So as you all already know from the title
of the episode, today we are going to be discussing
the events of the Hungarian Revolution. This
episode builds on our last episode where we
laid all of the groundwork explaining the
situation in Hungary leading up to October
of 1956 so, if you haven’t already seen
that episode you really should go watch it.
Go now. Go… OK, now where were we...right!
Budapest in October of 1956 was at a leading
edge in changing feelings towards socialism.
The Death of Stalin three years before, Khrushchev’s
secret speech a few months earlier, years
of political oppression and economic stagnation,
all of this was coming together in a movement
demanding real change. I’m your host David
and today, we are looking at the 1956 Hungarian
Uprising. This is...The Cold War.
OK, so as I’ve mentioned, the liberalizing
atmosphere that was developing after Stalin’s
death was certainly giving new hope to Hungarians
interested in bringing reforms to their own
country. But it wasn’t just the changes
in he Soviet Union they were looking at. They
had also just seen a spate of successful reforms
enacted in Poland after the so-called Poznan
June, a small-ish revolt that had taken place
in the city of Poznan (here is the link to
the video we did on THAT). Not only had Poland
installed a new reformist government with
more local control but they had also arranged
for the removal of large numbers of Soviet
Army troops from Poland.
Now, as you’ll recall, following Stalin’s
death, Rakosi Matyas, the Stalinist post-war
Hungarian leader had been removed from leadership,
replaced by the reformer, Nagy Imre, who had
set about releasing political prisoners and
reinstating to the Hungarian Workers Party
anti-Rakosi members who had previously been
expelled. Public forums were being held, with
workers, students and intellectuals all taking
part. Vitally, when Rakosi ousted Nagy and
regained power, no rollbacks on these liberalizations
occurred. Even when Rakosi was permanently
ousted and replaced by his heir-apparent,
Gero Erno, no re-Stalinization occurred. As
you can imagine, all of this bolstered hope
for increased permanent freedoms in the country.
That brings us to October 1956. Agitation
and public calls for change were becoming
more prevalent. On October 23rd, over twenty
thousand people gathered in Budapest at the
statue of Jozsef Bem, a Polish revolutionary
who had taken part in the 1848 Hungarian Revolution.
At that gathering, the president of the Writer’s
Union of Hungary, Veres Peter read a manifesto
to the crowd, what has become known as the
16 Points. It demanded the withdrawal of all
Soviet troops from Hungary, free and open
multi-party elections, a new government led
by Nagy Imre to lead Hungary to those elections
as well as the complete reorganization of
the Hungarian economy. The 16 Points also
called for freedom of the press and the restoration
of Hungary’s national symbols in place of
the Communist ones that had been adopted since
the end of the war. It was this gathering
that first witnessed one of the most prominent
symbols of the revolution: a Hungarian flag
being waved with the communist coat of arms
cut from the middle.
This crowd on Bem Square then spontaneously
moved from Bem Square across the river to
the Parliament buildings, to continue the
demonstration there. At this point, the working
day for many was ending and the crowd swelled
to as many 200,000 people. Despite the large
crowd, things remained peaceful, although
there were hints that things at this point
were beginning to radicalize. The constant
outcry from the demonstrators were calls for
the Soviets, simply referred to as Russians,
to go home.
By the evening of the 23rd, the Hungarian
leadership had grasped the severity of the
situation. Gera made the decision to publicly
condemn both the 16 Points and the demonstrations
as a whole. He also made a private request
to the Soviet ambassador to Hungary for military
assistance. The ambassador’s name by the
way? Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov. Remember
that name for later.
Back in the square outside parliament where
the demonstration was occurring, calls for
Nagy to speak increased until, at 8:45pm on
the evening of the 23rd, he appeared. Now,
his speech that night actually called for
the dispersal of the demonstration to allow
him time to secure the reforms everyone was
looking for. This is actually totally on brand
for Nagy who was not a firebrand revolutionary
but rather more of a moderate. Understand
that Nagy was still a dedicated communist,
one who believed in gradual reforms to transition
to increased sovereignty and democracy for
his country.
The crowd left Parliament but did not disperse,
instead splitting into two groups. One group
moved towards the building housing Hungarian
Radio and the other towards Sztalin Square.
This second group moved onto Sztalin square
at the edge of the Varosliget, the city square,
and set about destroying the statue of Stalin,
a ‘gift’ that had been presented to the
country in 1951 to mark the Vozd’s 70th
birthday. According to Kopacsi Sandor, the
head of the police at the time "[The demonstrators]
placed ... a thick steel rope around the neck
of the 25-metre tall Stalin's statue while
other people, arriving in trucks with oxygen
cylinders and metal cutting blowpipes, were
setting to work on the statue's bronze shoes.
... An hour later the statue fell down from
its pedestal." Only the boots remained and
Hungarian flags were quickly planted in them.
Now, the second group that left Parliament
that night had moved towards Hungarian Radio.
The crowd entered the building and demanded
that the 16 Points be read over the radio
waves. The request was refused and a standoff
began. A rumor began to spread outside the
building that those inside had been detained
by the AVH, the secret police and tension
began to spiral. This is where the demonstrations
took a significant turn.
The AVH opened fire on the crowd, killing
three. This did not disperse the crowd but
only angered it instead and violence flared.
The AVH, realising their predicament, called
for the Hungarian military to provide support
and troops were dispatched. However, the soldiers
not only didn’t move against the crowd but
actively joined them and began firing on the
AVH troops. The AVH troops, at the direction
of Kopacsi Sandor, then declared themselves
for the demonstrators and joined the burgeoning
Revolution. They opened their weapons depots
and the revolutionaries began to arm themselves.
Soviet leadership in Moscow quickly understood
the gravity of the situation and after short
discussion, immediately decided that the best
course of action would be to dismiss Gero
as First Secretary of the Hungarian Workers
Party and appoint Nagy as the new Prime Minister
in place of Hegedus Andras, who had been PM
since 1955. This would be done in exchange
for Nagy agreeing to accept that Sovet troops
would remain in Hungary to “ensure stability”.
This was an offer which Nagy accepted.
In the early morning hours of October 24,
6,000 Soviet troops accompanying hundreds
of tanks entered Budapest and took control
of the city's main streets and squares. Opposing
them, armed rebels had three main strongholds
in Budapest. On the Pest side of the river
was the area surrounding the Corvin theater
as well as the area around Baross Square while
on the Buda side, they had invested themselves
around Szena Square, below the Castle District.
Of course, we would be remiss if we didn’t
also point out that Budapest was not the only
site of revolt. Hungarians in Debrecen, Miskolc,
and Csepel had taken to the streets in support.
The entire country was tense and divided.
And not just between the Soviet-backed government
supporters and the protesters but within the
factions of the protestors themselves. On
one side was Nagy who called for calmness
so that reforms could be enacted. However,
many of the protestors did not want to wait
for reform; they wanted immediate action to
dismantle the entire system then and there.
The Soviets continued to move new troops into
the city as fighting continued but were forbidden
to use artillery or airstrikes as they engaged
with the demonstrators. So clearly fighting
is going on but who was fighting who? Well,
as you can guess, the protestors were fighting
the Soviet troops who were being brought into
the city. The protestors were also fighting
AVH troops who largely had remained loyal
to the Moscow-backed government, in part out
of fear of what would happen to them if the
regime they had so brutally served suddenly
fell. But where did the Hungarian army stand
on all of this? Well, it was largely divided.
Some units were protecting or had even joined
the protesters while other units were actively
fighting against them trying to put down the
rebellion.
The next day, October 25th, saw another large
demonstration outside of the Parliament building.
At some point during the demonstration, either
AVH or Soviet troops, it is unclear which
opened fire, resulting in the deaths of 75
people. The result of this massacre was a
massive boost in support for the rebels (I'm
going to call them rebels now), including
hundreds of the demonstrators moving into
the rebel strongholds. It is likely that at
this point there were perhaps up to 2,000
armed rebels in Budapest.
After the massacre on the 25th, the reaction
of men like Gera and Hegedus was not to stay
and find a way to quell the rebellion but
rather to flee the country, to the Soviet
Union. The rebellion was spreading and by
then Debrecen, Miskolc, Csepel and Pecs were
under full control of the rebels. In Budapest,
skirmishes continued with the rebels finding
success, even repelling an assault by Soviet
troops on the Corvin theater, destroying four
tanks in the process.
Nagy understood that the situation in his
country was precarious, with a real possibility
that the conflict would spiral out of control,
endangering the uprising itself. On October
27th, he announced the formation of a new
government, one which included 4 non-communists.
At the same time, he was negotiating with
representatives from Moscow, Anastas Mikoyan
and Mikhail Suslov in an attempt to win some
of the reforms demanded by the rebels. By
the next day, the 28th, a ceasefire had been
arranged. The fighting had claimed the lives
of over 1,000 rebels and at least 500 Soviet
troops.
The agreement Nagy arranged stipulated that
Soviet troops would be withdrawn not only
from Budapest but also from Hungary. In exchange
the Nagy government would restore order to
the country and disarm the rebels. Nagy also
announced on the 28th his support of the Revolution,
that the AVH was being dissolved and that
a new National Guard was to be formed, made
up of elements of the police, the army, and
the rebels. In addition, 8,000 political prisoners
were to be released and political parties
which had been banned under the Rakosi regime
were allowed to operate.
So, everything seems good for the Hungarians,
right? Well, as i’m sure you can guess,
it didn’t stay that way. In the days following
the ceasefire, the crowds of demonstrators
captured and then subsequently lynched several
hundred members of the AVH and the Hungarian
Workers Party. The most significant example
of this happened on the 30th when a renewed
skirmish between the rebels and the AVH broke
out at the headquarters of the Hungarian Workers
Party. The AVH troops surrendered and 23 of
their officers were then summarily executed.
This anticommunist violence was, as you can
imagine, not at all well received in Moscow
and strengthened the argument of those who
wanted to forcibly put down the rebellion.
But what was the overall viewpoint from Moscow?
From the beginning, it was divided. On one
side were those who wanted to immediately
resort to force. But, there was a more moderate
group, notably led by Khrushchev and Zhukov,
who feared a disastrous international outcome,
similar to that being suffered by the French
and British in the Suez at the same time the
Hungarian Revolt was playing out. Khrushchev
was hoping for an outcome similar to what
had been arranged in Poland, where the Nagy
government would remain communist and inside
the Soviet sphere of influence. In fact, on
the 30th, before the attack and execution
of the AVH troops in Budapest, the Soviet
government had pledged to tolerate the Nagy
government and would reconsider the status
of Soviet troops stationed in Warsaw Pact
nations.
When Soviet leadership heard about the anti-commuist
attacks and the murder of the AVH troops,
this line of moderate thinking was swept from
the table. Clearly seeing the depth of anti-communist
mood in the country, and coupled with Nagy’s
recent decision to withdraw from the Warsaw
Pact coupled with a declaration of neutrality,
a decision to act was made. On October 31,
the Politburo reversed its earlier decision
and resolved to use force to put down the
Revolution. The date was set for November
4.
As Soviet troops began to mass on the Hungarian
border, Nagy was reassured by Ambassador Andropov
that there was nothing to fear and it was
routine troop movements. Nagy, not anybody’s
fool, understood what was happening and in
a bid to draw on international support from
the West, publicly announced the withdrawal
from the Warsaw Pact and declared Hungary
neutral. On November third, Ambassador Andropov
met with the Hungarian Minister of Defence
Maleter Pal, himself the colonel of an armoured
division who had defected to the rebels after
being initially ordered to destroy them. They
met at the Tokol soviet barracks to discuss
the terms of the Soviet withdrawal. Although
the meeting seemed to go well, Maleter was
arrested by the KGB towards the end of the
meeting.
By this point, Soviet troops had encircled
Budapest and the Hungarian army found themselves
totally unprepared for what was to come. Nagy
was reluctant to order his own troops to fire
on the Soviets, still hoping to find a peaceful
solution. Now, there could only be one possible
outcome. IN the early hours of November 4,
Soviet forces went into action and brutal
repression followed. Nagy fled to the Yugoslavian
Embassy where he sought refuge. As fighting
intensified, Kadar Janos announced the establishment
of a new government, the “Hungarian Revolutionary
Worker-Peasant Government”. Nagy was lured
out of the Yugoslavian Embassy on the promise
of safe passage from Hungary but was promptly
arrested. Nagy was executed two years later.
Lacking any central control, no widespread
organized resistance was possible and the
defence of Budapest and other regions of Hungary
fell to isolated pockets of rebels, which
the Soviet Army systematically crushed. By
the 9th of November the fighting was done
and Hungary had been subdued. No outside support
would be forthcoming for the rebels as the
West was otherwise distracted by the Suez
Crisis and was not willing to risk a war with
the Soviet Union.
IN all, between 2,500 and 3,000 Hungarians
died as a result of the fighting and estimates
of those wounded ranged anywhere from 13,000
to 20,000 people. On the Soviet side, over
700 soldiers were killed and as many as 1,500
wounded in the fighting. Significantly, over
180,000 Hungarians fled the country, most
heading West, across the border into neighbouring
Austria. Of those who remained in Hungary,
22,000 people were brought before the courts
and imprisoned and as many as 350 people were
executed. Kadar Janos would remain head of
a Soviet-backed, communist Hungary until 1988
by which time the winds of change had begun
to blow.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this second episode
of The Cold War Channel’s presentation of
the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Please be sure
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