Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The award-winning website of the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolu-
tion (
www.rev.hu
)
will walk you through the build-up to and outbreak and aftermath of
Hungary's greatest modern tragedy through photographs, essays and timelines.
The 1956 Uprising
Hungary's greatest tragedy - an event that for a while shook the world, rocked international
communism and pitted Hungarian against Hungarian - began in Budapest on 23 October
1956, when some 50,000 university students assembled at II Bem József tér in Buda, shout-
ing anti-Soviet slogans and demanding that reformist Imre Nagy be named prime minister.
That night a crowd pulled down and sawed into pieces the colossal statue of Stalin on Dózsa
György út on the edge of City Park, and shots were fired by ÁVH agents on another group
gathering outside the headquarters of Hungarian Radio at VIII Bródy Sándor utca 5-7 in
Pest. Budapest was in revolution.
The following day Nagy formed a government, while János Kádár was named president
of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Workers' Party. Over the next few days the gov-
ernment offered an amnesty to those involved in the violence, promised to abolish the ÁVH
and announced that Hungary would leave the Warsaw Pact and declare its neutrality.
At this, Soviet tanks and troops crossed into Hungary and within 72 hours attacked Bud-
apest and other cities. Kádár had slipped away from Budapest to join the Russian invaders;
he was installed as leader.
Fierce street fighting continued for several days, encouraged by Radio Free Europe
broadcasts and disingenuous promises of support from the West, which was embroiled in the
Suez Canal crisis at the time. When the fighting was over, 25,000 people were dead. Then
the reprisals began. An estimated 20,000 people were arrested and 2000 - including Imre
Nagy and his associates - were executed. Another 250,000 refugees fled to Austria.
Hungary Under Kádár
After the 1956 Uprising, the ruling party was reorganised as the Hungarian Socialist Work-
ers' Party, and Kádár began a program to liberalise the social and economic structure based
on compromise. He introduced market socialism and encouraged greater consumerism; by
the mid-1970s Hungary was light years ahead of any other Soviet-bloc country in its stand-
ard of living, freedom of movement and opportunities to criticise the government. This
'Hungarian model' attracted Western attention and investment.
But the Kádár system of 'goulash socialism' was incapable of dealing with such 'unso-
cialist' problems in the 1980s as unemployment, soaring inflation and the largest per-capita
