Indictment for Murder

The spark that set off the Hungarian explosion blew across from Poland in June 1956, when the workers of industrial Poznan (pop. 372,000) revolted. By October Moscow had been forced to grant the Poles a large measure of independence. The question then arose: How much further could Moscow go in granting freedom to other restless satellites? Evidence before the U.N. committee suggests that there was a difference among Soviet leaders on this point. One group, probably the marshals, was against any further concessions, and eager to crush any rebellion that might take place in Hungary.

Early in October Moscow sent Hungary's Premier Andras Hegedus and Party Secretary Erno Gero on a visit to Tito's Yugoslavia, and the world concluded that Kremlin concessions to Hungary were in the wind. But several days before the revolt broke out, says the U.N. report, ponton bridges were assembled by the Russian army at Zahony on the Hungarian-Soviet frontier. And in neighboring Rumania, Soviet officers on leave and reserve officers speaking Hungarian were recalled to their units.

The day before Hungarian students were expected to demonstrate at the statue of Hungarian Hero-Poet Petofi, Soviet forces in western Hungary were observed moving towards Budapest. The Hungarian demonstrations, when they occurred, were spontaneous, "entirely peaceable," and nothing shows that any demonstrators intended to "resort to force." Then Erno Gero, suddenly recalled from Belgrade, made an aggressive radio speech: There would be no relaxation of Communist control. The students became incensed. And when they tried to have their modest demands read out over the same radio station, the hated AVH secret police fired on them.

"So far as any one moment can be selected as the turning point that changed a peaceable demonstration into a violent uprising," says the U.N. report, "it would be this moment. The anger of the crowd was intensified when white ambulances, with Red Cross license plates, drove up before the Radio Building. Out piled AVH police, wearing doctors' white coats. A part of the infuriated crowd attacked them and, in this way, the demonstrators acquired their first weapons."

Playing with Fire. There is thus reason to believe that the Soviet marshals intended to provoke rebellion in Hungary in order to crush it firmly and finally. But the Russians badly miscalculated their own strength and control. Within a few days the Hungarian Communist Party had disintegrated, the Hungarian army had defected, and the borders of Hungary were open to a host of sharp-eyed Western observers. Overnight the Revolution became a war strictly between Hungarians and Russians, with the world looking on. In this unexpected situation, the Soviet army command was forced to mark time while the forces they had alerted days before in Rumania (mostly Mongols and Tartars) could be brought up.

On the first evening Hungarians had called for the return of the one Communist leader whose 21-month rule they had identified with a relaxation of Communist hardship. But now, on the steps of Parliament House, the reluctant Imre Nagy had given a disappointing party-line speech. He was called into the presence of Hegedus and Gero. "Now you can stew in your own juice," shouted Gero. Answered Nagy: "I warned you not to play with fire."

Nagy was forcibly taken to Communist Party headquarters in Akademia Street and locked in a room with his son-in-law. Next morning, six hours after the first Soviet tanks (from garrisons inside Hungary) began shooting up Budapest streets, Budapest radio announced that Imre Nagy had been appointed Premier. And the radio implied that Nagy himself had called for Soviet intervention.

Minister in a Cell. That night, as Soviet tanks burned in the Corvin block and the great statue of Stalin lay in pieces on the pavement, Soviet Vice Premier Anastas Mikoyan and Presidium Member Mikhail Suslov flew secretly into Budapest to confer with Gero (a ruthless Communist known as Comrade Pedro in the Spanish Civil War). There was confusion and panic among the Russians as the crowds in nearby Parliament Square began shouting for Nagy. Soviet tanks massacred hundreds. The party conference was shifted to the cellar of Communist headquarters where it was decided by the Russians that Secretary Gero should be replaced by Janos Kadar, a Communist popularly identified with the anti-Stalinist line. Suslov and Mikoyan stayed three days in their guarded cellar working out the plan of operations. Nagy--his country's Premier so far as the people knew--was brought in from time to time from his room and told their decisions, and a stream of announcements continued to go out over the radio in his name. A workers' delegation, permitted to see Nagy, found him seated in front of 15 silent men all armed with submachine guns. Blandly Nagy told the workers it was "naive to ask for a definite date" for the withdrawal of Soviet troops, said that they should be grateful for Soviet protection.

On the third day of the Revolution, Gero attempted to have Nagy sign a predated document inviting the Soviet forces to intervene in Hungary, but Nagy wrote in the corner of the paper: "I do not accept this." The Freedom Fighters, backed and armed by the Hungarian army, were winning the battle of the streets. Next day Gero and Hegedus went off somewhere in a Soviet tank and have not been seen since. But the Soviet plotters still had their master play to make.

The Pull-Out. No longer captive, Premier Nagy announced a ceasefire and the world cheered. Mikoyan and Suslov agreed to the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary, and flew back to Moscow. The Russian troops started pulling out. The Workers' Councils, formed during the past week of fighting, began to exert their influence, and outlawed political parties, Socialist and Peasant groups, revived.

Nagy, "somewhat taken aback by the pace of developments . . . threw in his lot with the insurgents," fired some but not all the Communists from his Cabinet and set up Hungary's first multiparty government in eight years. As Minister of Defense he appointed Lieut. General Pal Maleter, who as a colonel had led the heroic stand against the Soviet tanks at Kilian barracks.

First Party Secretary Kadar gave Nagy his full support, "to avoid bloodshed." During an interview with Soviet Ambassador Andropov, Kadar told the Russian that as a Hungarian he would be prepared to fight "with my bare hands against your tanks." Witnesses said that Kadar at that moment, a man broken in spirit and health in Communist prison, was "visibly under great emotional strain and demonstrably sincere."

The Promise. This was the bright, brief heyday of Hungarian freedom. Then the news reached Budapest that massed Soviet armed forces were pouring across the eastern frontiers. Nagy summoned Soviet Ambassador Andropov, told him that this was a violation of the Warsaw treaty and that unless the troops were withdrawn he would denounce the treaty. Andropov insisted that the Soviet troops were coming across the border only for the purpose of relieving those troops who had been fighting. He said that the Soviet government was sticking by its promise to negotiate a partial withdrawal of its troops from Hungary and suggested that the Hungarian delegations resume talks with the Russian military. They did, and a couple of days later only certain technical details of the withdrawal remained to be settled.

To settle these details the Russians, on the evening of Nov. 3, invited a Hungarian delegation consisting of Minister of Defense Maleter, Minister of State Ferenc Erdoi, Chief of Army Staff General Kovacs and Staff Officer Colonel Szucs to visit the Soviet military command at Tokol near Budapest. The Hungarian negotiators sat down to a banquet given in their honor by the Soviet officers. At midnight the gathering was interrupted by the entry of a short, soft-footed man in a uniform that "bore no insignia of rank." The head of the Soviet delegation, General Malinin, seemingly astonished by the interruption, made a gesture of indignation. But the visitor whispered to him, and General Malinin shrugged his shoulders and ordered the Soviet delegation to leave the room. The midnight visitor was General Ivan Serov, notorious chief of Soviet security. On the spot, Serov and his men arrested Pal Maleter and the entire Hungarian delegation. None have been heard from publicly since.

The next day the fresh Soviet army came pounding down the Budapest boulevards "firing indiscriminately into houses to strike fear into people and to force their surrender." With the capture of the main radio station, the voice of Janos Kadar was heard announcing the formation of a new Hungarian government composed of former Stalinists. It was a tape-recorded announcement. Kadar was in Moscow and next day he was in Prague, being briefed on his new functions. "It was the Russian commandos, and not Mr. Radar's government, who assumed control." The multiparty government melted away, and an astonished, despondent Nagy took refuge in the Yugoslav embassy. Threats and false promises signed by Kadar soon pried him out of that temporary haven. He and his entourage disappeared into the hidden fastnesses of Soviet Rumania.

There was no Hungarian civil administration to support the Kadar government, no public support whatever, only "a small segment of former Communist Party officials, a few senior officers of the Hungarian army," and a few members of the old AVH. But that did not bother the Russians, who sent Kadar scurrying around the country whipping up a following while his taped voice cried hysterically from every radio station. When a delegation from Kobanya asked him to intervene with the Soviet military commander to stop the deportation of workers, Kadar answered: "Don't you see there are machine guns at my back?"

That is Hungary today, says the U.N. committee: a country ruled by machine gun.

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