As the students made their way toward the statue of a hero of the 1848 revolution, Polish general Józef Bem, their numbers swelled as young workers fell in with the demonstration. Ullmann’s laboratory was just a few minutes away from the path of one march. Her husband, Tamás Erdös, a biologist, was in Sweden at the time, so Ullmann joined the ranks by herself. She had no inkling that by the next day, these first steps of peaceful protest would trigger a violent revolution. Nor could she possibly have had any notion that ensuing events would lead her to a life-changing rendezvous with Jacques Monod.
That same morning, Gerö and other Hungarian leaders had returned from a visit to Yugoslavia and were warned by the newspaper’s editors that the demands of the masses should be taken seriously. Gerö tried to squelch the demonstrations by having his minister of the interior issue a ban on all public gatherings, which was announced over the radio just before one p.m. But the students did not hear it and were assembling anyway. The regime faced the dilemma of either putting down the demonstration by force or doing nothing and looking impotent. So they reversed the ban shortly after two p.m.
By then the marches were under way.
Emotions were very high. After years of repression, the mass display of unity and purpose was liberating. People watched and cheered from windows and shop doors. The slogans from the marchers grew from simple statements of solidarity—“Poland Shows Us the Way”—to more brazen chants of “Gerö into the Danube.” Someone cut the hammer and sickle out of the center of a green, white, and red Hungarian flag. The redesigned flag was passed forward to the front of the marchers.
By four thirty p.m., 50,000 people were crammed into and spilling out of Bem Square. The students had no plans beyond gathering at the square, so they started to disperse and fan out over the city. As they meandered the streets and were joined by workers leaving factories and shops, the crowds swelled again by tens of thousands. Now shouts of “Russkik haza!” (Russians, go home!) could be heard. Ullmann returned to the Faculty of Science Building, where some students reassembled in a large auditorium.
Another group of students headed to the government-controlled radio station in order to press for their demands to be broadcast. The bulk of the crowd headed for Parliament Square, a little more than a mile away, in the heart of Pest. By dusk, the square was filling with what would become a throng of 200,000 people. The government tried to disperse the protestors by turning off all the lights in the square. Instead, marchers turned the daily newspaper and students’ flyers into torches. The mood was excited but peaceful.
At eight p.m., instead of hearing a broadcast of their demands, they heard Gerö speak by radio. In a twelve-minute, cliché-laden speech, he condemned “those who seek to instill in our youth the poison of chauvinism and to take advantage of democratic liberties that our state guarantees to the workers to organize a national demonstration.” Gerö’s tone and language angered the crowd, and reminded them exactly why they were protesting.
Not far away, in Heroes’ Square, another group knocked down a forty-foot statue of Stalin and dragged the head to an intersection.
The joy of that triumph was short-lived. At the radio station, more than two hundred AVH men had barricaded themselves inside the building in anticipation of some trouble. They were equipped with heavy machine guns and tear gas. Throughout the evening, the students had been negotiating to get their demands broadcast; a delegation had been allowed to enter the building. Now, after hearing Gerö’s speech, the crowd was getting more agitated and concerned about the delegation inside. They started hurling bricks and stones at the windows.
The AVH men tried to disperse the throng with tear gas and water hoses. They then tried to clear the street by fixing bayonets and moving the demonstrators back.
Shots rang out. Two demonstrators were hit, then another three. Chaos erupted.
Hungarian Army units arrived on the scene with orders to protect the radio station and crush the demonstration. Instead, seeing the AVH firing on the crowds, they did nothing. A tank regiment arrived, and the commander quickly sized up the situation and declared that he would not attack Hungarian civilians. The crowd asked the soldiers for their weapons so that they could shoot back at the AVH. The soldiers promptly handed them over. Police also opened their armories and provided weapons.
The protest at the radio station erupted into a firefight.
In the auditorium at the university, Ullmann and other students were getting reports from the radio station every fifteen minutes or so. Around eleven p.m., she and some colleagues tried to get close to the radio station but decided that it was too dangerous.
In the course of the battle at the radio station, sixteen protestors were killed and sixty were wounded before the building was taken. Five AVH were killed, and more than eighty were wounded or captured.
Around one a.m., some friends dropped Ullmann off near her home. As she and other residents of Budapest went to sleep that night, many questions loomed: Was the battle at the radio station an isolated incident? How would the government respond?
DAY 2: OCTOBER 24
At two a.m., those questions were answered. Columns of Soviet tanks started to rumble into the city.
Gerö had called his masters for help.
At four thirty a.m., Budapest Radio broadcast from a second transmitter not in the hands of the rebels. After wishing its listeners good morning, it spoke for the government on the previous evening’s events: “Fascist and reactionary elements have launched an armed attack against our public buildings and against our forces of law and order. In the interests of re-establishing law and order, all assemblies, meetings, and demonstrations are forbidden. Police units have been instructed to deal severely with troublemakers and to apply the law in all its force.”
The Russians sent 700 tanks and 6,000 men into Budapest—an overwhelming force relative to the roaming bands of just a few hundred young, unorganized protestors. Gerö was confident that the streets would be cleared of those troublemakers “without difficulty in a few hours.”
But Gerö had miscalculated; the presence of the Russians galvanized the protestors. Now armed, they became freedom fighters. Once the troops were spotted, they were greeted with hails of bullets and Molotov cocktails. The bulky Soviet T34 tanks could not navigate the narrower streets and alleyways within the city, so the rebels engaged in hit-and-run attacks, using their knowledge of the city’s interior to stage ambushes and then quickly disappear.
Budapest Radio urged: “The Soviet soldiers are risking their lives to protect the peaceful citizens of Budapest and the tranquility of the nation … Workers of Budapest, receive our friends and Allies with affection.”
The radio announced shortly thereafter that Imre Nagy had been reappointed prime minister. Gerö remained in charge as first secretary of the Party.
Fighting across the city—at major squares, on main boulevards, and at several intersections—forced the streets to remain empty. Most citizens, including Ullmann, stayed home.
Instead of being put down in a few hours, the rebellion grew. Seeing that the dead rebels in the streets were largely young students, some Hungarian Army troops and their tanks joined the insurgents. In the course of the day, 80 freedom fighters were killed and another 450 were wounded, while the Russians lost 20 men and had 40 wounded.
DAY 3: OCTOBER 25
“The army, the state security forces, the armed workers’ guards, and Soviet troops liquidated the counter-revolutionary putsch attempt on the night of October 24,” proclaimed Budapest Radio on the morning of the twenty-fifth.
But when people ventured out into the streets they still heard and saw gunfire. The rebellion had not been squelched. The radio was telling lies, as usual. Word spread that there would be another demonstration in front of Parliament. Ullmann and thousands more headed to Parliament Square.
They passed the Russian soldiers and tanks deployed throughout the city that had been reinforced by 14,000 troops overnight. But the Russians
did not seem to be bent on the destruction of Budapest or the killing of Hungarians. Their instructions were to maintain order. Marchers engaged the Russians in conversation, explaining that they were workers and university students, not counterrevolutionaries or Fascists. Some Russian soldiers placed Hungarian flags on the turrets of their tanks, then escorted the marchers to Parliament Square.
Despite the ban on assemblies, more than 25,000 demonstrators, including many women and children, soon filled the large square. And despite the events of the previous two days, coupled with the presence of the Russian tanks in front of Parliament and of AVH men on surrounding rooftops, the atmosphere was light and celebratory. With Nagy back in government, many figured that the course of reforms could resume and that the Russians would leave.
Shots rang out.
Ullmann and the rest of the crowd dove, or tried to dive, down to the pavement. It was so crowded, not everyone could lie down. Machine-gun fire burst through the square. When some tried to run for open spaces or into side streets, they were fired upon by the AVH.
When the shooting stopped, Ullmann got up, but, she recalled, “there were people who did not get up. That was absolutely awful. And they didn’t let the ambulances in.”
It was a massacre. Estimates of those killed varied widely, from seventy-five to several hundred. But regardless of the death toll, the effect of the slaughter was to inflame and expand the ranks of rebels. They went on the offensive in the city, springing more ambushes on Russian tanks.
The wheels were already in motion for Gerö’s removal when the debacle unfolded at Parliament Square. Moscow’s representatives in Budapest told Gerö he had to resign. He was replaced by János Kádár, a former minister once jailed by the Rákosi regime. The announcements were made by radio shortly after the killings. Kádár appealed for order and promised that the rebels would not be punished. Moreover, he pledged that Hungarian-Soviet relations would be reviewed. Nagy added that the government would negotiate for withdrawal of the Russians.
But with fierce fighting continuing in the streets, and uncertainty regarding Moscow’s stance on the escalating crisis in Hungary, the ability of the new regime to control events was unclear. The Russians imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew, and the government appealed for calm and the resumption of normal activities.
VICTORY!
The two days of street fighting had left Budapest in shambles. A reporter for the London Daily Mail described the scene as he entered the city: “Every street was smashed. Hardly a stretch of tramcar rails was left intact. The jungle of hanging electric cables was denser even than in Buda. Hundreds of yards of paving stones had been torn up, the streets were littered with burned-out cars … I counted the carcasses of at least forty Soviet tanks … two monster Russian T-54 tanks lumbered past, dragging bodies behind them, a warning to all Hungarians of what happened to the fighters. In another street, three bodies were strung up on a tree.”
The bodies belonged to AVH men who had been hunted down and lynched by freedom fighters in reprisal for the massacre at Parliament Square.
After several days of violence, Budapest Radio kept repeating that the Russians were successfully liquidating the counterrevolution. But the freedom fighters continued to hold out.
For the Soviets’ part, their commanders recognized that they were in a difficult predicament. They were not prepared for a long urban guerrilla war. Moreover, since Hungary was a friend and ally, the Soviet troops were asking themselves just who were they fighting and why had they become targets? In just a few days, the streets and facades of beautiful Budapest were shot to hell. Would they have to raze the city to wipe out the rebels?
By Saturday, October 27, the streets became calmer as fighting abated and the populace ventured out of their homes to buy food and to get the latest news. While the new Kádár-Nagy government was debating what to do in the rapidly developing situation, and consulting with Moscow’s envoys, citizens were taking the next steps in the revolution into their own hands. In the first days of the revolt, in factories across the country, many workers’ councils were formed to make their demands known to the government and to take over the management of the factories from Party appointees. And in villages, towns, and cities, revolutionary councils were formed to take over municipal government.
At the university, committees of intellectuals—students, professors, writers, and scientists—were forming. Ullmann, trying to find out how she could be useful, learned that a nascent committee was in the offices of the rector of Eötvös Loránd. There, she met György Adám, who asked her to stay and help what became part of the Revolutionary Committee of Hungarian Intellectuals. Ullmann made contact with workers’ committees and other revolutionary committees, and helped distribute weapons that had been stashed in the basement of the building. Her husband, Tamás, hurried back from Sweden and joined the committee as well. By October 28, the Revolutionary Committee had drafted a ten-point appeal to the government. Among its demands were the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Hungary, the management of factories by the workers, complete freedom of speech and the press, and the right of assembly.
Throughout the uprising, the Hungarian Central Committee of the Communist Party had been meeting and debating how to manage the situation. Under the pressure of the revolt, the Central Committee acknowledged the need for wholesale changes in response to the demands of the people and declared: “In consultation with the entire people, we shall prepare the great national program of a democratic and socialist, independent and sovereign Hungary.”
That same morning, Nagy and Kádár pressed for a truce with the Russians. Khrushchev consented. After five days in which more than 1,000 Hungarians and 500 Russians had been killed, a cease-fire was announced over the radio at 1:20 p.m.
Later that afternoon, Nagy acknowledged the revolutionaries’ victory on Radio Budapest.
He pledged to dissolve the AVH and promised that the government would abstain from any action against the rebels. On the matter of the Russians, Nagy continued: “The Hungarian Government is initiating negotiations to settle … the question of the withdrawal of the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary.”
The next day, the Soviets announced that they were withdrawing.
ON TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, the Soviet tanks guarding Parliament, the bridges over the Danube, and other monuments and strategic points began to leave, taking the bodies of many fallen comrades with them.
Early that afternoon, Nagy announced the end of one-party rule, proclaiming that “the tremendous force of the democratic movement has brought our country to a crossroads.” The national radio station, now renamed Free Radio Kossuth (after one of the 1848 revolutionaries), stunned listeners with its candor about “beginning a new chapter in the history of Hungarian radio. For many years our radio has been an instrument of lies; it merely carried out orders. It lied by night and by day, it lied on all wavelengths. Not even in the hour of our country’s rebirth did it cease its campaign of lies … In the future, we shall tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
In just one week following the marches to Bem Square, the Hungarian people had managed to replace a hardline regime, stand up to a Soviet invasion, dissolve the AVH and one-party rule, and free its press.
The world had watched with awe and admiration as the Hungarians displayed courage in the face of overwhelming odds. A British diplomat in Budapest declared, “It is nothing short of a miracle that the Hungarian people should have withstood and turned back this diabolical onslaught.” Camus, at a gathering to honor a Spanish Republican statesman, spoke of the “heroic and earth-shaking insurrection of the students and workers of Hungary.” Le Figaro reported that by their “glimmering fires of joy,” the citizens of Budapest had “washed away the last traces of communism.”
After twelve years of repression and suffering, Hungarians had just cause for hope in a future of their own making. The same day as Nagy’s and Free Radio Kossuth’s bold announcements, the Kremlin endorsed a p
act called “On Friendship and Cooperation between the USSR and Other Socialist States.” It repeated the promise that troops would leave Budapest, but most remarkably, it admitted “violations and mistakes which infringe the principles of equality between sovereign states.” It further promised to negotiate with Hungary and other members of the Warsaw Pact on the matter of maintaining Soviet troops in their territories.
The Russians’ contrition and commitment lasted all of one day.
CHAPTER 26
REPRESSION AND REACTION
If ten or so Hungarian writers had been shot at the right moment, the revolution would never have occurred.
—NIKITA KHRUSHCHEV
THROUGHOUT THE CRISIS IN HUNGARY, THE SOVIET UNION CENTRAL Committee Presidium met frequently to decide policy and tactics. Khrushchev had heartily endorsed the generous language used toward the Hungarians on October 30, but by the next morning, he was having second thoughts. He told the Presidium, “We should re-examine our assessment and should not withdraw our troops from Hungary and Budapest. We should take the initiative and restore order in Hungary. If we depart from Hungary, it will give a great boost to the Americans, English, and French—the imperialists. They will perceive it as weakness on our part and will go onto the offensive.”
Most of his comrades, several of them hard-liners who were against the initial agreement to withdraw, promptly agreed. Khrushchev asked Marshal Ivan Konev, the commander of all Warsaw Pact forces, how long it would take to crush resistance.
“Three days, no more,” the veteran soldier replied.
“We’ll do it then,” Khrushchev said.
IN BUDAPEST, IMRE Nagy had been receiving conflicting reports on the Russians’ withdrawal. Nagy’s advisers sounded the alarm, but Nagy did not believe that the Soviets would renege on their agreement so soon. Nagy warned the Russian ambassador, Yuri Andropov, that if the troops did not retreat, Hungary would declare itself neutral and leave the Warsaw Pact. With no such assurances forthcoming, Nagy made good on his vow; Hungary’s withdrawal was announced over the radio that evening.
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