The Raday Salon is all about freedom, and here was a night to talk about what it means to be free. Held at the home of hosts Michael Simmons (aka the Professor at Soul School on RadioCafé 98.6) and Linda Carranza, these two human-rights activists regularly hold evenings that combine fun and serious discussion about current and historical topics.
At the October 30th event, we watched Freedom’s Fury, a 2006 documentary that tells the story of the 1956 revolution, in part through the eyes of the Hungarian Olympic water polo team, who ended up facing the Soviet Union in semi-final match in Melbourne that was later dubbed the “blood in the water” match.
The discussion following the film was led by Balázs Nagy Navarro, an activist and journalist, who started by saying that there remain a lot of questions surrounding the 1956 revolution, how it began, how it ended, and what it all meant and means to Hungarians and non-Hungarians today.
Navarro also outlined his own “experience” of 1956, which is that his parents never discussed it with him while he was growing up under socialism. People were trying to protect their children by giving them no information about 1956 or their parents’ role in it, he said. That has contributed to a lack of a common vision of the revolution.
“We have no unified understanding of 1956,” Navarro said. “Two years ago, the right-wing party appropriated a certain view of the revolution, calling the current left-wing party communists, and the left wing doesn’t want to be associated with that.”
The polarized political climate in Hungary today has hindered attempts to create a common understanding and provide an opportunity for collective commemoration.
The discussion turned to the world’s reaction, and one attendee who remembers listening to the broadcasts of 1956 in the U.K. recalled feeling “very emotional, with a sense of the injustice of it.”
A young American student at the gathering said, “It was a missed opportunity for the U.S.. Maybe communism could’ve ended in 1956 instead of 1989.”
Navarro and others pointed out that the global political climate prevented action against the Soviets. Some have indicated that it was a win/win situation for the U.S., because the Russians look bad if the Hungarians are allowed to put a dent in Soviet power, and they also look bad if they brutally crush the revolution.
“It was a bipolarized world,” said Navarro. “For Hungary, it was a big disappointment after the propaganda of Radio Free Europe. Those who understood realpolitik knew nobody would risk war for a country as small as Hungary, or even Poland. But the people on the street didn’t know about realpolitik, about Eisenhower, about Krushchev.”
Host Michael Simmons also pointed out that the U.S. didn’t necessarily want to, or wasn’t even justified in, criticizing Soviet action:
“Let’s avoid this mythology about the West,” he said. “Let’s be clear: in 1956, half the U.S. was living in apartheid, and there was McCarthyism from the right wing. Let’s not think of the U.S. as the arbiter of international morality.”
For more about the Raday Salon, and to read about previous and upcoming events, visit http://raday.blogs.com. For more background on Freedom’s Fury, visit the official website of Freedom’s Fury, or read Wikipedia’s page on the „Blood in the Water” match.
Adri Bruckner
Place: Ráday Salon
1092 Budapest, Ráday utca 17.
Tel.: +36.70.709.6073
