50 years on, the Hungarian uprising of 1956 remains one of the most inspirational displays of the fearlessness and tenacious solidarity of workers and youth that can endure even in the face of unspeakable repression and state violence. We look at the legacy of the revolution.
As Leslie Bain, a journalist and eyewitness of the events of 1956 has written, "No event in recent history has been so much lied about, distorted and besmirched as the Hungarian Revolution". According to the vicious lies of the Stalinist and Communist Party apologists who sought to slander and denigrate the heroism and true motivation of the masses involved in the uprising, this was a counter-revolutionary movement, stirred up by Fascists and CIA agents.
Western capitalist commentators tried to paint it solely as a movement against Stalinist totalitarianism and against Communism. Both sides concocted their lies to obscure the true nature of the events in Hungary 1956, as they represented both a threat to the bureaucratic ruling elite of the Soviet Union and an inherent threat to world capitalism.
After World War II, Hungary had so-called "socialism" imposed upon it by the Red Army and was quickly forged into a one-party, totalitarian state modelled on the bureaucratic Stalinist regime of the Soviet Union. The factories, the mines and the land were brought under state ownership and a plan of production drawn up. This facilitated considerable advances in terms of education and public health. Four and half million acres of land were distributed among 400,000 peasant families and on the basis of a planned economy, living standards continued to rise until 1949. However, power lay not in the hands of the workers as under true socialism, rather it was nefariously clutched by the privileged bureaucrats of the Communist Party, under Rakosi, who ultimately were puppets of the Kremlin. They maintained their bungling grip on the control and management of the economy through horrendous levels of state repression, enforced by the hated AVO secret police. Sandor Kopasci, the Chief of Police in Budapest in 1956 who subsequently resigned and sought asylum in Canada, described his horrific visit to networks of secret prisons for "enemies of the revolution", overflowing with prisoners who had never been tried, some tortured to the point of insanity, others jailed for crimes as petty as stealing chickens.
Due to bureaucratic mismanagement of the economy and the appropriation of a large portion of the national product for the bureaucratic caste, who along with their officials, staff, spies and hacks of various description numbered close to a million, living standards began to fall in the 50s. Intellectuals who were critical of the regime, such as the "Petofi Circle", began to organise debates and discussions and called for lifting of censorship and greater freedom of expression. The expression of discontent among intellectual circles had a snowballing effect, encouraging workers and youth critical of the bureaucracy to discuss their ideas more openly and ultimately to rise to their feet in action.
The death of Stalin in 1953 created a space to relax the intensity of the heavy-handed repression of the Hungarian regime. A section of the bureaucracy sensed the massive discontent within Hungarian society. They supported placing Imre Nagy in power, who was seen as a liberal opponent of Rakosi, in an attempt to offset the bubbling tensions rather than any genuine steps in the direction of democracy. Another section of the bureaucracy was in favour of further hard-line measures to quell dissent. This split in the ruling elite shows the crisis they were in as the movement from below was about to explode far beyond their control.
Throughout the Eastern bloc, tensions were rising. A massive strike swept Eastern Germany in 1953. There were riots in Plzen and Prague in Czechoslovakia, and workers in the Hungarian industrial towns of Csepel, Ozd and Diosgyor were taking to the streets in protest against the miserable conditions they faced. The frightened bureaucrats were vacillating and in July decided to put Kadar, a hard-liner in power. However, their efforts were powerless to stem the rising tide of opposition swelling over the summer months of 1956. In October, students in Budapest called a demonstration for the 23rd. The authorities banned it but this did nothing to prevent the spread of support for it among broader layers of workers and youth. It developed into a demonstration in support of striking workers in Poznan, Poland. This exemplary act of international solidarity proved to be the spark for the revolution.
Revolutionary spark
The youth were joined by the workers on 23 October, as tens of thousands poured onto the streets of Budapest. The actions of the AVO inflamed the situation, as they fired in panic into a crowd of unarmed men, women and children outside the radio building. When the police arrived, the crowd explained what had happened. Many of the young policemen, aware of the cruelty of the AVO, handed their weapons over to the crowd. Kopasci’s book shows the wholesale collapse of the bureaucracy’s seemingly monolithic apparatus of repression, in the face of an armed uprising of workers and youth. He describes a phone-call to a terrified young officer who informed him of the handing over of weapons to the crowd. Kopasci, the Chief of Police’s only advice was to "Barricade yourselves in and turn out your lights."
Workers' council
The Russian bureaucracy responded to events by sending in tanks on the night of 23 – 24 October. The workers and youth of Budapest met the challenge with fearless opposition. The troops were lied to and told that they were quelling a fascist uprising. Many of the troops had already been stationed in Hungary however, and spoke the language, and the workers and youth fraternised with them, winning some over and neutralising others.
Workers took over all the main buildings, and the labyrinth of secret prisons, symbols of the depravity of the bureaucratic regime, were opened and long-suffering prisoners released. New publications of workers and youth sprung up. One eyewitness declared that "people hunger and thirsted for the printed word as though they had crossed a desert". Peasants showed their support by bringing cartloads of food into the city and distributing it free of charge.
A general strike was declared and embryonic workers’ councils were established in the factories. As is always the case in the throes of revolution, the political consciousness of the masses took enormous leaps forward, as the workers’ councils developed into the true representation of the Hungarian people. The National Council of Free Trade Unions was set up and demanded that workers’ councils be set up in all workplaces to establish workers’ control and management and to end bureaucratic planning, increase wages, and end privileges. "All attempts to restore capitalism in our country" were explicitly condemned by the body.
Trotsky explained that under Stalin, the Soviet Union had obliterated all remnants of the first example of workers’ democracy, begun with the Russian Soviets or workers’ councils of 1917. Instead a bureaucratic elite that retained privileges for itself gained control over the planned economy. Trotsky argued that a political revolution was necessary to sweep away the bureaucratic caste that was ultimately a fetter on the development of productive forces. The political revolution would maintain the social base of the planned economy but place it under democratic workers’ control and management, leading to the development of a genuinely socialist society. The Hungarian Revolution, and the infinite heroism of the workers, youth and peasants who were its lifeblood was a living vindication of Trotsky’s analysis. One worker from an enormous factory in Csepel expressed this essence of the Hungarian Revolution when he told a Western journalist, "The West should not believe that the workers fought to bring back Horthy (the fascist who was in power before Red Army entered Hungary) or the landowners and counts. We shall not give back the land, the factories or the mines."
On the evening of 28 October, Russian tanks began to withdraw. Bureaucrats had placed Nagy in power in a desperate attempt to subdue the movement. However, the Nagy "government" was rendered impotent as an alternative system was posed by the workers’ councils and revolutionary committees in an example of "dual power". Peter Fryer, a reporter from the British Communist Party paper reported on the fleshing out of the workers’ councils as follows; "They were at once organs of insurrection – the coming together of delegates elected by factories and universities, mines and army units, and organs of popular self-government which the armed people trusted. As such they enjoyed tremendous authority, and it is no exaggeration to say that until the Soviet attack of 4 November the real power in the country lay in their hands."
General strike
Despite the far-reaching conclusions drawn by the most advanced workers, events in Hungary may have taken a different route had there been, as Trotsky had argued for, a revolutionary political organisation. Such an organisation could have collectivised and generalised experiences of workers’ struggle and on that basis consciously organise in order to ensure workers were best prepared to defend their revolution. The bureaucrats would not surrender their privileged ruling position lightly. A successful political revolution in Hungary would no doubt inspire the workers of Eastern Europe and in Russia itself to follow suit and thus struck fear into the very heart of the Kremlin. For this reason, the retreat of Russian tanks in the closing days of October was only going to be temporary. It was in these weeks that a revolutionary party would have consciously prepared workers and youth for another invasion.
Anna Gabor, a participant in events described how by 3 November "people swung between hope and despair". She described how people "believed they had won a victory. They could not think it would be snatched from them". Russian tanks invaded on 4 November. Troops were on strict orders not to leave their tanks in an effort to prevent any class appeal to them. One Soviet tank driver was executed because he halted his advance when a line of women and children blocked his path.
The working class reacted with amazing courage and outstanding and ingenious revolutionary discipline in the face of overwhelming and savage force that saw thousands butchered. Waves of strikes developed into a solid general strike and fighting was brilliantly organised. As one worker in Csepel explained, "Each man spent eight hours fighting, eight hours working in the factories manufacturing shells and guns, eight hours sleeping…". Young people and children as young as 10 and 12 took part in disabling Russian tanks through various resourceful means, such as laying silk on the roads so they’d slip and firing home-made Molotov cocktails.
The workers’ councils steered the resistance, keeping the general strike solid when the government were desperate to re-start production as Hungary faced into the gruelling Winter months. The councils organised their own meetings, armed resistance and press and refused to budge until their demands for workers’ control and management were met. The workers’ councils were utterly and inherently democratic in their operation. The workers basically took on a version of Lenin’s points on the maintenance of democracy through the rotation of positions and through all representatives being subject to instant recall.
Despite the use of 15 divisions with six thousand tanks, backed up by fighter planes, it took the bureaucracy weeks to regain control and quell the movement. The industrial working class districts held out the longest, with Red Csepel being one of the most enduring pockets of resistance. Unrest continued in isolated districts well into 1957 and even 1958 as workers battled bitterly to keep the return of the strangling grip of the bureaucracy at bay.
Lessons for today
The fear of a repeat of the events of 1956 impelled the bureaucrats into pumping resources into Hungary, leading to a period of economic development which allowed for relative stability for a period. Khruschev put it bluntly, "We shall shut their mouths with goulash". However, as Trotsky explained, without a successful political revolution to gain workers’ democracy, the bureaucrats would eventually run the economy into the ground resulting in a return to capitalism. This was what occurred in Hungary and the Soviet Union, despite the heroics of the workers and youth who came so close to altering the course of history during their magnificent uprising in 1956.
The restoration of capitalism has offered nothing but poverty, declining living standards and the scourge of unemployment to Hungarian workers and youth. With half of Hungary’s enterprises being privatised within four years, it has been a bonanza for the wealthy capitalists. Recent revelations about Gyurcsany, the former leader of the communist youth movement turned venture capitalist who became a millionaire overnight by buying up former state assets, have spurred thousands of workers and youth to take to the streets of Budapest. Capitalism can offer nothing but misery for the masses of Hungary. The capitalist politicians openly admit the coming of even further neo-liberal attacks and cuts as a pre-requisite of gaining entry to the EU. However, membership of the EU, as has been the case for other former Stalinist states such as Poland and the Czech Republic, will offer no escape from the nightmarish conditions of neo-liberal capitalism. It will ensure only the loss of their young people, who will add to the welcome supply of cheap labour for Western capitalists.
1956 is one of the proudest moments of working class history. It was a struggle for genuine socialism in which workers and young people, with the support of the peasantry, displayed indomitable courage and solidarity, risking their lives to shake off the stranglehold of the bureaucracy. It was in every way a return to the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky and had much in common with the Russian Revolution of 1917 when the Workers’ Soviets represented the way forward for workers’ democracy, before the degeneration under Stalin. 50 years on, the struggle of 1956 remains an inspiration for workers and youth internationally. The participants recognised the vital need for a socialist plan of production, democratically controlled and managed by workers, as the only way by which a decent standard of living could be guaranteed for all.
This is the most pertinent and vital lesson of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. With reactionary neo-liberal capitalism wreaking havoc on our livelihoods and ultimately on our very future with its destruction of the environment in the relentless pursuit of profit, never has this lesson been more relevant both to the masses in Hungary, and to the working class internationally. As the struggles of workers develop, this lesson will become crystal clear to the masses again. Victories can be achieved and the untold sacrifices of the worker, youth and peasant participants of the events of 1956 will not have been in vain.
