“Soviet troops drowned the Hungarian uprising in blood.” Option - “Soviet troops brutally suppressed the Hungarian uprising.”
To understand how “bloody” or “cruel” the suppression of the “uprising” was, let’s look at the numbers.
As a result of the fighting, Soviet troops lost 720 people killed. Hungarians - 2500. It would seem that the significant losses of the Hungarian side clearly indicate the cruelty of the Soviet troops.
However, as always, the devil is in the details.
The fact is that 2,500 people were Hungarians killed from October 23 to December 1957 throughout Hungary. Including as a result of clashes between units of the Hungarian army, police and state security forces with the rebels; as a result of the “White Terror” in Budapest and other cities in the period from October 30 (the day of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Budapest) to November 4 (large-scale offensive by Soviet troops, the beginning of Operation Whirlwind to suppress the rebellion); as a result of fighting between various rebel groups and, finally, as a result of clashes between rebels and Soviet units. IN mass literature And newspaper articles Usually they miss the fact that in the first phase of the rebellion (23-28.10) the Hungarian army, police and state security troops took an active part. And the fact that battles also took place between various rebel groups is completely unknown.
Now let’s take a closer look at what the losses of the Hungarian side consist of. So. Army battles with rebels. It is difficult to say reliably how many Hungarians were killed by the Hungarian soldiers, police and state security themselves during the suppression of the rebellion. Although, for example, the only surviving leader of the rebellion, General Bela Kiraly, testifies that, on the orders of Colonel Pal Maleter, at least 12 “revolutionaries” from among the defenders of the Corvin cinema were killed. But the losses of the Hungarian army can be approximately calculated. The fact is that the losses in Budapest of the 2nd Guards Mechanized Division of the Special Corps of the Soviet Army in the period from October 24 to October 29 can be taken as a basis. During 6 days of fighting, the division lost 350 people killed. That is, on average, the loss of life was more than 50 people per day. Such high losses are explained not so much by the ferocity of the fighting itself, but by the tactics chosen by the corps command: covering especially important objects and defense (do not open fire first). Moreover, Colonel Grigory Dobrunov, who at that time was the commander of the reconnaissance battalion of the 2nd Guards Mechanized Division, testifies that there were no clear instructions and instructions when sending troops into Budapest. But there was a clear order “Don’t shoot.” Dobrunov’s words are also confirmed by the cryptographer of the Special Department of the Special Corps, Dmitry Kapranov. Moreover, the participants in the rebellion - in particular, the current member of the Hungarian Parliament, Imre Mecs - confirm this thesis. As a result, the rebels had the opportunity to throw Molotov cocktails at tanks with impunity, then shoot the crew who jumped out, shoot from the windows of houses and throw grenades at open BTR-152 armored personnel carriers in which soldiers were moving around the city, and shoot them with rifles and machine guns. The defensive tactics of the Soviet troops led to unreasonably high losses. But the fact is that the leadership of the Hungarian People’s Army (HPA), the police, and state security chose exactly the same tactics. With rare exceptions, they did not conduct offensive actions, which naturally irritated the Soviet military, who believed that the Hungarians themselves should still play the first fiddle. Therefore, it is quite reasonable to assume that the losses of the less protected and less armed VNA soldiers were at least no lower than the losses of the Soviet troops. That is, at least 50 people on average per day.
But this is Budapest. There were battles in other cities as well. In Miskolc, Gyord, Pécs, the army and police tried to fight. In Miskolc, rebel casualties on the first day alone amounted to at least 45 people. In some places bomb attacks were carried out on the rebels. Finally, in his speech on October 24, Prime Minister Imre Nagy stated that as a result of the actions of the fascists (this is exactly what the national hero of Hungary Imre Nagy said - this document is stored in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, RGASPI) many military personnel and civil servants died and mine citizens. That's it - a lot! And this is only for a day of rebellion.
Following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Budapest on October 30, fighting broke out in the city between various rebel groups. The deputy of Ivan Kovacs, the commander of one of the most significant rebel groups in the Korovin cinema, Gabor Dilinki, testifies that already on October 30, shootings began even within the Korovin residents themselves. In particular, Gabor's beloved girlfriend was killed. Western correspondents noted that incessant firefights began in Budapest after October 30, a period when Soviet troops simply were not there.
Particular attention is paid in Western correspondence from “free Budapest” to the actions of the troops of József Dudas, who first decided to expropriate the holdings of the National Bank. Naturally, this all happened with shooting.
Finally, in Budapest itself, after the departure of Soviet troops, the so-called “White Terror” began, when Bela Kiraly’s guards and Dudas’s troops destroyed communists, state security officers and military personnel who refused to obey them. Photographs and newsreels of hanged people with signs of torture, with faces covered in acid, have spread all over the world and are well known to everyone.
On October 30, Kiraly’s guards shot state security soldiers guarding the building of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Communist Party. The assault on the building was carried out on a large scale, involving infantry and tanks. The soldiers and officers who surrendered were simply shot. A photo report by Life magazine correspondent John Sajova spread all over the world. Like his story about it:
« Six young officers came out, one very handsome. Their shoulder straps were torn off. Quick argument. We are not as bad as you think, give us a chance, they said. I was three feet away from this group. Suddenly one began to bend. They must have shot very close, right in their ribs. They all fell like cut corn. Very graceful. And when they were already on the ground, the rebels were still pouring lead on them. I've been to war three times, but I've never seen anything more terrible. ».
Finally, the actual cruelty of the Soviet troops in suppressing the uprising. Let's remember the total number of Hungarians killed: 2,500 people. It is interesting that at the time of the assault on Budapest on November 4, the city was defended, according to various estimates, from 30 to 50 thousand people. This is only Budapest. In the city of Pecs, a group of 2,000 people put up very stubborn resistance. Miskolc resisted very stubbornly. And with so many rebels resisting, 2,500 dead, including those who died in the intra-Hungarian civil conflict throughout Hungary??? Amazing. Still, even if we roughly estimate how many Hungarians died in clashes with the Soviet troops themselves, it would be barely a thousand people. And these are losses quite comparable to ours.
With all this, the Soviet army did not use aviation and artillery for combat purposes. Tank shelling was sporadic - in any case, the chronicle of rebel tanks firing at the building of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Communist Party is known to the whole world, but for some reason there are no newsreels or photographs of Soviet tanks firing.
The “cruelty” of the Soviet troops is also evidenced by the report on the military operations in Hungary of the 12th separate Rymniksky SME of the Order of Bohdan Khmelnitsky of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR. For the uninitiated, this is special forces. Before the events in Hungary, its fighters waged an active and truly tough fight against UPA units in Ukraine. They were sent to Hungary on November 6 and arrived 3 days later. I was on a business trip for 2 months. Their task included: covering the Hungarian-Austrian border, destroying the rebels, arresting the rebels, and guarding important facilities. So, according to the report for two months of the mission, the special forces soldiers, who were not particularly scrupulous in their activities, killed... one Hungarian. In two months! And this is not a press release. This is absolutely secret document for internal use. The secrecy label was lifted just recently, and the document is stored in the Russian State Military Archive (RGVA).
Thus, it is clear that during the battles with Soviet troops a quite comparable number of Hungarians died - within a thousand people. The rest are victims of the intra-Hungarian conflict itself.
Myth 2
"Imre Nagy and Pal Maleter - fighters for the freedom of Hungary."
To understand this myth, it is worth familiarizing yourself with the biographies of these heroes. Pal Maleter. At the time of the mutiny - Colonel of the VNA. During World War II he fought in the army of fascist Hungary against the USSR. It is worth recalling here the obvious fact that the Hungarian soldiers on the Eastern Front were second only to the SS men in cruelty. And that's not always the case. In the Voronezh villages, the Magyars are remembered very well and are not remembered with kind words.
Maleter was captured and immediately began to re-educate. After some time, he was already conducting propaganda work among Hungarian prisoners. Then he collaborates with Soviet intelligence. Confidence in him is so great that in 1944 he took part in partisan actions against the Hungarians and Germans. Actually, this point is worth dwelling on in more detail. The fact is that during the war there were many defectors and surrenderers, but literally only a few were given such trust. It had to be earned. Unfortunately, the GRU archives, which could shed light on the secret of such trust in Maleter and his merits, are, alas, classified. But it would be naive to believe that a person who has once linked his fate with the intelligence of some country can easily resign from his service.
For his actions, Maleter was awarded the Order of the Red Star. He then studied at the Military Academy under Bela Kiraly. Kiraly remembers Maleter as an extremely fanatical cadet who even fainted from overwork. It even took an order to go to the hospital, as the doctors feared for his health. Bela Kiraly characterizes Maleter as follows:
“He changed his mind very often.”
Knowing him military biography and his behavior during the rebellion, it’s hard to disagree with Kiraly. On October 23-24, Maleter resolutely opposed the rebels, declaring his loyalty to the government and dedication to the cause of communism. Maleter decisively fights the rebels, which General Bela Kiraly still cannot forgive him for. On October 25, he and five tanks, according to Kiraly, headed to the Kilian barracks to quell the rebellion in one of the military units. And he went over to the side of the rebels.
Imre Nagy. Also a hero. He fought in the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War. He was captured by the Russians. Participant in the Russian Civil War. Became a communist. Until 1945, he lived in the USSR with short-term trips abroad on assignments from the Comintern (Soviet intelligence, to put it simply). NKVD informer. It should be noted that when deciding on granting Nagy Soviet citizenship and admitting him to the leadership of the Comintern, his candidacy met with sharp rejection from the leaders of the Hungarian Communist Party led by Bela Kun. All of them were shot in 1937-1938. Except Nadya. In 1990, KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, at the request of the Hungarian side, sent copies of Nagy’s case to Hungary. With his denunciations, slander against his fellow workers... For political purposes, these documents were hidden and have not been made public to this day. Some part, however, leaked to the Italian press in the early 90s.
Nagy then served for some time as Minister of the Interior. In this post, he achieved the return of most of the Hungarian prisoners from the USSR to Hungary, and also carried out repressions against fascists and nationalists. At the same time, Nagy was a creature of Beria himself. The same Beria in 1953 forced Rakosi to appoint Nagy as prime minister. True, the irony of fate is that three days later Nagy was appointed prime minister, and Beria was arrested in Moscow. By 1955, Nagy was relieved of his post and expelled from the Communist Party “for his right-wing views.” Simply put, Nagy, earlier than all the Hungarian communists, grasped the general trend towards a “thaw” in the countries of the socialist camp. As a man resented by the Rákosi regime, in this capacity he was popular among the masses. It is characteristic that he was popular for a reason, but at the suggestion of Radio Free Europe, which presented the communist Nagy as a kind of lamb. Why did the West rely on Nagy? Yes, it’s simple: political spinelessness and personal lack of will made his figure very convenient for the emerging transition period. And finally, Nagy probably hated his Soviet curators, who, as he knew, had powerful incriminating evidence on him. But one way or another, Nagy gradually became the leader of the Hungarian opposition. And in this capacity he speaks on October 23 in front of demonstrators on Parliament Square. As a witness, US Marine Sergeant James Bolek from the Embassy Security Corps, shows, Nagy begged people... to disperse, but in response to his appeal, “comrades,” the crowd roared:
“No more comrades, no more communism.”
And on October 24, having already been appointed prime minister on orders from the USSR, Nagy, in a radio speech, called on, as he put it, fascist provocateurs to lay down their arms. He calls the participants in the uprising nothing less than “fascists” and “reactionaries.” At the same time, Nagy assures that Soviet troops are in Budapest solely at the request of the government.
Nagy probably realized that power on the streets no longer belonged to those who demanded to appoint him prime minister just a day ago.
As events unfold, Nagy gradually begins to do more and more strange things. For example, it prohibits the VNA from conducting active offensive operations. That is, it imposes on the army the same disastrous tactics that the Soviet Army had - to defend itself. On October 28, Soviet and Hungarian troops almost completely blocked the main groups of rebels in Budapest, prepared for the assault and their destruction, but... Nagy managed to convince Mikoyan, and Khrushchev, to withdraw troops from Budapest.
After this, Nagy began calling yesterday’s fascists revolutionaries. But it was difficult for Nadya. A military revolutionary council headed by Maleter was already operating in the country. A National Guard was created in the country, led by Bela Kiraj and former Horthy officers. József Dudas demanded a place in the government and refused to disband his troops. Nagy tried to disband all the armed forces and begin their construction anew, on the basis of the National Guard, but Maleter and part of the Budapest garrison sharply opposed, Bela Kiraly spoke out against Maleter, for which Maleter gave the order to arrest him, Dudas generally refused to obey anyone . In addition, the United States generally relied on Cardinal Mindszenty, an active anti-communist who called on all Hungarian Catholics to fight for freedom of faith. Mindszenty also called for denationalization, the renunciation of all social gains, and the return of property to the former owners. Most of the army refused to obey both Maleter and Kirai, and especially Mindszenty. Nagy was, after all, a communist after all. But on October 30, an anti-communist coup took place in Budapest. The building of the Central Committee of the Party was stormed, the guards were shot, some of the communists were killed, and some were arrested. Nagy understood that the same awaited him. And he made an almost unmistakable move. He announced Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and the establishment of “new relations” with the West. Maybe all this would have worked, since the West began to exert powerful pressure on the USSR, so powerful that even Zhukov and Khrushchev were inclined to reconsider relations with Hungary. But... the Suez crisis broke out and the West had no time for Hungary. As a result, on November 4, SA units entered Hungary from three countries, and Nagy, calling for resistance... fled to the Yugoslav embassy. It is very important that it was in Yugoslavia: since 1948, Tito was active in creating a split in the camp of socialism, and Hungary was one of the priorities. It was with her that Stalin planned to start the war against Yugoslavia. In fact, history knows examples of how state leaders fought for their beliefs, either proving they were right, or paying for mistakes. An example similar to Nadia is Salvador Allende. Having called for resistance, he did not flee, but died with weapons in his hands, defending his views and paying for his mistakes. Nagy acted differently. Well, every country has its own heroes. For example, the Hungarians also have General Bela Kiraly as their hero. Yes, the same one, the commander of the National Guard. He also gave his guards (most of whom, according to Kiraly himself, were “teenagers”) the order to hold out until the end and fled to Austria, and from there to the USA. This is such a general, such a hero. In our country, other generals are considered heroes.
What’s also interesting is that Imre Nagy formally remained... a Soviet citizen until the end of his days. In the RGASPI, in the files of the Hungarian communist leaders Rakosi and Gere, there are documents confirming that they were deprived of Soviet citizenship when leaving for Hungary in 1945. But in Nadya’s case there are no such documents. As far as I know, researchers also did not find such documents regarding Nagy in other archives.
Myth 3
the work of Soviet soldiers and Hungarian state security.”
The situation looks like this. On the morning of October 25, a crowd gathered in the square near the parliament. Mostly women and students. Opposite were Soviet tanks and armored personnel carriers with soldiers. Everyone was in a completely peaceful mood. The Hungarians did not bully the Soviets, did not throw stones at them, but tried to communicate. Then the generally accepted outline of events is as follows: shots rang out from somewhere from the rooftops, Soviet soldiers opened hurricane fire from all types of weapons, bullets hit the fleeing people, in total about 200 died (according to different options, and more) people.
Well, actually, a different number of deaths is more common - 20 people. But let it be 200, if corpses are not enough for someone. Let's try to look at the problem from a different angle.
First, witness testimony is required. But whose? Hungarians, like Russians, are interested and biased people. But we do have one important third-party testimony: US Marine Sergeant James Bolek. He saw everything that happened and later described it:
“At 10 o'clock in the morning, two sailors and I were standing on the balcony of our second-floor apartment, looking at the Soviet soldiers, when someone dropped explosives from the roof of our building - on Soviet tanks and their crews on the street in front of our building. When the explosives detonated, Soviet soldiers began firing their machine guns at our building, from the ground floor to the roof." .
So, it all started with someone throwing explosives from the roof of a house or the top floor onto a Soviet tank. Pay attention to one more detail: Soviet soldiers opened fire on the house from where the explosives were dropped. This is also important.
Simultaneously with the shots of the Soviet soldiers, automatic and machine-gun bursts struck from the rooftops - at the tankers and at the crowd, at people scattering in panic. There are photos of these moments. The crowd is very scattered and does not run densely. That is, there could not be a crush and there could not be a dense defeat. Who were the Soviet tankers shooting at? Hardly according to the crowd. Since soldiers usually very clearly determine where the shooting is coming from, and respond with fire to fire, and not in all directions. Moreover, from the very beginning they reacted correctly, opening fire on a very specific building. If our people fired at the crowd (for which there is no evidence even from the Hungarians), it was only because they were shot at from the crowd.
But who started throwing explosives and shooting from rooftops? The Hungarians are sure that this is a provocation of state security. But there are objections to this version.
Firstly, by October 25, the Hungarian state security was completely demoralized. Having its own troops and a huge operational apparatus, it, in fact, did nothing either to prevent the rebellion or to eliminate it in its infancy. State security units fought only in the provinces - and then only in defense. In Budapest itself, the Hungarian KGB officers did not show themselves in any way. In addition, by October 25, almost all district AVH (KGB) departments were destroyed. And why did the KGB people arrange this? At the very least, Soviet troops conducted operations against the rebels, as did the VNA. The task of the KGB agents is to seize and destroy. But they did not do this even under the cover of Soviet tanks. This provocation was beneficial precisely to the organizers of the rebellion: by the evening, all of Hungary knew that in front of the parliament in Budapest, Soviet soldiers and the GB had killed more than 200 Hungarians. The rebellion, which had almost died down by October 25, flared up with renewed vigor, and the ranks of the rebels were replenished with sincere volunteers. Part of the Hungarian garrison hesitated. All agreements that had been reached by this time were buried. Typically, supporters of the version that the execution in front of parliament was organized by state security cannot imagine a single corpse of a Hungarian intelligence officer at the battle site or on the roofs of houses around. Although the Soviet soldiers simply fired hurricanes from all types of weapons.
Myth 4
"There was a popular uprising in Hungary."
This myth does not stand up to criticism if you look at the documents, and documents that are declassified and in open use.
The fact remains: there was no uprising. There were several phases of a well-organized armed rebellion.
It is well known that the events began on October 23 at 15:00 with a peaceful demonstration of students, which was joined by significant sections of the population of Budapest. Within three hours the demonstration ended and an armed rebellion began.
But traces of a conspiracy, if there was one, must be looked for a little earlier. They are. And not so hidden. In an archive such as RGANI, one can find documents such as reports from the USSR Ambassador to Hungary Andropov or KGB Chairman Serov, in which they indicate that an armed rebellion is being prepared in the country. It is characteristic that these reports were sent in the summer of 1956. The testimony of Alexander Goryunov, an investigator of the special department under the Soviet military candidacy in Budapest, also dates back to the summer of 1956. It was during this period that our Hungarian colleagues informed our counterintelligence officers about the existence of a conspiracy and the preparation of a putsch.
There are other documents. US Army Intelligence Report, January 6, 1956. It, in particular, points to information from a Hungarian officer, recruited back in 1954, about the existence of a conspiracy in the army. This officer reports that although the underground movement consists of a relatively small number of officers, there are cells in almost every Hungarian unit. Meanwhile, according to the British correspondent Sherman (Observer), a certain VNA colonel played a significant role in the radicalization of the events of October 23. The night before the events, he met with students at the Polytechnic University and persuaded them to demonstrate. Moreover, under his influence, an appeal was drawn up to the government with radical and clearly impossible conditions, such as a ban on the export of uranium to the USSR, which no one, in fact, exported. Sherman writes that under the influence of the colonel the demands became as radical as possible. A little later, the captured rebels pointed out the identity of the colonel. His last name is Nodar. During the rebellion he became Bel Kiraly's assistant. It is characteristic that during interrogation Nodar named Kiraly one of the organizers of the rebellion. Considering that the head of the National Guard was not Nodar, who led an underground struggle at the risk of his life, but Kiraly, who seemed to have remained out of work until October 30, his testimony deserves attention. By the way, it was Nodar who was approached by the American military attache with a request to help him acquire and send to the United States a new Soviet MIG-17 fighter. Documents about this have again been declassified and are located in the Russian State Historical Institute and the Central Archive of the FSB of the Russian Federation.
There is also other evidence of the existence of a conspiracy and the preparation of a rebellion. The same Alexander Goryunov shows that shortly before the mutiny they received information that waybills for vehicles had already been prepared, that it was already known who would transport what - people, weapons..., their routes had been planned.
Literally shortly before the start of the uprising, members of the Hungarian youth-sports-military organization (analogous to our DOSAAF) were gathered in the city from all over Hungary. At first they became the striking force of the rebellion.
Another interesting point. The situation was rocking long before the events. In particular, dissatisfaction with the presence of Soviet troops in Hungary was spreading throughout the country. True, not because the troops are in the country at all, but because the Soviet army in Hungary lives off the Hungarian budget, thereby eating up the not so well-fed Hungarians. It’s clear that this is nonsense. Soviet troops were on the USSR budget; they paid for purchases in Hungary with real money. But someone introduced these ideas to the masses, who immediately thought the same thing. How could it be otherwise: Hungary was always in a state of economic crisis, it was necessary to find extreme ones. Rumors were spread and picked up that it was cold in the houses in winter, since there was nothing to heat with: all the coal was sent to the USSR. Typically, during this period, coal was exported from the USSR to Hungary due to its acute shortage in Hungary itself. We helped them, in general.
The uranium issue stands out separately. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a literal uranium fever began. The United States has managed to lay its paw on uranium deposits almost all over the world, except Eastern Europe. On “our” territory there were deposits in East Germany (Gera), Czechoslovakia (Jachimov), Hungary (Pecs) and Bulgaria. We made the first atomic bombs from German and Bulgarian materials. It is clear that uranium mining was under strict control of the USSR and guarded by Soviet units. Serious counterintelligence work was carried out, including disinformation work. By 1956, in the strictest secrecy, development began on Soviet territory - in Kazakhstan. But in the USA they did not know this. But they knew about the deposits in Eastern European countries from the Soviet high-ranking KGB officer Iskanderov, who defected to the West and stopped in the USA in 1950 (by the way, Iskanderov’s escape became one of the additional factors in the fall of the once all-powerful Abakumov). Uranium was not exported from Hungary (as well as from Czechoslovakia) to the USSR. However, for some reason the “masses” thought differently. And the “uranium” point in the historical document “14 demands” was number 6. Who inspired this stupidity in people? The answer is obvious. Those with whom the USSR was in a state of nuclear confrontation in those years. Although this moment is not hidden. All the demands of the “masses” to the government were first voiced on Radio Free Europe, or more precisely, as part of the CIA’s Operation Focus, which began in 1954.
But let's return to the popular uprising. As you know, the events began on October 23 at 15:00. Soviet tanks entered Budapest at 5-6 am on October 24th. And well-organized mobile groups of militants with commanders, communications, intelligence, weapons and clear coordination of actions were already waiting for them. Soviet troops began to suffer losses from the very first hours of participation in the Hungarian events. The good military training of Hungarian reservists and pre-conscripts is known. However, any military man will tell you that the distance from preparation to the creation of full-fledged combat units is very long. Soviet troops faced not teenagers, but rather well-trained troops. In addition, in addition to Budapest, the rebellion began almost throughout the country at the same time. And everywhere according to the same pattern: the seizure of government agencies, radio stations, armories, police departments and AVH. It is characteristic that the second largest and most intense rebellion was the events in the city of Miskolc. The already mentioned US Army intelligence report indicated that it was around Miskolc that there were at least 10 partisan camps, each of which had from 40 to 50 partisans with radio stations, weapons and food depots. By the way, the area around Miskolc is the only one in Hungary where partisans can be found - forests and difficult terrain.
In Budapest itself, the production and transportation of nitroglycerin was even established. For information: for sabotage, you can only use so-called pure nitroglycerin, which cannot be made at home. Homemade, dirty nitroglycerin will explode either during manufacture or, in the best case scenario, during transportation. At the latest, as soon as you raise your hand with a bottle filled with dirty nitroglycerin to throw. However, in Budapest these issues were resolved as quickly as possible, which only speaks of the work done in advance.
How could the omnipresent Hungarian state security have missed the plot? It's simple. By 1956, state security was paralyzed by internal purges. Something similar happened here a little earlier - after the arrest and execution of Beria, when the most professional intelligence and counterintelligence personnel were dispersed in subsequent purges. In addition, in his memoirs, Alexander Goryunov shows that he and his colleagues had the impression that in the AVH leadership itself there were supporters of changing the country’s course.
The Council's directives do not support the version of the uprising either. National Security USA. For example, in the directive NSC-158.
« Aims and Actions of the United States to Take Advantage of Unrest in the Satellite States,” June 29, 1953, states: “To fuel resistance to Communist oppression in such a way that the spontaneous character is not questioned.
Organize, train and equip underground organizations capable of conducting sustained military operations ».
By satellite countries we mean countries of the socialist camp.
Another directive, NSC-68, states: “ to intensify operations by covert means to cause and support unrest and uprisings in selected strategically important satellite countries.”
Oleg Filimonov
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Modern bourgeois Hungary, which drove out the communists, became a member of the EU, and finally gained the “freedom” long-awaited by some »
live in a capitalist "paradise" »
. What kind of freedom? To become unemployed, homeless, hungry and sick, to work for someone else’s capitalist uncle until exhaustion instead of contributing your labor to social production, to be useful to the whole society - i.e. to be a respected person in society, and not a “loser” »
, not a marginalized person, powerlessly watching the death of loved ones for whose treatment there is no money?
In Hungary, a population of 10 million, 40% of the population is on the verge of poverty, 15% is beyond the poverty line. Many political parties and religious denominations took part in the charitable food distribution taking place in Hungary - from ultranationalists to socialists, from Hare Krishnas to Baptists. But everyone knows that a person needs to eat every day...
Photo from the publication “Népszava” ___________________________________________________________________________________
Today, Speaker of the Federation Council Sergei Mironov in Budapest publicly repents to the Hungarians for the events of 1956. He tears the shirt on his chest in half, and, smearing snot on his thin mustache, he sobs over the memorial to the fallen.
Of course, Mironov is no stranger, and the people have already adapted to his antics - such as refusing to meet with the “terrorist” Arafat or demanding an extraordinary term for the president. In the end, he said about himself quite figuratively: “We will work fruitfully, and this will never end!”
But we are adults and we should take a closer look at the past to understand its lessons.
So, what happened in Hungary in 1956 and what was the role Soviet Union in these events.
The liberal version of these events is as simple as Gaidar's bald head. The Soviet Union poured blood on Hungary, which had taken the path of liberal reforms.
Let's start with reforms
Who was our “reformer” and what “reforms” was he going to carry out?
So, the main fighter against communism and reformer Imre Nagy.
Born in 1896. He fought in the Austro-Hungarian army. In 1916 he was captured. And already in 1917 he joined the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), and during the Civil War he fought in the Red Army. In 1921 he returned to Hungary, but in 1927 he fled to Vienna from the Horthy regime. Since 1930 he has lived in the USSR, working at the Comintern and the Institute Agriculture Academy of Sciences of the USSR with Bukharin. He was arrested but immediately released. And not just released, but accepted into... service in the OGPU. As it later turned out, he was recruited back in 1933 and reported to the authorities about the activities of his Hungarian compatriots who had found refuge in the Soviet Union. This may have then saved Nagy himself. In March 1938, he was also arrested by security officers from the Moscow department of the NKVD, but they were kept in jail for only four days. The 4th (secret-political) department of the Main Directorate of State Security of the NKVD stood up for him. Subsequently, security officer Nagy was involved in the “cleansing” of the Comintern, during which Bela Kun and a number of other Hungarian communists were repressed. Having “cleansed” the Comintern of “enemies of the people,” Nagy actually cleared a place for himself and became one of the most influential leaders of the Hungarian Communist Party in exile.
From 1941 to November 1944, Nagy worked quite comfortably at the Moscow radio station Kossuth Radio, which broadcast programs in Hungarian for residents of Hungary, Germany's former ally in the war.
It is worth recalling here that Hungary was one of the main allies of the Nazis in the war against the USSR. Almost one and a half million Hungarians fought on the Soviet front, of which 404,700 people died, more than 500,000 were taken prisoner. Hungarian troops committed many war crimes on the territory of the USSR, which were recorded by investigative bodies and commissions investigating fascist atrocities, but Hungary ultimately did not bear any responsibility for its crimes, betraying yesterday’s ally in time and leaving the war in 1944.
On November 4, 1944, Nagy returned to his homeland with the first group of communist emigrants. But to his great disappointment, he never became the “first person” of Hungary; he had to be content with ministerial posts under various coalition governments. Since 1945, Imre Nagy served as Minister of the Interior in Tildy’s cabinet - then this minister was also in charge of the intelligence services; under Nagy, a cleansing of Hungary took place from “bourgeois elements,” during which a huge number of former high-ranking military and civilian officials of Hungary ended up in the camps. Under the cabinet of Ferenc Nagy and Istvan Doby, Imre Nagy was removed from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and appointed Minister of Food.
Such a miserable career demoralized and embittered Nagy so much that in the end he openly opposed the leadership of the Communist Party, accusing the then General Secretary Rakosi of “perverting the Lenin-Stalin line” and inability to work with personnel. For this, in 1949 he was expelled from the Central Committee and removed from all posts. Realizing that he had clearly gone too far, Nagy immediately publicly repented and asked for forgiveness from his party comrades. He repented so skillfully and fervently that in December 1950 he was reinstated as Minister of Agriculture. True, they say that this could not have happened without the intervention of his Soviet curators, who stood up for their valuable agent. According to people close to the KGB archives, Nagy never broke up with the Soviet intelligence services.
In the summer of 1989, KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov gave Gorbachev a bundle of documents from the KGB archives, from which it followed that Imre Nagy had been an NKVD informant in the pre-war years. Gorbachev then handed over these documents to the Hungarian side, where they were safely hidden and have not yet been presented to the public.
Why did Kryuchkov take out documents from the archive? He wrote about this in an accompanying note to Gorbachev.
Kryuchkov to Gorbachev: “An aura of a martyr and unmercenary, an exceptionally honest and principled person is being created around Nagy. Particular emphasis in all the hype around Nadya’s name is placed on the fact that he was a “consistent fighter against Stalinism”, “a supporter of democracy and a radical renewal of socialism, although documents prove quite the opposite.”
Nagy vegetated in this post until 1955.
During this time, several significant moments occurred. In the USSR, Stalin died and the debunking of his “cult of personality” began, which to many then seemed to be the threshold of the collapse of the Soviet system. The influence of the 20th Congress in Moscow also had an impact. The Hungarians demanded the same reckoning with the past that Khrushchev began with his famous anti-Stalin speech.
In July 1956, in the context of the outbreak of student unrest, the plenum of the Central Committee of the WPT dismissed General Secretary Rakosi. However, the new leader of the VPT was not Nagy, who by this time, like Yeltsin years later, had won the laurels of a “reformer” and a “victim oppositionist,” but his closest ally Ernő Gerő. Once again, the disappointed Nagy discharged another portion of criticism, and on October 23, 1956, a mass student demonstration began in Budapest, ending in a pogrom. Demonstrators demolished a monument to Stalin and attempted to seize a number of buildings in Budapest. In such a situation, on October 24, 1956, Nagy was nevertheless appointed to the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers. At the meeting where this appointment took place, Nagy vowed to leave the growing confrontation and begin a process of civil reconciliation. Under pressure from Moscow, the leadership of the Communist Party agreed to carry out political reform and declared its readiness to begin a dialogue on all the demands of the protesters. In fact, Nagy received carte blanche to carry out reform and peacefully resolve the political impasse.
But the former informer decided that his finest hour had come, and instead of trying to calm people down and start a peaceful dialogue, Nagy actually provoked a civil war - by leaving the Communist Party and declaring it “illegitimate,” he dissolved the state security agencies by decree and demanded the immediate withdrawal of the Soviet troops.
In fact, immediately after this, the massacre began - the communists and the Hungarians who supported them entered into a battle with the “nationalists” and former Hortis, who actively supported the demands for the withdrawal of Soviet troops and Hungary’s withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and began to seize government institutions. A wave of lynchings swept across Budapest, when caught communists, intelligence officers and even members of their families were hanged upside down from trees after brutal abuse. In an effort to stop the pogroms and murders, Soviet units were brought into Budapest with a categorical order not to open fire. And almost immediately the killings of Soviet military personnel and members of their families began. During the 6 days of unrest from October 24 to 29, 350 Soviet military personnel and about 50 family members died.
Trying not to completely interfere in the events taking place in Hungary, the Soviet leadership agreed to meet Nagy’s demands and on October 28, 1956, Soviet troops were withdrawn from Budapest, but this only led to an escalation of the civil war.
The very next day, on Republic Square in front of the city party committee building, a crowd dealt with state security officers and the capital city party committee. During the massacre, 26 people were killed, led by the secretary of the city committee, Imre Mese. They were all hanged from trees head down.
Today, many people like to talk about the “universality” of the uprising, although in fact a civil war began in the country, dozens of people fought and died on both sides. And how long this war would have lasted can only be guessed at, but one thing is certain - the death toll would have been in the tens of thousands.
The pinnacle of the OGPU agent’s “career” was his appeal to the UN with a request to protect the sovereignty of Hungary.
Actually, one thing is clear to me personally: the political adventurism of the former seksot led to the fact that a civil war was actually provoked in Hungary, the consequences of which are difficult to predict if not for the entry of Soviet troops.
Such, alas, is the flawed psychology of the “sext” - a bunch of repressed complexes, hatred of curators, contempt for others and a huge inferiority complex that can push to any adventure.
Now about the “bloody massacre” itself.
Today it has been established that as a result of the events of 1956 in Hungary, 2,740 people died, 25,000 were repressed, 200,000 fled the country.
At the same time, it is somehow generally accepted by default that all of them – 2,740 people – were destroyed by the “Soviet occupiers.” Although in reality this is not at all the case. These are ALL victims of these events. Moreover, according to documents, in the first days of the “uprising”, more than 300 “communists and their accomplices” died at the hands of the “rebels”, such as, for example, the soldiers shot near the building of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who were simply unlucky to be in the wrong uniform in the wrong place.
It must be said honestly that not everyone in Hungary lost their head and was eager to fight. For example, in the entire Hungarian army there were only a few officers who went over to the side of the putschists. However, not a single general took part in this massacre.
The most notable “hero” of that time turned out to be the head of the construction units, Colonel Pal Maleter, no matter how funny it is - another Soviet agent, a former officer of the Horti army, who was captured in 1944, trained in a Soviet intelligence school and sent to Hungary with the task of organizing a partisan squad (pictured left).
It was he who became the military leader of the putschists, although before that he managed to order the tanks to shoot at the “rebels” and personally shot two captured students. But when the advancing crowd actually left him no chance, he ordered the soldiers to go over to the side of the people and himself declared his allegiance to Imre Nagy. Nagy needed at least one senior officer to defect to his side so much that he calmly turned a blind eye to the execution committed by Maleter and appointed him First Deputy Minister of Defense.
And now about the losses and atrocities.
The garrison of Budapest at that time numbered about 30,000 soldiers; it is known that about 12 thousand went over to the side of the rebels, but not all of them took part in the battles. After Maleter's arrest, his subordinates actually went home. A total of about 35,000 people fought in various combat units, more than half of whom were former soldiers and officers of the “Khortists” who formed the backbone of the putschists.
Today the topic of studying the social composition of “rebels” is not at all fashionable. Most often they insist that these were “students and workers,” but judging by the lists of dead students there were not so many of them. Modern Hungarian historians were forced to admit through gritted teeth that the “Khortists” formed the backbone of the detachments.
Thus, the defense of the city of Pecs was commanded by an experienced Horthy officer, a veteran of the war in Russia, Major Csorgi, who had more than 2,000 militants under his command. Miskolc was also defended by Horthys and emigrants transferred here from West Germany, trained by Gehlen.
The putschists had at their disposal more than 50,000 small arms, up to 100 tanks, and about 200 guns and mortars. The power is not small. And in just 4 days of fighting, this entire group was scattered and disarmed. Hungarian losses amounted to about 1,300 killed, and in total during the entire period of hostilities from November 1 to January 5, 1,700 people died in battle.
Moreover, this figure includes the losses of both sides, the putschists and those who fought against them.
If you want to say that this is called “washing with blood,” then I don’t even know what humanism means.
Six years before the events in Hungary, British units were sent to suppress the communist uprising in Malaysia, and in the first year of fighting alone, more than 40,000 people were killed there. And no one was outraged by this.
Two years before the events in Hungary, the French army began a punitive expedition in Algeria, where almost a million Algerians died during the war. And again, it never occurred to anyone to accuse the French of cruelty.
And in just 4 days, Soviet troops were able to defeat and disperse an army of almost fifty thousand rebels, take control of all the main cities and objects, while destroying only 2,000 rebels, and for this they earned the nickname “bloody executioners.” This is truly eloquence!
The losses of the Soviet side amounted to 720 killed, 1540 wounded, 51 missing.
During the investigation, 22,000 legal cases were opened. 400 death sentences were handed down, but just over 300 were carried out, and 200,000 people fled to the West. If we assume that ONLY opponents of the communist regime fled to the West (and in fact, many simply took the opportunity to arrange their lives in the West without being an active participant in the events), then it turns out that only 2.5% of the Hungarian population took part in the putsch (10 million) To put it mildly, not much...
That's why I'm very ashamed today. But not in front of the Hungarians, who can wring their hands as much as they want on the graves of their putschists, bashfully keeping silent about the much more shameful and bloody trace left by their grandfathers and fathers on Russian soil, for which for some reason they are not going to repent, I am ashamed in front of the graves of our fallen soldiers and officers who saved Hungary from civil war. Today, an over-aged imbecile from the Federation Council despicably betrayed them.
The dead have no shame! You did your job well, eternal memory to you!
Eyewitness testimony
I served in the Carpathian Military District in the communications battalion of a tank division. Lieutenant, commander of a training platoon, age - 23 years old, had no combat experience. When the division was alerted, neither I nor my comrades knew anything about the beginning of the Hungarian events. It later became known that after the exposure of Stalin’s personality cult, the Hungarian political life came to life. On October 23, 1956, a demonstration took place in Budapest - I can’t say whether it was aggressive, but it was shot. Our army had nothing to do with this.
I was appointed as a platoon commander in a line-cable company of a communications battalion. The personnel are young people aged 19, 20 and 21 years. We met during a time of anxiety. They informed that the division would be transferred abroad.
The Hungarian border was crossed near the Chop station. Then they moved under their own power at high speeds. Tanks - on the ground, off roads. Wariness arose when an overturned statue of Stalin was seen in one of the border towns. At a short stop, a written order was handed out from the USSR Ministry of Defense: there is a counter-revolution in Hungary, we need to help the Hungarian people and government.
Due to my youth, I did not consider the counter-revolutionaries to be serious opponents. And it was unclear whether Austria’s neutrality was violated or not by NATO troops (we were in a hurry). Later we learned that Austria’s neutrality was being violated to recruit counter-revolutionaries. Already near Budapest, while on patrol, I was given the task of catching “foreigners.”
Our concerns about NATO policy also related to our families. We lived in Western Ukraine. My wife, who had just given birth to a daughter, thinking that the war had begun, asked to go to the North to be with her relatives.
... In front of a small town, the column was thrown with grenades. Among the dead was the commander of a tank company, who later learned that he had small children. The column stopped. The division commander ordered two warning shots to be fired from the tanks. They waited, the shelling did not resume, the column moved forward. The tank regiment that was moving next to us could have wiped out this settlement from the face of the earth. But there was no revenge for the killed and wounded. We had a rule: you don't shoot, we don't shoot.
I also remember the stop when the division commander in the headquarters car was negotiating with the commander of the Hungarian division. We learned from senior officers: the negotiations ended peacefully, our guards will be in the vehicle parks and at the weapons, so that weapons are not distributed to either supporters or opponents of the government and there is no attack from the rear. In essence, it was blocking the distribution of weapons, neutralizing the split Hungarian army.
Before the town of Gedelle we stopped to rest. A covered truck pulled up, with civilians in the car with machine guns. I immediately realized that these were not counter-revolutionaries. Otherwise they could have easily shot us. We disarmed them and took them to the political officer. It turned out that these were workers who were on their way to liberate Budapest from the putschists. Nevertheless, the political officer decided not to give them weapons, but insistently recommended that they return home and agitate for the settlement of differences peacefully (he spoke Russian, whether they understood it or not, I don’t know).
The division headquarters and communications battalion stopped near Budapest, in the city of Gedell. The local authorities allocated us a dormitory at the Agricultural Academy; it was completely empty. I was given the task of organizing wired telephone communication with the regiments, being on duty at the Gedelle telephone exchange (the Hungarians gave us two manual switchboard stands), and patrolling the city streets in the evening and at night. There was no front line or rear. While laying and restoring telephone lines, I walked. He spoke German and Russian. The overwhelming majority of the Hungarians I contacted were peaceful and helpful. But there was a danger of running into an ambush...
We went to duty on foot, past the market. I saw a demonstration in Gedell once. The division headquarters officers knew about it, but no one touched the demonstrators.
One day, a Hungarian younger than me came up to me and began to argue quite clearly in Russian (apparently he studied it at school) that the putschists were fascists, he knew them all and they needed to be arrested. I advised him to contact the local Hungarian KGB... Now they are called revolutionaries, but then the Hungarians themselves explained to us that both fascists and Horthyists took part in the rebellion.
… While patrolling late in the evening, I stopped a truck and checked the passes of two men; one of them was an armed policeman, he was crying bitterly. His comrade said that the “revolutionaries” shot the policeman’s wife and two young children when he was not at home.
When checking documents, I met many of our supporters; they had special passes. What I mean is that not only the government, but also Hungarian society has split into two camps. The fact that this is not the supreme power could be judged at least by the mediocrity of the machines...
Our tank regiments and motorized infantry were not used during the assault on Budapest; they stayed in the fields, in tent camps. I know this because I provided them with communications. But I must write the truth: the division’s reconnaissance battalion participated in the storming of Budapest... When the reconnaissance battalion officers appeared at the division headquarters, it became clear that the rebels had been pacified.
About a month after arriving in Gendelle, the local authorities and our rear service organized a bath for us. We went to the bathhouse on foot, without weapons. We calmly washed ourselves, changed our underwear...
The “people's revolution” does not pass so quickly, which means that it was not carried out by the entire people. There was an explosive mixture of anarchists, Horthyists, fascists, and “foreigners,” and they were concentrated mainly in Budapest. I won’t argue, there were reasonable democrats, but they were a minority.
Somewhere underneath New Year The division began to leave Hungary piece by piece. Our echelons were checked by representatives of the Hungarian People's Republic. They also checked my heating vehicle, there were no complaints.
Different people write about the Hungarian events of 1956 from different positions, adjusting and not adjusting... I am not a politician, but an eyewitness and I come to the following conclusions. No matter what they say today, mutual hatred and armed confrontation between Hungarians arose after the shooting of the October demonstration in Budapest by the Hungarians themselves. Society split. During the war, Hungary was a satellite of Germany; among part of the population, the Horthy-fascist worldview did not change. These people joined the ranks of the dissatisfied. The army distributed some weapons to both. She herself also split, although she did not take an active part in the events. Mutual reprisals began spontaneously and unspontaneously. Two groups of self-organized authorities were formed. It is impossible to do without armed struggle in such circumstances. I don’t know how thoughtfully the Soviet leaders acted, but without our intervention, the likelihood of the rebellion escalating into a civil war was objectively high.
If you look deeper, the Hungarian events are one of the local political confrontations between two systems. Europe was “pregnant” not only with political but also with military confrontation... As for the problem of the optimality of the social-state system, humanity has not yet resolved it. This issue was resolved in 1956 in Hungary - only not by intellectual means, but by force; after an erroneous decision by the Hungarian KGB, the “revolutionaries” took up arms.
There were many of our comrades - the fallen military - and their memory is eternal; they fulfilled their mission: they extinguished the hotbeds of the civil war in Hungary.
Boris Bratenkov retired colonel
http://www.ogoniok.com/4967/15/
5 years ago, Lieutenant General Yuri Nikolaevich Kalinin gave me his military order “Red Star” for safekeeping. This order No. 3397404 was awarded to him on December 18, 1956 in Budapest.
I hold it in my palm. Through the scarlet enamel I feel its calm, tough strength.
No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten!
I would like to remind Mr. Mironov that in just one day in Moscow (October 3-4, 1993), according to the official version, 137 people were killed, and according to human rights activists, more than 400 people and for some reason no one in the Kremlin talks about “bloody executioners” or is going to apologize to the relatives of the victims.
Anti-Soviet protests and demonstrations in post-war countries building socialism began to appear under Stalin, but after his death in 1953 they took on a wider scale. Mass protests took place in Poland, Hungary, and the German Democratic Republic.
The decisive role in the initiation of the Hungarian events was played, of course, by the death of I. Stalin, and the subsequent actions of Nikita Khrushchev to “expose the cult of personality.”
As you know, in World War II, Hungary took part on the side of the fascist bloc, its troops participated in the occupation of the territory of the USSR, and three SS divisions were formed from Hungarians. In 1944-1945, Hungarian troops were defeated, its territory was occupied by Soviet troops. Hungary (as a former ally of Nazi Germany) had to pay significant indemnities (reparations) in favor of the USSR, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, amounting to up to a quarter of Hungary’s GDP.
After the war, free elections were held in the country, provided for by the Yalta agreements, in which the Party of Small Farmers received a majority. However, the control commission, which was headed by the Soviet Marshal Voroshilov, gave the winning majority only half of the seats in the Cabinet of Ministers, and the key posts remained with the Hungarian Communist Party.
The communists, with the support of Soviet troops, arrested most of the leaders of the opposition parties, and in 1947 they held new elections. By 1949, power in the country was mainly represented by communists. The Matthias Rakosi regime was established in Hungary. Collectivization was carried out, mass repressions began against the opposition, the church, officers and politicians of the former regime and many other opponents of the new government.
WHO IS RAKOSI?
Matthias Rakosi, born Matthias Rosenfeld (March 14, 1892, Serbia - February 5, 1971, Gorky, USSR) - Hungarian politician, revolutionary.
Rakosi was the sixth child in a poor Jewish family. During the First World War he fought on the Eastern Front, where he was captured and joined the Hungarian Communist Party.
Returned to Hungary, participated in the government of Bela Kun. After his fall, he fled to the USSR. Participated in the governing bodies of the Comintern. In 1945 he returned to Hungary and headed the Hungarian Communist Party. In 1948, he forced the Social Democratic Party to unite with the CPV into a single Hungarian Labor Party (HLP), of which he was elected general secretary.
RAKOSI DICTATORSHIP
His regime was characterized by political terror carried out by the state security service AVH against the forces of internal counter-revolution and persecution of the opposition (thus, he was accused of “Titoism” and orientation towards Yugoslavia, and then executed former minister Internal Affairs Laszlo Rajk). Under him, the nationalization of the economy and accelerated cooperation in agriculture took place.
Rákosi called himself “Stalin’s best Hungarian student,” copying the Stalinist regime in the smallest detail, even to the point that last years During his reign, the Hungarian military uniform was copied from the Soviet one, and stores in Hungary began to sell Rye bread, which had not been eaten in Hungary before.
Since the late 1940s. launched a campaign against the Zionists, while eliminating his political rival, Minister of Internal Affairs Laszlo Rajk.
After Khrushchev’s report at the 20th Congress of the CPSU, Rakosi was removed from the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the WPT (instead, Erno Geryo took this position). Soon after the uprising in Hungary in 1956, he was taken to the USSR, where he lived in the city of Gorky. In 1970, he was asked to give up active participation in Hungarian politics in exchange for returning to Hungary, but Rákosi refused.
He was married to Feodora Kornilova.
WHAT DIRECTLY CAUSED THE UPRISING?
When it comes to the reasons for the demonstrations of many thousands that began in Budapest in October 1956, which then grew into mass riots, as a rule, they talk about the Stalinist policy of the Hungarian leadership led by Matthias Rakosi, repressions and other “excesses” of socialist construction. But it's not only that.
Let's start with the fact that the overwhelming majority of the Magyars did not consider their country to be to blame for the outbreak of World War II and believed that Moscow dealt with Hungary extremely unfairly. And although the former Western allies of the USSR in the anti-Hitler coalition supported all the points of the 1947 peace treaty, they were far away, and the Russians were nearby. Naturally, the landowners and bourgeoisie, who lost their property, were unhappy. Western radio stations Voice of America, BBC and others actively influenced the population, calling on them to fight for freedom and promising immediate assistance in the event of an uprising, including an invasion of Hungarian territory by NATO troops.
The death of Stalin and Khrushchev's speech at the 20th Congress of the CPSU gave rise to attempts at liberation from communists in all Eastern European states, one of the most striking manifestations of which was the rehabilitation and return to power of the Polish reformer Wladyslaw Gomulka in October 1956.
After the monument to Stalin was toppled from its pedestal, the rebels tried to cause maximum destruction to it. The hatred of Stalin on the part of the rebels was explained by the fact that Matthias Rakosi, who carried out the repressions in the late 40s, called himself Stalin’s faithful disciple.
An important role was also played by the fact that in May 1955, neighboring Austria became a single neutral independent state, from which, after the signing of a peace treaty, allied occupation forces were withdrawn (Soviet troops had been stationed in Hungary since 1944).
After resignation on July 18, 1956 Secretary General The new leader of the Hungarian Labor Party, Matthias Rakosi, became his closest ally Erno Geryo, but such small concessions could not satisfy the people.
The Poznan uprising in July 1956 in Poland, which caused great resonance, also led to an increase in critical sentiment among the people, especially among students and the writing intelligentsia. From the middle of the year, the Petőfi Circle began to actively operate, in which the most pressing problems facing Hungary were discussed.
STUDENTS STARTED AN UPRISING
On October 16, 1956, university students in Szeged organized an organized exit from the pro-communist “Democratic Youth Union” (the Hungarian equivalent of the Komsomol) and revived the “Union of Students of Hungarian Universities and Academies,” which existed after the war and was dispersed by the government. Within a few days, branches of the Union appeared in Pec, Miskolc and other cities.
On October 22, students from the Budapest University of Technology joined this movement, formulating a list of 16 demands to the authorities and planning a protest march from the monument to Bem (Polish general, hero of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848) to the monument to Petőfi on October 23.
At 3 o'clock in the afternoon a demonstration began, in which, in addition to students, tens of thousands of people took part. The demonstrators carried red flags, banners with slogans about Soviet-Hungarian friendship, the inclusion of Imre Nagy in the government, etc. On the squares of Jasai Mari, on the Fifteenth of March, on the streets of Kossuth and Rakoczi, radical groups joined the demonstrators, shouting slogans of a different kind. They demanded the restoration of the old Hungarian national emblem, the old Hungarian national holiday instead of the Day of Liberation from Fascism, the abolition of military training and Russian language lessons. In addition, demands were put forward for free elections, the creation of a government led by Nagy and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary.
At 20 o'clock on the radio, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the WPT, Erne Gere, made a speech sharply condemning the demonstrators. In response to this, a large group of demonstrators tried to enter the broadcasting studio of the Radio House with a demand to broadcast the program demands of the demonstrators. This attempt led to a clash with the Hungarian state security units AVH defending the Radio House, during which the first dead and wounded appeared after 21:00. the rebels received or took from reinforcements sent to help guard the radio, as well as from civil defense depots and captured police stations.
A group of rebels entered the Kilian Barracks, where three construction battalions were located, and seized their weapons. Many construction battalion members joined the rebels. Fierce fighting in and around the Radio House continued throughout the night.
At 11 p.m., based on the decision of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee, the Chief of the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces, Marshal V.D. Sokolovsky, ordered the commander of the Special Corps to begin moving to Budapest to assist the Hungarian troops “in restoring order and creating conditions for peaceful creative labor.” Units of the Special Corps arrived in Budapest at 6 a.m. and began fighting the rebels.
On the night of October 24, about 6,000 Soviet army troops, 290 tanks, 120 armored personnel carriers, and 156 guns were brought into Budapest. In the evening they were joined by units of the 3rd Rifle Corps of the Hungarian People's Army (HPA).
Members of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee A. I. Mikoyan and M. A. Suslov, KGB Chairman I. A. Serov, Deputy Chief of the General Staff Army General M. S. Malinin arrived in Budapest.
On the morning of October 25, the 33rd Guards Mechanized Division approached Budapest, and in the evening - the 128th Guards Rifle Division, which joined the Special Corps.
At this time, during a rally near the parliament building, an incident occurred: fire was opened from the upper floors, as a result of which a Soviet officer was killed and a tank was burned. In response, Soviet troops opened fire on the demonstrators, resulting in 61 people killed and 284 wounded on both sides.
A FAILED ATTEMPT TO FIND A COMPROMISE
The day before, on the night of October 23, 1956, the leadership of the Hungarian Communist Party decided to appoint Imre Nagy as Prime Minister, who had already held this post in 1953-1955, distinguished by his reformist views, for which he was repressed, but shortly before the uprising he was rehabilitated. Imre Nagy was often accused of sending a formal request to Soviet troops to help suppress the uprising without his participation. His supporters claim that this decision was made behind his back by the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party Ernő Gerő and former Prime Minister András Hegedüs, and Nagy himself was opposed to the involvement of Soviet troops.
In such a situation, on October 24, Nagy was appointed to the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers. He immediately sought not to fight the uprising, but to lead it.
On October 28, Imre Nagy recognized the popular outrage as justified, speaking on the radio and declaring that “the government condemns the views that view the current grandiose popular movement as a counter-revolution.”
The government announced a ceasefire and the start of negotiations with the USSR on the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary.
By October 30, all Soviet troops were withdrawn from the capital to their places of deployment. State security agencies were dissolved. The streets of Hungarian cities were left virtually without power.
On October 30, the government of Imre Nagy decided to restore the multi-party system in Hungary and create a coalition government of representatives of the VPT, the Independent Party of Smallholders, the National Peasant Party and the reconstituted Social Democratic Party. It was announced that free elections would be held.
And the uprising, already uncontrollable, continued.
The rebels captured the Budapest town committee of the VPT, and over 20 communists were hanged by the crowd. Photos of hanged communists with signs of torture, with faces disfigured by acid, went around the whole world. This massacre was, however, condemned by representatives of the political forces of Hungary.
There was little Nagy could do. The uprising spread to other cities and spread... The country quickly fell into chaos. Railway communications were interrupted, airports stopped operating, shops, shops and banks were closed. The rebels scoured the streets, catching state security officers. They were recognized by their famous yellow boots, torn into pieces or hanged by their feet, and sometimes castrated. The captured party leaders were nailed to the floors with huge nails, with portraits of Lenin placed in their hands.
The development of events in Hungary coincided with the Suez crisis. On October 29, Israel and then NATO members Great Britain and France attacked Soviet-backed Egypt with the aim of seizing the Suez Canal, near which they landed their troops.
On October 31, Khrushchev at a meeting of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee said: “If we leave Hungary, this will encourage the American, British and French imperialists. They will understand our weakness and will attack.” It was decided to create a “revolutionary workers’ and peasants’ government” led by Janos Kadar and conduct a military operation to overthrow the government of Imre Nagy. The plan for the operation, called “Whirlwind,” was developed under the leadership of the USSR Minister of Defense Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov.
On November 1, the Hungarian government, when Soviet troops were ordered not to leave the units’ locations, decided to terminate the Warsaw Pact by Hungary and handed a corresponding note to the USSR Embassy. At the same time, Hungary turned to the UN asking for help in protecting its neutrality. Measures were also taken to protect Budapest in case of "possible external attack."
Early in the morning of November 4, new Soviet military units began entering Hungary under the overall command of Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov.
On November 4, the Soviet Operation Whirlwind began and on the same day the main objects in Budapest were captured. Members of Imre Nagy's government took refuge in the Yugoslav embassy. However, detachments of the Hungarian National Guard and individual army units continued to resist Soviet troops.
Soviet troops carried out artillery strikes on pockets of resistance and carried out subsequent mopping-up operations with infantry forces supported by tanks. The main centers of resistance were the working-class suburbs of Budapest, where local councils managed to lead more or less organized resistance. These areas of the city were subjected to the most massive shelling.
Soviet troops (totaling 31,550 soldiers and officers) were thrown against the rebels (more than 50 thousand Hungarians took part in the uprising) with the support of Hungarian workers' squads (25 thousand) and Hungarian state security agencies (1.5 thousand).
Soviet units and formations that took part in the Hungarian events:
Special case:
- 2nd Guards Mechanized Division (Nikolayevsko-Budapest)
- 11th Guards Mechanized Division (after 1957 - 30th Guards Tank Division)
- 17th Guards Mechanized Division (Yenakievsko-Danube)
- 33rd Guards Mechanized Division (Kherson)
- 128th Guards Rifle Division (after 1957 - 128th Guards Motorized Rifle Division)
7th Guards Airborne Division
- 80th Parachute Regiment
- 108th Parachute Regiment
31st Guards Airborne Division
- 114th Parachute Regiment
- 381st Parachute Regiment
8th Mechanized Army of the Carpathian Military District (after 1957 - 8th Tank Army)
38th Army of the Carpathian Military District
- 13th Guards Mechanized Division (Poltava) (after 1957 - 21st Guards Tank Division)
- 27th mechanized division (Cherkasy) (after 1957 - 27th motorized rifle division).
In total, the following took part in the operation:
personnel - 31550 people
tanks and self-propelled guns - 1130
guns and mortars - 615
anti-aircraft guns - 185
BTR - 380
cars - 3830
END OF THE UPRISING
After November 10, until mid-December, the workers' councils continued their work, often entering into direct negotiations with the command of Soviet units. However, by December 19, 1956, the workers' councils were dispersed by state security agencies and their leaders were arrested.
Hungarians emigrated en masse - almost 200,000 people (5% of the total population) left the country, for whom refugee camps had to be created in Austria in Traiskirchen and Graz.
Immediately after the suppression of the uprising, mass arrests began: in total, the Hungarian special services and their Soviet colleagues managed to arrest about 5,000 Hungarians (846 of them were sent to Soviet prisons), of which “a significant number were members of the VPT, military personnel and students.”
Prime Minister Imre Nagy and members of his government were deceived on November 22, 1956, lured out of the Yugoslav Embassy, where they had taken refuge, and taken into custody on Romanian territory. They were then returned to Hungary and put on trial. Imre Nagy and former Defense Minister Pal Maleter were sentenced to death penalty on charges of treason. Imre Nagy was hanged on June 16, 1958. In total, according to some estimates, about 350 people were executed. About 26,000 people were prosecuted, of whom 13,000 were sentenced to various prison terms. By 1963, all participants in the uprising were amnestied and released by the government of János Kádar.
After the fall of the socialist regime, Imre Nagy and Pal Maleter were ceremonially reburied in July 1989.
Since 1989, Imre Nagy has been considered a national hero of Hungary.
The initiators of the protests were students and workers of large factories. The Hungarians demanded free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet military bases. In fact, workers' committees took over power throughout the country. The USSR sent troops into Hungary and restored the pro-Soviet regime, brutally suppressing resistance. Nagy and several of his government colleagues were executed. Several thousand people died in the battles (according to some sources, up to 10,000).
In the early 50s, there were other demonstrations on the streets of Budapest and other cities.
In November 1956, the director of the Hungarian News Agency, shortly before artillery fire leveled his office, sent a desperate message to the world - a telex announcing the beginning of the Russian invasion of Budapest. The text ended with the words: “We will die for Hungary and for Europe”!
Hungary, 1956. Self-defense units on the Hungarian border await the appearance of Soviet military units.
Soviet tanks were brought into Budapest on the orders of the communist leadership of the USSR, which took advantage of a formal request from the Hungarian government.
The first Soviet armored vehicles on the streets of Budapest.
Content:
Uprising in Hungary
Budapest, 1956
What was avoided in Poland happened in Hungary, where the intensity of passions was much greater. In Hungary, the internal struggle between communists turned out to be more acute. than anywhere else, and the Soviet Union found itself drawn into it more than in Poland or other countries. Of all the leaders still in power in Eastern Europe in 1956, Rakosi was most involved in the export of Stalinism. Returning to Budapest from Moscow after the 20th Congress of the CPSU, Rakosi told his friends: “In a few months, Khrushchev will be declared a traitor and everything will return to normal.”
The internal political struggle in Hungary continued to escalate. Rakosi had no choice but to promise an investigation into the trials of Rajk and the other Communist Party leaders he executed. At all levels of government, even in the state security agencies, the most hated institution in Hungary by the people, Rakosi was demanded to resign. He was almost openly called a “murderer.” In mid-July 1956, Mikoyan flew to Budapest to force the resignation of Rakosi. Rakosi was forced to submit and leave for the USSR, where he eventually ended his days, cursed and forgotten by his people and despised by Soviet leaders. Rakosi's departure did not cause any real changes in government policy or composition.
Arrests followed in Hungary former leaders state security responsible for trials and executions. The reburial of victims of the regime - Laszlo Rajk and others - on October 6, 1956 resulted in a powerful demonstration in which 300 thousand residents of the Hungarian capital participated.
Under these conditions, the Soviet leadership decided to once again call Imre Nagy to power. A new USSR ambassador (future member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee and chairman of the State Security Committee) was sent to Budapest.
The people's hatred was directed against those who were known for their torment: state security officers. They represented everything that was disgusting about the Rákosi regime; they were caught and killed. Events in Hungary took on the character of a genuine popular revolution, and it was precisely this circumstance that frightened the Soviet leaders. The USSR had to take into account at that moment that an anti-Soviet and anti-socialist uprising was taking place. It was obvious that this was a far-reaching political plan, and not just a desire to destroy the existing regime.
Not only the intelligentsia, but also industrial workers were drawn into the orbit of events. The participation of a significant part of the youth in the movement left a certain imprint on its character. The political leadership found itself at the tail end of the movement, rather than leading it, as happened in Poland.
The fundamental issue was the presence of Soviet troops on the territory of Eastern European countries, that is, their actual occupation.
The new Soviet government preferred to avoid bloodshed, but was ready for it if it came to the question of the satellites secession from the USSR, even in the form of declaring neutrality and non-participation in blocs.
On October 22, demonstrations began in Budapest demanding the formation of a new leadership led by Imre Nagy. On October 23, Imre Nagy became prime minister and made a call to lay down his arms. However, there were Soviet tanks in Budapest and this caused excitement among the people.
A grandiose demonstration arose, the participants of which were students, high school students, and young workers. The demonstrators walked towards the statue of the hero of the 1848 Revolution, General Bell. Up to 200 thousand gathered at the parliament building. Demonstrators toppled a statue of Stalin. Armed groups formed, calling themselves “Freedom Fighters.” They numbered up to 20 thousand people. Among them were former political prisoners released from prison by the people. The Freedom Fighters occupied various areas of the capital, established a high command led by Pal Maleter, and renamed themselves the National Guard.
At the enterprises of the Hungarian capital, cells of the new government were formed - workers' councils. They put forward their social and political demands, and among these demands there was one that aroused the ire of the Soviet leadership: to withdraw Soviet troops from Budapest, remove them from Hungarian territory.
The second circumstance that frightened the Soviet government was the restoration of the Social Democratic Party in Hungary, and then the formation of a multi-party government.
Although Nagy was made prime minister, the new Stalinist leadership led by Gere tried to isolate him and thereby worsened the situation even further.
On October 24, Mikoyan and Suslov arrived in Budapest. They recommended that Gehre be immediately replaced as First Secretary by János Kádar. Meanwhile, on October 25, an armed clash with Soviet troops took place near the parliament building. The rebellious people demanded the departure of Soviet troops and the formation of a new government of national unity, in which various parties would be represented.
On October 26, after the appointment of Kadar as the first secretary of the Central Committee and the resignation of Gere, Mikoyan and Suslov returned to Moscow. They went to the airfield in a tank.
On October 28, while fighting was still ongoing in Budapest, the Hungarian government issued an order for a ceasefire and the return of armed units to their quarters to await instructions. Imre Nagy, in a radio address, announced that the Hungarian government had come to an agreement with the Soviet government on the immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops from Budapest and the inclusion of armed detachments of Hungarian workers and youth in the regular Hungarian army. This was seen as the end of the Soviet occupation. Workers quit their jobs until the fighting in Budapest ceased and Soviet troops withdrew. A delegation from the workers' council of the industrial district of Miklós presented Imre Nagy with demands for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary by the end of the year.
The report of Mikoyan and Suslov on the situation in Hungary, made by them immediately after returning from Budapest on October 26 to the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee, reflected, as can be seen from the editorial of the Pravda newspaper of October 28, an alleged readiness to agree with the democratization program, provided that this program maintains the dominance of the Communist Party and keeps Hungary within the Warsaw Pact system. The article was just a disguise. The order for Soviet troops to leave Budapest served the same purpose. The Soviet government sought to gain time to prepare for reprisals, which were to follow not only on behalf of the remaining participants in the pact, but also Yugoslavia and China.
This way the responsibility would be shared among everyone.
Soviet troops were withdrawn from Budapest, but concentrated in the area of the Budapest airfield.
On October 30, when Mikoyan and Suslov were in Budapest, the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee adopted, as Khrushchev testifies, a unanimous resolution on the armed suppression of the Hungarian revolution, which stated that it would be unforgivable for the USSR to remain neutral and “not provide assistance to the working class of Hungary in its struggle against counter-revolution."
At the request of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee, a Chinese delegation led by Liu Shaoqi arrived in Moscow for advice. Liu Shaoqi declared that Soviet troops should withdraw from Hungary and let the working class of “Hungary m” themselves suppress the counter-revolution. Since this was completely contrary to the decision to intervene, Khrushchev, informing the Presidium on October 31 about the Chinese response, insisted on the immediate use of troops. Marshal Konev, summoned to a meeting of the presidium, stated that his troops would need 3 days to suppress the “counter-revolution” (in fact, a revolution, and received an order to put the troops on combat readiness. The order was given behind the back of Liu Shaoqi, who at the same time day returned to Beijing in full confidence that there would be no Soviet intervention. It was decided to inform Liu Shaoqi about the intervention at the time of the farewell at the Vnukovo airfield. In order to make a greater impression on Liu Shaoqi, the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee appeared in Vnukovo in full force. Talk about “the good of the Hungarian people.” In the end, Liu Shaoqi surrendered. Thus, Chinese support was ensured.
Then Khrushchev, Malenkov and Molotov - representatives of the Presidium of the Central Committee - went successively to Warsaw and Bucharest, where they quite easily received consent to the intervention. The last leg of their trip was Yugoslavia. They came to Tito expecting serious objections from him. There were no objections on his part; as Khrushchev reports, “we were pleasantly surprised... Tito said that we were absolutely right, and we must move our soldiers into battle as soon as possible. We were ready for resistance, but instead we received his wholehearted support. I would even say that Tito went even further and convinced us to solve this problem as soon as possible,” Khrushchev concludes his story.
Thus the fate of the Hungarian revolution was decided.
On November 1, the massive invasion of Soviet troops into Hungary began. To Imre Nagy's protest, Soviet Ambassador Andropov replied that the Soviet divisions that entered Hungary arrived only to replace the troops already there.
3,000 Soviet tanks crossed the border from Transcarpathian Ukraine and Romania. The Soviet ambassador, again summoned to Nagy, was warned that Hungary, in protest against the violation of the Warsaw Pact (the entry of troops required the consent of the relevant government), would withdraw from the pact. The Hungarian government announced on the evening of the same day that it was withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact, declaring neutrality and appealing to the United Nations to protest against the Soviet invasion.
But all this no longer bothered the Soviet government much. The Anglo-French-Israeli invasion (October 23 - December 22) in Egypt diverted the attention of the world community from the events in Hungary. The American government condemned the actions of England, France and Israel. Thus, a split in the camp of the Western allies was obvious. There was no sign that the Western powers would come to Hungary's aid. Thus, the conflict over the Suez Canal in 1956 and the subsequent war of England, France and Israel against Egypt distracted the Western powers from the events in Hungary. The international situation was developing extremely favorably for the intervention of the Soviet Union.
What happened on the streets of Budapest? Soviet troops faced fierce resistance from Hungarian army units, as well as from the civilian population. The streets of Budapest witnessed a terrible drama, during which ordinary people attacked tanks with Molotov cocktails. Key points, including the Ministry of Defense and Parliament buildings, were taken within a few hours. Hungarian radio went silent before finishing its appeal for international help, but dramatic accounts of the street fighting came from a Hungarian reporter who alternated between his teletype and the rifle he was firing from his office window.
The Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee began preparing a new Hungarian government; The first secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party, János Kádár, agreed to the role of prime minister of the future government.
On November 3, a new government was formed, but the fact that it was formed on the territory of the USSR became known only two years later. The new government was officially announced at dawn on November 4, when Soviet troops stormed the Hungarian capital, where a coalition government led by Imre Nagy had been formed the day before; The non-party general Pal Maleter also joined the government.
By the end of the day on November 3, the Hungarian military delegation led by Defense Minister Pal Maleter arrived at headquarters to continue negotiations on the withdrawal of Soviet troops, where they were arrested by KGB Chairman General Serov. It was only when Nagy was unable to connect with his military delegation that he realized that the Soviet leadership had deceived him.
On November 4 at 5 o'clock in the morning, Soviet artillery rained fire on the Hungarian capital, half an hour later Nagy notified the Hungarian people about this. For three days, Soviet tanks destroyed the Hungarian capital; armed resistance in the province continued until November 14. Approximately 25 thousand Hungarians and 7 thousand Soviet soldiers were killed.
After the suppression of the uprising-revolution, the Soviet military administration, together with state security agencies, carried out reprisals against Hungarian citizens: mass arrests and deportations to the Soviet Union began.
Imre Nagy and his staff took refuge in the Yugoslav embassy. After two weeks of negotiations, Kadar gave a written guarantee that Nagy and his employees would not be prosecuted for their activities, that they could leave the Yugoslav embassy and return home with their families. However, the bus in which Nagy was traveling was intercepted by Soviet officers, who arrested Nagy and took him to Romania. Later, Nagy, who did not want to repent, was tried in a closed court and shot. This message was published on June 16, 1958. General Pal Maleter suffered the same fate. Thus, the suppression of the Hungarian uprising was not the first example of the brutal defeat of political opposition in Eastern Europe - similar actions on a smaller scale were carried out in Poland just a few days earlier. But this was the most monstrous example, in connection with which the image of Khrushchev the liberal, which he seemed to promise to leave in history, faded forever. These events were perhaps the first milestone on the path that would lead a generation later to the destruction of the communist system in Europe, as they caused a “crisis of consciousness” among the true supporters of Marxism-Leninism. Many party veterans Western Europe and the United States was disillusioned, because it was no longer possible to turn a blind eye to the determination of the Soviet leaders to maintain power in the satellite countries, completely ignoring the aspirations of their peoples.
Having assessed the difficult situation in the country, Khrushchev did not dare to use armed force and even made concessions: the Polish leadership was updated, workers' councils were created at enterprises, agricultural cooperatives were dissolved, the former Minister of Defense of Poland, Marshal of the Soviet Union K. K. Rokossovsky and numerous Soviet advisers. Bloodshed was avoided this time. Blood would be shed later, on December 17, 1970, when the same Gomulka gave the order to shoot demonstrators in Gdansk. True, on December 20 he himself will resign and Edward Gierek will become the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the PUWP.
Events unfolded in Hungary according to a different scenario.
In Hungary, the influence of the opposition grew rapidly, making itself known more and more loudly. Events in Poland spurred on the Hungarians: if the Poles managed to return Gomulka to power, despite Russian resistance, then why couldn’t they do the same with Imre Nagy?
Soviet armored personnel carrier BTR-40
All this caused a sharp negative assessment by Soviet Ambassador Yu. V. Andropov. The Hungarian leadership’s consent to the return of “old party cadres” to the Politburo was regarded by them as “a serious concession to right-wing and demagogic elements.” M. Suslov and A. Mikoyan were sent to Budapest to analyze the events and evaluate them. Ultimately, Mikoyan persuaded “the best student of Comrade Stalin” M. Rakosi to resign. The Hungarian Workers' Party (HWP) was headed by Erne Gere, who was almost no different from his predecessor in ideological and political views.
In September, opposition protests noticeably intensified under the slogans of “more humane socialism” and the restoration of former Prime Minister I. Nagy to the party. Under strong pressure from below, the Hungarian party leadership was forced to announce on October 14 the restoration of Nagy to the VPT. But protest demonstrations continued.
On October 23, tens of thousands of residents of the capital took to the streets, demanding the withdrawal of Soviet troops, freedom of the press, a multi-party system, etc. By the evening, the number of demonstrators reached 200 thousand people. The crowd chanted: “Death to Hera!”, “Imre Nagy to the government, Rakosi to the Danube!”
At approximately 8 pm E. Gere spoke on the radio. His speech was replete with attacks against the demonstrators - they say that this demonstration is “nationalist” and “counter-revolutionary”. He demanded that the riots stop and everyone go home. But with this speech, Gere only added fuel to the fire: at night, groups of radical youth looted a number of weapons warehouses. A small army unit with two tanks went over to the side of the already armed demonstrators. With their support, demonstrators seized the building of the national radio center, where the secret police were forced to open fire with their service pistols. The rebels already had machine guns and machine guns (two tanks have already been mentioned). The rebels smashed the giant statue of Stalin into small pieces. The first dead and wounded appeared, the demonstration quickly grew into an uprising!
Distinctive features The radicalism and intransigence of their participants became part of the Hungarian events. A real armed uprising took place in Hungary against the Soviet Union and its supporters. The streets were filled with blood, sometimes of completely innocent victims, as, for example, during the mass lynching of Hungarian party activists and secret police recruits on Republic Square by an angry crowd - 28 people became victims of “people's” lynching, of which 26 were Hungarian state security officers. The Hungarian Prime Minister Imre Nagy, who returned to power, managed in the few days allotted to him by fate, history and the Kremlin to hand over to the Soviet Ambassador Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov a statement on Hungary’s withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and its neutrality and to radio the whole world about the war between the Hungarians and the Russians.
On the territory of the country during this period there were units of the Special Corps of Soviet Forces (the corps headquarters was located in Szekesfehérvár, it was commanded by Lieutenant General P. N. Lashchenko) - the 2nd and 17th Guards Mechanized Divisions, which were delayed on the way home from Austria after the liquidation of the Central Group of Forces in 1955, as well as the 195th Fighter and 172nd Bomber Air Divisions.
The uprising did not come as a surprise to the military - given the difficult political situation in the country, the corps command already in July 1956, by order of Moscow, developed the “Action Plan for Soviet Troops to Maintain and Restore Public Order on the Territory of Hungary.” After the plan was approved by the commander of the Special Corps, it received the name “Compass”.
Armored car BA-64, created during the Great Patriotic War. It remained in service with the Soviet Army for a long time.
The restoration of order in Budapest according to this plan was entrusted to the 2nd Guards Mechanized Division, Lieutenant General S. Lebedev. The 17th Guards Mechanized Division, Major General A. Krivosheev, was supposed to cover the border with Austria with its main forces. Particularly discussed were the cases when it was allowed to use lethal weapons. No other activities or special training were carried out for Soviet units.
Western countries actively helped the Hungarians in preparing the rebellion: on July 18, the United States allocated more than $100 million for the preparation of the putsch, Radio Free Europe intensively inspired: NATO countries would come to the rescue, in Upper Bavaria, near Traunstein, Hungarian saboteurs (who fled in 1945) were preparing . to the west are Hortis and Salashists). In October 1956, a group of Hungarian Germans arrived there, many of whom had previously served in the SS. From them, cohesive core groups of rebel detachments were formed, which were then transported by plane to Austria, and from there, by ambulance planes and vehicles, to Hungary.
In Munich, on Lockerstrasse, there was a recruiting center headed by an American army captain. From here, former Nazi supporters headed to the scene of events. On October 27, one of the groups (about 30 people) was transferred to Hungary with the help of border guards from neutral Austria. More than 500 “freedom fighters” were transferred from England. Several dozen groups were sent from Fontainebleau, France, where NATO headquarters was then located.
T-34 on the street of Budapest
So, as already mentioned, on October 23, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Budapest, demanding free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the country. In the evening, a telephone rang in the office of Lieutenant General P. N. Lashchenko. The Soviet Ambassador Yu. V. Andropov called:
Can you send troops to eliminate unrest in the capital?
In my opinion, the Hungarian police, state security agencies and the Hungarian army should restore order in Budapest. It is not within my competence, and it is undesirable to involve Soviet troops in carrying out such tasks. In addition, such actions require a corresponding order from the Minister of Defense.
Despite the obvious reluctance of the army authorities to interfere in the internal Hungarian conflict, Andropov and Gere that same evening, by telephone through the Moscow party leaders who had gathered for an emergency meeting of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee, achieved a decision to put units of the Special Corps on combat readiness.
After the start of shooting and fighting on the streets of Budapest, the Chief of the General Staff, Marshal V.D. Sokolovsky, at 11 pm on October 23, gave the order to move Soviet troops to Budapest. Imre Nagy himself did not object to this decision. A similar action was supported by Mao Zedong, Joseph Broz Tito and Palmiro Togliatti. The corps commander, General Lashchenko, went to the capital to lead the troops, accompanied by security. On one of the streets of Buda, the rebels burned down a radio station in a car and killed the radio operator. Approaching Soviet tanks saved the other crew members.
On the city streets, Soviet soldiers were met by barricades hastily erected by the rebels. The troops were fired from the windows of houses and from the roofs. The rebels skillfully used close combat anti-tank weapons and the peculiarities of urban planning. Strong pockets of resistance were created in the city center, which were defended by rebel detachments numbering up to 300 people. every.
The first to enter the battle on the streets of Budapest in the early morning of October 24 was the 2nd Guards Mechanized Nikolaev-Budapest Division of Major General S.V. Lebedev, having lost four tanks and four armored personnel carriers during the day of fierce fighting.
The BTR-152 armored personnel carriers, which did not have an armored roof, burned like candles: any grenade or Molotov cocktail thrown from the upper floors of the buildings turned them into a flaming steel grave for the entire crew and troops.
The current situation required clarification of the Compass plan, since there was no need to count on the help of the Hungarian army and police. As it became known later, out of 26 thousand people. 12 thousand personnel of the Hungarian People's Army (HPA) supported the rebels. In Budapest itself alone there were about 7 thousand Hungarian military personnel and up to 50 tanks. In addition, there were several dozen self-propelled artillery units (self-propelled guns), anti-tank guns, mounted and hand grenade launchers. The passages between the houses were mined and blocked with barricades.
The rebellion turned out to be well prepared; a lot of weapons fell into the hands of its participants. It was the saboteurs mentioned above who seized radio stations and the Danuvia and Lampadyar weapons factories on the night of October 24. The International Red Cross Hospital in Budapest was headed by former SS man Otto Frank.
The Hungarian Revolution began with a carnival, but too quickly turned into a bloodbath. The intervention of Soviet tanks politically turned its course: the civil war turned into a war with the Soviet Army, its main slogan now became “Soviets, go home!”
There were already up to three thousand armed rebels operating on the streets of the Hungarian capital. About 8 thousand people were released from prison, most of whom were ordinary criminals.
The approaching units - the 37th Guards Tank Nikopol Red Banner Order of Suvorov Regiment of Colonel Bichan, the 5th Guards Mechanized Regiment of Colonel Pilipenko, the 6th Guards Mechanized Regiment of Colonel Mayakov and the 87th Guards Heavy Tank-Self-Propelled Brest Regiment of Nikovsky - immediately entered the battle.
The number of Soviet troops that entered Budapest did not exceed one division: about 6 thousand people, 290 tanks,
Some units of the Hungarian People's Army went over to the side of the rebels
120 armored personnel carriers and 156 guns. These forces were clearly not enough to restore order in a huge city of two million.
Units of the Hungarian People's Army that remained loyal to the previous government also entered the battle - until October 28, in 40 cities of the country, Hungarian units used weapons against their compatriots. According to Hungarian data, about a thousand people died, Hungary was on the verge of civil war.
Four divisions of the 3rd VNA Rifle Corps arrived in the capital and began fighting against the rebels. The grouping of Soviet troops in the Hungarian capital was also constantly increasing. On the same day, October 24, armored vehicles of the 83rd Tank and 57th Guards Mechanized Regiments of the 17th Guards Yenakievo-Danube Mechanized Division entered the city.
At noon on October 24, Hungarian radio announced the introduction of a state of emergency in Budapest and the establishment of a curfew. The cases of participants in the uprising were to be considered by specially created military courts. Imre Nagy declared martial law in the country, trying to bring the anarchy of the revolution into the mainstream of law and order. Alas, it was already too late - events that had been held back for too long, as if catching up for lost time, developed spontaneously and uncontrollably.
During the day of fierce fighting, about 300 rebels were captured. Soviet tanks took control of strategic targets in Budapest and bridges over the Danube.
On October 25, M. Suslov and A. Mikoyan met with I. Nady. By October 28, an agreement was reached to overcome the crisis by peaceful means, but the entire course of subsequent events in the capital and the country changed the agreements reached.
In the following days the fighting continued. The tankers had a hard time on narrow streets among a hostile population. Schoolchildren, who at first did not pay attention to them, approached the tanks parked at intersections, took bottles of gasoline from their briefcases and set fire to the combat vehicles. There was constant shooting from the windows at soldiers who had abandoned their tanks and shelters. There was danger everywhere. Every day, transport planes took the wounded and the bodies of the dead to the Union.
PTRS-41 is another fairly effective anti-tank weapon. Simonov's anti-tank rifle had a 5-round magazine and automatic reloading
By October 28, virtually all power in Hungary was in the hands of the Revolutionary Military Council, led by generals Kanna, Kovacs and Colonel Maletera. They proclaimed Imre Nagy the official leader of the uprising. On the same day, Hungarian troops receive an order from their government not to participate in hostilities. The assault on the center of the capital planned for that day by the joint efforts of Soviet and Hungarian units never took place.
At the request of Imre Nagy's government, Soviet troops were withdrawn from Budapest at the end of October. On October 30, Suslov and Mikoyan brought from Moscow the Declaration of the Soviet government on equality and non-interference in relations between socialist countries. The next day, Soviet units began to leave Budapest, and Imre Nagy announced on the radio the beginning of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary.
On November 1, the Hungarian government, in connection with the transfer of additional eight divisions to Hungarian territory by the Soviet command, announced its withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, the country’s neutrality and the need to withdraw Soviet units and units outside the country. Such a development of events was not expected either in Moscow or in the capitals of other socialist states.
At the same time, 87-year-old Admiral Horthy, who was in Portugal, offered himself as the ruler of Hungary, and in Montreal, Canada, there was a demonstration of Hungarian emigrants shouting: “Hitler is coming back!” We are freedom fighters!”
In October 1956, the “fighters for democracy and freedom,” brutalized by blood and impunity, hanged them, trampled their victims underfoot, gouged out their eyes and cut off their ears with scissors. On Moscow Square in Budapest, they hung 30 people by their feet, doused them with gasoline and burned them alive.
Nevertheless, the withdrawal of Soviet troops began, but it was only a smoke screen. The grouping of troops in Hungary and neighboring territories continued to increase - the danger of the Hungarian example for other socialist countries of Eastern Europe was too great. The Soviet leadership decided to put out the flaring fire as quickly as possible.
Soviet units withdrawn 15–20 km from the capital were putting equipment and weapons in order, replenishing fuel and food supplies. The Minister of Defense, Marshal of the Soviet Union G.K. Zhukov, received instructions from the Party Central Committee to develop “an appropriate action plan related to the events in Hungary.” This was the last combat operation that Zhukov had to carry out.
The Degtyarev light machine gun (RPD), created back in 1944, was actively used by both sides
N. S. Khrushchev and G. K. Zhukov: one of the last “peaceful” conversations
To N. S. Khrushchev’s question about how long it would take the Soviet troops to restore order in the People’s Republic of China, Zhukov replied: “Three days.” It took, of course, more, but the operation had already received the code name “Whirlwind.” The leadership of Soviet troops in Hungary was entrusted to the Commander-in-Chief of the United Armed Forces of the Warsaw Pact member states, Marshal I. S. Konev.
Troops were raised on alarm in the border military districts. Units of the 38th Army of General X. Mamsurov and the 8th Mechanized Army of General A. Babajanyan from the Carpathian Military District were urgently sent to help the Special Corps, including the 31st Tank, 11, 13 (39), 32nd Guards , 27th mechanized division.
Li-2 - began its service in the United States before World War II. For a long time it was the best Soviet military transport aircraft
Units sent to Hungary received new T-54 tanks and other military equipment. A white vertical stripe was applied to the tank turrets to identify “friend or foe.” The 33rd Guards Mechanized Division, Major General E. I. Obaturov, arrived from the Separate Mechanized Army stationed in Romania. The 35th Guards Mechanized Division was transferred from the Odessa Military District.
Thousands of tanks, self-propelled guns, and armored personnel carriers walked along the roads of Hungary. Not since World War II have Hungarians seen so much military equipment and soldiers. The ring of Soviet troops tightened around the center of the armed uprising - Budapest. USSR Defense Minister Marshal Zhukov reported daily to the party leadership on the progress of the fighting on Hungarian soil.
T-34–85 with identification stripe, slightly damaged
By this time, the new government of Hungary, headed by Imre Nagy, announced the neutral status of the country, and even appealed to the UN with a request to protect its sovereignty. These actions of the Hungarian authorities finally decided their fate. The Soviet leadership gave the order for the armed suppression of the “rebellion.” To hide preparations for a military action, Soviet representatives entered into negotiations on the withdrawal of troops. Naturally, no one was going to do this, they just needed to gain time.
On November 2, Janos Kadar was brought to Moscow, who agreed to head the new government after the suppression of the rebellion, although only recently in a conversation with Soviet ambassador He declared to Yu. V. Andropov: “I am a Hungarian, and if necessary, I will fight our tanks with my bare hands.”
T-54 - the newest tank of that time
But the rebels did not waste time. A defensive belt was created around the capital, reinforced with hundreds of anti-aircraft guns. Outposts with tanks and artillery appeared in settlements adjacent to the city. The most important objects of the cities were occupied by armed detachments, the total number of which reached 50 thousand people. There were already about 100 tanks in the hands of the rebels.
Particularly brutal battles broke out in Hungary in November 1956. After strengthening the group and careful preparation, on November 4 at 6 a.m., at the signal “Thunder,” Operation Whirlwind began. The Soviet command, completing preparations for the operation, sought to misinform and, if possible, behead the Hungarian leadership. When the troops were already completing the final preparations for the assault on Budapest, Army General M. S. Malinin negotiated with the Hungarian delegation on the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the country. The delegation was led by Pal Maleter, who had already received the rank of lieutenant general. And on November 3, the chairman of the KGB of the USSR and his group, during negotiations, arrested a delegation of the Hungarian government, which included the “new” Minister of Defense Pal Maleter, Chief of the General Staff Such and other officers. A military tribunal awaited them ahead, which did not promise anything good.
The main task of “neutralizing” the enemy was still carried out by units of the Special Corps. The 2nd Guards Mechanized Division was to take control of the northeastern and central parts of Budapest, the 33rd Guards Mechanized Division was to enter the city from the southeast, and the 128th Guards Rifle Division was to establish control over the western part of the city.
The main role in the street battles in Budapest was played by the 33rd Kherson Red Banner, twice Order of Suvorov, Guards Mechanized Division, reinforced by the 100th Tank Regiment of the 31st Tank Division and the 128th Self-Propelled Tank Regiment of the 66th Guards Rifle Division. It was commanded by General Obaturov.
Soviet tank and mechanized units had to go into battle on the move, without thorough reconnaissance and organization of interaction with the infantry. To capture the most important objects, commanders created one or two special forward detachments in the division as part of an infantry battalion with attached paratroopers and 10–12 tanks. In a number of cases, assault groups were created. To suppress pockets of resistance, troops were forced to use artillery and use tanks as mobile fire weapons. The assault groups used flamethrowers, smoke grenades and sabers. In cases where the massive use of artillery did not produce positive results, surprise night attacks were carried out.
It can be said that the tactics of the combined arms units of the Soviet Army were based on the virtually universal experience of the Great Patriotic War.
The German MP-40 submachine gun again proved to be an excellent weapon in urban battles
By 7 o'clock in the morning on November 4, the main forces of the 2nd, 33rd Guards Mechanized and 128th Guards Rifle Divisions (about 30,000 people) rushed into Budapest, capturing the bridges over the Danube, the Budaers airfield, and capturing about 100 tanks, 15 guns, 22 aircraft. Paratroopers from the 7th and 31st Guards Airborne Divisions also fought in the city.
Tanks, using cannon fire and ramming, made passages in the barricades built on city streets, opening the way for infantry and paratroopers. The scale of the fighting is indicated by the following fact: on November 5, units of the 33rd Guards Mechanized Division, after an artillery raid, began an assault on the resistance center in the Corvin cinema, in which about 170 guns and mortars from 11 artillery divisions took part. From three sides, several dozen tanks shot at the surviving firing points, suppressing the last pockets of rebel resistance. By evening, the 71st Guards Tank Regiment of Colonel Litovtsev and the 104th Guards Mechanized Regiment of Colonel Yanbakhtin captured the city quarter.
At the same time, our units attacked rebel positions near Moscow Square. It was not possible to immediately capture the positions near the square, the Royal Fortress and the quarters adjacent to Mount Gellert from the south, but here one of the rebel leaders, General Istvan Kovacs, was captured. Fighting continued in this area in the following days. The assault groups used flamethrowers, smoke and incendiary charges.
Stubborn battles took place for the Royal Fortress and for the former palace of the dictator Horthy. More than a thousand rebels skillfully used engineering communications and underground walls of the fortress. We had to use heavy tanks and concrete-piercing shells. On November 7, Soviet units took another node of resistance - Mount Gellert.
The suppression of the rebellion also took place outside Budapest. From November 4 to 6, units of the 8th Mechanized Army disarmed 32 Hungarian garrisons, suppressing armed resistance in Derbrecen, Miskolc, Szolnok, Kecskemét, etc. The troops of generals Babajanyan and Mamsurov took control of airfields and main roads, and the Austro-Hungarian border was blocked.
"Faustpatron" (Panzerfaust) - the most formidable anti-tank melee weapon of the period of the end of World War II was again used by the rebels
On November 8, over the island of Csepel, where several military factories were located and the production of anti-tank “faustpatrons” was established, the Hungarians manage to shoot down an Il-28R from the 880th Guards Regiment of the 177th Guards Bomber Air Division. The entire crew of the reconnaissance aircraft was killed: squadron commander Captain A. Bobrovsky, squadron navigator Captain D. Karmishin, squadron communications chief Lieutenant V. Yartsev. Each crew member was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The fact that during the assault on the island, Soviet troops lost only three tanks is the undoubted merit of the heroic crew - the losses could have been much greater.
The small armed groups that remained after the defeat of the main detachments no longer sought to hold individual buildings and positions, but, acting from ambushes, retreated first to the outskirts of populated areas and then into forests.
By November 11, the armed resistance of the rebels was broken throughout Hungary. Having stopped the open struggle, the remnants of the rebel groups went into the forests with the aim of creating partisan detachments, but a few days later, after a continuous combing of the area, in which Hungarian officer regiments took part, they were finally liquidated.
Coaxial MG-42 anti-aircraft machine gun on an anti-aircraft mount. With the help of such a “spark”, an Il-28R was shot down
The Il-28R reconnaissance plane descended too low and was shot down. The crew died
During the fighting, Soviet troops lost 669 people killed. (according to other sources - 720 people), 1540 were wounded, 51 people went missing. Units of the 7th and 31st Guards Airborne Divisions lost 85 people killed. and 12 people - missing.
A large amount of equipment was shot down and damaged, so the 33rd Guards Mechanized Division alone lost 14 tanks and self-propelled guns, 9 armored personnel carriers, 13 guns, 4 BM-13 installations, 31 cars and 5 motorcycles.
The 9-mm Makarov pistol (PM) has been in service with the Soviet Army and a number of Warsaw Pact allies since 1951.
During the period of fighting and after its end, a large number of weapons were confiscated from the Hungarian armed groups and the population: about 30 thousand rifles and carbines, 11.5 thousand machine guns, about 2 thousand machine guns, 1350 pistols, 62 guns (of which 47 anti-aircraft). According to official Budapest, from October 23 to January 1957, that is, until the clashes between the rebels and Hungarian and Soviet troops stopped, 2,502 people died. and 19,226 were injured. About 2 thousand people died in Budapest alone. and over 12 thousand were wounded. About 200 thousand people. left Hungary.
When the fighting ended, investigative actions began to be carried out against those individuals who were suspected of participating in the uprising. The Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Hungary, Imre Nagy, asked for political asylum from Yugoslavia. Tito refused to hand over the rebellious prime minister for almost a month, but eventually gave in, and on November 22, 1956, I. Nagy, accompanied by two employees of the Yugoslav embassy, boarded a bus and headed to his home.
When the car drove past the headquarters of the Soviet command, a tank blocked its way, the Yugoslavs were thrown out of the bus, and Imre Nagy was arrested. Two years later he was convicted and executed “for treason.” Although it should be noted that N. Khrushchev advised J. Kadar to handle the case of the former Hungarian leader with “soft mittens” - put him in prison for 5-6 years, and then get him a job as a teacher at some institute in the province. But Janos Kadar did not listen to the “patron”: Imre Nagy and his six main associates were executed by hanging. There were 22 thousand trials, another 400 people. were sentenced to death and 20 thousand were expelled from the country.
The attempt to “democratize” Hungarian society from below ended in failure. After the suppression of the rebellion on the territory of Hungary, the Southern Group of Forces was formed, which included the 21st Poltava and 19th Nikolaev-Budapest Guards Tank Divisions.
J. Kadar ruled Hungary for more than 30 years. But he did not build the kind of socialism that developed on the territory of the Soviet Union. Kadar constantly emphasized that socialism is a distant prospect and there is no need to rush. In Hungary, he introduced alternative elections (several candidates for one seat), partial liberalization of prices, and economic levers for managing enterprises. A program for the development of commercial banks, joint stock companies and stock exchanges was implemented, the Hungarian economy remained multi-structured - state, cooperative and private enterprises competed with each other in the market. As a remark, it can be noted that the “father” of Hungarian economic reforms, R. Njersz, at one time passed on the experience of Hungarian reforms to China, which to this day gives the PRC stability of development and a positive effect.
After the liquidation of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (read socialist camp) and, accordingly, its military component (Warsaw Pact Organization), Hungary quickly chose a pro-Western orientation, and by 1999 it became a full member of the military organization of the West during the implementation of the NATO Eastward Expansion program "
However, at present there is a certain revival of contacts between Hungary and Russia in the military-technical sphere. It is proposed to replace outdated Hungarian armored vehicles with Russian armored personnel carriers, and supplies of Russian tanks are expected. There has been a noticeable increase in the supply of spare parts for various types of Russian-made military equipment and weapons, which are mainly equipped with the Hungarian army.
Notes:
15 developing countries have ballistic missiles in service, and another 10 are developing their own. Research in the field of chemical and bacteriological weapons continues in 20 countries.
Quote from: Russia (USSR) in local wars and military conflicts of the second half of the 20th century. - M., 2000. P.58.
Self engineering structure, which bore this name and included a high wall of reinforced concrete slabs, was installed in August 1961 and existed until 1990.
50 Jahre das Beste vom Stern. 1998, no. 9. S. 12.
The secrecy has been removed... - M.: VI, 1989. P. 397.
