V o L u m e I : a d

Meanwhile, Soviet leaders Anastas I. Mikoyan and

Mikhail A. Suslov arrived in Budapest from Moscow and

decided that GeroP would have to go. He was replaced by

János Kádár, neither a reformer nor a Stalinist, as general

secretary of the party. The Soviet leadership plainly hoped

that Nagy and Kádár would be able to control the situation.

The uprising, however, was rapidly spreading through-

out Hungary. Nagy announced that negotiations were under

way for the withdrawal of Soviet troops once law and order

had been restored. On 27 October Nagy finalized his new

government, which included noncommunist politicians

such as Zoltán Tildy and Béla Kovács. Nagy and Kádár

then commenced negotiations with the Soviets on a cease-

fire agreement.

During his brief tenure as prime minister, Nagy at-

tempted to bring events under control. He proposed only

limited reforms as a start. His ultimate intention, however,

was to implement the political program of his first pre-

miership in 1953. He offered a general amnesty to the pro-

testers and promised the withdrawal of Soviet troops from

Hungary. He soon realized, however, that his 1953 program

was out of step when the revolution spread to the rest of

the country. Therefore, he acceded to most of the popula-

tion’s wishes, namely the introduction of political pluralism

and Hungarian withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact.

On 28 October the new government convened for the

first time in the Parliament building. The government

then ordered the dissolution of the secret police. Mean-

while, the Political Committee of the party agreed to the

cease-fire. Nagy also announced that Soviet troops would soon withdraw

from Budapest, and on 29 October Soviet troops began to leave the city.

A four-party coalition government was founded on 30 October. As such,

the Smallholders’ Party, the Social Democratic Party, and the National Peas-

ants Party were all reconstituted. At the same time, the communist Hungar-

ian Workers’ Party was dissolved. Nagy freed political prisoners including

Cardinal József Mindszenty, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment

by Rákosi in 1948. Nagy also informed the people of his government’s inten-

tion to permanently abolish the one-party system.

This marked a decisive turning point in Nagy’s policy. He abandoned his

moderate reform agenda and became fully committed to the more radical

demands of the population. On 31 October, in a speech on Parliament Square,

he announced that Hungary would begin negotiating its withdrawal from the

Warsaw Pact. On 1 November Nagy formally declared his intention to leave

the Warsaw Pact, proclaimed Hungarian neutrality, and asked the United

Nations (UN) to mediate his nation’s dispute with the Soviet Union. At the

same time, a new communist party, the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party,

was founded. On the evening of 1 November, the general secretary of the

942

Hungarian Revolution

Hungarians burn a picture of Soviet leader Josef Stalin

during the anticommunist revolution in Budapest in 1956.

(Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)

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new party, János Kádár, went to the Soviet embassy to begin negotiations

with Soviet authorities. He was then secretly flown to Moscow, where he met

with Khrushchev.

On 3 November the new government began negotiations for the final

withdrawal of Soviet troops, and a new coalition was founded that included

communists, three members of the Smallholders’ Party, three Social Demo-

crats, and two representatives from the National Peasants’ Party. General Pál

Maléter, the new minister of defense and one of the heroes of the revolution,

visited Soviet Army headquarters on the evening of 3 November under a

pledge of safe conduct to negotiate for Soviet withdrawal and Hungarian de-

parture from the Warsaw Pact. He was not allowed to leave the headquarters

and was kept under house arrest until the end of January 1957, when he was

handed over to the new Hungarian authorities. Maléter was tried and exe-

cuted in the summer of 1958.

Meanwhile, Khrushchev and the Soviet leadership had become increas-

ingly alarmed with the developments in Hungary. While Moscow was willing

to make some concessions, a multiparty cabinet and free elections plainly

threatened Soviet control over all of Central Europe. Soviet leaders may also

have believed, as they charged, that Western agents had been at work stir-

ring up revolt. Military leaders also demanded action to reverse the humil-

iation suffered by the Red Army in withdrawing its tanks earlier. Nagy’s

announcement on 1 November 1956 of Hungary’s intention to withdraw

from the Warsaw Pact was the straw that broke the camel’s back and trig-

gered Soviet military intervention.

At dawn on Sunday, 4 November, Khrushchev sent 200,000 Soviet troops

and 2,000 tanks into Hungary. The troops immediately secured Hungary’s

airfields, highway junctions, and bridges and laid siege to the major cities.

Nagy called for resistance to the Soviets. Fighting broke out across Hungary,

but the center was in Budapest. Unaided from the outside, the fight lasted

only a week. Nagy and some of his associates sought and obtained asylum

at the Yugoslavian embassy. Cardinal Mindszenty sought refuge in the U.S.

legation, where he remained until 1971.

Kádár immediately denounced Hungary’s withdrawal from the Warsaw

Pact and, with Soviet military backing, took control of the government. On

8 November he announced the formation of the Revolutionary Worker-

Peasant Government and its Fifteen-Point Program. The latter included the

protection of the socialist system from all attacks, an increase in living stan-

dards, the streamlining of bureaucracy, the augmentation of agricultural pro-

duction, a justification for the Red Army’s intervention, and the withdrawal

of troops from Hungary. The last point was rescinded following pressure

from the Warsaw Pact.

Thousands of Hungarians were arrested, and an estimated 200,000 others

fled the country—many of them young and well-educated—most of them

across the western border into Austria. Nagy, promised safe passage from

the Yugoslavian embassy, was arrested by the Soviets on 22 November and

imprisoned. He was subsequently tried and executed on 16 June 1958. Some

70 other people were also executed.

Hungarian Revolution

943

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