By Tyson Strandlund, YCLer from Victoria
Whether in Hong Kong, Venezuela, Syria, Belarus, or recently Cuba, imperialist destabilization efforts against sovereign countries using local actors are nothing new. While the historical circumstances and political situations may vary, the formula remains essentially the same: use economic pressure to create hardship for working people (as with the blockade against Cuba and the sanctions against Venezuela), bombard the population with psychological warfare and propaganda (the likes of Radio Free Europe), and lastly, provide financial and political support to reactionary right-wing elements in the country. This often includes military equipment and weapons (as with Islamic extremists in Syria), and is always done in the name of “freedom” and “democracy.” It is precisely such a method that was used against the Hungarian People’s Republic in October-November 1956.
After the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I and a period of political instability, the Party of Communists in Hungary led by Béla Kun established the Hungarian Soviet Republic in March 1919. However, the revolution would be short-lived. The republic was toppled within a year by the forces of former Austro-Hungarian naval commander Miklós Horthy thanks to the support of the imperialist powers. Despite the Hungarian government having purchased the supplies in advance, U.S. president Herbert Hoover ensured that financial and food aid for Hungary was withheld until the communist-led government was overthrown and Horthy installed as regent in the now so-called Kingdom of Hungary. With the support of the Romanian army, Horthy implemented a “White Terror” that saw hundreds of communists and Jews tortured and murdered without trial. Horthy’s dictatorship would last 25 years before being defeated alongside Hitler and the Axis powers with whom Horthy had allied Hungary during World War II.
As the Red Army liberated the country, many reactionaries fled the country westward, a number of whom would carry on their anti-communist activities in the employment of American, British, and West German intelligence and propaganda agencies, or in some cases as university professors. Many also crossed the border and remained in Austria. As they retreated, the Nazis had wreaked havoc on Hungarian infrastructure, destroying every bridge in Budapest in order to slow the Soviet advance, and the war had devastated the country’s largely agrarian economy. Emerging from a quarter-century of fascist dictatorship which severely weakened and limited the Hungarian communist movement, as well as a costly war, conditions in Hungary were hardly ideal for the construction of socialism. However, economic hardship and the delegitimization of the fascists had made fertile ground for arguments for socialism and nationalization of the economy. By 1949, the Communist Party of Hungary had merged with the Social Democrats to create the Hungarian Working People’s Party, soon to incorporate additional democratic parties in a People’s Front. The Party was led by former Communist Party leader Mátyás Rákosi, an internationalist who had led the Communist International in 1942 and had been a minister in Béla Kun’s Hungarian Soviet Republic, which he viewed as the predecessor of the new republic under his leadership.
In the first year of the Rákosi government, a new constitution was drafted for the Hungarian People’s Republic that declared socialism as the country’s goal. A program of nationalization of major banks, industries, and mines was implemented, while the breakup and redistribution of the vast aristocratic estates had already taken place in 1945. However, the country needed time to rebuild from the ruins of war, and the lack of industry meant that improvements to living standards would take time under the new economic plans, which prioritised building Hungary’s industrial base. Not only this, but as a former Axis power, Hungary was for several years expected to provide reparations to the USSR for the destruction of its own economy. It is estimated that the Soviet Union lost at least 27 million lives and was set back economically by no less than a decade, in contrast to the U.S., which had remained almost untouched by the war and contributed relatively little to the fight against the Axis.
Under these conditions, the People’s Front and the Hungarian Working People’s Party faced many challenges, not least of all disunity and factionalism, particularly in the wake of Khrushchev’s cynical and opportunistic denunciation of Stalin in 1953, leading to Rákosi’s replacement by the reformist Imre Nagy from 1953 to 1955. Rákosi, however, retained his position as general secretary of the Party, and ultimately pushed for Nagy’s replacement by András Hegedüs. It was thus in 1956 that the imperialist powers led by the U.S. sought to take advantage of public dissatisfaction with stagnant living standards, factional infighting among the leadership, and significantly, the large number of former aristocrats, bourgeois, and fascist sympathisers still within the country or holding out in Austria who had so far escaped justice. Especially following the Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s 20th Congress, Radio Free Europe, a CIA propaganda outlet, bombarded the population with anti-communist rhetoric and led them to believe that the West would come to the assistance of forces hostile to the communists. This is the context in which on October 23, 1956, the deeply impoverished country saw the outbreak of protests.
It is clear, however, that this was not a united movement. Many of those who expressed their dissatisfaction or went on strike had legitimate grievances, and student groups were requesting only modest improvements to their situations. At first, protestors demanded “socialism with Hungarian colours” and called for the return of Imre Nagy to the leadership of the government, who, while not openly opposing socialism as such, opportunistically supported the bourgeois multi-party system and various “democratic” reforms. But this is precisely how fascist movements work, infiltrating, manipulating, and misdirecting popular movements, not infrequently under ostensibly progressive-sounding slogans, and ultimately presenting reaction as “revolution” – the very term used by Ukrainian Banderites in 2014 and by those waving the fascist collaborators’ flag in Belarus more recently. The same may be said of Cuba today, where, following the U.S.-sponsored unrest in July of this year, President Miguel Díaz-Canel noted that most Cubans who took to the streets were not in fact opponents of the revolution, and were not unjustified in expressing their dissatisfaction. The problem arises in that reactionary elements attempted to misdirect popular frustrations and scapegoat the Cuban government, rather than U.S. imperialism and the American blockade from which shortages of medicine and supplies originate, despite the overwhelming majority of Cubans’ support for the socialist system demonstrated in the constitutional referendum in 2019 and in the massive pro-revolutionary rallies which followed the protest.
By 11 p.m. on October 23, the protests in Hungary had taken a decidedly violent turn, which only grew worse throughout the night and into the following morning. Even many who were not opposed to capitalist restoration could not identify with the counterrevolutionaries committing atrocities, many of whom were constantly inebriated. Prime Minister András Hegedüs had no choice but to request Soviet assistance in quelling the counterrevolutionary riots – a call for aid that Nagy supported at that time. That same day, however, Nagy’s opportunistic faction gained the upper hand and declared him prime minister as some of the rioters had demanded, which was only possible thanks to his professed support for socialism. Nagy immediately began to exacerbate the situation, opening the border with Austria and allowing a flood of fascists, aristocrats, and Horthyites, trained and equipped with arms and explosives by the British and the Americans, to infiltrate the country and the increasingly anti-communist demonstrations. Egged on by Radio Free Europe broadcasts, the fascists carried out a wave of brutal terrorist activity, which international commentators remarked was reminiscent of Horthy’s “White Terror” decades earlier. The counter-revolutionaries released and armed prisoners who joined in the mob. Communists were beaten, tortured, lynched, and hung upside down from balconies and lampposts in the streets. Communist Party offices were raided and those inside killed. The fascists established checkpoints and boarded busses in search of communists, who were dragged out and shot on sight. Lists of names and addresses of the families and children of Party members were being compiled in preparation for extermination, while Jewish families had crosses marked on their doors. Nagy, meanwhile, negotiated with the terrorists and promised amnesty to the murderers if they laid down their weapons, leading famed Italian anti-fascist Palmiro Togliatti to express his alarm at the turn taken by the Nagy government.
By October 29, as the riots were winding down, Red Army troops began to withdraw at Nagy’s request. Showing his true colours, and now in full control after having expelled loyal communists from the government, Nagy announced his intention to withdraw Hungary from the Warsaw Pact, to welcome reactionary parties and aristocrats back into parliament, and to fulfill the demands of the “revolution.” Significantly, Nagy had also dissolved the ÁVH, the State Protection Authority, which had already been substantially weakened under his first period of leadership from 1953 to 1955, and had thus been more easily overwhelmed when the imperialist-backed violence began. The bloodshed continued with renewed intensity, but workers and dedicated communists who had organized in attempts to defend themselves managed to hold their ground. On November 4, they formed the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party under the leadership of János Kádár, devoted to the defence of the revolution and protection of the people’s democracy. The reorganised Party again requested aid from the Soviet Union, which dutifully responded and sent the Red Army to help restore order, but not before thousands of Hungarian civilians and state security forces had been murdered and mutilated by the counter-revolutionary terrorists. 700 Soviet soldiers would also give their lives in the clashes, which lasted until November 10. The following decades saw consistently rising standards of living and peaceful socialist construction.
This act of solidarity with the Hungarian working class resulted in neither political nor economic gain for the USSR, and U.S. anti-communist propaganda campaigns ensured that much of the Western world viewed Soviet aid as an act of violent repression – and even “imperialism” in certain ultra-leftist circles – precisely as would be the case following Soviet aid in Afghanistan against the Mujahideen decades later. In most of the Third World however, excepting U.S. and British puppets, communist and national liberation leaders like Mao Zedong, Jawaharlal Nehru, and others viewed Soviet actions with sympathy, with China referring to Soviet aid as an act of proletarian internationalism. Many believed the riots had been timed to distract from Israel, France, and Britain’s invasion of Egypt. Others were relatively indifferent, even if they voiced concern about how the Soviet intervention would be perceived in the West. But despite imperialist distortions and misrepresentations, history has shown us what the Red Army had held at bay, and it was not the forces of “democracy” or “freedom.”
In 1988, as the socialist world began to crumble, an ostensibly liberal-democratic party called Fidesz was founded in opposition to the communists. One of its founders was Viktor Orbán. In 1989, Orbán gained public attention after delivering a speech at the reburial of Imre Nagy in praise of the “Hungarian Revolution.” The rest of this history is much better known, with Orbán going on to lead the country, remaining president to this day, and openly declaring his government a successor to both the Horthy dictatorship and the 1956 wave of terrorism by the “Lads of Pest.” The socialist system has been completely dismantled, and under Orbán, living standards have fallen dramatically. The Orbán regime – praised by the likes of Steve Bannon – has entrenched itself, has undermined even the limited democratic forms of the bourgeois parliamentary system, and engages in endless xenophobic and Islamophobic rhetoric, scapegoating minorities for the country’s problems. Orbán’s government, which today rules indefinitely by emergency decree, has also passed anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in the name of “anti-pedophilia” laws, which regulate the “display or portrayal” of products that “express homosexuality” or represent a “deviation from the identity corresponding to the sex at birth.” The result of Orbán’s policies and rhetoric have been the creation of an increasingly unsafe environment for the LGBTQ+ community, ethnic minorities, and political opponents, and one in which far-right, white supremacist, and fascist movements have flourished.
Looking across the globe at U.S.-supported opposition movements in Cuba, Venezuela, Belarus, and elsewhere, progressive organizations and individuals would do well to keep the so-called “Hungarian Revolution” in mind.