Hungarian Revolution (1956): Difference between revisions

From AnarWiki
VisualWikitext
imported>PoliticalAustralian
(Created page with "== Background == The revolution had several major causes, namely: * Low living standards, which had dropped 17-20% between 1949 and 1953 as a result of an idiotic 'Five-Year P...")
 
imported>PoliticalAustralian
No edit summary
 
(One intermediate revision by the same user not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
== Background ==
The '''Hungarian Revolution of 1956''' was the largest anti-Stalinist rebellion in history, with rebels successfully topping the Hungarian government and the revolution was only started by an invasion where the USSR came from. It's also where the term "tankie" comes from, indicating someone who supported the USSR's crushing of the rebellion.
The revolution had several major causes, namely:
* Low living standards, which had dropped 17-20% between 1949 and 1953 as a result of an idiotic 'Five-Year Plan' devoted to heavy industry and steelworks in a largely agricultural country with no iron ore or coking coal. Similarly, the imposition of co-operatives on unwilling peasants led to
<nowiki> </nowiki>fall in their meagre incomes, and 1952 saw the worst ever yields in
Hungarian agriculture. Official statistics revealed that while 15% of the population was above the 'minimum' standard of living, 30% were on it and 55% below. A day's pay for a state farm worker wouldn't buy a kilo of bread; in 15% of working-class families not everyone had a blanket; one in every five workers had no winter coat.
* As a result, this created a rebellious culture where people would regularly steal from their jobs, scamming people and not going to work.
Following the [[East German Uprising (1953)|1953 uprising in East Germany]],


Workers and peasants went beyond theft, absenteeism and what the MDP
== Events ==
leadership liked to call 'laziness' and 'wage-swindling'. The third
banner in the official procession on May Day 1953 proclaimed "Glory to
the immortal Stalin, star which guides us towards freedom, socialism and
<nowiki> </nowiki>peace". Seven weeks later the workers of East Berlin rioted for their
vision of freedom and were quickly put down by Russian tanks. 20,000
workers went on strike at the Rakosi iron and steel works in Budapest's
Csepel district against low pay, production norms and food shortages.
There were wildcat strikes in Diosgyor, and mass peasant demonstrations
in the countryside. To avoid further outbreaks, Russia ordered a change
of leadership and a change of policy.


Matyas Rakosi, who styled himself "Stalin's Hungarian disciple" but
=== Protests and Statue Toppling ===
was more popularly referred to as 'arsehole' by Hungarian workers, was
20,000 protesters on 23 October gathered around a statue of József Bem - a national hero of Poland and Hungary as Péter Veres, president of the Writers' Union, read a manifesto to the crowd. Demanding independence, democratic socialism, joining the UN and civil liberties for all people. Afterwards the crowd began to chant songs and people waved Hungarian flags and tore communist emblems down. After being condemned by the government over radio, the protesters toppled a 9.1m high statue of Stalin, with Hungarian flags being placed in his boots.
required to make way for Imre Nagy, who had managed not to be involved
in the purges and generalised terror of the late 'forties. His 'new
course' outlined in late June 1953 was designed to ease the load on the
workers and peasants, produce higher living standards, end the  
internment camps and turn the economy away from heavy industry. Because
he was opposed by the hard-line Stalinists around Rakosi and Brno Cero,
Nagy is presented by some as popular and liberal. In fact he was much
like the rest. After Stalin's death, he talked of him as the "great
leader of all humanity"; the whole Stalinist era was a period of "trial
and error". In late 1954 Nagy felt able to say "We have created a new
country and a happy and free life for the people"; meanwhile Rakosi and
Gero argued that workers' living standards were too high.


Although Nagy may have felt that the removal of some of Stalinism's
=== Mutiny ===
worst features constituted a 'free life', his 'liberalism' was met by  
Protesters gathered around the headquarters of Hungarian Radio, secret police responded by throwing tear gas at the crowd and shooting live ammunition into the protest. The secret police hid weapons an ambulance and tried to resupply, but the crowd stopped them from entering. Soldiers were sent to crush the protest, but they defected and tore off the red starts from their caps. Soldiers began to arm the crowd with supplies from military depots, police cars were set on fire and government symbols were vandalised.
even more absenteeism, indiscipline and slacking by workers. A typical
Nagy speech from that period shows why. "The production results of the
third quarter show that, if the labour drive to mark these elections is
carried out with the same enthusiasm and vigour as the revolutionary
shift that was worked in honour of the Great Socialist October
Revolution, and if management and workers can get the same improvement
in worker discipline - in which there are still grave deficiencies - as
in production, then MAVAG will be able to take its place amongst the
ranks of the elite plants."[5] No amount of apologetics can cover up the
<nowiki> </nowiki>straightforward capitalist content of such a speech.


Workers' cynicism spread outside the workplace: in 1954 there were
=== Soviet Intervention ===
three days of rioting after the World Cup final defeat by West Germany
The Hungarian government requested assistance of the USSR, who sent the Red Army to protect the Hungarian Parliament and bridges across the country. Rebels barricaded numerous neighbourhoods, captured Soviet tanks, seized the radio headquarters and attacked secret police who were themselves attacking peaceful protesters outside of a newspaper office. There were reports of Soviet soldiers also showing open sympathy for the rebels. Soviet soldiers also accidentally fought in gunfights against the Hungarian secret police when they tried to shoot protesters, as they (Soviet soldiers) assumed they were the targets.
in the belief that the game had been thrown for hard currency. Games of
any kind against Russia were rarely without trouble. The MDP sent
intellectuals and writers out into the country at large during 1953 to
explain Nagy's 'new course': for most it was a first sight of the  
miserable conditions of the peasants and workers. They soon found out
that the 'toiling masses' had little time for the Literary Gazette or
for 'building socialism'. A young Communist commented "The workers hated
<nowiki> </nowiki>the regime to such an extent that by 1953 they were ready to destroy it
<nowiki> </nowiki>and everything that went with it."


Workers expressed this themselves: "The workers did not believe in  
=== Government Collapse ===
anything the communists promised them, because the communists had
Most of the Hungarian military remained neutral in the conflict, and numerous parts defected. Although there were a few dozen cases of rebels and the military fighting, and in one case a fighter jet bombed a protest, killing 17 people. Soon, the government collapsed and some rebels began to attack Soviet troops.  
cheated their promises so often." A worker from the Red Star Tractor
factory: "Under Communism, we should have a share in governing Hungary,  
but instead we're the poorest people in the country. We're just regarded
<nowiki> </nowiki>as factory fodder." Another worker: "The Communists nationalised all
the factories and similar enterprises, proclaiming the slogan, 'the
factory is yours - you work for yourself.' Exactly the opposite of this
was true."


Among the students the peasants' and workers' sons were most prepared
=== White Terror and Civil War ===
<nowiki> </nowiki>to speak their minds. They were more insolent than the middle-class
Some rebels began to carry out torture and executions of communists, secret police and military personnel. This soon led to a civil war between communists (themselves supported by factory workers and anti-fascist [[World War II]] veterans) and anti-communist rebels, with the Soviet army acting as a third faction. Workers' councils and popular assemblies spread across the country and rebels fought tanks with molotov cocktails. Anti-communist rebels destroyed public red stars, war memorials, executed communists and Soviet-sympathisers and communist books were burned. Soviet commanders often negotiated local cease-fires with the revolutionaries.
ones. They were also less likely to engage in abstract ideological
discussions but stuck to concrete issues - like food shortages.
Disillusion and anti-communism were widespread amongst Hungarian youth.
"We spoke less about political subjects, but if we did, we were cursing
the Russians, that was most of the time what it amounted to." "We were
the first generation that was not scared. After all we had nothing to
lose and we also had the feeling that we couldn't bear this for an
entire life."
 
Discontent and workers' opposition thus existed long before 1956.
However, the American assessment in December 1953 by an army attaché was
<nowiki> </nowiki>that "There are no organised resistance groups in Hungary; the
population does not now, nor will they in the future, have the capacity
to resist actively the present regime;". With a similar attitude, the
Russian leader Khrushchev thought that if he'd had ten Hungarian writers
<nowiki> </nowiki>shot at the right moment, nothing would have happened. A week before
the revolt a reader's letter to the Literary Gazette complained about
the uselessness of the intellectuals' debates: "The working class is,
and will remain, politically passive for good, and uninterested in such
hair-splitting...and without them what good can we do?"[6] However, a
Yugoslavian political analyst was more perceptive, commenting nine days
before the uprising, "People refuse to live in the old way, nor can the
leadership govern in the old way. Conditions have been created for an
uprising." The AVH ('Allamvedelmi Hatosag', State Security Force) sensed
<nowiki> </nowiki>trouble toot they and the Russian troops garrisoned in Hungary were put
<nowiki> </nowiki>on alert five days before October 23rd.
 
Much has been made of the dissatisfaction of Communist writers and
intellectuals and their supposed leading role in the revolution. The
intellectuals' program was only a criticism of Stalinism. Their 'Petofi
Circle' debating club wanted orderly reform and a change in the
leadership (because the Stalinists Rakosi and Gero had returned to power
<nowiki> </nowiki>replacing Nagy, now out of public life altogether). The Petofi Circle
did not encourage the revolt: it considered that precipitate actions
could lead to a catastrophe. They were seen by workers as Communists and
<nowiki> </nowiki>supporters of the regime. Nagy became a focus for this kind of
'opposition', which favoured working through MDP channels, and was
certainly against demonstrations. Most of these people came out against
the uprising: two such journalists thought that the crowds behaved "like
<nowiki> </nowiki>idiots" on October 23rd. One writer though, Gyula Hay, was honest
enough to see who was stirring up that: "I am perfectly willing to
accept that it was not I who awoke the spirit of freedom in youth: on
the contrary, it was youth who pushed me towards it." Workers started to
<nowiki> </nowiki>take an interest in what the writers were getting up to in
mid-September 1956, when a meeting of the Writers' Union saw the
Stalinists defeated in elections. A Literary Gazette account of that
meeting sold 70,000 copies in half an hour. Such a rebuff to the
authorities was bound to be of interest now.
 
The occasion of the reburial of a rehabilitated Communist, Laszlo
Rajk, a victim of an earlier purge, was used by workers to demonstrate
en masse. Some 200,000 attended in the rain on October 6th: an observer
commented "perhaps if it had not rained, there would have been a
revolution that day," There had been no difference between Rajk and
Rakosi politically, personal rivalry resulting in Rajk's trial and
execution as a 'Titoist fascist'. The workers' 'support' for Rajk's
rehabilitation was purely symbolic: on the other side of the coin, a top
<nowiki> </nowiki>Communist said that "if Rajk could have seen this mob he would have
turned machine guns on to them." The same day 2-300 students marched
away after the burial using the slogan, "We won't stop halfway,
Stalinism must be destroyed" Despite shouting this, the students weren't
<nowiki> </nowiki>stopped by the police, who assumed that any kind of demonstration must
be an official one.
 
<strong>October 23rd</strong>
It was the students who were responsible for the event that sparked off
the inevitable. On October 16th students in Szeged had broken away from
the official organisation and set up a new association. They sent
delegates countrywide to encourage similar breaks. By the 22nd there
were similar groups in most of the universities and large schools. News
had reached Budapest of events in Poland, where the Soviet army had
encircled Warsaw as the Polish Communist Party changed its leadership
under pressure from below. A meeting at the Polytechnic in Budapest
resolved to march on the 2Jrd in support of sixteen demands. These
included support for the Polish struggle for freedom; the removal of
Soviet troops; the election of MDP officials; a new government under
Imre Nagy; a general election; "the complete reorganisation of Hungary's
<nowiki> </nowiki>economic life under the direction of specialists"; the right to strike;
<nowiki> </nowiki>the "complete revision of the norms in effect in industry and an
immediate and radical adjustment of salaries in accordance with the just
<nowiki> </nowiki>requirements of workers and intellectuals"; and a free press and
radio.[7]
 
This mixed bag of demands could not even have begun to be met by the
regime - therein lay its explosive potential. Yet underlying the demands
<nowiki> </nowiki>was the all-too-common illusion that what had been mismanaged by 'bad'
leaders could be rectified by 'good' leaders elected to replace them.
The element of naivety was compounded by the way the students asked
workers for support but not for them to strike; they wanted a silent
march only. The Interior Ministry banned the march, which made more
people resolve to go. The ban was lifted after the march went ahead
anyway. Although the march started silently as the students wished, it
became more militant as workers off the morning shift joined in after 4
o'clock. The early slogans of support for the Poles were overtaken by
shouts for freedom and "Russians go home.'" Someone cut the communist
symbol out of a national flag and the flag of the revolution made its
first appearance - red, white and green with a hole in the middle. More
people left work to join a demonstration that they weren't forced to
take part in; soldiers were sympathetic and joined in too.
 
By dusk there were 200,000 people (about one-sixth of the whole
population of Budapest) in Parliament Square. The authorities turned off
<nowiki> </nowiki>the lights, whereupon newspapers and government leaflets were set
alight. The crowd demanded that Imre Nagy speak to them, but by the time
<nowiki> </nowiki>he turned up the mood had gone beyond listening calmly to speeches.
Appalled by the sight of so many people and by the flags with holes,
Nagy made the mistake of starting with the word 'Comrades!' This was
greeted with boos and shouts of "We're no longer comrades!" The people
had already rejected the whole HDP, not just the Stalinists, and the
'oppositionists' were too moderate. The disappointment with Nagy turned
into positive talk of a strike, and a crowd of youths marched to the
Radio building.
 
At 8 o 'clock there was an official broadcast by Erno Gero in which
he said: "We condemn those who seek to instil in our youth the poison of
<nowiki> </nowiki>chauvinism and to take advantage of the democratic liberties that our
state guarantees to the workers to organise a nationalist
demonstration."[8] This did nothing to calm the situation. The crowd
outside the Radio demanded access, with microphones in the street "so
that the people can express their opinions." A delegation was taken in
by the AVH to the Radio boss, Mrs Benke: she checked their ID cards and
found they were workers from the long machinery plant and an arms
factory. Similarly, Kopacsi, the Budapest police chief, questioned some
youths picked up on the demonstration and discovered they were factory
workers, some with Party cards.
 
When the delegation failed to reappear, the Radio building was
attacked and defended: at about 9 o'clock the first shots were fired
with many dead and wounded. The crowd had got weapons from sympathetic
police and soldiers before the AVH's first shots, and as the news
spread, workers from the arsenals brought more. The revolution had now
started in earnest. An observer felt that "it was at Stalin's statue
that the workers of Budapest appeared on the scene." When the crowd had
trouble getting it down, two workers fetched oxy-acetylene gear to cut
it down. The boots remained on the plinth, with a road sign saying 'Bead
<nowiki> </nowiki>End' stuck on them. Hungarian troops were greeted as friends and allies
<nowiki> </nowiki>by the crowds; workers were arriving from Csepel in lorries with
ammunition. Arms factories were raided and the telephone exchange taken.
 
The authorities called on the sappers in a nearby barracks, and told
them that fascists had risen against the government. The sappers were
met by workers who told them the truth. More sappers arrived to defend
the HDF's Central Committee HQ. When they saw, for the first time, the
luxury of the accommodation there, and realised that the crowds were
ordinary Hungarians, they went back to their barracks, changed out of
uniform and elected a revolutionary council. By midnight 'spectators'
were leaving the scene and the armed workers of Csepel and Ujpest were
taking their place. The battle for the Radio building went on all night:
<nowiki> </nowiki>it was finally taken at nine in the morning.
 
The mass, revolutionary character of the Hungarian uprising "was
established within hours. "The Hungarian uprising was the personal
experience of millions of men and women, and therefore of no one in
particular, just like the Paris Commune or other mass revolts."[9] The
casualty lists in the hospitals showed that it was young workers in
particular who did most of the fighting. A doctor commented: "There was
any number of youngsters amongst the fighters who knew nothing about the
<nowiki> </nowiki>Petofi Circle or who for that matter hadn't even heard of it, to whom
Gomulka's name was equally unknown, and who replied to the question as
to why they had risked their lives in the fighting with such answers as,
<nowiki> </nowiki>'Well, is it really worth living for 600 forints a month?" A student
noticed the same thing: "It is touching that it was the hooligans of
Ferencvaros who created ethics out of nothing during the revolution."
 
The participants knew why they were fighting: "We wanted freedom and
not a good comfortable life. Even though we might lack bread and other
necessities of life, we wanted freedom. We, the young people, were
particularly hampered because we were brought up amidst lies. We
continually had to lie." The character of the uprising was distinctive
in that it had a clear direction without a 'leadership'. The United
Nations Committee investigating it was told by a Hungarian professor of
philosophy, "It was unique in history that the Hungarian revolution had
no leaders. It was not organised; it was not centrally directed. The
will for freedom was the moving force in every action." The same point
is well made by two fighters: "There was no organisation whatsoever,
consequently there was no discipline either, but there was astonishingly
<nowiki> </nowiki>good teamwork." "Some people got together, fought, went home, then
others came and continued the fight."
 
The first tasks of the rebels involved seizing the telephone
exchanges, requisitioning lorries, attacking garages, barracks and
arsenals, getting arms and ammunition above all else. Then barricades
and molotov cocktails were made to face the Soviet tanks that entered
Budapest shortly after four in the morning of the 24th. Russian troops
had moved into action before the Hungarian authorities, in emergency
meetings all night, called for their 'fraternal' assistance. Some
'barricades were made of paving stones ripped up by hand by women and
children. The rebels took up positions in narrow streets and passages.
Those in the Corvin Passage made their stand by a convenient petrol
pump. As dawn broke, workers in Calvin Square confronted five tanks
without running away. Public support was immediate, with armed rebels
having no trouble getting food and shelter. Soldiers, when not taking
part in the fighting themselves, handed arms over to the rebels.
 
<strong>Thirteen days in Budapest... </strong>
First reactions to events were starting to come out. The Stalinists
called the revolt "a fascist counter-revolutionary action." The
'moderate' Communists wanted Nagy, but both wanted order restored, by
Russian troops if necessary. The writers' role was over already, their
demands surpassed. The students too were having second thoughts about
what they had sparked off. Very few people went to work on the 24th. At
4.30 am an official announcement banned all demonstrations and referred
to "fascist and reactionary elements". Just after 8 o'clock, Nagy was
declared Prime Minister: fifteen hours earlier the appointment might
have had some effect but from now on the authorities ' moves were way
behind the developing events. Half an hour later Nagy showed what
'liberal', 'moderate' Communism was about: he declared martial law with
the death penalty for carrying arras, and his government called in the
Soviet troops. After this, his program was of little interest to the
rebels.
 
The intervention by the Soviet troops now gave the revolt a national
character. The attitude of sympathetic neutrality that the Hungarian
army had taken in the first few hours was now replaced by and large by
one of active support for the rebellion. Soviet tanks were being
immobilised by the fighting youth, who, though poorly armed, were using
the partisan techniques drummed into them at school in praise of the
Soviet resistance to the German armies in World War Two. This was a rare
<nowiki> </nowiki>case of Hungarians eager to learn from Russian example. Anti-tank
tactics included loosening the cobblestones, then soaping the road, or
pouring oil over it. Liquid soap was used in Moricz Zsiground Square. In
<nowiki> </nowiki>Szena Square bales of silk taken from a Party shop were spread out and
covered with oil so the Soviet tanks couldn't move on this and became
sitting targets for petrol bombs. Youngsters would run up and smear jam
over the driver's window; some rebels blew themselves up knowingly
getting close enough to a tank to destroy it.
 
A thirteen year old girl was seen taking on a 75 ton tank with three
bottle bombs. A Viennese reporter at the Kilian Barracks met another 13
year old who had defended a street crossing alone with a machine-gun for
<nowiki> </nowiki>three days and nights. "The Russians found themselves faced by hordes
of death-defying youngsters: students, apprentices and even
schoolchildren who did not care whether they lived or died." A Swiss
reporter, seeing children fighting and dying, wrote: "If ever the time
comes to commemorate the heroes in Hungary, they mustn't forget to raise
<nowiki> </nowiki>a monument to the Unknown Hungarian Child." A chemical engineer saw
some children with empty bottles. He told them to use nitro-glycerine
rather than petrol, so they all went to their school laboratory where he
<nowiki> </nowiki>helped them to synthesise enough nitro-glycerine to make a hundred
bottle bombs. Then he went home and left them to it. Twelve year olds
learnt how to handle guns: older men instructed rebels in the use of
grenades and how to attack tanks.
 
An air force officer typed out copies of guerilla tactics. Many of
the carefully selected and supposedly politically indoctrinated officer
corps went over to the rebels. Officers of the Petofi and Zrinyi
Military Academies, the future elite, fought the Russians. After the
rebellion the army was reorganised with many officers and cadets got rid
<nowiki> </nowiki>of. The police were generally sympathetic. Only the AVH fought
alongside the Russians. The AVH (referred to by workers as 'the Blues'
or 'the AVOs', the name they had before 1949) had some 35,000 men and
women, the latter being reputedly the worse torturers. Their minimum pay
<nowiki> </nowiki>was over three times that of a worker, plus bonuses. They had their own
<nowiki> </nowiki>subsidised stores and a holiday village by Lake Balaton. Many
Hungarians had experienced 'esengofraz', namely 'bell-fever', a midnight
<nowiki> </nowiki>call by the AVH. Now it was the turn of the AVOs to be hunted. "The
security forces were capable of terrorisation in times of peace, or of
firing on an unarmed crowd, but impotent in the face of a people's
uprising."[10]
 
The AVH was abolished on the afternoon of October 29th, to be
resurrected after the Russian invasion. Since the 21st, two days before
the uprising, the AVH had been destroying its files. Neither of these
things saved individual AVOs from lynchings: such killings were
generally carried out in a purposeful and sombre manner. Without any
doubt, the AVH killed many more people over the years than the crowds
managed to kill of them. Despite this and the AVH's continued brutality
during the revolution, most insurgents condemned the lynchings. In the
work of creating a new society, such imitations of the old were
unwelcome. However, no one was sorry for the dead AVOs: as a Hungarian
told a Polish reporter "Believe me, we are not sadists, but we cannot
bring ourselves to regret those kind of people."[11] In the streets
bodies of AVOs lay or hung with the money found in their pockets either
stuffed in their mouths or pinned to their chests. Even in poverty, no
self-respecting Hungarian would touch it. After the rebellion was
crushed, the Hungarian authorities themselves put the total number of
security force members killed as 234 - a remarkably low figure in the
circumstances.
 
The crowds got on with removing symbols of the old regime: red stars
were torn down. At the offices of Szabad Nep, the MDP newspaper,
journalists threw down leaflets of support for the revolt out of the
windows: people tore them up and burnt them without reading them -after
all their years of lying, no one was going to believe them now. The
Party bookshop and the Soviet 'Horizont' bookshop were ransacked and the
<nowiki> </nowiki>works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin piled up and set alight. A
general strike spread over the country, a move which left the MDP
embarrassed. So often it had praised the strikes of Western workers, now
<nowiki> </nowiki>Hungarian workers were doing the same - but this time against them.
Fighting was fierce in Parliament Square and at the Party HQ after AVH
units fired on largely unarmed crowds. Black flags made their first
appearances to mourn fallen rebels. Radio Budapest, still in the hands
of the authorities, threatened: "If the destructions and assassinations
continue, the football match between Hungary and Sweden, scheduled for
Sunday, will have to be cancelled."[12] This radio station was now only
listened to for laughs, as its statements bore no relation to observable
<nowiki> </nowiki>reality. The fighting groups continued to form throughout the city. The
<nowiki> </nowiki>armed group holding Szena Square held open democratic meetings to
discuss strategy and tactics.
 
On the 25th the Government urged a return to work in its radio
broadcasts. This call was ignored, but as it implied an end to the
curfew (which had also been widely ignored anyway) many thousands more
took to the streets to find out what was going on and to discuss events:
<nowiki> </nowiki>going to work was the last thing on most people's minds, Nagy's
reshuffles of his ministers, his 'concessions' and announcements were
increasingly irrelevant and always too slow and too late to satisfy the
rebels. The people in the streets didn't give a damn that Georgy Lukacs,
<nowiki> </nowiki>a darling of leftist academics, was now in the cabinet. On the 26th
Lukacs said in a radio broadcast that "what we want is a socialist
culture worthy of the Hungarian people's great and ancient
achievements", while all around people were dismantling all the
'socialist culture' they could find.
 
The writers were giving up quickly. Gabor Tanesos said no progress
(whatever it was he had in mind) could be made "while the guns are
roaring." As early as the 25th, Gyula Hay stated "We must immediately
revert to peaceful methods; fighting must stop immediately. Even
peaceful demonstrations should not now be undertaken."[13] While the
intellectuals were way behind the workers, lacking their basic
intransigence, not all were so craven. On the 29th some told Nagy to arm
<nowiki> </nowiki>the workers. He shrank back from such a suggestion, replying that "At
present that is quite impossible. A lot of the workers are unreliable."
At times it seemed that Nagy had lost touch with the reality of what was
<nowiki> </nowiki>happening's in a speech he referred to the "historic, durable, and
ineffaceable" results of twelve years of Communist rule! The MDP's
plight now was of no consequence - the rebels had rejected it. On the
basis of their own direct experience, Hungarians were exposing the sham
of the 'socialist states'.
 
The call for the Russians to leave was an expression of this. The
fighting between the rebels and the Russians did not however have the
bitterness that the clashes with the AVH had. No Soviet soldiers were
lynched, none of their corpses were mutilated, and on the other side
there was no vindictiveness shown towards the rebels by the Russians.
The Red Army soldiers were not keen to be shot at, nor were they eager
to shoot at a population they had been peaceably stationed amongst for
some time. There were some desertions, particularly among members of the
<nowiki> </nowiki>Soviet Union's national minorities. One example was an Armenian major
who went over to the rebels on the 24th and distributed leaflets to
Soviet troops urging them not to fire. Some rebels too disliked fighting
<nowiki> </nowiki>the Russians. One fighter commented "I found myself shooting at
bewildered Ukrainian peasant boys who had as much reason to hate what we
<nowiki> </nowiki>fought as we had... It was an embittering shock to find that one can't
confront the real enemy even in a revolution. "
 
While the rebels struggled to confront and defeat the real enemy,
victims of the old regime were being set free. On the 26th the police
building in Csepel was stormed and its prisoners released. Thousands
were let out of forced labour camps and some 17,000 from the country's
prisons. The most common crime was petty theft. Police chief Kopacsi
allowed all political prisoners and those fighters held from the first
day or so's fighting out of the City Police HQ in Budapest. This act was
<nowiki> </nowiki>to cost him a life sentence in 1958. As the fighting continued, with
most damage occurring in the working-class suburbs of Budapest and the
industrial towns, the country's farmers worked to provide food for the
rebels, and lorries with bread, flour and vegetables streamed into the
towns. Bakers worked throughout the rebellion and strike to ensure that
rebels and strikers were fed.
 
Despite hunger and poverty there was an absence of looting in the
city. Shops with broken windows had their goods left intact. After the
radio and the Soviet press talked of looting, signs were put up on such
shops saying, "This is how we loot." Another popular slogan dated back
to the Korean War when the Federation of Working Youth collected metal
for the North Korean war effort: "Scrap Metals Ensure Peace!" now made a
<nowiki> </nowiki>more appropriate reappearance on burnt-out Soviet tanks. Some North
Korean students (and some Polish ones) returned the favour by joining
the rebels.
 
The collapse of the MDP and the unity of industrial workers, peasants
<nowiki> </nowiki>and white-collar workers left the Government powerless by the 27th.
Real power was moving towards the revolutionary workers' councils. It
was these councils that called the strike, and the workers obeyed this
call because it came in effect from themselves. Similarly, the call for a
<nowiki> </nowiki>return to work was accepted when the councils made it. The Communists
had said that workers were the ruling class, now, through the councils,
the workers were putting it into practice. As the workers' councils
spread from factory to factory and district to district the National
Trade Union Council, realising that it was being made redundant, tried
to pre-empt developments by advocating workers' councils, but with its
own old hacks on the platform. Workers still turned up to such meetings,
<nowiki> </nowiki>but elected from among themselves, rejecting the trade union officials.
<nowiki> </nowiki>MDP members were then urged to infiltrate the genuine councils. A paper
<nowiki> </nowiki>called 'Igazsag' ('Truth') was started, which kept in touch with the
councils. Delegations from the councils besieged Nagy's government with
endless demands. Two recurrent demands were for Hungarian neutrality and
<nowiki> </nowiki>withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact.
 
Among Hungary's Warsaw Pact allies, the Czech, East German and
Romanian Communist Parties were particularly virulent in their
condemnations of the 'counter-revolution'. This was motivated by the
fear that their own working classes might choose to settle accounts with
<nowiki> </nowiki>them. Russia itself, while getting more troops into Hungary ready for
the second assault on the workers, chose to make an official declaration
<nowiki> </nowiki>on relations between socialist states. Its high-sounding phrases were
of course meaningless, but it also contained an 'analysis' of events in
order to justify the approaching' repression. Russia's view was that
"the workers of Hungary have, after achieving great progress on the
basis of the people's democratic order, justifiably raised the questions
<nowiki> </nowiki>of the need for eliminating the serious inadequacies of the economic
system, of the need for further improving the material well-being of the
<nowiki> </nowiki>people, and of the need for furthering the battle against bureaucratic
excesses in the state apparatus. However, the forces of reaction and of
counter-revolution have quickly joined in this just and progressive
movement of the workers, with the aim of using the discontent of the
workers to undermine the foundations of the people's democratic system
in Hungary and to restore to power the landlords and the
capitalists."[14] For sheer drivel this was hard to beat: the workers
and peasants were fighting to eliminate the economic system itself and
destroy the state apparatus; the only 'counter-revolutionary force'
involved was the Soviet Union itself and its Hungarian supporters in the
<nowiki> </nowiki>MDP.
 
The rebels were quite emphatically not for the restoration of
capitalism, nor were the political parties, which were re-emerging. The
Smallholders Party leader Bela Kovacs was clear: "No one, I believe,
wants to re-establish the world of the aristocrats, .the bankers and the
<nowiki> </nowiki>capitalists. That world is definitely gone." Likewise National Peasants
<nowiki> </nowiki>Party leader Ferenc Farkas: "We shall retain the gains and conquests of
<nowiki> </nowiki>socialism..." Even Catholic Party leader Endre Varga saw no point in
trying to turn back the clock - "We demand-the maintenance of the social
<nowiki> </nowiki>victories which have been realised since 1945..."[15] People were
worried that the reappearance of these old parties would undermine the
unity of the revolution, but the hatred of the one-party system was such
<nowiki> </nowiki>as to tolerate them: demands for parties to be allowed was not though
an expression of any great enthusiasm for them. Despite the MDP's record
<nowiki> </nowiki>in power, no worker wanted private capitalists back: they wanted their
supposed collective property to become theirs in fact. No peasant wanted
<nowiki> </nowiki>the private landlords back - but they wanted the co-operatives to be
voluntary rather than forced. As the Party collapsed, members burnt
their cards. One member stuck his to a wall with a message next to it -
"A testimony to my stupidity. Let this be a lesson to you." The MDP
reorganised itself as the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (MSzMP).
 
Of the twenty or more new papers that appeared within days of the
uprising none were right wing. One that tried to publish found the
compositors refusing to touch it. The papers were usually four pages or a
<nowiki> </nowiki>single sheet, either printed or stenciled. 'Igazsag' proved the most
popular, as it was closest to the workers' councils. Walls were covered
with copies of the papers and other notices. Accounts of MDP leaders'
lifestyles made popular reading. There was very little nationalism, and
no anti-Semitism. Soviet armoured cars distributed the Party paper, but
people tore the bundles to bits without any regard for the contents. As
the Russian troops dug in round Budapest, boxes were left in the streets
<nowiki> </nowiki>to collect for widows and orphans. No one needed to guard these boxes
full of money. A notice next to one said "The purity of our revolution
permits us to use this method of collection." The mayor of the capital,
Jozsef Kovago, said the city was "pervaded with such sacred feelings
that even the thieves abandoned their trade." On the wreck of a Russian
tank someone scrawled the words 'Soviet culture'. A girl fighter in the
Corvin Passage spoke for thousands: "Now I'm making history instead of
studying it."
 
<strong>....and in the country</strong>
Hungarians were not just making history in Budapest. In the country
districts and industrial towns, workers and peasants were quick to
follow up the events in the capital. On the 23rd October itself in
Debrecen, red stars were already being taken off buildings and local
trams. In Szeged, crowds tore down Soviet emblems. In Miskolc, some
Russians were attacked and an army staff car thrown in the river. The
police were disarmed in Cegled when some 5,000 joined the uprising. The
removal of Soviet troops from Hungarian soil was demanded by oil workers
<nowiki> </nowiki>in Lovasz, miners from Balinka and auto repair workers in Szombathely.
Everywhere workers were finding their voices and taking action.
 
In Gyor on the 24th a small demonstration of factory workers ripped
red stars off the factories and destroyed a Soviet war memorial. They
broke down the prison gates and released political prisoners. They found
<nowiki> </nowiki>a list of the prisoners' occupations - drivers, workers, waiters and
mechanics. The AVH turned up and fired at the crowds, killing four and
wounding more. The next day the local police and army garrison joined
the revolution, forcing the surrender, of the AVH. The local Soviet
commander withdrew his troops saying that the rising "against the
oppressive leaders is justified". On the 26th a general strike got under
<nowiki> </nowiki>way, and by the next day a Workers' Council and a 'National
Revolutionary Council' had 'been set up ('National' referring to the
local county, not the whole of Hungary), composed in the main of workers
<nowiki> </nowiki>with some MDP members. These councils were in constant session. They
were both insurrectionary and self-governing. The local radio was in
rebel hands, and on the 28th it called for an end to the Warsaw Pact and
<nowiki> </nowiki>demanded that Imre Nagy negotiate with the Budapest workers. Thirty
thousand miners struck for these demands. A network of local workers'
councils developed, linking the railway works with the miners of
Tatabanya and Balinka. Personnel chiefs were dismissed and new plant
managers elected by workforces. The national Revolutionary Council
successfully repulsed efforts by a handful of reactionaries to exploit
the situation.
 
In nearby Magyarovar, everybody was talking politics as the news came
<nowiki> </nowiki>through from Budapest. A peaceful unarmed demonstration was fired on by
<nowiki> </nowiki>the local AVH. Between 60 and 90 were shot in the massacre. Upon this,
the local police joined the rebels and the Revolutionary Council in Gyor
<nowiki> </nowiki>sent an army detachment. The AVH surrendered, and their officers were
lynched in revenge by a large crowd. Here as elsewhere essential
services were kept ticking over; miners produced just enough coal to
keep the power going. Peasants joined the rebellion as the MDP crumbled
and the AVH retreated in the face of popular opposition. Farmers worked
to feed the rebels. In town after town, radio stations were taken over,
Party buildings burnt down, AVOs sought out and killed, informers
attacked.
 
The Borsod district was the largest industrial area in Hungary, and
its main town, Miskolc, the largest industrial town outside Budapest. On
<nowiki> </nowiki>October 24th a workers' council met at the Dimavag iron foundry. The
next day the foundry workers marched into town with a list of demands,
removing red stars and the like wherever they were seen. They were
joined by other workers and a mass meeting created a workers' council
for all the factories of Greater Miskolc. A general strike was declared.
<nowiki> </nowiki>On the 26th a crowd besieged the local police Hi trying to get the
release of political prisoners. The AVH fired at the crowd. Some police
gave their weapons to the workers, and miners turned up with dynamite to
<nowiki> </nowiki>get their revenge. Six or seven AVOs were lynched in the ensuing
battle. The Workers' Council said "Stalinist provocateurs have felt the
just punishment of the people." The next evening the Council calmly
announced that it had "taken power in all the Borsod region".
 
In Salgotarjan in Nograd county all work stopped on 25th October. On
the 27th steelworkers marched through the town, taking down red stars,
releasing political prisoners and destroying the Soviet war memorial. A
'National Council' was set up for the district. In Pecs, even the AVH at
<nowiki> </nowiki>the uranium mines sided with the revolution. The Workers' Council there
<nowiki> </nowiki>farmed a military council which immediately made plans to face another
Soviet attack, which was not long in coming.
 
<strong>The Workers' Councils</strong>
The first workers' council to be set up in Budapest was at the United
Lamp factory. This council representing ten thousand workers got going
on October 24th, within hours of the revolution starting. It appealed to
<nowiki> </nowiki>workers to "show that we can manage things better than our former blind
<nowiki> </nowiki>and domineering bosses." 16 Within a day, workers' councils were set up
<nowiki> </nowiki>in the towns of Miskolc, Gyor, Debrecen and Sztalinvaros: incredibly,
the Dimavag Workers' Council mentioned above was actually set up on the
22ndi In Budapest, councils appeared at the Beloiannis electrical
equipment factory, the Gamma optical works, the Canz electric, wagon and
<nowiki> </nowiki>machine works, the Lang and Danuvia machine-tool factories, the Matyas
Rakosi iron and steel works and elsewhere. On the 26th the MDP
graciously announced that it "approved" the new workers' councils, but
it was hoping to keep them isolated as separate 'factory councils'.
However the councils were already assuming a united political and
economic role. The general strike was a political act in support of the
armed uprising. The councils kept their power at the local level, yet
exerted a collective pressure on the government. For the next few days
there were constant delegations from the councils to government
ministers.
 
The Miskolc Workers' Council wrote to Nagyj "Bear President, the
Workers' Council yesterday assumed power in all the domain of the Borsod
<nowiki> </nowiki>department." The councils in the districts unhesitatingly seized power
straight away; in Budapest, only as the armed rebels appeared to win.
The councils in Miskolc, Gyor, Pecs and Skolnok had control of radio
stations which allowed them to co-ordinate with each other and with
Budapest. As the fighting eased off, the workers' councils began to
group themselves into district workers' councils. On the 29th delegates
from the Ujpest councils met at the United Lamp factory; similar
meetings occurred in the 9th district of Budapest and Angyalfold. On the
<nowiki> </nowiki>30th October, nineteen factories in Csepel set up the Central Workers'
Council of Csepel. Only one day later, these moves to centralise and
strengthen the movement resulted in a Parliament of Workers' Councils
for the whole of Budapest.
 
This historic meeting drew up a statement of the duties and rights of the workers' councils with nine points, here in full:
 
1. The factory belongs to the workers. The latter should pay to the
state a levy calculated on the basis of the output and a portion of the
profits.
2. The supreme controlling body of the factory is the Workers' Council democratically elected by the workers.
3. . The Workers ' Council elects its own executive committee composed
of 3-9 members, which acts as the executive body of the Workers'
Council, carrying out the decisions and tasks laid down by it.
4. The director is employed "by the factory. The director and the
highest employees axe to be elected 'by the Workers' Council. This
election will take place after a public general meeting called "by the
executive committee.
5. The director is responsible to the Workers' Council in every matter which concerns the factory.
6. The Workers' Council itself reserves all rights to:
a. approve and ratify all projects concerning the enterprise;
b. decide basic wage levels and the methods by which these are to be assessed;
c. decide on all matters concerning foreign contracts;
d. decide on the conduct of all operations involving credit.
7. In the same way, the Workers' Council resolves any conflicts
concerning the hiring and firing of all workers employed in the
enterprise.
8. The Workers' Council has the right to examine the balance sheets and to decide on the use to which the profits are to be put.
9. The Workers' Council handles all social questions in the enterprise."[17]
 
This statement was an attempt by a workers' movement within days of
an uprising, before the success of the revolution was in any way
assured, to take power away from the bureaucrats. It was an attempt to
establish workers' control, and to an extent, workers' management, in
the workplace. It wasn't concerned with abstractions but with a
day-to-day reality; it represented a starting-point for the workers'
councils As the workers had generally taken their factories and
workplaces over already, the meeting's resolution that the factories etc
<nowiki> </nowiki>belonged to the workers recognised a fait accompli.
 
All the councils were both anti-capitalist and anti-Stalinist. Borsod
<nowiki> </nowiki>District Workers' Council said that it "resolutely condemns the
organisation of political parties."[18] The tendency to unify continued
into early November. The workers' councils in Miskolc set up a municipal
<nowiki> </nowiki>one for the town, then a departmental one for the whole district. On
November 2nd, the president of the Miskolc councils, Jozseff Kiss,
called for a 'National Revolutionary Council' based on the workers'
councils. The developing implicit trend was towards the idea of "all
power to the councils", and its realisation, but this was not clearly
stated: the second Russian attack cut short such developments, Imre Nagy
<nowiki> </nowiki>and his ministers saw nothing of significance in the councils;
similarly, the various political parties that had sprung up looked to
their own activity as a solution to Hungary's problems. Workers'
self-management was a notion beyond them.
 
On November 3rd the Csepel and Ujpest district councils called for
the strike to end, with a disciplined return to work on the 5th. This
was intended to strengthen the Nagy government's negotiating hand with
the Russians. On November 1st there had been a declaration of neutrality
<nowiki> </nowiki>and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact - this accession to one of the
major demands of the revolution gave Nagy a temporary popularity.
However, withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact was unlikely to be tolerated by
<nowiki> </nowiki>the Russians. On November 3rd Pravda reported in Moscow that "militant
communists had been massacred and murdered"; on the day of the invasion
it referred to "bestial atrocities" committed by the rebels, and the
Chinese Communist Party paper urged - "Bar the road to reaction in
Hungary" (by which they meant - "stop this example to Chinese workers").
 
<strong>The Military Defeat of the Revolution</strong>
The Russian attack began on November 4ths 150,000 men and over 2,000
tanks were used. The political parties as well as all the various
'leaders' disappeared in the face of it. The working class stood firm
and took the lead. An immediate spontaneous general strike started, and
the fiercest resistance to the Soviet troops came in working-class
areas. Janos Kadar was the new Hungarian puppet the Russians used to
'invite' them in. His 'Revolutionary Worker-Peasant Government" composed
<nowiki> </nowiki>of a handful of Communists rested simply on Russian armed might. Soviet
<nowiki> </nowiki>troops and tanks made straight for the industrial centres and
working-class districts to crush the revolution, Throughout Hungary,
peasants and workers tried to explain the truth to the invaders. Pecs
radio broadcast messages to Russian troops, many of whom had no idea
where they were, that "the Hungarian people have only taken the power
into their own hands". As even the Communist Radio Rajk proclaimed "The
place of every Hungarian communist today is on the barricades", Kadar's
first move was to set up a new secret police force. The workers'
councils rejected Kadar and his fake government without hesitation. When
<nowiki> </nowiki>Dunapentele was surrounded by Soviet troops on the 7th, the Workers'
Council there met the surrender ultimatum with the statement:
"Dunapentele is the foremost socialist town in Hungary. Its inhabitants
are workers, and power is in their hands. The houses have all been built
<nowiki> </nowiki>by the workers themselves. The workers will defend the town from
'fascist excesses' but also from Soviet troops!"
 
In Budapest the heaviest concentration of Soviet amour was in Csepel
and Kobanya. In the centre of the city fitting went on till the 6th,
when the rebels' ammunition ran out. Some suburbs held out until the
8th; Ujpest and Kobanya till the 9th and 10th, leaving Red Csepel to
fall on the 11th when the Russians could move all their troops to attack
<nowiki> </nowiki>it. These last districts saw by far the fiercest fighting. Some 80-90%
of the Hungarian wounded were young workers. Kadar's own reports
confirmed that most damage occurred in the working-class areas. On the
7th, rebels raised the red flag to commemorate the Russian Revolution,
while the heirs of that revolution killed Hungarian workers. The AVOs
re-emerged, looking for revenge for their recent humiliations.
Government proclamations started to appear on walls. Passers-by defaced
them, or pasted over them, or just ripped them down. In Csepel the
workers joked grimly "The 40,000 aristocrats and fascists of Csepel are
on strike." Trenches were dug in front of the workers' flats. Csepel
workers for those seven days slept eight hours, fought for eight hours
and spent the other eight hours working in the factories producing arms
and ammunition. The Csepel armoured car made its appearance - a
three-wheel mechanised wheelbarrow with a machine-gun in the bucket
propped up with sandbags. Against this, the Red Army used heavy
artillery and bombers. Le Figaro, a French paper, commented, "The Red
Array now occupies Budapest. It is red with the blood of the workers."
 
Outside the capital, Dunapentele lasted till the 9th led by its
Workers' Council. In Pecs, the Workers' Council decided not to defend
the town. Instead a plan was carried out for guerrilla warfare in the
nearby hills: this went on in a major way for ten days, and some miners
and soldiers carried on fighting the Russians for several weeks, in
Miskolc there was a brief resistance to the Soviet attack, followed by a
<nowiki> </nowiki>declaration of a general strike of all non-essential workers. The
Borsod Workers' Council offered to take 20,000 armed workers to Budapest
<nowiki> </nowiki>so that Nagy (now sheltering in the Yugoslav embassy) could prove to
the Russians that their fears of a 'capitalist restoration' were  
groundless. Later on, when the Budapest police chief, Kopacsi, who came
from the Miskolc area, was tried and sentenced to death, the Borsod
Workers' Council repeated this offer to Kadar, who promptly reprieved
Kopacsi. In Salgotarjan in Nograd county, workers supported their local
'Rational Workers' Council' after the Soviet invasion. Until the 16th
the workers held the town hall, the local press and radio, and local
army units were on the revolution's side. On that day the Russian troops
<nowiki> </nowiki>took over, setting up a 'Revolutionary Worker-Peasant Committee' in
opposition to the Workers' Council. On December 1st, the Russians
arrested the leaders of the National Workers' Council, but real power
still lay in the hands of the workers: they marched to the police HQ and
<nowiki> </nowiki>secured the release of their fellow-workers. There followed a solid
two-day strike in the area. A few days later when further arrests of
district Workers' Council members took place, thousands of demonstrators
<nowiki> </nowiki>were confronted by tanks, and the AVH fired on unarmed crowds.
 
<strong>Workers' Councils lead the Resistance</strong>
The military defeat of the Hungarian workers and peasants thus took just
<nowiki> </nowiki>over a week. The struggle now moved into a new phase. The workers may
have been beaten by an overwhelming armed force from outside, but they
still had control over productions as long as they could keep that,
"workers' power" was a reality and Kadar's government would rest on
repression alone. The workers' councils reorganised in the wake of the
invasion, setting up district workers' councils with an overtly
political role. The Csepel Workers' Council sent delegations to Kadar
and the Soviet army commander. The common demand of the councils was
that the workers were to run the factories, ensuring that power stayed
with them. On November 12th moves were made towards establishing a
Central Workers' Council for the whole of Greater Budapest, and on the
14th the founding meeting was held at the United Lamp factory. A young
Hungarian intellectual, Miklos Erasso, has claimed the credit for the
idea of a Central Workers' Council (CWC1), but he himself relates how he
<nowiki> </nowiki>was put in his place at the meeting: "The elderly social democratic
chairman asked: 'What factory are you from?' 'None', I said. 'What right
<nowiki> </nowiki>have you to be here?' I said that I had actually organised the meeting.
<nowiki> </nowiki>The chairman replied: 'This is untrue. This meeting is an historical
inevitability!"[19] The CWC1 was indeed the inevitable result of the
councils' attempts to unite. Krasso's 'idea' coincided with the
direction of the workers' movement.
 
The delegates who came together were in the main toolmakers, turners,
<nowiki> </nowiki>steelworkers and engineers. The following day a more widely based
meeting was held. Some of the delegates wanted to create a National
Workers' Council for the whole of Hungary then and there; while many
agreed, it was pointed out that they only had a mandate to form a CWC1
for Greater Budapest. The workers' councils were determined to be truly
democratic. "For the Hungarian workers and their delegates the most
important thing about the councils was precisely their democratic
nature. There was a very close relationship between the delegates and
the entire working-class: the delegates were elected for the sole
purpose of carrying out the workers' wishes, and it is noteworthy that
workers often recalled delegates who diverged from their mandate. They
didn't like delegates who were too 'independent'."[20] At the meeting,
Sandor Racz, elected president, stated "We have no need of the
government! We are and shall remain the leaders here in Hungary!"
Unfortunately, the majority were inclined to compromise in the face of
armed might, and to negotiate with Kadar's fake government. A return to
work, backed also by the Csepel Workers' Council, was planned in order
to show that the strike was conscious and organised. Many workers were
very angry at this, and accusations of sell-outs abounded.
 
As real power lay with the councils, Kadar's government had to
destroy them and reinstall authoritarian relationships in the factories.
<nowiki> </nowiki>For two months the struggle continued, Points 9 and 11 of Kadar's
'Workers and Peasants Revolutionary Program' were for "workers'
management of the factories" and "democratic election of the workers'
councils". Kadar's counter-revolution had to hide behind fine phrases.
But there was no way Kadar could agree to the workers' demands:
"collective ownership of the factories, which were to be in the hands of
<nowiki> </nowiki>the workers' councils, which were to act as the only directors of the
enterprises; a widening of the councils' powers in the economic, social
and cultural fields; the organisation of a militia-type police force,
subject to the councils; and on the political plane, a
multi-socialist-party system."[21] The CWC1 negotiated directly with the
<nowiki> </nowiki>Soviet army commander, Grebennik, giving him a list of missing workers'
<nowiki> </nowiki>council members every day, whereupon the Russians released them from
prison. The Soviets for their part showed that they knew power lay with
the councils, not Kadar. At first, Grebennik treated workers' council
delegations as fascists and imperialist agents; in due course though a
Soviet colonel and interpreter were made permanent representatives to
the CWC1. It was the councils, not Kadar's government, that was
arranging' all food and medical supplies.
 
On November 18th, a plan was developed for a truly national council, a
<nowiki> </nowiki>'parliament of Workers' Councils'. This was to have 156 members,
delegates from district workers' councils in Budapest and the counties,
and from the largest factories. This body would elect a thirty-strong
presidium, which would co-opt up to 20 representatives from other groups
<nowiki> </nowiki>such as the army, intellectuals, political parties, and the police. An
appeal went out for delegates to attend a. conference on the 21st to
discuss this. "The principal task of this national conference was to
create a power under the direction of the workers, and in opposition to
the government." On the 19th work restarted as a sign of discipline and
support by the workers for the CWC1. Delegates to the conference came
from Budapest, Gyor, Pecs, Tatabanya, and Ozd and there were others from
<nowiki> </nowiki>peasant organisations. A vital link had been established between the
CWC1 and the provincial councils. The various miners' delegates were
very much against the return to work: "You can work if you want, but we
shall provide neither coal nor electricity, we shall flood all the
mines!" But those in favour pointed out that the strike was hitting
everybody indiscriminately, and a return to work would keep the workers
united in their workplaces.
 
A rumour spread through Budapest that the CWC1 had been arrested: the
<nowiki> </nowiki>workers immediately resumed their strike. Although the workers in
Csepel joined in, the Csepel Workers' Council condemned the new strike.
Before a commission from the CWC1 could investigate this difference, the
<nowiki> </nowiki>Csepel workers had promptly elected a brand new council that was in
line with their wishes and actions, supporting the strike and the CWC1.
Workers were arguing through the different options facing them now:
active resistance, passive resistance or flight. The first could not be
maintained, although in fact there was never a Hungarian surrender, and a
<nowiki> </nowiki>quarter of a million Hungarians chose the latter and fled the country
to the west. Thousands were deported to Russia, particularly younger
workers, in an act of indiscriminate terror. Railway workers did what
they could to prevent these, for instance by removing railway track.
Some ambushes were carried out against trains and deportees released.
Most deportees were allowed back during 1957.
 
As passive resistance became the course followed by most Hungarians, a
<nowiki> </nowiki>sullen hatred developed towards the Russians and their puppet
government. When, later on, the Russian leader Khrushchev came to
Hungary, supposed mass meetings of support on the radio had to be
boosted by canned applause. A succession of sarcastic posters appeared
on walls: "Take care! Ten million counter-revolutionaries are roaming
the country. Hundreds of thousands of landowners, capitalists, generals
and bishops are at large, from the aristocratic quarters to the factory
areas of Csepel and Kispest. Because of this gang's murderous activities
<nowiki> </nowiki>only six workers are left in the entire country. These latter have set
up a government in Skolnok." "Lost: the confidence of the people. Honest
<nowiki> </nowiki>finder is asked to return it to Janos Kadar, prime minister of Hungary,
<nowiki> </nowiki>address: 10,000 Soviet Tanks Street." "Wanted! Premier for Hungary.
Qualifications - no sincere convictions; no backbone; ability to read
and write not essential, but must be able to sign documents drawn up by
others." "Proletarians of the World Unite: but not in groups of three or
<nowiki> </nowiki>more." A popular joke did the rounds: "D'you know where we went wrong
in October? We interfered in our own internal affairs."
 
As part of the policy of passive resistance, a silent demonstration
took place on November 23rd: from 2 o'clock till J in the afternoon, no
one went out on the streets of Budapest. This sort of action showed what
<nowiki> </nowiki>Hungarians thought of Kadar, and was impossible for his new security
force to suppress. He appealed to the workers' councils to help
establish order and get production restarted. As if in reply, the CWC1
stated on November 27th "We reaffirm that we have received our mission
from the working class... and we shall work with all our might for the
strengthening of the workers' power." The only press that the councils
had was a duplicated 'Information Bulletin' which was passed from hand
to hand or read out loud at meetings. The councils allowed no party
organisations in the factories: MSzMP and pro-government trade union
officials were banned and physically prevented from entering.
 
December saw Kadar's government slowly wrest power away from the
workers' councils in the battle for the factories. From below came a
relentless pressure for anti-Kadar action. On December 4th there was the
<nowiki> </nowiki>'March of Mothers', a silent procession of 30,000 women in black with
national and black flags. In support, all houses had lighted candles in
their windows at midnight, despite the government taking all the candles
<nowiki> </nowiki>it could out of the shops. The next day a decree dissolved the
Revolutionary Committees that had sprung up alongside the workers'
councils in the districts, for instance in Gyor, and 200 workers'
council members were arrested. The offensive continued on the 6th with
the arrest of the Workers' Councils in the Ganz and MAVAG factories. At
the same time the CWC1 was discussing plans for a National Workers'
Council and a provisional workers' parliament with representatives from
all the workers' councils. On the 8th, 80 miners were killed in
Salgotarjan by Soviet troops. The next day Kadar dissolved the CWC1,
arresting most of its members. The others carried on and declared a
48-hour strike in response to the dissolution and the shooting of the
miners. One delegate declared "Let the lights go out, let there be no
gas, let there be nothing!"
 
So it was for a 100% solid two-day strike. Two of the CWC1 leaders
who escaped arrest, Sandor Racz and Sander Bali, were protected for two
days by workers at the Beloiannis factory, who refused to hand them over
<nowiki> </nowiki>despite the fact that Soviet tanks were ringing the factory. On the
11th, Kadar 'invited' them to negotiations: as soon as they left the
factory they were arrested. The strike continued. Even the party paper
'Nepszabadsag' was forced to say of it that "the like of which has never
<nowiki> </nowiki>before been seen in the history of the Hungarian workers' movement." On
<nowiki> </nowiki>the 13th as the strike finished, the Csepel iron and steel workers sat
in demanding the release of Racz and Bali; other factories followed
suit. Soviet troops were then moved into the major factories to force
the workers to work at gunpoint.
 
<strong>The Revolution Defeated</strong>
The strike was the workers' last card. Kadar's "Revolutionary Workers'
and Peasants' Government" had defeated the workers and peasants.
Internment was introduced, and the death penalty set for striking or
inciting to strike. A few days after this announcement, the Csepel Iron
and Steel Workers Council resigned with- the words "we are returning our
<nowiki> </nowiki>mandate into the hands of the workers". As other councils did the same,
<nowiki> </nowiki>Kadar complained of "provocative self-dissolutions"! The CWC1's final
message was that "sabotage and passive resistance are the order of the
day". Kadar, backed by a new AVE and the Soviet army, had seized the
means of production back from the workers and attacked every workers'
organisation. Naturally, he had a theoretical justification for this. In
<nowiki> </nowiki>May 1957 he told the National Assembly: "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 leaders
is to represent the interests 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."
 
Two thousand Hungarians were executed for what the ruling classes
everywhere will always call 'incorrect ideas'. Continuing resistance to
Kadar's government can be gauged from the scale of the repression: the
curfew was not lifted until May 1957; summary justice was not brought to
<nowiki> </nowiki>an end till November 1957; during 1957 and 1958, executions occurred
virtually every day; two years after the revolution, there were some
40,000 political prisoners; in 1959, nine members of the Ujpest Workers'
<nowiki> </nowiki>Council were executed. It was not till January 1960 that death
sentences were officially ended for 'offences' during the revolution
(although one insurgent, Laszlo Hickelburg, was executed in 1961). The
last internment camps were closed in June 1960, but several hundred
rebels were not released from prison till the late 'sixties and early
'seventies.
 
The workers of Hungary proved once again that freedom comes from
below, not from any leadership ('revolutionary' or otherwise) above
acting on their behalf. To destroy the communist bureaucracy they
adopted a form of organisation that was democratic, anti-bureaucratic
and included the whole working-class these councils were also
constructive. The workers were able to destroy the old and start
building the new within days if not hours. They rejected the official
concepts of socialism and created their own, workers' self-management
and direct democracy, a logical development from previous workers'
struggles for a new society.
 
The Workers' Councils were never in any way separate from the
working-class. They never betrayed it, and dissolved themselves rather
than be recuperated by the authorities they returned to the class from
whence they came. The Hungarian working-class and their councils
reorganised society, ran production, kept their order and united the
rest of the population behind them. They were only defeated by a massive
<nowiki> </nowiki>military force and the passivity of the international working-class.
Given the chance to develop freely along the lines they started out on,
the potential of the councils was the creation of a free human society
at last. The program of the Hungarian Revolution still remains for the
working-class to carry out.

Latest revision as of 05:25, 4 November 2020

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was the largest anti-Stalinist rebellion in history, with rebels successfully topping the Hungarian government and the revolution was only started by an invasion where the USSR came from. It's also where the term "tankie" comes from, indicating someone who supported the USSR's crushing of the rebellion.

Events

Protests and Statue Toppling

20,000 protesters on 23 October gathered around a statue of József Bem - a national hero of Poland and Hungary as Péter Veres, president of the Writers' Union, read a manifesto to the crowd. Demanding independence, democratic socialism, joining the UN and civil liberties for all people. Afterwards the crowd began to chant songs and people waved Hungarian flags and tore communist emblems down. After being condemned by the government over radio, the protesters toppled a 9.1m high statue of Stalin, with Hungarian flags being placed in his boots.

Mutiny

Protesters gathered around the headquarters of Hungarian Radio, secret police responded by throwing tear gas at the crowd and shooting live ammunition into the protest. The secret police hid weapons an ambulance and tried to resupply, but the crowd stopped them from entering. Soldiers were sent to crush the protest, but they defected and tore off the red starts from their caps. Soldiers began to arm the crowd with supplies from military depots, police cars were set on fire and government symbols were vandalised.

Soviet Intervention

The Hungarian government requested assistance of the USSR, who sent the Red Army to protect the Hungarian Parliament and bridges across the country. Rebels barricaded numerous neighbourhoods, captured Soviet tanks, seized the radio headquarters and attacked secret police who were themselves attacking peaceful protesters outside of a newspaper office. There were reports of Soviet soldiers also showing open sympathy for the rebels. Soviet soldiers also accidentally fought in gunfights against the Hungarian secret police when they tried to shoot protesters, as they (Soviet soldiers) assumed they were the targets.

Government Collapse

Most of the Hungarian military remained neutral in the conflict, and numerous parts defected. Although there were a few dozen cases of rebels and the military fighting, and in one case a fighter jet bombed a protest, killing 17 people. Soon, the government collapsed and some rebels began to attack Soviet troops.

White Terror and Civil War

Some rebels began to carry out torture and executions of communists, secret police and military personnel. This soon led to a civil war between communists (themselves supported by factory workers and anti-fascist World War II veterans) and anti-communist rebels, with the Soviet army acting as a third faction. Workers' councils and popular assemblies spread across the country and rebels fought tanks with molotov cocktails. Anti-communist rebels destroyed public red stars, war memorials, executed communists and Soviet-sympathisers and communist books were burned. Soviet commanders often negotiated local cease-fires with the revolutionaries.

Retrieved from "http://anarwiki.org/index.php?title=Hungarian_Revolution_(1956)&oldid=4544"