Richard Lettis: The Hungarian Revolt

DEFIANT GROUPS HOLD OUT

BUDAPEST
The Hungarian uprising has now reached its third, and potentially its bloodiest, stage. It began nearly a week ago with unarmed student demonstrations. When these grew into a popular tumult a military revolt, which had probably been planned long in advance within certain units of the Hungarian Regular Army, was superimposed upon them. As far as Budapest is concerned, this semi organised military action seems to have been subdued by Soviet tanks. Fighting continued in the city, though on a reduced and more sporadic scale. The severest actions have been on the hills of Buda, near the island of Csepel, south of the city, at an intersection of the Stalin road in the middle of the capital, and at the Maria Theresia Barracks. Here a group of students and soldiers rejected four successive orders to surrender. They were flattened by guns of the Soviet T 34 and T 54 tanks, firing at point-blank range.
The Russians are using their heavy tanks purely as extermination squads. They rumble from one district to another, flattening every house where even one sniper's rifle is heard or suspected. Moscow may restore "order" by these means, but it will never quell the fresh waves of hate which every new action sets up.
Of the dozens of moving incidents I have seen in the streets the most pathetic sight was the action of a little Hungarian boy, aged about eight or nine. He clambered into a Soviet tank and poured a little can of petrol on to its tracks in an attempt to start a blaze. It is hard to think of any Communist Government reshuffle which will pacify this spirit.
From the regime's standpoint the main threat has now passed back to mostly unarmed mass demonstrators, who, having smelt blood and sensed their enormous moral power in the past few days, are even more determined than they were a week ago.
Typical of this latest phase are a few hundred students and workmen who were reported today to be barricaded behind stone and rubble barriers in the two main squares of Buda. As far as is known on this side of the river they have hardly any arms or food. They face certain extermination as and when the Russians choose to open fire. Yet they have rejected surrender appeals across the barricades, even when made by friendly soldiers of the Hungarian Army. Their answer was: "We will stay here and die if necessary -until the Russians agree to leave our homeland."
Similar outbursts of fanatical patriotism are reported from all over the country. In the Eastern provinces a sort of peasants guerilla war is said to have broken out, with the rebels going for their local enemies with shotguns, or even in mediaeval style with scythes and pitch-forks. At Tatabanya the colliers are reported to be on strike and preparing an unarmed protest march on the beleaguered capital. Regional revolutionary committees [101/102]

have been set up in Sopron and Hegyeshalom, on the Western frontier.
In all cases the main targets of hate have been the Russian troops and the AVO, or political police. Thus in this third stage the Red Army, which has hitherto concentrated its efforts almost entirely on the capital, is now forced to disperse them on a hundred or more smaller punitive actions in the countryside. This is not the same direct threat to the regime's seat of power as was put up in Budapest a few days ago by sections of the Hungarian Army. But the cumulative damage to the Russian cause may be greater in the long run.
One can now truly speak of an active national revolt, stretching from Neusiedler Lake, in the West, to the Transylvanian Mountains in the East. In an attempt to stifle this revolt before news of it can reach the outside world Red Army reinforcements have poured into Hungary in strength over the weekend. They came across the Rumanian and Russian borders. Two of the new units have been identified for certain by military observers here. One is a complete armoured regiment transferred from Timisoara, in Western Rumania. The other is a mortar battalion which has come in direct from Russia across Hungary's narrow strip of frontier with the Soviet Union. I saw rocket batteries from the mortar battalion in action against rebel targets on the Buda hills. Of the two Soviet Army divisions stationed permanently in Hungary only one is known for certain to have been committed in the Budapest fighting. The other is presumably dealing with local actions which have now broken out in other provinces.
One thing is certain. Nowhere does the Soviet command trust any Hungarian Army unit, whatever its alleged loyalties. One rebel told me that even some of the "loyal" Hungarian tanks fighting under Russian orders had been allowed only two rounds of ammunition for warning shots. At least one senior Hungarian Army commander is reported to have paid with his life for siding with the rebels. His name is given as General Kis, and he is said to have been shot out of hand by the Russians for refusing to order his troops to fire on demonstrators.
Meanwhile, as Red Army reinforcements have poured in from the East, the discredited Communist leadership in Budapest has fought to save its skin by roping itself to its former opponents.
Gordon Shepherd, Daily Telegraph (London), 29 October

THE SOVIET TROOPS

NICKELSDORF
The attitude of Soviet troops in Hungary differs from place to place, reported a member of the rebel forces in Nickelsdorf on the Austrian border. In many areas the Red Army soldiers are exercising obvious restraint. In Raab (Gyor) in West Hungary on Saturday there was a strong concentration of Soviet troops, who did not attack the insurgents, not even to defend themselves when demonstrators pelted them with stones. The Hungarian informant also said that near Gran regular Hungarian Army tank units handed over their vehicles to the revolutionaries...
Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 29 October

BUDAPEST
The Ministry of Defence has issued the following communiqué: The Town Council of Baja rang up the Ministry of Defence this afternoon and asked for information about the rumour that Soviet troops are engaged in large-scale military operations in Budapest. Are these rumours true? The Ministry of Defence informs inquirers that they are not. By this morning the bulk of the armed groups was liquidated. Military action is now confined to a few nests. It is true that Soviet troops have helped, and are helping very much in liquidating groups which have attacked the workers' power. In many places, however, insurgents trapped in larger buildings have asked to be allowed to lay down arms to Hungarian People's Army units, and their request has been granted. As the military activities are subsiding, formations of the Hungarian army are giadually taking over the task of maintaining order everywhere. If those armed groups which are still resisting do not lay down their arms after being summoned to do so by the Hungarian army units, they will be completely liquidated.
Radio Kossuth

LONDON
Reports reaching London supported the Hungarian Nationalists' claim that they hold the five towns of Gyor, Sopron, Szentgotthard, Magyarovar and Miskolc.
Soviet tanks entering the country bypassed Miskolc. They were prevented, at least temporarily, from crossing the River Tisza at Szolnok [102/103]

by Nationalists, who threatened to blow up the bridge.
Russian formations based in Rumania are now known to be engaged in the fighting. Some of their troops are among the wounded in the hospitals.
Some Russian soldiers are believed to have thrown in their lot with the Nationalists. The trade union paper Nepszava, which carried two Nationalist manifestos on Friday, demanded among other things "political asylum for Soviet fighting men who have come over to support our people."
Diplomatic Correspondent, Daily Telegraph (London), 29 October [103/104]

MOSCOW RADIO

MOSCOW
It is clear from the latest reports from Hungary that the calculations of the counter- revolutionary insurgents are suffering failure. The newly formed Hungarian Government headed by Imre Nagy is master of the situation in the country. The Hungarian Workers' Party and the Government of the Republic are doing everything possible to restore order as quickly as possible.
During the last few days bourgeois propaganda has been spreading naked lies about the situation in Hungary and has kept silent about the main thing: the fact that a counter-revolutionary putsch flared up in Hungary and that its organisers began to overthrow the people's power, the very people's power which had been won with such great difficulty by the Hungarian workers in the struggle against fascism.
The events of the last days in Budapest leave no doubt that the forces which started the counter-revolutionary putsch were anti-national forces deeply hostile to the cause of building socialism in Hungary. Moreover, those forces have very close and direct ties with abroad.
In his report from Vienna the other day the UP correspondent wrote that the participants in the insurrection against the people in Hungary were well-armed. This is a matter of a well-trained and armed underground. At present, bourgeois organs of the Western press prefer to keep silent about who is organising and financing subversive actions against countries of the Socialist camp. But it is already clear to the whole word that the U.S. Congress annually appropriates 100 million dollars for this shady business. And last summer the USA appropriated an additional 25 million dollars to intensify subversion in the People's Democracies. But is this all? Remember that the great campaign for sending off balloons with inflammatory propaganda was organised from West German territory by imperialist agents. Remember how many dirty and provocative rumours are spread every day by the so called "Radio Free Europe", which is financed by American dollars. If we added to this, direct diversionary and spying activities by Western Intelligence organisations in these countries, it becomes even clearer who the real initiator is of the anti-people's putsch in Hungary.
Reactionary insurgents played on temporary economic difficulties. For their dark purposes they used various shortcomings in the work of the Hungarian State apparatus and individual instances where revolutionary legality had been violated. The enemies of the People's Democracy did not shrink from anything. As the Polish paper Trybuna Ludu points out, peaceful demonstrations of the Hungarian population were joined by organised counter-revolutionary elements who were ready to turn the mood of the Hungarian public against the most sacred cause -the cause of socialism.
As a result of the armed outbreak by reactionary putschists a situation arose in Hungary which involved the question of defending the democratic conquests of the Hungarian working people. In order to protect these sacred gains from the designs of the counter-revolutionary insurgents, the Government of the Hungarian People's Republic appealed for help to the Soviet Union. At the request of the Hungarian Government, Soviet troops took part in repulsing the sallies of armed reactionaries and in establishing order and peace.
All honest men are convinced that the working people of Hungary will find strength and courage to give the reaction ary putschists a deserving rebuff and to safeguard the peaceful construction of their free motherland.
Antoly Sherstyuk, Radio Moscow [104/105]

NAGY

BUDAPEST
By chance I meet two prominent authors who played a major role in the writers' revolt . . . They lead me into the archives of the parliament, where I get to see, as the first foreigner, a document of historical significance: the proof that it was not Imre Nagy who had asked the Russians for Soviet military intervention against the Hungarian insurgents. The original document is actually signed "Imre Nagy" but not with his own written signature. There where it should stand is type-written, fine and clean: Nagy Imre, m.p. . . .
Eugen-Geza Pogany, Ungarns' Freiheitskampf (Vienna - 1956) [105/106]

"WAITING FOR INSTRUCTIONS"

BUDAPEST
Last night the Szabad Nep building was bombarded by Soviet tanks. Why? Because yesterday its editorial expressed the timid opinion that the accusation "counter-revolution" was somewhat exaggerated. At this, Stalinists in the Party leadership decided Szabad Nep had joined the revolution! The Stalinists alarmed the Soviet commander and obtained agreement from the War Ministry. Tanks fired at the first floor, then at the third floor. Only after delegates from the newspaper managed to explain to the Soviet officers that there must have been some mistake, they were firing at the official organ of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Communist Party -did the tanks withdraw.
The editor-in-chief of Szabad Nep received us in his office which, by some miracle, was saved. Many people, cut off from their homes, were sleeping in the room. The editor explained: "There was no counter-revolution. The crimes of the A.V.H. and a false evaluation of the situation offended the whole nation and brought about a nation-wide revolution. The Party does not exist. All its leaders can rely on is the apparatus. Real Communists turned away from the leadership and the ideology it represented. The abyss between the leadership and the nation has become definitive since the moment of the Soviet intervention . . . We must tell the masses the whole truth."
"Are you doing that in your newspaper?"
The editor hangs his head and after a moment's silence answers: "We are the organ of the Central Committee. We are waiting for instructions."
Marion Bielicki, Po Prostu (Warsaw), 2 December [106/109]

"EVERY STREET IS A CEMETERY"

BUDAPEST
Premier Nagy has surrendered to all the demands of Hungary's freedom rebels -and told the Russian troops to quit Budapest immediately. . . . Nagy's surrender offer, made only a few hours before the United Nations debated Hungary, could bring peace after six days of bitter fighting.
I believe that the rebels will parley if, as promised, the AVH is liquidated -and hope that the Russians will leave the country later. But who is to speak for them in a city where no man treads the street without the fear of a bullet? The revolt would have long since ended if the Red Army had not been here.
Meanwhile, as I write this in the dying city of Budapest, fresh Soviet troops, brought in from Poland, are fighting hand-to-hand street battles with the freedom fighters. Three more columns of Russian troops are on their way to the capi tal -one from Poland, one from Russia, and one from Rumania. The bridges that span the Danube are alive with infantry -and, a new departure, artillery. Not satisfied with 75 mm tank guns, the Soviets have put six or eight pieces of artillery on each of the major bridges. There is desolation everywhere and fighting lasted all day yesterday in Buda, just across the Margaret Bridge. [109/110]

It is clear now that the Russians grossly underestimated the qualities of the freedom fighters. Tanks have got them nowhere in the narrow streets of Budapest, where almost every window is draped with a gigantic black crepe flag. But with the infantry it is going to be tougher. These new troops are clearly battle-scarred veterans, and the mood is changing. This morning down one deserted, smashed-up street where the fighters had even torn up stones, I saw a Soviet tank trundle by dragging the bodies of four Russian soldiers. Whenever they felt like it the tank crew blasted open a window or house. It was their way of showing revenge.
This morning I tried to cross the Margaret Bridge to Margit Square, where rebels had fought desperately for 12 hours yesterday. No sooner had my car -with a Union Jack on one side and a white flag on the other- moved on to the bridge than the Russians opened fire on me. I backed, and then walked halfway across on foot, a flag in one of my upheld arms. They stopped me halfway across and I soon saw why.
In the middle was a three-ton-lorry, and round it -like icing on a wedding cake- the road was covered with flour. Two bodies lay by its side -the driver and his mate. Ostensibly they had been bringing flour into the city. But the Russians found a cache of arms hidden and shot them out of hand.
Lined up by the bridge were 15 trucks of Soviet infantry. I could not pass, so I went back to the car and drove along the river -despite the curfew- to Stalin Bridge. Here I managed to get across, helped by packets of American cigarettes. It was guarded by Hungarians. I made my way through the back streets to Margit Square, where a scene of such desolation lay before me that I just can't describe it. Nearby is a railway siding, and the rebels had somehow dragged out four complete railway passenger carriages and turned them over to form a gigantic tank-trap. One was smashed to firewood and halfway up it -looking as silly as broken tanks always do- lay a Soviet tank, half burned out. Behind the barricade hundreds of fighters waited in pouring rain. The whole square was literally -and I mean literally- torn to pieces. Every stone that could be taken from the road and pavements had been pickaxed to use for shelter walls. In one corner is a large café. Every single chair was smashed. Hardly a shop window was left and even above the cracks of riflefire was the echo of the old days of the blitz -the crashing of broken glass.
The city itself dies slowly and gallantly, but every street is a cemetery -every home a weeping one. The killed run into thousands, the wounded have no hospital space.
And the Soviets are advancing towards Budapest in force. The column from Poland came in via Kosice, and had its first brush at Miskolc. They detoured the city after meeting large demonstrations. The last report I had of them they had reached Hatvan. There were many trucks of infantry. The column from the Soviet Union has entered via Debrecen and reached the city of Szolnok. Troops from Rumania are also in Szolnok.
Everywhere people ask me one thing. "When is help coming?"
"Please, anything, even one gun." a girl begged me.
"Can't the British help, we are fighting for the world," said another.
It makes me ill, unable to reply.
There are tears all the way, and I feel terribly that if the Russians win the Hungarians are going to feel a thousand times worse the disappointment experienced by the East Germans in their rising in 1953...
What makes the situation so difficult is that though the Government has agreed to most of the demands of the fighters there is no leader with whom authority can deal. Government speakers can only plead on the radio. But each group of fighters fights separately. The Russians have deliberately and calculatingly kept the fight alive, and now -unless pressure comes from outside- they must reduce the country.
Once out of Budapest, it is a different story.
I am luckier than most correspondents, for I have a fast car, and, by now, a sizable quantity of petrol stacked away.
Later I toured the country, and it is clear that the rebels control a belt from west to east along the Austrian frontier about 30 miles deep into Hungary. Everywhere in this belt the AVH has been disarmed or shot.
The rebels have two radio stations and the hospitals and public works. There are no Russians there at all -I have covered all this territory. They have even unaccountably withdrawn from Gyor, perhaps to lend help in Budapest. Yesterday I saw no Russians west of Komarom, which is 25 miles beyond Gyor on the Vienna-Budapest road. There I saw a column of Soviet tanks -presumably withdrawing from Gyor. How can it be anything else but just a question of time, if the Soviet troops go in?
If Budapest were subjected, the heart would go out of the country, and then it might be easy for the Soviets to win victory against the boys and girls who are fighting for liberty in this stricken land. In Budapest it could still go on for a few days. It is a sort of "Warsaw", with a gun at every corner. I am pretty hardened to the sight of war, but this is terrible.
These kids, with clotted blood sticking to the bandages around their arms and heads, fighting tanks -and now artillery- with submachine guns and home-made grenades!
Noel Barber, Daily Mail (London), 29 October [110/112]

IN AN AVH-HEADQUARTERS

GYOR
On the floor we find, in a pile of torn and partly burned documents, the register of the Security Police for the year 1951. Page after page is filled with names, professions, and addresses of political prisoners. 699 names for this year alone. Next to most of the names there is the remark "Transferred" . . . and then the name of another prison. Only opposite a single name in this whole book-keeping of ruined destinies is there the remark "Discharged." The record of prisoners is a catalogue of workers, drivers, waiters, mechanics, office employees -a grey mass of little people, 699 names in one year alone, in the political prison of Gyor. But Hungary has 14 provinces, and every province has a political prison...
Adolph Rastén, Politiken (Copenhagen), 29 October

SOVIET COMMANDER PROTESTS, THANKS

GYOR
We read now the statement of the Soviet Military Commander of Gyor: "We will not interfere in your national political affairs . . . I think that the rising of the Hungarian people against the oppressive leaders is just . . .
According to the Commander's statement, certain elements got into this movement who are practically anarchists; they wouldn't agree with any regime. "I think the Hungarian people is strong enough to maintain its achievements and to constrain these elements to obedience. The commander feels very sorry that a few provocateurs incite against Soviet soldiers. They were stoned and spat at, although for their part they do not wish to interfere, not even by their presence, with the life of the town. The Commander begs the population of Gyor and its sober citizens to curb the dangerous elements, all the more so because he himself has experienced the most friendly attitude in the past. In the past women in the families of many Soviet and Hungarian soldiers were on very friendly terms, and also the members of both armies befriended each other in many cases. Their children played on the same play-grounds. The Commander thanks gratefully for the considerate behaviour of the citizens of Gyor who even yesterday, without a request from the Russians, asked them about their material needs and offered to give them 40 liters of milk for their children. They are in no need... In connection with the Gyorszentivany affair the commander said the following: "I have investigated the affair personally, but I could not establish any transgression." In spite of that he asked us that in case we observe any irregularity we should inform him immediately. They would punish any kind of excess most severely. As an example he mentioned the open trial that passed sentence against a Soviet soldier in January 1956. He was sentenced to 23 years in the penitentiary because he assaulted a child in Gyor. Hearing of this severe sentence even the child's mother asked for leniency. The Hungarian people may be assured that the Soviet State and the Soviet Army will punish even the slightest Soviet excess most severely!
When we parted, the Soviet Military Commander told me that he was leaving with the best impressions and asked us to tell this to the inhabitants of Gyor by press and radio. He assured us repeatedly the Soviet troops are making no preparations whatsoever for an attack, because they believe the peace of the world is at least as important as the peace of Gyor.
Radio Free Gyor [112/115]

NAGY DENIES "COUNTER-REVOLUTION", ANNOUNCES SOVIET AGREEMENT

BUDAPEST
People of Hungary! Last week, bloody events followed, one after another, with tragic rapidity. The fateful consequences of the horrible mistakes and crimes of the past decade are unfolding before us in the painful events which we are witnessing and in which we are participants. During our thousand-year-old history fate was not sparing in scourging our people and nation, but such a shock as this has perhaps never before afflicted our country.
The Government rejects the view that sees the present formidable popular movement as a counter-revolution. Without doubt, as always happens at the time of great popular movements, in the last few days, evil-doers seized the chance of committing common crimes. It also occurred that reactionary, counter-revolutionary elements joined the movement and tried to make use of events for overthrowing the people's democratic system. But it is also indisputable that in this movement, a great national and democratic movement embracing and unifying all our people, unfolded itself with elementary force. This movement has the aim of guaranteeing our national independence and sovereignty, of advancing the democratization of our social, economic and political life, for this alone can be the basis of socialism in our country.
The grave crimes of the preceding era released this great movement. The situation was aggravated even further by the fact that up to the very last the leadership was unwilling to break totally with its old and criminal policy. This, above all, led to the tragic fratricidal fight in which so many people are dying on both sides.
In the midst of the fighting was born a Government of democratic national unity, independence and socialism, which has become the genuine means for expressing the people's will. This is the firm resolve of the Government: The new Government, relying on the strength and control of the people, and in the hope that it will obtain the full confidence of the people, will immediately begin to realize the people's just demands.
The Government wants to rely, first of all, on the militant Hungarian working class but, naturally, it wants to rely also on the entire Hungarian working people.
The Government strongly supports the worker, peasant and student youth and university students, their activity and initiative; great scope should be secured for them in our purified political life, and it will do its best to see that young people starting their careers should enjoy as good a financial situation as possible. The Government will support the new democratic autonomous bodies created on the initiative of the people and will endeavour to integrate them into the State administration.
In the interest of avoiding further bloodshed and ensuring a peaceful clarification of the situation, the Government has ordered an immediate and general cease-fire. It has instructed the armed forces to open fire only if attacked. At the same time it appeals to all those who took up arms to refrain from all fighting activity and to surrender their arms without delay. For maintaining order and restoring public security, a new security force has been created, at once, from units of the police and Honveds, as well as from the armed platoons of the workers and youth.
The Hungarian Government has come to an agreement with the Soviet Government that Soviet troops will immediately begin their withdrawal from Budapest and, simultaneously with the establishment of the new security forces, will leave the city's territory.
The Hungarian Government is initiating negotiations to settle relations between the Hungarian People's Republic and the Soviet Union, including the question of the withdrawal of Soviet troops stationed in Hungary. All this is in the spirit of Soviet-Hungarian friendship, equality among socialist countries and national independence.
After the restoration of order we are going to organise a new and single state police force and we shall abolish the State Security Authority. No one who took part in the armed fighting need fear further reprisals. [115/116]

The Government will propose to the National Assembly that the national emblem should again be that of Kossuth and that the 15th March should again be declared a National Holiday.
People of Hungary! In these hours of bitterness and conflict, people are prone to see only the black side of our history during the last 12 years, but we must not allow ourselves to entertain such an unjust view of things. These 12 years mark historic achievements, both lasting and ineffaceable, which have been attained by Hungarian workers, peasants and intellectuals under the leadership of the Hungarian Workers' Party. In this force, the spirit of sacrifice and creative work, our revived people's democracy has the best guarantee of Hungary's future. [17:23]
Radio Kossuth [116/118]

"WHEN YOU HAVE LIED TOO MUCH..."

BUDAPEST
In a small crowd in front of a tobacco shop, nobody was even trying to buy more than one or two packages of cigarettes. I asked, "why not?" "It's very simple," an elderly woman explained. "Everything will be all over now; another day's fighting and Soviet troops will withdraw. Nagy has promised. There are even rumours that the AVO is going to be dissolved."
But a young man interrupted her: "Who will believe him? He's just taking us in."
Soon everyone had joined in the discussion. For them the main question was: "Should we believe Nagy or not?" Opinions varied, but most people thought Nagy should be trusted . .
Will Nagy be able to regain the confidence of the nation, which only last Tuesday considered him its leader . .
A. told me that Nagy had decided to break with the Stalinists . . . We decided to go to the Central Committee together.
We were not allowed in, but a young girl, probably a secretary, came out to speak with us: The Central Committee is still in session, but its decisions will probably be favourable. Nagy seems determined to act energetically. "And high time too!" she added with a sigh, "otherwise we'll all be drowned in this chaos." We asked her what was happening in the countryside. Nobody knew exactly, but one thing was certain: the revolutionaries controlled a large part of the country. Some of the revolutionary leaders promised Nagy their support if he fulfill their essential demands: to withdraw Soviet forces, disband and disarm the A.V.H., and rid the government of people compromised by their Stalinist past...
From an armoured car two soldiers threw out packages of newspapers. Nobody picked them up. Everybody waited for the armoured car to drive off. But then only a few people responded. One young man gathered up several copies, shouted something, and tore them to bits. Then everybody did the same thing, even though these fresh copies of Szabad Nep have replaced (in their upper left hand corner) the old star with the new Kossuth emblem. I recalled the face of the editor as he talked to me about his article about the necessity for truth. Does he know what is now happening to his newspaper?
The young man shouted: "Don't read this slop! Whatever Communists print serves the Russians and not the Hungarians. That's why their soldiers are distributing Communist newspapers. The Kossuth emblem is just a pretext.
I asked almost desperately. "But why don't you even read it?"
Somebody answered: "Even if it is the truth, it comes too late. It cannot find its way to human hearts. When you have lied too much, nobody will believe you.
I spent the night with Hungarian friends. In the room more than thirty people were sprawled about on improvised couches. I knew some of them. The small man next to me was a steel worker; another was a skilled worker in the shipyards; there was also a plumber, a bookkeeper, and a young medical student.
I asked them: "But what do you really want? What are you fighting for?" About fifteen people answered my question. The answers were different, but the essential themes were the same: a free and independent Hungary, a country in which nobody will land in prison just because of a bureaucrat's fancy. They want a Hungary free of 75,000 irresponsible armed A.V.H. agents. They want a Hungary where you can talk freely to one's neighbour, without being afraid that he might be a police informant. They want a Hungary where power will belong to the people, and not to a small elite abusing the slogans of socialism.
Did they want socialism?
The steel worker answered fiercely:
"We want justice, freedom, truth. If socialism doesn't give that to us, we don't want socialism."
Each word I felt as a reproach .
These people identified the system in which they live with socialism. The ship-worker then said: "We are going to build our own socialism." But the bookkeeper was sceptical: "Ideas are beautiful, but people are capable of spoiling every thing."
"We are not going to allow anybody to spoil anything now," protested the medical student.
"And fascism," I ask, "aren't you afraid of fascism?"
Everybody shouted, but I understood the words of the student: "Nobody wants fascism . . . We won't allow it." .
Marian Bielicki, Po Prostu (Warsaw), 9 December [118/119]

"WE WILL FIGHT ON UNTIL --"

NICKELSDORF
In the bus half-a-dozen men were sitting in ragged clothes, red-eyed and weary, their unshaved faces stubbled with several days' growth. One wore a bloodstained bandage around his head. And then there was a pretty blonde seven-teen-year old girl who loaded Red-Cross boxes, doing the work of two, with revolutionary enthusiasm for four.
While jolting along all were arguing with one another. What had the revolution achieved? Nothing? Everything? Could Communist Nagy remain prime minister? Or should all those who had been tied up with the regime for the past eleven years make way for a provisional government until free elections could be held? Should all political prisoners be freed? Should the Communist Party be banned? Or should it remain in power as the exponent of a national Hungarian socialism? And the basic question: Should the Russian soldiers -of whom there are an estimated 80,000 in Hungary- be attacked with any weapon that happens to be at hand, with scythes or tanks, or should one leave them alone? On each question these Hungarians held basically different views.
When much later we arrived at Raab [Gyor], I stood in front of city hall as a group of young students -none could have been older than twenty- stepped out on the balcony. One of them shouted down at the thousand people gathered in the square: "Whatever the national committees may decide, we, the youth of Hungary will fight until our beloved land is freed from Soviet yoke, until the Communist party is no longer the despotic master of the country, until all those have gone who are responsible for our 11-year misery, until truly free and secret elections, held under the control of the United Nations, make a government possible which is elected by and for the people!" The words of the young student were followed by long lasting applause.
When we approached Veszprem -north of the Plattensee- two trucks with Soviet troops came towards us. The Russians were holding on to their machine pistols and were staring gloomily into the street. A few kilometers further we suddenly saw tanks, artillery and soldiers in prepared positions on both sides of the street.
A Soviet officer stopped us. He got into the bus, saw the Red-Cross supplies and
motioned us to go on. Three minutes later we ran into Hungarian positions. Here we stopped and asked for the officer-in-charge. He explained that they had an agreement with the Russians: "If you won't shoot, we won't." .
Ten minutes later we arrived in Veszprem. At the City Hall I was introduced to the chairman of the National Revolutionary Committee for Veszprem County one of the ten Hungarian administrative districts west of the Danube. He said that like most of West Hungary, his city was quiet. Almost everywhere, the army, police, and the local authorities had joined the revolution last Tuesday. Only the secret police had caused difficulties.
In Veszprem, after disarming members of the secret police -which was done without bloodshed- the revolutionaries unlocked a special prison for political prisoners. The chairman of the revolutionary committee said: "I was there myself. We found eight men in the subterranean cells. Among them were three Yugoslavs. They were mental and physical wrecks. One of them could not speak because -it seemed- his tongue had been torn out."
The chairman told how in several places the Russians had come to an amicable understanding with Hungarian troops. He explained to me that most Soviet units were dependent on Hungarian food supplies. Then the chairman put a car and a driver at my disposal.
We left Veszprem. The driver, who knew the area well, suggested a short cut. We were driving almost cross-country, when a Soviet motorized patrol spotted us almost at the same time as we him. The Russian jumped down and opened fire on our car with his submachine gun. He must have been a poor marksman. Only two bullets hit the car. Suddenly his machine pistol went silent. My driver lowered the rifle in his hand; for all the clatter of the machine pistol, I had not heard him shoot, but I saw the Russian crumple and fall. We got back into the car and drove off at top speed.
In every town through which we passed, as soon as it became known that "people from outside" were there -we were given enthusiastic hand-shakes. Newspaper and revolutionary proclamations were pressed into my hand. "Demands of the soldiers of Rajka", "the 15-point program of the miners of Dudar", etc.
Peter Howard, Reuters, Suddeutsche Zeitung (Munich), 30 October [119/123]

"- AND A GREAT FEELING OF GUILT..."

NICKELSDORF
Then a girl, the only one in a crowd of rebels, took up the tale. "To-day is my seventeenth birthday," she said, a little bashfully, with just a hint of pride in her voice. Seventeen and she was one of the rebels who were defying the massive might of the Soviet Army. Seventeen, and she had just come from the town of Gyor, sixty or so kilometres from the frontier, where, someone else told us, 80 members of the Security Police had been "liquidated" by the workers; where, she announced proudly, "we put up a ladder against the Russian memorial, threw a noose round the Red Star on top of it, and pulled it down.
She was 17, but the Budapest youths who had attacked Russian tanks with bare hands were younger. Many were now dead. "What is your estimate of our casualties?" she asked. "Estimates vary from 200 to . . ." Perhaps the journalist who was replying was going to say 10,000, a figure that has been mentioned in some reports. But would it be fair to the girl? The thousands of dead, however few or many of them there were, had been her compatriots, her comrades in arms. Why name a possibly wild figure?
But her question had been purely rhetorical. She drew herself up to her full height, a look of steel came into her blue eyes. "I must tell you that the dead must be counted not in hundreds but in many, many thousands," she said. "What is the feeling of the Hungarian people about the sacrifices they are making," another journalist asked. "They believe that by thus drawing the attention of the world to what is happening they will compel the Russians to get out," she said, and without pausing, asked: "And what is the feeling of the British people?" We all hesitated. No one was anxious to reply...
Haltingly, one of the reporters began to frame an answer. "First, amazement." Then an pause ... "Second ... admiration." Then quickly, desperately, as if he wanted to withdraw each word as soon as he had uttered it: "And a great feeling of guilt." The girl came back like a flash:
"There is much to feel guilty for" ...
Victor Zorza, Manchester Guardian, 29 October [123/126]

Richard Lettis: The Hungarian Revolt