1956 Hungarian Revolution

The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, also known as the Hungarian Uprising or simply the Hungarian Revolt, was an anti-Soviet revolt in Hungary lasting from 23 October to 4 November 1956. The revolt was suppressed by Soviet troops, and to a much smaller degree the Hungarian ÁVH (Államvédelmi Hatóság, 'State Protection Authority'). 2500 Hungarian rebels were killed in action according Central Statistics Office. This number may underestimate the casualties, since it does not include other causes of death, combatants not found on the combat field, persons who simply disappeared or those executed immediately afterwards. 720 Soviet troops were killed according Soviet sources and thousands more were wounded or missing. Mark Kramer, “The Soviet Union and the 1956 Crises in Hungary and Poland: Reassessments and New Findings”, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol.33, No.2, Apr. 1998, p.210. Péter Gosztonyi, "Az 1956-os forradalom számokban", Népszabadság (Budapest), 3 November 1990, 3 The revolution led to a significant drop in support for Marxist-Leninist ideas in Western countries.

Overview

On 23 October 1956 hundreds of thousands of Hungarians rose up against the government. Within days, millions of Hungarians were participating in or supporting the revolt. The revolt achieved control over a large number of social institutions and a large amount of territory. The participants began to implement their own policies. Executions of pro-Soviet communists, and ÁVH members started, especially by ultra-nationalist groups like József Dudás'. The Hungarian Communist Party made Imre Nagy Prime Minister. After negotiating a ceasefire with Soviet forces in Hungary, Nagy declared his intention to withdraw Hungary from the Warsaw Pact.

Soviet troops entered Hungary on two occasions, both times to firm up pro-Warsaw Pact governments – the Gerő government that collapsed on 23 October, and the Kádár government formed on 3 November – that nominally invited them. On the night of 23 October and subsequent days the Hungarian ÁVH shot protestors. In comparison, Soviet troops generally attempted to keep order. Armed resistance by insurgents, and the collapse of the Hungarian Communist Party, caused a ceasefire between Soviet troops and insurgents by 1 November 1956. On the night of 4 November 1956 the Soviet army intervened, launching an artillery and airstrike assisted multi-divisional offensive against Budapest. To a minuscule extent this Soviet intervention was assisted by the ÁVH, reorganized by the Kádár government as a militia. By January 1957 Kádár had brought the instability to an end. Due to the rapid change in government and social policies, and the use of armed force to achieve political goals, this uprising is often considered a revolution.

The revolution

Prelude

Following World War II, the borders were almost identically restored to those of 1920. Hungary became part of the Soviet area of influence, and after a brief period of multiparty democracy, it transformed into a communist state by 1949, under the dictatorship of Mátyás Rákosi and the Hungarian Communist Party.

Soviet troops had occupied Hungary since 1944; firstly as an invading army and occupation force, then at the nominal invitation of the Hungarian government, and finally as required by their membership in the Warsaw Pact.

On March 5, 1953, Josef Stalin died, leaving a power vacuum at the top of the Soviet Union and ushering in a brief period of destalinization - in which some anti-Stalin sentiment was tolerated. Most European communist parties began to develop a reformist wing.

On June 17, 1953, workers in East Berlin staged an uprising, demanding the resignation of the East German Communist government. This was quickly and violently put down with the help of the Soviet military. The death toll lies between 125 and 270. Das internationale Schrifttum über den 17. Juni 1953

On 9 May 1955, the entry of West Germany into the NATO alliance was described as "a decisive turning point in the history of our continent" by Halvard Lange, Foreign Minister of Norway at the time.BBC On This Day: 1955 West Germant accepted into NATO Seen as a threat by the Soviet Union, a counter-alliance, the Warsaw Pact, was created on 14 May 1955 by the Soviet Union and its satellite states in response. Ironically, one of the principles of this Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance was "respect for the independence and sovereignty of states, and also ... noninterference in their internal affairs".Modern History Sourcebook: The Warsaw Pact, 1955

On May 15, 1955, the Austrian State Treaty was signed, ending the Allied occupation of Austria, and establishing the country as independent, and demilitarized. As a direct result, on October 26, 1955 Austria formally declared its neutrality. This treaty and declaration significantly changed the calculus of cold war military planning because they established a neutral cordon splitting NATO from Vienna to Geneva, and increased the strategic importance of Hungary's location to the Warsaw Pact.

On July 18, 1956, Mátyás Rákosi - "Stalin's Best Hungarian Disciple" - was forced to resign as General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party, and was replaced by Ernő Gerő.

In October 1956, the Polish reformist Władysław Gomułka was rehabilitated and elected as head of the Polish Communist Party. Gomułka's reinstatement inspired hope across Eastern Europe for greater reforms and increased autonomy.

Revolution begins - 23 October

On the evening of 23 October 1956, students from the Technical University gathered in Budapest's Bem Square to stage a small pro-Gomułka solidarity demonstration. This small rally quickly attracted others as the mood changed from demonstration to protest. Many Hungarian soldiers on duty in the city joined the protesters, tearing the Soviet stars off their hats and throwing them into the crowd. Emboldened, this growing crowd decided to cross the Danube and move toward the Parliament building. At its peak, the crowd numbered at least 100,000 and had no clear leader. At this point, the demonstration was spirited, but peaceful.

The demands of the demonstrators were at first relatively mild. The turning point was when Hungarian Security Police (ÁVH) opened fire on the crowds and killed hundreds. Pretenses of moderation were dropped, police cars were flipped over and set on fire, and guns were distributed among the masses by arms factory and arsenal workers. Hungarian Security Police (ÁVH) headquarters was besieged by the crowd. As the authorities tried to resupply the besieged ÁVH, hiding arms in an ambulance with lights and siren, the crowd intercepted it and liberated the arms within.

Soviet resistance

On 23 October, the Soviet Union activated contingency plans which had existed since early October 1956 for a police action intervention into Hungary's internal situation. The Presidium of the Soviet Party had been concerned with the internal situation in Hungary from April, when they heard of Rákosi's plans to eliminate a large number of intellectuals. Their concerns grew over autumn, as Gerő lost control of his party. The Presidium of the Soviet Party believed that the Hungarian Party's request for invitation indicated that Nagy held the confidence of the Party, and that the Hungarian Party still held the confidence of the Hungarian public.

The intervention of 23 October began using forces already in Hungary. These Soviet soldiers had become more accustomed to a Hungarian way of life. Their traditional mission was to defend the Soviet Union from a NATO invasion. This first intervention was politically confused: for example, when a column of tanks encountered a protest march on the parliament, the tanks accompanied protestors.

While Soviet troops fought in Budapest, the rest of the country was largely quiet. Soviet commanders often negotiated local cease-fires with the revolutionaries. In some regions, the Soviet forces managed to halt revolutionary activity. In Budapest, the Soviet troops were eventually fought to a stand-still and hostilities began to wane.

23 October to 4 November

Imre Nagy was soon installed as Prime Minister by the Hungarian communist party. Many of his previous supporters now denounced him as a traitor, mistakenly thinking that he, not the hardline Party Secretary Ernő Gerő and the former Prime Minister András Hegedűs, had declared a state of emergency and ordered Soviet troops into action. However, it soon became clear that Nagy opposed Soviet intervention. Nagy sought and received assurances from Yuri Andropov that the Soviet Union would not violently crush the revolution, despite Andropov's knowing otherwise.

During the Revolution, many political prisoners were released including major Church figures such as József Cardinal Mindszenty. Hungary declared intention to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact. Political parties which had been banned over the period 1945-1949 reappeared. Several trade-centered workers councils and regional national councils were formed, which were much like the independent Russian soviets of 1905 or 1917.

Soviet political reaction

Although widely believed that Hungary's declaration to exit the Warsaw Pact caused the Soviet military to crush the Revolution, minutes of the meetings of the Presidium of the Soviet Communist Party indicate that this declaration was only one of several contributing factors. While the Presidium had debated, and decided, not to intervene prior to the withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, a hardline faction around Molotov were pushing for intervention. While Khrushchev and Zhukov were pushing against intervention, the withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact cemented the Presidium's hardline position.

The key tendencies which alarmed the Presidium of the Soviet Communist Party were the simultaneous movements towards multiparty parliamentary democracy, and a democratic national council of workers, which could lead to a step towards a capitalist state. Both challenged the preeminence of the Soviet Communist Party in Eastern Europe and perhaps the Soviet Union itself. This approach of the Soviet Union was later explained by the Brezhnev Doctrine, which stated "When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries." It was later denounced by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988.

While Britain and France were intervening in the Suez crisis, the United States declared its position through John Foster Dulles on October 27: "We do not look upon these nations and other Warsaw Pact countries as potential military allies."

With this combination of political and foreign policy considerations, the Presidium decided to break the cease-fire and eliminate the Hungarian revolution. | accessdate = 2006-07-08}}

Revolution crushed - 4 to 10 November

On 4 November, plans which had been in motion for a number of days reached their fruition. New Soviet troops, who shared no sympathy for the Hungarians, invaded. While the Soviet Union justified its second intervention on the basis of responsibility to a Warsaw Pact ally, in the form of the Kádár government formed on 3 November, the Soviet forces allocated came from national reserves, and other Warsaw Pact countries did not supply troops.

This intervention, unlike the intervention of 23 October, did not rely on unsupported tank columns penetrating dense urban areas. The 4 November intervention was built around a combined arms strategy of air strikes, artillery bombardments, and coordinated tank-infantry actions (Soviets brought some 6,000 tanks) in penetrating urban core areas. Hungarian MP Imre Mécs (a death sentence survivor of the 1956 Revolution) said that more tanks were used by the Soviets than the Germans used to invade the USSR in WW2. While the Hungarian Army put up an uncoordinated resistance, it was working class Hungarians, organised by their councils, who played the key role in fighting the Soviet troops. Due to the strength of working class resistance, it was the industrial and proletarian areas of Budapest which were primarily targeted by Soviet artillery and airstrikes. These actions continued in an improvised manner until the workers' councils, students and intellectuals called for a cease-fire on 10 November.

In explaining Soviet intervention a number of features need to be examined. The Presidium of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union sought to maintain a Hungarian government which was controlled by a like minded party. By late October the Nagy government had moved well beyond the limits acceptable by the Soviet party. Additionally, by late October, unrest was noticed in some regional areas of the European Soviet Union: while this unrest was minor, it was intolerable. For the majority of the Presidium, the instances of workers control in Hungary were incompatible with their idea of socialism: and needed to be stamped out. Most importantly, the Presidium was unable to accept the Nagy government announcement that Hungary would leave the Warsaw Pact. Soviet international relations in central Europe were not only dictated by a desire for empire, but by a fear of invasion from the West. These fears ran deep in Soviet foreign policy: back to the civil war and the war against Poland in the 1920s. However, it was the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, when the Hungarian state was an ally of Germany's, that cemented the Soviet concept of a necessary defensive buffer of allied states in central Europe.

10 November onwards

Between 10 November and 19 December the workers' councils negotiated directly with the Soviet occupation force. While they achieved some releases of political prisoners, they did not achieve their aims of a Soviet withdrawal.

János Kádár formed a new government, with the support of the Soviet Union, and after December 1956 steadily increased his control over Hungary.

At the Melbourne Olympics, the Soviet handling of the Hungarian uprising led to a boycott by Spain, the Netherlands and Switzerland. A confrontation between Soviet and Hungarian teams occurred in the semi-final game of the water polo tournament; the match was extremely violent, and was called off in the final minute to quell fighting among spectators. Some members of the Hungarian Olympic delegation defected after the games.

Sporadic armed resistance and strikes continued until midway through 1957. Mass arrests started, and many Hungarians, some 200,000, left the country. CNN: Géza Jeszenszky, Hungarian Ambassador, Cold War Chat (transcript) November 8, 1998 Imre Nagy and many others were tried and executed by Kádár's government. The CIA's estimates published in the 1960s approximate 1200 executions.

By 1963 most political prisoners from the Hungarian revolution of 1956 had been released by János Kádár.

After the fall of the communist regime, the Republic of Hungary was declared on the 33rd anniversary of the Revolution, October 23, 1989. Today this day is a national holiday in Hungary.

On February 13, 2006, the US State Department commemorated the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. US State Department Commemorates the 1956 Hungarian Revolution

Causes

Economic collapse and low standards of living provoked working class discontent, which was visible during soccer riots. Peasants were unhappy with land policies. The Communist Party was unable to unite its reformist and Stalinist wings. Journalists and authors were upset with their working conditions, and took control of their trade union. Students were upset with academic conditions and University entrance criteria and established independent student unions. Nikita Khrushchev's speech on the Soviet government under Stalin caused much debate within the elite of the Hungarian communist party. As the Hungarian communist party was blinded by leadership debates, the population took action.

Historical debate

The historical and political significance of the Hungarian revolution of 1956 is still actively debated. The main views on the nature of the revolution are:

That it was a socialist and democratic revolution aiming to create a more open socialist society like Yugoslavia, or a social democratic society like Sweden, or perhaps a new and different kind of socialist system. This view was popular among reformist communists and is popular among democratic socialists, Trotskyists and others.
That it was a spontaneous revolution with a broad intention of establishing political self determination within existing social contexts, particularly in terms of an alignment of Central European states. This view is popular in Hungary itself and Central Europe.
That it was a libertarian socialist and anarchist revolution aiming to create a new kind of society modelled on the Hungarian workers councils. This view is popular amongst libertarian communists, council communists, anarchists, and some Trotskyists.
That it was a parliamentary-democratic revolution with the key intentions of establishing political independence from the Soviet Union, a closer relationship with Western Europe and the United States, and reintroducing parliamentary capitalism in a Western European form. This view is popular in the USA, and to a lesser extent in Hungary and Central Europe. Despite this view's continued popularity with various publics, its historical credibility has waned over time, particularly outside of the USA. It has been primarily been replaced by the 2nd stream of historiography above amongst professional historians. Much like the 5th stream of historiography below, this history was primarily created in a context of Cold War propaganda between the United States and the Soviet Union. The propagation of this view was heavily supported by CIA front organisations until the mid 1960s.
That it was a clerical and fascist attempt to restore a Horthyite or Arrow Cross government and a semi-feudal capitalist economy. This view was popular with Soviet Union and Chinese aligned communist parties, and is present in many primary sources discussing the revolution, for example, in the Hungarian Government's White Book series (November 1956–1959). However, it has little credibility amongst professional historians in the West, primarily due to the fact that all accounts on the 1956 events were subject to censorship in Hungary continuously until the year 1989. Much like the 4th strand of history above, this history was a result of Cold War propaganda and was primarily supported by the institutions of Soviet aligned states. In recent years some of the attention paid by this view to the reprisals against Stalinist Hungarians and AVO/AVH officials has received attention by serious scholars, admittedly with different conclusions.

Due to the variety of conflicting and irreconcilable historiographical positions on the Hungarian revolution of 1956, it is difficult to produce a summary account of revolutionary events. Similarly, because the revolution was short lived, it is nearly impossible to speculate on what its effects might have been, if successful.

References

External links

The 1956 Portal: 1956 photos, videos, resources, and events across the US
The American Hungarian Federation's 1956 information site
Institute of Revolutionary History, Hungary
A detailed description of the revolution
Hungary '56 by Andy Anderson also available free at the libcom.org/library
Hungarian Tragedy, eyewitness account by Peter Fryer
Peter Fryer's writings on the 1956 Hungarian revolution
Budapest 1956. Locations of Drama (Bob Dent, publ. 2006) An unusual and interesting approach concentrating on 49 locations and what happened there (and often comparing with the location today).
The Hungarian Revolt, October 23 - November 4, 1956 by Richard Lettis and William I. Morris, Editors, ebook
Economic factors leading to Revolution
Project for 50th Anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution 1956
1956 The Hungarian Revolution An short account of the workers uprising in Hungary.
Hungary 1956 The uprising from an Anarchist point of view.
Hungary-1956 flickr photo group social networking - photos
1956 original newspapers historic front pages

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