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All data for 31 Oct. goes here Research Notes

October 31

The ambiguous events in Hungary on October 30 (progress with consolidation coupled with developments that threatened it) were followed by ambiguities in Moscow on the 31st. There had been strong debates in the Kremlin on October 28, but eventually, the turn of events proposed by the Central Committee of the HWP had been accepted, with some strict conditions attached. Imre Nagy was to form a stable government, on which he would rely in restoring order in the country. However, the basis for this could not be the acceptance of further revolutionary demands. Khrushchev made it plain that he saw the call for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary as a hostile move. Even if that were allowed, serious heed had to be taken of Mikoyan’s warning to the HWP Political Committee in Budapest on October 28: ‘Comrades have to show and behave with firmness in this. If there are further concessions tomorrow, there will be no stopping things.’

In the event, the HWP had to make several further important concessions after October 28. It lost its remaining influence over the armed forces and over the press. The central party daily, Szabad Nép (Free People) ceased to appear on October 29 and the local newspapers and radio stations became mouthpieces for the rebels. Hungary seemed likely to restore a de facto multi-party system. The Soviets remembered what vote the communist party had received under far more favourable conditions in the 1945 general elections.

The leaders of the CPSU  were accurately informed about the situation in Hungary. Their informants told them of the anti-communist sentiments of the population, greatly exaggerating the atrocities that were being committed. An account was kept of all the Soviet war memorials overturned and war graves desecrated. The information in these reports was corroborated on the following day by the mob justice dispensed in Köztársaság tér, which was also reported in the Western press. Reports and rumours that the Hungarians were brutally murdering any Soviet soldiers that fell into their hands were still credible eleven years after the Second World War. They confirmed the view that there was a danger of a fascist take-over, which the Soviet Union had an obligation to prevent, as it had once before. On October 30, Mikoyan and his team reported that it was impossible to halt the armed uprising by peaceful means. The rebels had occupied party buildings, printing presses and telephone exchanges. Furthermore, a change could be expected in Hungary’s international policies. ‘We think that Comrade Konev,’ the Warsaw Pact commander-in-chief, ‘should come to Hungary without delay.’

This was the kind of information possessed by the Presidium of the CPSU  when it sat down to discuss the Hungarian crisis on October 30. Hungary’s chances of escaping a Soviet intervention were lessened further by Soviet air-reconnaissance reports of a concentration of transport planes near Vienna. This could be interpreted by the Soviet leaders as preparations for a possible Western invasion. The willingness of the West to fight had been demonstrated on October 29 when war broke out with Egypt over Suez. The message of reassurance to the Soviet Union from President Eisenhower was by no means a guarantee.

So it is surprising, in fact, that Khrushchev, when addressing the CPSU  Presidium, should initially have rejected the demands of the hard-liners for immediate intervention. Indeed he agreed to the publication of a government statement promising a radical revision of relations between the Soviet Union and the people’s democracies. This meant that Moscow accepted the events in Hungary for the time being. It was endorsing not only the changes of October 28, but the introduction of a multi-party system and the formation of a coalition government. However, Khrushchev on October 28 had also outlined a military alternative, detailing a scenario in which a counter-government would be set up and a concentrated attack made, with prior agreement from the leaders of the ‘fraternal’ parties.

At the meeting of the CPSU  Presidium on October 31, First Secretary Khrushchev changed his position of the previous day and decided on military intervention. Preparations began and roles were assigned straight away, according to the plans prepared in advance. The members of the future government and the committee that would draft its programme were decided. The army was given the three days it needed for preparation. Khrushchev undertook to brief the leaders of the fraternal parties, including those of Poland and Yugoslavia, whose endorsements were least certain and most important. The Chinese leaders were in Moscow at the time. Despite previous support for the changes in Eastern Europe, they had already proposed on the afternoon of October 30 that there should be a military solution to the Hungarian crisis.

In the light of events, the curious aspect is not that CPSU  Presidium, after thorough debate, decided on military intervention on October 31, but that it had not done so a day earlier, on October 30. The most plausible explanation is that the full picture to be gained from all the alarming news that arrived on October 30 only took shape the next day. By then it was apparent in Moscow that communist power in Hungary would collapse (if it had not done so already), unless the Soviet Union gave immediate military assistance. The prospect of Hungary breaking away from the Soviet bloc was unacceptable to the Kremlin in several ways. Any erosion of Stalin’s legacy could bring an end to de-Stalinization and the de-Stalinizers in Moscow. They would be accused of allowing the ‘imperialists’ (the Western powers) to move their positions up to the Soviet border. Khrushchev needed only to remember the fate that had overtaken the ousted Beria three years before, which was too high a price to pay. The Soviet leadership felt that the opposing world order would interpret the changes in Central Europe as weakness on their part. This had already been a factor in the Suez affair and could only be refuted by a display of force. Finally, there was a danger that Hungary’s secession might lead to the disintegration of the socialist camp, which was unacceptable to Soviet (or even Polish) security policy. So the Moscow leadership had no other option but to intervene militarily. Analysing the situation, the US intelligence services had reached the same conclusion on October 30. The reports they prepared on that day note that the Soviet policy-makers were facing two courses—either to accept the new situation in Hungary and allow it to become independent, or to restore their power by force of arms. They concluded that Moscow would certainly choose the latter course. The Soviet decision was followed by an influx into Hungary of further Soviet units, much more modern in their equipment and reliably manned than those deployed on October 23.

The disintegration of the Hungarian communist party was hastened by the events in Köztársaság tér, so that paradoxically, these helped to further the consolidation. The Akadémia utca party centre became almost deserted, although the insurgents of Tûzoltó utca (9th District) agreed to guard it at János Kádár’s request. There were similar tendencies at other party premises, where a decreasing number of other party committees were still operating. Radical reform of the party could not be deferred. The question was no longer whether the party would retain a share of power, but whether it would survive at all, whether Hungary would continue to have a communist party of any kind.

These events led on October 31 to the dissolution of the HWP and the foundation of a new communist party, the HSWP. This was not just a change of name, although that too had importance. It was a radical renewal, as the composition of the new Provisional Executive Committee showed: János Kádár, Imre Nagy, Géza Losonczy, Ferenc Donáth, Zoltán Szántó, György Lukács and Sándor Kopácsi. Replacement of the old party by a new one had become inescapable. The Soviet delegates, who returned to Moscow on the 31st, agreed that it offered the one possibility of having communist policies represented by a party and a leadership with mass credibility and a chance of retaining a share of power, even in free elections.

There was success on the same day in the government’s talks with the armed rebels. Adults were to be allowed to keep their weapons. The rebels were to be incorporated as units into the new public-security force, the national guard formed at the Kilián Barracks, which was viewed as the centre of the armed revolutionary struggle. Army General Béla Király was appointed commander-in-chief of the national guard, but representatives of the young revolutionaries were also included in its leadership. The result was an agreement with the armed rebels, so that a start could be made to clearing away the barricades and wreckage, and incorporation of them into a security force able to keep order and prevent further lynchings and mob justice.

Parallel with the establishment of the Revolutionary Armed Forces Committee and the national guard, a Revolutionary National Defence Committee was set up at the Ministry of Defence. The generals of the Rákosi period were dismissed from command of the army, opening the way for it to present itself as a popular force dedicated to defending the revolution. So the position of the armed forces on October 31 looked settled: the dilemma hitherto facing officers—whether to side with the people or obey the government’s orders—seemed to have been resolved.

Soviet forces during the withdrawal, seen in Budapest’s Hõsök tere (Heroes’ Square, 14th District) on October 31, 1956 (MTI photograph) The process of redressing one of the most serious grievances from the past—political prisoners—continued, or rather concluded with the release of those held in the Budapest National Prison. Cardinal József Mindszenty, freed from house arrest on the previous day, was accompanied to Budapest by the Rétság armoured unit commanded by Antal Pálinkás (Pallavicini) and by a group of revolutionaries from Újpest (4th District).

Events in the provinces had been moving somewhat faster. Since October 28, the revolutionary organizations had hardly had to contend with any political or military force. (Nonetheless, the consolidation can be considered to have culminated on October 31 in the provinces as well. That was when Major General Lajos Gyurkó in Kecskemét, the last army commander to put up armed resistance to the revolutionary changes, placed himself under the protection of the Soviets.) From October 28 onwards, the revolutionary councils consolidated and forms of cooperation developed between the revolutionary organizations of various kinds (local and workplace bodies and workers’ councils). The revived political parties, which also began to reorganize in the provinces on October 30, sought to introduce themselves into this existing system of local and regional relations. To maintain order and prevent further mob violence, ÁVH officers were taken into protective detention, as were compromised police and army officers and party and council functionaries in several places. That the consolidation was faster in the provinces is apparent from the absence of any further provincial victims of mob violence, after the lynching in Ózd on October 29. Although blows were struck and knives drawn in several places (especially villages), respect for the revolutionary organizations sufficed to prevent people taking the law into their own hands.

Notes and References
