Greetings on the 57th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution

[sixdollarchampagne]

Today, October 23, marks the fifty-seventh anniversary of the beginning of the Hungarian Revolution.

To quote from a January 1957 document by the (US) Socialist Workers Party, "The developments in Hungary and Poland, which brought the masses into the political arena on a nation-wide scale and lifted the struggle to a higher level, now make it possible to draw new and important conclusions regarding the further course of the death agony of Stalinism and the rebirth of revolutionary socialism as a mass movement."

The document, "Revolution in Hungary and the Crisis of Stalinism," is available on-line at: http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/swp-us/hungary.htm

IMHO, a proletarian revolt against Stalinist rule is a big deal, and the Hungarian workers' struggle ought to be remembered.

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

Tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in Hungary to demand an end to Soviet rule.

There are believed to have been many casualties in a day which started as a peaceful rally, and ended with running battles between police and demonstrators in which shots are said to have been fired.
The demonstrators are demanding that the former Prime Minister, Imre Nagy, be returned to power.
Mr Nagy was dismissed last year for his liberal policies, but has since been rehabilitated and was re-admitted to the Hungarian Workers' Party this month. Other demands include free elections, freedom of the press, and a withdrawal of Soviet troops.

(BBC News - http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/23/newsid_3140000/3140400.stm)

[reb]

Hungary reading guide

http://libcom.org/library/hungary-1956-reading-guide

[Sir Comradical]

That's not the only version of events. They wanted to sell uranium to the west, and fascist elements were using the event to undermine the state, in other words, the threat the USSR responded to was from the right, and they weren't going let the Warsaw Pact fall apart. Put it this way, if you can justify crushing Kronstadt, there's an even stronger case for moving against Hungarian horthyites. For the most part Khrushchev agreed to most of the demands that were based on genuine grievances, i.e. by getting rid of the secret police, and the Hungarians ended up with 'goulash communism'.

Call me a Stalinist, but that's probably a more nuanced version of events than the workers vs. stalinism nonsense that trots like to throw around.

[BOZG]

Hungary reading guide

http://libcom.org/library/hungary-1956-reading-guide

Peter Fryer's The Hungarian Tragedy (http://www.marxists.org/archive/fryer/1956/dec/) is also a good read. Fryer was a journalist with the Daily Worker, the Morning Star's predecessor and broke with the CP over the events in Hungary.

Sandor Kopasci's In the name of the Working Class (http://www.amazon.com/Name-Working-Class-Hungarian-Revolution/dp/0802100104) is also worth a read, even if it needs to be read a bit more critically. Kopasci was the Chief of Police in Budapest and sided with the uprising.

[Thirsty Crow]

Kopasci was the Chief of Police in Budapest and sided with the uprising.
Makes one think.

[reb]

I also found this but forgot about it. I haven't read it yet but The Commune is usually pretty good.

Hungarian Revolution - Interview with Nicholas Krasso

http://thecommune.co.uk/2013/10/06/hungarian-revolution-interview-with-nicholas-krasso/

[reb]

That's not the only version of events. They wanted to sell uranium to the west, and fascist elements were using the event to undermine the state, in other words, the threat the USSR responded to was from the right, and they weren't going let the Warsaw Pact fall apart. Put it this way, if you can justify crushing Kronstadt, there's an even stronger case for moving against Hungarian horthyites. For the most part Khrushchev agreed to most of the demands that were based on genuine grievances, i.e. by getting rid of the secret police, and the Hungarians ended up with 'goulash communism'.

Call me a Stalinist, but that's probably a more nuanced version of events than the workers vs. stalinism nonsense that trots like to throw around.

I seem to remember a certain state dealing with nazis, signing pacts with them and handing over communists. And it is not surprising that someone who can justify crushing Kronstadt can also justify crushing the Hungarian uprising. Why are Stalinists so obsessed with trots anyway?

[Lensky]

I like what Zizek says about the Hungarian revolution, even if it succeeded, it would have either taken the reformist road or the capitalist road like Yugoslavia, eventually a limit would have been defined by the Hungarian ruling classes; forced by the realities of a proactive and imperialistic United States. By crushing the revolt, Moscow ensured the legacy of the 56' revolution became idealized and wasn't tarnished by its eventual degeneration.

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

I like what Zizek says about the Hungarian revolution, even if it succeeded, it would have either taken the reformist road or the capitalist road like Yugoslavia, eventually a limit would have been defined by the Hungarian ruling classes; forced by the realities of a proactive and imperialistic United States. By crushing the revolt, Moscow ensured the legacy of the 56' revolution became idealized and wasn't tarnished by its eventual degeneration.

...so tanks were deployed against the 'rebel' citizens to help preserve the ideals of the revolution? They were saving the mis-guided Hungarians from the revolution's inevitable failure?

Seems legit :unsure:

[Lensky]

...so tanks were deployed against the 'rebel' citizens to help preserve the ideals of the revolution? They were saving the mis-guided Hungarians from the revolution's inevitable failure?

Seems legit :unsure:

Nono. I was not saying this.

[Red_Banner]

Maybe Kruschev should have let Nagy and Andropov negotiate.

[A.J.]

I always thought a revolution entailed the replacement of one mode of production by another higher mode of production?

If we consider that capitalistic relations of production had been essentially re-established throughout the Eastern Bloc soon after the death of J.V. Stalin (see here; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Course) and that the conscious motivation behind the CIA-Vatican sponsored armed uprising was to re-orientate Hungary away from the Soviet sphere of influence towards that dominated by NATO, the events of 1956 weren't any sort of "revolution" (or for that matter a counter-revolution) at all. All that occured was an attempt to substitute one form of capitalism with another form of capitalism.

That's not a revolution.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

...so tanks were deployed against the 'rebel' citizens to help preserve the ideals of the revolution? They were saving the mis-guided Hungarians from the revolution's inevitable failure?

Seems legit :unsure:

The point that was being made, as far as I can tell is that, by the fact that the uprising was crushed, it's inability to achieve anything (by virtue of its geopolitical position and conditions) remains speculative and the hopeful still cling to the idea that some genuine worker's rule would have arisen out of it, a hope not tarnished by any reality.

[A.J.]

To call the 1956 uprising in Hungary a "proletarian revolution" is to adhere to the theory of spontanaity, which Lenin so famously criticised in his What Is To Be Done?.

For one thing, although the majority of combatants were workers they weren't proletarians. As I explained elsewhere, you have to be of at least of three generations of wage-workers to be considered proletarian. In the case of the 1956 uprising the participants were the recently expropriated members of the propertied classes or their offspring. Quite clearly resentful at the fate the hand of history had dealt them they yearned to roll back the clock to when they privately owned the means of production.

It was never the conscious intention of the uprising to introduce socialism but to establish the western model of capitalism(which they associated with capitalism in general) by bringing Hungary into the orbit of NATO.

[bluemangroup]

IMHO, a proletarian revolt against Stalinist rule is a big deal, and the Hungarian workers' struggle ought to be remembered

in relation to this:


Call me a Stalinist, but that's probably a more nuanced version of events than the workers vs. stalinism nonsense that trots like to throw around.

I used to be a Trotskyist, and looking back with hindsight I can see why portraying Hungary as "Stalinist" can be problematic and an oversimplification (Case in point: "De-Stalinization" had already taken place at this time)

What has to be remembered is that Stalin, whether you agree with me or not, manged to reassert Bolshevik principles onto Soviet soil after almost a decade-long period of following what amounted to state-capitalism through the New Economic Policy. Collectivization of agriculture, the socialization of agricultural land, was started during the civil war but was renewed by the implementation of the First Five-Year Plan; furthermore, Lenin repeatedly in his writings turned to collective farming as a form of socialist farming. Stalin was merely carrying out (in a flawed manner) an attempt at creating socialist agriculture.

This line also saw rapid industrialization of industry, a necessary measure for if the USSR was to survive against an increasingly hostile world (esp. after the rise to power of the Nazis).

Such measures was the revolutionary side of Bolshevism reasserting itself into not only the politics but the economics of the Soviet Union as well.

IMHO "De-Stalinization" was a form of De-Bolshevization, with the denial of class struggle which goes under a proletarian dictatorship occurring under Stalin's successors.

So I'm critical whenever some Trotskyist publication exhorts the line that the evil Stalinists had usurped power from the workers blah blah blah.

Likewise, one shouldn't trust the opposite types of analysis; as someone who wants to be a future historian, its important to truly look at each angle of the history objectively and from multiple sides.

[goalkeeper]

That's not the only version of events. They wanted to sell uranium to the west, and fascist elements were using the event to undermine the state, in other words, the threat the USSR responded to was from the right, and they weren't going let the Warsaw Pact fall apart. Put it this way, if you can justify crushing Kronstadt, there's an even stronger case for moving against Hungarian horthyites. For the most part Khrushchev agreed to most of the demands that were based on genuine grievances, i.e. by getting rid of the secret police, and the Hungarians ended up with 'goulash communism'.

Call me a Stalinist, but that's probably a more nuanced version of events than the workers vs. stalinism nonsense that trots like to throw around.

Sure, there is a more nuanced understanding of the events to be had than some old trot document from the 1950s. However, I think its completely fantastical to suggest that Hungary was about to witness a rebirth of fascism in the 1950s. Of course some old fascists were joining in, or at least those that hadn't been recruited into the Hungarian security apparatus, but their ability to have heavily influence events or plunge Europe back into fascism is sheer fantasy. Any reasonable observer would have to concede that the majority of Hungarians protesting were not fascists.

[goalkeeper]

To call the 1956 uprising in Hungary a "proletarian revolution" is to adhere to the theory of spontanaity, which Lenin so famously criticised in his What Is To Be Done?.

For one thing, although the majority of combatants were workers they weren't proletarians. As I explained elsewhere, you have to be of at least of three generations of wage-workers to be considered proletarian. In the case of the 1956 uprising the participants were the recently expropriated members of the propertied classes or their offspring. Quite clearly resentful at the fate the hand of history had dealt them they yearned to roll back the clock to when they privately owned the means of production.

It was never the conscious intention of the uprising to introduce socialism but to establish the western model of capitalism(which they associated with capitalism in general) by bringing Hungary into the orbit of NATO.

Excuse me? Were many of the revolutionary workers in Russia not from peasant backgrounds? Were they not really proletarian?

Not that I wish to try and draw parallels between Russia in 1917 and Hungary in 1957, but this idea of parental lineage is fucking weird and dumb.

[A.J.]

Excuse me? Were many of the revolutionary workers in Russia not from peasant backgrounds? Were they not really proletarian?

Not that I wish to try and draw parallels between Russia in 1917 and Hungary in 1957, but this idea of parental lineage is fucking weird and dumb.

No you shouldn't draw parallels as agriculture was much more developed in Hungary in the 1950s than Russia at the time of the 1917 revolutions.

For one thing there wasn't a poor peasantry(who Lenin defined as being "semi-proletarians") in the former country. Just relatively well-to-do independent farmers('middle' peasants, if you will) who resented 'their' land being collectivised.
They were, to use a phrase, on the wrong side of history.