ON TUESDAY night I had a long telephone conversation with the writer Stephen Vizinczey, who was one of the heroes of the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Vizinczey was a student activist and playwright in Budapest in the 1950s. Three of his plays were banned by the communists. He was part of the squad that managed to bring down the colossal bronze statue of Stalin in the middle of Budapest with the aid of three tractors, some steel cables and a blowtorch (this last was needed to cut off Stalin's feet at the base of the statue).
As the uprising was put down ferociously by the Soviet military, Stephen had to flee from his homeland. After adventures in Austria and Italy, he arrived in Canada, with fewer than 50 words of English and even fewer dollars. Yet he eventually established himself as an English language novelist of enormous distinction. His global bestseller, In Praise Of OlderWomen, is widely regarded a modern erotic classic.
Stephen told me: "We knew the Soviet Union would collapse; we just didn't know when. We had been waiting, we thought this was the moment." But he is wise enough to realise that this view was not shared by all his fellow revolutionaries. He told me of a friend, a poet, who believed that repressive totalitarianism was so solidly entrenched that nobody could make even a dent in it. Yet this man also took part in the uprising. Why? Amazingly, the reason was: "For decorum. He didn't expect it to make any difference."
The revolt was started by agitators in the Writers' Union. The Soviet leader, Nikita Kruschev, later claimed that "shooting a few writers" would have prevented the uprising. The agitation spread rapidly, especially when units of the Hungarian army joined the insurgents. The Soviet forces already in Hungary withdrew. This was a tactical move, almost a trick. They regrouped in the remote countryside and tens of thousands of fresh troops were brought in from Romania and Russia. Then the real fighting began.
The insurgents had no chance. Budapest was bombed mercilessly. Soviet soldiers rampaged through hospitals shooting wounded Hungarians. All resistance was crushed with exceptional brutality. About 2700 Hungarians were killed. Another 350 were executed after so-called trials, and a further 30,000 were either imprisoned or interned. About 200,000 fled for their lives. Many of them were the highly educated young. Few returned to Hungary.
The leaders of the uprising had hoped ingenuously for support from Britain and France, but these countries were otherwise engaged - in the debacle of Suez. For the ordinary folk of Hungary, and the other Russian satellite states in Eastern Europe, the grim conclusion was that communism just had to be endured. The west had no intention of helping them defeat it.
The intellectual ramifications through the west were huge. In the years between 1945 and 1956, many on the left in the west were fellow travellers; that is, people who were in sympathy with communism but not card-carrying party members.
After the vicious suppression of the revolution, many of those fellow travellers, as well as avowed communists, finally realised that there was no point in looking to Russia for any kind of hope or leadership. It was not the revolt itself, but its suppression that changed minds.
The Italian Communist Party shed half a million members. In Britain, about 7000 members left the much smaller British Communist Party. There was one glaring exception to this trend. The distinguished Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid courageously, if provocatively, rejoined the Communist Party, claiming that the brutal Russian intervention in Hungary had been both justified and necessary. He condemned the "so-called free nations of the west" and trumpeted his "strengthened and confirmed communist faith".
This prompted predictable outrage, yet MacDiarmid was perhaps speaking for more people than was allowed at the time. A significant number of fellow travellers did not recant; they just kept quiet. And for another 20 years or so many trade unionists and intellectuals in Britain still looked to Soviet Russia for succour and advice. Reviewing the heroic failure of 50 years ago, Stephen Vizinczey told me: "Before our attempt at revolution, I did not know there is something to value more than life, and that is freedom.
"Today in the west people do not have the opportunity to find out who they really are. At least we had that chance." He added that anecdotal evidence now suggested that many ordinary people in Hungary are actually poorer than they were in 1956. "If I hadn't lived under communism, I'd be a communist today, " he said.
Stephen's final thought was: "Remember this: Hungary 1956 was the last revolution in which people fought and died for liberal western values. In revolutions, only those who are willing to die can play. But none of us wanted to die just to kill innocent people. I cannot imagine such a thing as a Hungarian suicide bomber."
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