Hungary Official Admits 1956 Uprising Was No Counterrevolt

In a startling contradiction of the official view of history, a member of the ruling Communist Party Politburo said on Saturday that the 1956 Hungarian Revolution was a popular uprising, not a counterrevolution.

Imre Pozsgay became the first Hungarian leader to publicly contradict the official view that the revolution, which was suppressed by Soviet tanks and troops, was a foreign-instigated counterrevolution designed to subvert the Communist system.

Pozsgay, who heads a Communist Party panel investigating Hungary’s post-World War II history, made his announcement in a radio interview.

His portrayal of the revolution as a popular uprising could signal the government’s readiness to rehabilitate the men who led the upheaval. Premier Imre Nagy, Defense Minister Pal Maleter and other top men in the short-lived revolutionary government were executed in 1958 and buried in unmarked graves.

In another development, Rezsoe Nyers, another reformer and father of the 1968 economic reform, was quoted as saying he and other top officials favor a center-left coalition to govern Hungary after the 1991 parliamentary elections.

Nyers, who is also on the Politburo and in the government of Premier Miklos Nemeth, made the statement in an interview carried in the latest issue of the Vienna news magazine Profil to be published Monday.

Pozsgay made clear his comments reflect the fact-finding work of the party’s committee carrying out an inquiry into the Hungarian history of the past 40 years.

But he refrained from commenting on the Soviet role in crushing the revolution, which led to heavy losses of life.

He noted the forthcoming reburial in marked graves of Imre Nagy and his associates was a humanitarian issue that concerns the families and “not a rehabilitation as such about which one ought not to prophesy.

“Nagy was right on his 1953 program, in the 1954-55 power crisis, though a dispute still exists about his 1956 rule,” said Pozsgay, who was named to the Politburo in May, 1988, when longtime party chief Janos Kadar was ousted. “But in October, 1956, there was “a popular uprising against a humiliating oligarchic rule.”

He added, “The term counterrevolution cannot stand its ground, it is being revised . . . a rethinking in under way, while the international background is being looked into.”