When workers in their millions rose against Stalinism
“They were lying
to us fifty years ago and we made a revolution! They’re still lying to us
today!”. This was the sentiment of many on the angry
protests of tens of thousands outside
The analogy with
1956 ends almost where it begins. Prime minister, Ferenc
Gyurcsany, was caught on tape describing the failure
of his party’s policies and how they had cynically lied to the people about the
dire economic situation just to get re-elected. This Blairite
neo-liberal ‘socialist’ survived a confidence vote for his coalition
government. But neither his party nor the opposition around Fidesz
has anything to offer other than austerity. Unashamedly they throw the burden
of the highest debts and deficits in
Undoubtedly,
participants in the recent street protests will have been turning over in their
minds important questions, seeking in the past solutions for the present and
the future. It is both inspirational and instructive to go over the actual
events of half a century ago. A newer generation of activists and class
fighters has grown up in a world without a ‘Cold War’ between
two mutually antagonistic social systems and without any major ‘Communist’
parties in either Eastern or
‘
All the objective
components of a political revolution against the parasitic, dictatorial regime
had matured. Had it been carried through to a successful conclusion, the world
today would be a completely different, and very socialist, place.
The crucial
element of a workers’ party with a far-sighted revolutionary leadership was
missing. Not even in the white heat of the events was such a party forged. The
tide of history rolled back, drowning the aspirations of the long-suffering
working class of
There had been
little experience of any kind of democracy in
When, during the Second World War, Horthy
became an unreliable collaborator of Hitler, the Arrow Cross thugs over-powered
his regime and the dictator Szalasi carried out a
foul programme of exterminating Jews and workers’ leaders with bestial
efficiency. The Red Army, which in 1945 fought its way inch by inch to take Gellert Hill and ‘liberate’ the devastated capital, was
generally welcomed by the exhausted and starving population.
As in other East European countries, the
capitalists of
The situation was
similar in other East European ‘satellites’ of Stalin’s
Understandably, no
independent non-party press was tolerated and censorship of all art and culture
was stultifying creativity. Neither Stalin nor his replicas throughout
The peasantry in
Collectively the
workers were robbed and tricked out of vast sums of the wealth they produced,
paid directly to
Punishment – in
work and in society – was meted out by the hated secret police or AVO. Many of
their number were recruited from the former Arrow Cross storm-troopers and
other dregs of society. An AVO secret policeman could earn from 8,000-16,000 forints a month – up to 16 times the average worker’s wage.
First they were used against the Small-holders’ Party and the Social Democrats
in the period after the war. Then, from 1949, they were turned against ‘Titoists’, ‘Trotskyists’ and
other ‘deviationists’ - the flower of Hungary’s communists, including partisan
fighters and veterans of the Spanish civil war.
There were mass
round-ups and deportations by the AVO secret police of so-called reactionaries
- to the mines, farms, road and bridge-building projects or the concentration
camps known as Educational Labour Camps. Thousands of political prisoners and
innocent people were held in a living death deep under
Life in the early
1950s in
His death in March
1953, however, raised the hopes of hundreds of millions that genuine
democratisation of the workers’ states could be carried through. Workers moved
to take things into their own hands in important parts of the Soviet Union and
in
Events like these
and the pressure building up inside Hungarian society - with sporadic outbreaks
of 24 and 48 hour strikes - finally forced the hand of Malenkov and his cronies
in the Kremlin. They replaced the hard-line Rakosi
with Imre Nagy. Reforms were introduced with the aim
of heading off the threat of revolution. Some political prisoners were released
including János Kádár, who
was later complicit in the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution. The ‘New
Course’ for the economy would give more emphasis to consumer goods and less to
heavy industry. The policy of forced collectivisation would be reversed.
Early in 1955, in
the post-Stalin
Yet Khrushchev’s
dramatic speech against the ‘mistakes’ of Stalin made to the 20th Congress of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956 acted as a green light
for revolt across Eastern Europe. Most serious was the uprising in
The wind of
revolution, as Trotsky put it, will often sway the tops of the trees first. In
In the face of a
growing crisis, the ruling layer split – the first condition of any revolution!
This was manifested in the frenetic changing of the guard at the top.
When Rakosi appealed to the Kremlin for assistance, he was told
to take a long holiday! He was replaced by Gero,
another hard-liner instead of Nagy, the more popular leader supported by the
party paper, Szabad
A ruling stratum
will often be divided over how to deal with a threat from below – through
repression or concession. But things can rapidly reach a stage where neither
policy can save them. Repression angers, concessions embolden opposition.
In July, Lazslo Rajk, a prominent
communist who had been purged in 1949, was rehabilitated.
Early in October, on the ceremonial occasion of his re-burial, more than
200,000 marched through the streets of
In
As the
demonstration moved across the
The population of
the capital had shed their fear. The revolution had begun. The middle layers of
society had already shown whose side they were on. The workers in the factories
began electing factory councils and revolutionary committees. Peasants’
committees were formed and drew up plans for pursuing their demands. Many set
about the task of supplying food for the embattled workers in the big cities.
“Within two days,
the main centres of the revolt were in the working class areas”, Peter Fryer
writes in his vivid eye-witness account of the rising, Hungarian Tragedy. Sent
to the country on behalf of the British ‘Communist’ paper, the Daily Worker, he
saw for himself how the ‘insurrectionary committee’ of the Northern city of
The first reaction
of the regime was, naturally, to take the road of repression. Gero immediately went on state radio to condemn the 23
October demonstration and declare a state of emergency. This only inflamed the
situation. A delegation of students went immediately to the radio station to
protest. When they failed to reappear, a Hungarian tank in the square moved
forward. Once its commander was seen to side with the demonstrators, an
unstoppable process began. The Hungarian state machine – the police and army -
began to fracture. Whole sections joined the revolution; others remained
neutral.
After a dramatic
stand-off at the Killian barracks between Hungarian workers and their brothers
in the army, the famous tank commander, Pal Maleter,
led them to the side of the revolution. Others followed. Revolutionary
committees matching those in the factories and regions were elected in the
army. The ‘Revolutionary Military Council of the Army Command’ published a list
of demands including the withdrawal of all Soviet troops from Hungarian soil.
Soldiers shared out their weapons and ammunition with the ‘freedom fighters’.
Residents of the workers’ districts in the capital got their supplies from the
massive Lampart armaments factory.
Russian tank
commanders angered by what they saw when AVO snipers on rooftops opened fire on
unarmed demonstrators, killing men, women and children, turned their guns
against the hated AVO. This made them heroes. Many Russian soldiers responded
gladly to appeals of workers pushed through the ‘loopholes’ of their tanks –
translated into Russian by students of the faculty of languages. Many Russian
officers and men later faced the firing squad for siding with the Hungarian
working class. Others who decided there was no way
back, were given refuge in Hungarian homes.
Russian tanks had
been called in by Gero but they had proved unable to
stem the revolutionary tide. After the first day of the uprising,
A situation of
dual power was rapidly developing. The workers across the country were forming
revolutionary councils. But Nagy was not cut out for the role of a Lenin or a
Trotsky. Having been purged from the ruling party when he was last demoted, he
now formed his own. But it was far from a combat party of revolution.
The question was
starkly posed at the height of the insurrection of proceeding to establish a
real democratic workers’ state and making an international appeal or sliding
back under the heel of the Stalinist boot. Nagy wanted neither. He was doomed
to play the role of a Hungarian Kerensky, if on a different class basis. The
monument to him not far from
For a few heady
days of real freedom, a festive air gripped the country. As in all revolutions
there was a phase when people came onto the streets simply to look around, to
promenade and to feel the taste of liberty in the air.
The parliament
building – “The immense ‘Westminster-on- the-Danube’, resembled the Smolny Palace in Petrograd, the Bolsheviks centre in 1917”,
wrote Sandor Kopaksi,
former Budapest Chief of Police. In less than 48 hours from its start, he came
over to the revolution, bringing with him the whole of the city’s police. Three
days later he was elected second in command of the Patriotic Revolutionary
Militia. Pal Maleter was made Minister of Defence in
the new government Nagy set up on October 27.
Peter Fryer
describes the revolutionary committees, linked up country-wide as both “Organs
of insurrection – the coming together of delegates elected by factories and
universities, mines and army units – and organs of popular self-government
which the armed people trusted…Until the Soviet attack of November 4, the real
power in the country lay in their hands”.
Sandor Kopaksi describes in his
book, In the Name of the Working Class, how a certain friend, Joska, described the ‘soviets’ he had seen. “Real soviets,
the kind that could not survive in
The ‘ruling’
Communist Party, numbering around 900,000, disintegrated. Creating the
Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party to take its place gave Kádár
no more authority in the eyes of the working class. His government was
suspended in mid air.
Around him sprung
up new or long-banned parties and trade unions, like mushrooms after rain – “No
fewer than twenty-five daily newspapers”, wrote Fryer, the excited British journalist, “In place of the five sad, dreary, stereotyped
sheets of recent years”! Flags flew everywhere but with the emblem of Soviet
power cut from the centre. Russian soldiers had been persuaded to take the star
from their caps.
The enemy had all
but disappeared. On October 30 the withdrawal of the Russian troops was
officially announced. Power was in the hands of the working class but, as so
often in revolutionary situations, they failed to see it. The opportunity for
sweeping aside the old politicians and their hated system of government came
and went. The reins of power fell into the hands of other forces either not
willing or not able to lead the mighty workers’ struggle to a successful
conclusion.
Nagy was just
keeping open the gate for the Kremlin appointee, János
Kádár to return. The latter was later, on the
instructions of the Kremlin’s Hungarian ambassador, Yuri Andropov, to set up a
separate government in
As the general
strike rolled across the country like a tidal wave, an independent workers’
party with a revolutionary leadership would have launched the slogan “All power
to the Central Council of the Revolutionary Committees!” and moved to arrest
the Kremlin-backed government ministers. An appeal would have been made to
their brothers and sisters in the neighbouring countries to do the same – to
struggle for genuine workers’ and peasants’ governments. In different parts of
From the early
days of the revolution, the demands of the movement looked identical to the
principles outlined by Lenin and Trotsky for ensuring genuine workers’
democracy - a precursor to socialism. New leaders must be elected,
no trust in the old state; the people must be armed. Workers’ management and
decision-making through elected councils must be applied everywhere. No
privileges. Increased wages, pensions and family allowances.
Basic democratic demands for press freedom, academic freedom, freedom of
expression and assembly were accompanied by an insistence on the right for all
parties to stand in elections. Freedom from all forms of national oppression
meant, in this situation, the immediate and total withdrawal of Russian troops.
Everyone was
behind this programme. If there had been a party and leaders like the
Bolsheviks in
Kopaksi says in his book: “The Pongratz
bothers, young workers from the
The brave fighters
of the Hungarian revolution were not laying down their lives for the programme
of fascist counter-revolution! No commentator, even from bourgeois origins
could deny that the movement was unanimous in its socialist aims.
Bella Kovaks, leader of the Smallholders’ Party:
“No one must
dream of going back to the world of counts, bankers and capitalists: that world
is gone for ever”.
Anna Kethley, leader Social Democratic Party:
“Let us watch
over the factories, the mines and the land which must remain in the hands of
the people”.
Central
Workers’ Council of Greater
“We shall
defend our factories and our fatherland from capitalist and feudal restoration,
if necessary at the cost of our lives”.
Daily Worker
correspondent, Peter Fryer:
“This was no
counter-revolution, organised by fascists and reactionaries. It was the upsurge
of a whole people, in which rank and file communists took part, against a
police dictatorship dressed up as a socialist society … backed up by Soviet
armed might”.
Released from
the ‘Communists’’ vile prisons, even the reactionary Cardinal Mindszenty, in his broadcast of 3 November, insisted:
“We want a
classless society!”.
In a movement
against so-called communism, some of the dregs of society will come to the
surface. During the Hungarian workers’ uprising few outright
counter-revolutionaries dared to raise their heads. Anti-Semitism was
noticeably absent. Right-wing gangsters appearing on the streets would simply
be taken in by the workers’ militias.
The hated men and
women of the AVO faced the wrath of the people in whose name they had murdered
and maimed. Hundreds were kicked and beaten to death or shot in the streets.
Many hung from trees and lamp-posts head downwards to be spat at by the passing
crowds. Hundred-forint notes were pinned on their suits or stuffed in their
mouths. Even the famished and desperate people of
Money thrown into
boxes in the streets to help orphans and wounded combatants were also left
untouched. An unwritten revolutionary order reigned There was no looting. “Shop
windows were often shattered and yet the goods in these windows, jewellery and
even food, remained there for days”, Mikes writes. There were also no signs of
anti-Semitism.
A revolutionary
situation can seldom last for an extended period. It is like a pregnancy that
has reached its full term. Without the timely intervention of a skilful
midwife, in the form of a revolutionary party, it will end in disaster. Instead
of a new society coming into being, a tragedy ensues.
In the first days
of November 1956, the Kremlin bureaucracy, in league with Kádár,
was preparing a very bloody revenge. Nagy, feeling himself in mortal danger
fled to the Yugoslav embassy on November 3. Kádár had
disappeared on November 2, returning on November 4 as the head of a bogus
‘Revolutionary Workers’ and Peasants’ Government’. On that fateful day, the
valiant workers and youth of
These new fresh
forces were brought in from distant republics of the
The new tank
detachments were coming in equipped with no less than 6,000 guns and ample
supplies of phosphorous shells. Workers and youths, some in
their teens and younger, hurled Molotov cocktails to try and stop them in their
tracks. Barricades were thrown up and mown down. Thousands lost their
lives in the battles. Thousands more were injured. Workers’ districts, seen as
the most stubborn fortresses of resistance, were pounded by tank and aerial
bombardment. Every major city in
Another
nation-wide general strike was called, this time to be maintained, ‘until the
last Russian soldier leaves Hungarian soil’. The workers’ resistance was solid.
Their organisations were still developing but this was happening too late to
change the outcome of events. Still one week after the second invasion there
were workers’ councils everywhere. In places like Dunapentele
and ‘Red Csepel’, workers maintained their strikes
for another week. In the South, the
In the teeth of
the new repression, 500 delegates of the Budapest Workers’ Council met on 13
and 14 November, laying plans for a National Meeting of Workers’ Councils on 21
November. The Russian overlords switched from negotiating with the workers’
leaders to insinuating themselves into them in order to control them. Then they
resorted to brute force. They banned their activities and sent tanks to
surround the National Council’s meeting. From then on and into December,
prominent workers’ leaders were rounded up and imprisoned. Still, in defiance
of the new regime, strikes and go-slows in some workers’ strongholds continued
for more than a year.
The toll of
revolution and counter-revolution was grim. More than 30,000 were counted dead,
hundreds of thousands injured and homeless, 200,000 living as refugees in
Pal Maleter and Imre Nagy were
tricked out of the Yugoslav embassy, abducted and held in
About the second
invasion, often said to have been provoked by Nagy’s declaration of neutrality,
George Mikes writes: “It seems certain that the Russian decision to intervene
in Hungary for a second time was taken immediately after the news of Nagy’s
decision to abolish the one-party system had reached Moscow along with the
almost simultaneous news of Eden’s ultimatum to Nasser to withdraw from Sinai
or face invasion of the Suez Canal area. The declaration about
Most threatening
for the ‘Soviet’ bureaucracy was the possibility of the victory of the
political revolution in
Was this a real
possibility? Why did ‘The West’ not move in on the side of ‘democracy’ in
As the anniversary
of the momentous events has approached, many capitalist papers have carried
articles hypocritically grieving for the fact that the ‘Free World’ did not
intervene on the side of the struggle for democracy in
George W Bush, for
example, made a speech in
At a distance of
five decades, imperialism will aim to completely erase the class content of the
struggle – how close the workers of
Neither
imperialism, on the one side of
the Cold War divide, nor the Stalinist bureaucracy of the Soviet bloc on the
other had any desire for that revolution to succeed. In spite of confused
appeals for help, the ‘Free World’ turned its back on
the crisis and let events run their course. They condemned the brutal invasion
of the troops of the
If,
on the other hand, support for market capitalism and outright
counter-revolution had been stronger within the country, outside help or even
clandestine internal help would undoubtedly have been forthcoming.
One of the biggest
lies of the ‘Communist’ camp, the apologists for Stalinism, and even some
‘left’ intellectuals was that Hungary’s October had to be crushed by tanks to
protect the ‘workers’ state’ from reaction! There was no reaction to speak of.
There was no involvement of capitalist powers. The most significant elements of
a bureaucratically run workers’ state – state ownership and planning - were not
being challenged; only the actual bureaucratic and totalitarian management.
The invasion was
to protect the rule of the interests of the Kremlin bureaucracy, no less. Would
the workers’ state under the control of the working class have survived if the
second invasion had not happened? That is a question that brings us back to the
crucial role of the revolutionary party in carrying through the revolution – be
it political or social.
If a genuine
workers’ government had come to power, through the emergence at its head of a
genuine revolutionary party, a class appeal would have paralysed not only the
forces of the old state machine but those of the invading army as well. An
international appeal would have sparked similar developments throughout the
region. The idea of a European Federation of socialist states would have been
firmly on the agenda. Without the clear strategy and tactics of a revolutionary
leadership, the revolution could not have succeeded. A workers’ state of the
old, hideously, deformed kind that existed previously would be restored. And
this is what happened.
Nevertheless,
nothing in
The most immediate
effect outside
In
The crippling
effect on the CP’s finances was revealed recently in
a Times obituary for Reuben Falber, the “British
Communist who collected secret Soviet cash”. “Payments from
Those who stayed
in the party continued to justify the Kremlin’s tanks on the basis of the lie that the alternative was capitalism or even fascism.
(Trotsky’s biographer, Isaac Deutscher, as well as
Tito of Yugoslavia, justified the second invasion for similar reasons!) The
same excuse was given twelve years later for sending Russian troops against
Dubcek’s ‘reformist’ government in
Not all those who
left the CPs in disgust after the workers’ defeat in
The lie is still
peddled today that both ‘56 in
Even as the trade
union Solidarity developed in
As in other parts
of the Soviet Bloc the bureaucratic elites experimented with reforms, to save
the situation. Then they decided to abandon the state-owned planned economy. It
could no longer assure even the bureaucrats themselves the income and
life-style to which they had grown accustomed, let alone satisfy the needs of
the long-suffering working class.
In
Capitalism has
proved to be a hard school for the Hungarian working class. The heroes of 1956
have been proved right to have set their sites on state ownership and the plan
but without the bureaucrats. Now the harsh austerity programmes of the bosses
and their parties demand a revival of the legendary fighting capacity of the
Hungarian working class. The building of powerful workers’ organisations on the
basis of a programme of socialist change represents the best way to honour the
martyrs of ’56 and follow in the traditions of the fearless workers of Red Csepel and Ujpest, of
There
are a number of pictures and video of the above events on www.hungary1956.com