Hungarian Revolution 1956 [Archive]

Ismail

16th April 2010, 17:48

I'd call it more of an uprising.

But basically, Marxist-Leninist views include:
http://www.kibristasosyalistgercek.net/misc/Aptheker-Truth_About_Hungary_1957.pdf (http://www.kibristasosyalistgercek.net/misc/Aptheker-Truth_About_Hungary_1957.pdf) (pro-Soviet view of events, basically a "everyone was a fascist" narrative, but still good backstory on the Hungarian situation before 1956, and notes on US involvement)
Also of note (on anti-semitism): http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/furrlethal84.pdf (PDF pages 3-5)

Enver Hoxha on Hungary in 1968 (once again relying on the "everyone was a fascist" narrative, but still correct in-re Soviet social-imperialism):

1. The Hungarian counter-revolution was initiated by some intellectuals and students. These wavering strata, deprived of the influence of a genuine Marxist-Leninist party, became reserves and squalds of the counter-revolutionary attack under the direction of the bourgeoisie. The Hungarian writers were in the van of this counter-revolution.

2. The Hungarian working class in general and that of Budapest in particular, despite the revolutionary traditions inherited from the 1919 proletarian revolution, was unable to defend its power and gains. On the contrary, a considerable part of the working class, especially in Budapest, was activated in favour of the counter-revolutionaries. It became therefore a reserve of reaction. This means, in other words, that the work of Rakosi's party was not well grounded, it was superficial. The working class did not fully recognize it as their leader. This was the greatest and most dangerous evil.

3. The counter-revolution entirely liquidated Rakosi's party within a few days, while counterrevolutionary Janos Kadar promulgated the decree for its official dissolution.

4. During the few days of counter-revolution in Hungary many bourgeois, capitalist and fascist parties immediately sprang up like mushrooms after rain. Thus, the Hungarian counter-revolution was suppressed by means of Soviet tanks, a thing which can no longer be repeated. The same traitor who liquidated the party, under the dictate of the Khrushchevite revisionists, promulgated the other decree for the re-founding of the new allegedly "Marxist-Leninist" party, the Hungarian revisionist party, a still worse one than that of Rakosi.

The Hungarian counter-revolution was suppressed by counter-revolutionaries. Thus, both wings of the putsch were bound to come together, as they did. They would build up their own "Hungary", as they did build it. They would restore capitalism, as they are restoring it. Drawing lessons from the bloodshed and, after having paid a bloody ransom for its hasty actions, Hungarian reaction is now carrying out at leisure its reforms of radical capitalist transformation independently, and without any trouble from the Soviet forces and tanks which remain on Hungarian territory. The Hungarian bourgeoisie is, so to speak, going about its business, this time under the protection of the Khrushchev tanks. The Hungarian capitalist bourgeoisie, hostile to the working class, disguised under the "banner of the party", is lulling the working class to sleep while forging new chains for it. The capitalist bourgeoisie has as its vanguard the old and new revisionist intelligentsia in complete identity of views and unity of action.But it was basically a situation wherein workers were discontented with how the government was running things. The "fighting" forces on one side were composed of the Hungarian State led first by market-"socialist" liberal revisionist Imre Nagy and then by pro-Soviet revisionist János Kádár. On the other side were disgruntled workers, whose ideologies were as diverse as anti-revisionism and syndicalist-like thinking on one side, and anti-communist conservatism and even fascist-like tendencies (extreme nationalism, anti-semitism, etc.) on the other. With no party to lead the workers, and with the US inciting reactionaries to rebel,* the pro-Soviet Hungarian revisionists were able to note the significant elements of reaction among the anti-government protests and were able to rally enough of the people to the side of the government to suppress the rebellion with Soviet tanks.

All in all, a pretty lame situation, and interesting experiments in workers control in some factories can't really change the fact of the objective developments going on at that point.

"No more than 15,000 including all political shades from reform socialist (the majority) to fascists, out of a total population of almost ten million." (Progressive Labor Party, citing the work Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt)

The PLP analysis is good:

The revolt began as a protest from the Left against a revisionist (= phony communist) Party and leadership. But, heavily influenced by nationalism from the beginning, the rebels’ politics rapidly moved to the Right.
No leadership ever developed that opposed any of the following:

Nagy’s rapid move to the right, towards accommodation with capitalist parties and NATO imperialists;
the lynchings of communists;
anti-semitic attacks against Jews.

In addition,

There were no appeals to proletarian internationalism – nationalism, not internationalism, was the ideology that united all the rebels.
There were no attacks on the inequalities of revisionist Hungarian – and Soviet – socialism

[...]

Building a base for communist politics in Hungary would have been a hard job -- as it always is, anywhere! Right-wing capitalists, aristocrats, and Fascists had ruled Hungary for decades. These forces still had a following. But they were heavily discredited by losing the war, and causing the deaths of so many Hungarian soldiers and civilians... the youthful worker and student rebels of 1956 wanted, not capitalism, but a better form of socialism.

So the chance was there. But The Hungarian Workers Party (real name of the Communist Party) blew it. It had never made a revolution. It was put into power by the Soviet Union. It modeled itself on, and was a right-wing caricature of, the Soviet Communist Party. It "built a base" by offering privileges, and repressing those who disagreed with it.

The future of the working class lay not with the Soviet and Hungarian CPs, and still less with the "West", who did not care at all for Hungarian workers (except as they could make good anti-communist propaganda by lying about the Hungarian "Revolution", as they call it)David Irving's 1981 book Uprising! (http://www.fpp.co.uk/books/Uprising/) is fairly good for showing the extent of anti-semitism in Hungary, how Communism became associated with "the Jews," and the extent of anti-semitism in the uprising. (This does not, of course, excuse the fact that Irving is a reactionary anti-semite and anti-communist himself—he heaps praise upon the uprising, but he does cite his sources—he was given access to CIA and Hungarian documents back when he was still seen as a legitimate historian)

* William Blum, Killing Hope, pp. 58-59: "But the Agency did send its agents in Budapest into action to join the rebels and help organize them. In the meantime, RFE [Radio Free Europe] was exhorting the Hungarian people to continue their resistance, offering tactical advice, and implying that American military assistance was on the way. It never came." The source cited by Blum is Stephen Ambrose, Ike's Spies (Doubleday & Co., New York, 1981) pp. 235, 238.