The Hungarian Revolution - a talk by Pat Wall

I have uploaded a talk by Pat Wall, Marxist Labour MP for Bradford North from 1987 to 1990, given at a ‘Militant’ Summer Camp in 1981, on YouTube here:

Here is the transcript of the speech:

Comrades, at 3 a.m. on November the 4th 1956, 15 Russian armoured divisions massed at key points in Hungary for the second assault on a largely defenceless people. The first assault had been inconclusive. Moscow claimed - or denied - that it had been consulted on the use of its soldiers in the first assault. The Hungarians had not been expected to resist with bare hands, and small arms, the attack of Russian tanks. Russian soldiers had not been expected to go over to the side and to fraternise with the Hungarian people on the scale which they did. But on this occasion, there was no mistake and at 4:00 a.m. Russian tanks again entered Budapest in 4 days of bitter and bloody fighting which cost the lives of somewhere between 25 and 35,000 Hungarians and probably two and a half to 3,000 Russians. The Hungarian Revolution was crushed in blood.

And that this glorious workers’ revolution should be drowned in blood by those who claim to be the heirs and defenders and the standard bearers of the traditions of the 1917 October Revolution is a bitter irony. Stalinism arose from the impasse of the Russian Revolution. Isolated and backward Russia on the one hand and the failure of the workers revolution throughout Europe and Asia on the other. And it was that that opened the way for the development and the consolidation of Stalinism. The conditions which gave rise to Stalinism have long since disappeared in Russia with the development of industry, technique, education and culture but that doesn't mean that peacefully and gradually that Stalinism will disappear from the scene. Indeed, it's the existence of this deformed worker state, of a bureaucratic totalitarian one party state, that has been the cause of the deformed development of the revolution in a whole series of states in the post-war period: in Hungary, in Czechoslovakia, throughout Eastern Europe, in China, in Burma, in Cuba, in Mozambique, in Angola and in the Horn of Africa. And that in itself has raised for the workers' movement throughout the world, not only in those states, a whole series of new problems. It's not the only factor, but the weakness, or relative weakness, of imperialism and the nonexistence on a mass basis of a Marxist tendency inside the world labour movement has also reinforced that particular development.

And what that means, is that it means for the workers in those states the need again to make a revolution, the need to make a political revolution - not a social revolution - a political revolution, to establish on the basis of the public ownership of the means of production and distribution in that society, a workers' socialist democracy. It means that that has to be done in extremely difficult conditions and it also means that the tool for achieving this aim - that is a revolutionary Marxist party - has to be created in an extremely short space of time and under the most difficult conditions. And nowhere was that process been shown to date more clearly than the events in Hungary in 1956.

But if we're to understand what happened in 1956, it's necessary briefly to look at the prehistory of that particular period in order to see where the Hungarian workers gained their traditions. Hungary in fact was never even an independent nation until 1918, and Hungary as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire fought on the German side in the 1914-18 war and was defeated. From that defeat, the Allies - Britain and France - imposed on Hungary draconic conditions in a treaty. They gave large parts of what had formerly been Hungary to Czechoslovakia and other states, where one Hungarian statesman said an attempt to cripple the already crippled. And that reinforced the movement which was developing in Hungary at that particular time. And the soldiers who returned from fighting in Russia brought with them stories of the Revolution which was developing with inside Russia, of a new state that was arising - a workers' state where land was given to the peasants and the workers would own industry. And in Hungary, quite in isolation from the Red Army who had more than enough to do with the problems which they had fighting the armies of intervention, Soviets were set up, Soviets of workers, of peasants, of intellectuals throughout the length and breadth of Hungary. The Allies forced out of power, on the basis of the treaty they imposed on the Hungarians, the government of that particular time and constitutionally the government of Bela Kun came to power, a government composed mainly of Communists but containing within it a number of Social Democrats. And that government in 1919 proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic. That government lasted only 4 months. That Republic was drowned in blood and tens of thousands of Hungarian Communists, Socialists, Trade Unionists, and thousands of innocent people who would have nothing to do with the revolution or the workers' movements, were murdered by the agents of the White Terror of Admiral Horthy who had been backed by the Allies and supported by the Romanian Army which crushed the Hungarian revolution in blood.

We have to examine why that Revolution was defeated and I would suggest that there were two basic reasons for that defeat. Firstly, the existence within the government, and acting as a brake, a number of Social Democrats who in any event were largely discredited as far as the masses of the Hungarian people were concerned, and secondly the failure to immediately carry out land reform and to distribute the land to the peasants. I think that Kun thought he should bring in eventually some form of collectivization of agriculture. Well, had they proclaimed immediately the revolution ... the Soviet Republic was declared, the land to the peasants, that would not only ensure that the largely peasant population had a real stake in the preservation of the Revolution but it also would have other enormous propaganda effect as far as the Romanian Army which were the major invaders were concerned. In all events, the Revolution was crushed. A regime of decades of Terror was instituted in Hungary and Bela Kun fled to Moscow. Just as an aside, Kun opposed Stalin during the purges of the mid-30s and was executed as a 'Trotskyist' during the purges of the mid 1930s. 

And the Horthy regime existed right up to the outbreak of the Second World War and it entered the Second World War on the side of Hitler. But seeing the way the things were going towards the end of the war, as the Russian army started to advance following the victory at Stalingrad, the Hungarian government attempted to sue for a separate peace or at least to ease its way out of its participation in the war on behalf of the Germans. And the answer of the Nazi regime was to occupy Hungary. 400,000 Hungarian Jews were shipped to the concentration camps. Hundreds - thousands - more of activists within the opponents of the Horthy regime were imprisoned, tortured and murdered. 

And that was the situation when in 1944 the Red Army started to advance into Hungary. And as far as the mass of the Hungarian people were concerned, they shared the traditions of 1917, the Russian Revolution, and 1919, the Hungarian Revolution. They shared the traditions of the Soviets as the organisation for the carrying through of that Revolution. They had a hatred of the Horthy regime and of the Nazi regime, of the Nazi occupation, and the Russians were very largely welcomed by the Hungarian people as their armies began to push the Germans out of Hungary. The peasants began to seize the land. There were first indications of the workers moving in their tradition to form Workers' Councils or Soviets in Hungary. And having given an impulse to the Socialist Revolution in that sense, the Red Army then proceeded to strangle it from the top. On the guise of keeping order, a Hungarian government was formed under General Béla Miklós, who in fact was the holder of Hitler's highest military honour, the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. The government contained two of the leading military gentlemen who cooperated with the Hitler regime. It also included Imre Nagy who was later to play such a prominent role in the events of 1956 as Minister of Agriculture. It contained other Communists, Social Democrats and members of the Smallholders' party. That government still considered and declared that Admiral Horthy was still the leader of Hungary and in his first statement issued to the Hungarian people, on the Red Army's occupied radio, General Vörös, one of the other militarists in the government said, "Long live a free and democratic Hungary under the leadership of Admiral Horthy!". It would be hard to find a statement ... in such a few words which was so contradictory as that. The government declared in its first declaration the sanctity of private property and that private property would continue.

And we have to raise the question, why did the Russians form such a government? And the reason is, that in Hungary a vacuum existed. The Horthy regime had been universally hated - except by the aristocrats and the church, the landowning class in Hungary. That during the Nazi occupation, the aristocrats, the landowners and the capitalists had cooperated with the Nazi regime. Those that hadn't had been shot. They fled when the Red Army occupied Hungary. So, you had a situation where the capitalist class didn't in reality exist, where the old reaction didn't in reality exist. 

I've been listening to a very learned scientific discussion about time and motion and space - which is a little bit above my head - just before I came into this tent, but I know a little bit about science, and I know that nature abhors a vacuum. And the situation in Hungary was, without the intervention of the sort of Governments which the Russians set up, the only force capable of filling that vacuum would have been Councils of Workers and Peasants within Hungary. And therefore, the Russians moved to prevent such a development, which would have posed enormous dangers for the bureaucracy in Moscow and imposed this particular weird Coalition Government onto the backs of the Hungarian people.

Now by 1948 the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe have been consolidated. I think it's important to make the point that the Hungarian Stalinist regime started where the Russian Stalinist regime finished. That in Russia we'd had a situation of a genuine workers' Revolution - for the facts as that Ted [Grant] explained, and I mentioned briefly in opening my contribution, which was became a deformed workers' state, became a totalitarian one party state. In Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and China and the other Stalinist States, because of the existence of the Russian deformed workers' state, of the one party totalitarian regime in Russia, Hungary started from that basis and never went through the process of a healthy workers' Revolution along the classical lines sketched by the great teachers of Marxism. As a young comrade said in one of the debates either this morning or yesterday what in fact the Stalinists did was to make initially a coalition with the shadow of the capitalist class because in reality it had no substance because they fled with the retreating Nazi armies. And then balancing first on the capitalist class then on the workers' class - the shadow of the capitalist class, then on the workers' class - the Stalinists began to consolidate their regime. Rákosi, the leader - the first Secretary - of the Hungarian Communist Party explained how the revolution - in 'inverted commas' - was made from the top using the Ministry of Interior. The opposition was sliced away slice by slice, as one would slice a salami sausage, and there really is the origin of the famous phrase the 'salami tactic' by which the Stalinists established their control of the state within inside the the countries of Eastern Europe. In every satellite the Communist Party controlled the police, the army and the security forces. In Hungary, the Smallholders' Party, controlling the means of repression - the 'armed bodies of men' with inside society, were soon exposed using the Secret Police in order to find information on them. The Social Democrats, which were part of the governments, were absorbed or most of them were in a forced coalition with the Communist Party. And I'd like to quote - because I think it clearly shows the tactics of the Stalinists at that particular time - the words of Rákosi on this particular subject. And he says that "there was one position control of which was claimed by our Party from the first minute. One position where the party was not inclined to consider any distribution of the post according to the strength of the Parties in the Coalition. This was the State Security Authority. We kept this organization in our hands from the first day of its establishment". And I think that clearly shows the methods which the Stalinists used to establish their regimes in Eastern Europe and the reason that they were able to establish control so firmly, so easily, and so relatively quickly. The ÁVO, the State Security Police in Hungary, became a privileged elite within that society. When the average wage was 1,000 forints in Hungary, an ordinary policeman in the ÁVO received three times that salary, an officer from 9,000 to 12,000 forints, in order to separate the secret police from the mass of the ordinary people.

The occupation by the Red Army was followed by a series of monstrous acts which resulted, not only in Hungary but in Poland and throughout Eastern Europe, the development of a real nationalist feeling against Russian occupation, and against the Russian domination of the countries of Eastern Europe. It's estimated that in the early years of the Rákosi regime, that between 30 and 35% of the national income of Hungary was spent on reparations to Russia and on payments for the garrison of Russian troops within that country. By 1949, because of the appalling living conditions of the Hungarian people, and because signs of unrest were seen, that figure in fact was cut by half. Not only that, but during the whole of that period, the Russians exploited the countries of Eastern Europe in relation to the terms of trade, where Hungary and the other Eastern Europe European satellites were forced to sell their products at under the world market price, and forced to buy Russian products at well over the world market price. And that was the situation which continued until 1949.

But in 1949 and I haven't any time whatsoever to go into it, but along National Stalinist lines, Tito and Yugoslavia broke with Stalin, not on the basis of a movement of workers' democracy but on the basis of the national interest of the bureaucratic clique in Yugoslavia as opposed to the domination of the bureaucratic clique inside the Kremlin. And, arising from that situation and the enormous wave of propaganda by the Russians, against the Tito regime and by the very real fear that the Bulgarians, Hungarians, Romanians and others would follow along the Tito path, a whole series of purges were instituted by Stalin and by the Kremlin throughout Russia and the whole of Eastern Europe. Between 1948 and 1950 nearly half a million members were expelled from the Hungarian Communist Party. Massive purges took place and the haunting of 'Titoists' became a favourite pastime among the bureaucrats. Thousands were arrested and imprisoned and thousands of 'honest Stalinists' if you can use that expression - genuine supporters of the Stalinist movement - were also arrested and imprisoned on trumped up charges. And that didn't stop at the lower ranks, that continued even among the leading figures inside the Communist parties in Eastern Europe. Slánský and Clementis in Czechoslovakia, Koçi Xoxe in Albania, Kostov in Bulgaria, Rajk in Hungary. Kostov was charged with being a friend of Bela Kun who it had been 'proved' was a "Trotskyite-Fascist", and Rajk - I can't pronounce his name: R-A-J-K, I've no idea how he pronounced that - was given a ... was forced to make a confession which is really one of the most disgusting episodes following along the lines of the purges, the two series of show trials in Moscow in the 1930s, was forced, was held in prison from April to when he was tried in September and refused - it's understood - to consistently to sign a confession to say that he was a traitor, an agent of the fascists and that he'd committed crimes against the Hungarian people. And it's believed that he only finally signed on the basis of he was promised that if he did sign his life would be spared. It wasn't, he was executed immediately after the end of the trial. 

And in March, on March the 6th 1953, the Kremlin announced Stalin's death. And that event, the death of the dreaded figure of Stalin, gave an impetus to the developing revolt inside Eastern Europe. In June, mass protests were held in Plzeň in Czechoslovakia around the giant Škoda works, arms factory, which was only quelled by the use of troops. On June the 17th 1953, building workers - construction workers - working in Stalinallee, now I think named Karl-Marx-Allee, in East Berlin walked off the job and staged a demonstration in relation to working conditions and in relation to - later - to political demands that they made along the lines - and I'll explain that more when we deal with Hungary itself - along the lines of the 'Four Points' enumerated by Lenin which Ted [Grant] explained during the course of his lecture on Russia. And that demonstration of East German workers became a massive demonstration of workers throughout East Berlin - joined by students, by workers, by housewives, by intellectuals - and spread rapidly throughout the whole of East Germany, and was only finally defeated - certainly the workers of East Berlin - in two days of fighting against Russian tanks. And in reaction to the events in Germany in June of 1953, from the top, the leaders of the Kremlin attempted to head off the movement from below, by giving concessions from the top. 

And in Hungary, Malenkov advised Rákosi to retire into the background. Imre Nagy became prime minister and certain concessions were made as far as the Hungarian regime was concerned. More emphasis ... the five-year plan was revised and less emphasis was placed on heavy industry and more on light industry in order to make available more consumer goods as far as the masses were concerned. Certain rights were given in relation to an overwhelming vote in relation to the dissolving of collective farms. The hasted ÁVO secret security police were given a less prominent role and told to keep more in the background. 

But, as the bureaucracy throughout its whole history has moved from repression to concessions, to repression and back to concessions, never to get off the backs of the working class but in order to establish its own rule, by 1955 when Khrushchev had replaced Malenkov in some form of panic and doubt about the developments which were taking place in Hungary, and the growing disturbance among the writers and intellectuals in Hungary, Imre Nagy was removed as prime minister, replaced again by Rákosi. Nagy was in fact expelled from the Communist Party though not put in prison at that particular time for being an 'irreconcilable right-wing deviationist'. Yet very shortly the situation was reversed again because in February of 1956 Khrushchev, in the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party,  Khrushchev made his famous speech / revelations outlining the role of Stalin during his years of rule - of the purges, of the false accusations, of the false arrests, of the mass deportations, of the slave labour camps, and all the things which the Stalinists for generations had denied, and were said were 'Trotskyist lies' and were the work of fascists, all those were revealed to a startled world - and an even more startled communist movement throughout the world. Revelations which caused enormous upheavals in the British, French, Italian and many other Communist Parties. The revelations which were made, not by accident and not by mistake as far as Khrushchev was concerned. Revelations which were made because following the death of Stalin, following the unstable situation which existed particularly in Russia itself, that the failure to expose Stalin and to promise reforms, and to promise liberalisation, would have led to a revolt from below, not only in Poland and Hungary but within Russia itself and in order to buy time - and it's what some 20 years now 25 years - in order to buy time Khrushchev made those revelations, at the same time enormously damaging the position of the Communist Parties in the rest of the world.

And as far as Poland and Hungary were concerned, those revelations gave an impetus to the growing movement of revolt which was taking place in both those countries. On June the 28th of 1956, the workers at the ZISPO locomotive works in Poznań in Poland went on strike, and as the news spread, they walked out of the factory, a mass movement developed not only in Poznań but in many other areas of Poland. The slogans that the workers carried were 'Peace' and 'Bread', 'Out with the Russians', 'End to piecework' and slogans of that particular character. And Russian tanks surrounded Poznań, but eventually after 2 days it was in fact Polish tanks which were sent in and again crushed the revolt, the strike of the Polish workers, in blood. And that created an enormous panic as far as the Stalinist regime in Poland was concerned. Gomułka, who had been excommunicated from the Communist Party in 1951, and who'd been under house arrest since 1954, was suddenly given a new party card and in a very short period of time was brought back into the leadership of the Polish Communist Party and became First Secretary. And on that basis, and on the basis of opposition to the demands that Khrushchev and his agents and his representatives made, on the basis of national Stalinist lines, Gomułka was able to head off the revolt of the Polish workers for a temporary period. But how narrow the base of that regime! Because since Gomułka, we've had Gomułka removed by another movement of the Polish workers, we've had his successor Gierek removed by another movement of the Polish workers, and the events of 1980 and 1981, I can't remember, I think have removed two or is it three further leaders of the Polish Communist Party as the Polish workers move into action.

And similar events to those in Poland in 1956 were taking place in Hungary. The 'Petőfi Circle' - which was a group of writers and intellectuals under the new liberalisation, the slight relaxation which had taken place in Eastern Europe - began more and more to openly voice criticisms of the Stalinist regime, to demand the right of writers to write the truth, to demand the end of censorship as far as Hungarian literature and newspapers were concerned. And that was followed, at a meeting of the Hungarian Writers' Union, at the removal from office of all the supporters of the Rákosi regime and the putting into office of the liberal opposition elements ... among the Petőfi Circle and among the Writers' Union. And meetings of a few hundred or a few dozens, became meetings of thousands as workers - mainly the intellectuals at that particular stage - discussed the possibility of a 'Hungarian road to Socialism', of an end to Russian occupation, of a liberalisation, of changes to the regime, of the right to access to the media, of the right to print uncensored their material. And more and more the criticism and discussion moved away from discussion of literature and the rights of writers, to the very organisation of society itself.

Julia Rajk, the widow of the Rajk who had been purged as explained, and murdered in a show trial, spoke at a meeting organised by the Petőfi Circle in which she demanded not only the rehabilitation of her husband - which had been done by the regime, in passing, a few months earlier - but the trial and the bringing to punishment of those guilty for his murder. And under the temper of events, Rákosi was again removed by the Russians but replaced on this occasion by his first lieutenant Gerő. By the end of September of 1956, as foment grew, the working class began to make demands for a right to independent trade unions, for the right for some say - and they were modest demands which the workers first made - in the running of the factories and the organisation of production in Hungarian society. As I say the movement and the impetus of the revolt of the Hungarian workers began to mature and began to develop. And at that particular time, the trial took place in Poland of the workers arrested and accused of creating an uprising in Poznań that I spoke about a few minutes ago. And it was decided to hold a mass demonstration, mainly again of intellectuals, students and the middle class, in Budapest in solidarity with the Polish people. And that particular demonstration, the government wasn't quite sure whether or not that it should be allowed to go ahead, go but in the event this particular demonstration did go ahead. Before that the government attempted to head off the movement by having a state funeral as far as Rajk was concerned. It was very interesting in relation to that there was an old ... a Hungarian joke at that particular time which said 'What is the difference between a Christian and a Communist?' and the answer was that 'a Christian believes in the hereafter, a Communist believes in rehabilitation hereafter!'. And 200,000 people attended the funeral - the reburial of Rajk.

But the mass demonstration of solidarity with the Poles began with a march to the statue of a Polish General Bem, a Pole who had fought in the Hungarian Revolution against the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And tens of thousands of people took part - probably hundreds of thousands of people in this particular demonstration. They went to the square, one speech making very modest demands was made, and then it was decided to march to the Parliament building. Gerő at that time was in Moscow discussing the situation with the Kremlin. As the people marched to the Parliament Square and stood in front of the Parliament Square in silence, from the loud speakers outside the Parliament building a speech of Gerő was broadcast to the assembled demonstration, [in] which Gerő said that the student demonstrations were a provocation, that the party would protect the regime, would deal firmly with any opposition, that the pact with Russia was indissoluble and nobody could move to change that particular situation. And the mood of the crowd changed from what had been a peaceful and entirely silent demonstration and they marched instinctively to the state radio station and marched on that, joined on this occasion by thousands of workers who were leaving their factories and places of work in order to go home. When they arrived at the state radio station, they found it cordoned by two rings of armed ÁVO men with machine guns. The demonstration was still peaceful and they spoke to the policeman and they said 'we only want the right to send the small delegation in to speak to the ... to put the point of view of the Hungarian people as opposed to the lies that Gerő has put on the radio', and eventually a small delegation was allowed in. The workers stood, and the students laughed and joked outside. For half an hour the delegation didn't appear, three-quarters of an hour the delegation hadn't reappeared and the crowd became angry. It pushed through the first cordon of ÁVO men but when it came to the second cordon, with a police mentality - and entirely lunatic in the particular situation, they fired with their machine guns and shot to death and wounded many people in the crowd. But such was the enormity of the crowd, that they were swept aside. Their machine guns were captured and the demonstrators started to fire on the windows of the state radio station and attempt to capture it. In that sense the first Hungarian insurrection had begun.

At the news of the events in Sándor Street, at the radio station, thousands of workers poured onto the streets, into the main squares, into the working-class districts in Budapest. Workers from the arms factories went and took the arms from the factory, soldiers and policemen joined and fraternised with the people and handed over their guns to the demonstrations, and this enormous movement of the workers, this insurrection of the working people with inside Budapest, spread from Budapest throughout the length and breadth of Hungary. The workers immediately declared a general strike, and throughout Hungary immediately, in the traditions of 1919, the workers moved to construct Workers Councils' or Soviets, and very rapidly to link these Workers Councils' on a regional and eventually on a national basis. 

Nagy was made overnight prime minister, resurrected yet again. Within a few days Rákosi was removed and Kádár, who had himself been a prisoner of the regime and whose missing fingernails and burns testified to the torture he received from the ÁVO, became first Secretary of the Communist Party. But it's certainly almost certain that it was Nagy who asked for the intervention of Russian troops at that particular stage and Russian tanks entered Budapest and were met with the resistance of the working people using Molotov cocktails, using one captured artillery piece, using any methods they could they for days - four to five days - fought Russian troops and fought them virtually to a standstill. The two main areas they defended, they defended right through until Russian tanks were eventually removed. And many of the Russian soldiers who took part in that intervention were absolutely horrified of what they saw. When they spoke to the Hungarian workers and heard of the demands that the Hungarian workers were making they fraternised, went over, refused to fire on the Hungarians. There's stories of a Russian tank actually taking people to a demonstration outside the Parliament building, saying to the workers 'climb aboard' and we'll take you there. On the basis of that, and the confusion of the leadership of both the Hungarian Communist Party and of the Kremlin, Russian tanks would eventually be withdrawn Budapest - but to ring the city, a few miles outside the city, and not to be removed from Hungary itself.

An immense, confused situation then developed, as the workers made increasing demands as far as the regime was concerned. No end to the general strike, until the Russian troops were removed, demands which were entirely in line, as I said before, with the demands which the workers made in East Germany and with the 'Four Conditions' that Lenin laid down. And recognising that a system really of dual power existed within Hungary the Nagy-Kádár government was forced to make concessions as far as the workers were concerned. In words, they promised to recognise the Workers' Councils. In words, they promised to democratise and reform all aspects of Hungarian life, including the government and the Hungarian Communist Party. But, while giving those words, the Kremlin decided that it had to intervene to finally crush the Hungarian Revolution. Kádár, who had been considered a liberal, and three other members of his government went to negotiate with the Russians and declared a 'Provisional Government' in Hungary, denounced the government of Nagy and called for the intervention of the Russian army to cross the "fascist uprising" as they called it, the "counter-revolution" within Hungary. At 4:00 on that November morning, thousands of Russian tanks entered Budapest. Budapest was ringed by guns and bombarded. Nevertheless, knowing they would be defeated, the Hungarian workers fought back. And it took four days to crush the workers in Budapest, and a further week to crush the workers throughout Hungary. Children of 13 and 14 fought tanks with Molotov cocktails. There were 30 or 40 Russian tanks were destroyed, and, as I say, anything from 25 to 35,000 people - Hungarian people - died in that particular thing. And when armed resistance was finally crushed, the workers remained on strike and the power of the Workers' Councils and the support for the Workers' Councils actually increased as far as Hungary was concerned. 

And a period of negotiation took place as the regime - the Stalinist regime, on the basis of Russian tanks, began to consolidate itself. And it's worth remembering that the Russian troops who'd been brought for the second attack were fresh troops. They'd been brought from Soviet Asia because they wouldn't speak the language of the Hungarian workers and they wouldn't live in the same sort of social conditions as the Hungarian workers were concerned. And you have to ask the question, 'Why did they send tanks into Budapest, when infantry would have much more effectively done the job?'. It's because those tanks separated the Russian soldiers from the Hungarian workers, and nevertheless thousands of Russian troops had to be removed from Hungary and sent home in sealed vans. Many of those troops came to Hungary believing they were fighting fascists in East Berlin and didn't really realise that they had been sent to Budapest. Such was the effect of the heroism, and the courage, and the appeal of the Hungarian workers at that particular time.

Finally, Imre Nagy was abducted from the Yugoslav Embassy and I think killed in Romania - was murdered, executed in Romania - and finally the regime moved to crush the Workers' Councils. The ÁVO, which had been atomised in the uprising of the Hungarian people, was reformed on the initials of the ÁVH. The vermin crawled out from behind the stones and launched a terrible purge against the flower of the Hungarian working class. Tens of thousands were arrested. Many were summarily shot or hanged, and finally the Hungarian Revolution was broken, and the Stalinist regime was re-established with inside Hungary. 

The 'Daily Worker' and the Communist movement throughout the world, claimed that Hungary was a 'Fascist Uprising', was a fascist counter-revolution - and I don't think it's necessary to go into any detail in answering that appalling slander. What 'Fascist Revolution' was ever led by councils of workers? At no time at all did the workers in Hungary ever put forward any position which called for the restoration of capitalism, but on numerous occasions they said that they defended the state ownership of production. What they wanted was workers' control over that production, and workers' control over the state!