TANKS IN BUDAPEST

Peter Kemp remembers his

days in Hungary during the revolution 30 years ago

For I would rather have my sweet,

Though roses die of grieving, Than do high deeds in Hungary To pass all men's believing.

THESE lines by Ezra Pound, which I received on a postcard from an old friend when I went to Hungary in October 1956, certainly did not represent the attitude of young Hungarians at that time. Thirty years ago, on Tuesday 23 October, they rose in a spontaneous outburst of fury and national pride against a regime imposed on them by Stalin in the immediate post-war years, which for sheer sadistic brutality was unsurpassed even in Eastern Europe.

Stalin's death in 1953, which raised false hopes throughout the Soviet empire, brought little relief to the Hungarians. For Stalin's appointed gauleiter, the odious Matyas Rakosi, still remained in power; his AVH (Avo) secret police continued to terrorise all sections of the population with a cruelty extreme even by communist standards. Ralcosi was dismissed as Party First Secretary and officially disgraced in July 1956, but the power of the Party, under his Stalinist successor, Gera, and of the AVH remained absolute.

Although the causes of the 1956 revolu- tion lay in this continuing repression, the incident that sparked off the rising occur- red on the evening of 23 October, when a group of AVH opened fire on an unarmed crowd demonstrating outside the radio building in Budapest, killing at least 12 of them. The crowd attacked them and seized their weapons. The revolution had begun. It gained momentum as the demonstrators received arms from Hungarian soldiers and from military arsenals. Within hours an enormous army of freedom fighters had assembled under leaders appointed by themselves.

Virtually the entire nation was behind the revolution; but the inspiration for it sprang, significantly, from the two groups most favoured by the communist regime the workers and the students.

In the early hours of the following morning, 24 October, Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest. This was the start of the five days of fierce street fighting between the Hungarian people, including boys and girls of 12 years and upwards, and Russian troops aided by units of the AVH. The freedom fighters fought with a courage and ferocity typical of Hungarians when they have been pushed too far and when their country and their cherished way of life are threatened. They had no anti-tank guns, only automatic weapons and, most effec- tive of all in the confined conditions of street warfare, grenades and Molotov cocktails, with which they set on fire or disabled hundreds of tanks. Unsupported by infantry, the tanks were peculiarly vulnerable to this form of attack, and at last the Russians were obliged to abandon the city.

At a critical moment in the battle the Hungarian Colonel Pal Maleter, comman- ding the garrison of the Killian Barracks in Budapest, had led his men and his tanks into the fight against the enemy, and probably decided the outcome. The 'First Phase', as it was called, had ended in a total victory for the Hungarians. The free- dom fighters now controlled all the country west of the Danube and all the frontier crossings into Austria.

I arrived in Budapest in the last days of this fighting, having hitched lifts in cars from Vienna; I was representing a small London weekly paper. On 28 October the new Prime Minister, Imre Nagy, ordered a ceasefire and announced, prematurely, that Soviet troops would leave and the AVH would be dissolved. But the frantic euphoria of the previous days was begin- ning to give way to an atmosphere of tension, even foreboding; for it was hard to believe the Russians would so easily swal- low their humiliation. On 4 November they returned to avenge it.

Taking advantage of the truce, they had brought strong reinforcements into the country, surrounded Budapest with a ring of armour, re-occupied the frontier cros- sings and the airfields, and even, with cynical effrontery, refused landing permis- sion to the UN secretary-general. Who really invited the Russians to come in? Hungarians tend to blame Janos Kadar, who had replaced Ger6 as Party First Secretary on 25 October; but it seems more likely the Kremlin made the decision itself, and induced Kadar to support it — a demand he had neither the resolution nor the power to resist. He is still, I am told, very sensitive on the subject of 1956.

I shall not easily forget the eve of that second Russian assault — the start of the `Second Phase', which ended so tragically for Hungary. The Russians had invited the Hungarian leaders Nagy and Maleter, the new defence minister, to their headquar- ters to discuss troop withdrawals. The intermediary was the Soviet ambassador, Yuri Andropov, later head of the KGB and finally Soviet Party leader and Presi- dent. He guaranteed them safe conduct, and so they went. They were arrested, along with their aides — Nagy a little later — and eventually hanged. But none of us knew of the arrests at this time.

On Saturday, 3 November, there was a press conference in Buda on the progress in the negotiations for the Russian with- drawal; among the British journalists attending it was Basil Davidson, whom I had known during the war, when we both served in SOE. I joined him at lunch in our hotel, and found him radiating confidence and satisfaction. 'Everything's settled,' he told me. 'The Russian troops are pulling out. There's to be another conference tonight to discuss the logistics of the withdrawal.'

Between four and five next morning I was awakened by the sound of machine- gun fire and the explosions of shells. It was soon apparent the Russians were launching a full-scale attack on the city. They used not only artillery but aircraft, as well as tanks — well supported this time by infantry. They came in irresistible strength, and the Hungarians stood no chance; the freedom fighters had won the admiration of the entire free world — but alas no more than admiration. No help came to them. Britain and France were entangled with Suez and a bitter dispute with the United States; the media very quickly switched their attention away from Hungary.

Nevertheless the Hungarians fought on. It seemed as though the entire population of Budapest was involved in the battle. Students and workers, boys and girls from 12 to 25, helped to man the houses and barricades; the Russians had to blast their way through, from street to street and house to house. But there could be no doubt of the result; after nearly a week of desperate resistance, the Hungarians were simply overwhelmed. But even then they continued their defiance. The workers of Csepel went on strike and kept it up, in the face of Russian threats and reprisals, for at least another month.

Soviet vengeance was terrible. Hun- dreds, even thousands, of freedom fighters were arrested; many were hanged, many more tortured. Most horrible of all, perhaps, was the fate of the boys and girls below the age of 18, the minimum age for the death penalty. They were held in AVH prisons until their 18th birthdays — six years in some cases — when they went to the gallows. Others were deported by train to camps in the Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands flocked out of the country to take refuge in the West, creating a problem for Hungary which persists even today.

I had a small insight myself into this terror, when a Hungarian I met in Budapest asked me if I could help three young freedom fighters on the run from the AVH. They were really desperate. They had escaped from a prison train, and the AVH was hot on their trail. They had already seen friends beaten to death for escaping from custody. Of course they had no papers, but they had to get out of the country.

They were two boys, around 19 or 20, and a 17-year-old girl. I hope I never see again such frightened children. Luckily, I had recently hired a car and a Hungarian driver; and so, putting all three of them in the back seat, I took them westwards, passing safely through the road blocks, and handed them over to friends of theirs near the Austrian frontier, who took them across. About a week later I was ordered out of the country — one of the last Western journalists to leave.

For all the tragedy, suffering and death it brought to Hungary, the 1956 revolution has, in the long run, brought one benefit to her people: the Kremlin, which had thought it would be easy to crush the Hungarians' resistance, received in the event a severe shock; and since then it has regarded them with a new respect. I believe it will not lightly push them too far again, or reverse the reforms which Kadar has introduced.

It is hard to find sufficient praise for those young Hungarians who, at the cost of their lives, brought so much honour on their country. Despite some shabby left- wing efforts to dim it, their memory will not fade. For they, in Pericles' words, `have the whole earth as their memorial'.

Next week, Peter Kemp will report from Budapest today.