1956-2008

COMMEMORATING THE 52ND ANNIVERSARY OF THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION OF OCTOBER 1956

In October 1956 a series of peaceful demonstrations in Hungary turned into a revolution against the Soviet oppresion. People wanted a better life without the foreign rule. In the short two weeks, from October 23rd until the bloody defeat on November 4th, they accomplished almost everything. With the lead of Imre Nagy prime minister and the heroism of young freedom fighters they were able to force the Soviet army to withdraw their tanks from Budapest. Hungary exited from the Warsaw pact and declared its independency from the Communist Block.

But without the promised help from the US and the UN the revolution was defeated by the Soviet troops, who came back to repress the revolt with 2000 tanks, more than Hitler used to attack France in WWII. The 1956 special edition of LIFE Magazine, tells the story of the heroic fight.

FOR THE PEOPLE OF HUNGARY

We do not speak of a Hungarian Revolution. We speak of the Hungarian agony. From the moment when the Communist regime in Budapest fired upon an unarmed crowd and turned its quarrel with the Hungarian people from a political quarrel which it could not win into an armed revolt which, with Soviet aid, it could not lose, the suppression of the Hungarian resistance was inevitable. The world seemed to feel that it had no choice, short of atomic atomic war, but to sit back and watch, in horror and disgust, the brutal, methodical destruction of an angry people by overwhelming force and conscienceless treachery.

It is understandable, certainly, that we in the United States should feel shamed by our inability to act in this nightmare. Nevertheless, we should not forget, in all the suffering and pain, that we owe the people of Hungary more than our pity. We owe them also pride and praise. For their defeat has been itself a triumph. Those Hungarian students and workers and women and fighting children have done more to close the future of Communism than armies or diplomats had done before them. They have given more and done more. For what they have done has been to expose the brutal hypocrisy of Communism for all of Asia, all of Africa, and all the world to see. So long as men live in any country who remember the murder of Hungary, Soviet Russia will never again be able to pose before the world as the benefactor of mankind. The Hungarian dead have torn that mask off. Their fingers hold its tatters in their graves. Archibald Macleish

THE MOST HATED MAN / HUNGARIAN SECURITY POLICE, HANGMAN OF THE NATION, RECEIVE THEIR PUNISHMENT AT THE PATRIOT'S HANDS.

The fighting in Budapest had been directly set off by the Hungarian security police, the AVH, called "Avos" by the Hungarians. When demonstrators on Oct 23 sent a delegation into the Radio Budapest station to ask that their demands be broadcast, the delegation was detained and the AVH opened fire on the unarmed crowd storming the station's ddors. The next day, outside the parliamant building in Budapest, the members of the AVH fired on an orderly demonstration. The Russian troops on hand joined in. There were a thousand casualties, and it happened again in the provinces. Although Moscow-trained Communists had taken control of the Hungarian police soon after World War II, and then the rule of terror spread everywhere in the Communist state, such cold-blooded murder was characteristic of the AVH.

HEADQUARTERS OF TERROR.

For years, the headquartes of the terror organization was in Budapest, where an endless parade of democratic politicians, writers, businessmen (including several Americans employed by U.S. companies operating in Hungary), and other oppositionists were "broken". They used all the techniques of terror and torture and were the enforcement arm of the Communist surveillance system that blanketed every aspect of public and private life. The communist party had its own informer network, served by perhaps 70-80,000 people. Hungarian army intelligence branched out into investigations far beyoond the purely military preserve. There was a natiowide organization of "social controllers", "who reported on the happenings in their neighborhoods in the towns and villages. In city apartment houses janitors and "tenants' committees" recorded the comings and goings and conversations of the residents. Finally, there were 27,000 ironically named "peace committees" in Hungary, whose principal task it was to spy on farms and factories, in schools, offices restauratns, everywhere. The enormous mass of information that all these espionage services produced waas handed over to the AVH. The AVH in its turn made the arrests from which there was no appeal. People could be arrested for an innocent remark to a stranger, for reading the wrong books, for dressing too well, for being friends of "class enemies", for listening to foreign broadcasts, for simply havaing "wrong" attitudes. No Hungarian was safe.

FURY OF A NATION

Thus the vast majority of Hungarians had felt the iron hand of the AVH in their own families, or had lost friends or relatives forever through its depredations. Almost all saw in the AVH personnel the worst types of traitors to their own people. The Hungarians hated the Russian occupiers, but they hated even more the AVH, under whose terror they lived every day. It was no wonder that the Hungarian rebels again and again called for dissolution of the AVH and the punishment of its members.It was no wonder either, that the AVH defended the Communist regime with the ruthlessness of men fighting for their lives. They knew that they could expect no mercy from the people. And the people, as they progressed from the first chaotic stage of street fighting to more systematic organization, began to hunt the AVH down.

THE TIME OF REBEL TRIUMPH AS SOVIETS LEAVE BUDAPEST,THE AMAZED PATRIOTS REGAIN THEIR FREEDOM BUT FEAR THAT IT WILL NOT LAST.

After a week of battle, the rebels awoke to a wild surprise. Not only was the hated AVH apparently broken, the mighty Soviets were in the process of retreating from Budapest and they were passive in the country. Was it all over? The weary rebels hoped so, but they could not tell.

THE RUSSIAN ENIGMA

The behavior of the Russians had been especially puzzling. Their forces in Budapest had seemed adequate to crush the rebel partisans. The vast bulk of the Russian troops showed no signs of fear or panic, although they were undoubtedly not prepared for the extent of the uprising. Where they fought, they fought fiercely. They took their casualties with the customery Russian indifference to loss. Yet the Russians had chosen to commit only a small percentage of their forces to fight against the resistance. Apparently the wanted to make an example of these rebel units and subdue the rest by the threat of similar reprisals. For several days, though small tank forces were still battling resistance pockets elsewhere in town, the main force of Russian armor was dug in along the Danube embankment. When the Russians withdrew from Budapest, theywere scarred but far from crushed and they calmly took up new defensive positions. What did it mean? Amid the confusion two things were clear: the spectacular, surging ascent of the liberty-loving Hungarian people and sickly collapse of the Soviet-inflated Hungarian Communist party. THE REBEL MOBILIZATION HAD BEEN ALMOST UNWITTING. On the first day, some hundreds of patriots had suddenly found themselves together , meaning only to protest, When they were firedon, the discovered a common readiness to fight.

THE EXAMPLE OF THE UNTRAINED CIVILIANS impressed the Hungarian army, many of those units either actively joined the revolution or left it alone. Even some Soviet soldiers were sufficiently moved to desert. As the struggle spread, more and more volunteers flocked to the freedom forces, wherever they were. A vast scattering of on-the-spot fighting squads blanketed the land. As people has cracked the shackles of fear and terrror: it had rediscovered itself and its strenght. THE MOST AMAZING ELEMENT OF THE FREEDOM FORCES WAS THE YOUTH OF HUNGARY, boys and girls in their teens and early 20-s. During all their formative years they had been incessantly subjected to Red indoctrination and Red discipline. The had heard traditional values revile by their Red instructors. Nevethless when battle came Hungary's youth turned the tide. The threw Molotov cocktails on the Soviet tanks. They fought their way from house to house. They held out to the last besieged positions. ANd in proving that Hungarian national pride had survived a decade of Communism, the also provedthaat Red indoctrination anywhere may evaporate before a clear call for freedom.

ON the other hand,THE COMMUNIST PARTY HAD WAVERED. In the first rush of hostilities, it yielded to the rebel demand that Imre Nagy- who was identified with the more "liberal" Communist line- be appointed premier. Nagy himself vacillated hopelessly between threats agains the "conterrevolutionaries" and pathetic pleas for order. Deadlines for amnesties were proclaimed time and again, with no takers. Then Nagy reversed himself and declared that there was no "counterrevolution" at all. He promised everything the rebels asked: WITHDRAWAL OF THE SOVIET TROOPS, abolition of the AVH, free elections, more housing, better wages, reform in industry and agriculture, democratic rights. The Communist newspaper Szabad Nep wound up by extolling the "heroic freedom fight of the Hungarian ppeople."

THE COMMUNIST COLLAPSE

Their attempt to identify themselves with the revolution showed that the Communists had lost their own following. Privately, the Communists had lost their own following. Privately the Communists confessed that in a free election their party would not poll 10%. Many party members went into frightened hiding; others humbly begged the freedom forces for clemency. Then the unreality began again. The rebel forces, recently assembled and loosely organized in local units, had no real leadership. The three non-Communist parties that had been suppressed for many years- the Smallholders, the Social Democrats and the National Peasants- emerged in tentative, fragmentary form. They began to publish newspapers which supported the general revolutionary demands and took up the cry for free elections. But there had been neither time nor opportunity for the non-Communists to organize a cabinet, let alone the extensive administrative corps that they would need to run Hungary.

THE REBELS' QUANDARY

No matter where Nagy stood, the rebels had to put up with him. By now the actually wanted much more than the reform of Communism. They wanted the abolition of Communism. But until they had a better political organization, Nagy seemed to be the only man who could carry out their immediate demands for domestic improvement. Even more important, the rebels knew that a full-scale Russian offensive would crush them. Soviet First Deputy Premier Anastas I. Mikoyan had been reported nervously shuttling back and forth between Budapest and Moscow, apparently trying to set the course of Soviet strategy. The rebels' best hope was that the Soviets really would negotiate their troop withdraval, as they had suggested they would. Nagy, the man somewhere in between the freedom forces and the diehard Communists, was the best Hungarian available for the negotiations. So the anti-Communists cooperated with Nagy- and waited.

T

HE MURDER OF A COUNTRY

MASSED SOVIET FORCES RETURN TO DESTROY THE PATRIOTS, DEPORT THEM TO SLAVERY AND DRIVE THEM INTO EXILE.Then the Russians made their terrible decision. On Nov.1 and 2, Hungarian apprehension grew. Free radio stations in half a dozen places chattered about Russian reinforcements coming in from Romania and from the Soviet Ukraine. People of Budapest heard that Russian units had seized the city's outlying airport. Premier Imre Nagy appealed to the U.N. to protect the country. The Hungarian army posted tanks to defend the approaches to Budapest. Some free radios spoke of more Russians arriving from Czechoslovakia; others reported Russian-Hungarian clashes at the eastern border. Nagy protested the developments to the Soviet ambassador, Yuri Andropov. Nov.3 was a day of strange suspense. A report had it that Nagy and the Soviet ambassador had agreed on the formation of mixed Hungarian-Soviet commissions to oversee the Russian evacuation. the triumph of the rebels seemed nearer as Nagy appointed nine non-Communists to his 12-man cabinet. Then a Hungarian military mission, headed by a ranking Hungarian officer who had gone over to the rebels, sat down with the Soviets to help their withdrawal, The Hungarians were not heard from again.

'ANY NEW S ABOUT HELP?

In the early-morning hours on Sunday Nov.4, massive Russian tank and artillery forces- their arrival in Hungary now fearfully confirmed- smashed into Budapest and into the provincial strongholds of the freedom fighters. A Budapest teletype message said: "Russian MiG fighters are over Budapest...the Russian infantry division is going toward the parlament...Gyor is completely surrronded...Pecs was attacked... We shall die for Hungay.

WE SHALL DIE FOR HUNGARY

Die for Hungary and Europe... Any news about help?... Qickly, quickly, qickly...." Nagy himself took to the radio to make an impassioned appeal to the U.N. and its Secretary General Dag Hammarkjold. Within hours Nagy was deposed. Janos Kadar took over the goverment. This tough Communist had been jailed and tortured during Hungary's anti-Tito campaign. He had been released under de-Stalinization. Somehow his readiness to serve Moscow had remained unimpaired. By noon of Nov.4, Soviet tanks had occupied all the important intersections of Budapest. One tank was stationed at each corner, firing down the street whenever a Hungarian appeared. More MiGs screamed over the city. The artillery slammed salvo after salvo into the resistance pockets. Buildings went up in flames Wreckage choked the streets. Smoke and the stench of death poisoned the air. NO THOUGHT OF SURRENDER.

THE REBELS NEVER THOUGHT OF SURRENDER. If anything, they were bolder and stronger than when the Soviets had left. People who had remained aloof from the first fight now aided the rebels. Every frantic and ingenious expedient of defense was used. Dinner plates were laid across the streets to stimulate mines and decieve the Russian tanks into stopping so that they could be picked off with Molotov cocktails. barricades of cobblestones were heaped up and topped with the pictures and statues of Communist leaders; the rebels wanted the Russians to have to destroy their own idols as they advanced. Budapest's city blocks became fortresses. In the blocks of houses, the walls between cellars were knocked out so that the resistance fighters could move underground from point to point.

SOVIET INFANTRY ARRIVED IN BUDAPEST UNDER COVER OF SOVIET TANKS. As tanks art artillery had killed thousands, indiscriminately, the infantry went from house to house, wiping out the patriots systematically. En route, the Russians found time for looting and arson. They re-equipped the reconstituted remnants of the AVH and turned them loose. Against these odds, the Hungarians had no chance. It was the same in the provinces. Strong Russian forces had sealed off the border- and escape route to Austria. Others encircled units of the Hungarian army and the freedom forces in their natural strongholds. When the tide of battle had turned, the Kadar regime asked the Hungarian nation to welcome "the soldiers of the Russian army who have helped us overcome the counterrevolution of reactionaries." The Russians help included the public hanging of rebels from the Danube bridges in Budapest. The Russians stuffed money in the corpses' mouths and placed signs accross their bodies, reading,"These men fought for capitalists." The Kadar regime also asked the Russians for relief supplies. Meanwhile the Russian military forces at the Austian border refused to let well-equipped Italaian, Danish and Austrian welfare teams come into Hungary.

PASSIVE RESISTANCE. Sporadic fighting all over the country continued, but the freedom forces now changed their main tactics to passive resistance. They simply refused to go back to work. The Russians tried to starve them out and they went hungry, but they still held fast. The goverment went on the radio again. As Nagy had pleaded with the patriots to lay down their arms, Kadar begged them to return to work. For a long time he found few takers. He could not even find many Hungarians to help him to run his own newly constituted goverment. The men who really seemed to be running Hungary now was General Ivan Serov, the chief of the Soviet secret police. The Russians used a new weapon to break the general strike: mass deportation of Hungarians to slave labor in the Soviet Union. In one week, perhaps 10,000 Hungarians were deported. The Russians were not always successful. At one railroad station a survivinng band of rebels freed 1,000 Hungarians destined for Russia.

DRAGNET AND DEPORTATION

As the Russians tightened their nationwide dragnet for everybody who had in any way been engaged in the fight for freedom, a ragged desperate stream of Hungarian refugees poured toward the Austrian border. Sometimes the Russians indifferently shot them down. At other times, in unaccountable Soviet caprice, they let them go. By the end of November the total number of refugees swarming into Austria was approaching 100,000. The rest of the Hungarian people silently awaited their fate in their own country.

Why had the Russians reverted to the most savage Stalinism? The answer was not far to seek. DE-STALINISM HAD FAILED IN HUNGARY. As soon as the Hungarians got a chance to protest within the framework of the Communist system, their protests swelled to demand for the abolition of Communism itself. If the Russians had let the Hungarians win, the victory would have encouraged every other Eastern European satellite of Russia to revolt and throw the Russians out. Communism in Russia itself would have been discredited, defeated. To forestall this, to give a massive warning to all its restive captive peoples, the Kremlin made a horrible example of the Hungarians.

REVOLUTION AGAINST REDS

A WORLD APPALLED BY THE SOVIET ACTIONS IN HUNGARY CRIES OUT IN ANGER AGAINST COMMUNISM EVERYWHERE.

A shock of indignation at the Soviet murder of Hungary ran around the globe. Never had Communists repression so stirred consciences and hearts. Even Communists- in many lands- were aghast. The reaction among the free peoples was instant and massive. In Madison Square Garden in New York, 10,000 assembled and shouted "stop the massacre" in Hungary. Pickets at the Soviet U.N. delegation headquarters were so angry, that a detail of more than 130 policemen was assigned to restrain them. Detroit and Cleveland were at the scenes of anti Russian rallies. Elsewhere in the Americas, in Argentina, Uruguay and El Salvador, demonstrators showed their sympathy for Hungary.

BELGIAN STUDENTS BATTLED OUTSIDE THE SOVIET EMBASSY.

IN LUXEMBURG a crowd actually entered and set fire to the Soviet embassy, while the Soviet ambassador cowered in the cellar. IN FRANCE anti Communist demonstrators blanketed the nation from Normandy to Marseilles; IN PARIS where the Reds usually foment and direct the political riots, both the headquarters of the Communist party and the editorial offices of the Communist party paper, L'Humanite, were set aflame by anti-Communists. ALL DENMARK OBSERVED FIVE MINUTES' SILENCE IN HONOR OF THE HUNGARIAN 'S RESISTANCE. One hundred thousand WEST BERLINERS assembled at Bradenburg Gate and shouted "DOWN WITH THE SOVIET RAPERS IN HUNGARY". In HOLLAND THERE WEERE PROTESTS IN ALMOST EVERY CITY. At a rally of 30,000 in Amsterdam a demonstrator held up a banner reading: "LET US GO AS VOLUNTEERS TO HUNGARY". London students donned black armbands, and six hundred invited guests boycotted the Soviet embassy party for the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. The boycott was repeated at many Soviet embassies around the world. The rise of this great wave of anger was especially reflected in the U.N. IN THE FIRST PHASE OF THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION, THE U.N. DID NOTHING.

SOURCES/ Hungary's Fight for Freedom, a special edition of LIFE Magazine (C) TIME Inc., 1956/ and 1956-2006 Commemorating the Hungarian Revolution (C) Csaba Teglas, 1998.