http://libcom.org/history/articles/hungary-56

Why shouldn't I have stood with the Hungarians had I been around back then?

What's untrue or out of context in this brief synopsis from the not so commie leftists at libcom?

since many of the relevant documents have either become "declassified" or have surfaced since the dissolution of the USSR

But first, as you are probably aware, there was a Polish insurrection just prior to the Hungarian uprising and news of this had made its way to Hungary via Radio Free Europe. Soviet troops DID NOT advance on Poland even though there was a process of reform being implemented.

The key distinction is that there was no concerted attempt to overthrow Communism in Poland, whatever posture they took towards the Kremlin.

So that was a deciding factor in that the uprising in Hungary was expicitly anti-Communist and not anti-Kremlin (in fact, at one point the Soviets issued a statement that they were prepared to negotiate with members of the Warsaw Pact about the presence of Soviet troops in Hungary). Remember we are talking about the heighth of the Destalinization period here.

The other primary reasons discussed in internal Soviet documents are not showing weakness to the US (who has recently launched a strike against Suez with the Israelis, remember), cutting off anti-Communist sentiment from spreading to neighboring states, and also a concern with how not acting would be perceived/received by members of the Soviet party.

What exacerbated this more was that there was turmoil within the leadership in Hungary, and Stalinists were being purged and in their waked emerged Imre Nagy who simply became a front man for the anti-Communist uprising including calling for a multi-party state, abandoning the Warsaw pact and appealing to the UN to help establish Hungary as a neutral state.

Beyond this, I don't know what else can be said. Blood was spilled obviously. There were large groups of people opposed to the Communist system.

Why shouldn't you have stood with the Hungarians demanding "reforms"? Because they only go in one direction: regression and ultimately the dissolution of the Communist system.

If you want to make this about right and wrong or excesses or violence or brutality or something like that, then I think you would be well served to ask what any of this is about in the first place.

Its not about "democracy" first and foremost. Its not about worker's management on the individual level. The piece you linked was simply a cloying defense of Council Communism playing on the reader's sentimentality. Why couldn't almost the exact same piece be written against the Jacobins and the Terror? What say you on that matter?

What did you think of this quote?


The Observer said: 'Although the general strike is in being and there is no centrally organised industry, the workers are nevertheless taking it upon themselves to keep essential services going for purposes which they determine and support. Workers councils in industrial districts have undertaken the distribution of essential goods and food to the population, in order to keep them alive... It is self help in a setting of Anarchy. "

How were they going to stop the fascists mentioned in the article if they took "power"? Where was the central oganization going to come from? Not some fairy tale of "common good Anarchy"

The backdrop for this is a war that killed 60 million people and a previous war that killed millions more and the rise of fascism dictatorships all over Europe and in Japan. History, as always, was one giant uninterrupted bloodbath.

Perspective, man.

but my first sense has never been that "the uprising in Hungary was expicitly anti-Communist." This is perhaps because I have seen so-called "left communists" speak of Hungary as an example of "state capitalism" crushing "genuine" worker movements.

The trouble with perspective is that it is plural and so many folks have dogs in the proverbial hunt.


I have wondered how destalinaztion may fit into the mix.

Had just pulled this up tonight, but haven't read it...again perspective...

http://clogic.eserver.org/2005/furr.html

an opening up of freedom of political speech

Its the same story told time and again whether its repeated by "left communists" or "genuine" worker's movements or not.

That link is something I've read before. You're better off avoiding it IMO. It is short on real history and long on interpreations and subjective appeals/opinions. And I say that with no dog in the hunt.

See, these guys can SAY whatever they want. It still means dick just like it always did. They're for the people or workers or they're for freedom and democracy and independnce and whatever.

But all of those things carry an addendum

I'm for the worker's..

..and their right to fight collectivization

I'm for the people..

..and their right to choose their own economic desitny

I'm for freedom..

..for capitalist rule

I'm for liberal democracy..

..the hallmark of the bourgeoisie state

I'm for independence..

..from the communist system

Get it? None of the things they're "for" are lofty ideals in the abstract. Everyone one of them is grounded in stone cold reality..and they're all in favor of the rule of reaction and the continued power/domination of capitalist violence

"Neutral" never means neutral, and both sides understood that perfectly well in 1956. So there is no reason we should be confused about it now.

Leaving the Warsaw Pact as a response to Stalinist excesses that were already in the process of being reformed? C'mon, think about what that really means.

Because you grew up in America, that's why. As such you know all about "democracy". You know where the slogan comes from, who uses it, what it really means, and what interest it serves. You know that every single movement has to have "democratic-" prefixed to it or else it is not legitimate... it doesn't conform to "human rights", it is not A-OK. Even the ultra-radical-super-left must be "democratic"... even to the point that it must first disown that "other" anti-democratic-ultra-radical-super-left

You should know all that. You should be a fookin' expert on the subject.

In 1956, Hungary had stopped being Fascist for exactly 9 years. They became socialist, not by choice but because of geopolitics. Perhaps the Soviets could have done a better job of it but they were a little busy, what with 25 million war dead, and the devastation of one third of the country... representing two thirds of the productive capacity... and this after the famine, after the Civil War, after WWI...

Of course, there might have been "genuine" workers feelings on the subject. These would have been hardy feelings indeed. They would have survived the crushing of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919. They would have had to survive the White Terror that followed. They would have hidden during the anti-Jewish pogrom by the Arrow Cross Party which pioneered Nazi anti-semitism and genocide in Europe... and managed to be the only national Nazi Party to have gotten a significant Nazi vote among real workers (there is that "genuine" again).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/89/Nyilaskereszteszaszlo.SVG/200px-Nyilaskereszteszaszlo.SVG.png

Then, there were the Hungarian National Socialists, the Greenshirts, and the rest:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/86/Arrow_cross.svg/220px-Arrow_cross.svg.png

Between them all, that genuine working class feeling would have had to survive six or seven years of such government, the murder of perhaps 100,000 communists, socialists and trade unionists... and at least 500,000 Jews... all rounded up by their countrymen.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0f/Holocaust-ArrowCross-DohanySynagogue.jpg
Arrow Cross massacre at Dohany Synagogue

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ce/MarosVictims.jpg/455px-MarosVictims.jpg
Arrow Cross murder of doctors and nurses at Maros Hospital

These workers with genuine feelings would have had to tolerate all that, with nary a peep, only to feel the stirrings of such feelings again, only a few years after the war...

... and without the slightest ambiguity coming from the Arrow Cross underground which to this day maintains dozens of websites devoted to the "injustices" in the trials of Hungarian Fascism by the Soviets after the war.

http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/hist/jpetropoulos/arrow/history/arrow%20cross.gif

It's possible, I suppose...
...those "genuine" feelings.

As I said, I haven't ever looked at the history in any depth at all - let alone that history that is of course dramatically missing in the acceptable views of the acceptable "left."

Danka.

Hadn't realized that fascism ran so deep in Hungary. That and other recent history provide sufficient 'excuse', imo.

Coulda used that info a couple days ago as it was brought up by a detractor over yonder, but I got it now.

is that, even given all of the above -- and it was like that in most countries in Eastern Europe where fascism came rolling in -- it wouldn't have been enough to draw the Soviet's hand had they merely been about reforming their own government and purging/replacing leaders.

EVEN IF the resulting turnover meant that the new government was not as friendly with the Kremlin a la the Poles

To me, Poland and Gomulka is the perfect foil for this discussion because you have to explain why one countries actions precipitated a military response and the other didn't..and both events happened almost simultaneously.

Maybe we should talk about what it meant for Eastern Europe and Italy and Japan when the Nazis came to town. What it truly meant for fascism to be on the rise in Europe.

Thanks to Pinko for bringing this subject forward and thanks to everyone else for their participation. This is why I just love this motley mob - you don't get these kind of discussions and education anywhere else.

Anax, I haven't read about the Arrow Cross in years. I have some brushing-up to do...

You guys! :adore: