by Geert Mak
No one in Hungary saw 1956 coming. The little square where the young upstarts first gathered lies in the space between two highways along the Danube and is dominated by a statue of the revolutionary hero of 1848, the poet Sándor Petófi. The lawn at his feet is the perfect place for spontaneous, hit-and-run demonstrations, and that was their only intention on 23 October, 1956. Hungary, just like Poland, needed more freedom, and in the previous months a few hundred students had been meeting regularly in the university auditorium to talk. Now they had decided to organise a demonstration. But to everyone's surprise, huge crowds of young people from all over the city joined the usual group of students. They waved Polish and Hungarian flags, shouted ‘Long live the young people of Poland!’ and ‘We believe in Imre Nagy!’ The streets of Budapest were filled with a spirit of revival and adventure. Even students from the staunchly communist Lenin Institute came to the gathering, carrying red banners and a portrait of Lenin.
Rarely has a mass meeting got out of hand the way this one did. Soldiers from the barracks across the way unexpectedly joined the students. Because it was closing time at the factories, masses of workers came along as well. None of it had been planned. ‘To Stalin!’ someone shouted, and those who followed spent hours working with blowtorches, cables and a truck to topple the giant statue. ‘To the radio station!’ someone else cried, and the broadcasting centre was surrounded by thousands of people and finally occupied. The first shots rang out. In ten hours the clock advanced from 1848 to 1956, that's how fast things went in Budapest.
In European history, 1956 was a pivotal year. It was the year of Khrushchev's Stalin speech, the year of open discussion in the Eastern Bloc, of unrest in Poland.
It was the year of the Suez Crisis, the fiasco for the British and the French who had worked with the Israelis on a joint colonial expedition against Egypt to secure passage through the Suez Canal, and who withdrew with their tails between their legs when the Americans threatened to cut their funding and undermine the British currency.
1956 was the also the year in which three pretty Muslim girls carried out the first attacks on the Milk-Bar, the Caféteria and the offices of Air France in Algiers, dragging France into a humiliating war in which more than half a million Frenchmen finally took part. It was the year in which Indonesia cut final ties with the Netherlands, in which the British sent the Greek-Cypriot leader Makarios into exile, in which the brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro landed in Cuba to start a revolution. It was the year of the fairy-tale marriage between Prince Rainier of Monaco and the American film star Grace Kelly, and of Elvis Presley's breakthrough with ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. And it was, above all, the year of the Hungarian uprising.
The images went all over the world, and for as long as the Cold War lasted the Hungarian rebellion was the symbol of the spirit of freedom against communist oppression. The truth was, as usual, much more complicated. After Stalin's fall from grace, the position of Hungarian leader Mátyás Rákosi, an old-school Stalinist, soon became untenable. He was replaced by an interim pope, but the man the Hungarians were really waiting for was the former president, Imre Nagy. ‘Uncle Imre’ was cut from the same cloth as Gomulka: a communist, a humanist and a patriot. He had actually taken part in the Russian Revolution and the civil war and had occupied a top position in the Comintern in Moscow for fifteen years. But all that work on behalf of the party had not, as his biographer Miklos Moln puts it, ‘succeeded in deadening the human essence within him, party politics did not make him forget “the ideal”.’ Yet he was also a loner, and a doubter. He lacked Gomulka's feeling for the masses, his toughness and vigour.
The Hungarian Revolution began in the central hall of Budapest's Technical University. From 1955, it was the site of increasingly frank discussions on all manner of political issues, and the movement gained momentum after Khrushchev's speech on Stalin. Some of the students devoured the works of Western writers like Aldous Huxley and George Orwell, others experimented with modern music and painting. In spring 1956, László Rajk was posthumously rehabilitated. In September, the first issue of a new, fiercely oppositionist weekly, Hétfõi Hírlap (Monday News) appeared, which the Hungarians fairly tore from the news-stands. On Sunday, 6 October, Rajk was solemnly reinterred. What was intended as an intimate gathering developed into a spontaneous tumult in which 200,000 Hungarians took part. As one of the early dissenters later recalled: ‘That was the moment we all realised that our protest was not simply an affair for a few communist intellectuals. Everyone, it seemed, was turning against the government in the same way.’
In October, after Rajk's funeral and the successful rebellion in Poland, the students’ demands grew increasingly specific: democratic reforms had to be implemented in Hungary as well. Gomulka was their hero and Imre Nagy could play the same role in Hungary, although Nagy himself was not too enthusiastic about this. A demonstration was scheduled for Tuesday, 23 October, to underscore their ‘sixteen points’; the loyal party man Nagy was vehemently opposed. Later in the week, a huge conference was to be held, a kind of broad national debate about their demands. An armed rebellion was the furthest thing from their minds.
It was only on the evening of 23 October, when things truly got out of hand, that Nagy let himself be convinced by the Politburo to address the huge crowd in front of parliament. ‘Comrades!’ he began. ‘We are no longer comrades!’ the crowd roared back. The next morning he spoke of ‘hostile elements’ who had turned against the popular democracy. One week later he declared that the Hungarian people, by means of ‘a heroic struggle’, had achieved a centuries-old dream: independence and neutrality. He had become, despite himself, the leader of the Hungarian Revolution.
Later interviews showed that many students were deeply shocked by the way ‘their’ demonstration had degenerated into an uprising by roaming crowds ‘who acted like idiots’, incapable of ‘putting on the brakes themselves’. Most of them realised from the start that this was bound to go wrong.
By the end of the week, fewer and fewer revolutionary students were to be found among those fighting in the streets. Most of the combatants were working youths, hoodlums and vandals, tough kids from the poorest neighbourhoods of Budapest. A Hungarian doctor, who treated many of the wounded, said later: ‘There were many fighters who … had never even heard of Gomulka, and who, when asked why they were risking their lives, answered by saying, “Well, what good is living for 600 forints a month?”’ One of the rebellious students said later: ‘It's painful to admit, but it's true: they were the real heroes.’
On Wednesday morning, 24 October, long columns of rapidly assembled Soviet troops came rolling into the city. Barricades were thrown up, the tanks could go no further, and skirmishes broke out here and there. Regular discussions also arose between the tank crews and Hungarian civilians. More than once during those first days, a Russian commander announced that he had been sent to free the city from ‘fascist bandits’ but that he had absolutely no intention of firing on these peaceful crowds. Such declarations were greeted with loud cheers, the Russians were embraced, Hungarian flags were spread across the tanks. One Hungarian tank commander, the former communist partisan Pál Maléter, who had been ordered to use his five tanks to break through to a prison besieged by the crowd, openly took sides with the people and let the prisoners go free; he became one of the great leaders of the Hungarian revolt.
When several other such instances of fraternisation took place around the Astoria Hotel, the rumour started that the Soviet troops had taken sides with the revolution as well. But a wild shoot-out in front of parliament, probably instigated by the Hungarian secret police, soon put an end to any such illusions. Everywhere in the city after that, tanks were attacked with Molotov cocktails and the brashest among the young rioters even climbed onto them and tossed grenades straight down the turrets.
When Noel Barber, correspondent for the Daily Mail, drove into the city on Friday, 26 October, he saw torn-up streets and burned-out cars everywhere.‘Even before I reached th
e Duna Hotel, I counted the carcasses of at least forty Soviet tanks … At the corner of Stalin Avenue … 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 in a tree, the necks at ungainly angles, looking not so much like bodies, more like effigies.’
The day before, Imre Nagy had been appointed prime minister of Hungary with Moscow's approval. Khrushchev's wager was that things would then go more or less the way they had in Poland: Nagy's popularity would soon stifle the uprising, the communist regime would remain firmly in place. But there was one important difference: Hungary was not Poland. Where Gomulka stopped, Nagy continued: he let himself be carried away by the mood in the streets, in his speeches he demanded neutral status for Hungary and called for withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. Meanwhile the rebellion spread across the country, prisons were stormed, factories were shut down by strikes, there was fighting everywhere.
On Tuesday, 30 October, after a shooting incident, an angry crowd besieged the main headquarters of the Communist Party. The army was called in, but the tank crews turned their guns and began firing on the party offices instead. When party secretary Imre Mezó stepped outside waving a white flag, he was shot down. Then the building was stormed. In the crowd that day was György Konrád, twenty-three at the time and just finished at university. He told me how he saw secret police officers hung up by their feet. ‘They had probably been tortured beforehand, because they were no longer wearing shirts. The people spat on them. An older man in an expensive-looking coat said: “Shame on you, the Russians have done a great deal for all of you.” He was hanged as well. The scene made me very uneasy.’
Later, rumours began circulating about secret prison cells beneath the square, and people even claimed to have heard the sounds of tapping. Excavating machines were brought in and a huge hole was dug in the middle of the square. The crowd watched breathlessly. No one seemed to have the slightest idea that anything else was going on in the world around them.
In Moscow, however, as we now know, there was a strong inclination to let Hungary go. The Russians’ greatest fear was that the revolt would spread to Bucharest, Prague and Berlin. ‘Budapest was an enormous headache,’ Khrushchev wrote later. He told the Politburo: ‘There are two paths: a military path of occupation, and a path of peace; the withdrawal of troops, negotiations.’ Marshal Zhukov – in his brief role as minister of defence at the time – advocated withdrawing all troops from Hungary. Central-committee member Yekaterina Furtseva said this was a lesson in military politics for the Soviet Union: ‘We must look for different kinds of relationships with the popular democracies.’
Meanwhile, György Konrád – acting as bodyguard to a professor – trotted around town carrying a sub-machine gun. At the time he was also on the staff of a literary journal. ‘I decided to pay a visit to the director of the state publishing house, to ask him for a bigger print run for our magazine. I asked him for 30,000 copies. “Of course, make it 50,000,” he said. I didn't grasp at the time that his reaction had everything to do with my sub-machine gun hanging on the coat rack.’
A certain degree of order was restored during the final weekend of the uprising. The man who had led the lynch mob at the party headquarters was arrested. The strike ended.
In Moscow, however, the mood changed after Nagy's announcement that Hungary would leave the Warsaw Pact. Britain and France had invaded the Suez zone that week, and the Soviet leadership felt that it would be a mistake to tolerate too many ‘capitalist’ successes.
György Konrád: ‘At night I heard the first shots. I turned on the radio, like everyone else. Very early the next morning I went to the university, with my sub-machine gun. There were Russian tanks in the streets. I knew that a number of students were armed as well, and I hoped we could defend the buildings together. But we never fired a shot. They didn't shoot at us, so we decided not to shoot at them.’
On Sunday morning, 4 November, the Russians rolled into Hungary with considerable numbers of men and material. Within a day Budapest was theirs, within a week the uprising had been crushed. A new regime was installed under the leadership of party secretary János Kádár, a former associate of Nagy who had gone over to the Russians. There was, ever so briefly, a general strike, and then winter settled in.
According to the most reliable sources, approximately 600 Soviet soldiers and 2–3,000 Hungarians were killed in the fighting; some 22,000 proven or suspected rebels were sentenced to work camps or prison, and approximately 300 – including Imre Nagy – were executed.
Konrád: ‘We were cowardly or prudent, I still don't know which it was, but we surrendered the university. The next decision was whether to stay in the country, or flee. About 200,000 Hungarians left after 1956; journalists, writers, intellectuals – it was an enormous brain drain for the country. Most of my friends left, my cousins went to America. I stayed. Then there was another decision to be made: to work with the regime or not. I didn't. I accepted a marginal existence, the only goal of which was to keep the culture alive, to expand it if possible, to save what had once existed. Which brings us to the boring story of the period after 1956.’
The Hungarian summer of the final year of the twentieth century was slowly fading. There were no storms, no mists, in late September the days were still warm, the trees heavy with foliage. I had driven to the home of my friends in Vásárosbéc, across the endless plains south of Budapest. The road was full of Trabants and Warburgs, it looked as if half the rolling fleet of the former DDR had washed ashore in Hungary. Forty kilometres later the first horse and wagon appeared, close to Pécs there were dozens of them. A tanned, bent man struggled along the concrete gully beside the road, pushing a bicycle and two full canvas bags. Here and there roadside hookers in elfin skirts stood twisting a high heel in the dirt. Along the way I found myself at a little horse market, a stretch of grass beneath the trees beside a crossroads. Wagons and pairs were trotting about everywhere, showing their stuff, often with a few foals in tow. The horse traders all had bottles of beer and were knocking them back furiously. For sale a little further along were fish and sausages, cheap watches and hairpins. A drunken trader began beating two skinny horses in front of a customer, until they dragged the cart along with the brake still on. The wheels slid over the grass; blood trickled on the horses’ flanks.
In the café in Vásárosbéc, Lajos (b.1949) and Red Jósef (b.1937) were talking about the way things used to be. Right after the war there were 1,600 people in the village, at least a hundred farmers, every patch of ground was cultivated, but they still died of poverty. Today there are fifty families and only one real farmer, the mayor. In 1956, they tell me, it did not take long for people here to hear about the revolt in Budapest, and all the farmers withdrew their cattle from the collective right away. ‘But that didn't last long!’ Lajos shouted. In another village the farmers had fought, but here things had remained peaceful. Communism, that was other people's business. ‘Here we just tried to survive and make our own lives a little better, year by year, and that was all. There was one man in the café who was always talking politics, he had a big mouth; after 1956 he left for Germany.’
The village did have one minor source of diversion: the local cinema. Lajos: ‘A man lived here, you still see him in the café now and then, he was the postman for thirty years. Every week he brought the film here from the city, on foot, summer and winter, for thirty years.’
The collective remained intact until summer 1999. ‘All the ground has been given back now. But the young people have left and the older people can't start all over again. There's a big landowner who's buying everything up now. That man is going to be filthy rich. It's too late.’
And all the Dutch people and the Swedes who buy houses here? Red Jósef approved: ‘They're not Gypsies, and they help to fix up the village.’ Lajos said: ‘Just sell the whole thing. Today is today, that's life. The cemetery is patient, it will wait for
all of us.’
A Gypsy woman came in to ask if she could call the vet. Her pig was sick. We went with her to have a look. The woman stood beside the pig – her entire capital for the winter – she scratched and petted the animal, whispered in its ear, begged it to live on for just a little while. A couple of men stood off to one side. ‘You mustn't feed it any more,’ one of them said, and she clumsily swept the leftover feed out of the trough. She had tears in her eyes, she wiped her fingers on a dirty cloth, and then on the bristly pig itself.
Later we went to visit Maria, the church organist. Every Sunday she sat at her harmonium and played a series of notes, higgledy-piggledy, and sang along loudly. Now she was sitting on the bench beside her house, clutching two flowers, while her daughter sewed a pair of leather gloves with neat little stitches. A lot of women in the village did that, for a glove factory in Pécs, to earn a little pocket money.
Maria was, as she put it, ‘forty-seven years old, but then the other way around,’ and she lived in a constant state of infatuation. She caressed my friend, grabbed his hand, hinted at wild and promising events from a misty past. She served us the first wine of the year from a plastic cola bottle, it was still murky, little more than grape juice. ‘Trink, trink, Brüderlein trink!’ Maria sang, rocking back and forth with her glass. She was one of the last few of the elderly here who still understood a few words of Swabian, a German dialect brought here by immigrants 200 years ago and pretty much ground back into silence in the last century by Hungarian nationalists. She did not actually speak the language any more, but there were still a couple of German songs living in her head, ones she had learned on her father's lap, a long time ago. The air in the village was autumnal, smoky, sour and pungent.