BACKGROUND
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (also known as the Hungarian Uprising of 1956) was a nationwide revolt against the government of the People's Republic of Hungary and its Soviet-imposed policies. The revolt lasted from October 23 until November 10, 1956. Although leaderless when it first began, it was the first major threat to Soviet control since the USSR's forces drove out Nazi Germany from its territory at the end of World War II and broke into Central and Eastern Europe.
After World War II, the Soviet Army occupied Hungary, with the country coming under the Soviet Union's sphere of influence. 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 People's Party, which stood its candidate list unopposed in 1949. The People's 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.
POLITICAL REPRESSION AND ECONOMIC DECLINE
Hungary became a communist state under the severely authoritarian leadership of Mátyás Rákosi. Under Rakosi, the AVH began a series of purges, starting with the Communist Party to end dissent. From 1950 to 1952, the Security Police forcibly relocated thousands of people to obtain property and housing for the Working People's Party members. Thousands were arrested, tortured, tried, 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. Consequently, jobs and housing were very difficult to obtain. The deportees generally experienced terrible living conditions and were impressed into forced labor on collective farms where many died as a result of the poor living conditions and malnutrition.
The Rákosi government thoroughly politicized Hungary's educational system. It sought to supplant the educated classes with a "toiling intelligentsia." Russian language study and Communist political instruction were made mandatory in schools 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, Hungary's government was among the most repressive in Europe.
Although national income per capita rose in the first third of the 1950s, the standard of living fell. Mismanagement created chronic shortages in basic foodstuffs, which resulted 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 fueled discontent as foreign debt grew and the population experienced shortages of goods.
SOCIAL UNREST
On March 5, 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 as Prime Minister. However, Rákosi remained General Secretary of the Party, and was able to undermine most of Nagy's reforms. By April 1955, he had Nagy discredited and removed from office. After Khrushchev's "secret speech" of February 1956, which denounced Stalin and his protégés, Rákosi was deposed as General Secretary of the Party and replaced by Ernő Gerő in July 1956.
Rákosi's resignation 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 Petőfi circles, became very popular and attracted thousands of participants. On October 6, 1956, László Rajk, who had been executed by the Rákosi government, was reburied in a moving ceremony that strengthened the party opposition.
On October 16, 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 in Pécs, Miskolc, and Sopron followed suit. On October 22, students of the Technical University compiled a list of 16 points containing several national policy demands. When the students learned that the Hungarian Writers' Union planned to express solidarity with pro-reform movements active in Poland the following day by laying a wreath at the statue of Polish-born General Bem, a hero of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 (1848–49), they decided to organize a parallel demonstration of sympathy.
REVOLUTION
In the afternoon of October 23, 1956, approximately 20,000 protesters convened next to the statue of József Bem—a national hero of Poland and Hungary. Péter Veres, President of the Writers' Union, read a manifesto to the crowd, which included: The desire for Hungary to be independent from all foreign powers; a political system based on democratic socialism (land reform and public ownership of some businesses); Hungary joining the United Nations; and citizens of Hungary should have all the rights of free men. At 8:00 PM, First Secretary Ernő Gerő broadcast a speech condemning the writers' and students' demands. Angered by Gerő's hard-line rejection, some demonstrators decided to carry out one of their demands, the removal of Stalin's 30-foot-high (9.1 m) bronze statue that was erected in 1951 on the site of a church, which was demolished to make room for the monument.
During the night of October 23rd, Hungarian Working People's Party Secretary Ernő Gerő requested Soviet military intervention "to suppress a demonstration that was reaching an ever greater and unprecedented scale." The Soviet leadership had formulated contingency plans for intervention in Hungary several months before. By 2 a.m. on October 24th, under orders of the Soviet Defense Minister, Soviet tanks entered Budapest.
THE NEW GOVERNMENT
The rapid spread of the uprising in the streets of Budapest and the abrupt fall of the Gerő-Hegedüs government, left the new national leadership surprised, and, at first, disorganized. Nagy, a loyal Party reformer described as possessing "only modest political skills," initially appealed to the public for calm and a return to the old order.
On November 1, in a radio address to the Hungarian people, Nagy formally declared Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and Hungary's stance of neutrality. Because it held office only 10 days, the National Government had little chance to clarify its policies in detail. However, newspaper editorials at the time stressed that Hungary should be a neutral, multiparty, social democracy. Previously banned political parties reappeared to join the coalition.
SOVIET INTERVENTION
On November 1, Imre Nagy received reports that Soviet forces had entered Hungary from the east and were moving towards Budapest. This second Soviet intervention, codenamed "Operation Whirlwind," combined air strikes, artillery, and the coordinated tank-infantry action of 17 divisions. Fighting in Budapest consisted of between 10 and 15 thousand resistance fighters. The heaviest fighting occurred in the working-class stronghold of Csepel on the Danube River.
In the immediate aftermath, many thousands of Hungarians were arrested. Eventually, 26,000 of these were brought before Hungarian courts: 22,000 were sentenced, 13,000 imprisoned, and several hundred executed. Hundreds were also deported to the Soviet Union, many without evidence. Approximately 200,000 fled Hungary as refugees. Former Hungarian Foreign Minister Géza Jeszenszky estimated 350 were executed. Sporadic armed resistance and strikes by workers' councils continued until mid-1957, causing substantial economic disruption. By 1963, most political prisoners from the 1956 Hungarian revolution had been released.
A soviet armored car burns on a street in Budapest in November 1956. Photo by Házy Zsolt.
The November 1956 Soviet intervention in Budapest, codenamed "Operation Whirlwind," combined air strikes, artillery, and the coordinated tank-infantry action of 17 divisions.
U.S. RESPONSE
Although John Foster Dulles, the United States Secretary of State recommended on October 24 for the United Nations Security Council to convene to discuss the situation in Hungary, little immediate action was taken to introduce a resolution, in part because other world events unfolded the day after the peaceful interlude started, when allied collusion started the Suez Crisis. The problem was not that Suez distracted US attention from Hungary but that it made the condemnation of Soviet actions very difficult. As Vice President Richard Nixon later explained, "We couldn't on one hand, complain about the Soviets intervening in Hungary and, on the other hand, approve of the British and the French picking that particular time to intervene against [Gamel Abdel] Nasser."
The US response was reliant on the CIA to covertly effect change, with both covert agents and Radio Free Europe. However, their Hungarian operations collapsed rapidly and they could not locate any of the weapon caches hidden across Europe, nor be sure who they'd send arms too. By October 28, on the same night that the new Nagy government came to power, RFE was ramping up its broadcasts – encouraging armed struggle, advising on how to combat tanks and signing off with "Freedom or Death!" – on the orders of Frank Wisner. When Nagy did come to power, CIA director Allen Dulles advised the White House that Cardinal Mindszenty would be a better leader (due to Nagy's communist past); he had CIA radio broadcasts run propaganda against Nagy, calling him a traitor who'd invited Soviet troops in. Broadcasts continued to broadcast armed response while the CIA mistakenly believed that the Hungarian army was switching sides and the rebels were gaining arms.
Responding to the plea by Nagy at the time of the second massive Soviet intervention on November 4, the Security Council resolution critical of Soviet actions was vetoed by the Soviet Union. Instead, resolution 120 was adopted to pass the matter onto the General Assembly. The General Assembly, by a vote of 50 in favor, 8 against and 15 abstentions, called on the Soviet Union to end its Hungarian intervention, but the newly constituted Kádár government rejected UN observers.
Nixon addressing Hungarian refugees (1956)
Vice President Richard Nixon (center right, facing refugees) addresses Hungarian refugees, including author S.I. Horvath (center left, facing Nixon).