50 years since the Hungarian Revolution.

international | history and heritage | news report Sunday October 22, 2006 22:12 by liszt

It is very curious that most of the key momentous changes of European History & thus the events we note as watersheds of our social development - were spontanous & un-planned or even the results of "accidents".

50 years ago today young people took to the streets of Hungary & kicked off a popular revolution. No-one really knew what they wanted & no-one really remembers if they had leaders & what their names were. It proved to be the event which confirmed that the Warsaw Pact states of Europe would have to follow the stalinist isolationist path laid out just a few years before in the former East German state & sectored Berlin. It is odd how the Hungarian revolution began, as odd as how the Berlin wall came down (the result of a mistakenly read statement at a press conference). The brutality shown them was the same brutality that kept half of our continent in bonds till only recently.

Hungarian youngsters danced on the remains of Stalin's statue. Only his big boots were left for a few weeks. That was really revolutionary.

When thanks to a quick run of really very good Eurovision song competition winners with chirpy easy to understand choruses -stalinism disappeared & now all we have are a few James Bond movies with no special effects & dodgy casio watches & car gadgets.

Of course they don't tell you that in school. They credit the fall of stalinism to the EEC & the good work of the polish pope. But at end it was unsustainable just like Capitalism will be someday .

But one thing is certain. We must all be very glad Stalinism ended. & that Kruschev didn't get an -ism or Andropov for that matter though Andropov went on from being Soviet ambassador to Budapest & thus a sort of Soviet equivalent of Negroponte to being head honcho of the USSR. & that's when he tried to kill the polish pope. (you see how it all comes together?)

And oh yeah! the Americans did nothing. Don't forget that either.

from Wikipedia :-

{ "On the afternoon of October 23, 1956, about 20,000 protesters convened next to the Bem statue. Péter Veres, President of the Writers’ Union, read a manifesto to the crowd, the students read their proclamation, and the crowd then chanted the censored "National Song" (Nemzeti dal), the refrain of which states: "We vow, we vow, we will no longer remain slaves." Someone in the crowd cut out the communist coat of arms from the Hungarian Flag, leaving a distinctive hole and others quickly followed suit. Afterwards, most of the crowd crossed the Danube to join demonstrators outside the Parliament Building. By 6 p.m. the crowd had swollen to more than 200,000 people; the demonstration was spirited, but peaceful.
At 8 p.m., First Secretary Ernő Gerő broadcast a speech condemning the writers' and students' demands, and dismissing the demonstrators as a reactionary mob. Angered by Gerõ's hard line rejection, some demonstrators decided to carry out one of these demands - the removal of Stalin's giant statue from its place near to Heroes' Square. By 9:30 p.m. the statue was down and protestors placed Hungarian flags in the boots atop the pedestal." }

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956