bout de papier, Vol. 22, No. 3 (2006) — Fall/Winter 2006 // Automne/Hiver 2006, pp. 5–8
Fifty years ago, the First Secretary in the Canadian Embassy in Belgrade, A.F. Hart, and his wife, Marion Ruth (Sellers); entered Hungary on the day that a mass uprising began in Budapest against Communist rule. A peaceful demonstration was transformed into a revolution when the Hungarian Security Police opened fire and killed hundreds of unarmed protesters. Within days, in spite of the ominous presence of Soviet tanks from units already stationed in Hungary, the rebels took up arms, the government was toppled, political prisoners were freed, non- Communist local authorities were established and a new government announced its intention to withdraw from the .. Warsaw Pact. The first phase of this clash ended with a ceasefire on 1 November 1956.
While the rest of the world was distracted by the Suez Crisis, the Soviet Union orchestrated a brutal suppression of the revolt by Red Army forces from outside
Hungary. On 4 November, a massive assault on Budapest began, with 150,000 infantry supported by 6000 tanks, heavy artillery barrages and sustained air strikes. In less than a week, the revolution was effectively over as a second ceasefire brought an end to the fighting. Though there were some negotiations between local groups and the occupation force between 10 November and 19 December 1956, the Soviet-backed regime in Hungary consolidated its hold on power, with thousands of its opponents imprisoned and an estimated 1200 executed.
The despatch below captures some of the tension and uncertainty of the first phase of the Hungarian Revolution. The original document may be found in part 3 of file 8619-40 from the records of the Department of External Affairs (RG25) in Library and Archives Canada
From: The Chargé d’Affaires, a i., Canadian
Embassy, Belgrade, Yugoslavia
To: The Secretary of State for External
Affairs, Canada
Despatch No. 632, November 1, 1956.
CONFIDENTIAL
Subject: The Red Star Falls from
Hungarian Skies.
On Tuesday, October 23, my wife and I, in our car, crossed the Hungarian border just beyond Subotica. It was an afternoon of bright, warm sunshine and the golden brown tints of autumn gave the countryside a peaceful, tranquil appearance. All appeared to be well in this part of the world. A comment to this effect to the Hungarian Customs officer drew, however, only a short pessimistic reply.
2. Fifteen minutes after completing the frontier formalities, we passed through Szeged, one of the larger industrial towns on the way to Budapest. Here on the streets there was nothing to excite our curiosity, and good-natured students, wandering aimlessly on the streets, cheerfully directed us on to the Budapest road.
3. By the time we entered Budapest, or rather the Pest section of the town, darkness had descended. The initial impression of the city which the poor lighting accentuated, was one of gloominess and depression. As we got closer to the heart of Pest, traffic became thicker and dense crowds spilled over on to the road itself. Finally in the centre, we ran into complete confusion: large bodies of students were marching in chaotic fashion here, there and everywhere. We attempted to cross over into Buda only to meet other marching groups on the bridges, all converging upon Pest.
4. As each succeeding group of students surrounded our car, our licence plates instantly became the focus of attention The red star on the plates drew prompt criticism but our “YU” plate on the back of the car softened the blow. Yugoslavia, after all, was synonymous with anti- Stalinism and we were allowed to turn round and escape further inspection.
As they marched, the students shouted slogans which it was impossible for us to understand. Motorcyclists were distributing mimeographed student manifestos. These remained unintelligible to us until we obtained a translation the next day. They embodied demands for the reorganization of the Government and Party, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary, freedom of opinion, press and radio; a multi-party parliamentary system based on free elections, recognition of the right of workers to go on strike, rehabilitation of all political prisoners wrongfully condemned and the repatriation of all Hungarians deported to the Soviet Union.
5. Towards eight o’clock in the evening, we were passed by one group of very determined-looking young men who were shouting words which sounded like “radio hoz” • A passerby informed us that this meant “on to the radio station”| At this point we found ourselves outside the British Legation and went inside to make enquiries. There was still apparently no feeling that any unusual developments were in store.
Hungarian soldiers, we were informed, had associated themselves with the student demonstrations in the demands which they were presenting to the Government and nothing more unusual than the present manifestations of ebullience was expected. Since we had now spent several hours trying to find our hotel on Margaret Island, we gladly accepted an offer from a member of the Legation to guide us to the hotel. Once installed there weariness induced us to leave further sightseeing of Budapest to the morning.
6. Next morning we awoke to the noise of full-scale battle from the direction of Pest. A state of martial law had already been declared, a curfew was in force and we were told that we could not venture out on the streets. We were thus more or less isolated on the island which lies in the river between Buda and Pest and extends from the Margaret Bridge near the centre of the city to the Stalin Bridge further along the river. From the island we could hear and see something of the general turmoil but not distinguish clearly what was going on. Part of the Margaret Bridge was under fire occasionally because it lay close to AVO [ÁVH: Államvédelmi Hatóság or ’State Protection Authority’l the political police headquarters. Over the nearby Stalin Bridge traffic consisted only of military vehicles and urgent screaming caravans of Red Cross ambulances.
7. From various sources we gathered that the developments of late Tuesday night and Wednesday morning had unfolded as follows: the students marched first to the Polish Embassy to demonstrate their solidarity with the trend of events in Poland. They then went to pay their respects at the foot of the statue of General [Józef Zachariasz] Bem, the Polish hero whose struggle in Poland had made the [Louis] Kossuth rising possible in Hungary in 1948. From there they went on to the Parliament Buildings where they presented their demands to the Government. Gero [Ernö Geröl, the First Secretary lof the Central Committeel of the Hungarian Workers Party, who had just returned from Yugoslavia, chose somewhat arrogantly to ignore these demands. In an evening broadcast he attacked the demonstrators and defended Hungary’s ties with the Soviet Union. These rejoinders served only to inflame the demonstrators and they headed off in the direction of Stalin’s statue which, through the efforts of a number of trucks and great masses of students, was toppled over and dragged a couple of blocks to one of the main squares. There it reposed in crumpled ignoming in the following days undergoing repeated acts of desecration on the part of the irate inhabitants of Budapest. A group of students next broke into military barracks and with the soldiers looking on helped themselves to arms and ammunition. This enabled hostilities to begin in earnest with an attack first on the radio station which lies near Rakoczi Street. This area in which the newspaper offices and National Museum are also located was to be the scene of the most bitter fighting throughout succeeding days.
8. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the brunt of the opposition to the insurgents was borne by the political police. A little later, Hungarian troops were brought in followed by Soviet tank components. These forces we learned had been stationed just on the outskirts of Budapest the evening before in preparation for any trouble. A Dutch traveller at our hotel, a Mr. deLange, who had attempted to reach Budapest from Vienna on Tuesday evening had been turned back by troops and told to return to Vienna. Instead, he took a detour along the Danube and entered the city from that direction.
9. During the course of Wednesday, the noise of battle in Pest continued without much interruption. On the island we were dependent for precise information on events on telephone calls to the various Embassies in town and to the news being broadcast every few minutes over Budapest Radio. I was able also to listen in on the extended telephone conversations which M. [Jean- Daniell Daninos, a French film producer [best known for directing Un Martien a Paris (1961)| resident at the hotel, maintained with his Hungarian colleagues, in Pest. These people, with the lid off, expressed their views in completely uninhibited fashion. On two occasions small groups of Red Cross workers and youths armed with revolvers, who were passing by, gave us their version of the campaign.
10. Radio transmissions, telephone and power facilities continued to operate fairly continuously but all other phases of the normal life of the city were suspended while we were there, Radio Budapest transmissions remained under Government control but the studio building itself was largely demolished in the course of the fighting. Broadcasts were made, we were informed, from the cellar of the Parliament Buildings and were transmitted from technical facilities in Government hands outside the city.
1l. Throughout the night the Government and the Central Committee of the Hungarian Workers’ Party sat in emergency session in the Parliament Building. With the deterioration in the situation they remained indefinitely in session assuring inviolability of their deliberations by posting a cordon of Soviet tanks around the building.
12. Among Wednesday’s early-morning announcements over Radio Budapest was. the news of the admission of [Imre] Nagy to the Government as Prime Minister [later lured out of asylum in the Yugoslav Embassy by a false promise of safe conduct to exile, his execution was announced on 17 June 1958]. This was the only change made at this stage and Gero was still First Secretary. Since announcements about martial law and the request to the Soviet Union for military help were made about the same time it looked as though Nagy had assumed responsibility for these unpleasant and drastic measures. In fact, Soviet tanks had already started fighting within the city several hours before the request was announced. A telephone conversation with the U.S. Embassy reported that fighting was going on outside the Embassy and one badly wounded Soviet tank crew member had been brought inside the Embassy. From eye-witness accounts, it appeared that the Soviet tanks were being used against the strongholds of armed groups of insurgents and for protecting the main Government buildings such as AVO, the large political police building near the Margaret Bridge. One report indicated that some Soviet crews had abandoned their tanks and were fraternizing with the civilians. Eye-witness accounts have subsequently become available to indicate that on one occasion on Wednesday Soviet tanks fired into an unarmed crowd of demonstrators outside the Parliament Buildings. The number of dead resulting from this incident was estimated officially at about 200 persons.
13. During the day Radio Budapest kept broadcasting appeals to the insurgents to lay down their arms. An ultimatum set. two o’clock in the afternoon as the deadline for compliance and also as the end of the curfew. The Government’s hopes, however, proved unavailing and in both cases new deadlines had to be set as control over the situation continued to elude the Government’s grasp. From these broadcasts in the afternoon, it was clear that large numbers of workers had joined the students and were holding out in factories in one industrial section of the town.
14. Thursday opened fairly quietly in the morning and, although the curfew was still in effect, deLange, our Dutch friend, accompanied by an American decided to drive in preparation for the drive to Vienna. Shortly afterwards some others of us were about to set off on foot into town. But these intentions were dissipated by the early return of delange and his passenger, both looking visibly pale and shaken. Two automobiles in front of them, they said, had been shot up and their occupants killed in a tank sortie just beyond the Margaret Bridge. Abandoning their car, they temporarily sought shelter in a nearby doorway and, when the tanks passed by, they got quickly into their automobile which fortunately had escaped undamaged.
15. Mass demonstrations, we learned through our telephone contacts, continued throughout the day in the town. Members of the American and Yugoslav Embassies brought us reports of large crowds appearing outside their Embassies to appeal for military assistance against their Soviet masters.
16. Towards noon on Thursday only sporadic outbursts of machine gun fire could be heard and it appeared that the uprising was almost over. Various events immediately conspired, however, to render this conclusion premature. First. M. Daninos introduced us to a Mr. [Andras] Libik la film director and producer, who later made a documentary film about the Hungarian uprisingl, whose father, we were informed, held the position of Director of Information in the Hungarian Government with responsibility for all cultural activities. Mr. Libik presented us with an alarming picture of the situation at that point. He said that in effect the uprising was just in its early stage and would probably soon assume wider proportions. Hungarian Army units and even some Soviet tank crews had abandoned voluntarily their equipment to the insurgents; the city was now ringed by Soviet forces and, as the Hungarian Army was extremely restive, it was possible that pitched battles might take place between the two armies. It was expected that the Soviet Air Force would bombard Budapest in the afternoon. (A squadron of jet fighters did fly over according to schedule but nothing happened.) This information was conveyed to us in a way which left no doubt He out no dou as to the sympathies of the young man himself, and, when I remarked on this fact to M. Daninos, he suggested that if I wanted to hear some really strong anti-Communist view-points expressed, I should meet the young man’s father. It was M. Daninos’ impression, after some weeks in Hungary, that the presence of Soviet forces was bitterly resented and the Communist regime itself heartily and generally disliked.
17. After Mr. Libik’s stimulating remarks, we went outside to salute the arrival of a young French journalist from Pest. She brought a story of bloody fighting around the railway station and also the lamentable news that the political police had just fired into a massed crowd of demonstrators causing casualties which were later set officially at 300 dead. She also seemed to think that the battle was far from over. Indeed her remarks were punctuated by an outburst of firing for the first time in the Buda section nearby.
18. In the early afternoon Radio Budapest gave the significant news of Gero’s replacement by [János] Kádár as First Secretary [of the Central Committeel of the [Hungarian Workers] Party land later head of the Hungarian Worker-Peasant government, which declared itself in power on 4 November 1956; ruler of Hungary until 1988]. A further concession to the insurgents was contained in the announcement that the Government intended to open negotiations with the Soviet Government on a basis of equality and to have Soviet forces withdrawn once order was restored. The impact of these statements was weakened, however, by complimentary references to the fraternal Soviet Army units, and, in a disappointing inaugural address which followed, Kadar chose to dwell largely on the need to restore order.
19. These evidences of the Government’s weakness and vacillation encouraged the insurgents to stiffen their demands. A new manifesto was distributed on Thursday evening which confirmed both that a prolongation of the struggle was anticipated and that the insurgents were developing an organization. The manifesto, a translation of which has already been sent on from Vienna repeated previous demands and went on to call for the formation of a new temporary revolutionary national government. The insurgents were prepared to accept Nagy and Kadar in this new government. They demanded also the ending of martial law, the cancellation of the Warsaw Pact, a general amnesty, the disarming of the AVO (political police) and the establishment of Hungarian socialism on real democratic foundations. On Friday morning early heavy fighting broke out. The Margaret Bridge was under fire again and over the Stalin Bridge more tanks were pouring from out of town to take part in the battle. For the new few hours there was a full complement of sound effects from machine gun fire, cannons and mortars. Although this all seemed to be going on very close at hand, we learned subsequently that the major battle was taking place in the ninth region, an industrial sector lying just beyond the area in which is found the Parliament Buildings, the main squares and radio and newspaper offices.
20. The increased intensity of the fighting induced a number of foreigners in the hotel to think about getting out in spite of the curfew and a total of fifteen cars were quickly enrolled for a convoy. There were fortunately enough vacant seats for those without their own cars. In our car we were able to accommodate an Indian engineer, an Israeli diplomat, and Mr. George Boer, a Canadian of Hungarian origin from Georgetown, Ontario. Petrol coupons, however, were required and here our Dutch friend volunteered to make another attempt to reach the auto club. This time he was successful. On his return he described the centre of the town as a scene of complete shambles and desolation with overturned carts, buses and trams lying on the streets, buildings on fire – the National Museum was gutted – and bonfires which people were stoking with the contents of Communist literature from the bookshops.
21. At noon our convoy headed slowly out towards Buda by way of the Stalin Bridge. This bridge was now fully occupied by Soviet tanks but no attempt was made to stop us and, as we passed, each tank seemed to be the scene of a curious crowd of Hungarian people.
22. The paralysis of all normal activity which was noticeable in Budapest also characterized the areas through which we passed en route to Vienna. People seemed to be out en masse on the streets aimlessly wandering around or queued up before closed food shops. Some were avid for news of the progress of the fighting in Budapest; others begged us to get help to them from the West in their struggle for freedom. Flags were much in evidence, the Hungarian tricolour alternating at times with a solid black flag. In their lapels, people were also wearing ribbons of the Hungarian colours surmounted by a black patch. Nowhere did we see any of the symbols of Sovietization and Communism. All had been torn down including the Communist centrepiece from the Hungarian tricolour. The Hungarian Army barracks which we passed flew only the unadorned Hungarian tricolour with the tell-tale off-colour patch in the centre where the Communist centrepiece had formerly reposed
23. As we had heard that the main Vienna road for some distance from Budapest was clogged with tank components, we took a detour for the first 100 kilometres along the Danube River. We passed innumerable truckloads of men headed in the direction of Budapest obviously with the intention of joining the struggle. All along the road it was clear that the normal organs of authority had abandoned their functions. There were no police officers to be seen at any point. Occasionally we had to stop to identify ourselves to groups of insurgents who were obviously conducting themselves without interference from the normal authorities, if indeed these still existed. At one of these points just fifteen kilometres outside of Budapest we were stopped by insurgents who were exercising their supervisory powers on traffic in front of military barracks from which the soldiers, with apathy or approval. The red star on the licence plates of my car was promptly noticed and in the next few uneasy moments we faced the distinct prospect of being heaved into the ditch by irate Hungarians. Fortunately our fellow refugees were able to intercede successfully on our behalf and we were allowed to proceed. Before we approached the next town, however, I took the precaution of covering over the red stars with sticking plaster.
24. The most sensitive area we had to pass through before reaching the border was the large industrial town of Györ. About a kilometre before reaching the town, units of the Hungarian Army including artillery, tanks, and infantry were drawn up in full battle array on a small ridge commanding the approaches to the town. Artillery and tanks were both deployed in the direction of Budapest. This deployment might have been devised for fleeing groups of insurgents from Budapest but, on the other hand, since Györ was clearly in the hands of anti-Government groups which were not being molested by the troops, another explanation offered was that these were anti-Government Army units drawn up to protect the town against possible intervention from Soviet forces.
25. As I look back on our Budapest sojourn, the predominant emotions which remain apart from well remembered feelings of anxiety and concern, are astonishment and admiration – astonishment that an uprising of such proportions could take place in a Communist-controlled state occupied by Soviet forces, and admiration at the remarkable heroism of the people who participated in the insurrection. A full explanation of the failure of the Communist regime in Hungary to cope with the situation must await the efforts of people who are better-informed on Hungarian politics than I am. On the surface, it appeared that the Government badly misjudged the temper of the people on that fateful Tuesday evening. The early arrival of Soviet forces which had been conveniently stationed in readiness nearby suggests, however, that Hungarian leaders were not too sure of themselves. Perhaps what they did not expect was the remarkable unity and courage of the people in the crisis. In the face of such staunch nerve and continued in the following days to fumble its way towards some kind of solution which would enable the Stalinists in its midst to retain power.
26. In Budapest and in the countryside generally, the rising was both anti- Communist and anti-Soviet. People obviously did not differentiate between the two evils. The predominant theme was “Liberty and Independence” and these words were inscribed on the flags which covered the bodies of those who had fallen in one of the main squares. The manifestos which the insurgents issued also laid the stress heavily on objectives which were basically nationalist: equality in relations with the Soviet Union, the withdrawal of Soviet troops, the use of the Kossuth symbols and the restoration of traditional Hungarian Army uniforms. They brought out clearly that, in the eyes of the Hungarian people, the leadership of the Communist Party was completely discredited. Demands for a multi-party parliamentary system and socialism based on real democratic foundations were put forward as avenues of escape from the all-embracing monolithism of Communism. My impression, however, was that the insurgents were realistic enough to appreciate that they could not eradicate Communism immediately. Acceptance of Nagy and Kadar, in the absence of other less offensive Communist leaders, was put forward in their manifestos, providing of course that they were not merely the stooges of the Stalinists and that other demands were conceded. But these two men, I am sure, are merely regarded as stopgaps. They will undoubtedly in the future have to answer to the Hungarian people for their share of responsibility in the use of Soviet forces against the people of Budapest.
27. It was impossible to say when we left Budapest on Friday what the outcome of the struggle would be. All that we could take away definitely with us from this tragic event was the conviction that if the Hungarian people could be freed of Soviet forces and the hated political police they would probably then seek to go further and discard all traces of Communism.
Allbert]. F[rederick], HART Chargé d’Affaires, a.l.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 22, No. 3 (2006) — Fall/Winter 2006 // Automne/Hiver 2006, pp. 5–8. Read the rest of this issue →
