1. Prelude (communism in Hungary and the forces behind the revolution) [now with a paragraph on football added!]
2. Outbreak (the turbulent events of 23 October)
3. Turmoil (the hectic events in the next twelve days)
4. Fighting (the final losing battle against the Soviet tanks and its background)
24. Personal Memories (eyewitness accounts from my relatives)
5. Aftermath (what happened to the country and the people, and what role did its memory play later)

As can be seen from these individual examples (and these mostly cover only the communists), people reacted in very different ways to the events 50 years ago. As later President Árpád Göncz (will be in the Aftermath diary) will say, "The versions of '56 are as numerous as its participants -- what's more, as its opponents". Given that this revolution had no time to consolidate while events overtook each other, this is natural.

The course of the next week's events was decided on two battlefields: the regime's leading body and the streets of Budapest. Review and analysis in four plus one acts below. Some parts will establish the basis not for the next but the fifth and last diary.

1. Conflict in the central power

The Central Leadership of the Hungarian Workers' Party (Hungarian acronym: MDP KV), not realising the extent of the uprising, began work in the night from 23 to 24 October under the premise of copying the Polish route from crisis (see first episode): let the Soviets crush armed rebellion, while appeasing the people by bringing the reformists into the leadership and making their leader PM (Imre Nagy, against Khrushchev's wishes). At first, Nagy himself gave consent, but his allies who also got into the MDP KV didn't, and began to fight tooth-and-nails for interpreting the events as (democratic) revolution, not (reactionary) counter-revolution.

The hardliners, chiefly the Military Commission around Antal Apró (the butcher of the revolution), could hold back their colleagues by claiming that the question is "socialism or capitalist restauration". (You have to realise that in this specific space and time, this was honestly the frame of reference of most Party leaders, be them fanatics, pragmatists or dreamers, and socialism was = 'true' democracy; see also first diary.) But a key event that strenghtened the opposed side's hands was that in the northeastern industrial centre (and communist base) of Miskolc (where events started, see second episode), local Party boss Rudolf Földvári accepted the joint workers-students demands, and took on the road to deliver them personally to the central leadership.

This battle in the MDP KV had the effect of blocking the hardliners from implementing centralised action against the revolutionaries. Meanwhile on the streets, the effort to take control drowned in chaos.

2. The first tank invasion

All over the country, work stopped, Workers' Councils formed, and strikes were declared, statues of Stalinist figures and Red Stars were demolished. People ignored official media, inpromptu newspapers and (sometimes wild) rumours spread. Armed resistance groups formed, which 'controlled' specific locations (say the crossing of two main roads), and were often aligned with Workers' Councils. (This had the special advantage that fighting units knew each other well.)

It is said that every general fights the last war, here that was turned on its head. A new generation in Hungary grew up watching Soviet war movies, and every young lad knew how to stop tanks with partisan methods. Molotov cocktails, tank traps, torn-up pavements, overthrown trams, kids gluing sheets of paper on the windows and lookout holes of tank drivers quickly blocked the advance of Soviet tank columns that lacked ground support. Hits at this stage often resulted not in the death but capture of tank crews.

Another picture of the cut-up Stalin statue at Blaha Lujza tér on 24 October, this time with an overthrown tram and torn-up pavement visible.

Captured Soviet tank.

Where the troops met on protest rallies, two different things happened: either the crowd was shot at, or the Soviets were persuased that there is no enemy to shoot at. The Soviet troops were told by their generals that they have to take on fascists. But these first troops have lived among Hungarians for years, and at a number of locations, the protesting crowd got tank crews to talk with them (in Russian), told them they aren't fascists, and got firendly with the Soviet soldiers. It happened that crews allowed the people to climb their tanks with their flags. Thus the slogan "Russians Home!" didn't always translate to Russophobia, it had more to do with the sovereignist tradition going back to 1848 ('all soldiers should be at home'). As most of the dozens of shooting-into-crowds incidents involved not the Red Army but Hungarian forces, chiefly the KGB equivalent ÁVH, people's hate focused on the ÁVH.

3. The massacre before Parliament

Then the most critical event happened on 25 October. In the late morning, again a crowd of a few ten thousands assembled before Parliament, protesting the continuing lies in the radio. Here too, protesters made friends with the Soviet soldiers who were supposed to guard the place.

Then just when another Red Army tank line rolled on the square, someone started to shoot from the top of a building. To this day, it is a mystery who was it and why, though ÁVH is the prime suspect. In the ensuing chaos, one group of Soviet tanks shot at the building's top, the other at the crowd, some of both at each other, and some at arriving Hungarian army units, leaving at least 70 protesters dead in the crossfire.

Protesters flee the shooting.

In the wake of this massacre, events quickened. Within hours, the MDP KV removed Stalinist party leader Ernő Gerő, and János Kádár (whom the Soviets saw as compromise figure) took his place. As newly formed Workers' Councils and street protests (now symbolically carrying bloodied flags) multiplied, the debate inside the MDP KV intensified about whom they are really facing.

On the 26th, Miskolc Party leader Földvári arrived to talk with Nagy, and trade unions made themselves independent and announced their own reform programme. The cornered leadership made a decision that took up a large part of the protesters' demands (see 16 points in first episode): economic reforms, legal Workers' Council elections (a brainchild of Kádár that would cause him the most trouble later), Hungarian-Soviet talks and demand of troop withdrawal, political reforms; and amnesty for fighters laying down arms.

At the same time, Imre Nagy re-arranged the government, involving the most reformist communists, and also took up a former leader of the Smallholders' Party (see first diary!): Zoltán Tildy (right), who was under house arrest until the summer of this year -- he would become a less recognised but important link to peasants and the Church.

Yet, the leadership was still only following events, without real control of what was happening.

Still back on the 25th, upon orders from the MDP KV, Colonel Pál Maléter went into a ceasefire agreement with revolutionaries. Maléter, who would become a leading figure of the revolution, was the boss of a military barracks next to what became the strongest pocket of resistance, the Corvin-köz (where large houses surrounding a cinema formed good positions, and gifted grass-roots organisers assembled a force of more than a thousand).

Corvin-köz (the cinema at center was restored, with a memorial in its wall, and in service).

Pál Maléter (the tall soldier center-right).

As a result, the armed resistance only grew. In practice, Budapest became a mosaic of small areas (each only a few blocks) controlled by different forces: Soviets, Hungarian military, ÁVH, police, various revolutionary groups, Workers' Councils. Unlike in most other revolutions, there was no central leadership. Some of the heaviest (and ultimately successful) fighting was for the Csepel quarter, which, due to ports and an Iron Works complex and cheap housing, was a core workers' district ("Red Csepel").

Meanwhile, the countryside was in similar turmoil, and groups that for example blew up border-crossing railway lines (most significantly at the Soviet border at Záhony) or blocked the advancement of tank columns towards the capital (most significantly in power plant city Várpalota) played a significant role.

Meanwhile, a solidarity movement developed abroad. But you'd never guess from where the first aid arrived from: fellow reformed communist Poland (on the 26th).

4. Victory (it seems) and lynching

At this point, some deeper analysis becomes possible.

The expectations of moderates and hardliners in the MDP KV that newly legal Workers' Councils will split workers from the (armed) revolutionaries proved a folly. Instead, the Councils sent back calls for an economic programme like the reformists', paired with expressions of support for the fighters, calls for the withdrawal of Soviet troops, and demands for the removal of remaining hardliners in government. At the same time, the revolution reached the villages. Also, large parts of the military, police, and the Party itself joined the revolution and the local revolutionary committees (even the first revolutionary radio in Budapest was installed in a district Party HQ).

At this stage, the broadly socialistic outlook of the overwhelming majority of revolutionaries became all too clear to the reformist and moderate part of leadership, the hardliners' case of "socialism or capitalist restauration" collapsed.

In a way, the leadership was blind to their own success. While city people wanted private small-business, of course the workers didn't want their old owners back. It is said a meeting with a workers' delegation on the 27th had the strongest effect on Nagy. The peasants, while socially mostly conservative and resentful of collectivisation, of course didn't want the old landlords back. They even loved Nagy (and that less ambiguously than city people; see photo below) for having been the agriculture minister during the 1945 land redistribution. The old feudal and bourgeois elites could only play a marginal role. Papers would write a few days later that Hungary shall become a "national, socialist democracy".

So the hardliners began to prepare a military coup -- but Nagy was first with a preemptive strike. On the 28th, Nagy's newly inaugurated government, with Kádár's support, announcing a ceasefire and the dissolution of the ÁVH, swung behind even the armed resistance: they called on people to join the spontaneously organised National Guards, and started talks with the leaders of armed groups. The Stalinist old guard then fled to Moscow by plane.

The Soviet leadership had to confront a new situation. Nagy's and Kádár's arguments included that it would be impossible to build non-Stalinist Socialism after a Soviet-only (foreign) military operation. So Khrushchev consented to (at least starting) a pullout. This began on the 30th.

Now separated from the Party (also symbolized by Nagy moving from the Party HQ to Parliament), the government began to establish itself, starting a slow consolidation. But this only went by going even further in accepting demands, effectively standing ahead of a grass-roots revolution. As at this point, even Colonel Maléter supported the armed groups' more radical demands, they had little choice. But Nagy also had the wit to invite some real hotheads (for whom nothing was enough and endangered unity) for personal talks, and got them to accept at least him as PM.

So on 30 October, a lot happened. The government officially announced that it recognised the various local ad-hoc organisations (Workers' Councils, Revolutionary Commissions, National Commissions, student organisations etc.). The army finally swung behind the revolution with its full hierarchy. Political prisoners were freed, among them house-arrested József Mindszenty, a conservative cardinal but who built wide respect by taking personal risk. Nagy fired the remaining stalinists from his government. The state radio began to speak the truth (the next day a tearful announcer would speak the famous words of public penitence: "We lied in the morning, we lied in the evening, we lied the whole day on all wavelengths!")

And a final sea change: Imre Nagy announced the end of the single-party system. Already on the same day, the Smallholders' Party and the Social Democrats, next day a couple of others are re-established. Note that this wasn't greeted that widely: some feared the break-up of national unity, the armed resistance feared do-nothings will take their glory, and some saw parties tainted by their past compromises ("fellow-travellers" was a phrase of the day).

But it was too late to prevent one serious atrocity with consequences. All the while armed groups prevented Soviet military control with the defense of fixed locations, less organised groups stormed various government, Party, military, police and secret service buildings. This was usually motivated by hate for local figures (there was one Army general who even ordered planes to shoot unarmed protesters) or local events.

On 30 October at Köztársaság tér (Square of the Republic), at the HQ of the Party's Budapest Political Commission, upon rumours that captured revolutionaries are kept in the basement, fight breaks out between the guards and armed rebels. After a bloody victory, the remaining guards, thought to be ex-ÁVH but mostly simple conscripts, were killed by a lynch-mob.

Though this wasn't unprecedented (for example, it happened at the police HQ just in Miskolc, where everyone but the ÁVH joined the revolution), revolutionary organisations condemned the lynching, and arranged the protective arrest of potential lynching victims, for those who interpreted the events as a counter-revolution or the marauding of criminals, this was the central event.

It will also play a mayor role in the Soviet decision to finally crush the revolution (more on that in the next diary). Back on 30 October 1956, up to date only to the events of the 28th, the then majority doves in the Soviet leadership still consider a peaceful solution, sympathy protests are on-going in Poland, and also in Transsylvania where the secret service arrests 3,000 students.

Dark clouds collect during four days of freedom

Fighting winding down, Soviet troops leaving, and revolutionary demands accepted -- it would seem things were over. But the dynamics of prior events still rolled on, and first signs of the coming crackdown (decided already on 31 October, but I'll write about that in the next episode) also drove changes.

That the Social Democrats re-established themselves (under the leadership of Anna Kéthly, right) finally nailed the coffin of the One Party. For, in the course of the elimination of multi-party parliamentary democracy (see first diary in series), a key event was the forced merger of Communist Party and Social Democrats into the "Hungarian Workers' Party" (with leading ex-SocDems later purged). Nagy finally took account on 31 October by dissolving the old Party and establishing the "Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party". Note that this was still supported by the local Soviet representatives!

The last important change was triggered by the first Soviet troop movements: on 1 November, while the pullout of troops inside progressed, new Soviet troops moved into the country, and those inside suddenly took over airports. Soviet ambassador Andropow claimed both measures were aimed to help the pullout. The government didn't believe him, and responded by fulfilling one last protesters' demand: it declared that Hungary leaves the Warshaw Pact (which would have been the legal basis for military intervention) and opts for non-alignment. At the same time, in the name of the latter, Nagy forbade fights with the Soviets.

This was the day Kádár deserted Nagy. He left without informing anyone; ironically the same night, the radio aired a recorded speech of him still talking of "the glorious revolution of our people". It must be noted though, that once in Moscow, he first tried to ponder whether a peaceful solution would be possible. (I'll analyse Kádár in more detail in the last episode.)

Yet the coming storm wasn't yet obvious to people. The next day, while the Red Army stops moving and spends its time with tactical surveillance, and some armed revolutionaries spend theirs with preparations, the Workers' Councils prepare to take up work again, and the government prepares negotiations with the Soviet Union, the Red Army and the UN. One misjudgement of the government was to assume that the Red Army really aims to prevent a potential Western intervention (It's a few days after the start of the Suez Crisis). Another, also shared by much of the population, that Finland and Austria could serve as model for a pullout.

On 3 October, Nagy reorganises his cabinet into a national unity government (prepared since days). Cardinal Mindszenty talks on the radio: though he won't endorse the government or avoid some clerical demands, he gives a relatively measured speech, and lends his respectability to an appeal to the West. Throughout the day, talks are on-going between a delegation headed by Colonel Maléter (now also Defense Minister) and the Soviets about withdrawal -- a delaying tactic, judged to have ran its course at 22h, when Maléter & co arrive for a new round and are promptly arrested -- by General I.A. Serov, the KGB's head personally. János Kádár, now in Moscow, announces a counter-government.

All is set for attack.

What was behind the Soviet decision of armed intervention? What was the West's role? How did the fighting pan out? Why did the Soviet troops fight differently this time? Find out in the next episode.