(from
History Today, March 2000, Expanded ASAP).
Hungary 1920
The Austro-Hungarian Empire, while dragging the world into World
War I due to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
was dragged out by the United States, Great Britain and France who
imposed peace on their terms at Versailles in 1919. While
World War I ended the Austro-Hungarian Empire and created the Hungarian
nation, the 1920 Treaty of Trianon finalized the end
of World War I in Eastern Europe and, among other things, whittled
away what was traditionally considered Hungary, one third of
it's population, that is ethnic Hungarians, lived in other nations:
Romania and Yugoslavia central among them. Transylvania, another
traditional Hungarian territory was now located squarely in Romania.
Thus revanchism and irredentism dominated inter war Hungary,
its sights were set on finding a way to recover its lost lands and
lost cultural brethren. That opportunity presented itself in Nazi
Germany,
Eastern Europe's regional hegonem in the 1930s until the end of World
War II. For (non-Jewish) Hungarians the situation was somewhat
beneficial. Germany was a strong trading partner buying up Hungary's
agricultural production, while Hungary could also negotiate a
return of its former lands, and Germany could protect Hungary from
the Russians (see 1848 invasion) and the Bolsheviks, who briefly had
ruled Hungary under Bela Kun, a process the Hungarians did not seem
to relish. Yet Hungary was mostly a reluctant Axis member for a
large part of World War II. It was in Hungary that Swedish diplomat
Raul Wallenberg worked tirelessly to help Jews evacuate, and even
Regent Miklos Horthy, the Admiral of landlocked Hungary (and, in fairness,
an admiral in the Austro-Hungarian Navy, protected Jews in
Budapest. (Rothschild, p.41).
(from
History Today, March 2000, Expanded ASAP).
Hungary 1956
In 1944 Hungary saw the writing on the wall, and it left the Axis.
Nazi Germany, while retreating out of Hungary, returned
the favor by not protecting Hungary from Allied air raids on the nation.
Soviet Communism arrived in Hungary via the Red
Army, but Stalin himself was unsure as to whether Hungary was too far
West for establishing a Soviet satellite state. Stalin
though quickly included it snugly into the USSR's sphere of influence,
and Hungary, through various Smallholder and Socialist
parties working with a legitimized Communist Party, Hungary moved towards
being a Soviet satellite. Only in the late 1940s
did the Hungarian Communists begin choking off power from nationalist,
socialist, agrarian, and smallholder elements. Matyas
Rakosi was the Stalinist protégé in Hungary and ruled
with the same vigor as the man in Moscow. Rakosi's Hungary though
was
different from the Hungary left by Horthay before the War started:
the departure of its ethnic German population as well as the
departure of Hungary's Jewish population to Israel and of course the
Roma and Jews that were killed in concentration camps had
left Hungary more homogenous after World War II, yet its fewer
lands and war dead also made it smaller.
Domino
Effect? After the death of Stalin, the end of Rakosi's regime could
not be far behind
(State Library of Victoria [Australia].
After Josef Stalin died on March 7 1953, there was a desire to leave
Stalinism behind, not only on the part of Nikolai Khrushchev but
with Malenkov and Maletov as well: Rakosi’s hard line style was
out, somewhat. Imre Nagy, a Leninist, economist trained in Moscow,
was named permier, while Rakosi remained in control of the party secretariat.
For two years Nagy proposed reforms to the Stalinist system
and Rakosi opposed them Soviet politics in Moscow undermined Nagy's
position in 1955. Nagy was removed from the premiership and
eventually the party itself. Meanwhile there was a growing unrest
amongst Hungarian intellectuals, and there was a growing distrust among
the Hungarian people in general over the vacillation in the government's
approaches. Rakosi's hold on power proved untenable in the new
Soviet climate, Khruschev ordered that Rakosi be replaced, and an illness
was manufactured for him that he would be forced to Moscow
to take his medicine sotospeak (CNN, “Destalinization”, Cold War, 1999).
In Rakosi's place the Soviet's selected Erno Gero. The Hungarian
nation, intellectuals and the general public alike thought Gero too
close to Rakosi, while they grew to demand the reformist tenure of Nagy.
All of these actions were taking place after the revolt in Poland,
the earlier development of the Petofi circle (a group of intellectual
somewhat-nationalist writers), the 1954 worker revolt in East Germany,
and Khruschev's calls for destalinization.
On October 23 1956 a Budapest student protest grew from peaceful to
violent to a confrontation with the state police force. They called
for
the return of Nagy to power and a continuation of the destalinization
process. Soviet troops were called in to restore order, but stopped
short
of cracking down on the Hungarian public. Imry Nagy indeed did
return as premier, along with Janos Kadar as first party secretary.
The Soviets
hoped that this move would quell the impending revolt. Hungary, however
did not flinch, and the population, intellectuals and the general population
together demanded release from the Warsaw Pact and the desire to join
their old Imperial twins, Austria, as a neutral nation with a multiparty
government. Nagy had been outmaneuvered by the Hungarian population
and he acquiesced to their demands as fighting with Soviet forces
increased. Soviet backups along with other Warsaw Pact nations
invaded Hungary, the West turned its attention to the Suez Canal Crisis
and Hungary was quickly and powerfully put back in its place as a satellite
state to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, at the behest
of China, disposed of Nagy, secretly holding him prisoner before killing
and secretly burying him. In his place they installed Janos Kadar,
a synthesis of sorts between Rakosi and Nagy, as premier Janos
Kadar would come to dominate the Hungarian mood until his resigation in
1988,
near the end of communist Hungary itself.
For a 1957 Time Magazine article on the Hungarian revolution click here
A
large Soviet tank roles through Budapest assisting in leveling the city
(and sending a message to Tito in Yugoslavia). State Library of Victoria
[Australia].