I thought about marking the beginning of the uprising a couple weeks ago, but seeing as how today was the beginning of the end (the second Russian assault on Hungary) it seemed more appropriate for this to be the day to mark. For her birthday this year I got my wife a illustrated book of essays about the revolution and the aftermath. The cover of the book and my favorite photograph is of a man in the smashed storefront of a Soviet bookstore. As Soviet propaganda is burning in the street he recites Sandor Petofi's "National Song".
The uprising or revolution or whatever you call it was a muttled affair at the time and has not become any clearer within the shrouds of history. So I'll keep it short and leave the last word with the resistance fighters themselves.
"We shall drag the blood soaked Hungarian mud on to the carpets of your drawing rooms.
In vain do you take us into your homes-we still remain homeless. In vain do you dress us in new clothes-we remain in rags. From now on a hundred thousand question marks confront you.
If you wish to live in the illusion of a false peace do not heed us. In our streets there are still cobblestones from which to build barricades. From our woods we can still get stout sticks. We still have clear consciences with which to face the guns.
But if you will heed us, listen. And at long last understand. We not only want to bear witness to the sufferings of the Hungarian people in their fight for freedom. We want to draw the attention of all the people to the simple truth that freedom can only be achieved through struggle.
Peace is not simply the absence of war. No people have longed more passionately for peace than we. But it must not be the peace quiescence. This involves complicity in oppression. We promise the world that we shall remain the apostles of freedom.
All workers, socialists, even communists, must at last understand that a bureaucratic state has nothing to do with Socialism"
Nemzetor. January 15, 1957
(as Malcolm notes the correct date to be marked is the 4th of November, but I put it up last night instead)
3 comments:
Those of us old enough and sensitive enough to remember 4th November 1956 (and I just qualify) should share a shiver of regret on this anniversary.
Those transmissions from Kossuth Radio (and other "illegal" stations) were heart-breaking, particularly as -- one by one -- they were suppressed, quelled, snuffed out.
That always came back to me when I was teaching Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and we reached Casca's chilling speech in Act I, scene ii:
I could tell you more news too: Marullus and Flavius, for pulling scarfs off Caesar's images, are put to silence.
While the young revolutionaries were systematically "put to silence", the West, the US in particular, did little. What the West did contribute -- those incendiary broadcasts by the CIA-controlled Radio Free Europe, for example -- merely added to the subsequent slaughter. The UN was shown to be useless.
Most culpable of all were the British and French, embroiled in the pointless and deceitful Suez adventure. Thus, at a single stroke, the two European powers of any significance were incapable of taking a moral or military stand.
Three good things came out of 1956:
1. The West, and the US in particular, received an influx of young, talented, motivated Hungarians.
2. The apologisers for Stalin (in the likes of the CPGB) were exposed to harsh reality. Many good comrades came out of the CP-gloom into real leftist politics.
3. An idea, an ideal, cannot be "put to silence".
By the way, your employment experiences continue both to pain and amuse. It's the way you tell 'em. Commiserations on the redundancies: congratulations on the writing thereof.
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