The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: Hungarian and Canadian Perspectives

Introduction

Introduction In October 1956, a spontaneous uprising took Hungarian Communist authorities by surprise. In a matter of days, a new regime, led by reformist Communist leader Imre Nagy, was put in place. The government immediately manifested its intention to install a democratic, multi-party republic, to withdraw Hungary from the Warsaw Pact, and to liberalize the economic system of the country, all the while maintaining its socialist orientation. This prompted Soviet authorities to invade the country. After a few days of violent fighting, the revolt was crushed. In the wake of the event some 200,000 refugees left Hungary and over 38,000 of those made their way to Canada. This would be the first time Canada would accept so many refugees of a single origin, setting a precedent for later refugee initiatives. A major political event of the Cold War period, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution continues to be of interest to scholars, as evidenced by a number of recent works (cf. Lessing 2006; Sebestyen 2007; Eörsi 2006; Gati 2006; Gough 2006; and the review of these works by Deák in 2007). This publication offers a selection of the papers presented at the conference “The 1956 Hungarian Revolution 50 Years Later – Canadian and International Perspectives” held at the University of Ottawa, October 12–14, 2006. The nearly two dozen academic presentations and the active participation of scholars and specialists from around the world helped give this conference a significant international and multidisciplinary aspect. Many of the contributions to this book draw upon new archival data from Hungary, the USSR, Canada, and the United States, as well other documents not available until relatively recently, and they Introduction 1 attempt to cast new light on a number of issues. The chapters reflect a range of perspectives from the disciplines of history and the social sciences. The book is divided into two main sections: the first one reviews the 1956 Revolution from the Hungarian and international perspective, while essays in the second section focus on Canadian perspectives. Part I: The Revolution, Hungary, and the World In the opening chapters, conference keynote speakers János Rainer and Csaba Békés, two leading Hungarian researchers of the period (cf. Békés, Byrne and Rainer 2002) contextualize the uprising, albeit from different angles. Rainer situates the events of October–November 1956 within the context of Hungarian domestic politics. Rainer argues that most revolutionaries of all stripes and backgrounds seemed to agree when it came to the political elements of a post-revolutionary Hungary. The revolutionaries essentially wanted to maintain a welfare state—with limited privatization—alongside a multiparty democratic system. Csaba Békés, by contrast, approaches the revolution from both the perspectives of historiography and international politics. One of the key controversies surrounding the revolution was the lack of intervention on the part of the West, specifically the United States, which had implied that military aid might be forthcoming through its anti-Communist rhetoric. Yet Békés argues that there was no chance that any type of military intervention would materialize, as the goal of American foreign policy was to maintain, rather than destabilize, the postwar political and diplomatic situation in Europe. Susan Glanz turns the discussion to economic history and provides a survey of the fiscal policies and platforms of the resurrected political parties that played a role in the revolution and the formation of a new multi-party government. Glanz concludes that all major parties agreed that the redistribution of land through the division of large estates in 1945 was a positive development for Hungary and that they also arrived at a consensus on the public ownership of mass industry, with reintroduction of limited private ownership. Mária Palasik’s contribution focuses on social history, looking at gender issues and specifically the role that women played in the revolt. By analyzing a 2 The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: Canadian and Hungarian Perspectives series of archival photographs, Palasik finds that while in half of these photos women appear to be leaving scenes of potential conflict and violence during the days of the revolution, many were openly critical of the Communist regime in a vocal way, which in a number of cases led to persecution after the supression of the revolt. Some women did participate actively in armed clashes, but Palasik finds that the majority of these were either teenagers or women in their early to mid-twenties. She...