Today in history 11-04

[remrogers]

1956
November 04
Soviets put a brutal end to Hungarian revolution

A spontaneous national uprising that began 12 days before in Hungary is viciously crushed by Soviet tanks and troops on November 4, 1956. Thousands were killed and wounded and nearly a quarter-million Hungarians fled the country.

The problems in Hungary began in October 1956, when thousands of protesters took to the streets demanding a more democratic political system and freedom from Soviet oppression. In response, Communist Party officials appointed Imre Nagy, a former premier who had been dismissed from the party for his criticisms of Stalinist policies, as the new premier. Nagy tried to restore peace and asked the Soviets to withdraw their troops. The Soviets did so, but Nagy then tried to push the Hungarian revolt forward by abolishing one-party rule. He also announced that Hungary was withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact (the Soviet bloc’s equivalent of NATO).

On November 4, 1956, Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest to crush, once and for all, the national uprising. Vicious street fighting broke out, but the Soviets’ great power ensured victory. At 5:20 a.m., Hungarian Prime Minister Imre Nagy announced the invasion to the nation in a grim, 35-second broadcast, declaring: “Our troops are fighting. The Government is in place.” Within hours, though, Nagy sought asylum at the Yugoslav Embassy in Budapest. He was captured shortly thereafter and executed two years later. Nagy’s former colleague and imminent replacement, János Kádár, who had been flown secretly from Moscow to the city of Szolnok, 60 miles southeast of the capital, prepared to take power with Moscow’s backing.

The Soviet action stunned many people in the West. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had pledged a retreat from the Stalinist policies and repression of the past, but the violent actions in Budapest suggested otherwise. An estimated 2,500 Hungarians died and 200,000 more fled as refugees. Sporadic armed resistance, strikes and mass arrests continued for months thereafter, causing substantial economic disruption.

Inaction on the part of the United States angered and frustrated many Hungarians. Voice of America radio broadcasts and speeches by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had recently suggested that the United States supported the “liberation” of “captive peoples” in communist nations. During that time, approximately 30,000 Hungarian refugees were allowed to enter the United States. Yet, as Soviet tanks bore down on the protesters, the United States did nothing beyond issuing public statements of sympathy for their plight.

[Okanagan]

Budapest is a beautiful city.  A great memory is walking with my wife in the moonlight, up stone paths that wind up to the castle looking down on the Danube and that old chain bridge.  Stone buildings and walls have a lot of bullet chips in them, some probably going back to the Nazis but most from 1956.  And new buildings in such a city mark where a building was destroyed and a new one built in its place.

A friend of mine in Canada was a Hungarian refugee.  As the Russian tanks rolled in he walked out of Hungary as a 19 year old.  He and a friend took a train with hundreds of other people to a place nearest the border (with Austria?).  They got off at night with the others and started walking west though farm fields.  He chose to not stay with any other people, especially familes with children, because he knew he could not abandon them if they got in trouble, and he knew they would tire and be more likely to be caught.  As it got light they came to a village, could not read the first street sign, and knew that they had crossed the border during the night, out of Hungary.

At a Christmas party his Hungarian background came up and someone with a low social IQ laughed and asked him if he was a Hungarian Freedom Fighter.  He did not smile.  He looked her in the eye and said, "No, I am a Hungarian freedom runner.  The Freedom Fighters are all dead."