Hungarians Quietly Commemorate 30th Anniversary of Uprising

In a somber mood, Hungary on Thursday marked the 30th anniversary of its 1956 revolution, a futile uprising against Soviet domination that left the country with thousands of dead, a devastated capital and a lasting image of national courage.

Savage street fighting broke out against Hungarian secret police forces in Budapest on the evening of Oct. 23, 1956. The uprising spread quickly to other cities as Soviet forces intervened, briefly withdrew, then crushed the rebellion 13 days later in an onslaught of tank and artillery fire.

Although as many as 30,000 civilians are estimated to have died in the fighting, there were no public ceremonies Thursday to commemorate the dead.

The National Assembly convened for one of the several two-day sessions it has every year, but diplomats who attended said there were no references to the anniversary.

Variety of Commentaries

Instead, the official press published a variety of commentaries that avoided mention of the anniversary but stressed the tragic character of the uprising and its continuing effect on national self-perceptions. This message is being repeated in a six-part documentary film of the uprising, called “History Is Living With Us,” which is being aired in weekly installments on Hungarian television.

The second installment, which showed scenes of street fighting and the first televised interviews with former insurgents, was shown in prime time Thursday night. Like other official presentations, the documentary described the uprising as a “counterrevolution,” the doctrinal term implying that it conflicted with the desires and interests of the Hungarian people, but the film emphasized the more neutral description of the events of 1956 as “tragic.”

Politically, the 1956 revolution is still Hungary’s most sensitive topic, in large part because the current Communist Party leader, Janos Kadar, was installed under Soviet protection in November, 1956. Although Kadar, who is now 74, has gained popularity through liberalizing economic and political reforms introduced since 1968, Western diplomats say the authorities are anxious to avoid reviving any question of his government’s legitimacy.

In an indication of the sensitivity still attached to the revolution, plainclothes police stood watch over several sites in the city associated with its outbreak, apparently to deter any unauthorized commemoration.

Unmarked Graves

Among the sites under surveillance in the past few days is Section 301 of the main municipal cemetery on Kozma Street, which contains a dozen or so unmarked graves believed to be those of Premier Imre Nagy, his defense chief, Pal Maleter, and other leading participants.

Nagy, a popular founder of the Hungarian Communist Party, came to power with Moscow’s consent a day after the uprising began. He was executed on charges of treason in 1958, having declared Hungary a neutral nation and withdrawn from the Warsaw Pact after Soviet tank forces moved to crush the revolution.

Many official Hungarian sources acknowledged Thursday that the unmarked graves are an embarrassment to the Kadar government, and said the “problem is very close to solution.”

“After all, these were our deaths, too, but this requires a very delicate--I would almost say, artistic--solution,” a Hungarian with close ties to senior party officials said.

Memorial Service

Several members of Budapest’s small dissident community said they planned to gather in a private apartment Thursday evening to conduct a memorial service for those who died in the revolution, as an alternative to a demonstration in public.

“We know the police are ready, and we don’t want to provoke them,” one said.

The anniversary was also marked by an unusual “joint proclamation” signed by 122 dissidents in four East European countries--Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Germany.

Dissidents in Hungary and Poland said the statement took several weeks to work out and that it reflected an unusual degree of cooperation among opposition groups in the four countries.

The proclamation pledged “joint determination to struggle for political democracy in our countries” and drew parallels among the 1953 workers’ uprising in East Berlin, the 1956 Hungarian revolution, the liberal party reforms of Czechoslovakia’s “Prague Spring” in 1968, and the rise of Solidarity, Poland’s independent trade union movement, in 1980. All were suppressed by Soviet or domestic military forces.

“We declare our joint determination to struggle for political democracy in our countries, for their independence, for pluralism based on the principle of self-government and for the peaceful reunification of divided Europe,” it said.

“The traditions and experiences of the Hungarian revolution remain our common heritage and inspiration,” it continued, and noted that the 1956 uprising “made clear that what the Hungarian people really wanted was independence, democracy and neutrality.”

Among the signers was Lazlo Rajk of Hungary, whose father was a prominent victim of the Stalinist show trials in Hungary in the early 1950s. Others included Jiri Hajek of Czechoslovakia, who was briefly foreign minister before the 1968 Soviet invasion; Ralf Hirsch of East Germany, an anti-nuclear activist, and Jacek Kuron of Poland, a founder of the KOR workers’ rights committee and a leading Solidarity adviser.

Distortions Remain

Although Hungarian officialdom still describes the 1956 uprising as a counterrevolution, Western diplomats and some Hungarian intellectuals said the stream of media commentary and the current television series reflected a shift from past years toward a less dogmatic, more sophisticated and in some ways more objective depiction of events--though in the view of Western historians, major distortions remain.

Mostly gone, for instance, are claims that Western radio stations, notably Radio Free Europe, played a major role along with foreign agents in fomenting the rebellion.

Largely absent, too, are assertions that survivors of the prewar regime of Adm. Miklos Horthy, Hungary’s version of fascism, played a role.

Instead the uprising is now interpreted as an explosion of popular anger against an admittedly repressive Stalinist regime under Matyas Rakosi and Erno Gero. This is said to have brought to power an equally objectionable “right wing” regime under Imre Nagy, who sought to abandon the principles of one-party Communist rule and alliance with the Soviet Union.