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Richard Lettis: The Hungarian Revolt |
The New York Times Reports
The articles beginning here and concluding on page 158 are reprinted by permission of The New York Times.
JOHN MAC CORMAC[18]
BUDAPEST, October 24, 1956
The Hungarian police fired tonight on a crowd assembled before the
Budapest radio building. .. [p.1, col. 1/p. 10, col. 3]
The shooting incident in Budapest came when a crowd gathered before the
headquarters of the Budapest radio and became restive. It shouted "Down
with Gero!"
The crowd sent a delegation into the building. Shortly afterward flares
were sent up from the roof of the radio headquarters. Five trucks filled
with armed soldiers appeared and tried to make their way through the crowd.
The crowd refused to give way and the trucks left.
The crowd waited. When the youth delegation failed to emerge from the building
the crowd began to press against the doors. This was the signal for the
political police to throw tear bombs. Apparently these were not effective
and firing began.
Previously the demonstrations had been disciplined and peaceful. The police
made no attempt to interfere. One meeting held across the Danube in Buda,
the right bank of Budapest, numbered nearly 10,000 persons. Among them
were 500 officers and soldiers.
The red-white-and-green of Hungary's national colors waved in the air and
ornamented every buttonhole. The flags were supplemented by banners inscribed
with slogans, such as "Do not stop half way: Away with Stalinism,"
"Independence and freedom," "We want new leaders: We put
our trust in Imre Nagy," and "Hurrah for the Poles."
As the demonstrators marched this evening past the Hungarian Parliament,
crowned with its illuminated star, they shouted: "Put out the red
star." An hour later the star had been extinguished and the Parliament
buildings were draped with the Hungarian national flag.
The demonstrations began after students held meetings at noon at universities
in Budapest.
Office workers from Pest, the city's left bank, quickly attached themselves
to the students, as did passers-by.. . . Gatherings were held in a half
dozen public squares, generally before a statue of a national hero.
At every meeting a list of resolutions was distributed. They [col. 3/col.
41 expressed hatred of Mr. Rakosi and resentment over Hungary's relations
with the Soviet Union. The resolutions demanded:
Withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary in accordance with the 1947 peace
treaty and publication of Hungary's trade agreements and reparations payments
to the Soviet Union.
A reshuffling of the Government with Mr. Nagy as leader and an open trial
of Mr. Rakosi.
Restoration of Hungary's traditional national emblem and her traditional
Army uniforms instead of the present Soviet-style dress.
Destruction of a giant Stalin statue in a Budapest square. In the course
of the demonstrations, the marchers in fact tried, though without success,
to tear down the statue.
Attached to the list of resolutions was a statement that the Government
had refused to permit them to be printed or broadcast.
It was announced that a mass meeting would be held at the Polytechnic University
tomorrow to give further consideration to the resolutions.
ELIE ABEL[19]
BELGRADE, October 25, 1956
[p.6, col. 4] Communications between the Hungarian capital and other
European centers were completely disrupted. The closing of the Austrian-Hungarian
border early today caused a heavy traffic jam on both sides of the frontier.
Trains bound for Budapest did not reach their destination and private automobiles
once inside the country were turned back by Hungarian tanks within twenty
miles of Budapest.
Telephone operators in Vienna, Belgrade and London informed prospective
callers that all lines to Budapest were closed.
BUDAPEST, October 27, 1956
And yet it looked Wednesday as if the intervention of Soviet troops,
who had been called in at 4:30 o'clock that morning, had quelled the revolt,
The Soviet forces had eighty tanks, artillery, armored cars and other equipment
of a variety normally possessed only by a complete Soviet mechanized division.
The insurgent Hungarian students and workers at no time had more than small
arms furnished by sympathizing soldiers of the Hungarian Army.
What revived the revolt was a massacre...
Since only a few minutes earlier Soviet tank crews had been fraternizing
with insurgents, it is possible that the massacre was a tragic mistake.
The most credible version is that the political policemen opened fire on
the demonstrators and panicked the Soviet tank crews into the belief that
they were being attacked.
But in any case when the firing subsided Parliament Square was littered
with dead and dying men and women. The total number of casualties has been
estimated at 170. This correspondent can testify that he saw a dozen bodies.
Far from deterring the demonstration, the firing embittered and inflamed
the Hungarian people. A few minutes later and only a few blocks from the
scene of the massacre, the surviving demonstrators reassembled in Szabadsag
(the word means liberty) Square. When trucks filled with Hungarian soldiers
drove up and warned the demonstrators that they were armed, the leader
of the demonstrators brandished a Hungarian flag and replied: "We
are armed only with this, but it is enough."
On a balcony above appeared an elderly Hungarian clad in pajamas and a
dressing gown and clasping a huge flag. He threw it down to the demonstrators.
Another man mounted a ladder to tear down the Soviet emblem from the "Liberty"
monument in "Liberty" square. It was erected in 1945 by the Russians
with forced Hungarian labor.
A crowd assembled before the United States legation in the square and shouted:
"The workers are being murdered, we want help."
Finally Spencer Barnes, Chargé d'Affaires, told them that their
case was one for decision by his Government and the United Nations, not
for the local staff. The British Minister had received a deputation and
given it the same message.
Among those watching this demonstration was a furtive figure clad in a
leather coat. Suddenly someone identified him rightly or wrongly as a member
of the hated Avo, the Hungarian political police. Like tigers the crowd
turned on him, began to beat him and hustled him into a courtyard. A few
minutes later they emerged rubbing their hands with satisfaction. The leather-coated
figure was seen no more.
During all these activities and while Soviet tanks continued to race through
near-by streets firing their fusillades, the crowd never ceased shouting:
"Down with Gero!" Less than an hour later the radio announced
that Mr. Gero had been replaced by Janos Kadar, former Interior Minister
and second secretary of the party... [p.2, col. 3/col. 4]
At 4 P.M. yesterday afternoon pamphlets were distributed signed by "Hungarian
workers and university students." They read: "We summon all Hungarians
to a general strike. As long as the Government fails to grant our demands
and until the murderers are called to account, we shall answer the Government
with a general strike. Long live the new Government under the leadership
of Imre Nagy."
At 6 P.M. that evening a one-sheet newspaper was issued from the printing
plant of the Hungarian Army. It had been occupied by the political police
but apparently reoccupied by the Army. It was an Army officer who threw
hundreds of copies from an upper window to a crowd waiting for them below.
The sheet repeated the sixteen demands that had been formulated by Tuesday's
peaceful demonstrators, which the Government had refused to print or broadcast...
[col. 4/col. 5]
The massacre before the Parliament occurred in a mysterious circumstance
for which no explanation has been forthcoming.
Known is the fact that the crews of three Soviet tanks began to fraternize
with the insurgents shortly before noon in front of the Astoria Hotel.
They shouted that they did not want to fire on unarmed Hungarian workers.
They let a score of the demonstrators climb on their tanks and drove them
to Parliament Square. This correspondent saw the Soviet soldiers there
laughing and waving to the crowd of hundreds that had collected. But only
a minute later from a few blocks in the distance he heard a violent cannonade
and saw at the end of the street another Soviet tank firing in the direction
of the crowd...
That the Soviet forces suffered at least one casualty was demonstrated
Wednesday morning when a Soviet soldier, bleeding from an abdominal bullet
wound, was carried into the dining room of the Duna Hotel for treatment.
He was bandaged by a Western physician.
A few hours later a Soviet armored car was set on fire near Engels Square.
A worker told this correspondent that some Soviet tanks had been attacked
with "Molotov cocktails," made according to old Russian recipe
out of wine bottles filled with gasoline...
The revolt began as a series [col. 5/ col. 6] of demonstrations that remained
peaceful until about 10:30 o'clock Tuesday evening. The trouble began in
front of the Budapest radio station when a delegation that had entered
it to request the broadcasting of its "sixteen points" was arrested
by political policemen who were guarding the building.
The crowd demanded their release and tried to storm the doors. At first
the policemen tried to drive the demonstrators back with tear gas. Then
they opened fire, killing one demonstrator and wounding several others.
When this correspondent arrived at midnight the radio station had been
stormed. Its lower floors had been occupied by the demonstrators, while
the political police held the upper ones. A group of students had mounted
a balcony in front of the building, hung out Hungarian flags and Hungary's
pre-Communist national emblem.
A military command car that had been set on fire burned with dense smoke
and a rubbery stench. The air in the narrow street in front of the station
reeked of tear gas, which was reinforced by an occasional bomb hurled from
the upper floors by the political policemen.
Trucks filled with Hungarian soldiers stood by, but their occupants were
taking no action.
Shortly before midnight seven heavy Hungarian tanks rumbled into the area.
Some of the demonstrators fled. But the leading tank displayed the national
flag, its crew cheered the demonstrators and numbers of them mounted it
to shake hands with the soldiers. One youth shouted: "Come on, the
army is with us!" and the crowd surged forward again to invest the
building.
It was obvious that the army was refusing to make common cause with the
political police. An hour later several insurgents were observed with tommy
guns in their hands. They said they had obtained them from the soldiers.
Meanwhile, the crowd was beginning to grow more violent. It threw up barricades
at street intersections. These were flimsy affairs made of park benches
but they were guarded by youths with tommy-guns.
At one intersection the crowd overturned the automobile of a state official.
It seemed for a moment as if an American car would share that fate, but
the crowd grew good humored when it realized that the car was being driven
by a Western newspaper man.
At 1:30 A.M. Wednesday the crowd stormed the plant of Szabad Nep,
principal Communist newspaper. They brought with them the body of a dead
demonstrator wrapped in a national flag.
The newspaper had just issued a one-page extra edition condemning the political
police force for having opened fire on the demonstrators at the radio station.
Meanwhile, other insurgents stormed a Soviet bookstore, threw books into
the street and set fire to them. The head quarters of the Soviet-Hungarian
Friendship Society was wrecked . . . [col. 6]
VIENNA, October 28, 1956
Anti-Communist rebels appeared today to be firmly in control of the
western part
of Hungary. The region adjoins Austria from the Danube to the southern
plains, where Austria, Hungary and Yugoslavia meet.
Along the 160-mile Austrian-Hungarian border neither Hungarian soldiers
wearing the Communist red star insignia nor Soviet troops were reported
seen.
However, Soviet forces were being moved to the rear of the rebels facing
the Austrian-Hungarian border, according to information received by Austrian
military authorities.
In particular, strong Soviet tank units were reported concentrating in
the area between Gyor and Komarom, south of the Danube. The railroad and
main highway between Vienna and Budapest traverse this area.
A broadcast monitored here at 6 P.M. purporting to originate from the "Free
Station" of Gyor, said Soviet troops in that area had given assurances
they would not take any actions against the local population unless attacked.
The broadcast added that during a mass meeting in Gyor's [p. 1, col. 7/p.
31, col. 4] main square orators demanded weapons in order to be able to
bring aid to the insurgents in Budapest.
The broadcast also reported that Vac, Hatvan and Szolnok to the north and
north-east of Budapest had proclaimed themselves "free towns."
The insurgents entrenched on the Leitha River less than forty miles from
here claim to be in continuous contact by telephone with other "fighters
for freedom" in Budapest...
Only at Lockenhaus, an Austrian village not far from the Hungarian town
of Sopron, was firing heard this afternoon. It sounded like light artillery...
Sopron itself was reported controlled by the insurgents. The streets of
that town were said to be patrolled by groups of three, consisting of one
soldier, one worker and one student. Sopron's statue of Stalin was said
to have been toppled from its pedestal...
Railroad service in the Hungarian border area has come to a standstill.
All international traffic via the Hungarian frontier station and railroad
hub, Hegyeshalom, is suspended.
The town of Hegyeshalom is understood to be ruled by a Revolutionary Committee.
When this body first had its communications put on official billboards
yesterday, local security police tore them down.
However, later yesterday all military and police forces placed themselves
at the disposal of the insurgents. Also cooperating with them are reported
to be the officers and soldiers of a new block of barracks near Hegyeshalom.
The insurgents' general strike order was rigidly observed in the entire
Hegyeshalom district
Hungarians living near the border appeared to have high hopes that the
West would intervene if Soviet forces attacked the rebels in the western
part of the country. Hungarian railroad men expressed confidence that it
would take the Russians several days to move reinforcements from Poland
and Rumania into Hungary because railroad connections between eastern Hungary
and neighboring countries were clogged by cars of sugar beets...
BUDAPEST, October 31, 1956
The Hungarian people seem to have won their revolution. Soviet troops
are now leaving Budapest and apparently are also leaving Hungary...
This afternoon Janos Kadar, chief of the Hungarian Communist party, former
President Zoltan Tildy, leader of the Smallholders party, and Ferenc Erdei,
representing the former National Peasant party, broadcast to the people
a promise to hold free elections, to proclaim Hungary a neutral country
and to insist on the immediate departure of Soviet troops.
In other words all the parties in Hungary, even the Communist party, have
united in a common front against the Soviet Union and in favor of a return
[p. 1, col. 5/p. 21, col. 1] of democracy...
This was an eleventh-hour grant of the demands on which the revolutionaries
have insisted ever since their demonstration a week ago turned into a revolt.
It was made after the insurgents had stormed the headquarters of the political
police in Republic Square in Pest this afternoon, burned down the Communist
party headquarters in Buda and set fire to every Communist bookshop in
the city.
During the storming of the political police headquarters Jean-Pierre Petraghini,
photographer for the magazine Paris Match, received a burst of machine-gun
fire in the stomach and leg while Tim Foote, photographer for Life, was
slightly wounded in the hand.
They were fired on by A.V.H. tanks. Not long afterward a number of political
police who had been captured by the revolutionaries paid for their resistance
with their lives. Tonight the A.V.H. appealed to the Hungarian Writers
Association, which started the revolutionary movement, to intervene for
their 10,000 members. They said they were willing to surrender in return
for an amnesty. Whether the public in its present mood of fierce hatred
will be willing to consent to this is highly doubtful.
Mr. Tildy broadcast tonight an order that all political prisoners who had
not already been freed by the revolutionaries be immediately released.
The Government has also ordered that the compulsory collection of produce
from Hungarian farmers be canceled. This means the end of the Communist
agricultural system.
This was followed by an instruction from the Revolutionary Council to the
Army and police to send delegates from their revolutionary councils (this
was the first revelation that such bodies existed) to a meeting to be held
in the Ministry of Defence at 2 o'clock tomorrow morning. The radio also
announced that the third motorized formation of the Hungarian army would
replace the Soviet troops leaving Budapest.
The last group of the Hungarian insurgents who had been holding out in
the Maria Theresia barracks for six days stopped fighting at 8 o'clock
this morning.
They did not surrender but merely emerged from the building they had defended
with incredible bravery against Soviet tanks, artillery, armored cars and
infantry. They did not lay down their arms and said they were ready to
resume fighting if the Russians did not leave Budapest today.
This correspondent when he drove down Ulloi Ut at 9 o'clock this morning
saw havoc that was not surpassed by any of his experiences as a correspondent
in World War II. The barracks, renamed Kilian, a 200-year-old building
with massive walls, had stood up under the constant battering by Soviet
tanks and artillery. Not only that but there was evidence in burned-out
Soviet tanks and armored cars as well as in the bodies of twenty Soviet
soldiers that lay still unburied in the shattered street, that its defenders
had given as good as they got.
As I drove carefully up the street, steering past broken glass, broken
telegraph wires, unexploded shells, unexpended ammunition and the corpses
of Soviet troops, the car was immediately surrounded by a crowd of youthful
insurgents.
Their faces were gray with exhaustion, their young chins were covered with
a week's beard but their spirit was still indomitable.
"We greet you in the name of the Hungarian freedom fighters,"
said one of them in German, when we had disclosed our identity. [col. 1/col.
2] He said he had been in the barracks since October 23...
"When did you surrender?" he was asked. He drew himself up. "We
never surrendered," he said. "The Russians went away and we came
out."
It was unnecessary to ask him if the rebels had laid down their arms. He
had a submachine gun slung over his shoulder and a pistol in his belt.
Near him stood another partisan similarly armed and with two hand grenades
stuck in his waistband. A boy who could not be more than 10 years old stood
holding at the ready a rifle as tall as himself.
Beside him was a 15-year-old girl with a submachine gun and a forage cap
on her head, who looked on the brink of absolute exhaustion. She tried
to tell my wife in Hungarian what it had been like to fight with no sleep
and little food for five long days.
Our German-speaking informant confirmed that the defenders of the barracks
had been under the command of a lieutenant colonel of the Hungarian Army,
but he said only a few of them had been soldiers. Their commander, he said,
was still in the barracks.
"We were armed with rifles, [col. 2/ col. 3] tommyguns, grenades and
Molotov cocktails," he continued. "We got a lot of them from
dead Russians. The Russian tanks used to attack us in the night and go
away in the morning." ...
At this juncture a youthful partisan with an armband and an air of command
advised us to withdraw our car. "Get out," he said, "we
don't like some of the people around here. We have some scores to settle."
Some of his clear-headed lieutenants directed us to safety down a side
street. As we turned down it a rattle of tommygun fire only a few yards
down Ulloi Ut reinforced the wisdom of his command. The air was electric.
Obviously anything could happen and might happen.
In the side street we passed a surgical clinic whose chief surgeon said
that forty dead and about 500 [sic] had been carried into [col. 3/col.
4] his clinic alone from the barracks fighting. He said Soviet troops had
shot up the clinic and even its operating theater.
When we left Ulloi Ut to get this story off by courier five Russian tanks
were still posted only 500 yards from the barracks. It seemed obvious that
the situation in Budapest would remain explosive until and unless the Russians
leave.
Near the Technical University building where the revolution had its inception
A.V.H. soldiers at 10 o'clock this morning shot at a crowd that had gathered
before the building. Later an A.V.H. captain tried to make a run for it.
He was captured by the crowd and hanged from a lamppost.
In Roeck Szilard Street in the Eighth District a crowd of children, 12
to 14 years old, quietly surrounded a Soviet tank that was standing there.
Suddenly several of them jumped on the tank, one of them produced a pistol
and shot into it and the rest stole the machine gun of the Russian driver.
Then they fled down the street under a hail of fire from other Russian
tanks.
At 10 o'clock thousands marched in mass demonstration toward the Kilian
barracks. They carried black flags to commemorate those who had died there
and shouted, "Whoever is a Hungarian join us."
In the Rokus Hospital, the central hospital of Budapest, lie 500 wounded.
One, a major of the Hungarian Army from the Petofi Academy Military School,
said that all the cadets had joined in the revolution as early as last
Tuesday. They fought chiefly in Buda, where they suffered heavy casualties
but also inflicted them on the secret police.
Premier Imre Nagy walked this morning from Communist party headquarters
to Parliament. He was attended by two policemen wearing their new uniforms
and followed by a truckload of policemen. [col. 4]
BUDAPEST, November 2, 1956
[p. 15, col. 3] At 11:30 last evening there was some cannonading in
Budapest, apparently in the west, and a few bursts of machine-gun fire...
The next development was Soviet occupation of the Budapest air field. It
is now surrounded by 160 Soviet tanks...
The Government's announcement that the Russians were returning caused a
panic in the streets of Budapest. People hurried home to join their families.
A diplomat who visited the Soviet Embassy reported that it was deserted
by all of its staff except the Ambassador and a few secretaries, and that
boxes and crates were stacked as if for removal.
BUDAPEST, November 3, 1956
[p. 17, col. 1] Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty appealed to the West today
for political support in Hungary's fight against Soviet domination...
He said his appeal was addressed specially to the "great powers"
in the West, presumably the United States, Britain and France. He asked
also for gifts to relieve the suffering here.
Speaking in German in a strong vibrant voice, the Cardinal told correspondents
who crowded his small, almost bare study that "the whole Hungarian
people wish and demand that Russian troops leave Hungarian territory."
"The people," he added, "want to work for themselves and
for the life of the nation"...
The Cardinal said he had received a telegram of blessings from Pope Pius.
He said the telegram had contained nothing else. This was taken to mean
that he had no political instructions from the Vatican.
As he did just after his release, he avoided a direct answer to the question
whether he would take part in a government. He answered that he had not
had time to get the full picture of political conditions in Hungary.
BUDAPEST, November 3, 1956
[p. 15, col. 1] . . Budapest has been surrounded since Thursday but
so far Soviet tanks have not entered the city.
The Hungarian Army has not offered resistance at any point. This is not
because it is unwilling to fight but because if there is to be a war the
Hungarians want the Russians to take responsibility for starting it. Neither
have the Russians fired a shot so far . . . All the fighting that has taken
place to date has been in Budapest between revolutionists and members of
the A.V.H., the Hungarian political police.
The day's political developments in Budapest include the radio announcement
that Premier Nagy will reform his Cabinet by withdrawing from it all members
who had compromised themselves by collaboration with the Soviet. A second
was the arrest of Gyula Alapi, the state prosecutor in the trial of Cardinal
Mindszenty...
Whether Russians will ever be willing to leave Hungary was the topic of
wide speculation here. One possible motive, it is believed, may be the
repugnance that has been shown by members of many Soviet units toward their
assigned task of suppressing the revolution.
This correspondent has already related how one Russian officer in the Moritz
Zsigmond Square in Buda tried to justify the presence of Soviet tanks to
a crowd of students with the statement, "But we have been told you
are fascists here," He also recorded the statement of some bewildered
Russian soldiers to Russian speaking Hungarians that "we were told
that American troops went to Budapest and have been surprised not to see
any.
The Russian-speaking correspondent of The Times of London heard
a Soviet lieutenant tell some citizens of Budapest Thursday: "Rakosi
never told us you did not want us in Hungary. We don't like what we are
doing but what can we do? We are soldiers and we must obey orders."
But the most sensational report of all came from Kecskemet. There, it is
said, elements of two Soviet divisions stacked their arms outside the town,
entered it and told inhabitants: "We don't want to hurt anybody. We
would like some food, but we have money to pay for it."
The Soviet official with the troops is reported to have told some members
of the town's Revolutionary Committee that the reason Russian reinforcements
had been brought into Hungary was to prevent widespread mutiny among their
own troops already there...
At another press conference a spokesman for the Revolutionary Council of
the Hungarian Army said, "West of the Danube Russian units have not
really remained neutral but in many cases helped it [the revolution]."
It is a matter of history that more than 1,000,000 Soviet army soldiers
revolted against communism in World War II. Undoubtedly thousands more
would have defected had it not been for the brutality of the Nazis in Russia
. . . [col. 1]
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Richard Lettis: The Hungarian Revolt |