The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: Hungarian and Canadian Perspectives

2. Could the Hungarian Revolution Have Succeeded in 1956? Myths, Legends, and Illusions

2. Could the Hungarian Revolution Have Succeeded in 1956? Myths, Legends, and Illusions Csaba Békés Whether it could have been otherwise is the most frequent and poignant question for contemporaries and posterity alike when a revolution or an uprising has failed. Was defeat inevitable, or might there have been a chance of success if external and internal circumstances had been luckier? The failure of the most recent revolution in Hungary, in 1956, causes critics to pose such questions, to which Hungarian society has failed to find reassuring answers. Popular verdicts and scholarly interpretations of the viability of the revolution contain both rational elements and emotional and moral approaches; the latter have assisted at the birth of many historical myths and legends in recent decades. The basic, still-prevalent myth about the 1956 Hungarian Revolution relates how the uprising might indeed have succeeded if events on the international policy stage had developed more favourably for Hungary. Post-1989 historical researches, based on systematic examination of domestic and foreign archive materials made available since the collapse of Communism, give strong grounds for saying that the bipolar world system designed to stabilize the post-1945 situation left the countries of the Soviet empire with no realistic chance of ridding themselves of the Communist system. Right up to 1989, the Soviet Union viewed East-central Europe as a security 32 The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: Canadian and Hungarian Perspectives zone of fundamental importance that could not be conceded. Any Western effort to detach these countries was seen as intervention, against which Soviet leadership was even prepared for direct armed conflict between the superpowers and the risk of a third world war. Yet it was quite apparent that neither the United States nor any Western country would strive or aspire to do anything of the kind, as they accepted the need to maintain the status quo in Europe. The “liberation propaganda” by the Eisenhower administration in 1953–1956 was simply rhetoric, aimed mainly at sustaining anti-communist morale behind the Iron Curtain.1 But this interpretation, offered by historians, clearly fails to attract those who are not content to measure what was one of the foremost events in 20thcentury Hungarian history by the revolution’s moral content, or by its decisively positive effect on the character of the Kádár system. Some want to believe there had been a chance of success. Many myths, legends, and illusions about the 1956 revolution remain or recur in the public mind to this day. They are designed to explain how the failure of the revolution was not preordained and the conditions had simply been unfavourable to Hungary. Such arguments or elements of such arguments recur periodically in memoirs and reminiscences of the revolution, and above all in political journalism. It is understandable that those who took part might uphold myths about the revolution, but it is difficult to excuse such views in journalism, where even minimal perusal of specialist literature could reduce the mythspreading and myth-making considerably. Yet the saddest thing for a historian is that the urge to mythologize does not always spare his/her own profession: myths, legends, and misconceptions sometimes crop up even in historical works with scholarly pretensions.2 The commonest myths and illusions about 1956 usually concern real or desired roles for the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Nations. Many concern the Suez Crisis, which was taking place at the same time as the revolution. Békés Could the Hungarian Revolution have Succeeded in 1956? 33 The United States and the West The main lost opportunity of the revolution, as perceived by the Hungarian public mind until very recently, was the expected help from the West that never materialized. So the focus, when subsequently weighing the chances, was almost always on what the West, above all what the United States, might or should have done in 1956 to assist the Hungarians.3 The main misunderstanding about the role of the West and America (still present as an illusion in many people’s thinking) was that many in Hungarian society thought of the status quo and spheres of interest established in Europe in 1945 as a temporary formation, and of the Hungarian Revolution as an exceptional occasion for the Western powers to alter the country’s status. Of course, it was not difficult to misunderstand the effectively targeted US propaganda broadcast by the Hungarian service...