Hugo Dewar and Daniel Norman 1957

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Hungary

Source: A pamphlet published in 1957 by the Socialist Union of Central-Eastern Europe, 489 Oxford Street, London W1.

Scanned and prepared for the Marxist Internet Archive by Paul Flewers. Basic spelling errors have been corrected, and Hungarian names have (I hope) been correctly rendered.

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The Authors

Hugo Dewar has published several pamphlets and three books: Assassins at Large (Wingate, 1951) – a full account of the executions outside Russia ordered by the GPU; and The Modern Inquisition (Wingate, 1953) – a history and an analysis of the ‘confession trials’ in the USSR and the People’s Democracies, and Communist politics in Britain: The CPGB from its origins to the Second World War.

Daniel Norman has represented for several years the Rumanian Social-Democratic Party at the Socialist International. During the war he served as a volunteer in the French army and spent five years in German captivity. Since 1951 he has been established in London as a journalist. In 1955 he published Marx and Soviet Reality (Background Books – The Phoenix Press).

Contents

I: Background to the Revolution

II: The Communists and the Revolution

III: The Workers and the Kádár Government

IV: The Youth

V: The Social-Democrats

VI: The Lessons of the Revolution

VII: The Scapegoats

VIII: The Policy of Reprisals

IX: Chronology

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Hungary. Hugo Dewar and Daniel Norman 1957

I: Background to the Revolution

Since 1789 there have been in reality but two powers on the continent of Europe – Russia and Absolutism, the Revolution and Democracy. For the moment the Revolution seems to be suppressed but it lives and is feared as deeply as ever. – Karl Marx

The enemies of the Hungarian revolution brazenly assert that it was instigated and led by ‘agents of the imperialist West’. An old, old story, always trotted out whenever a corrupt and oppressive ruling class is threatened in its power by an aroused people. And perhaps among the Communist bosses there are even some who half-believe this sorry excuse: for it must indeed be difficult for them to imagine that the patient common people, whom they have so long bullied and slave-driven and lied to with such contempt, could have found in themselves and of themselves the courage and strength to rise up against such formidable odds. Yet not only do all eye-witnesses of and participants in the revolution affirm its spontaneity, but official Stalinist statements, made when the outcome was still in the balance, themselves contradict the present propaganda. It was the ÁVH, the Stalinist security police, which, firing upon a peaceful, unarmed demonstration of students and citizens, caused the spark that exploded the pent-up force which had been accumulating for many years. That the revolution was unforeseen and unorganised is demonstrated by the entire course of the subsequent events. Let us look briefly at the background to the revolution.

From the Hungarian general election of 1945, the first and last free election to be held, four main parties emerged: the Smallholders Party with 245 seats; the Social-Democratic Party with 69 seats; the Communist Party with 70 seats; and the National Peasant Party with 23 seats. These parties formed a coalition government. As a result of Russian pressure the Ministry of the Interior continued to be the preserve of the Communists. When the Russian armies occupied the country in 1944-45 the organisation and control of a security police had been the Stalinists’ principle concern. In all the satellites it was this ministry that the Stalinists most coveted and which, with the backing of the Russian military, they always obtained. As Mátyás Rákosi said later:

There was only one organisation over which our party had control from the very first, and which never was influenced by the political coalition: that was the ÁVH... We maintained firm control over it from the very moment of its creation, and we made certain of it as a safe weapon in our fight...

Subsequent events showed what is meant by ‘our fight’. By 1948 the leaders of the opposition parties had been silenced – deported to Russia or imprisoned, or beaten to death, or shot, or forced to flee abroad. In 1949 the Communist leader László Rajk and several other leading Communists were themselves found to be too independent-minded for the Russians; they were sentenced in a frame-up trial and hanged; and many more Communists were imprisoned. In the same year Imre Nagy, also regarded as tainted with ‘national’ Communism, was removed from the Political Committee. Thus even the Communist Party, although all the other political parties had been suppressed, leaving it alone in the field, had to be itself disciplined into the servile tool of the Russians.

At the head of this party was Rákosi; at his right hand Erno Gerõ; behind them the ÁVH; and behind the ÁVH were the Russian tanks and artillery, whose presence was a constant reminder that Hungary lay under the domination of an alien power.

The disarray in the Communist camp following Stalin’s death in March 1953 sent Rákosi, Gerõ and Imre Nagy to Moscow for consultation and instructions. The inclusion of Nagy in this delegation was an indication of unrest within the party, for Nagy was associated with the opposition to Rákosi among the Hungarian Communists. His political rehabilitation was an effort to implement in Hungary the new ‘collective leadership’ principle. In July, Nagy replaced Rákosi as Prime Minister and a certain relaxation and betterment of living standards was apparent from then until 1955. But Gerõ became Minister of Interior and no really fundamental change in the regime was effected. The slight changes made were not enough to satisfy the people, but they were enough to arouse hope and to encourage opposition. The more courageous of the intellectuals, many Communists among them, had begun to voice criticism which, although cautious, amounted to an indirect attack on the regime. The Stalinists were alarmed at the potential threat, and Rákosi, still Secretary General of the party, took action. In the spring of 1955 Nagy was accused of ‘deviations’, stripped of his party posts and replaced by András Hegedus. Thus, torn by personal rivalries, more than usually incompetent and corrupt, utterly isolated from the people, and with a rank-and-file assailed by doubts, the Hungarian Communist Party was unable to achieve even the measure of collective leadership attained in Russia. In February 1956, Khrushchev’s dethronement of Stalin dealt it a further staggering psychological blow. László Rajk and his co-defendants in the 1949 trial are declared to have been innocent; Rákosi is made the scapegoat, forced to resign as First Party Secretary and replaced by – Gerõ. Thus again, in spite of admissions of past ‘errors’ and abundant promises for the future, nothing is changed. There is no escape valve for the pent-up forces of national discontent.

The situation in Russia dictated a policy of relaxation of tensions, and in the satellites this policy served to tie the hands of the Stalinists and strengthen the opposition. In Hungary the mood of criticism had taken firm hold and began to spread and deepen. The June rising in Poznań (Poland), strengthened the feeling of cautious hopefulness, further stimulated the ferment of ideas. Imre Nagy, associated in the minds of the people with the period of relative relaxation between 1953 and 1955, and now once more back in the party leadership, begins to be looked to within and outside the party as the man of the hour. With the triumph of Gomułka, Poland’s national Communist, hope begins to centre on Nagy. Might not Hungary, too, have her ‘Gomułka’? This fact is of the utmost significance: for the unanimous choice of Nagy by all the opposition elements shows beyond the shadow of a doubt that there existed no serious body of opinion desiring a return of the Horthy era. This very fact alone refutes the allegations of an ‘imperialist’-inspired plot to restore capitalism, later concocted and assiduously propagated by Moscow and her hacks.

Neither the Hungarian government, nor any of its apologists, has ever been brass-faced enough to claim that all was well in Hungary before the revolution. Even that tissue of lies, half-lies, misrepresentation and shuffling evasions, the official ‘Hungarian’ version of events entitled the Counter-Revolutionary Forces in the October Events in Hungary had to admit that Rákosi’s policy was ‘criminal’ and that it had consequently aroused ‘deep indignation and a broad popular movement’. Be it noted further that some of those Hungarian Stalinists who subsequently came to heel at Moscow’s command and condemned the revolution, themselves confessed its true cause. Thus István Dobi stated on 1 December 1956:

If in this country people have reason to complain against the inhuman character of the regime which was swept away on 23 October – and everyone knows that there was cause enough for bitterness – then the villages had many times more reasons to complain than the towns. It would be difficult to say which was bigger – the stupidity or the wickedness of the Rákosi regime’s rural policy. (Népszabadság, 2 December 1956)

And in a broadcast on 11 November Kádár himself admitted that:

I can affirm, speaking from personal experience, that there is not a single man or leader in Hungary today holding state or party office, who would wish to restore the old mistaken policy or methods of leadership. But, even if anyone should still wish to restore the old methods, it is certain that there is no one capable of doing this; for the masses do not want the return of the old mistakes, and would relentlessly sweep from power any leader who might undertake this.

Here Kádár – speaking at a time when the situation was still fluid, when the working people were still stubbornly persisting in the passive resistance of strikes and go-slow tactics – is concerned with lulling the suspicions of the masses. And so, in spite of the usual mealy-mouthed reference to ‘mistaken’ policy and methods, he is forced to admit what the true purpose of the uprising was, and to admit that it was wholly justified. Moreover, he at that time even implied that an uprising would again be justified should there be a return to the old ‘mistakes’.

On 1 November, when, although shaking in his shoes, he had still not scuttled away to the Russian military headquarters, Kádár, in the hope of ingratiating himself with the workers, declared the revolution ‘a mighty movement of the people’ evoked ‘chiefly by the indignation and embitterment of the masses’. But when he realised that he was too compromised by his past to gain the confidence of that mighty movement, he ran to his only friends (how temporary even they may yet prove!). Installed in office by Russian tanks and artillery, he still, since the situation remains tense and the economy of the country is at a standstill, adopts a placatory tone. He admits ‘mistaken’ policy and methods and promises that there shall be no return to the past. It is a matter of expediency; promises cost nothing.

‘Mistakes’, ‘bureaucratic manifestations’, ‘mistaken policy and methods’, these words are calculated to deceive. Their very use proves that these men have no intention of making any fundamental change in the regime. These words will be used more and more frequently in an attempt to cover up the truth. Hungary was exploited to serve Russian economic interests and aims, which was the reason for the revolutionaries’ demand that the facts about Hungary’s foreign trade be published. The workers were being exploited more viciously even than they had been under the prewar regime, which was why the revolutionaries demanded a complete revision of the so-called norms in industry and a radical adjustment of wages. The peasants were being equally exploited in the collectives and those still farming their small plots constantly harassed and persecuted, hence the revolutionaries’ demand for a revision of delivery quotas, rational use of the produce, and equal treatment for the peasant farming individually. The artists and writers were being squeezed into the strait-jacket of conformity to the dictates of a clique of bigoted politicians whose only criterion of judgement was the degree to which a work of art served the interests of the arid doctrine of so-called socialist realism.

Simply ‘mistakes’, ‘errors of judgement’ and so on. At bottom, don’t you see, this was really a workers’ state. A ‘workers’ state’, however, at the summit of which sat a new class of wealthy and privileged taking full advantage of all these little ‘mistakes’. So that:

Curtained cars swept by overcrowded trams. They bought in secret shops goods which ordinary people could get only seldom or not at all. They were guarded at every step. (Népszabadság, 18 December 1956)

They were ‘guarded at every step’. That is the official Communist organ speaking. Guarded against whom? Counter-revolutionaries? Fascists? Agents of the imperialist West? Not at all. Guarded against the wrath of the Hungarian people.

And guarded by whom? By the security police, the ÁVH, of which that same journal wrote:

The working masses also loathed the organisation which should have protected the interests and power of the working people. Mátyás Rákosi personally directed the ÁVH.

One truth, and one lie to counter-balance it. Rákosi is made the scapegoat for the system. Whom do they think to hoodwink with this stale rubbish about ‘the power of the working people’?

But how is it possible for them to be consistent and logical? In spite of all ‘mistakes’, there remains the ‘power of the working people’, the extent of which is seen from the following, also from the official Communist newspaper:

It was no wonder that the masses who were denied every possibility of expressing their will finally took to arms to show what they felt. (Népszabadság, 19 December 1956)

It is clear from the above that the present official Hungarian version of the causes and aims of the uprising differs fundamentally from that given out while the Stalinists were still staggering under the shock of the event. The present version is no more than a carbon copy of the Russian. Voroshilov characterised the Hungarian people’s gallant struggle for freedom as ‘a counter-revolutionary putsch’, a ‘fascist putsch’, in which ‘the international imperialist forces directed by certain United States circles played the main and decisive role’ (Soviet News, 2 January 1957). In similar vein, Pravda of 5 January pronounced that the crime of Rákosi and Gerõ was not their work of imposing police terror on the people but their lack of vigilance in not obtaining in good time ‘the information about the intentions of the counter-revolutionary forces and about their preparations to attack the people’s democratic order’. Thus – ‘the people’s democratic order’! – of a system that was not of the people, had nothing in common with democracy, and whose only order was that of a prison! Could any juxtaposition of three words contain a greater lie? And this has been the general tenor of Moscow-Communist propaganda on the subject ever since.

There is a reason to believe, however, that the people installed in power by the Russians are themselves not immune from the pressure of the general spirit of the people, who, even in defeat, remain obdurate to all efforts to reconcile them with the present state of affairs, within the Communist Party itself there continues to exist a strong ‘national’ Communist influence which seeks every opportunity of loosening the Russian hold over the country. The Hungarian revolution has been suppressed but its leaven continues to work. ‘Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy! When I fall, I shall arise.’

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Hungary. Hugo Dewar and Daniel Norman 1957

II: The Communists and the Revolution

... and how men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out to be not what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name – William Morris, The Dream of John Ball

Duka Julius, special correspondent in Hungary of the Yugoslav government’s paper Politika, wrote after the suppression of the revolution that ‘an outburst of the accumulated dissatisfaction of the people, including the Communists themselves, with the country’s government had to take place sooner or later’. Yet, before the event, no one could have foretold that the outburst would be of such proportions. Demonstrations, minor disturbances, strikes, riots even. But a revolution sweeping the entire country and involving the entire people, a movement so powerful that ‘the entire structure of the state and party collapsed in only a few hours’ (Duka Julius) – who would have dreamed it possible in Hungary?

The first reaction of the Hungarian Communist Party to the revolution is exemplified in the radio speech of János Kádár on 24 October 1956, the day after the outbreak:

It is only with burning anger that we can speak of this attack by counter-revolutionary reactionary elements against the capital of our country, against our people’s democratic order and the power of the working class.

The Stalinists still did not think it possible that the mass of the people were in revolt. Even so, they had so little confidence in their own forces that they at once appealed to the Russians. And even the most politically conscious leaders of the revolution did not at first realise its strength, and, as always on these occasions, lagged behind the masses:

When news spread about the Soviet intervention, most of our older friends, particularly those with some political experience, were convinced that all resistance would be useless from now on. What could unarmed Hungarian students and workers do against Russian armed forces? (Dezsõ Kozák, Franc-Tireur, Paris, 18 December 1956)

This was undoubtedly also the attitude of the die-hard Communists. So much so that they continued for some time to lie even to themselves about the gravity of the situation. Even Imre Nagy and other non-Stalinist Communists were apparently unaware of the tremendous force and scope of the explosion. As the days went by, and still the workers – now the heart and body of the battle – refused stubbornly to lay down their arms, the Stalinist elements grew progressively less truculent, more uncertain of themselves, until finally they fell back in disorder. Then Nagy came forward to refute Kádár and the other Stalinists in a speech on 28 October, in which he said: ‘The government rejects the view that sees the present formidable popular movement as a counter-revolution.’ Undoubtedly individuals and reactionary, counter-revolutionary elements had attempted to take advantage of the situation for their own ends:

But it is also indisputable that in this movement, a great national and democratic movement, embracing and unifying all our people, unfolded itself with elemental force. This movement has the aim of guaranteeing our national independence and sovereignty, of advancing the democratisation of our social, economic and political life, for this alone can be the basis of socialism in our country.

The Hungarian revolution, in spite of its seeming defeat, has inflicted a wound that will never heal. But the death of a tyrant is not something that happens in a mechanical fashion, like the gradual wearing out of a machine. The hold exercised by the Communist myth even in the West over the minds of millions remains strong. But the lessons of the Hungarian revolution have done much to shake off its hold and can do more, if widely propagated.

It is, fortunately, not necessary for all of us to be subject to the iniquities of secret police terror and one-party rule in order to understand how evil is the Stalinist system. For the Hungarian people – we except the relative handful of privileged bureaucrats who lived fat under the regime, and who, after all, can hardly be classified as Hungarians – the living experience of Communism was decisive. It can, if we spread the truth, be equally decisive for the workers everywhere.

The Hungarian people expressed their opinion of Communism in a very unmistakable manner. And after that expression of opinion it would seem that no one in the West, least of all a member of the Western labour movement, could still retain illusions about Communism. Unfortunately, people tend to think through their emotions, and the emotional impact of the Hungarian revolution is not the same for all people. If it were, if the true meaning of that revolution were accepted by all, then there would be no Communist parties left in the West. It is thus of the utmost importance that we should strive not only to preserve the memory of that revolution, but to teach its lessons, not only to socialists and trade unionists, but to Communists, too. For Hungary has also shown that the Communists can learn lessons. It would be a sad mistake to assume that the Communists are all self-seeking careerists, thoroughly insincere people, social misfits, knaves, or, at best, fools. Certainly, there are among them plenty of all those. But the rank-and-file Communist and the Communist sympathiser, although intellectually not often very bright, is frequently sincere, devoted and self-sacrificing. And it is these who form the backbone of the Communist parties. It is therefore vitally important that every effort be made to counter the hypocritical and lying propaganda of the Russian government, and to gain acceptance by the rank-and-file Communist and Communist supporter of the true lessons of the Hungarian revolution.

In this connection, one of the most significant aspects of the revolution was the part played in it by the Hungarian anti-Stalinist Communists themselves. It is to be noted that many of the witnesses before the UN Committee were Communists or former Communists. As early as the autumn of 1955, as we have already mentioned, Communist writers in Hungary found the courage to voice protests against the shackling of creative thought by the bureaucracy. If you think that writers are, all said and done, queer people with a bent towards individualism, recall the words of Herzen, revolutionary writer and fighter against Tsarist autocracy:

Literature, with a people that does not possess political liberty, is the only tribune from which it can make its cry of indignation and its voice of conscience heard.

Herzen was writing of the country of his birth, Russia, about a hundred years ago, but his words apply equally well to the USSR and its satellites, to the Hungary of today.

Some writers were arrested, but the situation was such that the voice of protest could not be stilled. Instead, it strengthened and began to embrace more than the professional grievances of the intellectuals. In the summer of 1956 the official Communist Youth organisation, DISZ, sponsored the formation of the Petofi Club’, [1] which provided a centre of discussion critical of the regime attracting the bolder spirits among the young Communist intellectuals.

According to the journal of the Hungarian Writers Union Irodalmi Újság (Literary Gazette) of 24 August 1956, the Communist ruling clique in Hungary was ‘more aristocratic than the Habsburgs’ (the Austrian dynasty).

They do not shop with the workers, but have special well-stocked stores for themselves, and even on holiday at Lake Balaton they bathe behind barbed wire fences with police guards to keep the workers away.

On 24 November, that is, after the defeat of the insurrection, the party daily Népszabadság, in an effort to placate the workers, still stubbornly fighting its rearguard action of strikes and go-slow tactics, admitted that:

... one of the main reasons for the insurrection was the luxurious life of the party officials... [and that] it must be acknowledged that a new aristocracy was born in the ranks of the Communist movement, the bureaucrats. These aristocrats of the regime travelled in sumptuous cars while the workers were packed together in overcrowded trams. They had at their disposal secret shops, where they could buy goods not available in the ordinary shops. They surrounded themselves with guards, secretaries, and became unapproachable to the workers. These aristocrats spent their holidays in luxury spots, isolated from the common herd, and their children had become true brats of rich people, insolent and conceited.

It was the extreme contrast between the luxurious life of the privileged class and the miserable existence of the mass of the working people, even more than their own personal frustration, that induced in the Communist intellectuals a mood of rebellion. They suffered from the knowledge that their talents were being prostituted in the interests of the slaveholders, and the more sensitive and courageous among them could not remain silent. Of course, disillusionment in the regime did not come suddenly. Doubts arose, were pushed into the background, returned, were again banished, finally came back more strongly than ever, and as the situation progressively deteriorated, the doubts became certainty. But some, of course, were only driven beyond doubt by the revolution itself. The case of the former Stalinist writer, and Stalin prize winner, Gyula Háy, is here worth noting as an example of the process of awakening among the sincere Communists. In discussion with a Swiss journalist, François Bondy, he said at the beginning of November 1956:

For years I thought that our regime was a socialist regime – with deviations and errors. I no longer think so. I do not know what name the sociologists will give to the type of regime to which we have been subject, but I do know that in that system deviation was everything and socialism nothing...

Gyula Háy had spent some 12 years in Moscow. After the war he returned to Hungary and became one of the leading writers of the Rákosi regime. He woke up from the hypnotic dream in which he had lived for so long only after Stalin’s death.

Among the reasons he gave for his conversation to ‘truth and freedom’ were ‘the complete lack of taste in everything cultural’, the ‘many cases of injustice’, the ‘complete bankruptcy of the Hungarian economy’, resulting in the impoverishment of a potentially rich country. Even so, it is clear that these reasons were not decisive for Háy, for he must have seen and experienced something of these matters in the Soviet Union. And, indeed, he admitted to Bondy that he ‘did not choose freedom’, but was ‘driven to freedom by the pressure of the young people’. This remark about the pressure of the youth is very significant, and we shall come back to it later when we discuss the question of Communist indoctrination. For the moment it is sufficient to note that even Gyula Háy, who had spent twelve years in the ‘workers’ fatherland’ and was himself a member of the privileged class in Hungary, in the end yielded to the forces of life.

Another well-known novelist and party member, Tibor Déry, speaking at a meeting organised by the Petofi Club on 27 June 1956 attacked various leaders, asked: ‘What is the source of all our troubles?’ And gave the answer:

There is no freedom. I hope there will be no more police terror. I am optimistic, and I hope that we will be able to get rid of our present leaders. Let us bear in mind that we are allowed to discuss these things only with permission from above. They think it’s a good idea to let some steam off an overheated boiler. We want deeds and we want the opportunity to speak freely.

Others spoke in the same strain and with increasing vehemence. Alexander Fekete, journalist; Tibor Merai, novelist; Péter Kuczka, poet, who made a most daring attack on Rákosi; György Nemes, who gave the names of over 50 journalists persecuted or imprisoned by the regime, and pointed out that of 52 journalists who worked for Szabad Nép in 1951, only five had kept their jobs. The hall in which they met was jammed to capacity, the audience spilling out into the street, which gradually became blocked by thousands of people, to whom loudspeakers relayed the discussion inside. The meeting lasted from the afternoon all through the night till the early hours of the morning.

Just as among the Communist intellectuals, so among many of the party officials themselves did the grim gulf between myth and reality work to destroy confidence. They, too, became guilt-ridden, unsure of themselves; they, too, began to doubt. Among them only the most case-hardened, cynically self-seeking careerists could look without a qualm upon the crimes committed in the name of Communism; and those were the men who inevitably gravitated to the top, nationally and locally, like scum to the surface of the seething social pot. Yet who can say that even at the top there were not also men who, God knows how, shut their minds to lying, deceit, treachery, torture, hoping that there might be some way out of the nightmare world into which their self-righteous arrogance, their stupidity and their criminality had led them.

In the satellites the conflict of loyalties in the mind of the Communists must necessarily be more acute than in Russia: for to the conflict between loyalty to a doctrine and loyalty to the working people, whose interests they claim to represent, is added the conflict between loyalty to the ‘workers’ fatherland’ and the country of their birth. In Russia it is less difficult for Communists to believe that the gain is worth the cost, that however much the people may suffer, the country itself goes forward. In the satellites it is manifestly clear that neither the interests of the workers nor the interest of the country is served by the regime.

That such a conflict exists is evident from the large number of Communists who fell foul of the regime, and were hanged or imprisoned as a consequence. Peter Fryer, former member of the British Communist Party, who went to Hungary to report events for the Daily Worker, relates what one Hungarian Communist told him:

... by and large the party leaders were hated. The party itself was corrupt, and at least half of its 700 000 members were simply careerists. Communists who expressed dissenting views had either been put in positions where they could do no harm, or terrorised into silence, or imprisoned, or murdered.

In this connection the following statement from the United Nations Report is worth quoting:

Many of the witnesses had spent years in prison before 1945 on account of anti-Horthy or anti-Nazi activities. Some of these had spent more years in prison under the Communists. Among the witnesses were some who had been accused in the Rajk trial; all of these had undergone extreme torture, had been forced to sign confessions, and had been kept in prison or forced labour camps for many years without proper legal proceedings. Some of them had, later, after the fall of Rákosi in 1953, been released and reinstated in the Communist Party. One witness had been a stenographer for the security police.

It is clear that disillusioned Hungarian Communists played a not inconsiderable part in the revolution. In particular, those persecuted for dissenting opinions after their release from prison following the Russian ‘thaw’ must have greatly helped to stimulate the mood of revolt. These disillusioned Communists, both inside and outside the party, both workers and intellectuals, must have brought, as a result of their personal experiences at the hands of the ÁVH, a particularly uncompromising tone to the criticism of the regime; and this evidence of the decay of Communist faith undoubtedly served to hearten and stiffen all the opposition.

The Hungarian revolution therefore brings us this further lesson, that not only is no satellite Communist Party immune from the disintegrating force of ‘national’ Communism, but that this force is much stronger than appears on the surface. Who could have predicted, even the day before the revolution broke out, such a complete collapse of the Hungarian party? Is it not now absolutely certain that the Communist Parties of East Germany, of Rumania, of Bulgaria, and even of Czechoslovakia are riddled with ‘national’ Communists? Further, can the Russian party itself be free from the fever of dissent? The answer to these questions can now hardly be in doubt.

Notes

1. Petofi was the revolutionary poet who defended the 1848 revolution arms in hand and fell on the battlefield under the Tsar’s bullets at the age of 27. The 1848-49 revolution in Hungary (and Rumania) was also suppressed by Russian armies, called in by the Austrian Emperor in agreement – irony of history – with a pact signed in Warsaw.

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Hungary. Hugo Dewar and Daniel Norman 1957

III: The Workers and the Kádár Government

The workers have been beaten, but they have not been defeated. History will prove that it was quite others who suffered defeat. – Karl Marx

Of all the bodies thrown up by the revolutionary movement most important were unquestionably the Workers Councils. They represented the masses, their organisation was sound and efficient, they were founded on the vital economic base of the factories and mines. As the UN Committee report states:

The Workers Councils emerged from the revolution as the only organisations commanding the support of the overwhelming majority of the people and in a position to require the government to negotiate with them, because they constituted a force able to bring about the resumption of work.

The Kádár government, based on Russian force, naturally also called fraud to its aid. It issued a programme of fifteen points calculated to give the impression of concessions while worded sufficiently vaguely as to mean nothing. The Hungarian people recognised the fraudulent character of this programme and tore down the posters announcing it. In opposition to it the Workers Councils issued their own programme of concrete demands, the essence of which was:

1. The immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops from the territory of Hungary.

2. Free elections at a definite date under the supervision of the United Nations, with the participation of all democratic parties, and an immediate announcement by the government that United Nations observers would be allowed into Hungary.

3. Pending the holding of such elections, formation of a new coalition government in which members of the Kádár government would not participate; the return of Mr Nagy into this new government and his appointment as Minister of State.

4. Immediate withdrawal from the Warsaw Treaty.

5. An effort to secure recognition of Hungary’s neutrality.

6. Liberation of those imprisoned for participating in the fighting and assurance that they would not be prosecuted.

7. Recognition of the right to strike.

8. Re-examination and publication of all commercial agreements.

Demands were also made for official recognition of the Workers Councils, permission to raise armed factory guards, and the elimination of party control within the factories.

At this stage all the efforts of the government were directed towards getting the workers back to work, while the workers were determined to obtain firm guarantees before they did so. The workers sent numerous delegations to the parliament building pressing their demands: they came from the mines of Tata and Oroszlány Város, the Central Transdanubian industrial area, the Clement Gottwald factory, the Ganz Wagon and Engineering Works, the Hungarian State Iron and Steel and Engineering Works (MÁVAG), from factories in Baja and elsewhere.

To coordinate the activities of the Workers Councils 500 delegates met in Újpest on 13-14 November and formed the Greater Budapest Workers Council, with Sándor Rácz as chairman. It was through the Executive Committee of this body that henceforth most of the negotiations with the Kádár puppet government were carried out. Thus on 15 and 17 November the council representatives made it clear that the Workers Councils adhered strictly to socialism and social ownership of the means of production. Kádár told them then:

We surrender the party’s monopoly: we want a multi-party system and clean and honest elections. We know that this will not be easy, because the workers’ power can be destroyed not only by bullets but also by ballots. We must reckon with the fact that we might be thoroughly beaten at the elections, but we undertake the election fight because the Communist Party will have the strength to gain once more the confidence of the workers.

Justifying the calling in of Soviet troops he said:

We were compelled to ask for the intervention of Soviet troops... we were threatened with the immediate danger of the overthrow of the people’s power... First, the counter-revolution must be broken by the people’s power consolidated with the help of armed workers... and, after that, Soviet troops will be withdrawn from Budapest and we shall negotiate with a view to their withdrawal from Hungary.

Further he promised that no one would be penalised in any way for taking part in the great popular movement.

Kádár’s apparently conciliatory attitude decided the workers’ leaders to call upon their followers to return to work at latest by eight o’clock of 19 November. This appeal (16 November) stated that work was to be resumed in view of the government’s recognition of the competence of the Workers Councils in the field of economic management and its earnest promise to fulfil within the foreseeable future the revolutionary demands formulated on 23 October 1956, including the gradual withdrawal of Soviet troops.

At the meeting on 17 November Kádár was informed of this appeal. The workers then asked that a supreme national organ of the Workers Council be set up by decree. Kádár replied that this was unnecessary, since a ‘Workers’ Government’ existed in Hungary. Individual councils would be recognised, however, as would the establishment of factory guards. Kádár again emphasised the necessity of resuming work: if the workers’ delegates would use their influence in this direction he would use his to effect the withdrawal of Russian troops from Budapest, and to start negotiations with the parties to the Warsaw Treaty on the possibility of declaring Hungarian neutrality. Still distrustful of Kádár, and as events showed rightly so, the workers demanded a written statement, but this Kádár would not give, his word should be enough, he said.

The fragility of Kádár’s promises first became apparent when on 1 and 2 December a meeting called by the Greater Budapest Workers Council to discuss the decree on the establishment and functioning of the Workers Councils, promulgated that day, was forbidden. The decree law made it plain that the Kádár government had to follow the bidding of the Russians, who were determined to whittle away the power of these bodies. In protest against the banning of the meeting a twenty-four-hour strike was called. The government further issued a decree appointing commissioners to certain enterprises, whose function would be to decide disputes between the Councils and the Ministers. In these and numerous other ways the thin edge of the wedge was inserted.

Further meetings between the workers’ representatives took place, the government playing for time all along. On 25 November at one of these meetings Kádár for the first time showed his hand, more correctly the Russian hand. Now he bluntly characterised the movement that he had hitherto referred to as a ‘great popular movement’, as ‘counter-revolutionary’. He also unblushingly defended the treacherous abduction of Nagy on the grounds that had he been allowed to return home counter-revolutionary elements might have murdered him. The following day, without doubt stimulated by his Russian ‘advisers’ to be still firmer in his attitude, he declared that:

... a tiger cannot be tamed by baits, it can be tamed and forced to peace only by beating it to death... Every worker, instead of drawing up and scribbling demands, must immediately and unconditionally begin to work to the best of his ability.

‘Drawing up and scribbling demands’! – Note the contemptuous attitude towards the workers when they dare to express themselves in a manner contrary to the wishes of the Stalinist bureaucrats.

The Revolutionary Councils were abolished by decree, resulting in clashes between factory workers and Russian troops. On 6 December the chairmen of the Ganz and MÁVAG factories councils were arrested. On the same day the Great Budapest Workers Councils proclaimed:

The government does not build its power on the Workers Councils in spite of Comrade Kádár’s promises. Leaders and members of Workers Councils are being arrested, ... dragged from their homes during the night without investigation or hearing, ... peaceful meetings of Workers Councils are interrupted or prevented by armed forces.

A reply to this proclamation was demanded by eight o’clock on 7 December. None having been given, on 9 December a general strike was declared for 11 and 12 December ‘in protest against the repression of workers and their chosen representatives’. The Greater Budapest Workers Council and all Workers Councils above the factory level were thereupon declared illegal. On 11 December the chairman of the Greater Budapest Council, Sándor Rácz, and its secretary, Sándor Bali, were arrested. Further arrests of workers’ leaders took place over the next few days. At the same time a whole series of repressive decrees were enacted, among them those banning meetings without police permission, and authorising detention by the police for a period of six months of persons endangering public order, in particular those hindering resumption of work, that is to say, strike leaders.

The general impression given by the negotiations at this time was that the workers’ representatives adopted a more conciliatory attitude than the rank and file. Kádár’s attitude progressively hardened. It is clear that the Kádár government was fearful of the Workers Councils, but it was pushed and stiffened by the Russians, whose attitude was that concessions to the masses could only be graciously conceded – if at all – when the workers were completely disarmed and powerless. The Russians recognised that the demands of the workers were incompatible with the continued domination by the Communists, that is to say, by themselves. Kádár and company had so utterly discredited themselves in the eyes of the working people that it was impossible that they could, no matter what concessions they made on paper, ever regain the confidence lost. It is at least theoretically conceivable that, had the Russians been more realistic, less under the influence of Stalinist traditions, some sort of compromise, such as had been effected in Poland, might have been achieved. However, the Russians’ had chosen Stalinism and their criminal and senseless military action had created such a mood of implacable hatred that a compromise was out of the question.

The shattering of the organised opposition of the workers was effected by armed force under cover of all sorts of treacherous manoeuvres. It was a fairly gradual process an apparent sweet reasonableness; readiness to admit the popular character of the uprising, to admit that grave, even criminal ‘errors’ had been committed in the past; willingness at first to talk things over, to promise some concessions – under cover of this, behind the shield of Russian military might, a regrouping of an armed militia and secret police against the people. The workers’ delegates wanted to believe in Kádár’s goodwill, and the workers were anxious enough to get back to work and build up the country’s shattered economy, but determined to do all in their power to ensure that there was no return to the miserable past. The workers’ delegates were lulled with false promises and then bludgeoned. But it must be recognised that the shadow of the Russian military machine loomed over all negotiations. What could the workers’ delegates do, mistrustful of Kádár as they might be, except to hope against hope that the man might show himself not to be a snivelling coward? Might he not ally himself with the working people; might not his conscience smite him and he say: ‘I will stand with them, even in defeat. If I go down, I will go down fighting for the working people, whose champion I have so often proclaimed myself and it will be remembered of me that, however much I failed in the past, in the final hour I refused to make myself a cloak for tyranny.’ Can one blame the workers for wanting to believe in a miracle?

The government, executing the orders of the Russian military, set itself the task of whittling away the power of the workers, and re-establishing the machinery of coercion and repression. Towards the end of December representatives of the Central Workers Council of Csepel, still in existence, came to see Kádár to protest against the recruitment of former members of the hated secret police into the militia. Unavailing: Kádár had chosen. The old order was creeping back, casting cautious glances behind at the Russian tanks covering its advance. The prisons were being repaired, the hangman’s noose was being greased.

On 5 January 1957 Kádár made a declaration on the ‘Major Tasks’ of his government, in the course of which the establishment of Workers Councils was hailed as one of the achievements of the regime. The bouquet concealed the knife. The future function of the council was neither to counsel nor to represent the workers. It was, in Kádár’s own words, to see that ‘the workers adhere strictly to government resolutions’. Outraged, discouraged, but by no means cowed, the workers continued their passive go-slow resistance tactics. Incensed at the Communists’ abuse of them as counter-revolutionaries, the men at the workbench took to ironically addressing each other as ‘Count’ and ‘Baron’.

Large numbers of Workers Councils, their members harassed and arrested, now resigned. Typical of their attitude was the statement issued by the Central Workers Council of Csepel, which resigned on 8 January:

It was the hallowed events of the 23 October Revolution of the Hungarian people that brought us into being so that we could build an independent, free and democratic Hungary, and establish the basis for a way of life free from fear.

The events that have taken place in the meantime, however, prove that we are unable, in present circumstances, to fulfil our mandate. We have no other role than to carry out the orders of the government. We cannot, however, carry out the orders that are against our convictions and we cannot sit passively when members of Workers Councils are being arrested and harassed without any reason and when the entire work of the Workers Council is, in fact, branded as ‘counter-revolutionary’. We have unanimously come to the conclusion that we cannot realise the wishes of the workers and, regardless of our personal fate, we are unanimously resigning our Workers Council mandate.

Our decision does not mean that we are trying to evade responsibility, but it is our opinion that since we are not in a position, in the present situation, to fulfil the wishes of the workers, we should not mislead our comrades by our existence. For this reason, we are returning our mandate to the workers.

The composition of those Workers Councils remaining in being was progressively changed, government stooges replacing the workers’ representatives.

The repressive policy of the Kádár government, acting on the instructions of the Russian military, thus forced the workers’ opposition movement underground. The government had demonstrated that it would not tolerate an independent workers’ organisation, would not discuss even. Itself a puppet, it would have only puppets ‘representing’ the workers. As a consequence labour troubles flared up more violently. In Csepel, confirmation of the government commissioner and director in their positions against the wishes of the workers caused another demonstration. The militia was called in, was reinforced by Russian troops, and the demonstrators dispersed after three hours’ fighting. So grave was the situation in Csepel that the government issued an order forbidding newspaper reporters to visit the island.

On 13 January it was announced over the radio that, in view of the strikes and disorders, the death penalty would be made applicable to the crime of ‘causing wilful damage to factories of public interest’ (that is, by definition those employing 100 workers or more), or of ‘intentionally disturbing the functioning of such factories by inciting others or calling upon others to strike’. The death penalty for strikes – decreed by a ‘Workers’ Government’!

At a meeting of the National Assembly on 10 and 11 May, Kádár put the Communist attitude towards the workers in a nutshell:

In my opinion, the task of the leaders is not to put into effect the wishes and will of the masses... In my opinion, the leaders’ task is to realise the interest of the masses... In the recent past, we have encountered the phenomenon that certain categories of workers acted against their own interests and, in this case, the duty of the leader is to represent the interest of the masses and not to implement mechanically their incorrect ideas. If the wish of the masses does not coincide with progress, then one must lead the masses in another direction.

It is this point of view that determines the Communist’s approach to all social problems. It does not matter whether he or she consciously admits to holding the view, as Kádár did. The Communist is a member of an élite; he cannot be wrong; he knows what is best for the workers. And if the workers do not accept his view, so much the worse for the workers, wherever the Communist has the power to enforce his will. It is this arrogant, superman attitude that lies at the bottom of all the evils peculiar to the Communist regimes. Whether it is held openly and sincerely, or whether it serves – as in most instances it does – for the purposes of personal aggrandisement and material gain; or whether it lurks in the subconscious – this is immaterial. It is a frame of mind that must inevitable result, when Communists come to power, in the shocking abuses and unspeakable iniquities the existence of which the Communists themselves have been compelled in part to confess, without having the intellectual honesty to recognise, and the courage to admit, their true cause. The democrat broadly bases his attitude and actions on the principle that ‘the people have the right to make their own mistakes’; the Communist acts on the assumption that he alone knows the answer to all the problems of humanity.

Aware that the Communists not only did not represent their real interests, but were diametrically opposed to them, one of the acts of the Workers Councils during the revolution was to dissolve the party cells in the factories. For the most part, of course, these cells simply faded out of existence. But the restoration of the old order also required the re-establishment of these bodies. In the first resolution passed by the Socialist Workers Party (the Communist Party) on 8 December it was stated that Workers Councils were ‘to be taken over by the Communists and cleansed of unsuitable demagogues’. Yet the total membership of the party was then only 103 000 (pre-revolutionary membership was said to be 700 000). There were only 500 members in the great Csepel Iron Works, and not all of those reliable, and their position in all the other industrial enterprises was correspondingly feeble. In the circumstances the party cells could only be re-established by force and chicanery. But neither force nor fraud could compel the workers to welcome these gentlemen. However, the methods employed by the Communists to reassert their influence, and the desperate situation of the ordinary working-man is well illustrated by the evidence of a witness before the United Nations committee. Describing the method of election of members of the Workers Councils he stated that the Communists would say: We, the party, recommend this able man here, and that worthy man there, and so on. Then he would add: Of course, you are in full agreement, comrades, with their election! Say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. The witness then went on:

I should like to ask the committee whether they think that, under the form of government that exists in the country, there would be a worker who would say: ‘I do not like this.’ He has to earn his living because of his family, he wants to sleep peacefully at night without being woken up by the police, he has to work next day, so he cannot but agree.

Is it possible that there still exist people who would question the veracity of that witness? Yet it is truly astonishing how easily some people can brush aside such evidence. Those words should never be forgotten by anyone who cherishes and fights to preserve the traditions and the conquests of the labour movement of the West. ‘He wants to earn his living because of his family, he wants to sleep peacefully at night without being woken up by the police...’

Can any Communist deny that it was precisely this freedom from police terror that did not exist under Rákosi and Gerõ? Even their own leaders have been forced to admit, in their own mealy-mouthed fashion, that the police terror was a dreadful fact, that men and women were tortured, morally and physically, sentenced to long years of imprisonment or to execution in trials that were travesties of justice. What can there be strange today about those simple words of that worker witness before the United Nations Committee?

The Kádár regime knew that the Workers Councils, however their membership might be manipulated, remained bodies too close to the workers in the physical sense, and would therefore always constitute a potential threat. It was necessary to revive the pre-revolutionary trade union apparatus as a counter to these bodies, which would have in time to be reduced to the status of mere paper organisations. Simultaneously with the systematic whittling down of the Workers Councils, measures were therefore taken to regroup the trade unions. The name, National Council of Free Trade Unions, adopted during the revolution, was hypocritically retained, and in the initial stages of regroupment the government spokesmen masquerading as trade unionists made the usual protestations of undying devotion to the workers, larded with declarations of independence. The Workers Councils – the revolution’s answer to the bureaucratic, servile and corrupt trade unions – were not at first directly attacked in such speeches and statements. But by January, when the Csepel Workers Council representatives resigned, the Trade Union Council felt safe enough to dispense with some of the camouflage and charge that the Workers Councils had ‘heeded the provocative voice of alien elements who have infiltrated into these Workers Councils’. The withdrawal from the World Federation of Trade Unions was revoked and other measures taken during the revolution, including the affiliation to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, annulled. It was made clear that the trade unions were to be the sole ‘expression of the interests’ of the working people and the Workers Councils were to be empty shells. And just how the unions were to serve the workers was stated in a resolution of the Hungarian Socialist Workers (that is, Communist) Party of 26 February, in the course of which occurs the following:

We have rejected the reactionary demands that trade unions should be ‘independent’ from both the party and the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government and for the right to strike in defiance of the Workers’ State.

The same old story: proclaim yourself a Workers’ and Peasants’ Government, but make very sure that the prisons and torture chamber and the hangman’s noose are ready for those who openly doubt your words!

There could be no more forceful demonstration of the reactionary, anti-working-class character of the regime that the Russians seek to impose again on Hungary than the attitude adopted towards these Workers Councils. In Hungary, these councils revived the movement that spontaneously arose during the first period of the Russian revolution. Then, as now, they expressed the will and aspirations of the ordinary working man. Whatever their faults and failings they represented a great advance in the political consciousness of the workers, and an invaluable organisational form for the expression of their will. However, the so-called Communists cannot permit the existence of an organisation that would give effective expression to the workers’ will, since it would inevitably clash with their will. Hugh Seton Watson summed up well when he wrote:

If the disparity between the strength of the combatants is taken into account, one may say that the effort of the Hungarian workers is the greatest single effort of resistance ever made by an industrial working class against an oppressor. It surpasses the Paris Commune, the St Petersburg Soviet of 1905, or the Viennese fighting of 1934. It is equally true that the Soviet government has shown itself more systematically, ferociously and consciously ‘anti-working-class’ than any capitalist government in history.

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Hungary. Hugo Dewar and Daniel Norman 1957

IV: The Youth

Who has the youth – has the future. – Karl Liebknecht

One of the most encouraging features of the Hungarian revolution was the part played in it by the youth. After nearly ten years of Stalinist indoctrination; with every means of propaganda and education in their hands, with every effort to suppress any views other than their own, every effort to seal the country off from the West – the Stalinists failed to win the youth.

In 1950 Rákosi declared:

The re-education of the old generation is extremely complicated and demands great efforts. It will take a long time and we shall have to give proof of great patience. In comparison with this mission, the education of the youth is a relatively easy task. The young generation puts less weight on old customs and traditions.

Gyula Háy, famed novelist and playwright, former Stalinist of long-standing (now, in prison with many of his fellow writers – all honour to them) whom we have quoted earlier, described the influence exerted on him by the Hungarian youth:

We writers have always thought of ourselves as the avant-guard in the struggle for freedom... I was supposed to be a guide for our youth, but in reality the youth became a guide for me. For years I had been lecturing to them. I gave interminable ideological answers to every question. I could feel that my young listeners found it all very shallow and boring. At first I thought: how strange and incomprehensible it is that we, the older generation, should work so selflessly to build the future of a happier Hungary for our young people, and that these young people should not care at all! Why were they so blind, so unfeeling, so cold? Gradually I began to wonder. Were they all, every last boy and girl in Hungary, hopeless reactionaries? Or could it be that we, the old men, were wrong, and that they were right?

So Gyula Háy began to try to look around him with the eyes of youth, and to answer the questions put to him, instead of fobbing the youngsters off with meaningless jargon masquerading as Marxism. And he kept asking himself questions, too:

Have we been building in this country a socialist society, marred only by some ugly distortions, or was this not a horrible regime for which I have no name and which was all distortions and no socialism? Even now, I long for the party which once had our love and loyalty. But its leadership has destroyed it. It is difficult to love a thing which does not exist. I would still support a new and pure Marxist movement. But I would not want to become a party member ever again... Was I courageous in speaking the truth, even under Rákosi? The pressure of the young on us all was so great that I can only say, in the words of one of our poets, ‘I was too much of a coward to remain dishonest!’

The confusion in the mind of Hay is here well evident. It is indeed difficult, if not impossible, for the older generation of Stalinists to rid its mind completely of all illusions. But Hay does make clear the enormous moral influence exerted by the youth of Hungary, whose minds were not cluttered up with all the moth-eaten, mouldering lumber of Stalinist ideology, and whose consciences were not burdened with guilt, and who could therefore look at the regime and condemn it pitilessly, without the qualms and regrets that the long-standing Stalinist feels. Condemning his party, he knows that he is also condemning himself and it is not easy to do that. But how much more agonising the mental conflict of those who joined the Communist movement in their youth, served it and sacrificed for it when it was no more than a persecuted sect; when not the party but its opponents seemed to represent all that was degenerate and corrupt; endured for its sake hardships, imprisonment and even torture – how much more painful for these to take the step that must seem to them like the denial of their youth. The youth of the Communist countries have not these mental reservations and torments. It is they who are now pressing forward; it is they who must inevitably, in the natural course of things, take the place of the present leaders, who cannot meet the requirements of the new situation. Khrushchev and company in the Soviet Union have demonstrated in Hungary that they are incapable of making the complete, fundamental break with the past that the youth is demanding, and will continue to demand with ever-increasing clarity and force.

Hungary has revealed how grossly overestimated, to put it mildly, is the power of the Stalinists to indoctrinate the youth. It is only in those countries where Stalinism does not monopolise education and all means of propaganda that the myth of the Soviet Union as the ‘workers’ fatherland’ still continues to attract some following among the youth. In the USSR and the satellites reality contradicts propaganda at every point. They have been proved wrong, those Jeremiahs who told us for years with an air of authority that Stalinism had taken such a firm hold on the minds of the Soviet and satellite youth that it was not to be shaken. We have seen, on the contrary, that it is precisely the youth that doubts most strongly and that is ready to throw itself with the greatest ardour into the struggle for freedom.

Pál Ignotus, the Hungarian writer who was a leading left-wing opponent of the Horthy regime in the 1930s, who had to leave the country in 1939, who returned in 1949, was arrested, tortured, sentenced to fifteen years’ hard labour as a ‘British spy’, and then released in March 1956, following the Russian period of ‘liberalisation’; and who again had to flee the country after the Russian invasion of 4 November, has very well expressed both the doubts about the Hungarian youth and the subsequent high admiration for it of the older generation. In a message printed in the pamphlet, Hungary, October 1956 (Committee on Science and Freedom, April 1957), he wrote:

There was, in particular, one factor in our national life that represented a dangerous unknown quantity, even for those of us who claimed to be its objective students. That was the youth, educated, indoctrinated and regimented under Communism, and taught to believe in Russian superiority, on the Stalinist pattern. We feared that these young people would never rise against our foreign oppressors. We feared even more that if they ever did rebel, they might follow the paths of their elders in clamouring for the return of a near-Hitlerite or at least a near-Horthy system.

These fears proved to be unfounded. Our youth fought the foreign invaders and their Quislings with admirable courage and determination. Russification and indoctrination only induced them to react all the more violently against everything connected with Stalin’s rule. Nevertheless, far from showing any sympathy for those Fascist or retrograde tendencies which had been inspired by the wish to counteract Bolshevism, they emerged from the years of Bolshevik rule completely free from conventional ‘anti-Bolshevik’ prejudice...

In a broadcast on 4 November, János Kádár admitted that the regime had failed to win the loyalty of the youth. He said then that ‘the reactionary elements have misled honest workers, and in particular the major part of the youth’. In particular, the major part of the youth! Kádár himself confirms the evidence of all eye-witnesses about the part played in the revolution by the youth. And he thereby also makes a damning confession of the bankruptcy of the Stalinist regime, which for close on ten years made every conceivable effort to mould the minds of the youth. In vain!

Fortunately for humanity, youth tends to be idealistic, to dream of noble deeds, to seek heroes to follow and emulate. It may for a time be deceived by false gods, but it learns to sift the spurious from the false, the hypocrite from the sincere man, more quickly than its elders. And having once recognised deception it does not forgive those who deceived it; it has no mercy for fallen idols.

One of the most hopeful and heartening aspects of the Hungarian revolution was the youthfulness of so many of the freedom fighters. In a report from the scene by Victor Zorza of the Manchester Guardian, is the following passage:

The girl, the only one in a crowd of rebels, took up the tale. ‘Today is my seventeenth birthday’, she said, a little bashfully, with just a hint of pride in her voice. Seventeen, and she was one of the rebels who were defying the massive might of the Soviet Army... She was seventeen, but the Budapest youth who had attacked Russian tanks with bare hands were younger. Many were dead.

Many were dead. Words fail in the face of such courage and self-sacrifice; they were so young.

It was the youth of Hungary that first rose to the height of the occasion and pointed the way forward. It was the students who took the first organised step (recall the students of Russia under the Tsar, and do not forget the students of the Soviet Union today), breaking with the Communist youth organisation and setting up their own Association of Hungarian University and College Students in Szeged University. Their call to action was answered by the students of the Building Industry Technological University in Budapest. These demands included the withdrawal of all Soviet troops in accordance with the provisions of the Peace Treaty; the election of new leaders by secret ballot at all levels of the Communist Party; the reconstitution of the government under Imre Nagy; a general election with the participation of several parties; the right to strike; the revision of norms in industry and a radical adjustment of wages to meet the demands of workers and intellectuals; a minimum living wage for workers in industry, freedom of speech, opinion and expression; the removal of the Stalin statue.

Gomułka’s victory against the Stalinists in Poland on 19 July further inspired the students, and they seized upon the occasion to organise a demonstration of sympathy and to press forward their demands. This demonstration was announced for 23 October, near the statue of General Bem, a Polish exile who had fought on the Hungarian side in the revolutionary war for independence in 1848-49 against the Austrian and Russian troops. On the morning of 23 October 1956, however, a government pronouncement was made over the radio banning the demonstration. This merely served to advertise it more widely and make the idea so popular that by midday the order had to be rescinded.

The ‘procession’, as the government preferred to call it, would be allowed.

A young participant in the revolution, George Fischer, described the demonstration (in a pamphlet, Hungary, October 1956):

It was an unforgettable experience when we advanced towards the Bem statue, with the disciplined ranks of the students at the head. We sang old songs of the 1848 revolution, and at about three o’clock we reached the scene of the demonstration. A crowd of about 150 000 assembled and demonstrated with great enthusiasms, but with discipline, their sympathy with the happenings in Poland, and with the demands of the university students.

Later in the afternoon, the ranks of the demonstrators were joined by large numbers of workers coming from the factories.

The general mood was one of hopeful suspense. All awaited the radio speech of the party’s first secretary Gerõ, just back from a visit to Yugoslavia. The general belief was that, after the example of Poland and the unmistakable expression of the popular feeling, at least some measure of reform would be announced. All the more bitter was the reaction to Gerõ’s speech, in which he made he made it plain that the government had no intention of yielding to popular pressure, and in which he went out of his way to launch an attack on the demonstrators, particularly the students. This brutal dashing of their hopes created not mere disappointment, but a mood of intense hatred. The people of Budapest were now determined to show the government the strength of their will.

The demonstrators now made for the radio station and requested that the students’ demands be broadcast to the nation. It was then that the loathed ÁVH fired upon the crowd, which retaliated with a hail of stones and bricks from a nearby building site. Within minutes the news of the battle spread throughout Budapest. Troops called to the scene refused to take action against the people, handed over their arms. The workers of Csepel Island, of Újpest and other industrial and working-class districts of Budapest, learning of the situation by telephone, seized trucks and drove into Budapest, obtaining arms on the way from soldiers or police, or from military barracks and arms factories.

Thus it was the students who first rallied the people. These students who, as the Stalinists have continually informed the world, came for the most part from the ranks of the workers and peasants. And during the days of fighting that followed not only the students, but even youngsters of school age joined the freedom fighters.

The youth of Hungary gave their answer to the regime and nothing that the Russians or their apologists can say will avail in any way to obscure that historic truth. They gave their answer in the voice of revolution: You have lied to us, cheated us, ruined and dishonoured us – away with you!

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Hungary. Hugo Dewar and Daniel Norman 1957

V: The Social Democrats

Neither Democracy without Socialism, nor Socialism without Democracy. – Léon Blum

... through all of Eastern Europe there roves a spectre of humanist Socialism, and it frightens not only the capitalists but also the Stalinists. – Edda Werfel, November 1956

The influence of democratic socialism and the role of the social-democrats in the revolution represents one of the most striking features of the October events in Hungary. When one examines as a whole the main political demands of the revolutionaries, their identity with the traditional aims of democratic socialism as expressed in the programme of the movement is indisputable. Although this or that demand may be found in the programme of other Hungarian political organisations, taken as a whole they are to be found only in the platform of the Social-Democratic Party. Not only have the Stalinists failed to weaken the influence of social-democratic ideas, they have even been unable to prevent their steady growth. From time to time the Communists themselves have been compelled to draw attention to this fact, in order to stimulate their informers and their police to further efforts of repression, and their propagandists to even more frenzied lying against those whom they rightly recognise as ‘enemy No 1’. For the subject peoples behind the Iron Curtain democratic socialism offers the only alternative to the spurious ‘socialism’ exported by the Kremlin that would not mean a return to the abhorred past.

Since the foundation of the Hungarian Socialist Party in 1869 the working people of Hungary have always shown their preference for democratic socialism, and the social democrats have consequently played a decisive role in the trade union movement. Perhaps one of the most alarming aspects of the situation that confronted Rákosi and his friends on their return from Moscow in 1945 was the working-class character of the social-democratic rank and file and the degenerate character of the bulk of the Communist Party rank and file, which had been swamped with all sorts of compromised people, careerists and self-seekers. And later on they were confronted with the fact that the imprisonment of the socialist political and trade union leadership after 1948 did not diminish their popularity, but only served to increase it. Social-democratic influence became one of the worst nightmares of the Stalinists.

Already in 1952, in a report to a plenary meeting of the Central Committee, Moscow-trained Márton Horváth, member of the Politbureau and editor of the official Communist daily, Szabad Nép, admitted the existence of a ‘very strong social-democratic organisation among the workers.’ According to him, the regime was faced in the factories ‘not with bourgeois influence, but with a social-democratic ideology’. The number of those workers, including the youngest, who ‘came to have social-democratic views’ was sufficiently important to show that they must be energetically fought’ (Szabad Nép, 29 July 1952). Since that time little has been heard of Márton Horváth, but his cry of alarm at the ‘hostile social-democratic activities’ has been repeated at more or less regular intervals, and the Hungarian Communist officials have periodically been called to account by Rákosi and his spokesmen for ‘neglecting the danger of social-democracy’.

During the revolution the attitude of the Socialist leaders remained firmly consistent with the principles they had always advocated and which now more than ever appealed to the nation in revolt. As long as the regime refused to acknowledge the right of other political parties to organise and propagate, the Socialist leaders rejected all invitations to join the successive governments set up by Nagy. It was only when the different parties were allowed to reconstitute themselves, when the freedom of the press was a fact, and when Nagy indicated willingness to form a truly representative government, that the Socialists’ provisional executive permitted their representatives to participate in the government. From the first to the last the Hungarian Socialists were unreservedly on the side of the insurgent people.

On 31 October, in Budapest, György Lukács, the veteran theoretician of the Hungarian Communists, told Wiktor Woroszylski, Polish Communist writer and editor of Nowa Kultura, that ‘Communism is completely compromised in Hungary... The working class prefers to follow the social-democrats.’ (Nowa Kultura, 2 December 1956) The same day, Woroszylski noted in his diary that, of all the newly published journals of the resuscitated Hungarian political organisations, ‘it seems that it is the social-democratic Népszava which has the greatest success’ (ibid).

The impact of democratic socialism on the Hungarian revolution was such that it carried beyond the frontiers of Hungary. The honest Hungarian national Communists, living and acting in the midst of a nation in revolt, in the midst of this storm that had utterly destroyed the last shreds of their ‘socialist’ fiction, could no longer afford the luxury of self-deception. They had to accept that the basic ideas and methods of social-democracy offered the only way out of their dilemma. But for Tito and Gomułka this has proved too much; they finally gave the new Russian pro-consul, János Kádár, their blessing.

‘The most surprising thing about the latest Hungarian events’, said Edvard Kardelj, the most intelligent of Tito’s lieutenants, in a speech to the Yugoslav National Assembly, ‘is the fear displayed by Hungarian Communists of the Workers Councils.’ Kardelj explained this by alleging the existence in the Workers Councils of ‘alien, anti-socialist influence’. In support of this contention he did not adduce any evidence, for the very good reason that such evidence did not exist. In fact, his own assertion that the Hungarian events were not ‘an organised counter-revolution’ directly contradicts this contention, since the Workers Council movement was the heart and the soul of those events. And the industrial workers showed by the demands they raised that they were – as they still are – firmly opposed only to the fake ‘socialism’ of the Stalinists, and equally firmly supporters of democratic socialism. Through their Workers Councils they expressed their awareness of the fact that under a one-party system all talk of their being ‘owners’ of the factories and industrial enterprises was empty phrase-mongering. There is thus no mystery about the Communists’ fear of these councils. They knew well enough that here lay the real danger to their regime: a truly workers’ movement giving organised expression, at the point of production, to democratic socialist principles.

They had to destroy these Workers Councils and they had to suppress the party whose views they expressed. That is why, on 5 January 1957, Marosán, the renegade socialist supporter of the new totalitarian dictatorship, warned that ‘to ask for the reorganisation of the Social-Democratic Party is a hostile act’. Yet the years of Stalinist terror did not destroy Hungarian social-democracy, and Kádár’s uneasy regime will be no more successful. For democratic socialism offers the only way out of the crisis that besets the peoples behind the Iron Curtain.

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Hungary. Hugo Dewar and Daniel Norman 1957

VI: The Lessons of the Revolution

I call revolution the conversion of all hearts and the raising of all hands in behalf of the honour of man. – Karl Marx

There is a picture taken during the Hungarian revolution that no one who really wants to get the truth should fail to study. It can be seen in the book published for the Congress for Cultural Freedom entitled The Hungarian Revolution. It shows a group of Soviet soldiers and officers, and the figure to which the eye at once jumps is that of a short, somewhat porcine-faced officer, advancing on the cameraman with a snarl, his hand reaching for his revolver. This was the answer that the ‘workers’ fatherland’ gave to the Hungarian people’s cry for justice.

The Russian government and its apologists have given the classic answer of all whose tyrannical rule is threatened by revolt. Throughout history it has always been the same: foreign agents and a handful of malcontents inciting the misguided masses. It is as lacking in originality as it is in truth.

This excuse has always been peddled on such occasions by the reactionaries. They cannot admit that the responsibility is theirs. The Russian leaders are no exception to the rule. By their ruthless bloody suppression of the Hungarian revolution they have shown that Russia continues to merit the label attached to her by Marx – ‘the gendarme of reaction in Europe’.

But can there really be any cause for surprise at this? Did not the Russian action in Hungary arise logically and perfectly naturally from her leaders’ political doctrine? ‘I grew up under Stalin’, said Khrushchev. ‘When it comes to fighting the imperialists, we are all Stalinists.’ And at the Twentieth Russian Party Congress he said enough to let the world know what Stalinism is. Not the whole truth was revealed; only just as much as he felt the domestic circumstances compelled, as much as he considered necessary to damp down the fires of popular opposition and to serve his struggle for power against his rivals – but it was enough to show that Stalinism has nothing in common with socialism or democracy and everything in common with that picture of the Russian commander, reaching for his revolver. No, one cannot be surprised at the Russian action in Hungary.

Yet the question arises, how did it happen, this appalling political and moral degeneration in Russia? How did that country which once gave such high hopes to the workers of the world, that once appeared to be leading them at last to the Golden Age of man, so change that it could send its troops, tanks, artillery and machine-guns to slaughter the working people of Hungary?

Volumes have been written and will be written on this question. Yet the heart of the matter lies in the following sentence:

Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for body and soul.

Those words were written by Engels, whose disciples the Communists still proclaim themselves. Engels was at that time arguing the over-riding importance to the workers of the vote and electoral campaigns, and relegating to the background, although not entirely rejecting, the civil war tactic. ‘The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses is past’, he asserted in 1895. Yet it would seem that here he was mistaken, for in the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in 1917 we had an example of precisely this surprise attack. However, Engels had in mind the achievement of a socialist transformation of society. Subsequent events in the USSR have confirmed completely the correctness of his view that this could not be achieved without the active, full participation of the mass of the people. Without such participation, which could only be achieved if the masses ‘grasped what was at stake’, that is, if they were ready to accept the transformation and fight and work for it ‘body and soul’, the power seized by a minority could only be maintained by methods of dictatorship and terror directed against the majority.

It would be not only historically false, but also unfair to say that the early Bolsheviks were not for the most part men of high ideals, to assert that they were self-seeking careerists and not men devoted to the cause of social progress. But it remains true that Stalinism grew inevitably out of the attempt of a minority to force Russia into the strait-jacket of a false theory. Many of the Bolsheviks eventually recognised that, but it was already too late: Stalin had won the day; behind him a new army of self-seekers and place-men. And Stalin, and those who, like Khrushchev, had grown up under Stalin, pursued in the satellites the same policy of trying to impose their will by force and terror. Hungary was neither economically nor politically ripe for the accelerated pace of industrialisation and the collectivisation of agriculture that the Russians leaders sought to impose on her. Moreover, here they were alien conquerors, served by native Quislings, and considerations of Russian imperial strategy and Russian aggrandisement dominated. To the demands for wealth and privilege of the native Hungarian Quislings were added the Russians conquerors’ demands for booty. The Hungarian economy had to conform to Russian ideas and Russian needs. All aspects of Hungarian life had to be patterned on the Russian, and the people were made to understand at every step that they were under the domination of a foreign power, whose troops stood behind their puppet government. It was this combination of outraged national sentiment and economic misery that unified the spirit of an entire people and finally caused them to rise in a hopeless attempt to throw off the yoke of their native and foreign exploiters and oppressors.

We said ‘hopeless attempt’. But nonetheless inevitable, nonetheless one for which all who love freedom must be eternally grateful, nonetheless one whose defeat advances mankind far forward on the road to ultimate victory.

The truly amazing and inspiring aspect of the Hungarian revolution is that it demonstrates the power of the people even against totalitarian tyranny. After this event not all the efforts to restore the former state of affairs can be more than temporarily successful.

In 1847, in a text that is little known, Engels declared: ‘We are not Communists who want to destroy personal freedom and transform the world into one great barracks or one great sweatshop.’ And he added:

As a matter of fact there are Communists who do not care for, deny and want to suppress personal freedom, which, in their opinion, bars the way to harmony; but we, we do not want to buy equality at the expense of personal freedom. (Kommunistische Zeitschrift, September 1847)

The social system consolidated by Stalin and now defended by Khrushchev and his colleagues, however, has indeed transformed Russia into one great sweatshop, and this system has been exported by force of arms to Eastern Europe. And it is a ‘sweatshop’ that has not even brought ‘equality’, for it exists in the service of a gang of unscrupulous, self-seeking politicians and their hangers-on.

Each of the two phases of the Hungarian revolution that sought to destroy this state of affairs has its peculiar lesson. The first we have noted: on 23 October the wrath of an aroused people scattered the apparatus of repression like chaff before the tempest. The moral influence exerted by the movement of the masses neutralised some sections of the army and induced the active support of others. The security police, whose firing on the unarmed demonstration before the Radio Building on the evening of the 23rd put the match to the blaze, were utterly powerless in the face of the fury of the populace. From the first hours the state apparatus collapsed. The five days fighting that followed was, apart from winkling out of ÁVH men, fighting against Russian tanks. ‘There was no single instance on record of Hungarian troops fighting on the Soviet side against their fellow countrymen’, stated the UN Committee Report. At the end of that five days a cease-fire was effected and the fighting stopped, ‘largely on the insurgents’ terms’. (Hungarian army units, under Colonel Pál Maléter, successfully defended the Kilian Barracks against continuous Russians attacks.) The freedom fighters, most of whom were workers, with a proportion of students in small groups. [2]

The second lesson. We recall Engels’ words:

Let us have no illusions about it: a real victory of an insurrection over the military in street fighting, a victory as between two armies, is one of the rarest exceptions. But the insurgents, also, counted on it just as rarely. For them it was solely a question of making the troops yield to moral influences, which, in a fight between the armies of two warring countries do not come into play at all, or do so to a much less degree. If they succeed in this, then the troops fail to act, or the commanding officers lose their heads, and the revolution wins. If they do not succeed in this, then, even where the military are in a minority, the superiority of better equipment and training, of unified leadership, of the planned employment of military forces and of discipline makes itself felt.

This problem of moral influence was seen in both phases of the revolution. In the first it would seem that there was a certain amount of dissatisfaction among the Russian troops. ‘There was evidence that some of the Russian soldiers disliked the task assigned to them... There were a number of cases of fraternisation with the Hungarians.’ (UN Report) There have been reports in newspapers that several hundreds, if not thousands of Russian troops went over to the insurgents. The extent of this fraternisation may well have been exaggerated, but that there was some cannot be questioned. The UN Report further states that:

All the evidence shows that the Soviet troops fought alone against the Hungarians. With the exception of former members of the ÁVH and a small number of former party officials, no Hungarians, whether organised or unorganised, fought on the Russian side. Many of the new Soviet troops brought into Hungary for the second intervention came from distant regions of Central Asia. Many believed that they were in Egypt, with the mission of fighting the Anglo-French ‘imperialists’. It would seem that the Soviet authorities had more confidence in troops who had had no opportunity to be affected by European associations and who might be counted upon to behave with indifference to the attitude of the Hungarian people.

The second phase of the revolution emphasised the vital significance of the moral influence that can be exercised by the revolutionaries on the rank-and-file of the opposing military forces. The second lesson of the Hungarian revolution is thus clear: it is the supreme importance of socialist propaganda among the Russian occupying forces and the Russian people. That the soil is ripe does not need to be proved. In this connection may be recalled the reaction of a young Russian girl who, one of the delegates to the Moscow Youth Festival reported, burst into tears when she was finally convinced that Russian troops had shot down Hungarian workers.

The Hungarian revolution had also the elements of a war between two countries. In any attempt in the satellites to overthrow the regime the revolutionary attempt must also take into account the possibility of Russian intervention, which must, as in Hungary, prove decisive, if the moral influence of which Engels spoke is not sufficiently strong. If every opportunity to exert this moral influence is seized to the full – everywhere – then the Russian ruling class, already severely shaken, will be confronted with a problem to which it will be able to find no ultimate solution.

We are waging a battle of ideas. Hungary has demonstrated that nearly ten years of Stalinist indoctrination failed to win over the youth. The youth of Russia and of every one of her satellites is today in ferment. No occasion should be missed to add to that ferment, to give it purpose and direction. Modern military means of destruction have rendered war between the two great power blocs mutually suicidal. It is this inescapable fact which made Western intervention in Hungary impossible. But it is not by war that the regime perfected by Stalin and his followers, already crumbling, will be finally overthrown, but by internal revolt. Hungary has shown us that this revolt is possible. Hungary has also helped to make it inevitable, and to bring it nearer, much nearer.

Notes

2. Sic: the final sentence of this paragraph appears to be incomplete – MIA.

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Hungary. Hugo Dewar and Daniel Norman 1957

VII: The Scapegoats

It seems better when it is a question of countries whose acquisition is decided upon to allow them to exist for some time under their own native leaders, but in complete dependence on Russia... – From an official memorandum addressed to the Tsar by his Prime Minister, and quoted by Karl Marx in Herr Vogt

On 5 April 1956 Bulganin sent a telegram of support to Rákosi and his Prime Minister, András Hegedus. It read:

The Central Committee of the Hungarian Workers Party, led by the tested veteran of the revolutionary movement, comrade Mátyás Rákosi, has carried out a number of vitally important measures to strengthen the people’s democratic system and to carry out the great programme of building socialism in Hungary. The government of the Hungarian People’s Republic, and comrades Mátyás Rákosi and András Hegedus personally, have done and are doing everything to strengthen the friendship and cooperation between the Hungarian and Soviet peoples.

This personal reference by Bulganin had an effect opposite from that intended. The Russian leaders looked on the Hungarian situation merely as a struggle for leadership within the party. That was something with which they were only too familiar. They thought that all that was necessary was for them to express once more their confidence in Rákosi and that then the campaign against him would cease. However, the opposition to Rákosi within the party was no more than a pale reflection of the opposition in the country, and when this at last penetrated the skulls of the Russians they sent Suslov and Mikoyan to Budapest in July to order the ‘tested veteran’ to resign. However, still unable to gauge the strength of the people’s mood of revolt, they appointed another of their agents, Erno Gerõ, equally hated, in Rákosi’s place. As though to make clear to all their determination not to relax their hold over the country, they retained in office Rákosi’s team-mates, István Kovács, András Hegedus, István Hidas, Béla Szalai and Lajos Ács. As a sop to the opposition, however, they permitted János Kádár, and György Marosán, to return to the party leadership circle. Both had been in prison under Rákosi and their political ‘rehabilitation’ could be pointed to as a promise of reform. But they could hardly be regarded as men of outstanding qualities or strong will. Moreover, each had his skeleton in the cupboard. Kádár had been Minister of Interior when the fake trial of Rajk was staged, and the proofs of his participation in that legal murder were in the hands of the Russians. Marosán was apparently the least compromised, but he had worked as a secret Moscow agent inside the Social Democratic Party, preparing for its ‘merger’ with the Communist Party, that is to say, its dissolution. Their willingness to work with Gerõ against Nagy was itself a mark of perfidious ingratitude, since both owed him their freedom and return to public life.

The changes in personnel effected at the instance of Suslov and Mikoyan were paralleled by similar apparent concessions in the economic policy changes announced by Gerõ and Hegedus. However, armaments and heavy industry continued to receive the lion’s share of investment funds at the expense of consumer goods production. The proposed reduction in the rate of heavy industry production amounted to no more than three per cent in five years, and labour productivity was still to be increased, according to the amended plan, by 36 per cent. Real wages, even if Gerõ’s promises were fulfilled, would by 1960 still barely reach the prewar level.

‘There has – touch wood – been no Poznań in Hungary’, exclaimed Gerõ in a speech on 18 July 1956. But, indeed, touching wood was about all that the post-Rákosi leadership was able or willing to do. And when the storm at last broke over their heads the Russians promptly denounced Gerõ. He and his companions were accused of having ‘affronted Hungarian national feeling by endeavouring mechanically to carry out in Hungary... policies mechanically copied from the Soviet experience’, as the statement of the British Communist Party expressed it. These words were themselves a mechanical repetition of the words of an article in Pravda on 23 October 1956. Conveniently forgotten was the incontrovertible fact that neither Rákosi nor Gerõ nor any other satellite leader had ever taken a decision of any importance without first consulting the real masters of the country – the Russians.

But for the Hungarian revolution, Pravda would doubtless have continued to forget that ‘each nation has its national traditions and customs which must be respected’. Pravda pointed to the adoption of Russian army uniforms in Hungary as an example of ‘mechanical copying’. Yet had not this same thing been done by Russia’s pro-consul in Poland, Marshall Rokossovsky? Was it not also done in Rumania by General Bodnaras? ‘There is no need for everybody to have his hair cut to the same pattern’, declared Pravda. Yet it is quite obvious that this brilliant discovery would never have been made by Pravda but for the fight for freedom in Poland and the revolution in Hungary.

According to the British Communist Party statement, quoted above, Rákosi and company were also guilty of ‘economic errors’, of pressing too hard the drive for industrialisation without adequate ‘consideration of specific conditions in Hungary and with insufficient attention to the improvement of living standards’. Pravda was more explicit in this connection: ‘A considerable part of the means was earmarked for the building of new large enterprises that were beyond the power of a small country like Hungary.’ Rákosi and company ‘mechanically copied the experience of the Soviet Union in the field of industrialisation’, continued Pravda, ‘despite the fact that the leaders of the Hungarian Workers Party were repeatedly given comradely advice not to do this’. Could hypocrisy go further?! How strange that Bierut in Poland should have also ignored this ‘comradely advice’; that the present leaders of Rumania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Albania should continue to ignore it. The fact is, the ‘comradely advice’ given was such as to encourage these ‘errors’. Bulganin backed Rákosi. Then Suslov and Mikoyan had to go to Budapest to oust him. But they put Gerõ in his place. And then these two had to go once more to Budapest, during the uprising, to get rid of these men when they wanted to – when, in fact, circumstances compelled them to; why did they not do it before?

The simple truth is that Hungary’s economic plans went first to Moscow for approval. Hungarian economy, like that of the other satellites, was organised to fit into the Russian economy. Her industry became almost wholly dependent upon raw materials from the USSR. As radio Budapest admitted on 29 September 1956, the Hungarian iron foundries and steel works depended almost exclusively on Russian ore, and 90 per cent of Hungary’s cotton and wool pulp continued to come from Russia. Rákosi and Gerõ, like the other leaders in the satellites, were the executors of policies worked out in Moscow. Those orders were followed by all, in spite of the fact that they were disastrous for the economy of each country concerned and for the standard of living of the people. Where was the ‘comradely advice’ when, for example, Stalin in 1951, as a consequence of the Korean war, ordered a further tilt in the balance in favour of heavy industry in the service of armament production? Hegedus himself admitted in his report to a meeting of the Hungarian Central Committee that the switch to armament production in 1951 had been fatal for the economy of the country. Real wages dropped everywhere behind the Iron Curtain from 1951 to 1953. The policy of relative relaxation and an increase in consumer goods production followed in Hungary by Nagy from then on until he was deposed in 1955 was itself not a sign of increasing Hungarian independence, but simply a reflection of the post-Stalin climate in Russia. And again, where was the ‘comradely advice’ when Nagy was kicked out? The fact was that when Khrushchev defeated Malenkov the Hungarian Stalinists took their cue and defeated Nagy. As the Budapest joke ran: ‘When Khrushchev takes snuff, Rákosi sneezes.’

The third point of the British Communist Party statement, still echoing Pravda, concerned ‘the grave political errors and crimes; concentration of power in the hands of a small group around Rákosi and Gerõ and the abandonment of democratic methods of leadership, bureaucratic tendencies and criminal abuses in the operation of the state apparatus and in the powers and methods of the police and security police...’. Of course, in this respect Rákosi and Gerõ are not accused of having ‘mechanically copied’ Russia. Yet everyone, including the Stalinists, knows very well that the terror methods of the ÁVH in Hungary were faithfully copied from the terror methods of the MVD in Russia, whose experts were, indeed, sent to Hungary to ‘advise and instruct’.

It is hardly necessary to say that our purpose in exposing the hypocrisy of the Stalinists’ ‘excuses’ for the degeneration and corruption of their party in Hungary is not to whitewash Rákosi and Gerõ. The point is that these gentlemen and their colleagues were carrying out orders; true, willingly enough so far as most of them were concerned. But those who pulled the strings will not escape judgement before the bar of history by blaming everything on their puppets.

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Hungary. Hugo Dewar and Daniel Norman 1957

VIII: The Policy of Reprisals

A new revolution is only possible in the wake of a new crisis. But the one is as certain as the other... – Friedrich Engels

On 3 November, when Budapest was ringed with Soviet tanks and troops, the Nagy government sent, by agreement with the Russian Ambassador, Andropov, and the Russian military, two military representatives to settle the date of the withdrawal of the Russian forces, agreed to by the Russians earlier that day. The Nagy government’s representatives were General Maléter, Minister of Defence, and General Kovács, chief of General Staff. Of these two, Pál Maléter, former fighter in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, and now raised from Colonel to the rank of General, had become a national hero on account of his stubborn and successful defence of the Kilian Barracks. for many days against superior Russian forces.

Maléter and Kovács went to the Russian military headquarters at ten o’clock on the night of 3 November, under a flag of truce. They entered those headquarters in the belief that the Russian officers with whom they would confer were men of honour. But Maléter and Kovács were mistaken. To the eternal dishonour of the Russian army, those two men were seized when they entered the conference room, and dragged away to prison. Nothing has been heard of them since.

In a broadcast of 4 November, Kádár gave his solemn word that ‘the government will not tolerate the persecution of workers on any pretext, for having taking part in recent events’. When he made this promise he knew of the cowardly treachery of his masters towards those two military representatives of the Nagy government. He knew also that Imre Nagy and others, among them the widow of László Rajk, had been forced to flee for safety to the Yugoslav Embassy and he would note without protest the later kidnapping by the Russians of those people when they left that embassy under a solemn promise by the Kádár government of safe conduct to their homes.

In view of these facts no one will be surprised at the vindictive reprisals that were taken against the defeated revolutionaries throughout the subsequent months. In the chronology the reader will find listed most of the instances of reprisal that the Kádár regime has admitted. That many hundreds, if not thousands, of prisoners were deported to Russia is already known to the world. That there were numerous summary executions of prisoners on the spot not made public can hardly be doubted.

Having reassembled its machinery of repression, the regime set to work to subdue the still recalcitrant spirit of the people by executing or imprisoning those national and local leaders who had not escaped abroad. In particular, it was imperative to strike at the leaders who had risen up from the ranks of the workers during the fighting and during the strike struggles that followed the military defeat. Whenever the regime announces the execution or imprisonment of ‘counter-revolutionary elements’ one knows that this refers mainly to such leaders. Words, for the Stalinists have only the same value as their ‘solemn promises’.

We need here mention only a few instances of the value of Kádár’s promise of no reprisals.

The tone was set by the Budapest radio announcement on 12 December that Sándor Rácz and Sándor Bali, leaders of the Budapest Central Workers Council, had been arrested the previous day. Simultaneously it was announced that the government had empowered the summary courts, set up under its decree imposing martial law, to pass sentences of death. That these two representatives of the industrial workers should be the first publicly announced victims of the policy of repression was no accident.

On 19 January, the ‘counter-revolutionaries’ Dudás and Szabó were executed; on the 24th ‘counter-revolutionaries’ Varga, László and István Batonai were sentenced to death, four others to between five and ten years’ imprisonment; on 25 January, the writers Tibor Tardos, Domokos Varga, Gyula Háy, Sándor Novobáczky and Pál Latay – all arrested, charged with participating in ‘counter-revolutionary activities’; 27 January, 34 arrests in Budapest; 8 February, three professors and seven students of Budapest University arrested; on the 12th, five sentenced to death; 21 February, Béla Bartha sentenced to 14 years for having organised demonstrations on 10 December, ‘as a result of which people were killed and injured’ (that is, workers killed and injured by Soviet troops and Kádár police); 4 March, the ‘chief organisers of the counter-revolution’ arrested in Heves (north-east Hungary) .

By these means the gang of hated Stalinists imposed upon Hungary by Russian military force asserts its will, and establishes once more the ‘people’s democratic order’. Courts-martial are set up, summary executions carried out; the Workers Councils are destroyed; the Writers and the Journalists Unions are dissolved; a special police force for the ‘suppression of counter-revolutionary activities’ is set up; the concentration camps are made ready.

Around 170 000 Hungarians have fled their homeland. Among them, as among any such large body of people, there are some whose motives for so doing may be questionable; but only the deliberately malicious will refuse to recognise that these refugees as a whole are men and women for whom freedom is precious; only those made inhuman by political bigotry or callous through prejudice will refuse to aid and comfort them. That is, after all, the very least that we can do to express our gratitude for the Hungarian people’s glorious battle, which in spite of defeat, in spite of all repression, continues, and will continue, until the victory is won.

For it is not possible that the government should be able to suppress an entire people. Leaders, those who achieve any degree of prominence during the revolution, these suffer the vicious reprisals of a government that knows itself hated by its subjects. But life cannot be defeated. Leaders of tomorrow will arise again from among the victims of today, from the ranks of the workers and peasants, from the intellectuals and students, from men and women in all walks of life.

Let us not forget that the struggle continues; and let us not forget our duty to demonstrate at all times and on all occasions our solidarity with that struggle.

In the long march of mankind towards a world of brotherhood and freedom the year 1956 will be forever remembered because of the heroism of the Hungarian people. Hail to you, Hungarian workers and peasants; hail to you, Hungarian poets, writers, intellectuals; and to you, youth of Hungary, hail!

The Hungarian people dealt Communist tyranny a blow from which it will never recover. The shoddy façade of Communist propaganda was torn down and the ugly reality laid bare for the eyes of all the world to behold.

The Hungarian people are again in bondage, and to the martyrs of battle against overwhelming odds are added the martyrs of defeat, for Russia’s puppets in Hungary are vindictive in victory. Yet even this works their destruction. ‘Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy! When I fall, I shall arise!

The Communist propaganda machine works desperately to repair the damage, to patch up the old camouflage with new lies and slander. In the long run all their efforts will be unavailing, but time is precious to those who live under the Iron Heel. Nor is the length of that run a matter of indifference to the Western world. Let us recall the words of Ignazio Silone, the great Italian socialist-humanist writer:

No country is spared the crisis of our age. There is no longer a geographic frontier of peace, freedom and truth. This frontier has moved into each individual country. What, then, is to be done? Gyula Háy has proposed ‘an offensive and defensive pact with truth’. I approve of the idea. We must first make peace with truth and establish a direct relationship with it... We must learn from the people what their truths are, and must let them know ours.

An urgent, immediate task is to spread the truth about the Hungarian revolution. Its lessons and the lessons of its aftermath must be instilled into our youth, into the youth of every country in the world, into all those who love freedom and loathe man’s inhumanity to man.

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Hungary. Hugo Dewar and Daniel Norman 1957

Chronology of Events

1956

Summer: Rákosi is replaced by Gerõ as First Party Secretary after Suslov’s and Mikoyan’s visit to Budapest. The Petofi Club is founded by the official Communist youth organisation as a forum for discussions.

Autumn: University students break away from the Communist youth organisation and set up their own Association of Hungarian University and College Students.

4 October: Hungarian Journalists Union, commemorating László Rajk and his companions, pledge themselves not to allow the press ‘to abandon its role of defender of the truth to become an instrument of calumny and persecution of innocent people’.

6 October: Gerõ goes to Moscow. State funeral for László Rajk, András Szalay, Tibor Szönyi and György Pálffy, executed as ‘traitors’ in 1949, now rehabilitated and termed ‘heroes of the Hungarian working class’.

10 October: György Lukács, widely-known literary critic and party theoretician of long standing, long time in disgrace, now reinstated, at a press conference at Budapest University demands complete freedom for writers and the abolition of censorship.

14 October: Rehabilitation of Imre Nagy, former Hungarian Prime Minister, deposed and expelled from the party in 1955.

19 October: Ministry of Education yields to students’ demand to abolish the compulsory tuition of Russian in schools and universities.

20-22 October: Soviet troop moves reported from Soviet-Hungarian frontier areas; assembly of floating bridges; recall of officers on leave.

20-21 October: Open-air meetings are reported to have taken place in Gyor demanding withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary and the release of Cardinal Mindszenty.

22 October: Budapest students draw up a list of 16 demands and call a demonstration in support of them and to express sympathy with Poland and Gomułka’s election as party leader. Students’ demands include those for the withdrawal of Soviet troops, reconstitution of the government under Imre Nagy, free elections, freedom of expression, improvements in the standard of living.

23 October: Mass demonstration in Budapest. Gerõ’s speech over the radio attacking the demonstrators. Clashes with the Hungarian secret police (ÁVH); shots fired by ÁVH.

23-24 October: Imre Nagy appointed Prime Minister; Gerõ – First Secretary of the party.

24 October:

7.45am: State of emergency proclaimed.

8.00am: Radio announces appointment of Imre Nagy as Prime Minister.

8.30am: Summary jurisdiction ordered. Decree signed by Nagy, Chairman of the Council of Ministers.

9.00am: Radio reports that the government had appealed for support of Soviet troops to help restore order. (The first Soviet tanks had made their appearance in Budapest at about 2am.)

11.00am: Government proclamation granting exemption from summary jurisdiction for all those laying down arms before 13.00 hours.

12.30am: University Students Association appeals to all students to support Imre Nagy.

1.00pm: Time limit for the surrender of arms extended until 5pm.

7.45pm: Kádár, Party Secretary, declares that only surrender or complete defeat awaits those who continue their ‘murderous and hopeless fighting’. During the day fighting spread to other parts of Hungary. Soviet troops, including tanks, reported to be in action in Budapest.

11.00pm: Radio Budapest announces that ‘the situation has generally improved. The rioters have been isolated, though in some places they have made sudden attacks’. Rail and air communication with Budapest practically at a standstill. Workers Councils spring up all over the country.

25 October: Minister of Defence appeals to troops to report back to their units. In an Order of the Day he states that heavy losses have been inflicted on the rebels, and that with the brotherly aid of the Soviet troops the ‘People’s Democracy’ has been saved. Population of Budapest greatly embittered by Soviet tanks guarding the parliament building opening fire on unarmed demonstrators in support of the ÁVH. Reported that Mikoyan, Soviet First Deputy Prime Minister, and Suslov, Secretary of the CPSU, arrived in Budapest and left at noon. At 11am Radio Budapest announces the appointment of János Kádár as First Secretary of the party in place of Erno Gerõ. In the afternoon, Kádár broadcasts a promise of greater democratisation and of the opening of negotiations with the USSR. Later, Nagy announces that Soviet troops will be withdrawn immediately after the restoration of law and order.

26 October: Gerõ and Hegedus, former Premier, reported to have fled to Russia. Fighting continues in Budapest and throughout the country. Special session of Central Committee of Hungarian Workers (that is, Communist) Party. Resolves to hold elections for new government based on the ‘Patriotic People’s Front’ (founded in the spring of 1954); promises correction of past mistakes; negotiations with the USSR; recognition of the Workers Councils: increase of wages; amnesty (with a time limit). Nagy receives a workers’ delegation and promises formation of a new government with a new programme based on the workers’ and students’ demands.

27 October: Budapest Radio announces formation of a new government under the leadership of Imre Nagy, to include non-Communists (Zoltán Tildy and Béla Kovács, former members of the Smallholders’ Party). National Council of the Trade Unions proclaims that Hungarian factories will now be administered by the Workers Council on behalf of their owners, the people. Workers Council in the province of Borsod announces over Radio Free Miskolcz that it has taken over power in the area with the army and police under its control. Russian troops reported to have taken up ‘a neutral attitude’.

28 October: Nagy orders an immediate cease-fire; promises a general amnesty, withdrawal of Russian troops, early negotiations with the Russian government, dissolution of the ÁVH. In a broadcast, he blames the old leadership of the party for the tragic events; states that the government approves of the Workers Councils, and promises the Kossuth coat of arms as Hungary’s national emblem. Moscow Radio denounces the Hungarian insurgents as reactionaries ‘financed by the United States’. Pravda declares that ‘this anti-popular venture was the result of long underground work carried out by the imperialist powers’.

29 October: Szabad Nép refutes Pravda’s allegations and declares that the insurgents ‘wanted freedom’. Revolutionary Council at Gyor, in West Hungary, demands a democracy of the ‘Western type’, with freedom to form political parties. Radio Budapest reports ‘sporadic fighting’ in the capital.

30 October: Radio Budapest announces that withdrawal of Soviet troops from Budapest began at 4pm. Nagy promises free elections and a multi-party system. Proclaims intention to form an interim five-party cabinet pending preparation of elections, and promises formation of a new police force incorporating personnel of the revolutionary armed forces and free from the evil methods of the ÁVH. Nagy, Tildy (Smallholders Party), and Kádár broadcast appeals for the resumption of work. Cardinal Mindszenty released; his trial declared a frame-up. Insurgents are reported to have burnt down Communist Party headquarters at Buda, and to have stormed the headquarters of the ÁVH at Pest. Hungarian National Air Command issues ultimatum to effect that if the Russian troops not withdrawn from Budapest within twelve hours the Hungarian Air Force would ‘make an armed stand in support of the demands of the entire Hungarian working people’. Immediately following this General Király, in accordance with Premier Nagy’s instructions, forbids any military action on the part of the Hungarian Air Force, in order not to prejudice the peaceful solution sought by the government in its discussions with the Russians.

31 October: Hungarian airfields surrounded and occupied by Russian forces. Nagy states that Russian troops have withdrawn from Budapest to their bases in Hungary. He is in favour of Hungary having the same sort of neutrality as is now enjoyed by Austria. At a mass meeting, Nagy declares that the revolution has been victorious: ‘We have chased away the Rákosi – Gerõ gang and will tolerate no interference in our internal affairs.’ He denies having called upon the Russians for armed assistance, which was done without consultation and without his consent. Cardinal Mindszenty returns to Budapest.

1 November: Hungarian government denounces Warsaw Pact, declares neutrality, and asks for guarantees of neutrality by the Four Powers. Nagy requests the United Nations Secretary-General to place the Hungarian question on the agenda of the General Assembly. Anna Kéthly arrives in Vienna to represent the Hungarian Social Democratic Party at meeting of the Bureau of the Socialist International. Dr Edith Bone, Hungarian-born British subject and former member of the British Communist Party, is released from prison after seven years. Kádár absent from cabinet meetings and not to be found; reported to have gone to Russian Embassy. General strike still continues, but in Budapest the population is taking first steps towards clearing debris. General agreement to return to work on 5 November. Reported that ‘this afternoon’ Russian troops of all arms pouring across the frontier into Hungary.

2 November: Reports estimate that between six and eight Russian divisions are in Hungary. Spokesman of Hungarian Revolutionary Military Council states that approximately 700 Russian armoured vehicles, including tanks, have entered Hungary during previous thirty hours. Russians are said to control all main railways, roads, airports. Anna Kéthly attempts to return to Budapest but is prevented by the Russian troops. Nagy again appeals to UN to guarantee Hungary’s neutrality and to bring her case before the General Assembly. Nagy makes three oral protests to Russian Ambassador concerning Russian reinforcements, still pouring across frontier. Government orders ex-members of the ÁVH to report to authorities in order to be sent before screening committee.

3 November: Nagy government negotiates with Russian generals on the technical aspects of the withdrawal of Russian troops. Military leaders of the revolt, General (formerly Colonel) Maléter, now Minister of Defence, his Chief of Staff, General Kovács, and Colonel Szfics go to Russian military headquarters to sign agreement. At the banquet given there ‘in their honour’ they are seized by Russian political police and are not seen again. Anna Kéthly is again prevented by the Russian from returning to Budapest. Government is again reformed. Anna Kéthly, Social Democrat, released from house arrest by the revolution, is appointed Minister of State and envoy to UN. Soviet tanks and supporting vehicles are still entering the country, and now estimated at 3500.

4 November: At 5am Nagy announces over Kossuth Radio that Russian forces are attacking Budapest ‘with the obvious intention of overthrowing the legal Hungarian democratic government’, but that government is at its post and that Hungarian troops are already in combat at the approaches to the capital. Almost simultaneously another radio station announces the fall of Nagy and the formation of a new government by Kádár. Shortly afterwards Kádár broadcasts a declaration that reactionary elements are seeking to overthrow socialism in Hungary and to restore the capitalists and landowners to power. The new government, he says, has requested the aid of Russian troops to defeat these ‘reactionary forces’. Kossuth Radio goes off the air after repeated SOS calls. Reported that a 7am ultimatum delivered by the Russians threatening to bomb Budapest if no capitulation received by 11am. At the UN the Russian use veto to prevent discussion of Hungarian situation in the Security Council.

5 November: Russian Army proclamation broadcast from Budapest says that Russian soldiers have not come as conquerors, but as friends to help crush a fascist revolution. The Russian High Command, in a statement on similar lines, urges Hungarian Army to cooperate in suppressing the revolution, and adds: ‘The Nagy government was wrong, there is no neutrality.’ Kádár government outlines in general terms a programme of economic concessions within the Communist framework and without mentioning free elections. Frontier between Austria and Hungary stated to be completely closed.

6 November: Fighting continues in Budapest and in some parts of the country between Hungarians and Russian armed forces. Russian Command issues an ultimatum to the freedom fighters. Estimated that 10 000 Hungarian refugees have crossed into Austria. Kádár government issues an appeal for food and medical supplies. Budapest now occupied by Russian troops, though some parts of the city continue fighting for another two days, and outlying industrial districts till 11 November.

7 November: Remaining Free Radio Stations broadcast appeals for help and call on the Communists to make the party of ‘the infamous and treacherous Kádár – Rákosi’s successor – a truly Communist Party’. In Moscow, Suslov declares that the setting up of a new Hungarian socialist government was the correct way ‘to bar the road to fascism’.

8 November: Marosán, Kádár’s Minister of State, states over radio that ‘rebel gangs’ are in places still putting up resistance. Russian Command in Budapest orders surrender of all weapons by tomorrow and a relaxation of the curfew; it also orders resumption of work on the railways to enable the transport of food and medical supplies. Ministries and government departments are to resume work immediately. Revolutionary Councils formed during the uprising are allowed to remain in being provided they help to ‘eliminate all counter-revolutionary elements’; they are to be allotted official political advisers. UN Secretary, General Hammerskjöld, asks Hungarian government for permission to send UN observers to Hungary.

9 November: Budapest Radio admits that fighting still continues in parts of the capital and in Western Hungary. General strike continues in spite of repeated government appeals stressing acute food shortage.

11 November: Main resistance in Budapest finally overcome. Russian tanks and armoured troops in control of the main streets. Freedom fighters have gone underground. Centre of Budapest severely damaged. Civilian casualties estimated at over 5000. In a broadcast speech Kádár blames the Rákosi government for the October revolt and admits that ‘the indignation of the masses’ was justified.

12 November: It is learned that Nagy has taken refuge in the Yugoslav Embassy in Budapest. The Hungarian government rejects UN request to admit observers to Hungary.

13 November: Reports that young Hungarian freedom fighters are being deported to the USSR. Hungarian railway workers stated to have attacked trains and released many deportees. Hungarian government informs UN that it is willing to consider the admission of UN relief workers.

14 November: For the first time in three weeks no reports of fighting received in Vienna. But the general strike and passive resistance continue unabated. Writers, journalists, students decide to continue resistance unless demands are met. Factory councils constitute the Greater Budapest Workers Council in order to present a united front to negotiate with the Kádár government.

15 November: Kádár promises a workers’ delegation free and secret elections in the near future, with the participation of all parties ‘fundamentally adherent to socialism’. He also promises to stop deportations to Russia and a no-victimisation policy; publication of the commercial treaty with the USSR and negotiations with Nagy concerning his return to power. Kádár refuses, however, demands for the immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops and a declaration of neutrality. Radio Budapest reports the expulsion from the Communist Party of nine Central Committee members, including Rákosi, Gerõ and Hegedus.

16 November: Austria protests against the Hungarian government’s charges that armed fascists have entered Hungary from Austria. Kádár’s ultimatum to workers to end the general strike extended till 19 November. Attorney-General György Non, a Rákosi man, dismissed.

19 November: Hungarian government’s repeated appeals to workers to end the strike have met with only partial response.

21 November: Workers’ representatives in Budapest call for a new 48-hour general strike following the government’s banning of a meeting of workers’ representatives from all over the country. Trade union paper, Népakarat, advocates independence of the trade unions from both party and government; demands that Rákosi and Gerõ be brought to trial for ‘crimes against the people’.

22 November: Nagy and 15 others, including László Rajk’s widow, all of whom took refuge in the Yugoslav Embassy, leave their sanctuary on promise by Kádár government of safe conduct to their homes. However, they are driven instead to the Russian military headquarters, where the two accompanying Yugoslav Embassy officials are forced to leave the bus, which is then driven off to an unknown destination.

23 November: One-hour general strike carried out in response to call of Revolutionary Workers Council to commemorate 23 October, the day of the rising.

25 November: Kádár, addressing representatives of the Budapest Workers Council, trade union officials and factory managers, declares that his government ‘cannot and will not be soft’. Only after restoration of law and order and ‘complete destruction of the counter-revolution’ will the withdrawal of Russian troops and the formation of a coalition government be considered.

26 November: Antal Apró, Minister of Industry, states in a broadcast speech that the total loss of production since the uprising amounts to £200 million. A representative of the Budapest Workers Council, commenting on Kádár’s speech, declares that as long as the rigid and uncomprehending attitude of the government persists the Workers Councils will be unable to exert their influence to induce the workers to return to work.

27 November: Travellers from Budapest report that General Strike has lost its momentum, and that there is general bitterness at the passive attitude of the West and the UN towards Hungarian events, and a mood of sullen frustration because Stalinism once more dominant. Ministry of Defence orders that discrimination against ex-members of ÁVH, who are finding it difficult to get new jobs, must cease.

30 November: Reported that Russian troops in Hungary have withdrawn to their winter quarters there. Kádár’s government is engaged in forming a new national militia which will gradually take over security duties from the Russian troops. Reported that by now the number of refugees from Hungary to Austria has exceeded 100 000. Hammerskjöld tells the UN General Assembly that no reply has been received from the Hungarian government or the Russian government concerning UN resolution on the Hungarian situation and the sending of observers. Anna Kéthly addresses a meeting of the Socialist International at Copenhagen on Hungary.

2 December: Negotiations between Kádár’s government and Workers Councils at a deadlock, the government having raised three points:

1. Constitution of different political parties must be postponed until the ‘people’s democratic regime’ is strengthened.

2. Shortage of skilled personnel has forced the government to re-employ people whose dismissal had been demanded by the Workers Councils.

3. A new and independent newspaper could only be allowed if it could be ascertained that if would serve the interests of the people’s democracy.

Leaflets are being distributed in Budapest to call for a new general strike as a protest against the government’s refusal to negotiate further with the workers’ representatives. Népszabadság, official party and government paper, admits that the majority of the population still distrusts the Kádár government. In Budapest, a gathering of people burns, copies of Népszabadság in the streets and has to be dispersed by Russian troops.

3 December: Budapest Radio announces that a committee to investigate the activities of ex-members of ÁVH will begin work on 5 December. István Szirmari, Kádár’s press chief, admits to Western reporters that Hungarians have been deported to the USSR, but assures them that ‘every one of them has come back thanks to the intervention of the Hungarian government’. He admits that law and order have not yet been fully restored in the capital and that the Hungarian mines are producing only a third of their pre-October coal output.

4 December: Demonstrations in front of Western embassies in Budapest.

5 December: Demonstrations continue. Budapest Radio reports that 39 ‘counter-revolutionaries’ have been arrested in front of the British and French legations.

6 December: Reported that more Russian troops enter Budapest; patrols are more in evidence; they break up group of demonstrators.

7 December: Budapest Radio broadcast an official statement that the Hungarian police has been forced by popular pressure to carry out some arrests in order to prevent further bloodshed. Kádár government rejects Yugoslav note protesting against the abduction of Nagy as interference in the internal affairs of the country. (Nagy was previously stated to have been taken to Rumania upon his own request.) Central Budapest Workers Council issues a proclamation protesting against the wave of arrests of workers’ leaders. It states that four weeks’ negotiating with the Kádár government has shown no results and that the government clearly has no power to rid itself of certain persons in the state administration whose removal is demanded by the workers.

9 December: Introduction of martial law. Central Workers Council in Budapest declared illegal; government orders its immediate dissolution, together with that of the councils in the provinces above factory level. Budapest Radio says these ‘extraordinary measures’ are necessary because of the ‘continued counter-revolutionary activities’; clashes involving injuries and deaths occurred in several parts of Hungary on the previous day. Kádár government, in order to stem the flow of refugees from Hungary, declares the area along the Austrian frontier a forbidden zone. Austrian Chancellor Raab, in a broadcast, ridicules Hungarian and Russian charges that Austria had smuggled arms into Hungary to the freedom fighters.

10 December: Following the decree on martial law, Hungarian police and Russian troops begin an extensive search in Budapest for arms. ICFTU issues a statement calling on the workers of the world to ‘demonstrate their solidarity with their Hungarian brothers by all possible means of action’.

11 December: The Budapest Central Workers Council’s call for a 48-hour general strike in protest against the ban on the Workers Councils meets with great response and life of the capital is brought to a standstill.

12 December: Two leaders of the Budapest Central Workers Council, Sándor Rács and Sándor Bali, are arrested. The 48-hour strike continuous and even spreads. Népszabadság writes that ‘the workers’ movement has never yet seen such a strike’, but claims that it is the result of intimidation by counter-revolutionaries. In Budapest, policemen with tommy guns accompany drivers of such means of transport as are operating.

13 December: Strike continued by many workers after learning the news of the arrest of the two workers’ leaders.

14 December: Kádár government bans public assemblies and demonstrations, unless police permit is obtained three days beforehand. Radio Budapest broadcast government appeal to coal miners to return to work in view of exhaustion of coal reserves, danger of inflation and of unemployment.

16 December: Trade union paper, Népakarat, calls for new elections of Workers Councils (that is, as part of the government’s design to destroy the authority of these councils and reassert the grip of the party-controlled trade unions).

17 December: Sentences of death passed by the Budapest military courts on people charged with offences under martial law. Most workers back at the factories in Budapest; but little work is being done owing to shortage of fuel, power and raw materials. Main factories occupied by government militia supervised by government commissars.

20 December: Budapest Radio announces that government has empowered the police to intern persons for periods of up to six months without trial if they are held to endanger state security or to interfere with production. The announcement also states that an ‘office of information’ has been set up to deal with internal press affairs.

21 December: Radio Budapest announces that to date three persons only have been sentenced to death and executed under the martial law decree. Summary courts have so far dealt with only 18 cases. The announcement continues that the Hungarian Presidium has rejected appeal for mercy by two men sentenced to death for illegal possession of arms and that the sentences have already been carried out.

23 December: The government announces its refusal to allow three former British Attorney Generals to attend the Budapest treason trials as observers.

26 December: Radio Budapest announces that Kádár is working on a new programme which envisages a broadening of the basis of the present government to include all ‘progressive elements’. Népszabadság admits that many former Communists hesitate to rejoin the Communist Party (formerly known as Hungarian Workers Party and now renamed Socialist Workers Party), because they fear the anger of the people.

28 December: Népszabadság suggest steps to prevent the exodus of Hungarian technicians to the West. Budapest Radio announces that lack of electric power has caused one-third of the workers in the uranium mines near Pécs to be dismissed or transferred to coal mines. Reported from Budapest that Russian tanks and armoured vehicles are gradually being withdrawn from the capital.

30 December: Radio Budapest announces the creation of a price-control body and the government’s approval of ‘small commercial activities’ by private traders. It also announces that the government has appealed to Western countries for loans and credits. Hungarian newspaper and Radio Budapest announce ‘radical changes in Hungarian economic policy’, which will entail the dismissal of thousands of workers from 1 February on. The press emphasises that those dismissed will receive unemployment pay.

1957

1 January: A conference of Russian and satellite Communist leaders in Budapest. Khrushchev and Malenkov represent USSR; Kádár and Münnich represent Hungary. Subsequent communiqué states that Hungary troubled by counter-revolutionary forces, but that danger of establishment of fascist dictatorship has been eliminated.

3 January: Chief of Budapest police declares at press conference that Russian troops are gradually withdrawing from Budapest.

6 January: Kádár issues policy statement in which it is said that Russian troops will remain in Hungary ‘for the time being’ in order to ‘repel the whole imperialist attack’. The question of their withdrawal will be a matter of negotiations between USSR and Hungary. ‘The Kádár government will never allow any tendencies towards the anti-Leninist proclivities of the Rákosi – Gerõ clique. In future the wishes of the masses will always be taken into consideration.’ The government also declares the Five-Year Plan no longer in force. Plans for the next two to three months will be worked out ‘to surmount the difficulties of the transition period’. Only later will a new Three-Year Plan be put into operation.

8 January: Announcement that a decree has been promulgated setting up a special police force for the suppression of counter-revolutionary intrigues.

9 January: Népszabadság states that 11 persons charged with counter-revolutionary crimes and the publication of illegal newspapers.

10 January: Kádár declares the UN vote to send a commission of enquiry to Hungary is an ‘unprecedented interference in the internal affairs of Hungary’.

11 January: Violent demonstrations against the director and government commissioner of the Csepel engineering works: official sources state one killed, six injured.

13 January: Radio Budapest announces strengthening of martial law to combat counter-revolutionary actions. Tribunals will be composed of an ordinary judge assisted by two ‘people’s judges’. This procedure will affect ‘those who endanger the lives of our citizens or who commit acts aimed at overthrowing the present regime, as well as those who commit sabotage or incite to sabotage in the factories’.

14 January: Béla Kovács forced to resign from post of General Secretary of Smallholders Party. Declares that he will renounce politics ‘for the time being’.

16-17 January: Chinese Communist leader, Chou En-lai, visits Budapest.

17 January: Hungro-Chinese communiqué states that the ‘imperialist and counter-revolutionary forces took advantage of the discontent of the workers and youth – discontent caused by the errors committed by the former leaders – in order to foster counter-revolutionary action aimed at liquidating democratic government and the achievements of socialism. The Hungarian people and their government have, with the aid of the Soviet Army, brought to nought the uprising of the army of reaction, thus preventing Hungary from becoming a seat of war in Europe.’ Radio Budapest announces the discovery of a ‘counter-revolutionary plot’ at Gyarfa, near Tapolcza. The Writers Association dissolved by decree. Hungarian government sends note to Hammerskjöld, Secretary-General of the UN, accusing some governments of preventing Hungarian refugees from returning to their country. The note further states that other governments force refugees to work in the mines or on work of a military character.

19 January: The Journalists Union dissolved by decree. Dudás and Szabó sentenced to death by special tribunal and executed.

20 January: Minister of Interior entrusts special commission with task of investigating circumstances in which collective farms were dissolved. If this was done by force, they will be immediately reconstituted. Serious incident at Austro-Hungarian frontier near Nickelsdorf, where a group of Hungarian soldiers penetrated some 50 yards into Austria in pursuit of Hungarian refugees, who were forced to return to Hungary.

23 January: TASS announces that ‘a counter-revolutionary gang under the leadership of József Varga’ was brought before Budapest garrison’s military tribunal. Varga, the brothers László and István Batonai, sentenced to death; four others receive sentences of from five to 10 years.

25 January: Radio Budapest broadcasts Ministry of Interior statement on arrest of writers Tibor Tardos, Domokos Varga, Gyula Háy, Balázs Lengyel, and Zoltán Róth, and journalists Sándor Novobáczky and Pál Letay.

27 January: Finance Minister, Kassa, speaks on danger of inflation. Police announce 34 new arrests in Budapest. Minister of State Marosán declares that ‘the insurrection was organised by international imperialism’. Népszabadság declares that ‘the revolution occurred as a result of errors of the former system’.

28 January: Social Democratic leader, Anna Kéthly, demands recognition as Hungary’s representative at UN.

29 January: Kádár declares in a speech to trade unions that he has never counted on his government being popular with the Hungarian people. Radio Budapest announces that the government has suspended activity of the Workers Council of the Railways.

30 January: Dögei, Minister of Agriculture, in a speech to the National Council of Cooperatives, praises the merits of Stalin, vehemently criticises leadership of cooperatives for having demanded that they should be independent of all parties and for having demanded the removal of those regarded as Rákosi-ites, or Stalinists. Vas, President of the National Council, is removed from office, replaced by Rezso Nyers, former government commissar for food.

2 February: Radio Budapest announces that Imre Nagy, together with his ‘supporters’, Mátyás Rákosi, Erno Gerõ, Géza Losonzcy and others ‘have definitely been excluded from the ranks of the Hungarian Communists’. Decree announcing that within certain limits the sale and renting out of land will be permitted. Kónya, Minister of Education, addresses appeal to students in which he reveals that ‘a certain number of students and professors continue on strike in the universities’.

3 February: Marosán declares that the government ‘will create a climate of terror for the enemies of the people’.

4 February: Budapest University, closed since 23 October, reopens. Hungarian provinces along the Yugoslav border declared ‘forbidden zones’.

5 February: New measures aimed at ‘restoration of discipline and public order’ decided upon at discussions between public prosecutors and Münnich, Minister of Interior and State Minister Marosán. In particular, the amnesty promised by Kádár on 4 November would be withdrawn from ‘counter-revolutionaries who laid down their arms in order to take advantage of the armistice offer’.

6 February: Radio Budapest broadcasts text of decree making liable to imprisonment all those aiding people to escape abroad.

7 February: Népszabadság accuses Mindszenty, in refuge at US legation, of political activities hostile to the regime.

8 February: three professors and seven students of Budapest University arrested.

10 February: Deputy Minister of Education, Mrs Jóbaru, declares at teachers’ conference that ‘basis of education in Hungary will remain the materialist conception of Marxism-Leninism’.

12 February: Steps taken to reorganise army virtually disbanded during revolution. General László Hegyi removed from post of Chief of Staff – to which he was appointed by Kádár government – and replaced by a Colonel of artillery, Ferenc Ugrai. Five Hungarians sentenced to death for being in possession of arms, and summarily executed.

13 February: Budapest newspapers celebrate twelfth anniversary of entry into capital of Russian Army.

18 February: Armed ‘workers’ militia’ established for purpose of ‘maintaining order among the workers’.

19 February: István Kineses and Ferenc Hidas relieved of their posts as deputy ministers; Ibiry Máté, Rector of Budapest College of Agriculture, dismissed.

21 February: Tribunal at Miskolcz sentences Béla Barta to 14 years’ imprisonment for organising demonstration on 10 December, as a result of which people killed and injured in clashes with police.

21-23 February: Clashes reported between workers and police, provoked by re-erection of red stars over industrial plants in the suburbs of Budapest.

25 February: Numerous arrests reported of Hungarians visiting foreign legations.

26-27 February: Conference of ‘Provisional Central Committee’ of new Socialists Workers (that is, Communist) Party in Budapest. Loyalty to Marxist-Leninist principles and leadership of USSR reaffirmed. Conference further declares Hungary bound by all treaties, etc, previously signed by ‘representatives of the Hungarian People’s Democracy’.

27 February: Government reshuffle announced.

28 February: Trial of 11 freedom fighters begins.

3 March: István Doby, President of the Republic, addresses radio appeal to peasants to aid rehabilitation of the economy. Assures peasants that the Kádár government will not repeat errors of the past, when the peasants were forcibly made to join collectives.

4 March: Minister of Interior announces over radio that chief organisers of the ‘counter-revolution’ of October and November have been arrested in the province of Heves.

5 March: More arrests of ‘counter-revolutionaries’ in the region of Szolnok. Gyula Kállai, Minister of Culture, declares at a meeting that: ‘A systematic ideological propaganda is necessary to liberate the intellectuals from the counter-revolutionary influence.’

6 March: A new literary weekly, Magyarözag, published in Budapest to replace Irodalmi Újság, former organ of dissolved Writers Union. New weekly announces formation of literary club, Tancsis, to replace dissolved Petofi Club.

7 March: Népszabadság publishes article by József Révai, former member of Political Bureau and former Minister of Culture, in course of which Rákosi and Gerõ praised for ‘at any rate’ not rallying to the forces of counter-revolution. Imre Nagy and his friends must receive ‘exemplary punishment’, writes Révai. Radio Budapest announces that a special tribunal has pronounced two sentences of life imprisonment, two of 15 years, and two of eight years, for ‘counter-revolutionary activities’.

13 March: Official statement states that between 16 December and 25 February 197 courts martial held, involving 312 accused; 40 death sentences pronounced, 15 executions carried out, 11 reprieves granted. Total courts martial executions to date: 26.

17 March: Announcement that a new Communist youth organisation to be formed.

18 March: István Nádor, formerly member of the secretariat of Kádár’s government, requests political asylum in Switzerland.

20 March: Hungarian government delegation, headed by Kádár, arrives in Moscow. By order of the Ministry of the Interior, persons ‘dangerous to the state or to public security’ are made liable to forced residence at places specified by the authorities. A tribunal at Debrecen pronounces a death sentence for participation in the ‘counter-revolution’.

21 March: At a reception in Moscow, Kádár hails ‘Soviet-Hungarian friendship’, proclaims ‘solidarity of the socialist camp’, and refers to ‘the mistakes of the former leadership and the betrayal of Nagy’s clique of renegades’ as among the causes of the Hungarian ‘counter-revolution’.

23 March: Marosán declares at a meeting at Csepel that Russian troops will remain in Hungary ‘as long as the interests of the workers require their presence’. Budapest tribunal pronounces sentences in trial of seven ‘counter-revolutionaries’. Gábor Folly, chief accused, sentenced to life imprisonment. Népszabadság announces that a tribunal in Miskolcz has sentenced to death three leaders of the ‘counter-revolution’, Dr Tokár, Dr Mizsei, and Gábor Mikulas.

25 March: Kádár declares in speech at Sverdlovsk that: ‘The theories concerning the different roads to socialism have every chance of leading into an impasse.’

27 March: Marosán declares at conference of Communist press that ‘although the counter-revolutionaries have suffered defeat’, it cannot be said that ‘disturbing elements have been definitely eliminated’.

1 April: Devaluation of currency ‘to facilitate tourist traffic’.

5 April: Radio Budapest announces government decision to set up an extraordinary tribunal, attached to the Supreme Court, to judge ‘counter-revolutionary crimes, and crimes against the regime and the internal security of the state’.

8 April: Three of the accused in a Budapest trial sentenced to death. Playwright and writer József Gáli, and journalist Gyula Obersovszky, responsible for publishing an illegal journal, sentenced to one and three years respectively for ‘agitation’.

11 April: Trial of 20 inhabitants of Miskolcz opens in Budapest. They are accused of ‘having in October 1956 organised an armed uprising in order to overthrow the regime, and of having killed, in the course of a riot, several police officers’.

17 April: Radio Budapest announces that ‘counter-revolutionary’ Miklós Oláh, aged 21, has been condemned to death for ‘killing an officer of the Hungarian Army’, and executed, at Borsod.

20 April: A communiqué of the Ministry of the Interior states that the writer, Tibor Déry, has been arrested for ‘an attempt against the security of the state’.

24 April: Mihály Farkas, former Minister of Defence, sentenced to 16 years imprisonment. (Among the demands of the revolutionaries was one for the public trial of Farkas and Rákosi. Of the two, Rákosi was regarded as the greater criminal.) Anna Kéthly, Minister of State in short-lived Nagy government, states at press conference in London that ‘the Kádár regime want to force Imre Nagy to confess that he has collaborated with foreign secret services and that in 1953, when he adopted his “liberal” policy, he was already an agent of the imperialist powers’.

25 April: Radio Budapest announces that the police have discovered a fresh plot of an armed uprising against the Kádár government. The conspirators have been brought before a military tribunal.

29 April: Announcement that Marosán, Minister of State and member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers (that is, Communist) Party, has been appointed First Secretary of the Budapest organisation of the party.

1 May: Speeches by Kádár and Marosán. Kádár refers once more to the ‘counter-revolutionary treason’ of Nagy and couples the name of Mindszenty with his. Marosán pays tribute to Kádár for ‘creating the conditions that have made possible the existence of the party and of socialist Hungary’.

3 May: Request from ILO to be allowed to send a commission of enquiry into situation of Hungarian trade unions rejected. Hungarian building worker, János Tóth, aged 51, sentenced to death in Miskolcz for organising ‘a movement to overthrow the People’s Republic. Another defendant, former police sergeant, Géza Kiss, aged 41, sentenced to life imprisonment. The arrest of a ‘counter-revolutionary band’ of nine in the Nógrád area reported by the Hungarian trade union paper, Népakarat. They are accused of obstructing Russian tanks in their movement on the industrial town of Salgótarján. Travellers returning from Budapest report that many wounded persons discharged from hospital have been arrested, charged with having fought against Russian troops or Hungarian militia. Trial opens in Budapest of five persons, members of the Dudás group, which operated from headquarters in the Budapest offices of Communist newspaper, Szabad Nép.

6 May: Trial opens in Budapest of seven journalists.

7 May: Radio Budapest announces verdict of death sentences in trial of Dudás group members, Ferenc Pálházi, Rezso Varga, and Zoltán Preisz. Announces also death sentences on four other insurgents accused of having blown up a bridge at Pásztó on 8 November. Two of them, L Gezko and László Alapi, immediately executed.

9 May: National Assembly accepts resignations of 28 of its former members, including Mátyás Rákosi, Erno Gerõ, András Hegedus and György Lukács. Eight other deputies deprived of their mandates, including Mikias, who has escaped abroad. National Assembly votes to extend its mandate until 1959.

10 May: Népszabadság published three ‘self-criticisms’ by Imre Nagy to demonstrate that ‘the right-wing deviationism’ of the former chairman of the Council of Ministers showed itself as early as 1930. Announcement that. Pálházi and Preisz, two of the members of the Dudás group sentenced to death on 7 May, have been executed.

11 May: Decision that the Hungarian flag should carry no emblem. (It formerly carried the Russian emblem, and the students had demanded its replacement by the Kossuth coat of arms, symbolical of the Hungarian struggle for independence in 1848-49, defeated with the powerful assistance of Russian troops of Tsar Nicolas.)

16 May: Fourteen ‘counter-revolutionaries’ accused of having killed seven ÁVH (security police equivalent to the notorious Russian MVD, to which Beria was chief for many years during Stalin’s reign and after his death, Beria was executed in 1953 for abuse of power’, murder and high treason) are sentenced to death.

20 May: Trial of eight ‘leaders of the counter-revolution at Dunapentele’ [Dunaújváros, Sztálinváros – MIA] opens before military tribunal in Budapest.

21 May: Trial of Ágoston Preszmajer, accused inter alia of having been liaison agent of General Maléter, opens in Budapest.

27 May: Marshal Zhukov arrives in Budapest together with Gromyko. Agreement on continued stationing of Russian troops in Hungary signed.

29 May: Vienna Radio reports arrest of István Bibó, former Minister of State in Nagy government.

31 May: Start of press campaign against the Petofi Party, formed during the revolution.

3 June: Trial opens at Gyor of five members of Writers Union, now dissolved: Michel Lendvai, György Peterdi, Imre Kéry, Emile Szabó and Federic Grozits.

8 June: Three persons condemned to death by a special tribunal, including one accused of killing a Communist official during revolution. MTI (Hungarian press agency) announces ‘suspension’ of 13 actors for ‘their condemnable attitude during and after the counter-revolution’.

10 June: Six death sentences in a trial at Mosonmagyaróvár.

15 June: Promulgation of new decree-law regarding political trials: majority of judges of ‘People’s Court’ to be laymen appointed on political grounds; Counsel for Defence to be approved by government; death penalty obligatory for wide range of cases.

19 June: Actors Iván Darvas and Miklós Szakáts arrested. Former won award as ‘country’s favourite actor’; accused of having used a gun to free brother from prison during the revolution; brother was serving 15-year sentence for ‘spying for the Americans’. Szakáts accused of having been president of revolutionary council of actors. The two leading theatres in Budapest have had to change their programmes because of lack of leading actors.

20 June: Playwright József Gáli and journalist Gyula Obersovsky and former policeman Ferenc Kovács, previously sentenced to terms ranging from one to 10 years, now sentenced to death. Other prison sentences of accused in same trial raised. Numerous appeals for reprieve sent by well-known persons, including French Communists Aragon and Picasso. Hungarian Supreme Court upholds three death sentences passed by a lower court previous April on 25-year-old medical student Ilona Tóth; former Army lieutenant Ferenc Gönczi; and Miklós Gyöngyösi.

21 June: MTI announces that a military tribunal at Gyor has sentenced Gyula Hetz to death for illegal possession of arms. Trade union journal Népakarat reports recent opening of a trial of 26 ‘counter-revolutionaries’ in Budapest.

22 June: A Budapest tribunal sentences to death Sigismon Gsibor, József Erdész and Pál Rákosi.

24 June: Radio Budapest announces that Miklós Pulay, ex-Deputy Minister of Finance, has been expelled from the party for his ‘activity during the counter-revolution’, which was ‘not worthy of a Communist’.

25 June: Official communiqué announces re-trial of the writers Gáli and Obersovsky. In meantime, sentences of death suspended.

27 June: National conference of Socialist Workers (Communist) Party opens in Budapest. Kádár gives report on political situation and outlines future tasks. Couples Nagy with Rákosi as guilty of treason.

28 June: Radio Budapest announces execution of Ilona Tóth, Ferenc Gönczi, Miklós Gyöngyösi and Ferenc Kovács. József Petrus, leader of an ‘armed gang’ that had ‘planned an uprising at Pécs (SW Hungary) last March’, condemned to death; 21 others given sentences up to 15 years.

29 June: Conference of Communist Party terminates. Resolution passed condemning the ‘counter-revolution of October-November 1956’ and admitting that not yet defeated: ‘Those who have committed crimes and who continue to undermine the people’s regime will be severely punished.’ Tribute is paid to the ‘brotherly help of the Soviet Union’. Party membership said to be 346 000, that is 42 per cent of the pre-October membership.

30 June: Radio Budapest broadcasts declaration of a government spokesman that ‘the telegrams sent by certain French, British and Norwegian intellectuals to the President of the Hungarian Council asking mercy for József Gáli and Gyula Obersovsky will in no way influence the Supreme People’s Tribunal’.

4 July: Budapest Supreme Court quashes sentences of death on Obersovsky and Gáli and condemns them respectively to life imprisonment and 15 years.

8 July: Radio Budapest reports that the Minister of the Interior, Béla Biszku, has stated at a meeting of the Communist Party at Szolnok that the enemies of the regime are ‘attempting to provoke new agitation’.

9 July: Tass (Russian news agency) reports opening of another trial in Budapest, in which the principal accused, László Schmidt, leader of a group of insurgents, is charged with the assassination of Imre Mezo, secretary of Communist Party in Budapest. Népszabadság announces that the police have had to be called in to put an end to a strike of building workers, called on 5 June, at Sajószentpéter, for an increase in wages.

13 July: Opening in Budapest of trial of József Balogh and others charged with ‘plotting against the popular democratic regime, murder and espionage’. A tribunal at Debreczen condemns 12 ‘counter-revolutionaries’ to terms ranging from eight to 12 years’ imprisonment.

14 July: Internment of persons ‘endangering order and public security’ is by government decree prolonged for an indefinite period.

17 July: Hungarian Supreme Court commutes six death sentences to life imprisonment and confirms seven other death sentences, in the case of the attack on the Miskolcz prefecture.

19 July: Hungarian literary weekly, Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature) admits that majority of Hungarian writers still persisting in their ‘strike of the pen’, begun last November in protest against repressive policy of the Kádár government. Austrian socialist paper Arbeiter Zeitung states that reliable sources in Budapest report large-scale arrests in that city, particularly among intellectuals.

20 July: A ‘People’s Tribunal’ condemns two Hungarians to death for attacks on Russian soldiers and for ‘activities harmful to the Communist regime’.

25 July: Marosán, Minister of State, reveals in the course of a speech that hundreds of arrests carried out over the past weeks. He also states that Russia has agreed to Hungarian government’s request that Rákosi should remain in exile in the USSR.

30 July: Népszabadság reports the Minister of Labour, Ödön Kisházi, as informing a meeting of trade unions that some wages have risen too much. MTI announces that the death sentences on Imre Farkas and József Nagy (both condemned as ‘counter-revolutionaries) have been commuted to life and 20 years respectively. New trial opens in Budapest. Albert Lachky, József Burgeszmeiszter, and Attila Oláh charged with having participated in the attack on Radio Budapest and the Communist Party headquarters and having committed atrocities on members of the secret police.

31 July: Ministry of the Interior communiqué accuses Mindszenty of having ordered ‘pillage’ of the government religious affairs office during the revolution. The arrest of ‘an important group of counter-revolutionary priests’ also announced.

1 August: MTI announces that in a communiqué the Ministry of Interior accuses the recently arrested priests of having ‘personally attacked the regime and supplied the terrorists during the October 1956 fights’. Ho Chi-minh arrives in Budapest.

2 August: MTI reports that the people’s tribunal of Gyor has sentenced Sándor Berger to life imprisonment, István Tóth to twelve years and Endre Csincsák to five years for ‘counter-revolutionary activities’.

3 August: Népszabadság reports the arrest of a certain number of leaders of the three non-Communist parties set up in October 1956: the Christian Party, the National Bloc of Non-Party and the Christian Democratic Union.

4 August: Minister of Education threatens writers and artists with new arrests. Ho Chi-minh leaves Budapest for Belgrade.

5 August: Kádár returns from visit to Moscow.

7 August: Radio Budapest broadcasts attack by the Minister of Foreign Affairs against UN commission report. János Gergely, described as ‘bodyguard’ of General Maléter, sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment. Forthcoming trial announced of seven persons accused of anti-regime activities in the Tatabánya coalfields, where strikes continued long after the revolution had been defeated. Alleged leader of the group, Dr J Sárközi, described as a lawyer.

9 August: Esti Hírlap reports that 25 people have been sentenced to various years of imprisonment by the tribunal of Veszprém for having ‘attempted to overthrow the people’s regime, burned red flags and destroyed the Soviet war memorials’.

13 August: János Horváth, leading member of Smallholders Party, arrested.

19 August: Hungarian delegation arrives in Colombo trying to obtain Ceylon’s support against the UN’s report.

20 August: Purge of schoolteachers in Miskolcz reported. Speaking at Kisújszállás to the peasants, Kádár states ‘the invitation to Mr Hammerskjöld is still valid’. Népakarat publishes speech by Sándor Gáspár, trade union’s secretary: ‘Absenteeism, late arrivals and unjustified early departure from work have increased in Hungarian factories during the last months.’ At Kaposvár, Antal Apró, Deputy Premier, demands that Imre Nagy should be tried.

22 August: Kádár government calls on UN General Assembly to reject the Five-Power Commission’s report as an interference in the internal affairs of a member state.

24 August: Hungarian press agency announces that the Gyor tribunal sentenced to death László Mindszenty, a priest, accused of ‘counter-revolutionary crimes’ and of illegal detention of arms; Anna Spranitz, accused of complicity, sentenced to five years of imprisonment. It is reported that Milan Ognyenovics, sentenced in 1949 at the Rajk trial to nine years’ imprisonment and subsequently released and rehabilitated, has made a come-back to politics.

25 August: Russian again compulsory in Hungarian schools and universities.

27 August: Népszabadság begins publication of extracts from UN report. Budapest Radio attacks Cardinal Mindszenty who is still a refugee at the US Legation and accuses him of having ‘revised and corrected’ the UN special Commission report on Hungary.

29 August: Hungarian railways are to adopt Russian wide gauge.

30 August: The bishops of Veszprém and Vác are reported under house arrest in a small village, at Hejce.

1 September: Budapest publishes third volume of the official White Book, which gives the total number of Stalinists killed during the revolution as 201 (of which 166 ÁVH members, 26 party officials or in service of the ÁVH, and only nine civilians). This contrasts strongly with previous propaganda claim that ‘tens of thousands of Communists succumbed to the terror of the counter-revolutionaries’. Total killed in fighting given as 2700 (of which 1945 in Budapest). Number of Russian casualties not given. (The victims of Kádár’s repression, according to reliable estimates: executed: 3000; imprisoned: 20 000; in forced labour camps: 15 000; internal deportation: 10 000; deported to the USSR: 12 000 (mainly youth); total: 60 000.) Celebrating Miners’ Day at Tatabánya, Kádár boasts that he is not ‘frightened’ by the forthcoming UN debates on Hungary. He also admits that the ‘October mood’ still prevails among the miners. Népszabadság claims that only a small number of teachers ‘turned against Socialism in October’, the others were simply in ‘temporary ideological and political confusion’.

3 September: Tibor Déry reported ill in prison hospital.

4 September: The campaign against forthcoming UN debates on Hungary reaches climax with the rally of the resuscitated People’s Patriotic Front. The main feature of the meeting is the reading of a statement allegedly signed by 216 writers and journalists in which they ‘at last’ recognise the ‘counter-revolutionary nature’ of the October events and approve Russian intervention. Magyar Nemzet – daily of the People’s Patriotic Front (PPF) from 14 November 1954 to the revolution, which became the official paper of the Smallholders’ Party during the revolution and ceased to appear after the second Russian intervention – is republished as the PPF’s official journal.

9 September: Refugee worker from Csepel reports use of fraud and duress to obtain signatures to a resolution of protest from iron and steel workers in the factories there against UN report. The signatures were collected during the distribution of wages and many signed in the belief of merely endorsing receipt-forms. Information Bureau of the Hungarian Council of Ministers issues the fourth volume of the White Book.

10 September: UN General Assembly discusses Hungary. The representatives of Hungary and the USSR complain that UN report takes no account of information they could have supplied. The UN special committee’s rapporteur Keith Shaun (Ceylon) points out that ‘the committee made repeated efforts to secure the cooperation of the Hungarian government’ and to go to Budapest to receive evidence, but was prevented in its efforts by the very Hungarian government which is now complaining. In the course of his speech, the USA delegate, Cabot Lodge, lists eight promises made by the Kádár government which have all been broken. Present number of Russian troops, excluding air force contingents, estimated at 68 000 men as compared with 25 000 before the revolution.

13 September: UN General Assembly adopts by 60 votes against 10 and 10 abstentions the 37 nations’ resolution condemning Russian actions of aggression in Hungary.

15 September: Speaking at Nagykorös, President István Doby denies that writers’ declaration against UN report was given under pressure.

17 September: Népszabadság scolds the managers who in their factories throw the responsibility for the ‘tightening of norms and reductions of wages’ on the government, instead of ‘explaining the need for such unpopular moves’ taken nevertheless ‘for the good of the workers’.

21 September: The widow and daughter of Béla Kun, the founder of the Hungarian Communist Party executed in Moscow during the great purges for ‘deviationism’ and rehabilitated just after the Twentieth Congress [of the CPSU – MIA], in February 1956, return to Budapest.

21-23 September: Marosán, speaking in Budapest’s ninth district and at the Technical University, warns against any demonstrations on 23 October and admits the arrest in July of 1200 people.

24 September: Kádár and Marosán leave for Peking, via Moscow.

27 September: Népszabadság states that party membership has reached 380 000.

28 September: Army Day celebrations. Minister of Defence Révész pays tribute to Russian troops fallen during the fighting and claims that only ‘cowards’ or ‘careerists’ such as Pál Maléter have passed over to the insurrection. ‘The people’s army as a whole’, he said ‘did not betray the people’s regime.’

29 September: At Kecskemét, Deputy Premier Antal Apró announces that the regime ‘intends to replace the Workers Councils by works councils, under the leadership of the trade unions’.

3 October: Interview of Harrison Salisbury with First Deputy Premier Ferenc Münnich in the New York Times. Münnich attempts to excuse the delay in bringing to trial of Sándor Rácz, Sándor Bali and Béla Annicz, the Workers Councils’ leaders arrested in January. He also claims that only 3000 to 3500 cases are still outstanding. He declared that General Maléter will be tried for violating his oath and that a ‘legal inquiry’ into the acts of Imre Nagy and his associates is continuing.

5 October: Kádár and Marosán arrive in Moscow from Peking. They are welcomed by Mikoyan and Suslov, and meet, at a dinner in the Kremlin, Bulganin and Khrushchev. (On 5 October 1956, Kádár was also returning from party congress in China and had talks with Mikoyan and Suslov in Moscow. They were joined then by Erno Gerõ, arriving from his talks in the Crimea with Khrushchev and Tito.)

9 October: Four young writers, Zoltán Molnar, Domonkos Varga, Aron Tobias and Gyula Fekete, sentenced to three, two and one year imprisonment respectively, for ‘aiding counter-revolutionary movement’.

15 October: Népszabadság repeats threats against would-be disturbers of the peace on 23 October and emphasises the need for ‘increased vigilance’.

16 October: Marosán again warns students against any demonstrations on 23 October.

19-20 October: Congress of the Hungarian Social-Democratic Party in Exile in Bonn. Anna Kéthly is elected chairman, Imre Szélig, the former chairman, is elected secretary. In its final resolution the congress states that the Hungarian Social Democratic Movement in Exile ‘stands by the Hungarian October Revolution in its entirety, determined to fight for the attainment of its aims by every means at their disposal’.

22 October: Rally of the People’s Patriotic Front in Budapest. Main speakers Kádár, Marosán and Antal Apró. The latter emphasised the supremacy of the party over all other groups and organisations in the country and made a savage onslaught against ‘revisionism’ and particularly against Imre Nagy, whom he accuses of having plotted since 1953 and ‘ideologically prepared’ for the uprising.

23 October: Budapest, under heavy guard by ÁVH troops, with Russian armed forces in attendance, had a calm day. Only incident reported, the arrest of an American journalist who tried to photograph the statue of General Bem, starting point of the revolution. Anniversary celebrations in all Western capitals. In Paris during an official ceremony, the municipal council changes the name of Place Carrefour – site of the French CP headquarters – to that of Place Kossuth, in memory of the leader of the 1848-49 Hungarian Revolution, defeated like the October 1956 one, by Russian troops.

26 October: First National Conference of KISZ (the new youth organisation). In his speech János Kádár asserted that it is logical and perfectly in order to demand freedom and democracy in a community such as the USA, which denies them to its citizens. But in Hungary, where freedom and democracy already prevailed, such demands are the hallmarks of a traitor. The secretary of the Communist Youth League emphasised that the youth in KISZ has only duties and no rights.

29 October: Radio Budapest announces that those who took an active part in crushing the revolution will be decorated with the ‘Order of Liberty’.

2 November: Budapest city council decides to erect a statue to Lenin on the very pedestal where there was the statue of Stalin pulled down by the demonstrators on 23 October 1956. Reports of a secret trial of Tibor Déry, Gyula Háy, Zoltán Zelk and Tibor Tardos reach the Hungarian Writers Association Abroad.

3 November: In Népszabadság, Ferenc Münnich draws up a balance-sheet of the first year of the Kádár government and attacks the Workers Councils which, he said, ‘were led by class-alien elements’. That is why it is necessary to replace them as soon as possible by new organisations.

4 November: Meeting of protest against the Russian intervention in Hungary, organised by the Hungarian Writers Association Abroad, Tribune and the New Statesman at Caxton Hall in London. Speakers: Hungarian, British and French writers and journalists.

6 November: A grave of honour for 24 Russian soldiers killed during the intervention, is unveiled in Csepel.

13 November: Radio Budapest announces the verdict of the Supreme Court on the writers’ trial, held in camera since the beginning of the month: Tibor Déry (63) is sentenced to nine years, Gyula Háy (57) to six years, Zoltán Zelk (51) to three years and Tibor Tardos to 18 months’ imprisonment. Déry is alleged to have been the ‘leader of an organisation aiming at overthrowing the state order’, and his co-defendants of having taken part in its activities. The sentence on Déry, because of his age and illness, is equivalent to a death sentence. According to reliable reports Déry declared during the proceedings that if a similar situation arose today he would behave exactly as he did in October 1956.

17 November: The abolition of the Workers Council is officially announced. With the abolition of what remained of the Workers Councils, the regime has destroyed the last trace of the revolutionary conquests and Kádár has proved himself a worthy pupil of his masters in the Kremlin. He has demonstrated that in the manipulation of the method perfected by the Stalinists and aptly described by Rákosi as the ‘salami tactics’, he can do as well as the fallen dictator of Hungary. ‘Slice by slice’ he has destroyed all the freedoms conquered by the Hungarians during, and all the institutions created by, the revolution. But what cannot be destroyed is the spirit of a people and the idea of freedom.

Table of Contents

I: Background to the Revolution

Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Hungary

II: The Communists and the Revolution

III: The Workers and the Kádár Government

IV: The Youth

V: The Social Democrats

VI: The Lessons of the Revolution

VII: The Scapegoats

VIII: The Policy of Reprisals

Chronology of Events