Could it have been different?

Eric Hobsbawm

LRB | Vol. 28 No. 22 dated 16 November 2006

Journey to a Revolution: A Personal Memoir and History of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 by Michael Korda · Harpercollins, 221 pp, $24.95

Twelve Days: Revolution 1956 by Victor Sebestyen · Weidenfeld, 340 pp, £20.00

A Good Comrade: Janos Kadar, Communism and Hungary by Roger Gough · Tauris, 323 pp, £24.50

Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest and the

1956 Hungarian Revolt by Charles Gati · Stanford, 264 pp, £24.95

Contemporary history is useless unless it allows emotion to be recollected in tranquillity. Probably no episode in 20th-century history generated a more intense burst of feeling in the Western world than the Hungarian uprising of 1956. Although it lasted less than two weeks, it was both a classic instance of the narrative of justified popular insurrection against oppressive government, familiar since the fall of the Bastille, and of David's in this case doomed victory against Goliath.

For the Western side in the Cold War, then at its height, it dramatised the desire of enslaved peoples for liberty and, after a brief intermission that allowed some 200,000 Hungarians to escape, its ruthless repression by arms and terror. For Communists outside the Soviet empire, especially intellectuals, the spectacle of Soviet tanks advancing on a people's government headed by Communist reformers was a lacerating experience, the climax of a crisis that, starting with Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin, pierced the core of their faith and hope. It cost the Italian Communist Party something like 200,000 members, and most Western Parties the bulk of their intellectuals. And it was literally a spectacle. Hungary 1956 was the first insurrection brought directly into Western homes by journalists, broadcasters and cameramen, who flooded across the briefly breached Iron Curtain from Austria.

Fifty years later, the Hungarian October carries a distinctly lighter load of emotion, except in its own country, which has recently seen, and is still seeing, an attempt to replay the drama of 1956 in the same setting and ideally with the same script: mass demonstrations turning into riot, the occupation of broadcasting studios, national flags with circles cut out of the middle, by analogy with those from which the symbols of Communism were removed. The issue today is the replacement of a centre-left party of the free market by more chauvinist and demagogic centre-right market champions. The tragedy of 1956 has been succeeded by something close to a post-Communist farce.

New documentation has transformed the history of the Hungarian October since the fall of Communism opened the Hungarian and many of the Russian archives and Freedom of Information legislation eased access to state papers in the US. All but one of the books discussed here are written by Hungarians old enough to have been participants or contemporary observers, or at least infants, in 1956. Except for Michael Korda's lively memory of an Oxford undergraduate jaunt, they are historically serious and not only recollect but analyse emotion in tranquillity. Victor Sebestyen's Twelve Days is well documented, based on up to date knowledge, and vividly written. Roger Gough's important biography of Kádár shows considerable understanding of a difficult, and in the end haunted, historical figure who was, not uncharacteristically, an admirer of The Good Soldier Svejk.

Charles Gati's Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt is an outstanding work. Its four major conclusions can be briefly stated in the author's own words. â?~First, relatively few Hungarians actually fought against Soviet rule, and their ultimate aim was to reform the system, not to abolish it.' Although practically all Hungarians cheered them on, the armed freedom fighters numbered no more than 15,000; they were mostly young, and they were â?~deeply nationalist, anti-Soviet and anti-Russian -- but not anti-socialist'. â?~Second, the revolution lacked effective leadership.' It was a â?~bungling performance'. Imre Nagy's â?~fearless, uncompromising behaviour before the kangaroo court that sentenced him to death in 1958 should not obscure that fact that however well-meaning he was, he lacked the political skill to make the revolution victorious; in particular, he failed to steer his country between the freedom fighters' maximalist expectations and Moscow's minimalist requirements.' â?~Third, the Soviet leadership in Moscow was not trigger-happy . . . Fourth, the United States was both uninformed and misinformed about the prospects for change -- even as its propaganda was very provocative.'

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