Hungary 1956

Synopsis

In October 1956 a popular uprising in Hungary liquidated the Stalinist bureaucracy that had ruled the country since 1949. Imre Nagy, a reformist Communist Party member, became the head of a new government, supported by popular grass-roots organizations including the workers' and revolutionary councils.

The councils pursued a program of national independence from the Soviet Union and workers' self-management in the factories. They also established coordinating bodies that took control of regions, cities, and productive centres. For critical left-wing militants on both sides of the Iron Curtain, the experience meant a new form of direct democracy. The councils' heterogeneous social composition and unclear political platform, however, caused fears in the USSR leadership about their shift toward nationalist and pro-Western positions. When the Hungarian government withdrew from the Warsaw Pact at the councils' requests, the USSR's Red Army occupied the country...