On This Day, 1956: Hungarians rise up against Soviet rule

[Red Son]

Thoughts on these events and the Soviet crackdown that followed a couple of weeks later? Was it 'counter-revolutionary' elements that were being stopped for the good of socialism? Was it an expression of frustration and a desire for a less oppressive government?

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Hungary to demand an end to Soviet rule. The day started as a peaceful rally, and ended with running battles between police and demonstrators.The demonstrators were demanding that the former Prime Minister, Imre Nagy, be returned to power. Other demands included free elections, freedom of the press, and a withdrawal of Soviet troops.

The uprising began as a rally in central Budapest, to express solidarity with Polish demonstrators who had recently succeeded in getting their deposed liberal leader, Wladyslaw Gomulka, returned to power. The gathering turned into a mass demonstration for a similar Hungarian "declaration of independence" from Moscow's control. As more and more people joined the demonstration, the First Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party, Erno Gerö, made an unscheduled radio announcement, describing as "lies and rumours" reports that Hungary wanted to loosen its ties with the Soviet Union. Immediately after the broadcast, the crowd marched on the broadcasting station.

The gathering was peaceful at first, but the crowd became restless and tried to force their way in.
They were driven back by security forces with tear gas and responded by throwing stones at the windows. One group drove a heavy lorry at the front door in an attempt to break it open.
The incident marked the start of an escalation of violence.
A running battle began to clear the crowd away from the building, while clashes between demonstrators and armed police broke out elsewhere in the city. When the crowds refused to disperse despite police opening fire on them, Mr Gerö ordered Soviet tanks onto the streets.

(BBC History / News)

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

It was a completely justifiable uprising that was a perfectly reasonable response to the State Capitalist/Social Imperialists of the USSR.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The Hungarian Revolution was what we Trotskyists call an incipient political revolution - a movement by the workers to remove the parasitic bureaucracy and return the state to the road of socialist construction. Despite the lies and slander heaped by both Stalinist and bourgeois press, it was not made by people who wanted a bourgeois republic with private property intact - it was made by people who wanted socialism, who formed workers' councils and who tried to form a revolutionary workers' party. It was not made by nationalists who hated the Soviet Union but by workers who fraternised with Soviet soldiers to the extent that the Kremlin had to pull troops out and replace them with new troops, who were lied to that they were fighting a fascist uprising.

Without a Leninist leadership, the revolution failed. But it shows us just what a political revolution would be like. Any socialists ought to salute the people who fought in the revolution - and fight against slimy bourgeois and social-democratic slander.

[Tim Cornelis]

(possible troll and flame-bait? Suspicious amount of guests lurking this thread)

Trotskyists are wrong on two accounts.

1) It was not 'an incipient political revolution' since the revolution affected the economic sphere as much as the political. It was not a revolution that merely changed the political character of the state, but also the economical with workers' councils taking over the management of production. Thus, it more or less refutes the notion that these 'nationalised economies' were some kind of deformed or degenerated workers' state. The scope of a revolution that would overthrow such regimes needs to be political and economic. Therefore, it has to be a social revolution -- the same as in liberal capitalism.

2) Despite the formation of workers' councils, there was not necessarily a majority of people who wanted socialism. The reason workers' councils were formed was the result of the nature of state capitalism where political and economic links are not severed. Thus, the overthrow of the political regime necessarily means the overthrow of the enterprise managers linked to that political regime. Workers' councils are the natural organisational form that follows, but the content of these workers' councils was not necessarily geared toward socialism. If we look at the demands put forward by the central council that emerged they clearly have liberal-democratic demands.
Generally, Trotskyists are too optimistic about the prevalence of socialistic anti-Soviet sentiment in the Eastern bloc, much of the opposition within was wrongly characterised as progressive or socialist. 870 also claimed that the 1989 East German protests were socialist in nature, but this does not conform to the facts. The only 'free' (liberal) democratic elections in 1990 was overwhelmingly right-wing and centrist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_general_election,_1990

Right-Wing 'Alliance for Germany': 48%
Centre-left 'Social Democratic Party': 21%
Left-Wing 'Party of Democratic Socialism': 16%
Association of Free Democrats: 5.3%
etc. etc.
Far-Left 'United Left': 0.2%
Turnout: 93.4%

I would guess that the reason Trotskyists severely overstate the prevalence of socialistic sentiment in Eastern Europe stems from their adherence to the notion of a deformed/degenerated workers' states. It amounts to self-delusion.

Of course, this is not to say that I wouldn't have supported the Hungarian revolution. The socialist elements were clearly visible and prominent, but hegemonic? I find that a slightly optimistic assessment of the balance of power.

EDIT: I can't remember where I read the liberal-democratic demands. It is possible that I have mistaken the demands of the national government or central workers' council or some other organ with some other organ.

[Illegalitarian]

(possible troll and flame-bait? Suspicious amount of guests lurking this thread)

Trotskyists are wrong on two accounts.

1) It was not 'an incipient political revolution' since the revolution affected the economic sphere as much as the political. It was not a revolution that merely changed the political character of the state, but also the economical with workers' councils taking over the management of production. Thus, it more or less refutes the notion that these 'nationalised economies' were some kind of deformed or degenerated workers' state. The scope of a revolution that would overthrow such regimes needs to be political and economic. Therefore, it has to be a social revolution -- the same as in liberal capitalism.

2) Despite the formation of workers' councils, there was not necessarily a majority of people who wanted socialism. The reason workers' councils were formed was the result of the nature of state capitalism where political and economic links are not severed. Thus, the overthrow of the political regime necessarily means the overthrow of the enterprise managers linked to that political regime. Workers' councils are the natural organisational form that follows, but the content of these workers' councils was not necessarily geared toward socialism. If we look at the demands put forward by the central council that emerged they clearly have liberal-democratic demands.
Generally, Trotskyists are too optimistic about the prevalence of socialistic anti-Soviet sentiment in the Eastern bloc, much of the opposition within was wrongly characterised as progressive or socialist. 870 also claimed that the 1989 East German protests were socialist in nature, but this does not conform to the facts. The only 'free' (liberal) democratic elections in 1990 was overwhelmingly right-wing and centrist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_general_election,_1990

Right-Wing 'Alliance for Germany': 48%
Centre-left 'Social Democratic Party': 21%
Left-Wing 'Party of Democratic Socialism': 16%
Association of Free Democrats: 5.3%
etc. etc.
Far-Left 'United Left': 0.2%
Turnout: 93.4%

I would guess that the reason Trotskyists severely overstate the prevalence of socialistic sentiment in Eastern Europe stems from their adherence to the notion of a deformed/degenerated workers' states. It amounts to self-delusion.

Of course, this is not to say that I wouldn't have supported the Hungarian revolution. The socialist elements were clearly visible and prominent, but hegemonic? I find that a slightly optimistic assessment of the balance of power.

EDIT: I can't remember where I read the liberal-democratic demands. It is possible that I have mistaken the demands of the national government or central workers' council or some other organ with some other organ.

Their demands were "socialist" in the old eastern bloc economic and political sense, but they did call for multi-party elections and full control over their natural resources and the ability to openly sell these resources to other nations, etc.


I think it's fair to say that most people in the Eastern Bloc did want to retain their expansive welfare states and fairly "egalitarian" distribution and wage system, but ended up getting the baby thrown out with the bath water so to speak since all of the new parties and leaders had no choice but to open up to the west and beg for aid, which we all know leads to massive neoliberal undertakings.


We can look at the '91 referendum in the USSR to see this as well as the growing nostalgia for the old ways by not only those who were alive at the time, but even younger folks. You could easily claim that there is a universal longing for the "good 'ol days", since people in the US romanticize the 50's and 60's in the same way, but it seems to be far more specific with regards to what those in the east actually long for.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Their demands were "socialist" in the old eastern bloc economic and political sense, but they did call for multi-party elections and full control over their natural resources and the ability to openly sell these resources to other nations, etc.


I think it's fair to say that most people in the Eastern Bloc did want to retain their expansive welfare states and fairly "egalitarian" distribution and wage system, but ended up getting the baby thrown out with the bath water so to speak since all of the new parties and leaders had no choice but to open up to the west and beg for aid, which we all know leads to massive neoliberal undertakings.


We can look at the '91 referendum in the USSR to see this as well as the growing nostalgia for the old ways by not only those who were alive at the time, but even younger folks. You could easily claim that there is a universal longing for the "good 'ol days", since people in the US romanticize the 50's and 60's in the same way, but it seems to be far more specific with regards to what those in the east actually long for.

The "parties and the leaders" that came to power in the counterrevolutions of the nineties did not represent the workers in the former deformed workers' states - all of them were elected (or elected themselves, as the Romanian junta did) after genuine workers' militancy had been crushed, by the Stalinists (who thus sealed the fate of the workers' state of the former Soviet bloc - and their own), by the capitalist-restorationist forces and so on.

And no, the Hungarian revolutionaries did not want "the ability to sell these resources to other nations", meaning the imperialist nations - you can find proclamations against this and against any thought of restoring capitalism by the Central Workers' Council in Budapest, for example. Or see the explicit statements by Maleter, the military leader of the revolution. Or the rejection of the Nagy government by the Hungarian workers' councils after its shift to the right. The lie was spread later by social-democrat pond scum on one side, and the Stalinists on the other, dragging out from the oblivion to which history had consigned them various minor newspapers, self-proclaimed student leaders and so on.

[Rafiq]

Can we just be clear and establish that just because demographically, something is overwhelmingly supported by the workers does not make it proletarian in character? This is a rather infantile understanding of class based politics. As I said in another thread, you do not become a Communist SIMPLY by merit of being a worker. It is more than that.

[Illegalitarian]

Can we just be clear and establish that just because demographically, something is overwhelmingly supported by the workers does not make it proletarian in character? This is a rather infantile understanding of class based politics. As I said in another thread, you do not become a Communist SIMPLY by merit of being a worker. It is more than that.


Oh, absolutely. I'm not making any sort of "deformed workers state" argument, I was merely pointing out that the mass political shift of the eastern bloc post-Soviet Union was not characteristic of the changes people wanted, aside from the case of East Germany apparently (Though now even this sentiment has changed in that part of the world, re: Ostalgie)

I never quite understood the Deformed Worker's State analysis, or rather, what good it does us.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I never quite understood the Deformed Worker's State analysis, or rather, what good it does us.

It means an unconditional defence of the workers' states against imperialism and internal counterrevolution - so for example, a Leninist-Trotskyist party would call for hot-cargoing any military equipment going to a country fighting a deformed workers' state, no matter the circumstances of the conflict. It also means fighting for workers' political revolution of the sort that nearly happened in Hungary in 1956.

[Atsumari]

That would explain why a good percentage of Trots I meet sound like tankies.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The Hungarian Revolution was what we Trotskyists call an incipient political revolution - a movement by the workers to remove the parasitic bureaucracy and return the state to the road of socialist construction. Despite the lies and slander heaped by both Stalinist and bourgeois press, it was not made by people who wanted a bourgeois republic with private property intact - it was made by people who wanted socialism, who formed workers' councils and who tried to form a revolutionary workers' party. It was not made by nationalists who hated the Soviet Union but by workers who fraternised with Soviet soldiers to the extent that the Kremlin had to pull troops out and replace them with new troops, who were lied to that they were fighting a fascist uprising.

Without a Leninist leadership, the revolution failed. But it shows us just what a political revolution would be like. Any socialists ought to salute the people who fought in the revolution - and fight against slimy bourgeois and social-democratic slander.

This is a lovely story and all, but do you actually have any proof whatsoever of anything you've said?

You seem to be a fan of bringing us narratives straight from your head, that bypass any logical thought process or supporting evidence.

[Kill all the fetuses!]

For the sake of a possible productive discussion, could some Trotskyist address Tim's points raised at the beginning of the thread? It's not the first time I see a thread where Tim provides a rather detailed critique of the workers' state theory and all the Trotskyist just ignore it, posting in the thread as if Tim's posts didn't exist.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

This is a lovely story and all, but do you actually have any proof whatsoever of anything you've said?

You seem to be a fan of bringing us narratives straight from your head, that bypass any logical thought process or supporting evidence.

Well since you asked so nicely (and for that matter, it's not as if people generally post evidence for the Cold War social-democrat fantasies that make up most of the discussion about the Eastern Bloc on this site; nor could they as the evidence does not exist), Lomax's "Hungary 1956" contains the interview with Maleter (where he actually threatened to shoot anyone who advocated the restoration of capitalism), the programme of the Budapest Parliament of Workers' Councils, including their rejection of Nagy's government for its right-wing course. Kopacsi's "In the Name of the Working Class" discusses the events from a "street" point-of-view, and includes a lot of information about the fraternisation with Soviet soldiers etc.


For the sake of a possible productive discussion, could some Trotskyist address Tim's points raised at the beginning of the thread? It's not the first time I see a thread where Tim provides a rather detailed critique of the workers' state theory and all the Trotskyist just ignore it, posting in the thread as if Tim's posts didn't exist.

That might be because for some of us they literally don't. I see Illegalitarian has quoted the post, and I'm not exactly impressed. The notion that the formation of workers' councils represents an economic revolution is wrong - that would mean that every change in management represents an economic revolution, and thus that not only did the introduction of one-man-management in the Soviet Union change the social basis of the Soviet State but the formation of the soviets in the Russian Empire did the same. And then people laugh at the Maoist "the evil revisionists came and restored capitalism" theory.

The notion that the workers' councils were formed because "the political regime had been overthrown", again, is wrong. The "political regime" - the Nagy government - functioned throughout the period, and in fact it was the weakness of the workers' councils that they were not able to sweep Nagy aside.

The argument about elections I've already answered in my reply to Illegalitarian. Not only is it mildly amusing to see an avowed leftist place so much faith in "liberal democratic" elections, these took place after workers' militancy had been crushed or petered out.

And this is literally all I will say on the subject. I gave an answer because I respect you, but the ignore function exists for a reason and I will not work around it like this.

[Illegalitarian]

That's not really an answer to anything I said though, or at least not with anything substantive, as VIL put it (albeit a bit more harshly).

[MonsterMan]

The Soviets were correct with their intervention - look at Hungary now - part of the capitalist EU. Not a great result.

[Illegalitarian]

Yeah but this had nothing to do with the revolution in the 50's, however.

[Brutus]

The Soviets were correct with their intervention - look at Hungary now - part of the capitalist EU. Not a great result.

Ooo, the capitalist EU rather than the capitalist Warsaw Pact! Workers all over the world are sobbing at the change in class rule... Oh wait, there was no change in class rule.

[MonsterMan]

Look at the pig's ear the Poles made of their freedom - Solidarnosc just sold out to the capitalists - so, way back in the 50's that would not have been a great outcome for the forces of communism.

[MonsterMan]

Ooo, the capitalist EU rather than the capitalist Warsaw Pact! Workers all over the world are sobbing at the change in class rule... Oh wait, there was no change in class rule.

Some countries of Eastern Europe had to pay a higher price, for siding with Hitler - for example, Hungary, East Germany, Romania and Bulgaria. Therefore, why support a revolution in Hungary so early on in the campaign - 1956, merely a decade since Hitler!

And Poland? they were right wing Catholics to the hilt - would have sided with Hitler given a proper chance.

The Soviets made the right call here

[Atsumari]

Don't forget that the far-right sectarianism is just as bad, if not worst than far-left. Much of the Ukrainian and some of the Polish population gladly sided with Hitler, whether it was out of fear/hate of communism, nationalism, or religious purity, did get fucked over by the Nazis due to their extreme arrogance and irrational racism.
Communists were not the only people who were against Nazis. In fact, much to my disappointment, the resistance in Poland was largely anti-communist and anti-Nazi. The Poles were invaded by both Soviets and Nazis so they have excellent reason to hate both.

And when we talk about collaboration in Poland, we mostly talk about the Germans living in Poland.

[Destroyer of Illusions]

The Hungarian Revolution

It is strange that at the left forum action that leadsa to to the restoration of the old system is called "revolution",it is excusable only for the bourgeois public.A movement back to capitalism should be called a counter-revolution.It was just Soviet troops in Hungary who was revolutionary bacause they have supressed the attempt to restore capitalism although this Khrushchov's action was a scum of trotskyism - " the revolution at the points of bayonets".

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Whether or not the events in Budapest and Prague were incipient "worker's rebellions" (its plausible they were, considering Bela Kun's uprising in Hungary some three and a half decades earlier, but I think we should be skeptical of the notion that they were essentially socialist and not liberal), the Soviet response did a lot to discredit such an avenue, and I imagine felling the trees of the Left opposition just gave the right opposition more light to blossom.

[DOOM]

It is strange that at the left forum action that leadsa to to the restoration of the old system is called "revolution",it is excusable only for the bourgeois public.A movement back to capitalism should be called a counter-revolution.It was just Soviet troops in Hungary who was revolutionary bacause they have supressed the attempt to restore capitalism although this Khrushchov's action was a scum of trotskyism - " the revolution at the points of bayonets".

This implies that capitalism has ever been replaced in the first place. I'm assuming that you're familiar with the features of capitalism, such as the commodity fetishism.

[Destroyer of Illusions]

The new social order according Engels " will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole – that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society. It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace it with association"


You only have to find in the USSR the presence of mutually competing individuals and the absence of branches of production operated according a common plan,and ypu'll prove that there was capitalism in the Soviet Union.More power to you.


Modern leftists did and do a lot to discredit the left movement by their left anticommunism,perhaps because of it this forum is so deserted.Theoretical attempts to justify the desertion to the bourgeoisie are simply laughable.

[Destroyer of Illusions]

This implies that capitalism has ever been replaced in the first place. I'm assuming that you're familiar with the features of capitalism, such as the commodity fetishism.

"... it will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole – that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society. It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace it with association" - Engels.


The one who wants to prove that Stalinist Hungary didn't destroy capitalism should find there competing individual produsers,the absence of the branches of production operated according to a common plan.to show that competition wasn't replaced by assosiation.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

It is strange that at the left forum action that leadsa to to the restoration of the old system is called "revolution",it is excusable only for the bourgeois public.A movement back to capitalism should be called a counter-revolution.It was just Soviet troops in Hungary who was revolutionary bacause they have supressed the attempt to restore capitalism although this Khrushchov's action was a scum of trotskyism - " the revolution at the points of bayonets".

So, can you actually prove that there was a movement back to capitalism, or is this another example of "capitalism" being a mere code word for anything the bureaucracy dislikes? The economic organs of the Hungarian state remained and were bolstered by widespread workers' councils. These councils in fact rejected Nagy for his rightward drift. Those who crushed the Hungarian Revolution had to drag out various "student leaders" with five followers to even attempt to prove any sort of pro-capitalist tendency among Hungarian workers (just as the social-democratic pond scum in the capitalist states did), which makes as much sense as calling the October Revolution a clerical one because some ranting monk with three followers called it a great spiritual revolution.

[Destroyer of Illusions]

So, can you actually prove that there was a movement back to capitalism, or is this another example of "capitalism" being a mere code word for anything the bureaucracy dislikes? The economic organs of the Hungarian state remained and were bolstered by widespread workers' councils. These councils in fact rejected Nagy for his rightward drift. Those who crushed the Hungarian Revolution had to drag out various "student leaders" with five followers to even attempt to prove any sort of pro-capitalist tendency among Hungarian workers (just as the social-democratic pond scum in the capitalist states did), which makes as much sense as calling the October Revolution a clerical one because some ranting monk with three followers called it a great spiritual revolution.

A good worker's movement under the head of Cardinal Mindszenty and active part of the CIA,indeed.

It's enough to look at the modern destalinizied Hungary and to see the result with a naked eye.And it's ridiculous after Gorbachov's perestroyka to hear that the destalinisation leads to " socialism with a human face",the destalinisation leads to the restoration of capitalism - that is a lesson of 1991.