The 1956 Hungarian Revolution

Christopher Adam, Tibor Egervari, Leslie Laczko, Judy Young, Christopher Adam, Tibor Egervari, Leslie Laczko, Judy Young

• Publisher: University of Ottawa Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780776618456
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Eastern European History
• Index: History

In October 1956, a spontaneous uprising took Hungarian Communist authorities by surprise, prompting Soviet authorities to invade the country. After a few days of violent fighting, the revolt was crushed. In the wake of the event, some 200, 000 refugees left Hungary, 35, 000 of whom made their way to Canada. This would be the first time Canada would accept so many refugees of a single origin, setting a precedent for later refugee initiatives. More than fifty years later, this collection focuses on the impact of the revolution in Hungary, in Canada, and around the world.

Part I
The Revolution, Hungary, and the World

1.
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956: Causes, Aims, and Course of Events

János M. Rainer

---

On October 23, 1956, a revolution broke out in Budapest and spread all over the country in just a few days. The demonstrators, strikers, armed insurgents, leaders of the organizations of the revolution, and their sympathizers, demanded democratic freedoms and national independence. The first modern anti-totalitarian revolution in Europe lasted for practically two weeks, with another four weeks of rear-guard actions. Its impact could, however, be felt directly or indirectly for decades to come, right up to the change of regimes in 1989–1990.

I offer here a survey of the antecedents of 1956 from the point of view of political and social history, as well as the history of ideas. This is followed by a brief history of the revolution and an outline of the strata of active participants. Finally, I attempt to characterize the revolutionaries’ aims.

Antecedents

The need for political, economic, social, and mental change became a constant concern of Hungarian public life from the early 1930s, when the Great Depression began to make an impact in Hungary. The solution to the agrarian question, in the form of land reform, was a perennial topic from the end of World War I onward. The great economic crisis and the outbreak of World War II gave an impetus to reformist thinking, as it became obvious that Hungary would necessarily emerge from the war a different country. The dimensions of the war made it clear that Hungary’s subsequent fate would be greatly determined by the superpower in control of the East-central European region.

In 1944 Hungary became part of the Soviet sphere of influence. This fundamentally determined Hungary’s domestic and foreign policy, as well as its social and economic development between 1944 and the late 1980s. All issues that were believed to interfere with Soviet military and political interests and security were decided by the Soviets. Hungarian political life was independent as long as it did not go beyond the limits of this system and remained in harmony with Soviet demands. Whenever a conflict arose, Soviet interests enjoyed absolute priority.¹

The “people’s democracy” established in 1944–1945 was a political system that corresponded to both the interests of Soviet security and the requirements of the proclamation formulated at Yalta in February 1945. The former were ensured by the dominance of the Communists in parliament, in the government, and in certain key positions (primarily in the form of the Interior Ministry and political police). The latter were, in turn, satisfied by temporary coalitions with the participation of all democratic political parties. The 1945 parliamentary elections revealed that the Hungarian people wanted democracy and a welfare economy, as well as a mixture of both Hungarian and Western traditions. However, the radical left managed to obtain considerable support in a very short time. Many people, especially the young, felt that the catastrophic four years they had experienced of World War II demanded a radical break with the former regime.

The Communist Party of Hungary drew the conclusion from the 1945 elections that its task was to “set the election results right” by means of extraparliamentary measures or even by force. This intention of the Communists met with the understanding of Moscow. Total social and political control came only when, in 1947, the Small-holders’ Party was destroyed,² Communist victory at the elections was obtained by fraud, and the show trials began. This trend turned into a conscious political course after the formation of the Cominform.³ Then came the merger of the Social Democratic Party with the Communists in June 1948, the arrest of Cardinal Mindszenty at Christmas 1948, his show trial in February 1949, and finally, the first single-party elections in May 1949.⁴

During the period of the Cold War, Hungary, a state bordering both the Soviet Union and the Western world, became an important element of the Soviet cordon sanitaire. Neither Western orientation nor non-alignment was acceptable to the Soviets. The Soviets became less and less tolerant and considered even a differing social order in neighbouring states a menace.⁵ All East-Central European Communist Party leaders of the period considered Soviet policy of the 1920s and 1930s to be their model. It included forced industrialization, an emphasis on heavy industry, an exaggerated development of the defence industry, the forced collectivization of agriculture, the misuse of education and culture for the purposes of everyday politics, an irrational cult of the country’s leader, and a ritual, degrading, and emphatic assertion of the Soviet model. War psychosis was coupled with constant hostility and campaigns of reckoning.

The pursuit of irrational economic plans resulted in a rapid decrease in the standard of living. These factors taken together led to increasing tension and later to mass discontent. Rákosi’s leadership entered into an actual state of war against society. It identified its “enemies” based on certain social and political criteria. (Members of the former elite, wealthy peasant farmers—“kulaks”—nonparty intellectuals, religious people, etc.) In the early 1950s, the state security police (ÁVH) kept on record nearly 1.3 million people. The state condemned 387,000 persons for various “offences” (30,000 for alleged anti-state activities and 120,000 for endangering public supply); 22,000 were relocated/assigned to forced residence outside their domicile; and 6,000 were interned without having been sentenced in court. By 1953 nearly 500 persons had been executed for political reasons. Even the Communist political elite was decimated by purges, including show trials (such as the Rajk case – more on this at the beginning of the next section).⁶

When Stalin died on March 5, 1953, Soviet leaders realized that the regime was threatened by a serious internal crisis and could not be maintained unless changes in policy were introduced. In order to be able to settle the question of succession and normalize conditions within their empire, the Soviets had to resolve the crisis that was arising in the peripheries. In the middle of June 1953, Soviet party leaders ordered a delegation of the Hungarian Party to go to Moscow to receive new political directives. General Secretary Mátyás Rákosi had to resign his post as prime minister in favour of Imre Nagy.⁷ Nagy pursued three main objectives between 1953 and 1955. First, he attempted to rectify the excesses committed between 1948 and 1953 in economic and social policy. He prepared a new economic policy strategy, which gave priority to light industry, agriculture, and consumption. An amnesty was announced, releasing the interned and restoring the freedom of deportees. He terminated forced collectivization and cleared the way for voluntary withdrawal from collective agriculture. Second, he planned to introduce a more democratic political process. He cautiously suggested the revival of limited activity for parties that had been suppressed earlier by including them in the People’s Front movement. Third, he supported the preparation of professional studies on future economic policy. These studies resulted in the coining of the famous key phrase of the economic reforms of the 1960s: “economic mechanism” (“gazdasági mechanizmus”).

All of this went far beyond what could be tolerated by the Soviets. With their support, and relying on the old apparatus, Rákosi managed to overthrow Nagy in March 1955. Total “re-Stalinization” and retaliation against the “deviationists” were eventually prevented, however, by further struggles for power in the Soviet Union and by the continuation of detente, especially after reconciliation with Yugoslavia in May 1955. The party opposition gathering around Nagy gradually gained ground in the press in 1955–1956, and Rákosi’s leadership slowly disintegrated.⁸

In February 1956, Khrushchev’s “secret” anti-Stalin speech at the 20th Party Congress, aroused hopes all over the world for a peaceful democratization of the Communist regimes. After the workers’ revolt in Poznan, Poland, the Soviets dismissed Rákosi but replaced him as head of the Party with Ernő Gerő, formerly second in rank among the leading group of “Muscovites” who came to an understanding with the moderate Stalinists led by János Kádár. Old and new at the same time, the leadership set up in this way followed the same course as its predecessor. In the meantime, a democratic mass movement arose, going far beyond the goals of the opposition within the Party.

What was Hungarian society like in 1956? First of all, it was a frustrated society. In 1945 the population was happy that the war was over, although, for most, the end of the war provided a deliverance from horror and mortal fear rather than liberation. Outside coercion was certainly the decisive factor in the transformation of Hungary after 1945. But László Péter had warned more than twenty years ago that “the people’s democracies did not fall out of the sky onto the countryside beyond the Elbe; it was not alien bayonets that forced this upon a resisting population, for everywhere without exception, they came into being through the active (and how active) cooperation of tens and even hundreds of thousands of the local population.”⁹ Such cooperation obviously presupposes that the Soviet-type system possessed a measure of legitimacy for many groups, at least at some point in history. Behind this, and in the longer term, Péter saw the specific features of social development in Eastern Europe and, as a direct antecedent, the institutions and political traditions that had developed in the nineteenth century. These included, for instance, the system of large landed estates, the one-sided industrial system, the tradition of étatism, the weak constitutional forms, the discretionary form of government, and the narrow and ever narrowing scope for autonomous social action. But the majority of Hungary’s population found the years of classical Stalinism to be unbearable. Resistance did not assume the form of sabotage, “White” partisan actions, or secret plots. There were, however, important phenomena that involved large masses. The continuing practice of religion, the resistance against the organization of collective farms, and the migration of the labour force indicated the healthy attitude of society, its ability to survive and even to make things difficult for the regime. Terror could not undermine solidarity totally; it even created and strengthened it.¹⁰

Nagy’s platform of 1953 was received with joy, relief, and high hopes. This hope...