Hungarian Revolution of 1956 - Part 1 The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 or Hungarian Uprising of 1956 (Hungarian: 1956-os forradalom or felkelés) was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of the Hungarian Peoples Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956. Though leaderless when it first began, it was the first major threat to Soviet control since the USSRs forces drove out the Nazis at the end of World War II and occupied Eastern Europe. Despite the failure of the uprising, it was highly influential, and came to play a role in the downfall of the Soviet Union decades later. The revolt began as a student demonstration, which attracted thousands as they marched through central Budapest to the Parliament building, calling out on the streets using a van with loudspeakers via Radio Free Europe. A student delegation, entering the radio building to try to broadcast the students demands, was detained. When the delegations release was demanded by the demonstrators outside, they were fired upon by the State Security Police (ÁVH) from within the building. When the students were fired on, a student died and was wrapped in a flag and held above the crowd. This was the start of the revolution. As the news spread, disorder and violence erupted throughout the capital. The revolt spread quickly across Hungary and the government collapsed. Thousands organized into militias, battling the ÁVH and Soviet troops. Pro-Soviet communists and ÁVH members were often executed or imprisoned and former prisoners were released and armed. Radical impromptu workers councils wrested municipal control from the ruling Hungarian Working Peoples Party and demanded political changes. A new government formally disbanded the ÁVH, declared its intention to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact, and pledged to re-establish free elections. By the end of October, fighting had almost stopped and a sense of normality began to return. After announcing a willingness to negotiate a withdrawal of Soviet forces, the Politburo changed its mind and moved to crush the revolution. On 4 November, a large Soviet force invaded Budapest and other regions of the country. The Hungarian resistance continued until 10 November. Over 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet troops were killed in the conflict, and 200,000 Hungarians fled as refugees. Mass arrests and denunciations continued for months thereafter. By January 1957, the new Soviet-installed government had suppressed all public opposition. These Soviet actions, while strengthening control over Eastern Europe, alienated many Western Marxists. Public discussion about this revolution was suppressed in Hungary for more than 30 years. Since the thaw of the 1980s, it has been a subject of intense study and debate. At the inauguration of the Third Hungarian Republic in 1989, 23 October was declared a national holiday. Prelude During World War II, Hungary was a member of the Axis powers, thereby being allied with the fascist forces of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Romania, and Bulgaria. As a part of this, in 1941, the Hungarian military participated in the occupation of Yugoslavia and the invasion of the Soviet Union, joining the Axis powers. The Soviet army was able to force back the Hungarian and other Axis invaders. By 1944 Soviet armies were advancing towards Hungary. Fearing invasion, the Hungarian government began armistice negotiations with the Allies, but these were ended when Nazi Germany invaded and occupied the country and set up their own pro-Axis regime, the Government of National Unity. Both Hungarian and German forces stationed in Hungary were subsequently defeated when the Soviet Union invaded the country in 1945. Postwar occupation After World War II, the Soviet Army occupied Hungary, with the country coming under the Soviet Unions sphere of influence. At the time, Hungary was a multiparty democracy, and elections in 1945 produced a coalition government under Prime Minister Zoltán Tildy. However, the Hungarian Communist Party, a Marxist–Leninist group who shared the Soviet governments ideological beliefs, constantly wrested small concessions in a process named salami tactics, which sliced away the elected governments influence, despite the fact that it had received only 17% of the vote. After the elections of 1945, the portfolio of the Interior Ministry, which oversaw the Hungarian State Security Police (Államvédelmi Hatóság, later known as the ÁVH), was forcibly transferred from the Independent Smallholders Party to a nominee of the Communist Party. The ÁVH employed methods of intimidation, falsified accusations, imprisonment, and torture to suppress political opposition. The brief period of multi-party democracy came to an end when the Communist Party merged with the Social Democratic Party to become the Hungarian Working Peoples Party, which stood its candidate list unopposed in 1949. The Peoples Republic of Hungary was then declared. By 1949, the Soviets had concluded a mutual assistance treaty, the Comecon, with Hungary, that granted the Soviet Union rights to a continued military presence, assuring ultimate political control. The Hungarian Working Peoples Party set about to modify the economy into socialism by undertaking radical nationalization based on the Soviet model. This forced method of economic socialization during infrastructural recovery from the war initially resulted in economic stagnation, lower standards of living, and a deep malaise. Writers and journalists were the first to voice open criticism of the government and its policies, publishing critical articles in 1955. By 22 October 1956, Technical University students had resurrected the banned MEFESZ student union, and staged a demonstration on 23 October that set off a chain of events leading directly to the revolution. Political repression and economic decline Hungary became a communist state under the severely authoritarian leadership of Mátyás Rákosi. Under Rákosis reign, the Security Police (ÁVH) began a series of purges, first within the Communist Party to end opposition to Rákosis reign. The victims were labeled as Titoists, western agents, or Trotskyists for as little a crime as spending time in the West to participate in the Spanish Civil War or for being Jewish (labeled as Zionist agents). In total, about half of all the middle and lower level party officials-at least 7,000 people-were purged. From 1950 to 1952, the Security Police forcibly relocated thousands of people to obtain property and housing for the Working Peoples Party members, and to remove the threat of the intellectual and bourgeois class. Thousands were arrested, tortured, tried, and imprisoned in concentration camps, deported to the east, or were executed, including ÁVH founder László Rajk. In a single year, more than 26,000 people were forcibly relocated from Budapest. As a consequence, jobs and housing were very difficult to obtain. The deportees generally experienced terrible living conditions and were interned as slave labor on collective farms. Many died as a result of the poor living conditions and malnutrition. The Rákosi government thoroughly politicized Hungarys educational system to supplant the educated classes with a toiling intelligentsia. Russian language study and Communist political instruction were made mandatory in schools and universities nationwide. Religious schools were nationalized and church leaders were replaced by those loyal to the government. In 1949 the leader of the Hungarian Catholic Church, Cardinal József Mindszenty, was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment for treason. Under Rákosi, Hungarys government was among the most repressive in Europe. The post-war Hungarian economy suffered from multiple challenges. Hungary agreed to pay war reparations approximating US$300 million to the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia and to support Soviet garrisons. The Hungarian National Bank in 1946 estimated the cost of reparations as between 19 and 22 per cent of the annual national income. In 1946, the Hungarian currency experienced marked depreciation, resulting in the highest historic rates of hyperinflation known. Hungarys participation in the Soviet-sponsored COMECON (Council Of Mutual Economic Assistance) prevented it from trading with the West or receiving Marshall Plan aid. In addition, Rákosi began his first Five-Year Plan in 1950-based on Joseph Stalins industrial program of the same name that sought to raise industrial output by 380 percent. Like its Soviet counterpart, the Five-Year Plan never achieved these outlandish goals due in part to the crippling effect of the exportation of most of Hungarys raw resources and technology to the Soviet Union as well as Rákosis purges of much of the former professional class. In fact, the Five-Year Plan weakened Hungarys existing industrial structure and caused real industrial wages to fall by 18 percent between 1949 and 1952. Rákosis agricultural programs met with the same lack of success, with attempted collectivization of the peasantry causing a marked fall in agricultural output and a rise in food shortages. Although national income per capita rose in the first third of the 1950s, the standard of living fell. Huge income deductions to finance industrial investment reduced disposable personal income; mismanagement created chronic shortages in basic foodstuffs resulting in rationing of bread, sugar, flour, and meat. Compulsory subscriptions to state bonds further reduced personal income. The net result was that disposable real income of workers and employees in 1952 was only two thirds of what it had been in 1938, whereas in 1949, the proportion had been 90%. These policies had a cumulative negative effect and fuelled discontent as foreign debt grew and the population experienced shortages of goods. International events On 5 March 1953, Joseph Stalin died, ushering in a period of moderate liberalization, when most European communist parties developed a reform wing. In Hungary, the reformist Imre Nagy replaced Rákosi, Stalins Best Hungarian Disciple, as Prime Minister. However, Rákosi remained General Secretary of the Party, and was able to undermine most of Nagys reforms. By April 1955, he had Nagy discredited and removed from office. After Khrushchevs secret speech of February 1956, which denounced Stalin and his protégés, Rákosi was deposed as General Secretary of the Party and replaced by Erno Gero on 18 July 1956. On 14 May 1955, the Soviet Union created the Warsaw Pact, binding Hungary to the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe. Among the principles of this alliance were respect for the independence and sovereignty of states and non-interference in their internal affairs. In 1955, the Austrian State Treaty and ensuing declaration of neutrality established Austria as a demilitarized and neutral country. This raised Hungarian hopes of also becoming neutral and in 1955 Nagy had considered the possibility of Hungary adopting a neutral status on the Austrian pattern. In June 1956, a violent uprising by Polish workers in Poznan was put down by the government, with scores of protesters killed and wounded. Responding to popular demand, in October 1956, the government appointed the recently rehabilitated reformist communist Wladyslaw Gomulka as First Secretary of the Polish United Workers Party, with a mandate to negotiate trade concessions and troop reductions with the Soviet government. After a few tense days of negotiations, on 19 October the Soviets finally gave in to Gomulkas reformist demands. News of the concessions won by the Poles, known as Polish October, emboldened many Hungarians to hope for similar concessions for Hungary and these sentiments contributed significantly to the highly charged political climate that prevailed in Hungary in the second half of October 1956. Within the Cold War context of the time, by 1956, a fundamental tension had appeared in US policy towards Hungary and the Eastern Bloc generally. The United States hoped to encourage East European countries to break away from the bloc through their own efforts but wanted to avoid a US-Soviet military confrontation, as escalation might lead to nuclear war. For these reasons, US policy makers had to consider other means of diminishing Soviet influence in Eastern Europe, short of a rollback policy. This led to the development of containment policies such as economic and psychological warfare, covert operations, and, later, negotiation with the Soviet Union regarding the status of the Eastern states. In the summer of 1956, relations between Hungary and the US began to improve. At that time, the US responded very favorably to Hungarys overtures about a possible expansion of bilateral trade relations. Hungarys desire for better relations was partly attributable to the countrys catastrophic economic situation. Before any results could be achieved, however, the pace of negotiations was slowed by the Hungarian Ministry of Internal Affairs, which feared that better relations with the West might weaken Communist rule in Hungary. Social unrest builds Rákosis resignation in July 1956 emboldened students, writers, and journalists to be more active and critical in politics. Students and journalists started a series of intellectual forums examining the problems facing Hungary. These forums, called Petofi circles, became very popular and attracted thousands of participants. On 6 October 1956, László Rajk, who had been executed by the Rákosi government, was reburied in a moving ceremony that strengthened the party opposition. On 16 October 1956, university students in Szeged snubbed the official communist student union, the DISZ, by re-establishing the MEFESZ (Union of Hungarian University and Academy Students), a democratic student organization, previously banned under the Rákosi dictatorship. Within days, the student bodies of Pécs, Miskolc, and Sopron followed suit. On 22 October, students of the Technical University compiled a list of sixteen points containing several national policy demands. After the students heard that the Hungarian Writers Union planned on the following day to express solidarity with pro-reform movements in Poland by laying a wreath at the statue of Polish-born General Bem, a hero of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 (1848–49), the students decided to organize a parallel demonstration of sympathy. COMING UP - Revolution
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 17:24:09 +0000