Hungary wins the right to not ask questions
THE 1956 COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN HUNGARY AND THE PRESENT-DAY ANTI-COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA
In the years of 1989-90, a bourgeois counter-revolution took place in Hungary. Opportunist and revisionist forces inside the leadership of the former Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (HSWP) made a bargain with capitalist circles of the USA and Germany and handed over the power to internal bourgeois counter-revolitionary forces. The Marxist wing inside the HSWP proved unable to defend the achievements of socialism. Later those who surrendered the socialism reorganised themselves into the Hungarian Socialist Party and joined the political system of capitalist Hungary. Neither can we neglect the role of the opportunist policy of the former leadership of the Soviet Union, that betrayed socialism.
The bourgeois forces which gained power in 1990 consider 1956 their historical ideal. On this ideal is based the whole political and ideological system of capitalist Hungary. It also constitutes the main means of the present-day anti-communist propaganda.
DIRECTIONS OF ANTI-COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA
The modern Hungarian bourgeois elite regards the events of the 1956 as "revolution and war of independence." The main aim of the anti-communist propaganda is to make people accept such an interpretation of 1956. The term revolution also means to them that everything that was done in the socialist Hungary during the period from 1948 to 1956 is unacceptable and should to be thrown away.
The "war for independence" in bourgeois interpretation means that Hungarian people carried out a heroic struggle against the Soviet Union and - as the present-day memorial plaques run - "here in Budapest heroic Hungarian patriots won a victory over the most powerful army of the world".
According to the argumentation of capitalist propaganda, the Soviet troops began military operations against Hungary without declaration of war. There were 2,652 Hungarian citizens killed in battle and a "heroic struggle for independence which lasted many days, suffering defeat as the country was left alone in the fight against a much more powerful enemy."
One of the main tendencies of the anti-communist propaganda is an attempt to prove that communism was alien to the nature of the Hungarian people and that the socialist period could come only because it was imposed upon Hungary from outside.
From the above follows one of the most widespread directions of the anti-communist attack - they try to prove that in the 1956-58 years, the "communist regime" implemented savage reprisals against "heroes of the revolution and the war for independence" and even against ordinary Hungarian people. According to the propaganda, 400 people were executed, 21,668 were sentenced to imprisonment, 16-18,000 were interned for participating in the revolution. Actually there can be no doubt that it was a counter-revolution aimed against socialism.
In October 1956, counter-revolutionary forces in Hungary started attacks on a young socialist state with the support of international imperialism. The aim was to overthrow the socialist system and restore the bourgeois system which existed before 1945. Counter-revolutionary forces took advantage of the misconceptions and errors made by the ruling Hungarian Working People's Party with Mátyás Rákosi at its head in the period from 1948 to 1956.
In 1985, János Kádár, who after 1956 led the party of Hungarian communists for 32 years, at the meeting with the then general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Mikhail Gorbachev, spoke about the lessons of Hungarian history: "The revealing of errors was not followed by their correction, and such a deep social crisis was formed that gradually turned into a counter-revolution." The counter-revolution forces also had taken advantage of the situation in the communist party of the Soviet Union when, after the death of Stalin, Khrushchev came to power. Khrushchevite "denunciations" played into the hands of the anti-communist propaganda and instigation against Soviet Union.
It is also beyond doubt that the majority of Hungarian people nevertheless didn't want the restoration of the capitalist past. They didn't want the return of the regime which, from 1920 to 1945, was marked by the name of Miklós Horthy and which brought Hungary to the ravages of the WWII and Fascism. In spite of the difficulties, problems and errors of socialist construction, the people preferred the socialist society.
In November 1956, the Soviet Union hastened to defend Hungarian socialism. It prevented the United States and other imperialist countries from military intervention into Hungarian events and, at the same time, allowed the suppression of the armed resistance of counter-revolutionary forces.
On 4 November 1956, the Hungarian Revolutionary Worker-Peasant Government was formed with János Kádár at its head. The Kádár-led government treated those whose activity was directed against state order according to the laws of the People's Republic of Hungary.
