Hungarian Revolution of 1956

The great statue of Stalin is pulled down.

The Hungarian uprising has begun.

Within days, Soviet armor is involved.

And in early November, Soviet forces move in overwhelmingly to crush the revolt.

Ian, I think that's a great question.

I mean, I, I've been thinking about this because, uh, whether you, you go back to [chuckles] whether it's after 1848 or after the Bolshevik Revolution or the Hungarian Revolution, you look at how diaspora groups try to maintain some force and some relevance.

There are several hundred thousand Hongkongers outside of Hong Kong, concentrated, of course, in the United Kingdom, where it's pretty easy for them to go and have the right to live and work and eventually get citizenship.

Also a lot in Canada and in Australia.

It starts later in October.

He's been invited to fly to Budapest to attend the 70th anniversary commemoration ceremony for the Hungarian Revolution.

Now, with the greatest respect to our Hungarian friends, scrap that one.

He doesn't need to go to that.

Can you tell our listeners why? what was it about the revolution in france that so inspired the hungarian 1848 revolution and as a bonus if you could give a short overview of this complex period okay

uh the easiest way to go about this is to start with the french revolution and French influence can be felt in Hungary from the very beginning of the Great French Revolution.

There is actually an early Hungarian revolutionary poet named Janos Bocsányi, who in 1792 publishes a poem that is very strongly addressed to the elite of the Habsburg Empire, and its two final lines, he calls them to, and I quote, "'Come to see your destinies ahead, upon Paris your watchful eyes be cast.'" Now, publishing that at like the height of Jacobin power is something.

There is even a Jacobin movement in the form of a conspiracy in 1795, but it's caught early and its entire leadership is executed in a brutal fashion to deter any further revolutionary movements.

And so Hungary remains part of the Habsburg realm throughout the wars that follow, which comes with something that is ubiquitous event in Eastern European or in Eastern European history for this period.

party line's important, is it? His loyalty to the Communist Party is very important in his story.

The year of your birth, I think, 1956, David, was a kind of testing moment for many members of the British Communist Party because of the Hungarian Revolution.

And Hobsbawm did

not leave.

Oh.

look at the people so these guys I'm serving under these guys and they're they're they're mentors in a realistic way you know they had been to war you know Felix from the Hungarian Revolution

you know

and he was just Like, it's hard to put into words, but you just learn so much just on his inspection tours.

It is impossible to seize power within a state if the major source of political power is not there to be seized.

The 1956 Hungarian Revolution, for example, was totally successful, and its leaders quickly found themselves in control of all the traditional instruments of power: the armed forces, police, radio, and communications facilities.

The one thing that could not be seized in the streets of Budapest happened to be the major source of power for the previous regime, the presence of the Soviet Army in and around Hungary.

This sounds just like January 6th, right? Power of the American regime.

All right, moving on.

These armed forces, vastly superior to the Hungarian Army, were a greater source of power to a Kremlin-backed government than any element within the country.

The control of the Red Army was in Moscow, thus the Hungarian Revolution would only have succeeded if it had been carried out in Moscow, not Budapest.

Under such conditions, a coup can only work with the approval of the greater ally.

Everybody can think of a thousand reasons why they might have run off the rails somehow.

Uh, so it was during, I think, the Hungarian Uprising in 1956 that he did speak out.

He thinks that's, that was the reason.

And, uh, thus, he was locked up as a rightist.

Workers' councils are like no mediation.

There's just people directly controlling their lives, and there's a definite, you know, basically the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 is the moment where, where that becomes, like that seems to, th- to this prediction seems to come true, basically.

It's a big moment where lots of people leave the Communist Party all around the, or Communist Parties all around the world, including in, in the UK.

The Situationists, they fully commit to this idea that like revolution equals workers' councils, et cetera.