Pécs
Pécs ( , ; hr, Pečuh; german: Fünfkirchen, ; also known by other #Name, alternative names) is List of cities and towns of Hungary#Largest cities in Hungary, the fifth largest city in Hungary, on the slopes of the Mecsek mountains in the countr ...
in the Mecsek Mountains, and in the industrial centre of Dunaújváros
Dunaújváros (; also known by other alternative names) is an industrial city in Fejér County, Central Hungary. It is a city with county rights. Situated 70 kilometres (43 miles) south of Budapest on the Danube, the city is best known for its ...
(then called Sztálinváros). There were ten to fifteen thousand resistance fighters fighting in Budapest, with the heaviest fighting occurring in the working-class stronghold of Csepel on the Danube River. Although some very senior officers were openly pro-Soviet, rank-and-file soldiers were overwhelmingly loyal to the revolution and either fought the invasion or deserted. The UN reported that there were no recorded incidents of Hungarian Army units fighting for the Soviets.
At 05:20 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 was remaining at its post. The radio station, Free Kossuth Rádió, stopped broadcasting at 08:07. An emergency Cabinet meeting was held in the Parliament 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
István Bibó (7 August 1911, Budapest – 10 May 1979, Budapest) was a Hungarian lawyer, civil servant, politician and political theorist. Life
During the Hungarian Revolution he acted as the Minister of State for the Hungarian National G ...
as the last representative of the National Government remaining at his post. He wrote '' For Freedom and Truth'', a stirring proclamation to the nation and the world.
At 06:00, 4 November, in the town of Szolnok
Szolnok (; also known by other alternative names) is the county seat of Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county in central Hungary. A city with county rights, it is located on the banks of the Tisza river, in the heart of the Great Hungarian Plain, wh ...
, János Kádár
János József Kádár (; ; 26 May 1912 – 6 July 1989), born János József Czermanik, was a Hungarian communist leader and the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, a position he held for 32 years. Declining health le ...
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. But Hungarian support did not materialise, and fighting did not take the form of a 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 08:00, organised defence of the city evaporated after the radio station had been seized, and many defenders fell back to fortified positions.UN General Assembly ''Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary'' (1957) Between 08:00 and 09:00, the parliamentary guard laid down its arms, and forces under Major General Kuzma Grebennik
Kuzma Yevdokimovich Grebennik (Russian: Кузьма Евдокимович Гребенник; 18 February 1900 – 22 September 1974) was a Red Army lieutenant general and Hero of the Soviet Union. Grebennik served in the Soviet Border Troops bo ...
captured Parliament and liberated captured ministers of the Rákosi– Hegedüs government. Among the liberated were István Dobi
István Dobi (; 31 December 1898 – 24 November 1968) was a Hungarian politician who was Prime Minister of Hungary from 1948 to 1952 and Chairman of the Presidential Council of the Hungarian People's Republic from 1952 to 1967.
Early life
Dob ...
and Sándor Rónai, both of whom became members of the re-established socialist Hungarian government. As Soviet troops also came under attack in civilian quarters, they were unable to differentiate military from civilian targets. For that reason, Soviet tanks often crept along main roads and fired indiscriminately into buildings. Hungarian resistance was strongest in the industrial areas of Budapest, with Csepel heavily targeted by Soviet artillery and air strikes.
The last holdouts against the Soviet assault were located in Csepel
Csepel (german: Tschepele) is the 21st district and a neighbourhood in Budapest, Hungary. Csepel officially became part of Budapest on 1 January 1950.
Location
Csepel is located at the northern end of Csepel Island in the Danube, and covers ...
and in Dunaújváros
Dunaújváros (; also known by other alternative names) is an industrial city in Fejér County, Central Hungary. It is a city with county rights. Situated 70 kilometres (43 miles) south of Budapest on the Danube, the city is best known for its ...
, where fighting lasted until 11 November, before insurgents finally succumbed to the Soviets. When the fighting ended, Hungarian casualties totalled approximately 2,500 dead and 20,000 wounded. Budapest bore the brunt of the bloodshed, with 1,569 civilians killed. Approximately 53% of the dead were workers; half of all Hungarian casualties were people younger than thirty. On the Soviet side, 699 men were killed, 1,450 wounded, and 51 missing in action
Missing in action (MIA) is a casualty classification assigned to combatants, military chaplains, combat medics, and prisoners of war who are reported missing during wartime or ceasefire. They may have been killed, wounded, captured, ex ...
. An estimated 80% of all Soviet casualties occurred in the fighting against insurgents in the eighth and ninth districts of Budapest.
Soviet perspective
Soviet reports of the events surrounding, during and after the disturbance were remarkably consistent in their accounts, more so after the Second Soviet intervention cemented support for the Soviet position among international communist parties. ''Pravda
''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, "Truth") is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most influential papers in the co ...
'' published an account 36 hours after the outbreak of violence that 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 and 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
The Warsaw Pact (WP) or Treaty of Warsaw, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republic ...
) forces stationed in Hungary to assist in restoring order.
# The Nagy government was ineffective by allowing itself to be penetrated by counter-revolutionary influences, weakening and 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. The 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 the Yugoslav embassy, his arrest was not reported. Also, accounts failed to explain how Nagy went from patriot to traitor. The Soviet press reported calm in Budapest, but the Western press reported a revolutionary crisis was breaking out. According to the Soviet account, Hungarians never wanted a revolution at all.Barghoorn, Frederick. ''Soviet Foreign Propaganda''. Princeton University Press. 1964.
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 the support of the Soviet army, defeated attempts "to eliminate the socialist achievements of the Hungarian people".George Washington University: The National Security ArchiveCommuniqué on the Meeting of Representatives of the Governments and the Communist and Workers' Parties of Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and the Soviet Union
(Budapest, 6 January 1957), Retrieved 7 December 2008 The Soviet, Chinese, and Warsaw Pact governments urged Kádár to proceed with the interrogation and trial of the ministers of the Nagy government, 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'') that documented real incidents of violence against Communist Party and ÁVH members and the confessions of Nagy's supporters. The "white books" were widely distributed in several languages in most socialist countries and, while based in fact, they present factual evidence with a colouring and narrative that are 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 and imprisoned, 13,000 interned, and 229 executed. Approximately 200,000 fled Hungary as refugees. Former Hungarian Foreign Minister Géza Jeszenszky estimated 350 were executed. Sporadic resistance and strikes byworkers' council
A workers' council or labor council is a form of political and economic organization in which a workplace or municipality is governed by a council made up of workers or their elected delegates. The workers within each council decide on what thei ...
s continued until mid-1957, causing economic disruption. By 1963, most political prisoner
A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention.
There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although n ...
s 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
The Hungarian Communist Party ( hu, Magyar Kommunista Párt, abbr. MKP), known earlier as the Party of Communists in Hungary ( hu, Kommunisták Magyarországi Pártja, abbr. KMP), was a communist party in Hungary that existed during the interwar ...
. Few Hungarians rejoined the reorganised Party, its leadership having been purged under the supervision of the Soviet Praesidium, led by Georgy Malenkov
Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov ( – 14 January 1988) was a Soviet politician who briefly succeeded Joseph Stalin as the leader of the Soviet Union. However, at the insistence of the rest of the Presidium, he relinquished control over the par ...
and Mikhail Suslov
Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov (russian: Михаи́л Андре́евич Су́слов; 25 January 1982) was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1965, and as uno ...
. Although Party membership declined from 800,000 before the uprising to 100,000 by December 1956, Kádár steadily increased his control over Hungary and neutralised 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
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million Volunteering, volunteers, members and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure re ...
and the Austrian Army
The Austrian Armed Forces (german: Bundesheer, lit=Federal Army) are the combined military forces of the Republic of Austria.
The military consists of 22,050 active-duty personnel and 125,600 reservists. The military budget is 0.74% of nati ...
established refugee camps in Traiskirchen
Traiskirchen is a town in the district of Baden in Lower Austria in Austria. It is 20 km south of Vienna, in the Thermenlinie region, known for its wine and heurigers. Traiskirchen is home to the Traiskirchen Lions basketball team. The town ...
and Graz
Graz (; sl, Gradec) is the capital city of the Austrian state of Styria and second-largest city in Austria after Vienna. As of 1 January 2021, it had a population of 331,562 (294,236 of whom had principal-residence status). In 2018, the popul ...
. Imre Nagy
Imre Nagy (; 7 June 1896 – 16 June 1958) was a Hungarian communist politician who served as Chairman of the Council of Ministers (''de facto'' Prime Minister) of the Hungarian People's Republic from 1953 to 1955. In 1956 Nagy became leader ...
along with Georg Lukács
Georg may refer to:
* ''Georg'' (film), 1997
*Georg (musical), Estonian musical
* Georg (given name)
* Georg (surname)
* , a Kriegsmarine coastal tanker
See also
* George (disambiguation)
George may refer to:
People
* George (given name)
* G ...
, Géza Losonczy
Géza Losonczy (5 May 1917, Érsekcsanád – 21 December 1957) was a Hungarian journalist and politician. He was associated with the reformist faction of the Hungarian communist party.
During the 1956 Hungarian revolution, he joined the Imre ...
, and László Rajk
László Rajk (8 March 1909 – 15 October 1949) was a Hungarian Communist politician, who served as Minister of Interior and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was an important organizer of the Hungarian Communists' power (for example, organizi ...
'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
Pál Maléter (4 September 1917 – 16 June 1958) was the military leader of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
Maléter was born to Hungarian parents in Eperjes, a city in Sáros County, in the northern part of Historical Hungary, today Prešov ...
and Miklós Gimes
Miklós Gimes (23 December 1917 in Budapest – 16 June 1958) was a Hungarian journalist and politician, notable for his role in the 1956 Hungarian revolution. He was executed along with Imre Nagy and Pál Maléter in 1958 for treason.
His p ...
, after secret trials in June 1958. Their bodies were placed in unmarked graves in the Municipal Cemetery outside Budapest."On This Day 16 June 1989: Hungary reburies fallen hero Imre Nagy"British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reports on Nagy reburial with full honors. Retrieved 13 October 2006. During the November 1956 Soviet assault on Budapest,
Cardinal Mindszenty
Cardinal or The Cardinal may refer to:
Animals
* Cardinal (bird) or Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds
**'' Cardinalis'', genus of cardinal in the family Cardinalidae
**''Cardinalis cardinalis'', or northern cardinal, t ...
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
Vatican may refer to:
Vatican City, the city-state ruled by the pope in Rome, including St. Peter's Basilica, Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museum
The Holy See
* The Holy See, the governing body of the Catholic Church and sovereign entity recognized ...
, he finally left the embassy for Austria in September 1971.
Nicolas Krassó was one of the left leaders of the Hungarian uprising and member of the ''New Left Review
The ''New Left Review'' is a British bimonthly journal covering world politics, economy, and culture, which was established in 1960.
History Background
As part of the British "New Left" a number of new journals emerged to carry commentary on m ...
'' editorial committee. In an interview he gave to Peter Gowan
Peter Gowan (15 January 1946, Glasgow – 12 June 2009) was a Professor of International Relations at London Metropolitan University, activist, published author and public speaker. He was a member of the editorial committee of ''New Left Rev ...
shortly before his death, Krassó summed up the meaning of the Hungarian Revolution with a recollection from Stalin's short speech in the 19th Congress of the Soviet Union in 1952: "Stalin kept silent throughout the Congress till the very end when he made a short speech that covers about two and a half printed pages. He said there were two banners that the progressive bourgeoisie had thrown away and which the working class should pick up – the banners of democracy and national independence. Certainly nobody could doubt that in 1956 the Hungarian workers raised these banners high."
International
Despite Cold War rhetoric from western countries espousing rollback of the Soviet domination of eastern Europe, and Soviet promises of socialism's imminent triumph, national leaders of this period (as well as later historians) saw the failure of the Hungarian Revolution as evidence that the Cold War had become a stalemate in Europe.Heinrich von Brentano di Tremezzo
Heinrich Joseph Maximilian Johann Maria von Brentano di Tremezzo (20 June 1904 – 14 November 1964), known professionally as Heinrich von Brentano, was a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He served as Federal Minister ...
, 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 Paul-Henri Spaak 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
Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld ( , ; 29 July 1905 – 18 September 1961) was a Swedish economist and diplomat who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 196 ...
, 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
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
), Denmark
)
, song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast")
, song_type = National and royal anthem
, image_map = EU-Denmark.svg
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark
...
, Tunisia
)
, image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg
, map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa
, image_map2 =
, capital = Tunis
, largest_city = capital
, ...
and Uruguay
Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...
, 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
A workers' council or labor council is a form of political and economic organization in which a workplace or municipality is governed by a council made up of workers or their elected delegates. The workers within each council decide on what thei ...
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 entry to the officials of this committee, 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.
The chairman of the Special Committee was Alsing Andersen
Alsing Emanuel Andersen (5 February 1893 – 5 December 1962) was a Danish social democrat politician. Andersen served as the Minister of Defense (1935–1940) for Denmark. From 8 July 1940 to 1945, he served as the vice chairman of the Danish ...
, a Danish politician and leading figure of Denmark's Social Democratic Party, who had served in the Buhl government in 1942 during the Nazi German occupation of Denmark. He had defended collaboration with the occupation forces and denounced the resistance. The Committee Report and the motives of its authors were criticised by the delegations to the United Nations from the Soviet Union and Kádár government. The Hungarian representative disagreed with the report's conclusions, accusing it of falsifying the events, and argued that the establishment of the committee was illegal. The committee was accused of being hostile to Hungary and its social system. An article in the Soviet journal "International Affairs", published by the Foreign Affairs Ministry, carried an article in 1957 in which it denounced the report as a "collection of falsehoods and distortions".
''Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' 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. In 2006, Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány referred to this famous ''Time'' cover as "the faces of free Hungary" in a speech marking the 50th anniversary of the uprising. Mr Gyurcsány (in a joint appearance with British Prime Minister Tony Blair
Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He previously served as Leader of th ...
) commented "It is an idealised image but the faces of the figures are really the face of the revolutionaries".
At the 1956 Summer Olympics
The 1956 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVI Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, from 22 November to 8 December 1956, with the exception of the equestrian events, whi ...
in Melbourne, 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 match of the water polo
Water polo is a competitive team sport played in water between two teams of seven players each. The game consists of four quarters in which the teams attempt to score goals by throwing the ball into the opposing team's goal. The team with the ...
tournament on 6 December. The match was extremely violent, and was halted in the final minute to quell fighting among spectators. This match, now known as the "blood in the water match
The "Blood in the Water" match ( hu, melbourne-i vérfürdő lit. ''Blood bath of Melbourne''; russian: Кровь в бассейне, Krov' v basseyne, Blood in the swimming pool) was a water polo match between Hungary men's national water pol ...
", became the subject of several films. The Hungarian team won the game 4–0 and later was awarded the Olympic gold medal. Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...
declined an invitation to the inaugural Bandy World Championship
The Bandy World Championship is a competition between bandy-playing nations' men's teams. The tournament is administrated by the Federation of International Bandy. It is distinct from the Bandy World Cup, a club competition, and from the Wome ...
in 1957, citing the presence of a team from the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
as the reason.
On Sunday, 28 October 1956, as some 55 million Americans watched Ed Sullivan
Edward Vincent Sullivan (September 28, 1901 – October 13, 1974) was an American television personality, impresario, sports and entertainment reporter, and syndicated columnist for the ''New York Daily News'' and the Chicago Tribune New York ...
's popular television variety show
Variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is entertainment made up of a variety of acts including musical theatre, musical performances, sketch comedy, magic (illusion), magic, acrobatics, juggling, and ventriloquism. It is ...
, with the then 21-year-old Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one ...
headlining for the second time, Sullivan asked viewers to send aid to Hungarian refugees fleeing from the effects of the Soviet invasion. Presley himself made another request for donations during his third and last appearance on Sullivan's show on 6 January 1957. Presley then dedicated a song for the finale, which he thought fitted the mood of the time, namely the gospel song "Peace in the Valley
"There'll Be Peace in the Valley for Me" is a 1939 song written by Thomas A. Dorsey, originally for Mahalia Jackson. It was copyrighted by Dorsey under this title on January 25, 1939, though it often appears informally as "Peace in the Valley".
...
". By the end of 1957, these contributions, distributed by the Geneva-based International Red Cross
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC; french: Comité international de la Croix-Rouge) is a humanitarian organization which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and it is also a three-time Nobel Prize Laureate. State parties (signato ...
as food rations, clothing and other essentials, had amounted to some CHF 26 million (US$6 million in 1957 dollars), the equivalent of $ in today's dollars. On 1 March 2011, István Tarlós
István Tarlós (; 26 May 1948) is a Hungarian politician who served as the Mayor of Budapest from 2010 to 2019. Previously he served as the Mayor of the Third District (Óbuda-Békásmegyer) of the city between 1990 and 2006 (as an independent ...
, the mayor of Budapest
The Mayor of Budapest ( hu, Budapest főpolgármestere) is the head of the General Assembly in Budapest, Hungary, elected directly for 5-year term since 2014 (previously municipal elections were held quadrennially). Until 1994 the mayor was elect ...
, made Presley an honorary citizen posthumously, and a plaza located at the intersection of two of the city's most important avenues was named after Presley as a gesture of gratitude.
Meanwhile, as the 1950s drew to a close the events in Hungary produced fractures within the Communist political parties of Western European countries. The Italian Communist Party
The Italian Communist Party ( it, Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) was a communist political party in Italy.
The PCI was founded as ''Communist Party of Italy'' on 21 January 1921 in Livorno by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI). ...
(PCI) suffered a split. According to the official newspaper of the PCI, ''l'Unità
''l'Unità'' (, lit. 'the Unity') was an Italian newspaper, founded as the official newspaper of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1924. It was supportive of that party's successor parties, the Democratic Party of the Left, Democrats of the ...
'', most ordinary members and the Party leadership, including Palmiro Togliatti
Palmiro Michele Nicola Togliatti (; 26 March 1893 – 21 August 1964) was an Italian politician and leader of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 until his death. He was nicknamed ("The Best") by his supporters. In 1930 he became a citizen of ...
and Giorgio Napolitano
Giorgio Napolitano (; born 29 June 1925) is an Italian politician who served as president of Italy from 2006 to 2015, the first Italian president to be re-elected to the presidency. Due to his dominant position in Italian politics, some critics ...
, supported the actions of the Soviet Union in suppressing the uprising. However, Giuseppe Di Vittorio
Giuseppe Di Vittorio (Cerignola, 11 August 1892 – Lecco, 3 November 1957), also known as Nicoletti, was an Italian trade union leader and Communist politician. He was one of the most influential trade union leaders of the labour movement after ...
, chief of the communist trade union CGIL
The Italian General Confederation of Labour (; CGIL) is a national trade union based in Italy. It was formed by agreement between socialists, communists, and Christian democrats in the "Pact of Rome" of June 1944. In 1950, socialists and Christi ...
, spoke out against the leadership's position, as did prominent party members Antonio Giolitti
Antonio Giolitti (12 February 1915 – 8 February 2010) was an Italian politician and cabinet member. He was the grandson of Giovanni Giolitti, the well-known liberal statesman of the pre-fascist period who served as Prime Minister of Italy five ...
, Loris Fortuna
Loris Fortuna (22 January 1924 – 5 December 1985) was an Italian left-wing politician.
Biography
Born in Breno, province of Brescia, he was a partisan during World War II, and initially joined the Italian Communist Party (PCI), leaving i ...
, and many others influential in the Communist Party. Pietro Nenni
Pietro Sandro Nenni (; 9 February 1891 – 1 January 1980) was an Italian socialist politician, the national secretary of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and senator for life since 1970. He was a recipient of the Lenin Peace Prize in 1951. He w ...
of the Italian Socialist Party
The Italian Socialist Party (, PSI) was a socialist and later social-democratic political party in Italy, whose history stretched for longer than a century, making it one of the longest-living parties of the country.
Founded in Genoa in 1892, ...
, a close ally of the PCI, opposed the Soviet intervention as well. Napolitano, elected in 2006 as President of the Italian Republic
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
*President (education), a leader of a college or university
*President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...
, wrote in his 2005 political autobiography that he regretted his justification of Soviet action in Hungary, stating at the time he believed that party unity and the leadership of Soviet Communism was more important.
The Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPG ...
(CPGB) suffered the loss of thousands of party members following the events in Hungary. Though Peter Fryer
Peter Fryer (18 February 1927 – 31 October 2006)
''Spartacus Educational''. was an English ...
, correspondent for the CPGB newspaper ''''Spartacus Educational''. was an English ...
The Daily Worker
The ''Daily Worker'' was a newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, a formerly Comintern-affiliated organization. Publication began in 1924. While it generally reflected the prevailing views of the party, attempts were ...
'', reported on the violent suppression of the uprising, his dispatches were heavily censored by the party leadership. Upon his return from Hungary Fryer resigned from the paper. He was later expelled by the Communist Party.
In France, moderate communists, such as historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
Emmanuel Bernard Le Roy Ladurie (, born 19 July 1929) is a French historian whose work is mainly focused upon Languedoc in the ''Ancien Régime'', particularly the history of the peasantry. One of the leading historians of France, Le Roy Ladurie h ...
, resigned, questioning the French Communist Party
The French Communist Party (french: Parti communiste français, ''PCF'' ; ) is a political party in France which advocates the principles of communism. The PCF is a member of the Party of the European Left, and its MEPs sit in the European Unit ...
's policy of supporting Soviet actions. The French philosopher and writer Albert Camus
Albert Camus ( , ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, and journalist. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His work ...
wrote an open letter
An open letter is a Letter (message), letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally.
Open letters usually take the form of a letter (mess ...
, ''The Blood of the Hungarians
Albert Camus ( , ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, and journalist. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His works ...
'', criticising the West's lack of action. Even Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and litera ...
, still a determined Communist, criticised the Soviets in his article ''Le Fantôme de Staline'', in ''Situations VII''. Left communists
Left communism, or the communist left, is a position held by the left wing of communism, which criticises the political ideas and practices espoused by Marxist–Leninists and social democrats. Left communists assert positions which they rega ...
were particularly supportive of the revolution.
The Chinese Communist Party
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victoriou ...
(CCP) viewed the events of the revolution in context of its concern with the Soviet de-Stalinization of 1956 and the sort of problems along the lines of the Eastern European uprisings that China might eventually have to face. Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...
cited the repressions in Hungary as a lesson: "You forbid people to strike, to petition, or to make unfavorable comments, you simply resort to repression in every case, until one day you become a Rákosi." Later, as the CCP leadership became concerned with the degree of criticism from the lower levels of the party and from outside of the party during the Hundred Flowers campaign
The Hundred Flowers Campaign, also termed the Hundred Flowers Movement (), was a period from 1956 to 1957 in the People's Republic of China during which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) encouraged citizens to openly express their opinions of t ...
, Mao again cited the Hungarian revolution, describing China as at risk of a "Hungarian Incident" if it did not win this "major battle".
Commemoration
In the north-west corner ofMacArthur Park
MacArthur Park (originally Westlake Park) is a park dating back to the late 19th century in the Westlake, Los Angeles, Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles. In the early 1940s, it was renamed after General Douglas MacArthur, and later designated ...
in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
, the Hungarian-American community built a commemorative statue to honour the Hungarian freedom fighters. Built in the late 1960s, the obelisk statue stands with an American eagle watching over the city of Los Angeles. There are several monuments dedicated to the Commemoration of the Hungarian Revolution throughout the United States. One such monument may be found in Cleveland, Ohio, at the Cardinal Mindszenty
Cardinal or The Cardinal may refer to:
Animals
* Cardinal (bird) or Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds
**'' Cardinalis'', genus of cardinal in the family Cardinalidae
**''Cardinalis cardinalis'', or northern cardinal, t ...
Plaza. There is also a monument of A Boy From Pest in the town of Szczecin, Poland. Denver
Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...
has Hungarian Freedom Park, named in 1968 to commemorate the uprising.
Public discussion about the revolution was suppressed in Hungary for more than 30 years. Since the thaw of the 1980s, it has been a subject of intense study and debate. At the inauguration of the Third Hungarian Republic
Hungary in its modern (post-1946) borders roughly corresponds to the Great Hungarian Plain (the Pannonian Basin). During the Iron Age, it was located at the crossroads between the cultural spheres of the Celtic tribes (such as the Scordisci, Boii ...
in 1989, 23 October was declared a national holiday.
On 16 June 1989, the 31st anniversary of his execution, Imre Nagy's body was reburied with full honours. The Republic of Hungary was declared in 1989 on the 33rd anniversary of the Revolution, and 23 October is now a Hungarian national holiday.
In December 1991, the preamble of the treaties signed with the dismembered Soviet Union, under Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet politician who served as the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...
, and Russia, represented by Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin ( rus, Борис Николаевич Ельцин, p=bɐˈrʲis nʲɪkɐˈla(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ ˈjelʲtsɨn, a=Ru-Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.ogg; 1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was a Soviet and Russian politician wh ...
, officially apologised for the Soviet actions of 1956 in Hungary. Yeltsin made the apology in person during a 1992 speech to the Hungarian Parliament.
On 13 February 2006, the U.S. State Department commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
Condoleezza Rice ( ; born November 14, 1954) is an American diplomat and political scientist who is the current director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. A member of the Republican Party, she previously served as the 66th Uni ...
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. U.S. President George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
also visited Hungary on 22 June 2006 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary.
See also
* "Avanti ragazzi di Buda
"Avanti ragazzi di Buda" (; hu, Előre budai srácok) is an Italian anti-communist song written by Pier Francesco Pingitore and composed by Dimitri Gribanovski. It commemorates the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and is a widespread and well-know ...
", an Italian song about the Hungarian Revolution of 1956
* Cultural representations of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 Although the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 failed in its efforts to oust the ruling Communist government of Hungary, the uprising provided inspiration for many artists, writers, poets, composers and filmmakers.
Film
Many movies and documentaries h ...
** ''Children of Glory
''Children of Glory'' ( hu, Szabadság, szerelem) is a 2006 film directed by Krisztina Goda. Children of Glory commemorates Hungary's Revolution of 1956 and the "Blood in the Water" match. Taking place in Budapest and at the Melbourne Olympic G ...
'' (2006)
** House of Terror
House of Terror is a museum located at Andrássy út 60 in Budapest, Hungary. It contains exhibits related to the fascist and communist regimes in 20th-century Hungary and is also a memorial to the victims of these regimes, including those detai ...
museum in Budapest
* East German uprising of 1953
The East German uprising of 1953 (german: Volksaufstand vom 17. Juni 1953 ) was an uprising that occurred in East Germany from 16 to 17 June 1953. It began with a strike action by construction workers in East Berlin on 16 June against w ...
* Foreign interventions by the Soviet Union
Over the course of its history, the Soviet Union intervened in foreign countries on numerous occasions.
Invasion of China (1934)
In 1934, Ma Zhongying's troops, supported by the Kuomintang government of the Republic of China were on the verge ...
* List of conflicts related to the Cold War
While the Cold War itself never escalated into direct confrontation, there were a number of conflicts and revolutions related to the Cold War around the globe, spanning the entirety of the period usually prescribed to it (March 12, 1947 to Decemb ...
* Quỳnh Lưu uprising
The Quỳnh Lưu uprising ( vi, Khởi-nghĩa Quỳnh-lưu 1956) was a revolution against the North Vietnamese communist government (Viet Minh) in the rural Quỳnh Lưu District in Nghệ An Province, from November 2–14, 1956.
Background and o ...
* 1956 Georgian demonstrations
The March 1956 demonstrations (also known as the 1956 Tbilisi riots or 9 March massacre) in the Georgian SSR were a series of protests against Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy, which shocked Georgian supporters of Stalinist ideolo ...
* Poznań protests of 1956
* Prague Spring
The Prague Spring ( cs, Pražské jaro, sk, Pražská jar) was a period of political liberalization and mass protest in
the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It began on 5 January 1968, when reformist Alexander Dubček was elected First Sec ...
(1968)
* Proletarian internationalism
Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is the perception of all communist revolutions as being part of a single global class struggle rather than separate localized events. It is based on the theory that ...
* Romanian anti-communist resistance movement
The Romanian anti-communist resistance movement was active from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, with isolated individual fighters remaining at large until the early 1960s. Armed resistance was the first and most structured form of resistance a ...
* Significant events of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 Listed below are some significant events in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which began on October 23, 1956, and was brutally crushed by Soviet forces in November.
* On October 22 - one day before the Revolution - Technical University students est ...
** "Blood in the Water" match at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics
The 1956 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVI Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, from 22 November to 8 December 1956, with the exception of the equestrian events, whi ...
Notes
References
Further reading
* * * * * * * * * Matthews, John P.C. (2007). ''Explosion: The Hungarian Revolution of 1956'' New York: Hippocrene, * * * * Schmidl, Erwin A. & Ritter, László. (2006) ''The Hungarian Revolution, 1956''; Osprey Elite series #148. * * * Watry, David M. ( 2014). ''Diplomacy at the Brink: Eisenhower, Churchill, and Eden in the Cold War''. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press *Historiography and memory
* Cash, John Joseph. "Commemoration and Contestation of the 1956 Revolution in Hungary". ''Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies'' (2011): 247–258. * Cox, Terry. ''Hungary 1956 – forty Years On'' (London: F. Cass, 1997) * Csipke, Zoltán. "The changing significance of the 1956 revolution in post-communist Hungary". ''Europe-Asia Studies'' 63.1 (2011): 99–128 phttps://is.muni.cz/el/fss/podzim2019/MVZb2091/um/Memory1956.pdf Online]. * Erőss, Ágnes. "'In memory of victims': Monument and counter-monument in Liberty Square, Budapest". ''Hungarian Geographical Bulletin'' 65.3 (2016): 237–254Online
* Gyáni, Gábor. "Memory and discourse on the 1956 Hungarian revolution". ''Europe-Asia Studies'' 58.8 (2006): 1199–1208. * Gyáni, Gábor. "Revolution, uprising, civil war: the conceptual dilemmas of 1956". ''European Review of History'' – ''Revue européenne d'histoire''. 15.5 (2008): 519–531
Online
* Heller, Ágnes, and Ferenc Fehér. ''Hungary 1956 Revisited: The Message of a Revolution-a Quarter of a Century After'' (George Allen and Unwin, 1983). * Mark, James. "Antifascism, the 1956 Revolution and the politics of communist autobiographies in Hungary 1944–2000". ''Europe-Asia Studies'' 58.8 (2006): 1209–1240
Online
* Nyyssönen, Heino, and Jussi Metsälä. "Building on legacy and tradition: commemorations of 1956 in Hungary". ''National Identities'' 21.4 (2019): 379–393
Online
Primary sources
* Beke, Laszlo. ''A Student's Diary: Budapest, October 16 – November 1, 1956'' (NY: Macmillan, 1957). * * Granville, Johanna (1999In the Line of Fire: New Archival Evidence on the Soviet Intervention in Hungary, 1956
''Carl Beck Paper'', no. 1307 (1999). * Haraszti-Taylor, Eva, ed. ''The Hungarian Revolution of 1956: A Collection of Documents from the British Foreign Office'' (Nottingham: Astra Press, 1995). * Michael Korda, Korda, Michael. ''Journey to a Revolution: A Personal Memoir and History of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956''. Harper Perennial (2006). * Lasky, Melvin J. ''The Hungarian Revolution; a White Book: The Story of the October Uprising As Recorded in Documents, Dispatches, Eye-Witness Accounts, and World-Wide Reactions'' (Books for Libraries Press, 1970). * Lomax, William, ed. ''Hungarian Workers' Councils in 1956'' (East European Monographs, 1990). * Nagy, Imre. ''On Communism: In Defense of the New Course'' (Praeger, 1957). * * United Nations: ''Report of the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary'', General Assembly, Official Records, Eleventh Session, Supplement No. 18 (A/3592), New York, 1957
External links
* Ürményházi, Attila J.(2006"The Hungarian Revolution-Uprising, Budapest 1956"
Historical collections
1956 Hungarian Revolution Collection
of the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (or Wilson Center) is a quasi-government entity and think tank which conducts research to inform public policy. Located in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washi ...
, Cold War International History Project The Cold War International History Project is part of the History and Public Policy Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The Project was founded in 1991 with the support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundati ...
, containing documents and other source materials relating to the 1956 Revolution.
Institute of Revolutionary History, Hungary
A Hungarian language site providing historical photos and documents, books and reviews, and links to English language sites.
OSA Digital Archive
Videos of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
Universal Pictures and Warner Pathé newsreels regarding the revolution
"On this day 4 November 1956: Soviet troops overrun Hungary"
(Accessed 12 October 2006) – BBC reports on the first day of the second Soviet intervention and the fall of the Nagy government.
at marxists.org
Hungary '56
Andy Anderson's pamphlet, written in 1964 and originally published by
Solidarity (UK)
Solidarity was a small libertarian socialist organisation from 1960 to 1992 in the United Kingdom. It published a magazine of the same name. Solidarity was close to council communism in its prescriptions and was known for its emphasis on worke ...
, about events of the Hungarian uprising of 1956, focusing on Hungarian demands for economic and political self-management. (AK Press
AK Press is a worker-managed, independent publisher and book distributor that specialises in radical left and anarchist literature. Operated out of Chico, California, the company is collectively owned.
History
AK was founded in Stirling, Sc ...
2002, )
*
*
*
Other academic sources
The 1956 Hungarian revolution and the Soviet bloc countries: reactions and repercussions
(MEK)
Hungary, 1956: Reviving the Debate over U.S. (In)action during the Revolution
published by the
National Security Archive
The National Security Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-governmental, non-profit research and archival institution located on the campus of the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1985 to check rising government secrecy. The Nat ...
Feature films
* ''The Beast of Budapest
''The Beast of Budapest'' is a 1958 American film about the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
Cast
* Gerald Milton as Col. Otto Zagon
*Greta Thyssen as Christi
*John Hoyt as Prof. Ernst Tolnai
*Violet Rensing as Marissa Foldessy
* Joseph Turkel as Mar ...
'', a 1958 American film
''Freedom's Fury''
The 2005 documentary film depicting events surrounding the Hungarian–Soviet confrontation in the Olympic water polo tournament, now known as the "blood in the water match". Narrated by Mark Spitz, produced by Lucy Liu and Quentin Tarantino.
''Torn from the flag''
Documentary film 2007. The significant global effects of the Hungarian revolution of 1956.
''Freedom Dance''
Multi award-winning animated documentary produced by Steven Thomas Fischer and Craig Herron. The film retells the escape of Edward and Judy Hilbert from Communist Hungary during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The film is narrated by Golden Globe-winning actress
Mariska Hargitay
Mariska Magdolna Hargitay (; born January 23, 1964) is an American actress, director and philanthropist. The daughter of bodybuilder and actor Mickey Hargitay and actress Jayne Mansfield, her accolades include a Primetime Emmy Award, a People's ...
.
* ''The Unburied Man
''The Unburied Man'' ( hu, A temetetlen halott) is a 2004 Hungarian-Slovakian-Polish drama film. It is based on the life of former Prime Minister of Hungary, Imre Nagy, who was executed following the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
Cast
* ...
'' Drama film on the life of Imre Nagy.
Commemorations
The 1956 Portal
– 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 United States
– personal stories of survival and escape from participants in the revolution
1956 Hungarian Memorial Oral History Project
– multicultural Canada oral history collection of revolution refugees in Canada
From the noon bell to the lads of Pest
{{authority control 1950s conflicts 1950s in Budapest 1956 in international relations 20th-century revolutions Anti-communism in Hungary Articles containing video clips Cold War military history of the Soviet Union Cold War rebellions Communism-based civil wars Communism in Hungary Conflicts in 1956 Eastern Bloc Hungarian People's Republic Hungary–Soviet Union relations Invasions by the Soviet Union Massacres in Hungary November 1956 events in Europe October 1956 events in Europe Protests in Hungary Revolutions in Hungary Soviet military occupations Urban warfare Wars involving Hungary Wars involving the Soviet Union