Foreign News: When the Earth Moved

It began like a carnival day. Thousands of people thronged Budapest’s old cobblestoned streets wearing red, white and green boutonnieres, tossing red, white and green ribbons into passing cars. Then gradually the crowd began to gather at focal points and to express its will, and then to march. A scared Communist official told an American businessman: “The earth is moving.”

The earth moved to the tread of a million feet in Hungary last week, and a satellite which had been blindly spinning in the Soviet orbit for eleven years suddenly swung out of its gravitational course into a still unsteady national axis. It had never happened before. As the world looked on, incredulous, a people armed principally with courage and determination (and a few filched guns) fought one of the most spectacular revolutions of modern times. Behind barricades, from rooftops and apartment windows, they harried their powerful oppressors in the classic revolutionary manner, and at week’s end they had wrung from the most ruthless of modern despotisms a promise of the right to be free.

In any fight to the finish, Soviet tanks might win military control because an unorganized, unfed people cannot fight for long against an organized army. Thousands of Hungarians would be dead or seriously wounded. But what mattered to Hungary as a nation was that her Soviet overlords had been forced to dissolve their all-Communist government and set up in its place a government that included non-Communist elements. The Soviet leaders might later attempt to hedge on this concession, but the fact was that they had made it in front of the whole world. This was the first time in their history that the Soviet leaders had done this, and the implications of their act went far beyond Hungary. That was why the events in Hungary on this foggy October day were of such vital concern to the world.

Eleven-Year Silence. Poland’s break with Russia was the spark. Hungarian students got permission to express sympathy with the Poles by gathering silently before Budapest’s Polish embassy. Then the Central Committee of the Communist Party canceled the permit. Party Leader Erno Gero, belatedly conferring with Tito on means to “liberalize” the regime and expected back from Belgrade that day, wanted no political demonstrations. At noon there were angry student meetings in every college. At the Polytechnic a printing press was seized, a broadsheet printed. Budapest came out to see the student fun. Said an old woman: “We have been silent for eleven years. Today nothing will stop us.” There was no hint of the violence to come.

In a solemn but peaceful mood, the students went to pay their respects to Poland. Ten abreast down the broad Danube quays they marched to Petofi Square, named after National Hero Sandor Petofi, a poet who sang songs of national liberation and in 1848 drew up the manifesto that launched Hungary’s revolution against the Habsburg monarch. The yeast of rebellion among young Hungarian intellectuals had been fermenting these past few months in a group called the Petofi Club. A voice in the crowd shouted a line from a Petofi poem: “We vow we can never be slaves.” Idol Smashing. The Petofi spirit spread like wildfire. All over Budapest there were demonstrations. Student manifestoes demanded religious freedom, the release of Josef Cardinal Mindszenty, the public trial of Rakosi and his lieutenants, sweeping economic reforms. One demanded that the Russians explain what they had done with Hungarian uranium. The Marseillaise and the Kossuth anthem (after Kossuth, another hero of 1848) were sung in the streets. Thousands of cadets, later joined by 800 Hungarian officers, swung out of the military academy to join the students. As if by magic, hundreds of placards appeared bearing slogans: RUSSIANS GO HOME. LET US FOLLOW THE POLES, etc.

In the square where the life-size statue of General Josef Bern stands, honoring the Polish officer who fought for Hungary’s freedom in 1848, 200,000 people crowded around a latter-day poet named Peter Veres, silent mover in the Hungarian Writers’ Union. He stood at the foot of the statue and read out a manifesto demanding complete freedom of speech and press, a new Hungarian government, release of political prisoners, and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary. The national flag — minus the Red star and hammer crossed by an ear-of-wheat emblem — was draped around the statue. The national anthem was sung.

The crowd, swollen by workers, soldiers and yet more students, and orderly until this moment, began to thrill for action. There was another statue in Budapest, as hated as this one was revered. By 1951 the Russians had cleared away the World War II ruins of Regnum Marianum, the famed Roman Catholic church, and erected in its place a 25-ft. bronze statue of Stalin. There he stood, in baggy pants and handlebar mustaches, symbol of Hungary’s servitude. One of the manifestoes had called for the removal of the statue. The crowd decided to do its own idol busting.

Surging down Stalin’s Boulevard, mounting the marble base of the statue, they flung ropes around Stalin’s neck, but the old dictator stood fast. Then a group of workers appeared bearing ladders, cables and acetylene torches. Melting through the metal knees, they brought the statue crashing to the ground. Immediately the bronze corpse was set upon by people with hammers and metal pipes who smashed pieces off the statue. Said one wrecker: “I want a souvenir of this old bastard.”

Students and workers had been tearing the Soviet emblem from national flags, pulling down illuminated Red stars from public buildings, distributing mimeographed resolutions and broadsheets. But their mood became ugly when the news flew around that Party Leader Erno Gero, back from Belgrade, had spoken on Radio Budapest condemning the demonstration and calling their demands for more freedom “reactionary provocation.”

Shouts of “Out with Gero” and “We want Nagy” were heard. A student and workers delegation went to the radio station, requested that its demands be made public. “We want to tell the world the truth,” said a woman. Security police arrested the delegation. The crowd stormed the building, but the police opened fire, killing and wounding several attackers and driving others back with tear gas. A group of students, mounting the balcony in front of the building, carried the fight into the upper floors. The body of a dead man wrapped in the national flag was carried through the street.

Trucks filled with Hungarian soldiers stood by, and seven heavy tanks, manned by Hungarian soldiers, rumbled into the area around midnight. Soldiers, students and workers fraternized. A tank bearing Hungarian colors came through the crowd. Cried the Hungarian colonel standing in the open hatch: “We are unarmed! We came to join you, not to oppose the demonstration.” Soon students and workers were flourishing Tommy guns. “The army is with us!” they shouted. Barricades were built in the street that night. Carnival had become revolution.

Ring of Tanks. Well apprised of the danger in Hungary, Moscow had moved new Soviet military units across the Hungarian-Carpathian border a few weeks earlier, now had five divisions in Hungary under Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, whose armies swept across southern Europe from the Volga to Vienna in World War II. With Hungary’s internal security forces (an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 men), this was enough to hold down Hungary—provided the 15-division (280,000 men) Hungarian army did not defect. The fact that the Hungarian soldiers were proving unreliable was the bad news for the Kremlin. Some time in the next 48 hours the U.S.S.R.’s Presidium Members Anastas Mikoyan and Mikhail Suslov flew into Budapest, fired Gero and Hegedus, put in Imre Nagy and Janos Kadar (see box). At the same time they ordered the Soviet forces to crush the rebels.

Budapest (pop. 1,750,000) woke early next morning to the sound of machine-gun fire as a column of 80 Soviet tanks rolled into the city and took up positions covering all bridges, boulevards and public buildings. Other tank forces ringed the city. At dawn martial law was imposed on the whole country, a 24-hour curfew on Budapest. Trains and streetcars stopped running, telephone communication with the outside world was cut.

Radio Budapest (evidently operating from a new location) announced: “Soviet troops are here under the Warsaw pact. They have been asked to put their lives at stake for the peaceful Hungarian people and to protect them from counterrevolutionaries. When order is restored, they will return to their garrisons. Workers of Budapest, accept these Soviet troops as your friends.” But the announcer betrayed Soviet nervousness by appealing to all Hungarian soldiers “who had become separated from their units” to report back.

Workers and students roamed streets, ignoring curfew. Passing the U.S. legation, they cried: “Why don’t you help us?” At 11:09 a.m. Nagy proclaimed that if workers and students “misled by hostile elements” surrendered in the next three hours, they would not be punished. Ex-President Zoltan Tildy appealed to workers to surrender. Said Communist-tamed Archbishop Josef Grosz: “I give you the point of view of the Catholic Church . . . We condemn murder and destruction.” At 12:58 the radio announced: “Only two more minutes to escape the death sentence.”

Murder in the Square. The Communist maneuver might have succeeded but for the menacing presence of the Soviet tanks. Around noon a crowd began gathering in front of the huge neo-Gothic Parliament building facing the Danube, intending to present Premier Nagy with a petition demanding the withdrawal of all Soviet troops. Soviet tanks and a phalanx of security police blocked all entrances to the building. Trigger-sensitive young Russian tankists became unnerved by the milling crowd around them and began firing indiscriminately into the mass of unarmed people. In a few minutes hundreds of men and women were lying dead or wounded on the ground, while others crouched for cover behind statuary and columns, or lay flat on the pavement.

The massacre in Parliament Square sent Budapest mad. The Soviet embassy was raided, Soviet automobiles fired, the contents of a Soviet bookshop burned in the street. Said a visitor: “I saw a column of rioters march with arms outstretched into machine-gun fire. Students were killed en masse by the Soviet tanks.” Workers fought their way into an arms depot at outlying Fot, got themselves machine guns. Others made gasoline bombs out of wine bottles. Soon Soviet armored cars were burning in the streets. Street barricades were strengthened with overturned buses. Hungarian railroadmen tore the hammer and sickle insignia off their uniforms, held the railroad terminal for the rebels. Fierce battles broke out for control of a Communist Party headquarters and the Karoly military barracks. The Communist newspaper Szabad Nep was stormed, and rebel broadsheets were soon distributed proclaiming the now famous 16 points. Out of the fog and smoke that obscured the sky, Soviet jet planes roared down with cannons blazing.

That evening Radio Budapest was calling for doctors and supplies of plasma, asking rebels not to fire on ambulances. In the lightless streets surgical operations were carried out by flashlight. The dead were picked up in trucks. The famed Hungarian National Museum, containing unique, irreplaceable art treasures, and a score of other Budapest buildings were burning. The sniper’s single shot rang short and clear beside the bark of the heavy-caliber Soviet tank guns. On Radio Budapest, Party Leader Kadar said that only surrender and complete defeat awaited those who stubbornly continued to fight. The Hungarians continued to fight.

“Tell the Youths.” In the next three days a battle of position was fought. Travelers racing out of Hungary (passport control had lapsed, and some border crossings were wide open for the first time in nine years) reported “the people taking more control.” Radio Budapest talked of “a state of siege” and appealed for “protection from hunger.” While shooting was going on in one street, people queued for bread in another. Leaflets appeared. They reiterated the 16 demands, signed by “the new Provisional Revolutionary Hungarian Government and National Committee of Defense.” Rebel troops now wore red, white and green armbands. Teen-age girl revolutionaries joined in skirmishes.

In a radio speech Nagy promised talks with the Soviet Union “on a basis of complete equality,” and promised a reform government with “widest possible national and democratic” elements. Kadar said there would be a “deepening of democratization.” Pleaded Radio Budapest: “Tell the youth we have a new leadership. All the new party secretaries are in prison under Rakosi. Tell the youths there is no danger.” Rumors flashed through Hungary that the Russians were forcing Nagy at pistol point to make his announcements, that he had been arrested and the Russian army command (set up at the battered Astoria Hotel) was in sole charge of Budapest.

True or not, the Russians were getting tough. Soviet tanks fired on all moving objects, and Soviet soldiers were executing Hungarian soldiers and civilian rebels in the streets. Reported a Swiss businessman: “Today, as I left Budapest, I saw people hanging in rows along the Danube pier. I counted 20 executed people hanging from flagpoles and street lights. It was terrible. The Russians have started a horror regime.”

The rebels retaliated by hanging Soviet soldiers. Roaming bands of rebels outside Budapest drove back Soviet units, set up roadblocks and cleared a corridor toward Vienna. The tide of battle was turning towards the provinces, and the faint voice of “freedom stations” was heard calling for a general strike throughout the country. An independent Hungarian government was reported to have been set up at Gyor (pop. 66,000), an industrial town 66 miles west of Budapest. At Pecs (pop. 87,000) in the south one rebel radio station was heard broadcasting military orders, indicating that a sizable part of the Hungarian army had gone over to the rebels. Miskolc (pop. 136,000), near the Czech border, Hungary’s second most important industrial center, fell to the rebels at week’s end. At the village of Magyarovar, 15 miles from the Austrian border, security police shot 75 people, wounded 200 others, when local farmers showed resistance. The village was relieved by rebel forces led by a rebel commander who described himself as “the colonel.” The rebel commander told foreign correspondents that “national councils” were in control of large areas of western, southern and northern Hungary and were planning a march on Budapest, where they would fight “only the Russians.”

Early on the fifth day of the revolution, the Soviet leaders made a crucial decision: they agreed that Hungary should have a new government in which two (out of 28) ministers would be nonCommunists. Premier Nagy announced that Bela Kovacs would be Minister of Agriculture, and Zoltan Tildy Minister of State. Both men were members of the Smallholders Party, which took 57% of the popular vote in the 1945 free elections but was later squeezed out of existence by the Communists. As first President of the Republic, aging (66) Zoltan Tildy’s record was undistinguished, and he had resigned in 1948 when his son-in-law was charged with spying (and later executed).

But the name of Bela Kovacs was something for Nagy to conjure with. A husky, muscular peasant from Pecs, a good speaker, Kovacs was the organizational genius of the Smallholders until arrested in 1947, forced to “confess” and shipped off to Siberia. Earlier this year, after nine years in Soviet prison camps, he returned to Pecs, where he was living quietly, avoiding politics. His appointment was as much a surprise to him as to everyone else in Hungary. Said a Hungarian: “He comes as close as anyone we know to being an anti-Communist.” The question was, had nine years of prison broken the 49-year-old Kovacs’ spirit?

“Freedom Radio” stations in Pecs, Miskolc and other cities, while critical of the overwhelming Communist majority in the new Cabinet (“Men who had sold out to the Soviet Union”), seemed ready to settle for “a general election,” i.e., the new government was acceptable provided it was as an interim one.

Nepszava, trade union newspaper, pleaded that the general pardon, now extended by Defense Minister Karoly Janza to all who capitulated, be extended to “Soviet soldiers who had come over to the people”—indicating where the Soviet leaders’ fundamental weakness might lie.

On the sixth day of Hungary’s people’s revolution, rebels were in control of much of the countryside, but Soviet tanks, withdrawing to the outskirts of Budapest, left behind a crushed city, ringed by Soviet steel. Moscow announced that it was ready to negotiate a withdrawal of all Soviet forces from Hungary. To cold, bone-weary rebels, Communist Radio Budapest broadcast: “Please, please stop. You have won. Your demands will be fulfilled.”