Political turmoil and street protests: rebellion's bitter legacy lives on
In the first of a three-part series to mark the uprising in Budapest that shook the world half a century ago, the Guardian looks at how the past still divides people
Ian Traynor in Budapest
Thursday October 19, 2006
The Guardian
mre Mecs will don his habitual bow tie on Sunday evening and make his way to the opera house in Budapest, one of the finest buildings in the Hungarian capital, to recall the event that marked him for life and shook the world 50 years ago - the Hungarian revolution.
Mr Mecs sat on death row in a dungeon in Budapest for six years as a result of his revolutionary youth. He fully expected to be strung up on wooden gallows by communist henchmen. For a long time, Mr Mecs, now a 73-year-old liberal MP, could not imagine winning free elections in a democracy or attending solemn ceremonies at the opera.
Hungarian revolution - 50 years on Political turmoil and street protests: rebellion's bitter legacy lives on In the first of a three-part series to mark the uprising in Budapest that shook the world half a century ago, the Guardian looks at how the past still divides people Ian Traynor in Budapest Thursday October 19, 2006 The Guardian  Brief victory … Hungarians crowd on to a Soviet tank during the short-lived revolution in October 1956 that was brutally crushed by the Russians. Photograph: AP Imre Mecs will don his habitual bow tie on Sunday evening and make his way to the opera house in Budapest, one of the finest buildings in the Hungarian capital, to recall the event that marked him for life and shook the world 50 years ago - the Hungarian revolution. Mr Mecs sat on death row in a dungeon in Budapest for six years as a result of his revolutionary youth. He fully expected to be strung up on wooden gallows by communist henchmen. For a long time, Mr Mecs, now a 73-year-old liberal MP, could not imagine winning free elections in a democracy or attending solemn ceremonies at the opera. "The statistics were very bad," Mr Mecs recalled. "Almost 400 of us were sentenced to death and 233 were executed. At one point 19 out of 20 of the condemned were being executed, so I didn't think I would make it." The night at the opera should be a happy occasion, a celebration of Hungary's passage from a depressed Soviet satellite state to a vibrant free democracy. Instead, the 50th anniversary events starting on Sunday will be bitter and divisive. "This anniversary should be a chance to make a fresh start at a moment where everyone can agree. Unfortunately no one believes this can happen," said Pal Germuska, a historian at the city's 1956 Institute. "The freedom fighters and the killers are still living in this society. Fifty years is not enough to sort out all these problems." Dozens of foreign dignitaries are to travel to Budapest at the weekend to take part in the anniversary rituals. But with Hungarian politics polarised to the worst extent since communism was routed in 1989, the national holiday may turn into a bad-tempered fiasco. President Laszlo Solyom is to host the opera house ceremony, but veterans of 1956 are threatening to walk out as soon as the prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, arrives, vowing not to "breathe the same air" as a politician whose governing socialist party is the successor of the communists who helped the Russians crush the 1956 uprising. The prime minister, who has been the target of weeks of protests in Budapest after admitting lying to win a second term in April's elections, is also to make a speech in the presence of international leaders in parliament next Monday, the anniversary of the day the revolution erupted with a student demonstration on October 23 1956. Rival parties That could also turn sour. Rival political parties and organisations are to stage their own separate commemorations. The main opposition said yesterday that it would boycott the Gyurcsany speech. Things could also turn ugly today when police attempt to clear the square in front of parliament, where anti-government demonstrators have established a month-old camp. "How many 1956s are there out there and which one is the right one?" asked the political scientist Ferenc Hammer. It is a question that Hungary is still not able to answer. Joseph Rothschild, the US historian of eastern and central Europe, suggested this definition: "These events in Hungary were not a mere rebellion or uprising or insurrection or putsch or general strike, but a genuine and domestically victorious revolution, defeated only by overwhelming foreign force." Three years after the death of Stalin and a few months after the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced the tyrant in his famous secret speech to the Soviet communist party, the Hungarian revolution initially hinted at a loosening of Soviet dictatorship in the heart of Europe. In the summer before the Budapest uprising, there had been a workers' insurrection in Poland that extracted concessions from the Kremlin and encouraged Hungary's reformist communist hero, Imre Nagy, to go further. Ten days into the revolution, the scale and the boldness of the Nagy project was made plain when he ordered the Red Army out of Hungary, reinstituted political pluralism in place of monopoly communist rule, announced Hungary was pulling out of the Warsaw Pact, Soviet communism's answer to Nato, and declared Hungary's military neutrality, as had happened in neighbouring Austria the year before when the Russians ended their postwar presence. Nagy opened to question the Kremlin's absolute power in central and eastern Europe. He had been encouraged both by Soviet dithering and US support. But the Hungarians were betrayed by the Americans and hammered by the Russians. The Kremlin sent in the tanks to crush the revolution after 13 days on November 4. The Americans, who had been broadcasting tips on how to make petrol bombs and defy the Russians, promptly averted their eyes as the Russians bloodily suppressed the insurgency. More than 2,500 Hungarians were killed, some 20,000 wounded, and another 200,000 fled, first to Austria then on to America, Canada, and Australia, in Europe's first big refugee crisis since the second world war. Suez distraction For decades the conventional verdict has been that Washington was too preoccupied with the Suez crisis to intervene for the Hungarians. But combing the US and Soviet archives, an American-Hungarian historian, Charles Gati, has argued persuasively this year that the Eisenhower administration perpetrated a cruel trick on Hungary and had no intention of challenging Moscow. "Washington offered only hope, no help," Mr Gati wrote recently. "The Eisenhower administration's policy turned out to be a hoax, hypocrisy mitigated only by self-delusion." A month after Mr Mecs received his death sentence in May 1958, Imre Nagy was executed, his corpse dumped in an unmarked grave. The 33 years of "goulash communism" that followed the doomed uprising were, said Mr Hammer, a period "of systematic forgetting. It was Orwellian." The revolution was renamed the "counter-revolution" by the ruling communists. "Some think it's legitimate to connect 1956 to the events going on here now. That's absolutely false," said Mr Mecs. "There's no connection between 1956 and the current situation." The eyes of the world will be trained on Hungary next week in admiration for the plucky freedom fighters and their glorious defeat. But they may be watching an ugly spectacle. "Hungary has never been united. Even in 1956 it was united only for a few moments," said Mr Germuska. "This is a big anniversary. And it's a big missed opportunity." Timeline 1956 National revolt against Soviet rule and Imre Nagy becomes prime minister. USSR crushes uprising and Janos Kadar takes over |
posted by JaxJacobsen @ 5:20 AM
0 comments
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home