Maybe not better red than…
The Second World War had ended. Hungary had signed the 1947 Treaty of Paris returning it to its pre-1938 borders. Unlike Yugoslavia where Tito’s Partisans had ruled the day, the Soviet Army played a major role in “liberating” Hungary. Thus, before transferring authority from its occupying forces to the Hungarians, the Soviets made certain they had installed a government that, largely for appearances and as a sop to the west included some moderates, but that was, in fact, dominated by communists. Thus, Hungary began to fall within the Soviet sphere of influence.
[Map from Omniatlas.]
Even in the immediate post-war period, the Hungarians chafed not only against the Soviets but, suspicious by nature and generationally conservative, the populace also distrusted the home-grown communists as well. In fact, in November 1945 the Western Allies, who perhaps saw Hungary as a possible check against growing Soviet influence, pressured the Soviets to authorize what was essentially the only free election to take place in post-war eastern Europe. Imagine the Russians’ irritation then when a center-right party called the Independent Smallholders’ Party (ISP) won 57 percent of the vote while the Hungarian Communist Party garnered a mere 17 percent. The election’s freedom ended there. Despite the ISP winning an outright majority, the Soviet commander in Hungary refused to allow the Smallholders’ Party to form a government. Instead, they were forced to form a coalition government with the Communist Party, the Social Democrats, and the left-wing National Peasant Party although the ISP was given the office of Prime Minister.
By early 1947, the Államvédelmi Hatóság (AVH) or State Protection Authority which was headed by a staunch communist began arresting leaders of the ISP and charging them with “conspiracy against the republic.” Hungary held a second round of post-war elections in August 1947. Even with many ISP leaders imprisoned, and despite being aided by widespread election fraud, the Communist Party increased their share of the vote to only 24 percent.
Unable to win at the polls, the Soviet influenced communists changed tactics and eventually forcefully organized all the so-called democratic parties into a single entity called the People’s Front headed by long time communist loyalist Mátyás Rákosi seen below.
[Photo from Wikipedia – Public Domain.]
Parliament passed a new constitution in August 1949 that was modeled after the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union and the nation officially became the People’s Republic of Hungary.
23 October 1956.
Sometimes a single event or a single date will resonate so strongly within a bonded group of people – whether that bond is ethnic, religious, or nationalist – that it leaves an imprint that transcends history and generations. For Hungarians, what happened beginning on 23 October 1956 represents just such an event.
Little good happened in Hungary in the immediate post-war period. Led by Stalinist disciple Mátyás Rákosi, Hungary’s Communist Party very much followed the Stalinist Soviet model. Aggressive nationalization of industry and education, unrealistic five-year plans, and repressive purges by the AVH burdened Hungarian society. An economic yoke that saw per capita national income rise while standards of living fell contributed to a rising tide of unrest. Like their counterparts in the Soviet Union, Hungarians faced chronic shortages of basic food staples requiring rationing of bread, sugar, flour, and meat.
Following Stalin’s death much of eastern Europe experienced a brief period of moderate liberalization. Hungarians elected the reformist Imre Nagy as Prime Minister. Behind the scenes however, Rákosi, who retained his position as General Secretary of the Communist Party, worked to thwart some of Nagy’s relatively modest attempts at reforming Hungary’s economic and political system.
In the early part of 1955 Nagy, following notions being espoused in Austria, considered adopting a declaration of neutrality but by April 1955, Rákosi, who would himself be deposed from his position a bit more than a year later, managed to discredit Nagy and have him removed from office. On 14 May of that year, in response to the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) into NATO, the Soviet Union established the Warsaw Pact that encased the Soviet Union and seven satellite states including Hungary in a similar military mutual defense alliance.
A violent uprising by workers in Poznań, Poland in June 1956 eventually led to a series of concessions by the Soviets known as Polish October. These concessions, together with Rákosi’s resignation in July, emboldened Hungarian reformers. University students around the country began snubbing the official communist student union in favor of the newly re-established and more democratic Union of Hungarian University and Academy Students. When they learned that the Hungarian Writers’ Union was planning a pro-reformist march for 23 October, they rapidly organized their own demonstration as a show of unity.
The demonstrations started out quite peacefully on Buda’s side of the Danube before the students crossed the river to join other demonstrators on Kossuth Square in front of the Parliament Building.
By 18:00, the crowd was reported to be more than 200,000 people. Within hours, the new Secretary General of the Communist Party, Ernő Gerő, broadcast a speech not merely rejecting, but condemning the demands of the writers and students. The demonstrators reacted by carrying out one of their non-policy demands – the removal of Stalin’s statue on the square – pulling it from its perch. By 21:30, they’d succeeded in toppling the 9-meter statue.
Meanwhile, a few blocks away, another demonstration was occurring in front of the Radio Budapest building. It was here that the peaceful demonstrations turned violent. A group of protesters tried to enter the building so they could air their demands and it was at this point that members of the AVH began lobbing tear gas and shooting into the crowd from the building’s upper floors.
Later that night, Gerő officially requested Soviet intervention and the Russian tanks began rolling into the city by 02:00 on 24 October. In an attempt to appease the demonstrators, in the afternoon of the 24th, Imre Nagy was returned to office replacing András Hegedüs as Prime Minister. Nagy promised to enact some of the political reforms that Rákosi had thwarted during his first stint in the office three years earlier. These included free elections and withdrawing Hungary from the Warsaw Pact.
The calendar turned to 25 October. With protesters still gathering in large numbers outside the Parliament building, all hell broke loose. Although Soviet tanks were positioned around Kossuth Square and at most bridge crossings, they hadn’t yet engaged the demonstrators. At this point, members of the AVH, who had taken positions in some of the surrounding buildings, began firing on the crowd. Thinking they were being shot at, the Soviets began shooting back. Armed protesters in the crowd also began shooting and the situation deteriorated into chaos.
If you’re really interested, you can watch this 20-minute BBC documentary: