On October 23, 1956, Hungarian engineering students gathered to protest against the brutal crushing of a student demonstration in Poland. Civilian protesters soon took to the streets of Budapest as well.
The freedom fighters cleverly and successfully resisted local forces and the occupying Soviet army, and it seemed that liberty was within their grasp. Political prisoners were set free, an independent government was formed, multi-party rule was re-established and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact was announced. The Soviet-influenced coat of arms was cut out from the Hungarian flag and the omnipresent red stars were ripped off of public places. The crowds didn’t stop with symbolic gestures – they also hunted down members of the security forces and showed no mercy to the ones they found.
The Soviet-controlled leadership viewed the insurrection as a counter-revolution; in Budapest and other cities they simply shot into the crowd, escalating the revolt. In the capital, freedom fighters successfully struggled against tanks rolling in from neighboring barracks, but freedom lasted for less than two weeks.
The arrival of 150,000 Soviet troops and 6,000 tanks spelled quick defeat for the resistance as they razed the buildings where would-be revolutionaries shot from windows or tossed Molotov cocktails, causing some 5,000 Hungarian deaths. Hardly before the dust had settled, the Soviets took their revenge, executing about 300 rebels and sympathizers (among them the legally-elected Prime Minister, Imre Nagy) and imprisoning another 12,000. More than 200,000 people fled to the West.
Hungarians are very proud that this was the first armed uprising in the Eastern Bloc, and feel that it was the first step in the slow and steady process that achieved its goal of democratic empowerment in 1989. It proved that terror itself cannot suppress the notion of freedom.
Films about 1956
Freedom’s Fury is a 2005 documentary by Lucy Liu and Quentin Tarantino depicting the bloody water polo match between the Hungarians and Soviets in the 1956 Olympics, just weeks after the uprising was crushed.
Szabadság, szerelem (Children of Glory) is a semi-fictional 2006 film by Hungarian director Kriszta Goda on the same water-polo match. Available for rental with English subtitles.
A Temetetlen halott (The Unburied Man) is a 2004 Hungarian film based on the diaries of Hungary’s prime minister in 1956, Imre Nagy, his humanism and his struggle to bring freedom to Hungary. Available for rental with English subtitles.
Swot Up
1956 – The Hungarian Revolution – A photographic chronicle of the fight for freedom
On October 23rd, 1956 a revolution broke out in Budapest as a protest against communist dictatorship, state terror and Soviet occupation. It developed into a fight for freedom in a short time, but was crushed quickly by communist authorities and the Soviet army. In spite of the defeat, this series of events was a landmark that made the first crack in the structure of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Here’s an album that chronicles the most important moments of the revolution, bringing this extraordinary time in history to life before our eyes, with photos of bombed-out trams and apartment buildings, a row of makeshift graves in a streetside park or a bullet-riddled Soviet star fallen to the ground. It’s the first time some of the images have been published.
The commentary sheds light on the background of the events as they unfolded facts and photographs about the Molotov-cocktails used against Soviet tanks, the bloody Hungarian-Soviet water-polo semifinal at the Melbourne Olympics the same year, and the fall of the Iron Curtain decades later are also included.
The book is available in English, German and Hungarian for 2,450 HUF at Memento Park as well as in the bookshops of House of Terror and Váci street. It can also be ordered online at www.mementopark.hu.
Memento Park
1223 Budapest, Balatoni út-Szabadkai utca corner
Tel.: +36.1.424.7500
Open daily 10 a.m.-sunset
www.mementopark.hu