Hungarian revolt
The Hungarian revolt of 1956 was a significant uprising against the communist regime in Hungary, marked by a series of protests that began on October 23. Following World War II, Hungary fell under Soviet influence, with the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (HSWP) establishing a dictatorial rule by 1948. In the early 1950s, moderate leader Imre Nagy sought reforms, promoting limited capitalism and calling for free elections, which sparked a nationalist movement among students and intellectuals. The unrest escalated after security forces fired on demonstrators, leading to widespread calls for democratic changes.
Initially, the situation appeared to shift in favor of the protesters when Nagy was reappointed as premier and Soviet troops began to withdraw. However, this was short-lived, as the Soviet Union ultimately crushed the revolt with overwhelming military force, resulting in thousands killed and many more imprisoned. The violent suppression left a lasting impact, shaping perceptions of Soviet communism in the West and prompting a significant refugee crisis. Despite the efforts to silence dissent, the legacy of the 1956 uprising endured, symbolizing the Hungarian people's enduring desire for freedom and self-determination, eventually contributing to Hungary's transition to a republic in 1989.
Hungarian revolt
The Event National uprising for freedom from Soviet influence that was crushed violently
Date October-November, 1956
Military violence used by the Soviet Union in its invasion of Hungary demonstrated its aggressive nature during the Cold War, prompting nearly 100,000 refugees from communist Hungary to find safety in the United States and Canada.
Hungary was first occupied by the Soviets as World War II concluded in 1945, and local communists of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (HSWP) gained dictatorial control by 1948. Direct Soviet rule was avoided. After May, 1953, tensions grew between a new, moderate socialist leader of the government, Imre Nagy , and more pro-Soviet elements of the HSWP. Nagy initiated policies called the New Course, which favored limited capitalism for farmers, open trade with Western Europe, better wages for factory workers, and release of political prisoners. Nagy announced plans for free multiparty elections, the right to create unions independent of communist control, freedom of the press, and other measures that challenged the established one-party communist dictatorship.
In foreign relations, Nagy challenged Soviet dominance by demanding the return of Hungarian citizens whom the Red Army had abducted ten years earlier and by announcing a plan to withdraw Hungary from the Warsaw Pact , an alliance of Soviet-controlled countries. He also requested the United Nations to act to protect Hungarian sovereignty.
Hard-line Stalinists in the HSWP fired Premier Nagy in January, 1955, but nationalist resistance to communism continued to grow at universities and among intellectuals of the Petőfi Circle and others. These elements received encouragement from the United States through broadcasts from Radio Free Europe.
On October 23, 1956, mass university student protests in Budapest in support of similar nationalist protests in Poland were fired on by security forces, igniting a riot. Joseph Stalin’s statue was pulled down, and crowds began to confront the hated secret police. Support quickly broadened to include workers and other urban residents, all demanding basic changes in the system of communism. Jailed Roman Catholic Cardinal József Mindszenty escaped and gave open support to the protests. To try to calm the growing revolution, HSWP leaders agreed to reappoint Nagy as premier, and on day six of the riots, Soviet Red Army troops began to withdraw.
Khrushchev Responds to Hungary’s Revolution
Soviet armored forces never actually left Hungary but had only pulled back from visible urban centers. On November 3-4, 1956, at Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s direction, the Red Army surged forward to confront the unrest. Elements of the Hungarian army, notably led by General Pal Maleter, had joined the people’s rebellion earlier, and arms were given to crowds of freedom fighters. Despite valiant resistance, the small arms of the disorganized bands of Hungarians proved no match for the five thousand Soviet tanks. Within weeks, the Hungarian revolt was crushed: Roughly 32,000 people were killed, and approximately 15,000 were wounded. Internment camps were created, and of the 35,000 people detained, 25,000 ultimately were jailed.
Impact
Soviet violence in Hungary created a strongly negative impression in the West. News weeklies such as Life and Look magazines showered readers with photographs of the repression and destruction; Reader’s Digest and other mass circulation magazines ran frequent first-person accounts of the Soviets’ violence in Hungary. Roughly 200,000 Hungarians fled across the border into Austria; 80,000 of these refugees immigrated to the United States, and several thousand more went to Canada.
No amount of talk from Soviet leaders about their desire for “peaceful coexistence” could overcome the direct testimony that the refugees relayed to their new North American neighbors about the dictatorial essence of Soviet Communism. Some American conservatives and Hungarian American advocates, however, were embittered by failure of the United States to lend military assistance to the rebels in their time of greatest need. These views found strongest voice in the pages of the National Review magazine. Defenders of American nonintervention in Hungary pointed to the fact that this crisis unfolded simultaneously with the crisis in Egypt’s Suez Canal, requiring careful effort to prevent a general escalation in East-West confrontation in order to avoid general war.
Subsequent Events
Suppression of the Hungarian revolt demonstrated that the Soviet Union, not allied local communist parties, actually ruled east of the Iron Curtain. These violent events ended hope for reform in Communist-dominated Central Europe for a generation. Nagy and Maleter were arrested in late November by Soviet troops despite having been given a promise of safe conduct out of the country by the new Hungarian administration of János Kádár. Tried in secret in Romania by the Soviets on charges of treason along with other revolutionaries, the two officials were executed on June 16, 1958, and were buried in an unmarked grave inside the prison on Kozma Street. Later, Maleter and Nagy were reburied in a second unmarked grave at Lot 301 of the main communal cemetery in Budapest. Despite this attempt to erase the memory of the Hungarian quest for freedom, brave Hungarians during the 1980’s began putting flowers on their resting places to symbolize the continuing guidance of their example. Ultimately, the HSWP succumbed to popular will and permitted their resting places to be dignified with grave markers and a public funeral on June 16, 1989.
The Hungarian revolt of 1956 continued to be a symbol of the quest for self-rule and freedom into the twenty-first century. Demonstrations against the communist system in the spring of 1989 demanded that October 23 be made a national holiday, and on October 23, 1989, the Hungarian government declared Hungary to be a free republic. The date is now Republic Day, a national holiday.
Bibliography
Békés, Csaba, ed. The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents. Herndon, Va.: Central European University Press/Books International, 2002. In 120 original documents from Soviet, American, and Hungarian official files, the complete story of the revolution is documented.
Liptak, Bela G. A Testament to Revolution. College Station: Texas A&M Press, 2001. A moving first-person, eyewitness account of a student activist caught up in the events of 1956, and his subsequent escape to freedom in the United States
Molnár, Miklós. A Concise History of Hungary. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. In this translation from the 1996 French original, Molnár places the 1956 revolution in the context of the long national struggle for independence. Lavishly illustrated, the book includes pictures of the 1989 funerals for the martyrs from the 1956-1958 era.