The Truth About Hungary

255 Pages·1957·12.778 MB·English

by  Herbert Aptheker

THE TRUTH ABOUT HUNGARY
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A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States
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Toward Negro Freedom
The
Truth
About
Hungary
by Herbert Aptheker
MAINSTREAM PUBLISHERS: NEW YORK
1957
Copyright 1957 by
MASSES 8c MAINSTREAM, INC.
Published by
MAINSTREAM PUBLISHERS
832 Broadway, New York 3, N. Y.
May, 1957
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
Contents
Page
Author's Foreword 7
I. Introduction 9
II. Special Features of Hungary's Development . . . . . . . . . . 14
III. Reconstruction and Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
IV. Counter-Revolution and Cold War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
V. Basic Developments Within Hungary: 1950-1955 . . . . . 120
VI. Sources of Popular Discontent in the New Hungary ... 132
VII. Efforts at Change ............•.................... 156
VIII. The Uprising ...•.....•..............•......•....• 184
IX. The Uprising (continued) .......................... 216
X. Conclusion ...........•........................... 247
Away with themes of War, away with War itself!
Hence from my shuddering sight, to never more return,
that show of blacken'd, mutilated corpses!
That hell unpent, and raid of blood-fit for wild tigers,
or for lop-tongued wolves-not reasoning men!
-WALT WHITMAN (1871)
Author's Foreword
In the preparation of this volume the author has had the
generous assistance of many friends. He finds it painful that,
under present circumstances in the U.S., it is not wise to name
each of the many who were helpful and to whom a great debt of
gratitude is due. The assistance of some Hungarian friends, in par
ticular, was indispensable. It is possible for him, however, to thank
most warmly the following individuals for their suggestions, and
for calling to his attention many particular items he might other
wise have missed: Art Shields, William Weinstone, Holland
Roberts, Milton Howard, Aurelia Johnson, Amy Shechter, Em
manuel Blum, Charles Humboldt, Sidney Finkelstein, Nemmy
Sparks, Robert W. Dunn, William Allan. In the body of the text
itself acknowledgement will be found, of course, to the works
of many individuals throughout the world, which were basic
sources for this book.
The author is pleased to thank especially Jessica Smith for her
most generous aid. Herself the author of a penetrating estimate
of the Hungarian events-written while they were still occurring
-Miss Smith also made available to me a splendid collection
of clippings dealing with the subject.
In this work, as in everything the author has undertaken, the
criticisms and suggestions of his wife have been invaluable. It is
a joy for him, too, to acknowledge the help offered by his
daughter.
No one except the author, is responsible for any failings that
may mar the volume. The views expressed may or may not
coincide with those of the people named above; in any case, of
course, the responsibility for them falls upon the author alone.
March_. 1957.
7
1. Introduction
Shelley wrote: "Everybody saying a thing does not make it
right." Of course, it does not make it wrong, either; but it is the
poet's thought which merits emphasis, and is comforting to a
dissenter.
One of the hazards of inquiry was indicated in Kierkegaard's
remark that, "Life can only be understood backwards; but it
must be lived forwards" -which helps explain, no doubt, the ter
rific amount of staggering that makes up so much of living. One
might add to the philosopher's comment, also, that, generally
speaking, the further back one goes-the longer the perspective
the better the understanding.
Even with a fairly good time-perspective, however, evaluations
of identical events often differ very sharply. Indicative is the fact
that a young professor has recently produced a stout volume•
devoted to elucidating the opinions of American scholars as to the
causes of their own country's Civil War. His work shows that the
opinions are nearly as distinct one from the other as are the
scholars themselves.
This being the result in regard to a major event occurring
nine decades ago, and in one's own country, and concerning which
government archives are fully accessible and published studies
very abundant, one trained in the field of history, such as the
present writer, would naturally be very hesitant to attempt an
evaluation of something so recent in time, and distant in space,
as the Hungarian upheaval of the Fall of 1956.
Nevertheless, that is the attempt made in the following pages.
It is made though the author comprehends the extreme difficulty
of achieving anything like a sound result on such a subject.
It is attempted though the author knows, and reminds the reader,
that Thomas Henry Huxley asked: "If a little knowledge is
*Thomas J. Pressly, Americans Interpret Their Civil War (Prince
ton University Press, 1954).
9
IO THE TRUTH ABOUT HUNGARY
dangerous, where is the man who is out of danger?" The author
knows that if there be such a one, it is not he.
Still the attempt is made-the reader having been forewarned
because the author had to try to understand that upheaval, is
bold enough to feel that he has gained some kind of a reason
able picture of the event, and desires to put that picture to the
finality of print and the ordeal of careful scrutiny.
• • •
One may begin with typical expressions of widely-held Ameri
can opinion concerning the Hungarian events. We cull these
not from the big-chain press, or from such newspapers as the
New York Times or Herald Tribune, themselves multi-million
dollar corporations, well-known as dedicated partisans of capital
ism, but rather from three very much smaller liberal, or Left or
socialist-oriented journals.
The New Republic, in an editorial entitled "Myth With Nine
Lives" (Nov. 26, 1956), finds that the "myth" that Comm1,mism
was somehow to be preferred over Capitalism, has finally and at
last been destroyed by the events in Hungary: "It is this myth
that the Russian tanks crushed as they lurched into Budapest."
The American Socialist editors (Jan. 1957) see "Russian butchery
in Hungary"; they find that the idea of a serious threat of the
restoration of fascism in Hungary early in November, 1956 "is
a slanderous fable." They "reject the fabrications about a fascist
counter-revolution" and insist that "the real trend of the Hun
garian revolution was not toward fascism, or capitalism, or feudal
Iandlordism, but to get the Russian troops out, to get Hungary
out of the Warsaw bloc and to neutralize the country."
Paul M. Sweezy, in the Monthly Review (December, 1956)
writes:
An uprising of classic form and proportions took place in Hun
gary. It was drowned in blood by the Soviet army. These are
simple fact.s which no amount of arguing and no conceivable new
evidence can change.
This opinion is dated November 12, and while it asserts that
"no amount of arguing and no conceivable new evidence" could
alter it, nevertheless the writer added a postscript-presumably a
few days later-stating: "In the interval between writing and
going to press, a great deal of new material on Hungary has
appeared. It tends to prove that by November 4th the forces of
extreme reaction were definitely getting the upper hand."
Introduction 11
One must assume that since "extreme reaction" was getting
the upper ha~d, this might throw askew the estimate of the event
as "an uprising of classic form." On the other hand, that so
astute and socialist-minded an observer as Dr. Sweezy should view
an event, at any time, as a classical revolution, would lead one
to believe that even if this first estimate should be wrong, still
the event was hardly likely to be a classical counter-revolution.
One cannot be sure just what is Dr. Sweezy's opinion; but cer
tainly his view as expressed on November 12 is the overwhelm
ingly dominant one in the United States.
One must add that it is not a unanimous opinion in the
United States for many (probably most) Communists disagree,
and some non-Communists also have serious doubts that the
dominant view is valid. Dissidents may draw encouragement
from the fact that the dean of American scholars, Dr. W. E. B.
He
Du Bois, is with them. finds that the fundamental feature of
the Hungarian outbreak, as it developed, "was not against the
failure of 'socialism, but against socialism itself, with the help
of former Hungarian capitalists and landholders now gathering
in Austria, together with the great capitalist and colonial
interests in America and the West." (The American Socialist,
Jan. 1957, pp. 8-9.)
It is significant, also, that in Western Europe, where political
maturity is greater, where fascism is better understood and carries
more bitter memories, and where a deeper comprehension of the
realities of Hungarian history and life is more widespread, the
estimates offered by the prototypes of the New Republic and the
Monthly Review and the American Socialist are quite different.
Thus in West Germany, the organ of the Social-Democratic
Party, Vorwaerts, editorialized (Nov. II, 1956) that the downfall
of Nagy had come about because he pursued a policy of con
tinually granting concessions in order "to appease the insurgent
movement." This, says the Social-Democratic paper, "was bound
to fail because the insurgents were being excited to extremism
under the influence of reactionary and fascist elements which
had come to the surface."
Two weeks later, Herbert \.Yehner, a member of the Central
Board of the West German Social-Democratic Party, reported in
Hamburg to Party leaders on the world situation: Wehner was
at pains to point out that a veritable White Terror had appeared
in Hungary in the last days of October, 1956, so that "a sort of