Hungarian industry. Even aristocratic landowners such as Prince Pál Eszterházy repudiated any such intention, while Cardinal Mindszenty personally told one witness early in November that he had no intention of claiming the return of the great Church estates, but was proposing to ask for the reopening of Catholic schools. "Let no one dream", said Bela Kovács, leader of the Smallholders' Party, "of the old world returning: the world of the counts, the bankers and the capitalists is gone forever." " 141. In its extensive examination of developments between 23 October and 4 November, the Committee found no evidence whatsoever to suggest that any political personality associated with the pre-war régime exerted the slightest influence on events. At no time was there a demand for any such personality to be included in the new Government. Moreover, it is a point of interest that the question of a counter-revolution seems not to have been raised by the Soviet authorities during their negotiations with the Government of Mr. Nagy. The Government which he was forming in the early days of November was a coalition composed of the parties included in the Hungarian National Independence Front of 1945. The parties composing this Independence Front had been sanctioned by the Allied Control Commission, on which the Government of the USSR was represented. 142. An interesting episode was the telephone conversation reported to the Committee as having taken place between Mr. Tildy and Ferenc Nagy, Prime Minister of Hungary from February 1946 to June 1947, who rang up Mr. Tildy from abroad. Mr. Tildy replied that the new developments in Hungary were developments with which Ferenc Nagy would be unfamiliar. He indicated to Mr. Nagy that his political ideas and connexions belonged to a world of the past. 143. The suggestion that considerable numbers of agents, saboteurs, former fascists and so on, entered Hungary during the uprising is rejected by the Committee. In this connexion it noted that the Austrian Government addressed to the Government of Hungary on 3 November a statement protesting against this very allegation. "The Austrian Government", declared the statement, "has ordered the establishment of a closed zone along the Austro-Hungarian frontier... The Minister of Defence has inspected this zone in the company of the military attachés of the Four Great Powers, including the USSR. military attachés were thus enabled to satisfy themselves of the measures which have been taken in the frontier zone with a view to protecting the Austrian frontier and Austrian neutrality." 1915 The 144. As to the suggestion that forty out of one hundred Red Cross aircraft landing in Budapest during the last days of October carried arms and agents, the Committee was authoritatively informed that the only Red Cross aircraft to arrive in Budapest during that time were five Yugoslav and one Swiss aircraft, each of which made three or four trips a day, and two Polish, two Czech, one Romanian and one Belgian aircraft, each of which made only one trip during the period in question. The Ferihegy airport was occupied by Soviet forces at about midday on 29 October and was not handed back to the Hungarian authorities until 28 December. 145. There still remains the question of popular demands breaking out of the orthodox Communist mould as the popular forces gathered strength. In the Committee's view, the fact that these demands culminated in the proclamation of neutrality and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact had nothing whatsoever to do with fascist influence or the alleged power of reactionary agents. The reasons for these more radical demands should be sought in such factors as popular hatred of the AVH and resentment against occupation by foreign troops which was intensified by the Soviet armed intervention, and by the bitterness with which the AVH fought against the uprising in co-operation with Soviet troops. 146. Before closing its comments on the conter-revolutionary thesis, the Committee wishes to draw attention to the fact that this thesis should be read with the point in mind that Soviet authors use such words as "counter-revolutionary", 14 Kis Ujság, 1 November 1956. 15 In the same note the Austrian Government informed the Hungarian Government that Ferenc Nagy unexpectedly arrived in Vienna on 29 October and was requested by the Austrian authorities to leave Austrian territory immediately. The Soviet Government was "fascist", "reactionary" and "chauvinistic" in a special sense, i. e., that of a refusal to accept the political tenets of the Soviet Union. Thus, Mr. Gerö in his highly unpoular broadcast on the evening of 23 October, told the Hungarians that there could be no chauvinism, no loosening of the ties with the Soviet Union. 147. The nature of the counter-revolution which was alleged to have been taking place in Hungary was defined on 5 December in the first resolution passed by Mr. Kádár's re-named Socialist Workers' Party. This spoke of "a Horthyitefascist-Hungarian capitalist-feudal counter-revolution"." The Committee looked most carefully for evidence of such a heterogeneous movement, but found none. The only counter-revolution which did take place was that effected by the Soviet authorities when, by the use of overwhelming armed force, they replaced a socialist but democratic régime in formation in Hungary by a police-State. 148. The Committee considers it of interest that certain writers of Communist sympathies, of whose writings they have been apprised, have rejected the thesis of the USSR and of Mr. Kádár's Government regarding Hungarian events. In their efforts to publish what they believed to be a truer version, they have encountered the obstacle of "Party allegiance in literature" to which reference has been made in quoting the comment of a Russian man of letters. One of these, Peter Fryer, claims to have been the first Communist journalist from abroad to visit Hungary after the uprising. He had been sent to Hungary by the London Daily Worker, which then suppressed or severely edited the dispatches which he sent from Hungary." "This was no counter-revolution, organized by fascists and reactionaries", Fryer wrote in an unpublished dispatch to London. "It was the upsurge of a whole people, in which rank and file Communists took part, against a police dictatorship dressed up as a Socialist society-a police dictatorship backed up by Soviet armed might." Next day, readers of the Daily Worker were told only about "gangs of reactionaries" who were "beating Communists to death in the streets" and the following day Hungary disappeared altogether from its front page. In consequence of what he saw in Hungary and of the refusal of his newspaper to print the facts as he reported them, Fryer resigned from the Daily Worker after eight years' service with it. His testimony would seem to be of particular value regarding the view of events in Hungary presented by the Governments of the USSR and of Mr. Kádár, because he still remained faithful to the ideals of Communism-“a movement", he calls it, "which has meant everything in the world to me". He has given as the reason for his being subsequently suspended from the Communist Party that the leaders of that Party are "afraid of the truth". E. CONCLUSION 149. It will be seen that the version of events favoured by the Governments of the USSR and of Mr. Kádár is in conflict at many points, and points of fundamental importance, with what the Committee believes to be the truth. For convenience, the Soviet and Kádár version of the Hungarian uprising is repeated below in summary form. 150. Events in Hungary are said by spokesmen for the USSR and for the Kádár Government to have followed the classic pattern of the counter-revolution. First, shortcomings on the part of Hungary's leaders created among the people an atmosphere of justified discontent. Bourgeois and reactionary elements are alleged to have been waiting for an opportunity to recover their lost political and economic domination. It is said that they made skilful use of this discontent to confuse even the workers and to induce them to put forward exaggerated demands. The argument runs that these Hungarian reactionaries were powerfully assisted by foreign sabotage organizations, propaganda, trained agents and a plentiful supply of arms. The Hungarian people are said, by exponents of this view, to be fully conscious of the benefits of living in a People's Democracy, but to have lacked the power and effective leadership to resist so cunning a foe. Only the assistance of Soviet troops, it is claimed, enabled the true leaders of Hungary to throw back the armed forces of "reaction". 16 Népszabadság, 8 December 1956. PART A. MILITARY INTERVENTION AND ITS POLITICAL CHAPTER IV. SOVIET MILITARY INTERVENTION (24 OCTOBER-3 NOVEMBER 1956) A. INTRODUCTION 151. In chapter I the Committee has explained why a detailed chronological account of the events in Hungary would be inappropriate for its report. The considerations indicated in chapter I may be briefly recalled insofar as they relate particularly to this chapter and to those which immediately follow. At the students' meetings on 22 October 1956 and during the demonstrations of 23 October, demands were expressed for the removal of the severe restrictions which had come to be characteristic features of the regime. Had events continued along these lines, many Members of the United Nations would undoubtedly have watched with sympathy the efforts of the Hungarian people to win for themselves a different form of government. However, such internal developments would not have constituted a matter of international concern calling for the attention of the United Nations. The feature of the developments in Hungary which compelled the attention of the Organization was the intervention of Soviet armed forces. This intervention transformed the uprising from a demand for a change in the form and character of the domestic Government into a call for national liberation from external oppression. It is, therefore, appropriate that the report dwell in the first instance on the details of Soviet armed intervention. The Soviet apologia has been directed exclusively toward the statement of reasons which would justify such intervention, and not to a denial of the act. 152. In this chapter it is not proposed to deal with the uprising itself or to discuss the reasons which have been advanced to justify Soviet intervention. This and the following chapters are concerned solely with stating the known facts about the extent of intervention by Soviet armed forces and the nature of the conflict between those forces and the people of Hungary. The present chapter I will deal with the time and manner of the first armed intervention which ostensibly commenced on 24 October 1956, and the subsequent chapter with the time and manner of the second armed intervention from the early morning of 4 November to the suppression of armed Hungarian resistance. B. MOVEMENTS OF SOVIET FORCES AND AREAS OF FIGHTING 153. The Committee has received information from many sources regarding the movements of Soviet armed forces, and on the basis of this information it is possible to present the following account of the military operations involved. 154. At the time of the uprising the Soviet troop locations nearest to Budapest were Cegléd and Székesfehérvár, both about 70 kilometres from Budapest, the former southeast and the latter southwest of the capital. The tanks coming from the southwest appeared in Budapest at about 2 a. m. on 24 October, at which time they were seen at Móricz Zsigmond Circle, in Buda, heading towards Pest. They had crossed the Szabadság (formerly Ferencz József) Bridge and were standing on the east, or Pest, side of the bridge between 3.30 a. m. and 5 a. m. Not all the tanks coming from the southwest crossed by the Szabadság Bridge. Between 4.30 a. m. and 5.30 a. m. other tanks passed over the Margit Bridge on their way between Buda and Pest. Some tanks remained near the bridges, controlling passage over the river. Others occupied the embankment road running north and south on the east side of the Danube. Still others concentrated about major buildings in Pest. At the latter points they were shortly joined by tanks arriving from Cegléd; these had passed through the outlying suburbs of Budapest-Pestszenterzsébet and Soroksár-at about 6 a. m. Thus the movement of Soviet forces gives the impression of a military movement planned in advance. 155. At the time of the entry of Soviet forces, the people of Budapest had been in conflict with the AVH for some hours. This conflict had begun at the Radio Building the previous evening, and during the night the people, having secured arms, had continued to attack the AVH wherever they could be found. 156. As day broke on the morning of 24 October, the people found themselves no longer confronted only by the discredited AVH, but by the armed forces of the Soviet Union parading in strength through the streets of Hungary's capital. At 6 a. m., one of the columns of Soviet vehicles coming from the west opened fire without warning at the point where the major thoroughfare of Üllöi Street reaches the People's Park (Népliget); no fighting was taking place there at the time. Soviet vehicles coming from the east are reported to have opened fire in the outskirts at 6 a. m. in the neighbourhood of the Slaughterhouse, and at 7 a. m. at the corner or Soroksári Street and Nagy Sándor Street. Thus began the conflict between the people of Budapest and the armed forces of the Soviet Union. 157. While the outbreak of fighting has focused attention on the actual entry of Soviet forces into Budapest, the Committee has good reason to believe that steps had been quietly taken during the two preceding days with a view to the use of Soviet forces for the repression of discontent in Hungary. It has been credibly reported that on 21-22 October, in the neighbouring areas in Romania, Soviet officers on leave and reserve officers speaking Hungarian or German were recalled. 158. On 20-21 October, floating bridges were assembled at Záhony on the frontier between the USSR and Hungary; it was over these pontoon bridges that Soviet troops from the USSR crossed on the morning of 24 October. It has also been credibly reported to the Committee that Soviet forces were seen on the march between Szombathely and Székesfehérvár as early as 22 October, moving from the west towards Budapest. During the night of 23-24 October, Soviet forces began to pass through Szeged and continued to move through the town along the road to Budapest for some thirty-six hours. 159. There is evidence also that, even in the first intervention by the armed forces of the USSR, use was made not only of Soviet troops stationed in Hungary, but of Soviet troops from the USSR itself and from Romania. It would appear that, of the Soviet forces used in the first intervention, only two divisions had been stationed in Hungary before the uprising, namely, the Second Mechanized Division and the Seventeenth Mechanized Division. Seemingly, however, Soviet authorities had foreseen the probability that the troops stationed on Hungarian territory would be insufficient to deal with the situation, and had taken steps to call in forces from outside Hungary. The Soviet troops from the USSR who crossed the pontoon bridges at Záhony moved onwards to Miskolc, while those who crossed the border in the vicinity of Beregsurány proceeded towards Nyiregyháza and Debrecen. The Hungarian political police at Nyirbátor reported at 1 a. m. on 24 October to the Ministry of Defence that Soviet troops had entered Hungary from Romania. When on 28 October soldiers of the Thirty-second and Thirty-fourth Mechanized Divisions were treated in the Verebély Clinic in Budapest, they were, on interrogation, found to be in possession of Romanian money. Part of the two divisions had been stationed at Timisoara. Thus the forces used to repress the uprising in October were not exclusively forces which had been stationed in Hungary under the Warsaw Treaty. C. RESISTANCE OF THE HUNGARIAN PEOPLE TO THE SOVIET ATTACK 160. The Soviet forces had been given to understand that their task would be the liquidation of counter-revolutionary gangs. The situation in which they found themselves was that they were confronted by the unanimous opposition of an outraged people. Those elements on which they had presumably counted, with the exception of the secret police, failed to provide the expected support. The Communist Party, which had held the country in its grip during the preceding years, was rapidly disintegrating. The detested AVH, which had been the main instrument of oppression, found itself paralyzed by the resentment of the people. Its members had been forced to seek refuge in varions strongholds, where they were subjected to persistent attack, for the ruthlessness which they had themselves exercised now recoiled on them. The Hungarian Army, which the Budapest Radio announced as fighting on the side of the Soviet forces, is not known to have lent them any assistance whatever, while in at least one instance it engaged in active battle with them and in many other cases gave aid and support to the Hungarian people in their resistance to the Soviet army. 161. In combatting the new enemy, people of all ages and occupations showed remarkable unity of purpose. However important the role of the students in the initial stage of the demonstrations, it was matched by equal determination on the part of the workers as the fighting grew in intensity. The fighting was nowhere more severe than in certain factory districts. The peasants lent aid and assistance by supplying the fighters in Budapest with food at little or no cost. Moreover, while there were many instances of middle-aged or elderly people participating in the fighting, the youth of the capital played a leading part. 162. Two of the first instances of the use of "Molotov cocktails" were by a man of some fifty years of age who destroyed an armoured car at 7:30 a. m. on 24 October near the Kilián Barracks, and by children who are reported to have blown up an armoured car with its crew at 8:30 a. m. Efforts made by leaders to prevent the distribution of arms to young boys seem in many instances to have been in vain; they readily learned to make effective use of rifles which came into their possession. 163. In the highly industrialized area of Csepel Island at the southern end of Greater Budapest, the factory workers, reinforced by police and artillery units which had come over to their side, created an effective organization of their own. Though Soviet tanks arrived in Csepel at 7 a. m. on 24 October, they made no persistent attempt to crush the uprising there. One incident was reported in which eight Soviet armoured cars, reinforced by AVH personnel, opened fire near the former Manfréd Weiss factory; 18 when, however, the factory workers pressed with their attack on the AVH, the Soviet armoured cars retreated to Budapest. The Csepel workers were thus free to go to the help of those who were fighting in Budapest. They travelled northwards in cars, on bicycles, or on foot, to the centre of the city. 164. In the middle of Pest, two of the major points of opposition to the Soviet invasion were the Kilián Barracks and the Corvin Cinema. At the Kilián Barracks the former Mária Terézia military barracks-an old and strong brick structure on Üllöi Street-a unit of the Hungarian Army under the leadership of Colonel Pál Maléter, took sides with the insurgents and continued to withstand successive attacks by Soviet forces. The defenders of the Kilián Barracks, including the civilian reinforcements, are said to have numbered some 2,000. When fighting ended there, sixty to seventy Soviet soldiers had lost their lives. About fifty yards away from the Kilián Barracks, just beyond Üll81 Street, the Corvin Cinema, standing at the point of convergence of three roads, Üllöi Street, József Boulevard and Kisfaludy Passage, was rapidly converted into a stronghold. Attack on the cinema, a strong, circular structure, was made difficult by the proximity on all sides of four-story buildings. 165. The Committee heard a graphic account of the conflict at the Corvin Block and of the use of the "Molotov cocktail" by the insurgents. An antitank gun, removed from a disabled Soviet tank, was placed against the steps in front of the cinema, and a mechanism was arranged to fire it from within the building. The tanks or armoured cars came from the side streets and, on turning into the boulevard, were within range of the anti-tank gun which was able to destroy their tracks before they could train their guns on the cinema. Observers posted on the top floors of buildings on the side streets signalled the approach of Soviet vehicles. At the signal, the preparation of "Molotov cocktails" began. A bottle-perhaps a bottle of tomato preserve previously emptied for the purpose was nearly filled with gasoline. It was then loosely corked, with towelling around the cork. At a second signal, given when the tank drew nearer to the Corvin Cinema, the bottle would be tipped downwards so that the gasoline could seep into the towelling. At the third signal, the towelling would be lit and the bottle thrown. As the loose cork fell out, the bottle would explode. A gasoline store on the premises of the Corvin Cinema provided its defenders with an adequate supply of fuel. The Corvin Block was one of the resistance groups in Budapest which successfully withstood attack during the first period of fighting. 166. At times the Hungarians met with sympathy from Soviet troops. Soviet forces normally stationed in Hungary or in Romania had been affected by their surroundings. Many a Hungarian had learnt some Russian-either at school, where it was a compulsory language, or in a prisoner-of-war camp. They were able to reproach the Soviet troops, when occasion offered, for their interference in Hungarian affairs. The Soviet soldiers were, indeed, in a situation of some embarrassment. The civilians whom they fought included women, children and elderly people. They could see that the people were unanimous in their fight against the AVH and foreign intervention; that the men whom the Soviet Army was fighting and the prisoners who were captured were not fascists but workers and students, who demonstrably regarded Soviet soldiers not as liberators, but as oppressors. It was also an unusual experience for the Soviet soldiers, 18 Subsequently called "Rákosi Works"; now known as "Csepel Works". |