Hungarian Revolution

[Leftsolidarity]

I want to learn about it and the different view points on it.

I felt pretty sympathetic while reading the Wikipedia page and then came across the list of demands and I felt less and less sympathetic as I continued reading.

It seems as if they wanted a full restoration of capitalism. Or am I wrong?

Their demands:


On October 23, 1956, a group of Hungarian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungary) students compiled a list of sixteen points containing key national policy demands. [1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demands_of_Hungarian_Revolutionaries_of_1956#cite_ note-sixteen-0) Following an anti-Soviet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USSR) protest march through the Hungarian capital of Budapest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest), the students attempted to enter the city's main broadcasting station to read their demands on the air. The students were detained, and when people gathered outside the broadcasting station to call for their release, the state security police fired on the unarmed crowd, setting off the 1956 Hungarian Revolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956).

We demand the immediate evacuation of all Soviet troops, in conformity with the provisions of the Peace Treaty.
We demand the election by secret ballot of all Party members from top to bottom, and of new officers for the lower, middle and upper echelons of the Hungarian Workers Party. These officers shall convene a Party Congress as early as possible in order to elect a Central Committee.
A new Government must be constituted under the direction of Imre Nagy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Nagy): all criminal leaders of the Stalin-Rákosi era must be immediately dismissed.
We demand public enquiry into the criminal activities of Mihály Farkas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mih%C3%A1ly_Farkas) and his accomplices. Mátyás Rákosi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A1ty%C3%A1s_R%C3%A1kosi), who is the person most responsible for crimes of the recent past as well as for our country’s ruin, must be returned to Hungary for trial before a people’s tribunal.
We demand general elections by universal, secret ballot are held throughout the country to elect a new National Assembly, with all political parties participating. We demand that the right of workers to strike be recognised.
We demand revision and re-adjustment of Hungarian-Soviet and Hungarian-Yugoslav relations in the fields of politics, economics and cultural affairs, on a basis of complete political and economic equality, and of non-interference in the internal affairs of one by the other.
We demand the complete reorganisation of Hungary’s economic life under the direction of specialists. The entire economic system, based on a system of planning, must be re-examined in the light of conditions in Hungary and in the vital interest of the Hungarian people.
Our foreign trade agreements and the exact total of reparations that can never be paid must be made public. We demand to be precisely informed of the uranium deposits in our country, on their exploitation and on the concessions to the Russians in this area. We demand that Hungary have the right to sell her uranium freely at world market prices to obtain hard currency.
We demand complete revision of the norms operating in industry and an immediate and radical adjustment of salaries in accordance with the just requirements of workers and intellectuals. We demand a minimum living wage for workers.
We demand that the system of distribution be organised on a new basis and that agricultural products be utilised in rational manner. We demand equality of treatment for individual farms.
We demand reviews by independent tribunals of all political and economic trials as well as the release and rehabilitation of the innocent. We demand the immediate repatriation of prisoners of war (World War II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II)) and of civilian deportees to the Soviet Union, including prisoners sentenced outside Hungary.
We demand complete recognition of freedom of opinion and of expression, of freedom of the press and of radio, as well as the creation of a daily newspaper for the MEFESZ Organisation (Hungarian Federation of University and College Students’ Associations).
We demand that the statue of Stalin, symbol of Stalinist tyranny and political oppression, be removed as quickly as possible and be replaced by a monument in memory of the martyred freedom fighters of 1848-49.
We demand the replacement of emblems foreign to the Hungarian people by the old Hungarian arms of Kossuth. We demand new uniforms for the Army which conform to our national traditions. We demand that March 15th be declared a national holiday and that the October 6th be a day of national mourning on which schools will be closed.
The students of the Technological University of Budapest declare unanimously their solidarity with the workers and students of Warsaw and Poland in their movement towards national independence.
The students of the Technological University of Budapest will organise as rapidly as possible local branches of MEFESZ, and they have decided to convene at Budapest, on Saturday October 27, a Youth Parliament at which all the nation’s youth shall be represented by their delegates.

[Blake's Baby]

I don't see anything about changing the nature of property ownership there, perhaps I'm missing something. Of course, what I think they had was capitalism anyway; it's just that now they want Hungarians to set the plans, not Russians.

There was certainly a nationalist element to it all though, the stuff about 'national traditions' and 'the Arms of Kossuth' and whatnot. But if the people you see as your oppressors are wrapped in red flags, what are you going to wrap yourself in?

[Leftsolidarity]

Anyone else?

[Tim Finnegan]

Setting aside the content of the demand themselves, why do you assume that the people who drafted them spoke on behalf of everybody in Hungary who was critical of the Stalinist regime?

[Leftsolidarity]

Setting aside the content of the demand themselves, why do you assume that the people who drafted them spoke on behalf of everybody in Hungary who was critical of the Stalinist regime?

I'm just openning this up for discussion. I know very little about what happened in Hungary.

But it does seem as though people rallied behind these demands.

[Ocean Seal]

I'm interested in what Enver Hoxha had to say on this subject. As blake's said it really seemed to have quite a nationalistic character which might have been brought upon by the reparations that the SU forced on the Hungarian people.

[Ismail]

I'm interested in what Enver Hoxha had to say on this subject. As blake's said it really seemed to have quite a nationalistic character which might have been brought upon by the reparations that the SU forced on the Hungarian people.http://marx2mao.com/Other/WCRC68.html

He also spoke of it at greater length in The Khrushchevites. See: http://enver-hoxha.net/librat_pdf/english/theKhrushchevites/9.the-demons-escape_from_control.pdf

Anyway, here's the main "Stalinist" book published in the USA on the Hungarian uprising: http://espressostalinist.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/the-truth-about-hungary.pdf

To quote an old post of mine:

"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.

[Jolly Red Giant]

I would suggest having a read of -

'In the name of the working class' by Sándor Kopásci

[Nox]

It was already a capitalist country when under Soviet control.

[Leftsolidarity]

It was already a capitalist country when under Soviet control.

Ok, that's not really the point of this thread.

It's about whether the "revolution" should have been crushed and what the goals of the people were.

[Mass Grave Aesthetics]

Most of these demands were quite fair and understandable, even though they were no communist program. I´m especially sympathetic to nr. 9 and the last sentence in nr. 5. I think it was definitely no "counter- revolution", the soviet intervention was the real counter- revolution.

[Tim Finnegan]

It's about whether the "revolution" should have been crushed...
I'm sorry, what?

[gorillafuck]

I'm not quite sure what you want people to talk about, but I don't see anything in those demands about altering the ownership property, if that helps you figure out what you're trying to figure out.

[Leftsolidarity]

I'm sorry, what?

What don't you understand?

----

I want to hear the arguments behind pro-Soviet intervention and from anti-Soviet intervention. I don't want to hear about how some people think it was "state capitalism" or "degenerated workers' state" or whatever. I don't want this to be theory but instead on the history and why people took different sides.

[Blake's Baby]

You can't seperate the two.

On the one hand you have people who think that the Hungarian Rising was a rebellion against the evils of Stalinism - confused and contradictory perhaps, but essentially a working-class response to state oppression, which was (as social movements like this often are) taken over (or seen to be taken over) by a more pro-western, pro-market layer that became the 'spokespeople'.

On the other hand you have people who think this was a CIA-backed attempt to destabilise the Eastern Bloc, a 'populist' rising on a totally bourgeois terrain, animated by the western powers and suckering some dissaffected people and criminals in an attempt to overthrow a 'socialist' (or whatever Hungary was supposed to be) state.

Those are political positions, based on theoretical understandings. How can we understand history otherwise? It's not just neutral 'stuff' that happens. We undertand it through the prism of political theory, because we accept that people have motivations and that actions have consequences.

[Tim Finnegan]

What don't you understand?
Asking whether the revolution "should" have been crushed implies that it is possible for us, as leftists, to support violent the military repression of the working class- even f only incidentally, before anyone starts with the CIA conspiracy stuff- and that the question is merely whether we support it in this particular case. And that threw me just a little.

[Ismail]

Asking whether the revolution "should" have been crushed implies that it is possible for us, as leftists, to support violent the military repression of the working classWell obviously this question isn't exclusive to Hungary. People make the same claims in-re Kronstadt as well.

[Leftsolidarity]

Asking whether the revolution "should" have been crushed implies that it is possible for us, as leftists, to support violent the military repression of the working class- even f only incidentally, before anyone starts with the CIA conspiracy stuff- and that the question is merely whether we support it in this particular case. And that threw me just a little.

Not exactly. Just because there is an uprising in a particular location doesn't mean that we should support it or not take steps against it.

Libya is a good example. The state there was particularly perfect and definately had its problems but the uprising against it was one backed and control by the Imperialist powers so we (I use "we" loosely) opposed it.

----

@Blake-

That's the kind of thing I was looking for. I wanted it laid out like that. Not a debate over whether we liked the Hungarian model at the time.

[Tim Finnegan]

Not exactly. Just because there is an uprising in a particular location doesn't mean that we should support it or not take steps against it.
You're shifting the goalposts. Your original comment wasn't about whether the Hungarian uprising should or should not have been supported by contemporary leftists, but whether they should have supported its violent repression by the Soviets. That is a very different question.

[Omsk]

A much bigger problem and a question is: "How did someone like Imre Nagy get to that position?" (With the rest of his colleagues.)

[Leftsolidarity]

You're shifting the goalposts. Your original comment wasn't about whether the Hungarian uprising should or should not have been supported by contemporary leftists, but whether they should have supported its violent repression by the Soviets. That is a very different question.

That's what I'm still talking about. Sorry if it wasn't clear.

[Leo]

A recommended article on Hungary 56. (http://en.internationalism.org/ir/127/hungary-1956)

[Tim Finnegan]

That's what I'm still talking about. Sorry if it wasn't clear.
Right, and what I'm asking is why you think that leftists should ever support the violent suppression of the working class. We may not support any given uprising, but that doesn't imply that we must correspondingly endorse anti-worker violence that emerges as part of state counter-insurgency. (That would suggests that leftcoms and anarchists, because they did not support the Viet Cong, should be expected to cheer on the American bombers!)

[Blake's Baby]

1 - 'some people' think Left Comms do cheer American bombers;
2 - 'some people' think that it's quite right to suppress uprisings like the Hungarian Uprising, as they're CIA plots, obviously, because how/why would the workers rebel against the rule of the Communist Party (or its Eastern European analogues)?

Hmmm. 'Some people', hey?

[Leftsolidarity]

Right, and what I'm asking is why you think that leftists should ever support the violent suppression of the working class. We may not support any given uprising, but that doesn't imply that we must correspondingly endorse anti-worker violence that emerges as part of state counter-insurgency. (That would suggests that leftcoms and anarchists, because they did not support the Viet Cong, should be expected to cheer on the American bombers!)

Well, this is another reason why I'm asking for stances on this.

A question would be whether this actually was a genuine working class rebellion. Like I said, I do not know much about this.

[Tim Finnegan]

I'm not saying that you think we should support the violent suppression of the working class, I'm asking why you think it is conceivable that we might.

[Leftsolidarity]

I'm not saying that you think we should support the violent suppression of the working class, I'm asking why you think it is conceivable that we might.

Not saying I support this stance, just throwing out what someone could try to say:

If some sections working class is dooped into fighting for the bourgeoisie or against the overall working class interests we should still fight it.

Example: Imperialist soldiers and the police are members of the working class but they take on the social role of upholding the bourgeoisie so we fight against them.

[Tim Finnegan]

Are you really naive enough to believe that the Soviet repressions were aimed purely at those members of the working class who had aligned themselves with the bourgeoisie? That they would have allowed an independent soviet to form in Budapest if they had been able to demonstrate their authentically proletarian credentials? That any worker could have walked up to a soviet tank and just hopped in, unopposed by Russian soldiers, if he could make it clear to them that he had not the slightest interest in Hungarian nationalism or private property?

[Leftsolidarity]

Are you really naive enough to believe that the Soviet repressions were aimed purely at those members of the working class who had aligned themselves with the bourgeoisie? That they would have allowed an independent soviet to form in Budapest if they had been able to demonstrate their authentically proletarian credentials? That any worker could have walked up to a soviet tank and just hopped in, unopposed by Russian soldiers, if he could make it clear to them that he had not the slightest interest in Hungarian nationalism or private property?

Yo, I don't know shit about this subject. Lay off me a bit and help me learn.

[Omsk]

What do you want to know?The Hungarian counter-revolution is a complicated subject.

[Tim Finnegan]

How can it be a counter-revolution when there was no revolution for it to counter?

[Omsk]

Of course there wasn't any kind of a revolution,as the Hungarian revisionists were one of the leading ones.One of the main problems with the Hungarian "revolution" is all the dirt that followed it,and those who carried it out.Nothing positive about it,whatsoever.

[Leftsolidarity]

What do you want to know?The Hungarian counter-revolution is a complicated subject.

Something I would like to know is why you call it a counter-revolution

[Ismail]

Something I would like to know is why you call it a counter-revolutionBecause, much like Kronstadt, whatever demands the workers who participated had (and I specifically mean those few who actually did support communism), they were much less of a force than reactionaries who were either in opposition to the anti-feudal reforms which had been carried out or simply opposed to communism in any case. It isn't a mystery that Imre Nagy's government included social-democrats (from the formerly prohibited party) and other open anti-communists.

It's also undeniable that there were brutal attacks against Party members and other functionaries. Unless Mao's Cultural Revolution appeals to you, I don't think hunting people down and murdering them in mobs is a good form of class struggle.

[honest john's firing squad]

holy shit make up your fucking mind omsk. was it a revolution or a counter-revolution?

[Omsk]

Something I would like to know is why you call it a counter-revolution

I used it in a 'mocking' way,because it was an event led by reformists,defended by right-wingers and full of nationalist,reactionary,anti-socialist and anti-communist rhetorics and acts.Don't listen to the romantic tales of the 'uprising' and 'heroism' - read about how Red Stars were removed,and how communist literature was burned or how the bandit groups of the likes of József Dudás rounded up and massacred communists or completely innocent people.Read how they rallied under nationalist monuments,sung nationalist songs,and promoted the Hungarian national flag. Or how they demanded that various reactionaries had to be released from the prisons they were in. Or how they basically fought for a social-democratic hungary and a bourgeois multi-party system.


holy shit make up your fucking mind omsk. was it a revolution or a counter-revolution?


It was a right-wing insurrection of a huge scale,led by anti-communist and non-communists.(Hence the events which i mentioned in the lines above.)

[Tim Finnegan]

I used it in a 'mocking' way,because it was an event led by reformists,defended by right-wingers and full of nationalist,reactionary,anti-socialist and anti-communist rhetorics and acts.
As opposed to the Soviet-backed regime, which mumble mumble mumble big pictures of Stalin everywhere.

[Omsk]

As opposed to the Soviet-backed regime, which mumble mumble mumble big pictures of Stalin everywhere.


The Soviet backed regime of Erno Gero (The regime that was caught up by the insurrection.),was by no means in support of Stalin,in fact, Mátyás Rákosi which was not anti-Stalin was replaced by Erno Gero (ie he was removed by the Soviet Politburo under N.S. ) and sent to the Kirgiz Soviet Socialist Republic,in the USSR,in hopes to remove him from the political events in Hungary. So the Hungarian regime of the 56 events was not in support of Stalin,but was in fact,going toward the Khrushchev line.

But,that's not relevant,because the problem is mainly with the 'revolutionaries'.

The Hungarian events of '56 are really not something that should be praised,although it seems some people will support anyone who topples a large figure of Stalin.

[ridethejetski]

so soviets invade a country to stop capitalism and reactionary forces triumphing, only to put in charge someone like Kadar who pretty much dismantled state planning and turned Hungary into a sort of market economy with massive debt. cool. :bored:

[A Marxist Historian]

I want to learn about it and the different view points on it.

I felt pretty sympathetic while reading the Wikipedia page and then came across the list of demands and I felt less and less sympathetic as I continued reading.

It seems as if they wanted a full restoration of capitalism. Or am I wrong?

Their demands:



On October 23, 1956, a group of Hungarian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungary) students compiled a list of sixteen points containing key national policy demands. [1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demands_of_Hungarian_Revolutionaries_of_1956#cite_ note-sixteen-0) Following an anti-Soviet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USSR) protest march through the Hungarian capital of Budapest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest), the students attempted to enter the city's main broadcasting station to read their demands on the air. The students were detained, and when people gathered outside the broadcasting station to call for their release, the state security police fired on the unarmed crowd, setting off the 1956 Hungarian Revolution (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956).
We demand the immediate evacuation of all Soviet troops, in conformity with the provisions of the Peace Treaty.
We demand the election by secret ballot of all Party members from top to bottom, and of new officers for the lower, middle and upper echelons of the Hungarian Workers Party. These officers shall convene a Party Congress as early as possible in order to elect a Central Committee.
A new Government must be constituted under the direction of Imre Nagy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Nagy): all criminal leaders of the Stalin-Rákosi era must be immediately dismissed.
We demand public enquiry into the criminal activities of Mihály Farkas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mih%C3%A1ly_Farkas) and his accomplices. Mátyás Rákosi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A1ty%C3%A1s_R%C3%A1kosi), who is the person most responsible for crimes of the recent past as well as for our country’s ruin, must be returned to Hungary for trial before a people’s tribunal.
We demand general elections by universal, secret ballot are held throughout the country to elect a new National Assembly, with all political parties participating. We demand that the right of workers to strike be recognised.
We demand revision and re-adjustment of Hungarian-Soviet and Hungarian-Yugoslav relations in the fields of politics, economics and cultural affairs, on a basis of complete political and economic equality, and of non-interference in the internal affairs of one by the other.
We demand the complete reorganisation of Hungary’s economic life under the direction of specialists. The entire economic system, based on a system of planning, must be re-examined in the light of conditions in Hungary and in the vital interest of the Hungarian people.
Our foreign trade agreements and the exact total of reparations that can never be paid must be made public. We demand to be precisely informed of the uranium deposits in our country, on their exploitation and on the concessions to the Russians in this area. We demand that Hungary have the right to sell her uranium freely at world market prices to obtain hard currency.
We demand complete revision of the norms operating in industry and an immediate and radical adjustment of salaries in accordance with the just requirements of workers and intellectuals. We demand a minimum living wage for workers.
We demand that the system of distribution be organised on a new basis and that agricultural products be utilised in rational manner. We demand equality of treatment for individual farms.
We demand reviews by independent tribunals of all political and economic trials as well as the release and rehabilitation of the innocent. We demand the immediate repatriation of prisoners of war (World War II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II)) and of civilian deportees to the Soviet Union, including prisoners sentenced outside Hungary.
We demand complete recognition of freedom of opinion and of expression, of freedom of the press and of radio, as well as the creation of a daily newspaper for the MEFESZ Organisation (Hungarian Federation of University and College Students’ Associations).
We demand that the statue of Stalin, symbol of Stalinist tyranny and political oppression, be removed as quickly as possible and be replaced by a monument in memory of the martyred freedom fighters of 1848-49.
We demand the replacement of emblems foreign to the Hungarian people by the old Hungarian arms of Kossuth. We demand new uniforms for the Army which conform to our national traditions. We demand that March 15th be declared a national holiday and that the October 6th be a day of national mourning on which schools will be closed.
The students of the Technological University of Budapest declare unanimously their solidarity with the workers and students of Warsaw and Poland in their movement towards national independence.
The students of the Technological University of Budapest will organise as rapidly as possible local branches of MEFESZ, and they have decided to convene at Budapest, on Saturday October 27, a Youth Parliament at which all the nation’s youth shall be represented by their delegates.


You're quite wrong. Imre Nagy was after all the leader of the Hungarian Communist Party, not some sort of Lech Walesa or something.

The demnands of the students are ambiguous, but this wasn't a student revolution, but a workers revolution. Workers councils, Soviets, were formed, and ran the country during the Hungarian Revolution, until Khrushchev sent his tanks in to smash the revolution.

Yes, the revolutionaries wanted to knock down statues of Stalin, this was a revolution against Stalinism. And it had some nationalist features. But the basic concept wasn't bringing back capitallism, as in Eastern Europe at the end of the '80s. It was bringing back Leninism.

Probably, the model that the workers leaders looked to more than any other was Tito's Yugoslavia, which had not yet at that time implemented any of the "market socialist" measures it later became famous for, but rather was best known for its "workers self-management" measures, with workers running the factories.

The revolutionaries were highly disappointed when Tito sided with Khruschchev against them.

The best account of the Hungarian Revolution is Peter Fryer's Hungarian Tragedy, available on the Internet at

http://www.marxists.org/archive/fryer/1956/dec/index.htm

Fryer was the official Hungarian correspondent of the Daily Worker, the newspaper of the British Communist Party, during the Revolution. As a result of what he saw, he broke with the BCP and became a Trotskyist.

He does a great job of refuting all the Stalinist myths about how this was a pro-capitalist counterrevolution, as he was there on the spot and saw it all.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

http://marx2mao.com/Other/WCRC68.html

He also spoke of it at greater length in The Khrushchevites. See: http://enver-hoxha.net/librat_pdf/english/theKhrushchevites/9.the-demons-escape_from_control.pdf

Anyway, here's the main "Stalinist" book published in the USA on the Hungarian uprising: http://espressostalinist.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/the-truth-about-hungary.pdf

To quote an old post of mine:

In this old post, you advised people to read David Irving's book on Hungary.

David Irving? Mr. Holocaust Denier, the Nazi historian?

The last time Irving dared to show his face in America, as far as I know, what when he tried to speak at the UC Berkeley campus about 20 years ago. A united front rally organized by the Spartacists broke up his meeting and chased him off campus. In the process he "tripped and fell," and sustained some minor but satisfying injuries. I was proud to participate in this rally.

According to reports from the demonstrators' spy inside the meeting, one of the guys in the audience got up to say that no, Hitler didn't kill six million Jews, but he should have! And Irving smiled politely...

No serious historian sees anything Irving wrote as being worthy to use as toilet paper. You could catch a disease from that...

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

I want to learn about it and the different view points on it.

I felt pretty sympathetic while reading the Wikipedia page and then came across the list of demands and I felt less and less sympathetic as I continued reading.

It seems as if they wanted a full restoration of capitalism. Or am I wrong?
...


In the interest of moving the discussion forward, I'll post what Fryer has to say directly as to the idea that this was a "counterrevolution."

I disagree with the statement in his last paragraph, that Soviet intervention would have been unjustified even if it really were a counterrevolution. (Which is Finnegan's position, I do believe). But since it wasn't, that is neither here nor there.

As Fryer demonstrates, Hungary in 1956 was very different from Kronstadt in 1921, an anti-Communist uprising in which white agents were heavily involve in, whose central economic demand was relaxation of "War communism" in a pro-capitalist direction, and where the rebels were sailors, most of whom were by that point former peasants, not workers, recently recruited from Ukraine, a traditional recruiting area for the Tsarist navy, and whom like all too many Ukrainian peasants hated "Jewish communism."

The old revolutionary sailors of 1917 had mostly been transferred to active battle fronts by 1921, rather than sitting idly in harbor at Kronstadt twiddling their thumbs for four years.

By the way, as to the AVH, the AVH was unique among Eastern European security forces, in that Rakosi had made the disastrous decision to incorporate large numbers of former Arrow Cross fascists in it. Gestapo style physical torture was common in Hungarian prisons, not true elsewhere in Eastern Europe. So that AVH agents, many former Nazis, were lynched is quite understandable.

-M.H.-

http://www.marxists.org/archive/fryer/1956/dec/8_revolution_and_counter.htm

********************************************
Peter Fryer, Hungarian Tragedy

8. Revolution and counter-revolution

The question of the origin of the Hungarian revolution was discussed in Chapter Three. It was argued that the revolution was not a well-prepared plot by counter-revolutionary forces, but a genuine upsurge of the overwhelming majority of the Hungarian people, for whom life had become intolerable – an upsurge prepared for by the past thirty-seven years and called forth in particular by the blunders, crimes and trickery of the Stalinist leaders of the Communist Party. There are some who would accept this view, and who would deplore the initial Soviet intervention, but who would defend the second Soviet intervention as a regrettable, but bitter, necessity. Three arguments are advanced to support this defence. In the first place it is said that the Nagy government as reconstituted on Saturday, November 3, had moved considerably to the Right, and was on the point of sliding still further to the Right, since it included people who wanted not merely to neutralise Hungary but to restore capitalism and landlordism. Secondly, it is held that a growing danger of counter-revolution, the increasing activity of reactionary forces throughout the country, which the Nagy government was powerless to check, made Soviet intervention imperative. (Cardinal Mindszenty’s broadcast on the evening of November 3 is usually cited as proof.) Thirdly, the defenders of the second Soviet intervention claim that White Terror was raging in the country, and that prompt action by Soviet troops was needed to save the lives of Communists. I propose to try to answer these arguments in turn.

The character of the Nagy Government on the eve of the Soviet attack, and the positions taken up by the parties represented in it, have been analysed by Daniel Norman in an article in Tiibune of November 23, 1956, to which I am indebted for some of the translations below. The ‘Inner Cabinet’ of three Communists and four non-Communists had been replaced by a Government consisting of two representatives of the Socialist Workers’ (Communist) Party, three each from the Social-Democratic Party and the Smallholders’ Party, two from the Petöfi (National Peasant) Party and – what Norman does not mention – one representative of the revolutionary committees, Colonel Pál Maléter, who sat as Minister of War, and who was one of the two delegates arrested by the Russians. The suggestion seems to be that this change meant a certain swamping of the Communists, and that the non-Communists in the coalition could not be trusted to retain Socialism, but would pave the way for fascism.

To which it must be answered first, that this coalition was more truly representative of the Hungarian people than any government Hungary had known since 1947: it was a real people’s front goverment, and, if the matter had been put to the test, would undoubtedly have enjoyed the trust of the national committees; and, secondly, that statements by responsible leaders of the three non-Communist parties in the coalition gave no grounds whatever for branding them as enemies of Socialism. In the first issue of the new Népszava, on November I, the Socialist leader Anna Kéthly had written:

The Social-Democratic Party ... has won its chance of living, and it has won this from a regime which called itself a popular democracy, but which in form and essence was neither popular nor democratic. We greet with profound respect the heroes who have made possible the rebirth of the party, thousands of young intellectuals and workers who have fought, starving and in rags, spurred on by the idea of a free and independent Hungary ... Freed from one prison, let us not allow the country to become a prison of another colour. Let us watch over the factories, the mines and the land, which must remain in the hands of the people. (My italics – P.F.)

On October 31, in a speech to the inaugural meeting of the Pécs branch of the Smallholders’ Party, Béla Kovács said:

No one must dream of going back to the world of counts, bankers and capitalists: that world is over once and for all. A true member of the Smallholders’ Party cannot think along the lines of 1939 or 1945.

On November 3 Ferenc Farkas, general secretary of the Petöfi Party, and one of its members in the Nagy government (the Daily Worker on November 5 described this party as ‘semi-fascist’) said there were a number of points on which the Government was unanimous, including the following:

The Government will retain from the Socialist achievements everything which can be, and must be, used in a free, democratic and Socialist country, in accordance with the wish of the people.

We want to retain the most sincere and warmest friendly economic and cultural relations with every Socialist country, even when we have achieved neutrality. We also want to establish economic and cultural relations with the other peace-loving countries of the world.

The demand for neutrality, which Nagy supported, was no evidence of a slide to the Right, nor of ‘open hostility ... to the Soviet Union,’ nor of ‘repeated concessions ... to the reactionary forces’, as that shameful statement of the Executive Committee of the British Communist Party, issued only twelve hours after the Soviet attack began yet thoroughly approving it, sought to make out. If Yugoslavia could choose its own path to Socialism without joining one or other bloc, why could not the Hungarian people, too, have both neutrality and Socialism? I am in complete agreement with Norman’s conclusion that, far from being ‘reactionary forces’, the parties associated in the Coalition Government of Imre Nagy on the eve of the Soviet attack ‘were the only forces capable of dealing with the dispersed fascists, little groups of fascists or plain hooligans who had made their appearance lately among the revolutionary mass and perpetrated crimes condemned by everyone among the insurgents. Their number was not great. They had no possibility of organising themselves. Only a government which had the backing of the overwhelming majority of the Hungarians, as Nagy’s last government had,
could have detected and dealt with them.’

This brings us to the second question. Were reactionary forces becoming more active? Of course they were. Was there a danger of counter-revolution? It would be senseless to deny it. The night I reached Vienna, November 11, I was told by Austrian Communists how 2,000 Hungarian émigrés armed and trained by the Americans, had crossed over into Western Hungary to fight and agitate. But the danger of counter-revolution is not the same thing as the success of counter-revolution. And between the two lay a powerful and significant barrier, which I for one was prepared to put my trust in: the will of the Hungarian people not to return to capitalism. As Bruce Renton wrote in The New Statesman and Nation on November 17:

Nobody who was in Hungary during the revolution could escape the overwhelming impression that the Hungarian people had no desire or intention to return to the capitalist system.

And remember that these people who wanted to retain Socialism and improve it had arms in their hands; they were armed workers, armed peasants, armed students, armed soldiers. They had guns and tanks and ammunition. They had splendid morale. They were more than equal to any putsch, if one had been attempted. But they were never given the chance to prove it. It was none other than the Communist Party paper Szabad Nép which on October 29 indignantly rebuffed Pravda’s article The collapse of the adventure directed against the people of Hungary. What happened in Budapest, said Szabad Nép, had not been directed against the people, it had not been an adventure, and it certainly had not ‘collapsed’. The demands were demands for Socialist democracy. Pravda’s claim that the insurrection had been instigated by ‘Western imperialists’ was ‘an insult to the whole population of Budapest’. It was not imperialist intrigue which produced this ‘bloody, tragic, but lofty fight,’ but the Hungarian leadership’s own ‘faults and crimes’, and, in the first place, its failure to ‘safeguard the sacred flame of national independence’. And Szabad Nép answered in advance the cry that counter-revolution obliged the Soviet Union to intervene:

The youth will be able to defend the conquests which they have achieved at the price of their blood, even against the counter-revolutionaries who have joined them. (The students and workers) have proved that they represent such a political force as is capable of becoming a guiding and irreplaceable force ... From the first moments of the demonstration and fighting they declared many times – and in the course of the fighting they proved it – that they were not against popular rule, that they were neither fascists nor counter-revolutionaries nor bandits.

As for the Mindszenty broadcast of November 3, the lengthy extracts quoted by Mervyn Jones in Tribune (November 30) make nonsense of Andrew Rothstein’s claim that it ‘issued a programme of capitalist restoration’, and John Gollan’s description of it as ‘the virtual signal for the counterrevolutionary coup’. Mindszenty on the whole supported the Nagy Government, and his one reference to private ownership came in a sentence beginning: ‘We want a classless society’! As Jones said, the speech was ‘reminiscent ... of a Labour Party policy statement’.

There is one further proof of how false was the claim that the Soviet troops went into action against reactionaries and fascists, and that is the indisputable fact that they were greeted, not with joy, as the Soviet communiqués claimed, but with the white-hot, patriotic fury of a people in arms; and that it was the industrial workers who resisted them to the end. ‘Soviet troops are re-establishing order ... We Soviet soldiers and officers are your selfless friends’, said the Soviet communiqué of November 5. It was the proletariat of Hungary, above all, that fought the tanks which came to destroy the revolutionary order they had already established in the shape of their workers’ councils. In my dispatch of November 11, I asked:

If the Soviet intervention was necessary to put down counterrevolution, how is it to be explained that some of the fiercest resistance of all last week was in the working-class districts of Újpest, in the north of Budapest, and Csepel, in the south – both pre-war strongholds of the Communist Party? Or how is the declaration of the workers of the famous steel town of Sztálinváros to be explained: that they would defend their Socialist town, the plant and houses they had built with their own hands, against the Soviet invasion?

Not only was no answer forthcoming to these questions, but the questions themselves never saw the light of day. The Stalinists in control of the Daily Worker backed the export of Socialism in high explosive form against the bare-handed heroism of ‘Red Csepel’. They took their stand on the wrong side of the barricades.

The third argument in favour of Soviet intervention is that there was ‘White Terror’ raging in Hungary, and that for the Soviet Union to have refused to intervene would have been ‘inhuman’. Leaving aside the still uncertain question of whether anyone ever did appeal to the Soviet Union to intervene, let us make quite sure what White Terror is. just as Red Terror is the organised, systematic repression by a proletarian dictatorship of its counter-revolutionary opponents, so White Terror is the organised, systematic repression by a bourgeois dictatorship of its revolutionary opponents.

Heaven help Andrew Rothstein and those others who call the state of affairs in Hungary on November 1, 2 and 3 ‘White Terror’ if they ever come face to face with real White Terror. In ten days the Versailles army which suppressed the Paris Commune of 1871 slaughtered between 20,000 and 30,000 men, women and children, either in battle or in cold blood, amid terrible scenes of cruelty and suffering. ‘The ground is paved with their corpses’, gloated Thiers. Another 20,000 were transported and 7,800 sent to the coastal fortresses. That was White Terror. Thousands of Communists and Jews were tortured and murdered after the suppression of the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, and hideous atrocities took place at Orgovány and Siófok. That was White Terror. In 1927 Chiang Kai-shek massacred 5,000 organised workers in Shanghai. That was White Terror. From the advent of Hitler to the defeat of fascist Germany untold millions of Communists, Socialists, trade unionists, Jews and Christians were murdered. That was White Terror. It is perfectly true that a section of the population of Budapest, outraged to the pitch of madness by the crimes of the secret police, was seized with a lust to exterminate Communists. It is true that the innocent suffered as well as the guilty. This is a painful and distressing fact. But to describe the murder of a number of Communists (which all observers agree was confined to Budapest) as ‘White Terror’ necessitating Soviet intervention is to describe events in Hungary in a one-sided, propagandist way. How many innocent Communists were murdered in Budapest? Twenty? Fifty? I do not know. But certainly fewer – far, far fewer – than the number of AVH men who were lynched. At the Agony of Hungary exhibition in London, and in all the hundreds of photographs I have seen, there was not a single one showing a lynched Communist. But there were many showing lynched AVH men in their uniforms. [1] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/fryer/1956/dec/8_revolution_and_counter.htm#note) There was one sequence showing a woman in civilian clothes being molested by a crowd, who accused her of being an AVH spy. The caption stated that the crowd let her go.

Now the only circumstantial evidence for the murder of Communists is that put forward by André Stil in an article translated in World News of November 24. Stil arrived in Budapest on November 12, nine days after the second Soviet intervention. His article was published in Humanité on November 19. Even bearing in mind the assertion of Coutts and others I spoke to that forty of those killed in the Budapest Party headquarters were AVH men, it is impossible to find Stil’s account of the treatment of the seven Communists whom he names anything but convincing and horrible. Yet Stil is obviously performing the disagreeable task of a propagandist making the most of a small number of atrocities. His need to have the attack on the Party headquarters begin on October 30 makes him antedate the Soviet withdrawal from Budapest by three days; he describes ‘the vandals attacking the liberation monument built upon the Gellért Hill’, whereas in fact the main figure was not attacked; and, worst of all, he mentions the AVH and its crimes in the following curious and oblique way:

Many of those who were there did not at first believe that the Party and its active members were being attacked, but that the attack was directed to the members of a secret police about whom the most unlikely stones were being told. (my italics – P.F.)

I have met Stil and have a great personal respect for him, as comrade, journalist, novelist and militant, but I should be dishonest if I did not say that the words I have italicised are unworthy of him. The truth about the ‘White Terror’ has been told by Bruce Renton:

In the provinces only the AVH was physically attacked. (New Statesman, November 17) I had seen no counter-revolutionaries. I had seen the political prisoners liberated ... I had seen the executioners executed in the fury of the people’s revenge ... But there was no ‘White Terror’. The Communists walked free, the secret police were hanging by their boots. Where then was this counter-revolution, this White Terror? (Truth, November 16)

The arguments in favour of the second Soviet intervention do not hold water. But even if Nagy had been making concessions all along the line to fascism, even if counter-revolution had succeeded, even if White Terror had been raging, it must be said, and said openly and with emphasis, that from the standpoint of Socialist principle the Soviet Union would still not have been justified in intervening. The Soviet aggression against Hungary was not merely immoral and criminal from the standpoint of the Hungarian people. It was a clear and flagrant breach of what Lenin called ‘that elementary Socialist principle ... to which Marx was always faithful, namely, that no nation can be free if it opresses other nations’. November 4, 1956, saw the leaders of the Soviet Union defy Lenin’s warning never to ‘slide, even in trifles, into imperialist relations with the oppressed nationalities, thereby undermining entirely our whole principle of sincerity, our principle of defence of the struggle against imperialism’.
Note

1. (http://www.marxists.org/archive/fryer/1956/dec/8_revolution_and_counter.htm#text) On November 14 the Daily Worker published under the headline The White Terror in Hungary a photograph of ‘the body of a lynched Communist Party member in one of the wrecked Budapest Party offices’. Another photograph of the same corpse was in the paper’s possession, but was not used, showing clearly that the lynched man wore AVH uniform.

[Paul Cockshott]

How can it be a counter-revolution when there was no revolution for it to counter?

Well look at the demands that the original poster put up.

There are calls for higher wages, but also calls for independent farms, the end of the planned economy - which in the context of the 1950s was code for a restoration of the market economy.

Then there is the whole series of explicitly nationalist demands - restoration of the old national symbols, old army uniforms, return of prisoners of war, end to reparations.

Remember that these are demands raised in one of the states that had been part of the fascist alliance that had attacked the USSR, they are demands for the re-legitimisation of the policy of fascist aggression. What would be interpretation if these same demands were raised in Germany : restoration of the old national flag, release of prisoners of war, end to reparations - then you would clearly see their right wing character.

[Omsk]

This should not even be debated these days,we all saw the pictures of lynched and murdered communists and AVH members,their legs and backs broken,their heads crushed with rifles and rocks,the communist symbols teared off their uniforms and the pictures of revolutionary figures like Lenin and Stalin smashed with hammers while nationalist songs dedicated to 'great fathers of the nation' were sung.The flags of the state which had clear 'socialist symbols' ruined and replaced with nation-flags.Tanks (captured from the Soviets,their crew members shot or slaughtered.) rolled in the streats while mobs tried to hunt down communists who opposed the murdering groups of Dudas and similar terrorist bandits.

And the nationalists from various other countries gathered in the Hungarian socialist grave,like black birds looking for targets,their pens and notebooks ready to spread malicious lies and half-truths,their mind only focused on the 'brutality and harsh reactions' of the old loyalists and the Soviet soldiers.No one talked about the Soviet casualties,no one talked about the Soviet men who were sent in by the revisionists to do enforce their official party doctrines.The figures in Kremlin had no intention to evade the violence,they were partially responsible for the reformist and liberal circles to gain power,to eliminate those who were in favor of the 'old ways' , and to launch a state-scale insurrection against the dubious communists in Hungary.And how do these crowds of nationalists and opportunists could recognize who was a communist,and who was not?

The AVH members,even the most obscure and unimportant ones,were murdered and lynched if caught.How many of them?Hard to say,the AVH was big,and the size of the crimes was huge,even Western people noted that the "The secret police lie twisted in the gutter" the men were massacred,in their main command,in the streets,in the towns and villages,no one asked what was their role in the AVH,they were just lynched and slaughtered.All of this well documented.As for the 'political prisoners' (Reactionaries.) they escaped and were let loose by the hundreds.Words can't describe my disgust with the 'Hungarian revolution.'

[ridethejetski]

Well look at the demands that the original poster put up.

There are calls for higher wages, but also calls for independent farms, the end of the planned economy - which in the context of the 1950s was code for a restoration of the market economy.
.

This is precisely what happened under the Soviet's man Kadar was installed though. So the only thing the Soviet tanks maintained was the Soviet Union's political domination.

[Ismail]

In this old post, you advised people to read David Irving's book on Hungary.

David Irving? Mr. Holocaust Denier, the Nazi historian?Yes, that David Irving. I advised people that if they wanted a book on how a lot of Hungarians who participated in the Rising were anti-semites, they could read his book on Hungary published when he was still seen as legit and when foreign governments (such as... the Hungarian government of the time) were willing to allow him to visit their archives.

Considering it's freely available online and can thus be easily skimmed, I don't see the issue. I just as well noted that he was a horrible reactionary, that he thinks the uprising was a wonderful event against the "Jewish communist" leadership, etc. Unless you'd like to direct me to how the US Government sources (i.e. interviews with émigrés and so on) he cited were distorted, I don't see the issue. Obviously the thesis of the book ("Hungarians were fed up by the Jewish communists who didn't care about freedom and national sovereignty") is dumb, but I didn't tell people to check out the book for that.

And don't worry, I'm well aware Hitler's War (the book he's known for) sucks and has tons of distorted material, ditto with pretty much anything else he wrote from Dresden onwards.


This is precisely what happened under the Soviet's man Kadar was installed though. So the only thing the Soviet tanks maintained was the Soviet Union's political domination.Quite right, hence why Hoxha called the situation "a counter-revolution within the counter-revolution."

As for Peter Fryer, the post-1989 Hungarian government wanted to give him a medal. His words like, "If Yugoslavia could choose its own path to Socialism without joining one or other bloc, why could not the Hungarian people, too, have both neutrality and Socialism?" demonstrate his line of thinking. It also isn't surprising that Tito was quite upset when Nagy was overthrown.

[A Marxist Historian]

"That David Irving" was always a Nazi, he just had his cover blown in recent decades. Nothing he ever wrote is reliable. That bourgeois historians and governments saw him as "legit" back then is because ... well, do I really have to explain it to you?

Why he presented the Hungarian Revolution as fascist, anti-Semitic and a good thing should not be hard to understand. It's because Irving is an anti-Semitic fascist.

And Tito fully supported the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution. He may not have been thrilled about executing Nagy, being as Stalin wanted to do the same thing to him after all.

Was "neutralism" a correct political position in the Cold War as of 1956? No, but hardly evidence of fascism and counterrevolution and whatnot. Walesa in Poland didn't want to be "neutral," he was a fullblown Reaganaut who thought Jimmy Carter was soft on communism, and made it clear that he was supporting Reagan in the 1980 elections during his visit to America. Now, that was counterrevolutionary.

As Fryer pointed out, the Hungarian regime wanted friendly relations with the USSR. It wasn't Nagy's fault that Khrushchev felt differently.


Yes, that David Irving. I advised people that if they wanted a book on how a lot of Hungarians who participated in the Rising were anti-semites, they could read his book on Hungary published when he was still seen as legit and when foreign governments (such as... the Hungarian government of the time) were willing to allow him to visit their archives.

Considering it's freely available online and can thus be easily skimmed, I don't see the issue. I just as well noted that he was a horrible reactionary, that he thinks the uprising was a wonderful event against the "Jewish communist" leadership, etc. Unless you'd like to direct me to how the US Government sources (i.e. interviews with émigrés and so on) he cited were distorted, I don't see the issue. Obviously the thesis of the book ("Hungarians were fed up by the Jewish communists who didn't care about freedom and national sovereignty") is dumb, but I didn't tell people to check out the book for that.

And don't worry, I'm well aware Hitler's War (the book he's known for) sucks and has tons of distorted material, ditto with pretty much anything else he wrote from Dresden onwards.

Quite right, hence why Hoxha called the situation "a counter-revolution within the counter-revolution."

As for Peter Fryer, the post-1989 Hungarian government wanted to give him a medal. His words like, "If Yugoslavia could choose its own path to Socialism without joining one or other bloc, why could not the Hungarian people, too, have both neutrality and Socialism?" demonstrate his line of thinking. It also isn't surprising that Tito was quite upset when Nagy was overthrown.

I don't know whether Fryer wanted to accept that medal or not, though I wouldn't be surprised if the Peter Fryer of 1989 was to the right of the Peter Fryer of 1956, such things happen.

But Fryer makes it very clear that one of the main things he supported about the Hungarian Revolution was that it was not a pro-capitalist revolution, but that everyone involved, all the way to Cardinal Mindszenty, believed that Hungary should remain a socialist country (in the general sense), that capitalist restoration was not what anyone wanted.

Pretty different from what happened in the late '80s in Hungary and the rest of Eastern Europe!

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Oh yes, one more thing. That the Kadar regime let Irving at the archives and so forth is, well, one more crime of the counterrevolutionary Kadar regime.

-M.H.-


"That David Irving" was always a Nazi, he just had his cover blown in recent decades. Nothing he ever wrote is reliable. That bourgeois historians and governments saw him as "legit" back then is because ... well, do I really have to explain it to you?

Why he presented the Hungarian Revolution as fascist, anti-Semitic and a good thing should not be hard to understand. It's because Irving is an anti-Semitic fascist.

And Tito fully supported the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution. He may not have been thrilled about executing Nagy, being as Stalin wanted to do the same thing to him after all.

Was "neutralism" a correct political position in the Cold War as of 1956? No, but hardly evidence of fascism and counterrevolution and whatnot. Walesa in Poland didn't want to be "neutral," he was a fullblown Reaganaut who thought Jimmy Carter was soft on communism, and made it clear that he was supporting Reagan in the 1980 elections during his visit to America. Now, that was counterrevolutionary.

As Fryer pointed out, the Hungarian regime wanted friendly relations with the USSR. It wasn't Nagy's fault that Khrushchev felt differently.



I don't know whether Fryer wanted to accept that medal or not, though I wouldn't be surprised if the Peter Fryer of 1989 was to the right of the Peter Fryer of 1956, such things happen.

But Fryer makes it very clear that one of the main things he supported about the Hungarian Revolution was that it was not a pro-capitalist revolution, but that everyone involved, all the way to Cardinal Mindszenty, believed that Hungary should remain a socialist country (in the general sense), that capitalist restoration was not what anyone wanted.

Pretty different from what happened in the late '80s in Hungary and the rest of Eastern Europe!

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

This should not even be debated these days,we all saw the pictures of lynched and murdered communists and AVH members,their legs and backs broken,their heads crushed with rifles and rocks,the communist symbols teared off their uniforms and the pictures of revolutionary figures like Lenin and Stalin smashed with hammers while nationalist songs dedicated to 'great fathers of the nation' were sung.The flags of the state which had clear 'socialist symbols' ruined and replaced with nation-flags.Tanks (captured from the Soviets,their crew members shot or slaughtered.) rolled in the streats while mobs tried to hunt down communists who opposed the murdering groups of Dudas and similar terrorist bandits.

And the nationalists from various other countries gathered in the Hungarian socialist grave,like black birds looking for targets,their pens and notebooks ready to spread malicious lies and half-truths,their mind only focused on the 'brutality and harsh reactions' of the old loyalists and the Soviet soldiers.No one talked about the Soviet casualties,no one talked about the Soviet men who were sent in by the revisionists to do enforce their official party doctrines.The figures in Kremlin had no intention to evade the violence,they were partially responsible for the reformist and liberal circles to gain power,to eliminate those who were in favor of the 'old ways' , and to launch a state-scale insurrection against the dubious communists in Hungary.And how do these crowds of nationalists and opportunists could recognize who was a communist,and who was not?

The AVH members,even the most obscure and unimportant ones,were murdered and lynched if caught.How many of them?Hard to say,the AVH was big,and the size of the crimes was huge,even Western people noted that the "The secret police lie twisted in the gutter" the men were massacred,in their main command,in the streets,in the towns and villages,no one asked what was their role in the AVH,they were just lynched and slaughtered.All of this well documented.As for the 'political prisoners' (Reactionaries.) they escaped and were let loose by the hundreds.Words can't describe my disgust with the 'Hungarian revolution.'

Fryer, the lead journalist of the British Communist Party and, until he got to Hungary, a loyal party supporter, was there, and you were not.

He documented the absolute opposite of everything you have to say, and I have provided that documentation in full here on this thread. Whereas you just claim that your version is "well documented," without even telling us what that documentation is.

Statues of Stalin were smashed. Statues of Lenin were not. The Hungarian workers knew which one was the revolutionary and which the counterrevolutionary.

-M.H.-

[Omsk]

Why did they topple the Red Star on the building of the radio station? Why did they burn communist books? (Lenin,Marx,Stalin,etc etc.) Why did the leaders of Hungary in that period call for social-democracy? Why did the group of Dudas massacre more than 20 AVH guards in just one raid? Why are there confirmed (By the Hungarian terrorists.) murders of party members who had nothing to do with the situation? (I think they minimalized it,saying 200 were killed.)The Public Communist symbols such as red stars and Soviet war memorials were removed, and vandalized,while the statues of 'Great national heroes' were of course,used as grouping stations. What did they do with their flag? Oh nothing,they just removed the communist red star from it. The Hungarian insurrection was absolutely anti-communist.



I had seen the political prisoners liberated ... I had seen the executioners executed in the fury of the people’s revenge ... But there was no ‘White Terror’. The Communists walked free, the secret police were hanging by their boots. Where then was this counter-revolution, this White Terror? (Truth, November 16)



Reactionaries liberated,'the fury of the terrorist revenge',people hanging by their heads,communists murdered (Party members and various known communists were murdered.) communist books burned,red stars removed.

It really sounds like a socialist revolution...

[Tim Finnegan]

Why did they topple the Red Star on the building of the radio station? Why did they burn communist books? (Lenin,Marx,Stalin,etc etc.) Why did the leaders of Hungary in that period call for social-democracy? Why did the group of Dudas massacre more than 20 AVH guards in just one raid? Why are there confirmed (By the Hungarian terrorists.) murders of party members who had nothing to do with the situation? (I think they minimalized it,saying 200 were killed.)The Public Communist symbols such as red stars and Soviet war memorials were removed, and vandalized,while the statues of 'Great national heroes' were of course,used as grouping stations. What did they do with their flag? Oh nothing,they just removed the communist red star from it. The Hungarian insurrection was absolutely anti-communist.

Reactionaries liberated,'the fury of the terrorist revenge',people hanging by their heads,communists murdered (Party members and various known communists were murdered.) communist books burned,red stars removed.

It really sounds like a socialist revolution...
If you think that class struggle is a matter of what colour flag you wave, then I'm really going to have to ask that you take a closer look at the Manifesto. There's some pretty big points in there that you're missing.

[Paul Cockshott]

If you think that class struggle is a matter of what colour flag you wave, then I'm really going to have to ask that you take a closer look at the Manifesto. There's some pretty big points in there that you're missing.

The sole purpose of flags is to give a public demonstration of what side you are on.

[Ismail]

Statues of Stalin were smashed. Statues of Lenin were not. The Hungarian workers knew which one was the revolutionary and which the counterrevolutionary.How? You've said other times that the workers obviously weren't all that class conscious if they were putting forth nationalist demands. Now they're so class conscious that they could differentiate between Lenin and Stalin.


And Tito fully supported the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution. He may not have been thrilled about executing Nagy, being as Stalin wanted to do the same thing to him after all.Actually relations between the USSR and Yugoslavia were strained as a result of the Soviet move into Hungary. In fact the Soviets even let Hoxha write a Pravda article shortly after the uprising had ended which criticized the Yugoslavs pretty strongly, and for some time Khrushchev talked about how the international communist movement must combat revisionism, etc. And then Khrushchev promptly made up with Tito soon after.

Tito was definitely encouraging the most right-wing elements of the party in Hungary, of which Nagy was a part. Khrushchev and the Soviet leadership, of course, concurred with Tito at first and praised Nagy as a "victim of Stalinism" and whatnot. Just as the Soviets praised Dubček at first.

[Grenzer]

The sole purpose of flags is to give a public demonstration of what side you are on.

But this kind of presupposes honesty of intent.

As much as I dislike Mao, it brings the phrase "raising the red flag to oppose the red flag" to mind.

Tim Finnegan was speaking figuratively as well. Just because one employs pro-communist rhetoric doesn't make them a communist. Fascists employ anti-capitalist rhetoric; this does not make them anti-capitalists.

[Paul Cockshott]

But this kind of presupposes honesty of intent.

As much as I dislike Mao, it brings the phrase "raising the red flag to oppose the red flag" to mind.

Tim Finnegan was speaking figuratively as well. Just because one employs pro-communist rhetoric doesn't make them a communist. Fascists employ anti-capitalist rhetoric; this does not make them anti-capitalists.

Possibly so, but we are not looking at that happening but the reverse, if you raise a national flag, and burn the red flag, then it looks like you are trying to say you are a nationalist anti-communist. Conceivably these people could have been false nationalists, internationalists who were just pretending to be Hungarian Nationalists, but what is the evidence for this?

If I see people on a political demonstration waving the St George cross, I draw conclusions, and I think you would draw the same ones.

[Omsk]

If you think that class struggle is a matter of what colour flag you wave, then I'm really going to have to ask that you take a closer look at the Manifesto. There's some pretty big points in there that you're missing.
You seem to be blind for the murdering of hundreds of communists and party members,the hundreds of AVH members.The flags have little to do with this,and you know it,but you can't construct an argument so you focused on the flag part.
The Red Stars were destroyed,AVH murdered,party members murdered,statues of Red Army soldiers crushed,statues of Stalin destroyed,pictures of Lenin and Stalin burned,books burned. The terrorist militias slaughtered many soldiers and party members,who were decent,true communists. When the Dudas group stormed an AVH building,more than 20 officers were lynched in the most vile way. Public executions of communists,demands like: "Social-democracy" and "A multi-party sustem" , "Out with the Soviets" ,not to mention the reactionaries and formerly banned parties emerged like an infection,like maggots on a wound. And what do the revisionists in the USSR doo? Get their man (Kadar.) to lead the country after they disposed of the 'old man' (Nagy was also a Soviet/Yugoslav agent.)
Magnificent class struggle. Tell me,why are you a communist if you romanticize an outright right-wing reactionary insurrection led by reformists and social-democrats. (And Soviet revisionist agents.)
The Hungarian 1956 insurrection is a good myth for liberals,but we as communists should examine it's roots,it's leaders and the actions of the "revolutionaries". When examined,they show the ugly right-wing reactionary face of the "revolution".

[Tim Finnegan]

You seem to be blind for the murdering of hundreds of communists and party members,the hundreds of AVH members.The flags have little to do with this,and you know it,but you can't construct an argument so you focused on the flag part.
It was what my people call a "metty-for", an arcane device used to communicate a concept through non-literal means. It is an often counter-intuitive device, but one that can be very powerful in the right hands.

The point being, words and symbols do not function as perfect expressions of social realities; smashing a red star does is not an objective and inarguable statement that "I am anti-working class", any more than erecting one is an objective and inarguable statement that "I am of the working class". To assume that this is the case is either grossly reductionistic or hopelessly idealistic- you're free to take your pick- but in either case, simply wrong.

The Hungarian workers were living, real people, acting in history, acting in the confused, ambiguous, self-contradictory manner that real people generally do, rather than the idiot-mediums of Marxist-Leninist myth, mindlessly channelling a perfect Theory that is prior to their own experience of capitalist society. If you can't handle that sort of nuance, then you'll be wanting to keep your historical judgements to yourself.

[Omsk]

What an arrogant person you are.Really disappointing.


Hungarian workers were living, real people, acting in history, acting in the confused, ambiguous, self-contradictory manner that real people


The anti-socialist nationalist bands that murdered many communists and AVH members knew what they were engaged in.There are no excuses for them.There was no 'confusion' - they knew what their goals were,and what the results could be,they were organized and directed,they were led and incited to shoot or lynch anyone with a communist symbol.

[ridethejetski]

Why are the murderous secret police being afforded any sympathy lol?

[A Marxist Historian]

Why did they topple the Red Star on the building of the radio station? Why did they burn communist books? (Lenin,Marx,Stalin,etc etc.) Why did the leaders of Hungary in that period call for social-democracy? Why did the group of Dudas massacre more than 20 AVH guards in just one raid? Why are there confirmed (By the Hungarian terrorists.) murders of party members who had nothing to do with the situation? (I think they minimalized it,saying 200 were killed.)The Public Communist symbols such as red stars and Soviet war memorials were removed, and vandalized,while the statues of 'Great national heroes' were of course,used as grouping stations. What did they do with their flag? Oh nothing,they just removed the communist red star from it. The Hungarian insurrection was absolutely anti-communist.

Reactionaries liberated,'the fury of the terrorist revenge',people hanging by their heads,communists murdered (Party members and various known communists were murdered.) communist books burned,red stars removed.

It really sounds like a socialist revolution...

The posting from Fryer I put in, written half a century ago, answers your nonsense quite adequately.

If the works of Stalin were burnt, no loss. I had not heard of any burnings of the works of Marx and Lenin.

Just how did the Hungarian Revolution start, anyway? With protest against the execution in 1949 of party leader Laslo Rajk, the original founder of the AVH! The very first act of the Revolution was the reburial of Rajk, whom Rakosi had been forced to rehabilitate, with a funeral march of 100,000 people.

And was Rajk some sort of a rightist? Far from it, he was a "hard liner" whose deviations from party policy were if anything to the left. And I don't think Rajk was too thrilled about the Rakosi policy of recruiting former Hungarian fascist torturers for his AVH!

A revolution which begins with a huge funeral march for the founder of the AVH is a march against capitalism and fascism in Hungary, not for it. The cleansing the popular masses applied to the fascist-invested AVH of 1956 was thoroughly wholesome, even if excessive at times.

But excesses are inevitable in any revolution.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

How? You've said other times that the workers obviously weren't all that class conscious if they were putting forth nationalist demands. Now they're so class conscious that they could differentiate between Lenin and Stalin.

Actually relations between the USSR and Yugoslavia were strained as a result of the Soviet move into Hungary. In fact the Soviets even let Hoxha write a Pravda article shortly after the uprising had ended which criticized the Yugoslavs pretty strongly, and for some time Khrushchev talked about how the international communist movement must combat revisionism, etc. And then Khrushchev promptly made up with Tito soon after.

Tito was definitely encouraging the most right-wing elements of the party in Hungary, of which Nagy was a part. Khrushchev and the Soviet leadership, of course, concurred with Tito at first and praised Nagy as a "victim of Stalinism" and whatnot. Just as the Soviets praised Dubček at first.

Tito may have liked Nagy, who was a bit of a rightist, but he definitely did not like the Hungarian Revolution, whose suppression he supported.

Why werre Hungarian workers carrying Hungarian flags in 1956? Well, I imagine this might have something to do with the fact that the Stalinist regime of Rakosi itself had been promoting Hungarian nationalism and waving the Hungarian flag!

And, after Khrushchev's "secret speech" made the rounds, even the most poorly politically educated Hungarian worker had been told that there was a big difference between the two, as Khrushchev himself had said so and all wings of the Hungarian party, including Kadar and even Rakosi, had endorsed it.

And even without that, Hungary had gone through a revolution imposed by Soviet troops in which capitalism had been abolished and the people liberated from Nazism and domestic Hungarian fascism, land to the peasants, factories to the workers etc., immediately followed by the imposition of Stalinist tyranny. So they had no trouble telling the difference between these two Soviet leaders.

-M.H.-

[Omsk]

Tito may have liked Nagy, who was a bit of a rightist, but he definitely did not like the Hungarian Revolution, whose suppression he supported.



Too bad he was one of the people who made it possible.



Well, I imagine this might have something to do with the fact that the Stalinist regime of Rakosi itself had been promoting Hungarian nationalism and waving the Hungarian flag!




Absolutely not. The Rakosi regime even banned the singing of the anthem,because it was decided that the anthem is 'old and nationalist-relgious' and he tried to get some of the best artists to write a new anthem,but they rejected.



And, after Khrushchev's "secret speech" made the rounds, even the most poorly politically educated Hungarian worker had been told that there was a big difference between the two, as Khrushchev himself had said so and all wings of the Hungarian party, including Kadar and even Rakosi, had endorsed it.



Rakosi endorsed the secret speech? Again,absolutely not,because Rakosi was removed after the speech and sent to a forced 'medical trip' (ie removed from power.) Rakosi was loyal to Stalin. That's why they removed him.



So they had no trouble telling the difference between these two Soviet leaders.



Oh you think so?
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_oIAhQMTG-dU/S90yyaee7sI/AAAAAAAAEds/uN7kIqWKA8c/s1600/invasion-hungary-1956-illustrated-history-pictures-images-photos-007.jpg


Absolutely everything that had to do with socialism,communism or the USSR was vandalized.

[Tim Finnegan]

What an arrogant person you are.Really disappointing.
You have a mass-murderer in your avatar, so I'd ask to keep your judgements to yourself.


The anti-socialist nationalist bands that murdered many communists and AVH members knew what they were engaged in.There are no excuses for them.There was no 'confusion' - they knew what their goals were,and what the results could be,they were organized and directed,they were led and incited to shoot or lynch anyone with a communist symbol.And if that was all the revolution consisted of, you might have a point. But it didn't. So you don't.

[Omsk]

But than,Finnegan,what was the point of the revolution? Because if you ask me,the negative side has more weight than the 'positive'. Any demands the insurrectionists (At first,students and bourgeois writers,later,various reactionaries and workers of which some had clear anti-communist tendencies,while some wanted a chance to gain something.) presented before the Hungarian communists were certainly turned to dust when the same insurrectionists started to lynch AVH members and communists.

What credibility does the mass of insurrectionists have when they storm a building and kill all inside? It is obvious what was their plan with those loyal to the party. (It was a weak party,but a communist party after all.)

[Tim Finnegan]

But than,Finnegan,what was the point of the revolution?
If you think that a revolution has a pre-determined "point", that historical events are reducible to a one-dimensional teleology, then we really have nothing to say to each other.

[Omsk]

Pointless semantics.

To rephrase myself: what did the "revolution" consist of? (Other than reaction.)

Again,my reply to your answer would be the same : the 'revolutionaries' lost all credibility when they started to massacre communists and lynch people. (And when they accepted Imre Nagy and others as their leaders.We all know what were the demands of the traitor Nagy and the others.)

[Ismail]

I think one thing worth looking into is if actual Hungarian analyses post-1989 note any leftist character in the uprising. I mean tons of anti-communists pretend that Kronstadt was some sort of valiant leftist workers' uprising against Bolshevism, so I don't think it'd be too strange to see a few modern Hungarian accounts argue similar things.

[Omsk]

As far as i know,most of them are the generic right-wing "battle for democracy" or "freedom" - the Hungarian nationalists like to say that Stalinism was killed in Hungary (Based on the fact that the insurrectionists vandalized and destroyed a statue of Joseph Stalin.) The regime of Janos Kadar left little space for any historians to examine the insurrection,mainly because of the roles of Nikita Sergeyevich, Kadar,Imre Nagy and Josip Broz Tito in the insurrection. (They were all basically alies,at certain points,but later,they abandoned Imre,like they cast away Erno Gero.)

[A Marxist Historian]

I think one thing worth looking into is if actual Hungarian analyses post-1989 note any leftist character in the uprising. I mean tons of anti-communists pretend that Kronstadt was some sort of valiant leftist workers' uprising against Bolshevism, so I don't think it'd be too strange to see a few modern Hungarian accounts argue similar things.

In Hungary these days 1956 has been inserted into the bourgeois national mythology, now that it is more than a half century later and memories have fogged.

So, whereas at the time everyone knew that it was an uprising in defense of socialism vs. Stalinism, not a revolt on behalf of capitalism, nowadays you could get into trouble in Hungary with the right wing authorities for letting the cat out of the bag and reminding people of that.

-M.H.-

[Ismail]

So basically the answer is "no" despite 23 years.

[Geiseric]

I don't think they were trying to get rid of the positive aspects of whatever they may of recieved from the soviet union such as trade agreements and development, but people don't start organizing a revolution for no reason.

It wasn't even the same case as Kronstadt where military suppression was necessary to directly protect Petrograd, Hungary was a workers movement against a military occupation. The sentiment against the USSR was reinforced by lack of democracy all across the fSU as a result of Stalinism. To ignore that would be making a mistake, workers don't organize to bring around Capitalism.

[Omsk]

I don't think they were trying to get rid of the positive aspects of whatever they may of recieved from the soviet union such as trade agreements and development
They almost left the Warsaw Pact and they wanted a multi-party system,and a social-democracy,they also rejected the idea that the country should be led by a single communist party.

They basically threw everything related to the Soviets into the rubbish.


but people don't start organizing a revolution for no reason.

The people didn't organize anything.At first,it was the students and the writers Unions,and various Hungarian intellectuals,not actual working men. However,when the fighting began,there were workers involved.But mostly in Budapest,the country-side was calm.



It wasn't even the same case as Kronstadt where military suppression was necessary to directly protect Petrograd


Yes,and in the same way,Hungary was an important element in the Soviet border,if it fell to the imperialists,that would mean the CCCP would have another Yugoslavia.


Hungary was a workers movement against a military occupation.

You are trying to portray this as if the entire population of Hungary took part in the 'uprising'. No. It was mostly students and 'intellectuals' ,later,some working people.



To ignore that would be making a mistake, workers don't organize to bring around Capitalism.


Your romantic tale is really nice.But it proves you know little about the Hungarian events.It was not some heroic "Working class organization" but students and anti-communist intellectuals,of which,some were nationalists.They were supported by reactionaries later on,those who they helped escape from the prisons.

The idea that 'the bad situation' caused the insurrection is simply false,economic conditions were bad (Objectively) both in Yugoslavia and other countries,yet no "revolutions" happened.

[Leftsolidarity]

From this (clearly biased) video, it looks like an anti-communist uprising

LVdQ9PK9Q5o

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

From this (clearly biased) video, it looks like an anti-communist uprising

LVdQ9PK9Q5o

I saw this video about a week ago. Honestly, I loved it. It showed what Khrushchev really did as Soviet leader; supporting the accession of uber-revisionists to high office in foreign nations and removing/silencing real Marxist-Leninist leaders, like Mátyás Rákosi ("for medical reasons" :rolleyes:). He did not do these things simply because they were super fun. He had an agenda, and that agenda was to destroy Marxism-Leninism not only in his own nation, but in every other nation of the socialist camp. He wanted to replace Marxism-Leninism world-wide with his own political thought, at the expense of the global proletariat and oppressed peoples.

Also, this video shows what the Hungarian "revolution" was really all about, even though it was biased and left out some key points. This was not a workers' revolt against evil "Stalinism" (like it says in this pathetic piece of bullshit (http://en.internationalism.org/ir/127/hungary-1956)); this was a reactionary movement of the naive students, anti-communist intelligentsia, destructive bourgeoisie, and nationalist petit-bourgeoisie. Just because some workers (mainly in the capital) got caught up in this reactionary festival of violence and formed a few workers' councils does not make the Hungarian Counterrevolution a workers' revolution. Also, a quick note to the ultra-leftist idiots (a sizeable percentage of the ultra-left population on RevLeft); stop saying the term "Stalinist" to attack everything and anything you don't like. It makes you guys look really, really stupid. Hungary at that point in time was quickly abandoning Marxism-Leninism, under the direct influence of Khrushchev and his best student in Hungary, Imre Nagy. "Stalinism" was well on its way out.

But, of course, you guys are suggesting the stupidest thing; that Khrushchev himself was a Stalinist. Unfortunately, that just proves your utter stupidity and blatant disregard for historical truth.

[Omsk]

Enver Hoxha wrote about the role of the revisionists in Hungary - and he described a conversation he had with the top Soviet leaders (Before the "anti-party group" was purged. - For those who don't know,the anti-party group was a force opposed to Nikita and his thugs,not the best men,but still,much better than N.S. [Molotov,Malenkov,etc etc]

This conversation happened in April 1957 :

- I was in Moscow with a delegation of our Party and Government. After a non-official dinner in the Kremlin, in Yekaterinsky Zal, we sat down in a corner to take coffee with Khrushchev, Molotov, Mikoyan, Bulganin, etc. In the course of the conversation Molotov turned to me and, as if joking, said:
“Tomorrow Mikoyan is going to Vienna, to try to cook up the same broth as he did in Budapest.”
To keep the conversation going I asked him:
“Did Mikoyan prepare that broth?”
“Who else?” said Molotov.
“Then Mikoyan can’t go back to Budapest again,” I said.
“If Mikoyan goes there again, they will hang him,” Molotov continued.
Khrushchev had dropped his eyes and was stirring his coffee. Mikoyan frowned, ground his teeth and then said with a cynical smile:
“Why should I not go to Budapest? If they hang me, they will hang Kadar, too, because we prepared that broth together.”

The same thing happened in Poland,after the death of Bierut.

[Communix]

That was no "revolution", but an uprising of fascist and pro-imperialist forces and some deluded and tricked workers and intellectuals.

[ridethejetski]

It's funny how the Hoxhaist nuts must bring in their boogyman Tito into this constantly. Funny how none mention that Yugoslavia condemned Hungary and ultimately said the Soviet invasion was needed to protect socialism, and when the Soviet tanks rolled in Nagy attempted to seek refuge in the Yugoslav embassy, but was handed over to for arrest by the Yugoslav instead.

10s of 1000s of people were killed by the Soviets in order to maintain their political domination, not to 'protect socialism' (that is, the Soviet planned economy model of 'socialism'), or else they would not have installed Janos Kadar who basically turned Hungary into a market economy anyway and plunged it into debt. A neutral foreign policy like Austria, a social democratic capitalist economy, and a liberal multiparty bourgeois democracy is certainly not that desirable and not something to fight for in 20th century Europe. But it would have been preferable to being subordinated to the Soviet, a market economy that still barely functioned and a repressive dictatorship, the benefits of which (the welfare state aspect) were all to be washed away in 40 years time anyway. Sorry, i'm just playing the 'this is the real world, i'm being a realist' card that Soviet Tankies like to trot (excuse the pun) out.

[Omsk]

It's funny how the Hoxhaist nuts must bring in their boogyman Tito into this constantly.
No Hoxhaists here.But this is not a surprise for me,considering the puerile mass which filled up this thread.



Funny how none mention that Yugoslavia condemned Hungary and ultimately said the Soviet invasion was needed to protect socialism


And of what value is this? You do understand that what was said by the revisionists counts little because their idea of 'socialism' is socialism under the table of Imre Nagy and the nationalist trash that emerged.



and when the Soviet tanks rolled in Nagy attempted to seek refuge in the Yugoslav embassy, but was handed over to for arrest by the Yugoslav instead.




Of course,he was of no use to them when he finished the job.



10s of 1000s of people were killed by the Soviets


No actually about 2000. And what of the 700+ Soviet soldiers who were used by the revisionists to defeat the insurrectionists? Or the AVH men who ended up massacred and lynched? They don't count as casualties?

The rest of your little charade has little or no worth.It makes zero sense.



A neutral foreign policy like Austria, a social democratic capitalist economy, and a liberal multiparty bourgeois democracy is certainly not that desirable and not something to fight for in 20th century Europe. But it would have been preferable


Hooray for anti-communism,bourgeois democracy,social-democracy and capitalism! Why not?After all,it's much better than a country which at least had socialist construction as it's goal.

And because you read absolutely nothing about Hungary 1956,let me inform you that Hungary pre 1956,during the uprising and after the uprising were absolutely different.

[Geiseric]

Brolotov, your post is ironic because your description of how khrushchev's politics rose is basically how Marxism Leninism started.

[ridethejetski]

No Hoxhaists here.But this is not a surprise for me,considering the puerile mass which filled up this thread.

whatevs, you weidos with Stalin aviators can call yourself what you want from your basement, i don't care.




And of what value is this? You do understand that what was said by the revisionists counts little because their idea of 'socialism' is socialism under the table of Imre Nagy and the nationalist trash that emerged.

It demonstrates that Tito was not supportive of the Hungarian revolution, so you can put the boogyman Tito back into the closet on this one.




Of course,he was of no use to them when he finished the job.

What do you mean? Nagy was some sort of agent for the the Yugoslav? lol




No actually about 2000. And what of the 700+ Soviet soldiers who were used by the revisionists to defeat the insurrectionists? Or the AVH men who ended up massacred and lynched? They don't count as casualties?

By mistake on the numbers. 2500 is still a lot and simply to keep a country under Soviet domination, is still unacceptable.

Good to know you feel sympathy for the AVH torturers, shows which side you are on.





Hooray for anti-communism,bourgeois democracy,social-democracy and capitalism! Why not?After all,it's much better than a country which at least had socialist construction as it's goal.

Like i said, its bourgeois social democracy is not good, but its better than a repressive dictatorship under Soviet domination with an indebted market economy.




And because you read absolutely nothing about Hungary 1956,let me inform you that Hungary pre 1956,during the uprising and after the uprising were absolutely different.

You've read Soviet hacks accounts and Hoxha's ramblings, woo.

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

whatevs, you weidos with Stalin aviators can call yourself what you want from your basement, i don't care.




It demonstrates that Tito was not supportive of the Hungarian revolution, so you can put the boogyman Tito back into the closet on this one.




What do you mean? Nagy was some sort of agent for the the Yugoslav? lol




By mistake on the numbers. 2500 is still a lot and simply to keep a country under Soviet domination, is still unacceptable.

Good to know you feel sympathy for the AVH torturers, shows which side you are on.





Like i said, its bourgeois social democracy is not good, but its better than a repressive dictatorship under Soviet domination with an indebted market economy.





You've read Soviet hacks accounts and Hoxha's ramblings, woo.

Troll.

[ridethejetski]

You're probably a real life basement dwelling troll in your underpants eating pizza, living a revolutionary life through a dead and discredited ideology.

[Omsk]

It demonstrates that Tito was not supportive of the Hungarian revolution, so you can put the boogyman Tito back into the closet on this one.


He was.He was after all,the one who placed those circles who were against Matyas Rakosi in power.



What do you mean? Nagy was some sort of agent for the the Yugoslav? lol




Tito and Nikita were the ones who placed him in power back in 1953. Yes,he was a Soviet/Yugoslav man in Hungary. That is well known.


By mistake on the numbers. 2500 is still a lot and simply to keep a country under Soviet domination, is still unacceptable.


So you the precise number of those who died? Than why did you proclaim that "10s of 1000 died!" ? Try harder.


Like i said, its bourgeois social democracy is not good, but its better than a repressive dictatorship under Soviet domination with an indebted market economy.



Hungary was on the road of socialist construction,and this 'repressive dictatorship' was no more repressive than the Nagy government.


Good to know you feel sympathy for the AVH torturers, shows which side you are on.



What about the Hungarian communists who were massacred? Or the Soviet soldiers? As for the AVH, they deserved to be lynched and tortured? They didn't hunt for AVH officers who tortured people,they were on a hunt for anything with a red star on it.


You've read Soviet hacks accounts and Hoxha's ramblings, woo.

No,i read a couple of general books about it,nothing specialized but also nothing which was published in the USSR. The works which were published in the USSR were quite bad.

However,you are really tempting me to simply ignore you,because this is hardly an adequate dicussion.

[Leftsolidarity]

You're probably a real life basement dwelling troll in your underpants eating pizza, living a revolutionary life through a dead and discredited ideology.

Can you get the fuck out of my thread and go troll somewhere else? This has been a good discussion and a learning experience so fuck off to a non-serious thread if all to want to do is name call and troll.

[Vyacheslav Brolotov]

You're probably a real life basement dwelling troll in your underpants eating pizza, living a revolutionary life through a dead and discredited ideology.

Absolutely, except that my townhouse has no basement, I'm on my iPhone, and I'm getting ready to go to a friend's house. I am in my underwear for now and I do plan to eat pizza later, I'll give you that. Goodbye, troll.

[Ismail]

It demonstrates that Tito was not supportive of the Hungarian revolution, so you can put the boogyman Tito back into the closet on this one.Actually Yugoslav media did praise the so-called "workers' committees" among other things as a step towards "genuinely democratic socialism."


What do you mean? Nagy was some sort of agent for the the Yugoslav? lolTito was not happy when Nagy was overthrown.


Like i said, its bourgeois social democracy is not good, but its better than a repressive dictatorship under Soviet domination with an indebted market economy. I seem to recall Hungary being an indebted capitalist country under Kádár, who joined the IMF in 1982. I'm fairly sure Nagy would have joined that a fair bit sooner, not to mention he would have replaced "Soviet domination" with American imperialism.

[Leftsolidarity]

Oh, I don't remember who brought it up or meant it in what context but people were talking about how the bourgeois media portrays the events that happened in Hungary. I posted that video already but the other day in school we watched some videos about Hungary and it was strongly in support of the people rebelling in Hungary saying how they were fighting for democracy/capitalism/anti-Stalinism/etc. It didn't say anything about worker councils or anything like that. They portrayed it as a sort of capitalist national liberation struggle.