The Hungary rebelion

[The Hong Se Sun]

I've heard so many different opinions and accounts of what happened durring the rebellion in 1956 and I wanna know if you thought what happened was imperialism from the USSR etc. Ive heard that they were peasants funded by the CIA all the way to they were libertarian socialist who wanted real freedom. So, what is your take?

[Os Cangaceiros]

they were peasants funded by the CIA

LOL wut? The revolt started after demonstrating students were fired on by state authorities. It had nothing at all to do with peasants.


they were libertarian socialist who wanted real freedom.

I don't think that that's accurate, either.

[The Hong Se Sun]

I should point out that I don't believe these things, just that these are some of the things Ive heard about it.

[Svoboda]

I've heard so many different opinions and accounts of what happened durring the rebellion in 1956 and I wanna know if you thought what happened was imperialism from the USSR etc. Ive heard that they were peasants funded by the CIA all the way to they were libertarian socialist who wanted real freedom. So, what is your take?
It certainty was USSR imperialism, the USSR was just as bad as the US during the Cold War, and I don't know if it was libertarian socialist but I would say they were against the large amount of centralized authority that was labeled as communism in Hungary.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Petty liberal scum student demanding inane political rights, inspired by Western ideals, encouraged an attempted full-scale counter-revolution by various elements, reactionary and otherwise.

I once saw a television news-clip that had been broadcast in support of the Hungarian attempted-counter-revolution in 1956, which clearly showed some quite vile anti-communist and ardent nationalist militias of former army-men, cutting down flags to replace them with the old fascist-era ones.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Petty liberal scum student demanding inane political rights, inspired by Western ideals, encouraged an attempted full-scale counter-revolution by various elements, reactionary and otherwise.

LOL it's like I'm reading a CPGB newsletter from the 50's.


I once saw a television news-clip that had been broadcast in support of the Hungarian attempted-counter-revolution in 1956, which clearly showed some quite vile anti-communist and ardent nationalist militias of former army-men, cutting down flags to replace them with the old fascist-era ones.

Viewing the HR as just a "vile" counter-revolution by "petty" students (nice try, but there was a larger working class and anti-Stalinist communist contigent as well) is reductionist and a brilliant example of ideological hackery that Stalinists reveal when this subject gets brought up. Fact of the matter is that Soviet forces used brutal repression on the Hungarian people, the type of violence against peripheral satellites that has illicited great outrage in past cases of such conduct, for example the USA's shelling of Veracruz during the Mexican-American War, or a million other more recent examples. But violence is instantly justified when cloaked in the absolving flag of the USSR, of course.

[khad]

The fascists and fascist sympathizers using the moment as an opportunity is a documented fact. As too is the fact that the Soviet Union wasn't prepared to fight, with what, 30,000 troops? 2.5 million men were drawn up for the Berlin Operation, with 500,000 of those participating in the city assault. Zhukov himself was very sympathetic to the Hungarians and was pleading their case to the politburo.

But when you want to sell uranium to the west and won't back down, what do you think is gonna happen? My main lament is that they should have made more effort to avert the political crisis, probably with more conciliation on the less strategically important parts of the protesters' agenda. However, once it came to arms, the USSR needed to move with more decisive force to prevent unnecessary loss of life.

Partly because of this experience, the USSR made sure to get the whole Warsaw Pact involved in order to get the required manpower to deal with the Czech situation in '68, which was relatively bloodless.

[manic expression]

(nice try, but there was a larger working class and anti-Stalinist communist contigent as well)
But were they leading and defining, ideologically, the course of the rebellion? That's the real question.


is reductionist and a brilliant example of ideological hackery that Stalinists reveal when this subject gets brought up. Fact of the matter is that Soviet forces used brutal repression on the Hungarian people, the type of violence against peripheral satellites that has illicited great outrage in past cases of such conduct, for example the USA's shelling of Veracruz during the Mexican-American War, or a million other more recent examples. But violence is instantly justified when cloaked in the absolving flag of the USSR, of course.It's not justified by the flag but by the conditions at hand. The USSR pulled its troops out of the centers of Hungary and tried to negotiate with the Nagy government in place. That didn't work and only fanned the flames of reaction. The Nagy regime was either unable or unwilling to curb the atrocities carried out by the militias, who were hunting down and murdering socialists in the streets. Further, Nagy legalized capitalist parties and made overtures to the imperialists through his attempts to leave the Warsaw Pact (such aid was being promised by Radio "Free" Europe).

By the time the Warsaw Pact intervened, the militias were actively seeking material aid from the CIA, and imperialist plans were in place to fulfill these requests. We know this from internal CIA documents:

…the mentality of the revolutionaries shows that almost anyone from the West, of whatever nationality, color or purpose would have been received with open arms by any of the revolutionary councils in the cities of Hungary during the period in question.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB206/CSH_Hungarian_Revolution_Vol1.pdf (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB206/CSH_Hungarian_Revolution_Vol1.pdf)
(pages 83, 84, 85 and 86 are of interest, the quote comes from page 86)

[Jolly Red Giant]

The fascists and fascist sympathizers using the moment as an opportunity is a documented fact.
A typical bloody unreformed Stalinist trotting out the usual Stalinist propaganda, complete with the fake film-strips and documents. A regular occurrance - they used the same nonsense in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

[Uppercut]

they used the same nonsense in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Actually, many "Stalinists" don't even consider China to be socialist at that point, and I don't see many organizations actually supporting the Tiananment incident except for FRSO.

[Jolly Red Giant]

Actually, many "Stalinists" don't even consider China to be socialist at that point, and I don't see many organizations actually supporting the Tiananment incident except for FRSO.
Didn't stop them using the same excuses though - did it?

[khad]

A typical bloody unreformed Stalinist trotting out the usual Stalinist propaganda, complete with the fake film-strips and documents.
And do you deny that Hungary was a fascist state up until 1945?

Unless the socialist government started killing millions upon millions of formerly card-carrying fascists, you can bet your ass they were still around.

[vyborg]

A workers' revolution that led to a workers' central soviet in Budapest (the KMT) with impeccable leninist slogan and policy but too weak to counter the stalinist counter-revolution. Any attempt to describe this marvelous communist revolution as a CIA coup is a deliberate slander to any revolutionary of any time

[Tavarisch_Mike]

I dont hink that we can simplyfie the whole event into black and white, good and evil, its much more complexed than this. The uprising was started by students and gained many workers support, it was a uprising comming frame below no CIA here.
Hungary was still effected by be destruction of ww2 and the economy hadnt really catched up yet, wich ofcourse made the socialist goverment not so good looking.
People didnt like the centralization to Moscow either, so eventually the whole thing started, whats intresting is that during this time workers formed councils and militias of theire own, but as Khad said many reactionary elements, specially former memebers of the fascists (Arrow Cross Party) tried to use the situation to go back into power, in my opinion the Soviets should have let hungary be more independent after the war, but first they shouldnt had been so nice towards the fascists, to many where setted free, wich gave consequences that we can see today on the streets of Budapest.

[vyborg]

here (http://www.rev.hu/portal/page/portal/rev/aktualitasok) you find good document about the role of the revolutionary workers in the events.

The book of the head of police in Budapest at the time is also very good (In the name of the working class - S. Kopacsi)

[FSL]

Hungary was one of the countries that had a rather weak CP before its revolution. The CP gained around 20% of the votes, the socialdemocratic party another 20% and a peasants' party something like 10% (these three merged). The main party in the right was the smallholders party (not counting fascists) that, as most bourgeois parties generally do, did have its own "populist trend".

The annoying thing is that people say "Not everyone in Hungary was a murderous Stalinist!". Yes, not everyone was a Stalinist. But people who weren't, weren't libertarian socialists or true communists either. We are to believe that in 1956 Hungary there were no people with fascist sympathies, no dispossesed previous rulling class, no people with their way of thinking messed up by years of bourgeois propaganda. The most shining example of this last thing was thinking their country as being "subservient" to the Soviet Union and that it 'd better be independent. As in taking a neutral stance between capital and labor.

All in all, Hungary's 1956 and Czechoslovakia's 1968 were counter-revolutions. It might have been harder to reach that conclusion back then but if one is still unable to do so, after witnessing perestroika and glasnost, then that person is guilty of willful ignorance.

[The Author]

Another point to add to what others have already stated, there was also an attempt by the Western media to draw an analogy between what the Soviet Union did in Hungary in 1956 and what the Russians did to Hungary in 1848 to save the Habsburg monarchy and the reactionaries from losing control of their Hungarian possessions from the tide of revolution that had swept all over Europe. The Western media drew parallels as if what happened in 1956 was 100% a guaranteed revolution against the "Stalinist oppression." Even Khrushchev was forced to admit that the West painted the events as a repeat of 1848. When it most certainly was not.

[The Hong Se Sun]

Thanks for the input, keep it coming.

[Red Commissar]

There may've been some genuine demands made by some of the protesters there, but it isn't unreasonable to think that there were other forces waiting in the wings to capitalize on a period of instability to push their reactionary views.

Some groups have a tendency to romanticize these uprisings (Hungary and Czechoslovakia) by focusing on a specific person or a group of people's views, but ignore the presence of other groups who were waiting to capitalize on the situation.