I had been so happy and preoccupied during the year that I had almost ignored what was going on outside of my classes.
That year had also been marked by a series of traumatic political rumors and developments. Ever since Stalin died, there had been a succession of new names and faces in the top positions in the Soviet Politburo. None of them had acquired the same image or reputation that Stalin had while he was alive, and none stayed in power very long.
But early in 1956, a rumor started circulating about one of the new Russian political leaders, a man named Nikita Khrushchev. According to the rumor, Khrushchev in a speech at a big meeting of the officials of the Soviet Communist Party denounced the terror and cruelty perpetrated by Stalin over the years. I never saw a detailed description of Khrushchev's comments. Every rumor was different from the others, but their persistent nature made you believe that there was some truth to them.
The changing of the guard in Russia was mirrored in Hungary, too. Rakosi, who represented the Hungarian Communist regime at its most repressive, was replaced by Imre Nagy, a popular political figure who was also considered more independent of the Russians. Nagy lasted only a short time before he, too, was deposed and replaced by a member of the Rakosi regime. But this time, even the Rakosi followers seemed less repressive.
Altogether, there was an unmistakable easing of the political climate in Hungary. Many people who had been imprisoned for political reasons were released. But what made the most visible impression on me was the change in the tone of the newspaper and radio commentaries. Discussions of politics and the economy were more open. Voices of criticism and analysis appeared, seemingly with impunity.
The trend seemed to have been driven by journalists and writers. A number of these belonged to a discussion group called the Petofi Circle, named after Sandor Petofi, the poet of the 1848 rev- olution. I was only vaguely aware of the existence of this group. Then in June 1956 there was a buzz about their organizing a public discussion about the journalistic practices of the day. Some friends of mine suggested that we attend.
There was so much talk about this session that we decided to go several hours before it officially started. This was a good thing. Already the cavernous hall was almost completely full. By the time the session started, people filled every nook and cranny of the auditorium, crammed the stairways, and overflowed into the courtyard of the building. Loudspeakers had to be hung so that the sessions could be broadcast to the crowds waiting outside. Hundreds of people were packed in, sweating in the early summer heat and occasionally cheering at a shouted remark. In addition to other university classmates, I ran into several high school classmates and some of my parents' friends. Later I found out that both my parents were there, too, but I never saw them in the crowds.
My friends and I managed to find a place inside the auditorium. A long table was set up on the stage. At it sat a panel of writers and journalists. One of them was my cousin Marika's husband.
One by one, they stood up and, facing the audience, described the many ways in which each had worked to mislead the Hungarian public through lies, distortions, and exaggerations. A lot of the discussion involved subjects that didn't mean much to me. But one confession that I understood was by the editor of the major Communist daily newspaper. He told how he had doctored the weather forecast to promise clear skies for each May Day in order to encourage people to turn out in large numbers for the annual parade.
While a lot of the comments may have been lost on me, they were not lost on much of the audience, who greeted each confession with increasingly exuberant cheers, approving comments, and energetic applause. I was stunned by the enthusiasm, but I also noticed something peculiar about the applause. Communist political speeches and pronouncements were always acknowledged by rhythmic clapping, slow, measured, and always in unison. I had grown to expect such clapping at political meetings. Now I found it ironic that the speakers were acknowledged by the same rhythmic clapping that I associated with the Communists.
The meeting started in late afternoon and went on for hours. There seemed to be no end to the revelations and confessions. It was fascinating to listen to, and I couldn't help but feel that I was witnessing something unusual and significant. I sensed that I was witnessing history being made.
Afterward, my friends and I walked home, talking excitedly about the events of the evening. None of us had seen anything like this before. We were optimistic about what it might mean for the future. Then a thought occurred to me. The whole thing reminded me of a pressure cooker whose lid had been weakened. The danger was that as more steam was generated, the weakened lid might very well explode.
A few days later, I had to report for military training, as did all the boys from my university class.
We took the train to a dusty, hot army camp near a town called Orgovany, a few miles from Kiskoros. Every summer, over the four years of university, we would train in antiaircraft artillery; at graduation, we would become reserve officers. This, our first summer, was devoted to basic training. It was very basic.
We slouched off the train and were handed ill-fitting, well-worn, faded, greenish brown uniforms with no insignia and a plain, foldable cap. Then we were greeted by a sergeant, a wiry guy with a coarse face, who looked us over with undisguised disdain and announced that he was going to make men of us. I don't know what I did, but the sergeant somehow singled me out of the first lineup. Later, I wondered what happened. All I could come up with was that I looked straight at him when he lectured us—it helped me understand him—while the other guys all looked at their feet. In any case, right from the beginning, I was assigned all the unpleasant tasks, like washing dishes, cleaning latrines, peeling potatoes, and the like. The sergeant picked on me for several weeks, then I guess he got tired of it and spread his attentions more broadly.
There also were students from other universities at this base, but our group from the Chemistry Department was assigned to a small platoon that trained together. The training consisted of marching in formation, learning to salute, and waiting, waiting, and waiting some more. It was very hot in Orgovany, and waiting around in the sun was miserable and boring. Occasionally, we were lectured on how to calculate airplane speeds so we could hit moving targets. An instructor held up terribly simplistic charts of trajectories and formulas. They were on par with counting “One and two and three …” from the time you see lightning to when you hear thunder to figure out how far away the strike is. He was bored, and so were we. And we were hot.
The highlight of our training involved loading dummy am-munition—a wooden bullet—into a World War II-vintage antiaircraft gun. We did this over and over and over, one person pulling back on the breech and the other loading the ammunition. Then the next pair repeated it and the next after that. We did this hour after hour after hour. The greatest danger was the possibility that when the contraption closed, it might take your thumb with it, so we were taught slowly and carefully to fold our thumb into our fist as we shoved the bullet into the gun.
Once or twice, we practiced aiming the gun, cranking away to track a model airplane that was suspended on a wire and was pulled back and forth across the firing range. Even though the model plane moved slowly across the horizon, we had a hard time keeping it in the gunsights. I remembered the two jets that had zoomed above Gabi and me at Lake Velence and wondered how we would keep track of those with this gun.
In the four or five weeks of our military training, we never did get to fire the antiaircraft gun. The only time we ever got to fire anything was in rifle training. We were each handed three live rounds and were instructed to fire at a target placed against a hillside some distance away. My experience with my air gun came in handy. To my sergeant's amazement, I did very well at target shooting. Momentarily, I had a bit of his respect.
The single overwhelming element of our weeks of military training was abject boredom. When we weren't marching or attending lectures or practicing with the antiartillery gun, we would drag a blanket under t
he shade of a tree and sit and chat and play endless games of Twenty Questions, while watching the regular soldiers lifting weights during their time off.
Sometimes, for a change, we sat near the boundary fence of the army base. Outside the fence was a dirt road, and every once in a while the camp commander's wife would walk past. We could look at her surreptitiously, but it had to be very surreptitiously, because rumor had it that someone in an earlier group had wolf-whistled at her and all hell had broken loose. I usually hung around with my friends Zoltan and Jancsi Lanyi, but even Zoltan couldn't muster more than a couple of halfheartedly sarcastic comments.
As the August days grew shorter, we counted the hours to our liberation. Unfortunately, the end wasn't that crisply defined, so the closer we got, the more anxious we became. Rumors started flying that because of some unspecific offense we had committed, they would keep us three days extra. No, it was five days. No, maybe it was only two. It was very painful. Finally, it was over. We were promoted to the rank of corporal and allowed to go home.
Right: Hungarian flag, with the Communist emblem cut out. Just about every building was decorated with one.
Below: Demonstration: The crowd thickened, occupying entire avenues. Everyone was hollering and shouting happily as more and more people shared in the increasing excitement. Hannes Betzler & Ernest Laue)
Left: I saw burned-out trucks, occasionally even a burned-out Russian tank. Wherever a tank still smoldered, it was surrounded by gawking passersby. (Hannes Betzler)
Chapter Twelve
REVOLUTION
IFELT VERY DIFFERENT walking into the university that September of 1956. I had just turned twenty. I felt happy and at ease, and I was looking forward to seeing all my classmates again. Even though I had just spent over a month at military training camp with some of them, it would be nice to see them out of uniform.
I was looking forward to my classes, too. The second-year curriculum was similar to the previous year's, but where the first year focused on inorganic chemistry, the second year would revolve around organic chemistry. Once again, the core chemistry course was taught by a chief professor, like Professor Lengyel another godlike figure whose textbook would be our course bible. Labwork, too, followed a familiar path. The year before, we had done labwork in qualitative analysis, in which we learned to identify the compounds in our samples. This year, our labwork would involve quantitative analysis, in which we would figure out the amounts of those compounds. This promised to be even more challenging than qualitative analysis, but having conquered qualitative analysis, I was looking forward to it. I thought I would have fun in this lab.
Everybody knew of my achievement in the first-year qualitative analysis lab, including my teachers in quantitative analysis. They implied that they expected me to do equally well in their class. I worried that I might not be able to live up to my reputation, but it was nice to be famous.
Early in the semester, our class organized a mixer for the first-year students. I met a girl in the new class whom I liked. Her name was Viki. She came from a small town in the country and was a little lost in the big city. It gave me an opportunity to offer my services as a tour guide, and to my delight, she accepted without hesitation. I enjoyed showing her around Budapest and taking her to my favorite haunts. She was petite, quiet, unaffected, and easy to be with. I asked her out a number of times, and I always looked forward to seeing her.
While the school year was getting off to a good start, outside of the university, the world was running off course. Earlier that summer, there had been rumors of antigovernment riots in East Germany that were supposedly put down by the East German police, aided by the Russian army. Other rumors claimed that anti-Russian demonstrations had also taken place in Poland at that same time and that demonstrations were again erupting in Poland in October. In late October, a buzz spread through the university about a march that was being organized to express our support for the Poles.
The plans were solidifying as some classmates and I headed off to lunch in a decrepit old restaurant that served as the college cafeteria. The restaurant was about a fifteen-minute walk from the university, but that day it took longer than usual to get there. We kept running into groups of excited students. They were all yelling, “Are you coming to the march?” When we arrived at the restaurant, I wrote the date, October 23, 1956, with my finger on a dusty mirror near the entryway and put a circle around it to emphasize the significance of this date.
Lunch was a rushed affair. We had decided that instead of going back to class we would join the demonstration, so we hurried back to the university, where the march was gathering. In a sign of solidarity with the Poles, we were all going to walk from the statue of Sandor Petofi to the statue of the nineteenth-century Polish general Jozef Bem. General Bem was revered as a friend of Hungary's for the support he'd given the Hungarian revolutionaries during the war against the Austrians and the Russians in 1848, the war in which Sandor Petofi gave his life. As we headed off to the Bem statue, students poured out of buildings and side streets. With every step, the crowd swelled like a river being fed by tributaries. At first it was only students, but then more and more adults joined in.
The crowd thickened, occupying entire avenues. The trams were forced to stop running, because people overflowed onto the tracks in the street. Everyone was hollering and shouting happily as more and more people shared in the increasing excitement. Every window facing the street had someone hanging out of it, waving madly. After all the years of sullen, silent May Day marches, there was something magical about a large spontaneous demonstration. I kept looking around, soaking it all in, feeling that I was in a dream.
All of a sudden, a Hungarian flag was unfurled from a window along the way. The Hungarian flag has horizontal stripes of red, white, and green. The original flag had the emblem of St. Stephen, a gold crown with a cross on top, in the center. During the Communist years, this emblem was replaced by the crossed hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union surrounded by sheaves of wheat. The flag now waving from the window had a hole in the middle. The Communist emblem had been cut out. Pretty soon, we saw more flags like that, then more flags, until just about every building was decorated with one, all with a hole in the middle.
The sight took my breath away. Those flags were permanently altered. The act seemed unequivocal and destined to provoke a reaction of some sort. The demonstration had started as an act of support and celebration, but now I felt we had crossed a line of no return. I began to feel a little nervous.
In the ebb and flow of the crowd and amid all my gawking, I got separated from my friends. I found myself being swept toward the big square in front of the Parliament building. Every inch of the square was jammed with demonstrators—thousands of them. After a while, they started chanting, “We want Nagy! We want Nagy!” Imre Nagy had been deposed as prime minister the previous year, but after a period of disgrace, he had been included in the government again. We stood and shouted, then waited, then shouted and waited some more. By now, it was early evening; it was getting dark, but nobody was leaving. Finally, Nagy appeared on the balcony of a building near the Parliament. People cheered wildly. He gave a short speech. I couldn't understand a word of what he said. People cheered again, but not as wildly as before. Clearly, whatever he said didn't seem to be enough.
A wave of excitement swept through the crowd. It seemed that the students who originally organized the march had formulated a twelve-point program of political reform, along the lines of a similar program formulated during the 1848 revolution. The buzz was that we should head to the main radio station and demand that the twelve points be read over Radio Budapest. Meanwhile, I also heard people saying that a crowd was trying to topple the gigantic statue of Stalin at Heroes' Square. I was excited but also increasingly scared.
The building in which Radio Budapest was housed was more or less on my way home, so I joined the stream of thousands that was flowing slowly in that direction. But before I could get there, a rumor ran
through the crowd that the security police were firing on demonstrators at the radio building.
I decided to head home. The events had gone way beyond the exuberant demonstration of the afternoon. Now I was really scared. It took me a while to break out of the crowd. I peeled off to a side street, but even the side streets were crammed with people, all milling around. It was quite late by the time I got home, but my parents were still waiting up. They were very relieved to see me in one piece. We sat around, comparing our experiences of that day. It had been a day unlike any other.
We were up and out early the next day. On the street, strangers were shouting the latest rumors to each other. There had been a battle at the radio station. Security police had fired on the crowds, then trucks loaded with rifles arrived from the industrial suburbs, manned by workers who distributed the rifles to the crowd. The firefight between the demonstrators and the security police had raged all night. We still heard sporadic shooting from a distance. I decided to stay home.
We had one of the two telephones in our apartment house, so all day long neighbors kept coming in to call friends elsewhere in the city, and I was busy answering calls from people wanting to know what I'd heard. People dropped in to exchange news, then left again to pass it on. We heard that another demonstration was planned for the next day.
When I looked out the window the next morning, the trams were not operating. By midday, open-air trucks jammed full of people were shuttling up Kiraly Street. Clusters of more people clotted the sidewalks. A few hours later, I saw the trucks coming back. This time, the truck beds were full of wounded people being taken to a hospital in our neighborhood. There had been another big gathering in front of the Parliament and, depending on whom you listened to, either the security police or Rus- sian soldiers had opened fire on the crowds. Later, people said, the Russians withdrew from Budapest.
Swimming Across: A Memoir Page 19