This year, the people of Hungary will mark the 50th anniversary of their heroic but unsuccessful revolution against their former Soviet occupiers, and the communist system the USSR once imposed on them.
Few countries have had a more traumatic recent history than Hungary. In 1914 they were a proud and independent people, co-rulers with the Austrians of the enormous multi-ethnic Habsburg empire. But the shock of defeat in 1918 brought down the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and allowed the communists led by Bela Kun to seize power.
In the 1930s the authoritarian Admiral Horthy ruled over a demoralised Hungary. The Hungarians joked that they were “the only landlocked country ever to be ruled by an admiral”. Horthy made the fatal mistake of allying himself with Hitler, and joining in the invasion of the Soviet Union. Horthy tried to keep his distance from the worst German excesses, but in 1944 Hitler pushed him aside and installed the “Arrowcross” Nazi, Ferenc Szalasi. Hitler’s grim executioner Adolf Eichmann came to Budapest, and in six months 300,000 Hungarian Jews and Roma were sent to their deaths at Auschwitz. Most of the Hungarian Army was destroyed on the Eastern Front. More than 600,000 Hungarians were killed in the war.
The Red Army arrived in Hungary in 1945, and Marshal Voroshilov was installed as High Commissioner. Although the Hungarian Communist Party had very little support, the Soviets shamelessly rigged elections, persecuted and imprisoned anti-communist politicians, and even imprisoned the head of the Catholic Church, Cardinal Mindszenty. By 1948 the Communists were in full control. The Communist ruler, Matyas Rakosi, was the most ruthless of all Stalin’s eastern European satraps.
Stalin’s death in 1953 set off a chain of events that culminated in the uprising of 1956. Gradual de-Stalinisation was not acceptable to the Soviets. Hungarians hated the imposed communist rule. Demands for reform mounted. On 23 October 1956, Budapest students rebelled and issued a manifesto demanding free elections. The Soviets reacted ruthlessly, sending their army into the city. This triggered a general rising and the overthrow of the regime. A reformed communist, Imre Nagy, became Prime Minister. Nagy announced that Hungary would leave the Warsaw Pact and become a neutral state, that all political prisoners would be released and that free elections would be held.
In Moscow, the Soviets viewed these events with horror. Their empire’s legitimacy was at stake with the challenge to the Communist Party’s monopoly of power