Source: Worldfocus: "Revolution of 1956 haunts Hungarians"
Download and ShareHungary is one of seven countries that was occupied by the Soviet Union after World War II. The Soviets had suffered more deaths during the war than the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Poland combined. Afterwards, in order to prevent any future conflict, the Soviet Union created a “buffer zone” between itself and the western powers by occupying a band of countries that came to be known as the Eastern Bloc.
In addition to being inhabited by Soviet troops, the Eastern Bloc countries were dominated by Joseph Stalin, the communist leader of the Soviet Union. Through appointed leaders in each of the occupied countries, Stalin exerted a strict authority by outlawing rival political parties, censoring the press, campaigning against religion, and keeping complete control over their economies. Winston Churchill famously referred to these nations as being under an “Iron Curtain.”
In Hungary, there was a great deal of resentment towards the communist monopoly of power. Although a liberal party had won the elections after the war, the AVH – a secret police force under the direction of the Stalinist leader Matyas Rakosi – continued to execute, imprison and expel hundreds of thousands of opponents of Soviet rule. The communist Hungarian Workers’ Party came to power in 1948, and in August 1949, the government ratified a Soviet-style constitution. Hungary officially became known as the Hungarian People’s Republic.
A tumultuous political period followed the communist takeover, and tensions in the country increased. On October 23, 1956, a student protest demanding an end to Soviet occupation sparked mass demonstrations. Loyal members of the AVH fired from their windows at the crowd, and a bloody siege began. The following day the Hungarian army joined with protesters to overthrow the Soviet-controlled government. On October 28, the popular, liberal communist leader Imre Nagy (IHM-ray nahj) formed a new government promising new elections and the removal of controls on the economy, encouraging political reform, and ordering Soviet troops to leave.
On November 1, Nagy announced Hungary’s withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and appealed to the United Nations and the West for support. The Western powers, occupied by the crisis in the Suez, did nothing. On November 3, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev responded with a brutal military strike and by November 4 the rebellion was crushed. Thousands died and hundreds of thousands fled the country. Nagy was convicted of treason and hanged; the Soviets were back in control.
Hungary remained under Soviet control until 1989, when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Communist state in Hungary was dismantled. On July 6, 1989 the Hungarian Supreme Court acquitted Imre Nagy of the charges of high treason for which he had been executed. Hungary held its first multiparty elections in 1990 and initiated a free market economy. Hungary later joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004.
Aired November 10, 2008
MARASH: Maria Wittner is a fiercely anti-communist opposition member of Hungary’s parliament. When Maria goes through her collection of newspapers and magazines from the anti-Soviet rebellion of 1956, the names and faces are not history to her.
WITTNER: I knew these people personally, and I fought along side them.
MARASH: Over it’s thousand years of history, Hungary has been invaded, overrun and occupied many times. So the events of 1956 were not unique, just another moment of history for a country often divided between those who accepted an oppressive reality and those who were what the rebels of 1956 were called, freedom fighters.
MARASH: On October 23, the day the rebels took temporary power, freedom fighter Maria Wittner was 19 years old.
WITTNER: I was stationed in a building next door to the radio center, loading weapons for two of our gunmen.
MARASH: And two weeks later…
WITTNER: On November 4th, when the Russian troops attacked, we couldn’t defend ourselves. Mortars rained down on us, houses were destroyed, and that’s when I was wounded and taken to the hospital.
MARASH: Maria wound up spending 13 years in prison for her freedom-fighting activities.
MARASH: To the watching Western world, the events in Hungary in 1956 were electrifying, spotlighting the reality behind what had been just an empty political phrase, captive nations. And although the rebellion lasted barely two weeks before it was violently crushed, to the West it seemed to contain an unbreakable promise – that one day, these captives of Communism would once again be free.
MARASH: In Budapest today, everywhere there are reminders of 1956.
WITTNER: I’m sure the 1956 dreams have not come true 100% but we are getting there.
MARASH: For Hungarians, getting there means getting past a history of hurts, of well-remembered foreign invasions and more recent betrayals and murders. Meant to be a cure – Budapest’s Terror House Museum.
MARIA SCHMIDT: The museum tries to explain some of the most horrific experiences of the Hungarian people in the 20th century.
MARASH: The museum is grim, but its in-your-face confrontation is necessary, says Director Maria Schmidt, because in Hungary almost everyone knows the facts of history but doesn’t want to face them.
MARASH: The museum itself is on the site of a Communist-era interrogation and torture center, a fact that is both known, and hidden.
SCHMIDT: I was a school child and I remember we always passed, went to the other side of this road because we knew that this house which at that time an office building, it has a secret, it has a terrible secret and nobody wanted to talk about it freely and openly because people were frightened and they were afraid to speak up.
MARASH: People in Budapest don’t need a museum to remind them of 1956. The walls of many Budapest neighborhoods do that. Some in Hungary see this wall and just see the damage from the battleground.
MAN ON THE STREET: The revolution was a good example of all Hungarian history. We were trying to find the truth, but when we found it we didn’t like it.
MARASH: Others see the just cause behind the battle.
TRISTAN AZBEJ: I would be really happy if today’s Hungarian society could copy that kind of atmosphere that they had back in 1956 because it was a real unity, it was a real, like miracle of people really wanting freedom and working together, fighting together for it.
MARASH: Hungary divided 52 years ago over the fight for freedom and the country hasn’t healed yet. I’m Dave Marash for Worldfocus in Budapest.
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