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1956 hungarian revolution
In October and November 1956, the Hungarian working class launched a general revolutionary uprising against the rule of the Stalinist bureaucracy headed by Matyas Rakosi and Erno Gero. The movement of the masses rallied around the demand for complete national independence and workers’ democracy.
In February of that year, the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union under Nikita Khrushchev had opened an attack on the Stalin cult and raised the slogan of “Back to Lenin.” This was an attempt by the top party leaders, after the uprising of the East German workers in June 1953, to associate themselves with the popular hatred of Stalinism.
But the “de-Stalinization” under Krushchev soon set in motion forces that would pass beyond the control of the Soviet bureaucracy. The denunciations of Stalin became a banner for the masses in Eastern Europe to cleanse the workers’ states of the hated Stalinist system.
On June 28 the workers of Poznan, Poland, went out on a general strike that grew into an uprising. Their action was symptomatic of the popular urge to extend the concessions made by the bureaucracy and to convert the paper promises about the return to Lenin into living reality.
In response to this uprising, the Polish Communist Party decided on Oct. 21 to depose the Kremlin proconsul Alban Rokossovsky and to replace him with Wladyslaw Gomulka, a popular symbol of resistance to Moscow’s rule.
Inspired by Polish events
Throughout September and October, the Hungarian people closely watched events in Poland. The Petofi Circle, a literary discussion club formed by young Communist Party members in April 1956, called for a demonstration in solidarity with the Polish workers in Oct. 23.
The demands of the Petofi Circle included the following: The removal of Rakosi, the Hungarian “Stalin,” and his replacement by Imre Nagy; the formation of a new government and free elections; equality of social and economic relations between Hungary and the Soviet Union; an end to the Stalinist economic policies; workers’ control of the factories; renovation of agriculture and voluntary collectivization; and full socialist democracy.
On Oct. 23 a crowd of 100,000 marched through Budapest to the statue of General Bem, a Pole honored for his role in the struggle for Hungarian national independence. As the crowd moved on to the parliament building, Party Secretary Gero denounced them as “fascist rabble.”
Demonstrators appeared at the Budapest radio station to ask that their demands be broadcast. Security police gave a typical Stalinist answer. They arrested the delegation.
As the roused crowd moved forward, the police opened fire. Street fighting broke out and the huge bronze statue of Stalin was toppled. The hated Gero government combined concessions with repressive action. On the one hand, it installed Nagy as premier; on the other, it called the Soviet occupations troops into Budapest to put down the demonstrators.
Workers Councils appear
As the Soviet troops rolled into Budapest on Oct. 24, the masses took up arms in self-defense. Nagy responded with appeals to lay down arms and surrender on the promise of amnesty.
But the Hungarian masses refused to place confidence in Nagy. They demonstrated that they trusted no one but themselves. Soon the Hungarian army went over the revolutionists and the Soviet troops began manifesting sympathy with their cause. On Oct. 25, the workers launched a general strike.
Within days, the entire country was mobilized against the ruling bureaucracy and the Soviet troops. The Hungarian workers began organizing themselves to maintain order and to distribute food and clothing. Councils – organs of workers’ power – appeared on a nationwide scale in the factories, the army, and neighborhood areas.
These councils were similar to those built by the Russian workers in 1917. They expressed the bitter determination of the Hungarian workers to end bureaucratic abuses, privileges, and mismanagement.
The charter adopted by the Greater Workers Budapest Council on Oct. 31, 1956, illustrates the depth of this struggle for workers’ democracy. “The factories belong to the workers,” the charter stated. “The supreme controlling body of the factory is the Workers Council democratically elected by the workers.”
The tasks of the Workers Council, as stipulated in the charter, include the following: “Approval and ratification of all projects concerning the enterprise; decision of basic wage levels and the methods by which these are to be assessed; decision on all matters concerning foreign contracts and credit; hiring and firing of all workers employed in the enterprise; and examination of the balance sheets and the decision on the use to which the profits are to be put.”
Contrary to what the international Stalinist movement has said about the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Hungarian workers never called for the return of the capitalists and of capitalist property relations. Of the thousands of resolutions adopted by the Workers Councils, not one can be found calling for the denationalization of the factories and farms.
The Hungarian workers were rejecting Stalinism and all the symbols identified with bureaucratic oppression. But they did not reject the essence of the socialist program: political and economic control by the working class expressed through their own state organization.
Second stage of the revolution
Caught between the Soviet troops and the Workers Councils was the Nagy government. The Stalinist bureaucracy was hoping that Nagy, a liberal figurehead with popular support, might put down the rebellion.
From the beginning Nagy tried to serve both the Soviet bureaucracy and the workers. But he ended up satisfying neither. His constant appeals to the workers to put down their arms met with no response.
But the situation of dual power that had arisen in the country allowed for no compromises. When, under mass pressure, Nagy announced on Nov. 1 the dissolution of the ruling Stalinist party and Hungary’s neutrality from the Warsaw Pact, this was too much for the Soviet bureaucracy.
On Nov. 4, the second assault on Budapest began. But this time the Soviet bureaucracy withdrew the troops used in the first assault because they had become “infected with the spirit of rebellion” and were therefore “unreliable.” Instead it brought in fresh new Soviet troops for the final showdown.
As the Soviet tanks approached, the bulk of the Nagy government resigned. Nagy and a handful of supporters took refuge in the Yugoslav Embassy. A government entirely subservient to Moscow was installed, led by Janos Kadar – who is still there to this day. [Nagy left the Yugoslav Embassy after he was given assurances of safe conduct, but he was arrested by the secret police and shot two years later.]
For weeks, the Hungarian workers resisted the Soviet troops arms in hand. The Workers Councils organized the resistance and called a successful general strike on Dec. 11-12. But the power of the Soviet tanks and the secret police ultimately overwhelmed the Hungarian workers.
Francois Fetjo, in his famous book titled “The Budapest Insurrection” also documents the complicity of the imperialist powers in the fate of the Hungarian workers. He writes:
“The U.S. Ambassador in Moscow at the time, Charles Bohlen, writes in his memoirs that on Oct. 29, 1956, he was assigned by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to transmit an urgent message to the Soviet leaders . . .
Was this a warning against possible Soviet intervention in Hungary? On the contrary, Dulles sent a message to the Soviet leadership that the U.S. government did not consider Hungary to be a possible military ally. The U.S. signal was clear: ‘Hungary is your problem. We will not intervene.’”
Need for a revolutionary party
What are the reasons for the failure of the Hungarian Revolution?
The actions of the Hungarian workers were heroic. The workers had gone very far in their struggle against the bureaucracy. They created their own militias and councils, split the ruling Stalinist party, and made a bid for power.
But the absence of a revolutionary socialist party based on the program of the Fourth International was costly to their struggle. Lacking conscious revolutionary leadership, the Workers Councils failed to assert their power. They continued to negotiate for concessions from Moscow’s puppets, wasting time while the Stalinist counter-revolution mobilized its repressive forces.
Many in the leadership of the Workers Councils had illusions that the Stalinist bureaucracy under Nagy could reform itself. But the fate of Nagy shows clearly that those who hope for a self-reforming bureaucracy are misguided.
The road to socialist democracy in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union is the road of independent working-class action. The Stalinist bureaucracy is the major obstacle on the return to Lenin and the regenerating of these bureaucratized workers’ states. The ruling Stalinist parties must be defeated and replaced by the democratic rule of the Workers Councils.
This article is based on the resolution on Hungary adopted by the Socialist Workers Party National Committee in January 1957.
