In an instant, daring men rushed back to the windows of the barracks and rained gasoline down upon the crippled monster. Then a grenade ignited the gas line, and from the cellars boys began to chant, “It’s going! It’s going!” Finally the burning gasoline reached the interior supply, and the mighty tank erupted in a vast explosion. In ninety minutes of desperate fighting, three Russian tanks had been destroyed.
It would not be correct to say that the men and boys of Kilian Barracks had driven off seven fully armed Russian tanks. It is true that the four remaining vehicles did withdraw, but this was probably because their ammunition had been expended in the furious bombardment of the barracks. But if the fight was not a complete victory—for the barracks were badly damaged internally and the losses were staggering, well over fifty per cent—it must have been a grievous shock to the Russians. They had seen three of the world’s most powerful tanks utterly destroyed, largely by hand weapons. They must have realized that the battle for Budapest was going to be costly, long and deadly.
There was another reason why the action at Kilian ought not to be termed a victory, for when the tanks left, the inside of the building was in such precarious condition that some of the floors seemed about to collapse. Accordingly, the soldiers abandoned the barracks, some by a sewer that led to the houses of the Corvin block, where in the cinema they set up what headquarters they could. From here Csoki led a group of soldiers into the street to establish a perimeter within which the daring street-car conductor who had stolen the first antitank gun could dismantle a second from one of the destroyed tanks.
“This conductor was sensational,” Csoki says simply.
He got the gun, mounted it on wheels in another angle of the theater, and caught some sleep while awaiting the next attack.
It did not come for a full day, and during the comparative lull Csoki and some of his men said, “It’s a disgrace to leave the barracks empty.” So they crept back and by means of heavy timbers shored up the collapsing floors.
They were there when the most furious of the Russian attacks occurred. Nine tanks wheeled into position, mostly along Ferenc Boulevard, and started a methodical annihilation of the Corvin Cinema. By a fluke shot, one of their first barrages destroyed one of the two antitank guns, and the street-car conductor was left with only one gun, while the soldiers had only a few grenades and a supply of gasoline bombs to face the full armament of nine determined tank crews.
Nevertheless, they destroyed two of these tanks, held the others off, and protected their one gun. By the time the seven remaining tanks departed, there was more rubble on the ground around the cinema, there were more Hungarian dead, but the Russians still had not achieved victory. As if to prove this, while the seven tanks withdrew, one insolent Hungarian youth ran after them, wound up, and tossed a gasoline bomb at the tail-end tank.
“It was a lovely good-by kiss,” Csoki recalls. “It missed, but it was a good idea, all the same.”
Two hours later occurred the most dramatic part of the fight. Three Russian tanks rumbled over the Petofi Bridge, clanked up the boulevard and came to the intersection at Ulloi Street, ready for battle. But the first tank had moved too fast, and when it got into the intersection its crew realized that because the five tanks destroyed earlier still cluttered the street, it had no safe place for maneuvering.
At this moment the street-car conductor brought his one remaining gun into position, but before he could fire, the Russians spotted it. Instead of blasting it, the Russians amazed the Kilian men by raising the escape hatch and hoisting a white flag of surrender. The other two tanks, seeing this, turned tail and fled back down the boulevard toward the Petofi Bridge.
Csoki and some of the boys from the Corvin Cinema quickly took over the Russian tank and tried to drive it into the courtyard of the barracks. “We were no damned good,” Csoki laughs. They got the tank stuck in the doorway and it remained there for some time, but finally one of the mechanics managed to jam it into reverse gear and dislodged it, running it full tilt backwards until it hit the wall of the cinema block across the street.
Some soldiers, nearly killed by the lurching tank, shouted, “You’re doing more damage with that tank than the Russians did.”
At last some of the boys who were mechanics got the hang of the controls and wheeled it into position, so that it commanded the intersection. Above them rose the pockmarked walls of the barracks. To the right stood the tottering façade of the Corvin block. Around them lay the dead … a boy who had tried to explode his bomb against a tank, a woman killed by accident, a charred corpse and a Russian who had leaped from a burning tank.
And there we leave tough, twenty-two-year-old Sergeant Csoki—Little Chocolate Drop—a wisecracking kid who looked like Marlon Brando. As he sat in the Russian tank, waiting for the next attack, he told the mechanics, “We’ll wait till they get close. Then we’ll shoot their pants off.”
In the fight that followed, additional tanks were destroyed here, making twenty in all plus eleven armored cars, and more soldiers died fighting the tanks with almost empty hands. But the Russians never captured the Kilian Barracks, they never occupied the Corvin Cinema.
The miracle of the fight at Kilian Barracks was not the triumph of Hungarian patriots over Russian tanks. Nor was it the heroism of men and boys fighting without weapons. It lay in this simple fact: Of the four hundred communist soldiers in the barracks on the night of October 23—and they were men both trained and pampered by the Russians—not a single one remained faithful to communism.
Throughout all of Hungary the percentage was about the same. Many experts believe that a similar percentage of soldiers in Bulgaria, Rumania and Poland would, if given a chance, turn their guns on communism. The Czechoslovakian army would, for curious reasons, probably support Russia. Soldiers of the Ukraine, on the other hand, might temporarily side with their communist masters, but probably not for long. And as we shall see later, soldiers from areas like Uzbekistan, Tadzikistan, and the other Central Asian Soviet Republics can certainly not be trusted to remain loyal to Russia.
As a Hungarian soldier who fought against the Russians observed after the battle was over, “Russia won, but they’d better keep two of their soldiers in Budapest for every Hungarian they give a gun. Let the Kremlin sleep on that.”
4
Brief Vision
The battle for Budapest, which began on October 23, fell logically into three parts. The first ended October 29, when the Russians, alarmed by unexpected resistance and wishing to withdraw for tactical reorganization, practically surrendered the city to the freedom fighters.
The second phase was brief, but extremely sweet. For five days Budapest delighted in the mistaken belief that Hungary was at last free of Russian domination and that some kind of more liberal government would replace the AVO terror.
The third phase began on November 4, when Russian tanks stormed back into the city in force, imposed a worse terror than the AVO, and horribly crushed the revolution. The Russians not only won; they reveled in revenge.
But during the five days when Budapest enjoyed its brief vision of freedom, the city experienced many vital changes, and from a study of these, one can deduce what characteristics would have marked a free Hungary. To comprehend these days most clearly, it will be best to follow the fortunes of one family, especially from October 29 to November 4.
Zoltan and Eva Pal, an attractive young couple in their early twenties, lived on the top floor of a four-story flat in northern Buda. Their rent, which did not include heat, light or any kind of service, cost them a large portion of their monthly pay. Of course the government owned the building. Mrs. Pal says, “The rule was simple. Any repairs inside, tenant pays. Any repairs outside, government pays. But there were never any repairs outside.”
Both the Pals worked, Zoltan as an automobile mechanic, and Eva as a postal employee. If she had not worked, they would have starved. Zoltan says, “I made 1,500 forints a month and my wife made 1,000, so we were rich
people. Of course from that 2,500 forints so many deductions were made for the communist party, for insurance, for AVO collections, and for study groups that we had little left. And we had to pay taxes too.”
Mrs. Pal, a trim blonde with blue eyes and a pug nose, had at the end of six years’ arduous work accumulated the following impressive wardrobe: one coat, two pairs of shoes, one pair of sandals, four dresses, two pairs of stockings and a pair of glasses, whose frames she had bought on the black market. “The eye doctor gives each patient about three minutes for examination. If you want good care, you have to get your doctor’s care and dental services on the black market too. Nobody would dare go to the state dentist. As for the state doctors, they simply growled, ‘If you aren’t dead, go back to work.’ ”
One thing Mrs. Pal did not have to worry about was makeup. She says, “In each office five or six girls would band together to buy one black-market lipstick and one little flat cake of rouge. So if one of the girls was going to go out with a particular boy, and she wanted to look nice, she was able to use the lipstick and the rouge. Maybe it would be her turn four different times each year. I was married, of course, but I still liked to look nice once in a while, so I helped buy the things. But we married girls mostly left them for the unmarried ones. I looked pretty twice a year.”
Since Mrs. Pal worked in the post office, and might have access to secret messages, she was constantly under AVO surveillance. “How many times did I have to fill out questionnaires about myself? As many as the stars.”
Getting clothes for a husband was more difficult. Zoltan, thin and wiry like most Hungarian men, but taller than the average, who rarely get enough to eat, says, “In order for us to save enough money to buy me my only suit … I used to go around in a windbreaker. Well, it took us six months to save the money, and in that time we were not able to go to one movie. My wife likes dancing, and in six months we were not able to go to one music bar.”
Eva says her husband is a good dancer, but points out that a “night on the town,” a phrase she picked up from a book, would cost at least 250 forints, or about one quarter of a month’s salary, after communist deductions. “We couldn’t dance much,” she says.
Actually, the Pals knew very few communists socially, for in all of Hungary, which has about ten million people, there were not more than 1,200,000 communists. So out of every eight people the Pals met, seven were not party members. “At the post office all the top officials were communists,” Eva says, “and of course the AVO were too. They spoke to me many times about joining the party, but I avoided it somehow or other.”
If the party had known that Eva Pal attended secret religious services at the home of her mother, she would have been dropped from her job. “You could go to church, and many people did, but not in a job like mine. Anyone at the post office who was caught going there would be checked by the AVO.”
Food was very expensive, but communist books were cheap. And of course things like phonograph records were prohibitive. “Zolton liked music, and since we couldn’t go to music bars or buy records, all we could do was listen to Russian music on Radio Budapest or what we could pick up from western stations.”
What disappointed Zoltan most in communism, however, was the fact that all his life he had wanted to acquire a beat-up jalopy that he could take apart and put together. His wife explained to strangers, “Zoltan is very skilled mechanically. It would be wonderful for him to have an old car on which he could experiment.” Then she added, “But of course we could never save that much money … not for a car.”
Once Zoltan asked me, “Is it true that in America a workman, almost any workman, could save enough to buy himself an old car to take apart?” I nodded, not having the heart to tell him that in my town most boys of fourteen have such cars, and it drives their mothers mad, the junk lying around.
On the evening of October 23, the Pals were at home listening to the radio, which announced that the secretary general of the central committee of the Hungarian communist party was going to speak. They knew that whenever Erno Gero, the top communist in the nation, spoke, it meant news, and tonight was no exception.
“Dear comrades, beloved friends, the working people of Hungary,” Gero began. “Today it is the chief aim of the enemies of our people to try to shake the power of the workers’ class, to loosen the peasant-worker alliance, to undermine the leading role of the workers’ class in our country and to upset their faith in its party, in the Hungarian Workers’ Party. They try to loosen the close friendly relations of our nation, the Hungarian People’s Republic, with the other countries building socialism, especially the relations between our country and the socialist Soviet Union. They try to loosen the ties between our party and the glorious Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the party of Lenin, the party of the Twentieth Congress. They slander the Soviet Union. They declare that our trade relations with the Soviet Union are one-sided and that our independence has to be allegedly defended, not against the imperialists, but against the Soviet Union. All this is a barefaced lie, hostile slanders which do not contain a grain of truth. The truth is that the Soviet Union has not only liberated our people from the yoke of Horthy fascism and German imperialism, but she has—after the end of the war when our country still lay trampled down in the dust—stood at our side and concluded pacts with us on the basis of full equality, and that she still continues this policy. There are people who want to turn against each other proletarian internationalism and the Hungarian national feelings.”
“Something’s happening,” Zoltan told his wife. “When you hear Gero talking like this there’s trouble.”
“Working-comrades, workers!” Gero cried with passion. “We must say it openly, now it is a question of whether we want a socialist democracy or a bourgeois democracy. The question is: Do we want to build socialism in our country, or make a hole in the building of socialism and then open the door for capitalism? The question is: Do we allow the power of the working class and the worker-peasant alliance to be undermined or else will you consciously, with discipline and in complete unity with our entire working population, join battle for the defense of the workers’ power and the achievements of socialism?”
“I’m going out to see what’s happening,” Zoltan said. “Gero’s in trouble.” He caught a trolley car which took him toward the center of the city, and even before he jumped off he heard that students had been meeting, and that there was some kind of rioting at Radio Budapest.
Keeping well back from trouble, he wandered down to the radio station and found a mass of people demonstrating in front of the building. To his horror, shots were fired, and from a vantage point well back in Brody Sandor Street he watched the rapid deterioration of the situation and the ultimate wrecking of the studio.
It was late when he got home, for other riots had disrupted trolley service, but in one way the enforced walk was good, for it showed him clearly how widespread the rioting was. That night he told his wife, “There is going to be a lot of shooting tomorrow. We’d better stay indoors.”
But the boredom of staying at home soon grew too great, so Eva Pal went to the post office, where all the communists tried to make believe nothing had happened. “They laughed a little more than usual and there were fewer AVO men than before,” Eva says, “but when firing was heard over the river, we stopped pretending and somebody said, ‘It sounds as if the riots were continuing.’ Suddenly the communists began talking, and it was clear that a lot of them hoped that the people would keep on fighting. At noon we closed the post office, and I think some of the leading communists hurried off to get guns. Of the seven main communists in my office, at least six joined the revolutionists.”
Zoltan Pal had a more adventurous day. He was by no means a revolutionist, nor even the kind of man who supports revolutions emotionally. For example, for a period of ten years he had kept clear of the AVO. At the big garage where he worked he had always given the communist party men enough encouragement to make them think he might make
a good party member some day, but never enough to make them actively want him. At thirty he was an inconspicuous, underweight, pleasant man who resembled most of the men his age in Budapest.
Yet as he walked along the streets of Buda and heard about the revolution he began to experience deepening emotions. He did not hate AVO men; he merely despised them as inhuman. He did not hate Russians; he merely thought of them as robbers in his land. Only the other night Eva had said of them contemptuously, “In ten years I cannot think of a Hungarian girl who married a Russian, although they have been among us all the time. If one of my friends went with a Russian no one would speak to her. Yet when the Germans were here, there were many marriages.” At another time she had asked angrily, “Can anyone in the world like a Russian?”
But when Zoltan crossed over the Margaret Bridge into Pest he began to see that it didn’t matter whether you liked Russians or not. They were the enemy. Once an armored car whizzed past, firing at another car, and Russians manned the guns. In Karl Marx Square, where Lenin Boulevard enters, a reconnaissance car was shooting at some unseen object, and again the gunmen were Russians.
So by the time Zoltan Pal reached the wrecked offices of Szabad Nep, down on Rakoczi Street, he was in a somber mood, which was heightened by the appearance of a powerful reconnaissance car, heavily armed with machine guns. “They’re heading for Kilian Barracks!” aboy shouted. “Stop them!”
From Nepszinhaz Street three youths dashed out toward the tank with gasoline bombs, but the alert Russians in the armed car spotted them and easily mowed them down with prolonged bursts of gunfire. Some of the bullets flew wild and smashed windows, so that glass tinkled into the street like children’s sleighbells, while the massive car rumbled on. One of the gasoline bombs, its fuse already lighted, exploded in the street, and the dead bodies were enveloped in fire.
The Bridge at Andau Page 6