Merry Andrew wrote:Dag's right. Nearly 3,000 dead Hungarians isn't exactly peanuts by Eastern European standards. What was the population of Hungary at the time anyway? You have to look at percentages, not raw numbers.
Well, I think of the 1956 Revolution and its suppression as one of the, say, 5 most defining and cruel moments of Cold War-era history. It certainly got according prominence in the history books. But in terms of numbers, then, the human cost actually paled in significance - not just compared to the Cambodian Genocide as Dag mentioned, but pretty much any of the civil wars that raged in Africa, Asia or Central America during (and due to) the Cold War, and that are largely ignored in the history books.
That just hadnt hit home with me yet. Some ethnocentrism in that - European blood is worth more attention than African blood?
And yes, the 1968 uprising and its suppression in Czechoslovakia was, in comparison I mean, almost non-violent. That brings up an interesting point I was thinking about the other day though. Two or three thousand dead may not, comparatively, be all that much, but it's still two or three thousand families bereft of their son, husband or father (most victims were men). And was it worth it?
This is of course much debated, still and ever again, in Hungary. Was it responsible of Imre Nagy to tell his people, in his famous last radio appeal, that "the troops were fighting" the Soviet invaders, when no organised army action was taking place, or could take place anymore? Was it responsible of the Americans, per Radio Free Europe, to call onto the Hungarians to resist and fight, right up till the last moment - when the US never had any intention to intervene on the Hungarians' behalf, never even had any contingency plans to do so, and it was clear that by themselves the Hungarians never stood a chance, at least not once the Soviet army returned the second time?
Most historians, Hungarians incluis, deem Radio Free Europe to have been irresponsible, though Nagy's appeal is approached with more empathy. But what about the kids, the "sracok", the teens and students and workers, who fought the incoming tanks with Molotov cocktails? Was it worth it, considering that they never stood a chance? Shouldnt someone like Nagy have called upon them, once the Soviet tanks had returned, to resist spiritually but not throw away their lives? Is that what they should have done?
I was reading a collection of memoirs about '56 of Hungarian emigres, and there was one story from a guy who was twenty-something at the time. When they heard that the tanks were returning, they hurried back to their suburb of Soroksar, and there built a barricade across the street. But when the tanks arrived, they just drove around the barricade, across the railway tracks. In anger and frustration, the youths threw anything they could find - rocks, bottles. The man recalls how they managed to break a few windshields - and how at the end, a young teenager lay dead.
Was it worth it? To any rational standard, it seems, at first blush, not. Notions of pride having been defended, honour having been saved, seem quaint, and cruel to the mother of that boy. But perhaps there was a rational argument why it was worth it. After 56, for sure, retribution was swift, harsh and massive. More people were executed then, I think, than ever after in the Eastern Bloc until communism fell thirty years later. But then, of course, after 1960, "goulash communism" came, "the merriest barracks in the Soviet camp". Would Kadar have pioneered this looser, more stoic communism if the Hungarians hadnt risen up with such violent passion in '56? Would he have been allowed to by the Soviets?
The backgrounds and motivations for Kadar's more pragmatic "goulash communism" were manifold, the product of many factors to do with the country, the moment, and the man as well. But surely part of the reason was that the Soviet overlords thought it wiser to buy those feisty Hungarians off with some material freedoms?
So perhaps those worker and student youths who in '56 fought the Soviet troops that were to put Kadar in power, with their lives won their countrymen the relative freedom that the same Kadar was, eventually, to accord them. Interesting irony.
Meanwhile, the Czechoslovaks responded to the Soviet tanks returning with almost completely non-violent passive and spiritual resistance, rather than Molotov cocktails, and what did they get? Twentyone years of arguably the most repressive communist regime, bar Ceausescu's, of the Eastern Bloc.
The comparison doesnt exactly seem a showcase for non-violent resistance..
Not in Central Europe. It's low perhaps in comparison to genocide in Cambodia or whatnot but up in our little corner of the world that's a large number, methinks. Less so in 1956, but not that much less. In 1968 when Soviets shot and injured tens of Czechs and Slovaks (maximum in the few hundreds, I really don't know the body count), it was still perceived as a blood bath. I think it's all relative to experience one grows up with and context, I've always thought of it (and was brought up to consider it) as a mass violence, a shooting rampage. Soviets may not have seen it that way, but we sure did. Eh, I guess I can see both sides.
