THE TRAGIC HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION OF 1956 (FIFTH RIVER CRUISE MISSIVE)

“October 23, 1956, is a day that will live forever in the annuals of free men and nations. It was a day of courage, conscience and triumph. No other day since history began has shown more clearly the eternal unquenchability of man’s desire to be free, whatever the odds against success, whatever the sacrifice required.”

                                                                  John F. Kennedy

“Hungary conquered and in chains has done more for freedom and justice than any people for twenty years. But for this lesson to get through and convince those in the West who shut their eyes and ears, it was necessary, and it can be no comfort to us, for the people of Hungary to shed so much blood which is already drying in our memories.”

                                                                  Albert Camus

Today, it is so rare for anyone to remember the momentous events of the Cold War. And, even more tragically, our young people are not taught (or are even required to study) those past occurrences which would make them appreciate the freedoms we enjoy.

I do not remember our beautiful guide (Nikki) for our walking and bus tour of the great city of Budapest, split in two halves by the Danube River, even once mentioning the revolution in 1956—the place where most of the fighting took place in the streets—an event that riveted the attention of the world.

Those sacrifices of blood and the lessons we learned from those chaotic times have been largely forgotten.

“Sigh.”

I was a pre-teen in January 1957, when the rock-and-roll icon Elvis Presley appeared on our black-and-white television (with the rabbit ears covered in tin foil) and I watched the Ed Sullivan Show where Elvis sang his legendary song “Peace in the Valley” in support of Hungarian refugees who were forced to leave the country after the Soviet Union brutally crushed the revolution.

I was thinking about that long-lost world when our bus drove through the streets of Budapest.

My early thoughts about the Hungarian revolution were shaped by one of James Michener’s early books, The Bridge at Andau (1957),[1] which chronicled the events in Hungary. To this day, this remains one of my favorite books. At the time, Michener was living in Vienna, Austria, and obtained much of his information about the tumultuous events wracking neighboring Hungary from refugees fleeing the Soviet crackdown. As a young reader, the book swept me to the streets of Budapest, where unarmed students, factory workers and poorly equipped Hungarian soldiers fought Soviet tanks.

Michener took the book’s title from the narrow bridge on the Austria-Hungary border—Brücke von Andau—near the Austrian village of Andau, across the small artificial river of Einserkanal. During the turmoil in Hungary, the small wooden bridge served as an escape route for some 70,000 Hungarians. These refugees walked along the so-called “Road to Freedom” (about 5.5 miles) to the village of Andau. The bridge was destroyed by Soviet troops in late November 1956. (in 1996, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the uprising, the bridge was rebuilt as a symbol of tolerance and helpfulness).

So, what happened?

On October 23, 1956, in Budapest, university students (snubbing the official communist student union) took over a radio station and asked the civil population to join them at the Hungarian Parliament building—very close to where our boat docked for our river cruise—to protest the loss of freedoms under the Stalinist puppet-government of Mátyás Rákosi.[2] The delegation of students broadcast sixteen demands for political and economic reforms to civil society. When the students left the radio station, they were detained by security guards. When another group of students gathered to demand the release of the students, several were shot by police from the ÁVH (State Protection Authority—secret police). Elsewhere a large crowd gathered at the statue of national hero General Józef Bem,[3] listened to a manifesto demanding Hungarian independence from all foreign powers and restoration of basic freedoms for citizens and sang a refrain from the Hungarian patriotic poem: “This we swear, this we swear, that we will no longer be slaves.” (The poem had been banned by the Soviet-controlled regime). 

(I cannot resist an aside here: remember a time when university student protests focused on things like government oppression and loss of freedoms rather than serving as tools of leftist extremists and paid provocateurs for street demonstrations in favor of terrorist thugs and murderers like Hamas? “Sigh.”)

Subsequently, Hungarians organized militias to fight the ÁVN, local soviets (council of workers), assumed control of municipal governments from the official Hungarian Working Peoples Party (Magyar Dolgozók Pártja), and established a new government under Imre Nagy,[4] who pledged to reestablish free elections, and withdraw Hungary from the Warsaw Pact. The students and crowds even demolished the Stalin Monument in Budapest (it had been erected five years earlier in place of a razed church).

But Nagy’s increasing concessions to appease the growing civic and nationalistic demands of the students, workers, military and populace was causing heartburn elsewhere.

In Moscow, the leadership of the U.S.S.R. (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—today’s Putin Russia is the stripped-down rump remainder) was growing increasingly nervous with Nagy’s reformist decrees and such acts as the public lynching of ÁVN officers in Republic Square. Nikita Khrushchev,[5] the former Ukrainian plumber and metal worker who had succeeded Joseph Stalin as First Secretary of the Communist Party, was originally inclined to go along with Nagy’s strategy as a way of defusing the tensions in the streets (to the point of beginning the withdrawal of Soviet forces and affirmed by a Pravda article).

By October 31, however, Khrushchev abruptly changed his mind. Scholars typically give five reasons for his about-face: Nagy’s increasing concessions, growing hardline opposition within his own party, Cold War geopolitical reverses in Egypt and the Middle East, restlessness of Communist leaders in the other Eastern European satellite Warsaw Pact allies, and concerns by Communist China.[6] Khrushchev became convinced—in Charles Gati’s words—that “Hungary did not want a longer leash; it wanted to be on no leash at all.” On November 2, Khrushchev traveled to Brioni to brief independent-minded Yugoslav leader Tito about the upcoming largescale intervention in Hungary (Tito agreed that Nagy had gone too far).

Two days later, “Operation Whirlwind” was launched and 60,000 Soviet troops with hundreds of tanks swarmed across the border. The force was led by Marshal Ivan Konev. The five Soviet divisions already stationed in Hungary swelled to seventeen divisions, which used combined air strikes, artillery and coordinated tanks and infantry operations. Within days, Budapest was completely encircled. The uprising lasted fifteen days before being crushed by Soviet tanks. Over 3,000 brave Hungarian patriots were killed—over half in the streets of Budapest—and the Soviets suffered over 700 killed (over 80 percent in the street fighting in Budapest). Over half of the Hungarian casualties were workers and over half of the dead were under the age of 30. Over 200,000 Hungarians fled the country. According to Pravda, the threat posed by fascist, Hitlerite, reactionary, and counter-revolutionary hooligans—financed, trained and equipped by the imperialist and capitalist West—had been suppressed.

Afterward thousands of Hungarians were arrested by the new pro-Soviet Kádár government: 26,000 were tried with 22,000 imprisoned, and over 200 were executed. The Hungarian Army—which refused to side with the Soviet forces—was purged and subjected to political indoctrination. By a treaty the next year, Hungary accepted the Soviet military presence on a permanent basis.

Today, we have largely forgotten the black-and-white photos of brave young people fighting Soviet tanks with Molotov cocktails. Nagy’s appeals to Washington, the U.N. and NATO went unheeded. One of the few reminders is the Time Magazine cover of a young Hungarian patriot as “Man of the Year” in 1956.

As a final note, it is impossible to understand the Hungarian Revolution without placing it in the context of the Cold War. The term is usually applied to the period after WW II until the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s (some put the dates at 1947-1990). Today it is hard for us to imagine the complicated strategy of the “bipolar world” where the U.S. and the Soviet Union competed at all points on the global stage for regional and global dominance. But for my generation—the baby boomers—it was an age of living under the constant threat of nuclear extinction, fallout shelters, civil defense sites, and school exercises to survive nuclear attacks.

As I used to teach my students, the term “Cold War” was first used by English writer George Orwell in the essay “You and the Atomic Bomb” which appeared in the British paper Tribune on 19 Oct 1945 and again in early March 1946 when he said the Soviet Union was beginning a “cold war” against Britain and its empire. A Democratic Party speechwriter injected the term into modern political jargon in mid-April 1947 by American financier Bernard Baruch. It was subsequently the title of an influential book by newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann. Others point to a speech by Winston Churchill in 1946, delivered in Fulton, Missouri, calling for an Anglo-American alliance against the Soviets, who he accused of establishing an iron curtain from the Baltic to the Adriatic.  Indeed, Stalin—the only one of the “big three” major leaders who survived World War II in office—knew if elections were held in the countries occupied by the “Red” armies after the war (including Hungary), the vote result would oust Communist leaders and be anti-USSR.

So why is it called the “Cold War”? Primarily because there was no “hot” war or large-scale fighting between the two superpowers (the US and its NATO allies, and the USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries). Although there were no major regional wars during the Cold War, there were what most historians now call proxy wars: a Greek civil war (1947)[7]; the Korean War (1950-53)—think Mash; the Vietnam War (1955-1975)—my war —(among nearly 60,000 US war deaths was my college roommate, James “Alfie” Lakins); and, finally, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979—1988). This last proxy war  pitted Soviet forces (originally to prop-up a pro-Soviet regime in Kabul) against Muslim forces called the Mujahideen (“holy warriors”), funded among others by Osama bin Laden—the son of Saudi Arabia’s richest construction magnate and future mastermind of the 9/11 terror attacks in the US.[8] It is worth noting that this last proxy war was an important factor in the break-up and subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, which led, in turn, to the independence movements in Eastern Europe—including Hungary—and the reunification of Germany.

Sorry for the history lesson.

But the “Cold War” fear that any sort of active intervention by Washington on behalf of the brave Hungarian freedom fighters could lead to a nuclear confrontation explains, in large part, why the U.S. was so reluctant to become involved.

In case you were wondering.

[This missive is dedicated to the memory of my good friend and former pastor, Jerry Dotson, who died last week following a massive hear attack. We will miss you.]

[1] Michener, James A., The Bridge at Andau, (reissue ed.), NY: Fawcett, 1985.

[2] Rákosi (born Mátyás Rosenfeld), 1892-1971) was a seasoned Hungarian communist leader who was—for all intents and purposes—authoritarian leader of Hungary from 1947 to 1956; known for massive imprisonments, show trials, ruinous collectivization policies,  After 1956, lived in exile in U.S.S.R. because Hungarian government refused to allow his return (feared mass uprisings), and ashes after death returned to Hungary in secret. Buried in Budapest cemetery..

[3] Bem, (1794-1850), is an interesting figure: he was a Polish engineer and general, regarded as a hero to the Poles, Hungarians, and Ottoman Turks (he converted to Islam later in life); a true soldier-of-fortune.

[4] Nagy (1896-1958), was a Hungarian Communist politician who was ousted by Rákosi and later leader during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. He was ousted after the Soviet invasion and hanged in Budapest.

[5] Krushchev (1984-1971), was First Secretary from 1953 to 1964 and Premier from 1958-1964. He is best known for his campaign of de-Stalinization, the invasion of Hungary, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Sputnik, the split with China, the Suez Crisis, pounding his shoe on a desk at the U.N..,,and the U-2 Incident (among other things)

[6] See, among many others, Sharkey, Aaron, “’Operation Whirlwind’: Explaining the 1956 Soviet Invasion of Hungary,” thevieweast.wordpress.com, Jun 25, 2012.

[7] That same year, President Truman announces policy of containment, the so-called Truman Doctrine, and the economic prong of that policy was the enactment of the “Marshal Plan” (generous economic assistance plan; from 1947-1952 over $13 billion pumped into war-torn Europe); at the same time the US security and intelligence organizations were reconfigured under the National Security Act of 1947 to help our country fight Communism.

[8] These “holy warriors” responded to calls for the faithful to wage jihad (holy war) against the Russian infidels. A charismatic Palestinian cleric, former guerrilla fighter and mystic named Abdullah Azzam provided the ideological basis for the Mujahideen cause and is often called the “Father of Global Jihad.” (Azzam was a Palestinian cleric, born in 1941 and died in a car bomb blast in late November 1989 in Peshawar, Pakistan. He studied theology at the University of Damascus and was a founding member of al-Qai’da. He was mentor and teacher to UBL and left a legacy of militant ideology (along with his paramilitary manuals); left a publishing house, and Internet sites (shut down after 9/11).  One of his many quotes: “one hour in the path of jihad is worth more than 70 years of praying at home.” Azzam issued a fatwa that electrified Islamists everywhere. In his book, Defense of Muslim Lands, 1979, where he argued that jihad in Afghanistan was obligatory for every able-bodied Muslim (even taking precedence over the Palestinian struggle against Israel).  Azzam draws a distinction between a fard ayn and a fard kifaya (a duty of the community). A fard ayn is an individual religious obligation that falls upon all Muslims (like praying and fasting). If nonbelievers invade a Muslim land, it is thus a fard ayn—a compulsory duty—for the local Muslims to expel them; if they fail, then the duty falls to neighboring Muslim and so on until, if necessary, it becomes fard ayn upon the whole world.  A child does not need permission from the parents to go, nor even a woman from her husband, to join the jihad against the invader. Thus Azzam argues that the jihad against the Soviets is the duty of each Muslim individually, as well as the entire Muslim people, and that all are in sin until the invader is repelled.)