The Tragedy of the 23rd
Monday was a national holiday in Hungary, a celebration of the nation’s 1956 attempt to regain sovereignty from Soviet tutelage. Tragically, it failed, simultaneously killing any hopes of post-Stalin communism reforming itself. Hungary’s current Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, was later to accuse the erstwhile socialist regime of robbing the youth of its future; however, he now faces similar accusations himself. Does the tragedy live on in Orbán’s government?
Sixty one years ago, on October the 23rd 1956, after a week of country-wide student organisation, protesters gathered in Budapest’s Parliament Square with a list of demands. Economic reform, greater democracy, free speech, the opening of society, and the installation of the reform-minded Imre Nagy as Prime Minister. The incumbent Prime Minister, Ernő Gerő, responded with a speech denouncing the protests, to which demonstrators retaliated by tearing down the statue of Stalin in the city centre. Soviet troops attacked the crowds, night fell, and the embattled Hungarian leadership burnt the midnight oil as they discussed their options. The following morning, a little while after dawn, they announced the installation of Imre Nagy as Prime Minister.
However, the protesters were not yet quieted and a week of turmoil followed. On October 30th, after an attack on the Budapest Communist Party’s headquarters killed 24 of its defenders, Nagy took to the airways and made a fateful announcement: he would form a multi-party government and ask the Soviet troops to withdraw. This would prove a step too far for Moscow. As historian Tony Judt writes,
“What the Kremlin could not condone was the Hungarian Party’s abandonment of a monopoly of power . . . . Such a departure from Soviet practice was the thin edge of a democratic wedge that would spell doom for Communist parties everywhere.”
Within 24 hours the Kremlin began to receive reports of animated discontent in Romania and Bulgaria. The anti-Soviet ‘contagion’ was spreading. In response, Khrushchev secretly summoned János Kádár, a member of Nagy’s government. Kadár was presented with a Hobson’s choice: regardless of what happened the Red Army was going to restore Soviet control, but Kádár was given the option of being installed as Nagy’s replacement. Kádár accepted.
On November 3rd, Kádár’s betrayal still a secret, Nagy’s government opened negotiations over the withdrawal of Soviet troops. It did not go well. Their delegation was arrested and, just hours later, in the murk of the pre-dawn, Red Army tanks rolled in. Despite intense resistance, within 72 hours Hungary had fallen. Kádár was sworn in on November 7th. The uprising had failed.
The death penalty was established and a purge began. 341 Hungarians were executed, 22,000 were sentenced to prison, 13,000 were sent to internment camps, and many more were fired from their jobs or placed under close surveillance. 200,000 fled the country (a little over 2 percent of the population) and settled in the West. And Nagy? On June 15th 1958 he was found guilty of fomenting counter-revolution and sentenced to execution by hanging.
These events are themselves tragic, but the tragedy extends beyond the revolution’s failure. As we all know, Hungary eventually gained the freedom Nagy was martyred for. Thirty-three years later — as Budapest celebrated its escape from Soviet tutelage — 100,000 Hungarians took part in Nagy’s ceremonial reburial. One of those who spoke at his graveside was the young Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s current Prime Minister. In his eulogy he described Nagy as a man who “identified himself with the wishes of the Hungarian nation to put an end to . . . blind obedience to the Russian empire and the dictatorship of a single party.” Today, 61 years after the revolution that ended in Nagy’s execution, Orbán is Putin’s closest ally in Europe, he is responsible for anti-democratic electoral reforms (that have been described as “a profound wound to the fundamental mechanism of democratic accountability”), and he is widely considered to be creating a corrupt oligarchy.
If Orbán were to accept these accusations, he might justify them as being for the greater good. He sees Hungary as the vanguard of a battle between two types of European nations: immigrant and non-immigrant. At a recent speech addressing the Association of Christian Intellectuals, Orbán described the situation:
“Europe’s overriding tension is about whether Europe will be Christian, and whether there will be a Christian Europe: a number of countries form a group of what have become immigrant countries, which have taken in people from non-Christian civilisations; and there are countries forming a group which have not yet become immigrant countries, or never want to become immigrant countries. The great task facing European leaders today . . . is to find a way of co-existing”
This, for Orbán, is perhaps what justifies his consolidation of power and his friendly relationship with Putin. He sees Hungary (and Europe at large) as facing a mortal threat from cultural change. In his own words,
“we are seeking to protect the foundations of life that have their origins in Christianity.”
In Orbán’s view, because these Christian values have not been defended in ‘immigrant’ countries, European projects such as freedom of religion, the fight against anti-semitism, and equality between the sexes (yes, he uses the cause of gender equality as a justification whilst members of his government attack gender study programmes) are all under threat. Orbán attributes this failure of defence to liberalism, which he contrasts with his guiding principles: sovereignty and Christian social teaching.
According to Goran Buldioski, director of the Open Society Initiative for Europe, Orbán is working straight from the populist playbook: fighting an imaginary war against an imaginary threat in an attempt to distract from domestic issues such as healthcare, education, and rural development. Whilst he pontificates about a mortal threat to Europe, and his critics lambast him with accusations of demagoguery, your average Hungarian continues to live in a country that languishes towards the bottom of the OECD’s Better Life Index, making it the worst-performing member of the European Union. This is where the true tragedy lies.
