Hungary 1956

Why was there opposition in Hungary?

Hungary was led by hard-line Communist Matayas Rakosi.
Hungarians hated the restrictions which Rakosi's Communism put on them.
Hungarians were feeling bitter about losing freedom of speech.
They lived in fear of the secret police
They resented thousands of Soviet troops and officials in their country.
Some places had Russian street signs, Russian schools and shops. Hungarians had to pay for all of them.

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In June 1956 a group within the Communist party in Hungary opposed Rakosi.
Rakosi appealed to Moscow for help. He wanted to arrest 400 leading opponents.
Moscow did not help him. The Kremlin ordered Rakosi to retire for "health reasons".
The new leader Erno Gero was no more popular to the people.
A huge student demonstration took place on the 23rd of October and the giant structure of Stalin in Budapest was torn down.
The USSR allowed a new government to be formed under the well respected Imre Nagy.
Soviet troops and tanks withdrew and Hungarians created thousands of local councils to replace Soviet power.
Several thousand Hungarian soldiers defected from the army to rebel cause, taking their weapons with them.
Nagy's government began to make their own plans. They planned to hold free elections, create impartial courts, restore farmland to private ownership.
It wanted the total withdrawal of Soviet presence in Hungary
It also planned to leave the Warsaw pact and declare Hungary neutral in the Cold War.
There was widespread optimism that president Eisenhower would support the new and independant Hungary.

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Kruschev at first seemed ready to accept these reforms. However he could not accept Hungary's withdrawal of the Warsaw Pact.
In November 1956 thousands of Soviet troops and tanks moved to Budapest.
The Hungarians did not surrender. Two weeks of bitter fighting followed.
Around 3000 Hungarians and 7000-8000 Russians were killed.
200,000 Hungarians fled across the border into Austria to escape the Soviet forces.
Imre Nagy and his leaders were imprisoned and then executed.
The Hungarian resistance was crushed within 2 weeks.
The west protested to the USSR but couldn't help due to the Suez crisis in the middle east.
Kruscheve put down Janos Kadar as leader
Kadar took several months to crush the resistance.
Around 35,000 anti-Communist activists were arrested and 300 were executed.
Kadar cautiously introduced some of the reforms being demanded by the Hungarian people.
However, he did not waver on the central issue of the the membership of the Warsaw Pact.

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