From Death to Revolution: A Memoir from the Hungarian Revolution
Király, Béla
With the memoir below we commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution which took place on October 23, 1956.—ED. On a murky January day in 1952, after five months of...
...I then alerted a tank company and a mechanized battalion at Dbzsa barracks on Hungaria Avenue, about a mile from the Soviet Embassy...
...It can't be true...
...The answer, instead, came from other sources as garrison after garrison on the Great Hungarian Plain reported that it was under heavy Soviet attack...
...A joint Soviet-Hungarian commission would regulate all traffic, sup plies, and contacts between Soviet military personnel and the Hun garian populace in order to prevent any misunderstandings or un toward occurrences...
...This might have been the reason for his last command and his last appeal...
...at the time of Pearl Harbor...
...But first, I had to go through release procedures...
...Soon we could hear guns from the eastern outskirts of Budapest...
...And thus another day of infamy dawned...
...From there we tried to contact and co-ordinate those Freedom Fighter groups still resisting in the immediate vicinity and in the mining area of Piliscsaba, Dorog, and Tata...
...An hour later the judge informed the court that, according to law, a divorce was impossible if one of the parties was condemned to death...
...he was not an opportunist...
...My answer was an immediate and definite "yes...
...Several of them support Imre Nagy's plans for reforms and are doing their best to get him back into the government and Party leadership, so that his reforms can go through...
...But during the hot summer of 1956 most political prisoners were still in jail...
...I am Bela Kiraly, Commandant of Budapest," I replied...
...The Divisional Commander, Colonel Karoly Cs^my, the present Kadarist Army Chief of Staff, reported that the units were ready to leave...
...Yet, as tension was growing in Hungary, they had to make concessions somewhere...
...With his voice raised too, Nagy replied: "You must know that an order to open fire or any such call means war...
...Only two institutions have refused to accept rehabilitated former political prisoners back into their old positions: the Army and the Secret Police...
...After all, things don't move that fast...
...But Andropov's case was perhaps even more monstrous...
...With the memoir below we commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution which took place on October 23, 1956.—ED...
...I had never completely lost hope and the will to survive...
...A small peephole opened in the center of the door and a man asked who we were...
...I was brought into a small room, before a state attorney who politely offered me a seat...
...I "confessed," of course...
...And the equally routine answer usually was a resounding, and true, "no...
...A plan was evolved that, should the Soviet Union attack, Budapest was to be defended, and to this end a defensive ring was thrown up around the capital...
...Then silence...
...There is no need here to explain why...
...After making arrangements for complete security of the Soviet Embassy, I sent the men that were not needed back to headquarters and drove to the Parliament building...
...Well, then there is no problem...
...As the days passed, news of unrest, demonstrations, meetings, demands, criticism of the Party leadership penetrated even the prison walls...
...I had been arrested wearing a general's uniform which, obviously, I could no longer wear...
...It seemed best to avoid anything that might offend Soviet sensibilities...
...On September 5, when I was returned to the courtroom, the same judge presided...
...It'll take a month or two before we can complete plans for co-ordinated action in your behalf...
...But now the country was being shaken...
...General Kovacs told me that the commission had come to a full agreement on the following four points: All Soviet troops would be withdrawn from all Hungarian territory by January 15, 1957...
...But the stubborn, shortsighted, selfish Hungarian Stalinists decided otherwise...
...The majority of Hungarians would have gone along with this program, for Imre Nagy's plans corresponded with the desires of the majority of Hungarians in the summer of 1956...
...I now received normal treatment accorded to men not under sentence of death...
...The Gero leadership intended to conserve the Stalinist structure intact and to follow the policies of the fallen Rakosi...
...I got myself physically into shape, to carry out any orders Imre Nagy might give me if and when he would become prime minister...
...Friends of Imre Nagy in Budapest put my name forward at a clandestine meeting of Freedom Fighters who were seeking a commander in chief...
...There were no switchboards in between...
...Life and action began for me soon after I left jail...
...I left my escort well out of sight to avoid causing a stir...
...I have every confidence in Imre Nagy's policy and am quite ready to accept this proposal...
...He knew that if the Soviet Union started an act of aggression it would see it through...
...Andropov in the presence of five or six other persons, presumably embassy staff and secret police...
...The interpreter and I entered the Embassy...
...We regret deeply what has happened...
...His welcome departure could have launched Hungary on the same peaceful road toward development of a national Communism as that of Poland...
...I'll go there and direct the operation," I told him...
...You had us all get on the buses, to get out of the rain...
...We congratulate you on your success and shall help you to rebuild your land...
...After questioning my wife, the judge turned to me: "What is your sentence...
...yet I, too, had to be a diplomat and I smiled at him with little conviction...
...ing or invading it...
...As I am six foot two inches tall, the guards could not find clothes to fit me...
...Before beginning the hearing, he smiled and told me: "Congratulations...
...The counsel assigned to my defense first saw me when I entered the courtroom, was not allowed to see the documents of the proceedings, and was not permitted to talk to me...
...Then one of them said to me: "Perhaps you do not know it yet, but several former political prisoners have already been rehabilitated...
...not, of course, in the hope of a final victory in case of a Soviet attack, but to secure a few days', or at least a few hours', respite for the Nagy government to make its dispositions...
...We suggest the Parliament building as the place for initial discussions...
...It pained him to see Hungarians dying in a gallant but futile battle...
...During one of my many calls both my voice and my temper were raised as I demanded that the government decide that either Imre Nagy or I go on the air (Budapest Radio was still in our hands) and issue a general order to resist the invaders...
...Budapest was in flames, and new Soviet troops were entering the city in great strength...
...At about five o'clock on November 4, as Soviet tanks began to mass around my headquarters, I called Imre Nagy once more...
...This is how much influence we have these days...
...Imre Nagy's voice was tense...
...A few weeks after the hearings—on September 5—my name was shouted down the prison corridor: I was to be released the next day...
...lmre Nagy's Last Command and Last Appeal Throughout the revolution both the government and the people always had kept in mind the possibility of further Soviet aggression...
...For four years after that dark day I lived on death row...
...Would you be kind enough to telephone the Prime Minister and ask him for his reply...
...I also spoke to a man who claimed to have witnessed your execution...
...I shall be requiring no further reports...
...Shortly afterwards, a patrol was sent out from the Military Engineers' base on Haros Sziget, an island opposite Tokol...
...Shortly afterwards he went on the air to deliver his last, famous appeal: "In the early hours of this morning, Soviet troops launched an attack against our capital city with the obvious intention of overthrowing the lawful, democratic Hungarian government...
...These were my thoughts as I picked up the telephone to call out the necessary troops...
...He spoke Hungarian with a thick accent...
...Our aim is to get as many decent people who believe in Nagy's mission into state and Party positions as possible in order to speed up the start of the reforms...
...Those under lesser sentences began to receive mail and visitors...
...This question was indeed revolutionary...
...Very well, but I should like you to go down there yourself and make arrangements on the spot...
...Yes, Prime Minister Bajtdrs, Kiraly here...
...From there I turned into Bajza utca, and to my relief and astonishment saw not a soul...
...Unquestionably, he wanted to put on the record of history that the Russians were attacking and that the Hungarians were trying to defend themselves...
...Perhaps you are aware of the exchange of notes between our two countries...
...Defense preparations were still in an early stage when the second Soviet attack was launched...
...we could raise no answer...
...About ten o'clock one morning it rang...
...The peephole closed silently...
...At last we realized that the tide that could never be turned by battle could not be turned by political means either...
...Something was in the air—this we clearly knew...
...On November 1, Colonel Andras Marton, the Commandant of the Zrinyi Academy (the General Staff College) and a member of the Revolutionary Committee for National Defense, was named commander of the outer defense perimeter of Budapest...
...And there was no feasible line of defense in Hungary which—even with the deployment of all of the country's armed forces—could have halted a full-scale Soviet assault for more than a day or so...
...After two hours, the jury withdrew to deliberate...
...The Rifle Division of Kaposvar, for instance, was to form part of the outer ring...
...It was now Imre Nagy's personal wish that—as Pal Maleter, the new Minister of Defense, was a member of the delegation—I remain on hand to give military advice if needed...
...If conventional strategic defense against massive Soviet aggression were not feasible, why did not the revolutionary government prepare an all-out guerrilla war for such an eventuality...
...It had been impossible to remove these Stalinist senior officers hastily, because of those same Soviet sensibilities...
...They assured me that our meeting had been endorsed by Imre Nagy and that there was nothing conspiratorial about it, nothing I could not talk about openly if I wished...
...I told him of my conversation with Ambassador Andropov...
...The most horrible part of this charade was the need to feign guilt at all times, even with fellow prisoners...
...Instead, Hungary's Stalinists invested Erno Gero, another Stalinist, with supreme power...
...I am here on the instructions of the Prime Minister to protect the Soviet Embassy...
...Communists, Social Democrats, and a few other political offenders were released on parole...
...They were also in principle reluctant formally to renounce the goals of the revolution in that manner...
...On a murky January day in 1952, after five months of "investigations" by the Military section of the State Security Agency of Hungary, I was brought before a three-member court-martial convoked by the Supreme Military Court of Budapest...
...Hello...
...His appointment doomed the hopes of the peaceful reformers, the Nagy group, and may be considered the beginning of the road to revolution...
...They were unwilling to put their arms or themselves at the mercy of the Soviet troops...
...Every day hundreds of prisoners up for release were brought before a group of state attorneys who were holding hearings in the prison office block...
...This court finds Major General Bela K. Kir£ly guilty of espionage for the United States imperialists...
...Then I am completely at Imre Nagy's disposal...
...But they told me that these rooms were too big to keep warm and went away...
...We hoped that then we could again offer him the services of the only surviving central organ, the joint headquarters of the National Guard of Hungary and the Revolutionary Committee for National Defense, to help him rebuild from the ruins...
...Only my health is not yet up to scratch, I must first go for a complete check-up...
...When was this sentence passed...
...I knew that Andropov was lying...
...One of them connected my desk directly with the Prime Minister's...
...of organizing subversive groups aiming to overthrow the government of Hungary...
...In fact, no one cared about the Soviet Embassy...
...The crucial year 1956 dawned...
...All 12 of us were lined up and led to the prison office bloc...
...Some of these had been serving life sentences, others just a few years...
...But now I despaired...
...We don't want anything to do with the detestable Secret Police, of course, but we do want to break the uniformly Stalinist top ranks of the Army...
...Yes, I understand...
...This is the phone," Andropov said, pointing to one of a number of telephones on his desk...
...In other words, it was clear that, even as the Soviet attack was being launched, the Stalinist officers had managed to take over the topmost military staffs as well as the Ministry of National Defense...
...If there were people with arms around the Soviet Embassy, ready to attack Soviet diplomatic personnel, they could not be Freedom Fighters...
...I ordered a company of Freedom Fighters from my headquarters battalion to board transport at once...
...But his investiture as supreme leader of Hungary was an anomaly, even an absurdity...
...During the evening the Hungarian delegation set out for Tokol and arrived there between 9 and 10 p.m...
...Soviet Ambassador Andropov is here in my office," he said, "and he is trying to contact Moscow to ask for instructions...
...The Soviet Army had absolute superiority in numbers and equipment...
...These 12 could scarcely have been more disparate...
...Accompanied by my smaller group, I drove through the Hosok Tere, where the larger column was due to arrive shortly, and turned into the most beautiful avenue in Budapest, a tree-lined street whose name has often been changed...
...They demanded radical reforms, including rehabilitation not only of the dead but also the release of the living...
...The Hungarian people were too mature to think of attack...
...A bloody encounter ensued, known today in Hungary as the Battle of Nagykovacsi...
...There we received information about a spontaneous meeting of revolutionary leaders, local Freedom-Fighter leaders, and workers' representatives who had gathered at the Bblyai Military Academy, a training school for political officers in the Huvosvolgy, a western suburb of Budapest...
...They would be incited by enemies of the Hungarian people and of the revolution...
...From the Battle of Nagykovacsi to the Bitter End Without political leadership the revolutionary military command faced a grave decision...
...He murmured in my ear: "You know that the Soviet people are your best friends...
...some were former Fascists, others Democrats...
...We laid down our arms on Austrian soil, not before the Red Army...
...There I met her for the first time since my arrest...
...the prison walls were cracking around us, and each day we saw friends leaving jail...
...The rest felt that, even if further fighting seemed to be hopeless in the final outcome, they would not surrender to the Soviet invaders...
...The hearings were over by early August, 1956, and of the several thousand men in our prison, only 12 had not been brought before the state attorneys...
...But also, for purely physical reasons, such a guerrilla war was out of the question in Hungary...
...I read that you had been condemned to death and that the sentence was carried out...
...He would have considered it perhaps dishonest to weaken the resistance, but he was also reluctant to encourage it...
...I was bewildered by the Prime Minister's position...
...Within a few minutes the man returned and asked me, through the peephole, to come in, with one escort...
...When the meeting had been called to order, a resolution was passed inviting me to preside over the group and to extend its scope as broadly as possible, to include all strata of the revolution...
...and of conspiracy against the people's democracy...
...I say hypocritically because he already knew that within 48 hours the Soviet Union was to launch a massive attack against Hungary...
...I ordered him to lead his force immediately to the Hdsok Tere [Heroes' Square], just two blocks from the Soviet Embassy, and to wait there for further orders...
...That is Ambassador Andropov's message...
...I rang the Embassy doorbell...
...After waiting several minutes without answer, I rang again...
...Do it at once...
...But it is you...
...We have Imre Nagy's backing for an effort to have you reinstated as commander in chief of the infantry if you are agreeable...
...What a sensational opportunity this would have been for Soviet propaganda) It is my opinion that this may have been precisely why the Soviet government ordered the Ambassador to go to the Parliament building, just as it opened its offensive against Hungary...
...I hope you realize what it means...
...But I do have one condition: I shall never again join the Party...
...This last statement of the Prime Minister was very carefully worded and meticulously refrained from any implication the Soviet Union might have used as a pretext for its intervention...
...There were a lot of things to be healed and cured after five years of subhuman living...
...Without such geographical features no standing guerrilla base could be built up and thus no lasting guerrilla campaign could be sustained...
...Recognizing this agonizing fact, I repeatedly urged the Prime Minister to go on the air and announce the government's intentions...
...it would have been undignified, by Stalinist standards, to have paid then with less than capital punishment...
...In August, 1955, I was suddenly taken to a civil court in Budapest...
...I telephoned my chief of staff at once, to issue orders to the defense perimeter...
...Andropov, the Soviet Ambassador...
...Opposite the prison gate is the huge entrance to the largest cemetery in Budapest...
...He was pledged to serve alien ideas and interests often opposed to those of the Hungarians...
...might have lost a diplomat but it would have gained an inestimable propaganda weapon with which to denounce the "barbaric Hungarians" whom the "civilized Russians" wanted to teach "law and order...
...Later that month all 12 names were called...
...I should like to talk with Ambassador Andropov...
...No witnesses for the defense were heard...
...To resist such aggression Hungary was too small, vis -a-vis the world's second supreme power...
...The staff that served the headquarters of the Commandant of Budapest was posted nearby, in the building of the Ministry of National Defense...
...Some of them have even been reinstalled in their previous positions with the state and the Party...
...I returned to my headquarters where I learned that the Russians had put off the talks until the morning of November 3. The talks opened in a civilized fashion and the first session ended in the afternoon of November 3. The delegates were to reassemble at 10 p.m...
...General Janza asked me to join him at the ministry to help prevent "the activities of Fascist bands...
...In the Gyujtofoghdz (Maximum Security Prison) at Kobanya, where I had spent the last five years, were several thousand political prisoners...
...Well, if there's no one on the street, let's see who's inside the Embassy," I thought...
...A second Soviet attack, particularly on the pretext that Soviet troops had come to preserve law and order and the immunity of diplomatic personnel, would cast a shadow over our unclouded revolution...
...The foremost difficulty was the notorious sensitivity of the U.S.S.R...
...Exodus to "Freedom" The Gero leadership hastened to rehabilitate many political prisoners and to release those who were still alive...
...It once was called Andrassy, after a former Hungarian Prime Minister and Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister...
...Hungary is essentially a flat plain devoid of sizable mountains, forests, or rugged terrain...
...When I received orders to hear your case, I was shocked...
...They offered me reading material to help me catch up on all that I had missed during my five years' confinement, and immediate information on anything that I wanted to know right then and there...
...Party membership is not a prerequisite...
...I assured the Ambassador that no one would be permitted to do any such thing...
...I am so very glad...
...The Ambassador said: "There must have been some misunderstanding on the part of the Prime Minister...
...I was in charge of the joint staffs of the Commander in Chief of the National Guard of Hungary and the Revolutionary Committee for National Defense, housed at police headquarters in the center of Budapest...
...it was only six weeks since my release from prison, and I had been rehabilitated only by the revolutionary government...
...The Prime Minister sounded happy...
...At the time of the second Soviet attack I happened to be at the headquarters of the National Guard in Dedk Square...
...The tank patrol was ferried up an arm of the Danube toward Csepel Island, and it transmitted radio reports to us regularly...
...With an interpreter and an aide I went up to the Embassy door...
...It did not ring often...
...In a state of revolution such as there was in Budapest during this "winter in November," there was every chance that terrified, frustrated, and outraged revolutionaries might seize the Ambassador and put him to death...
...In the Stalinist era, one "confessed," just as I had done, to the most unheard-of crimes...
...I am extremely glad to see you today," he told me...
...We bivouacked on various ridges of the Pilis, Vertes, and Bakony Mountains, while Soviet helicopters hovered overhead, tracking our line of retreat...
...A friend paid me an unexpected call and asked whether I wanted to meet certain people, all friends of Imre Nagy...
...The Soviet Embassy, just like all other diplomatic missions and the Hungarians themselves, had to be protected by the legal Hungarian armed forces, not by the Red Army...
...When the Prime Minister called that morning, nobody in the room anticipated good news...
...I also sent an officer back to Colonel Csemy to tell him to return to barracks with his troops as inconspicuously as possible to avoid unleashing false rumors...
...He did not...
...When it did, there was something important to talk about...
...In mid-November, threatened with Soviet encirclement again, I gave orders that the Hungarian military and Freedom-Fighter high command and the units immediately supporting it disband and withraw from the country in small groups...
...In the first place, lmre Nagy and his government refused to be a party to any kind of war against the U.S.S.R...
...You might like to know that you are a member of the delegation...
...If there was no place for Imre Nagy and his political solution, there could be no place for us...
...The court was to consult with the proper authorities and would reconvene September 5 for a new hearing...
...We have received the message," Imre Nagy told me...
...This is Imre Nagy...
...It was a dazzling autumn afternoon...
...I have received a note verbale from Mr...
...The attorneys always asked the same routine question: "Did you, or did you not commit the crime for which you were sentenced...
...On November 14 the last pocket of resistance in Budapest collapsed when the workers on Csepel laid down their arms...
...Thirty minutes later, the four sentences—for there were four charges—were drawn up...
...But my height turned out to be a blessing: the prison authorities sent to an outsize-store for something to dress me in, and I crossed the last checkpoint into freedom looking quite elegant, despite the large military boots that peeped out below my civilian trousers...
...It will give me great pleasure to phone the Prime Minister...
...he issued a government decree annulling my sentence which the Stalinist court-martial had pronounced, he reinstated me in my former rank of major general and appointed me Military Commandant of Budapest...
...Before my trial I had held a senior command position in the People's Army...
...If and when you are reinstated, you would be in a position to help more anti-Stalinist officers to join the Army...
...Imre Nagy endorsed the choice...
...There Imre Nagy told me that I had been dropped from the Hungarian delegation...
...The U.S.S.R...
...In 1954 as an investigator with the Secret Police, I had occasion to see your file...
...Haphazardly, without any apparent system or logic, prisoners would suddenly be freed...
...You may inform the Ambassador that our delegation is prepared to start talks this afternoon, at any hour the Soviet delegation cares to suggest...
...They continued to bar Imre Nagy from the Party, even as the Polish CP was ushering Wladyslaw Gomulka smoothly back into its ranks...
...I drove fast through the city followed by the company of Freedom Fighters...
...The utmost difficulty, however, had beset the revolutionary leadership in its attempts to prepare for such an attack...
...My answer is ready...
...Because the buildup of Budapest's perimeter defenses was proceeding slowly, (as the Military Commandant of the city) I set up a cordon of infantry, field artillery, anti-aircraft artillery, and Freedom-Fighter units around Budaors airfield...
...As for the Hungarian delegation, it had been arrested by General Serov, head of the Soviet Secret Police...
...And he carefully avoided any implication that he had encouraged this fight...
...We were ushered into a large hall where we were received by Mr...
...With exaggerated politeness, the Ambassador suggested that we go upstairs to his study and showed me the way, gently touching my arm...
...The jury filed back in and the chairman read: In the name of the Hungarian people...
...It complains that armed bands are keeping the Soviet Embassy under siege and have already invaded the building...
...I expected the need for a military operation which I myself would command to clear the block where the Soviet Embassy was, either peacefully or, if that were not possible, by force...
...Instead of listening to my orders, he handed the receiver to Lieutenant General Karoly Janza, the Stalinist dismissed, former Minister of National Defense, who was not even authorized to be there...
...I was among them...
...It was impossible, therefore, to send orders to the troops through the proper command channels...
...Even if it had wished to, the government was in no position to make such strategic moves, because many key positions in the army were still in the hands of Stalinist generals who could have obstructed such actions...
...He is of the opinion that someone has made a tragic mistake, and he is trying to stop the slaughter...
...Outside, they joined groups pressuring the regime for liberal and humane reforms...
...It kept us informed as it approached Tokol and drew up at the Soviet headquarters...
...Principally, it had been suggested that the Soviet delegates might interpret my presence as an affront...
...News of the exoneration and rehabilitation of the late Communist leader Laszlo Rajk and his closest associates, who had been executed by the Stalinists in 1949, reached us soon after the official announcement on March 29...
...With a military situation demanding that something be done, my anguish was intense as the Prime Minister turned down each and every one of my suggestions...
...There were a number of reasons for this...
...In recognition of the fact that Soviet troops were in Hungary to aid the Hungarian people and that they bore them no ill will, festive and friendly farewell celebrations would be given for all Soviet garrisons in the country, and all Soviet war memorials on Hungarian soil were to be protected and maintained...
...Until the Soviet attack overran the defenders of Budaors, the airfield remained in the hands of loyal revolutionary troops...
...Not that Gero was a man who lacked ideals or loyalty...
...it has been commuted to life...
...But at the moment something much more important has to be done...
...I hope that this marks the beginning of a new era in which, as the Prime Minister has said, we may be able to live in genuine friendship with the Soviet people," I said...
...The Petcfi Circle will take up your case, if you wish, and press for your complete and immediate rehabilitation...
...About half of the Freedom Fighters who were serving at the Headquarters on Szabadsaghegy voted for the armistice offer...
...I went into a hospital...
...The so-called "siege" seemed a pure figment of Mr...
...now it was called the Avenue of the Republic...
...You are no longer under sentence of death...
...The first time I called him, Imre Nagy told me the whole affair was an absurd mistake...
...the sight of people in mourning going in and out gave me pause in my first moment of "freedom" to think of the transience of human life...
...Please hurry over to my office so that we may begin policy talks at once...
...I had to shield my eyes from the glare of the sun, not used to such bright light...
...We listened anxiously to foreign radio broadcasts, waiting and hoping for a change that somehow at some point would force the Soviet Union to negotiate with Imre Nagy after all...
...After sustaining heavy losses, the headquarters was withdrawn during the night toward the west...
...Fortunately for us political prisoners, they decided to make these by amnestying political offenders...
...Thank you," he replied...
...My wife had filed suit for divorce...
...This meeting more than any other single event helped to bring about the fall of MAtyas Rakosi, the Stalinist czar of Hungary, on July 18, 1956...
...I ordered these troops to stand by immediately to await my orders...
...This enlarged representation was to meet to consider a draft resolution for an immediate armistice offer to the Soviet High Command in Hungary...
...These three possibilities were discussed at the Central Military Headquarters on Szabadsaghegy [Freedom Mountain] to which the Soviet advance had compelled us to retire...
...It was the greatest privilege of my life that their motion was carried and I was elected by the accredited delegates of the Freedom-Fighter units, workers' councils, and revolutionary committees to be both Chairman of the Revolutionary Committee for National Defense and Commander in Chief of the National Guard (the Freedom-Fighter Forces) of Hungary...
...I joned this group...
...If that telephone rang, it was Imre Nagy at the other end...
...In one of his latest notes Prime Minister Nagy suggests summoning a joint Hungarian-Soviet military commission to discuss and arrange the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary...
...Who would be coming before me under the name of Bela Kiraly...
...This would have meant gradual change without bloodshed, without the use of force, and without humiliating the U.S.S.R...
...the delegation was instructed to agree to all Soviet proposals and to bring forward to December 15 the deadline for Soviet military withdrawal, if the Soviet delegation did not feel that this would be too difficult to accomplish and if it would not offend the Soviet delegation...
...If you dial 1, the Prime Minister himself will answer...
...All right...
...Of course...
...We have connections to get articles proposing your reinstatement into the newspapers, and we can even get the issue brought up at Party meetings...
...If only the Party leadership and the government had been transferred into the hands of Imre Nagy and his followers on July 18, he could have introduced the reforms that he had proposed in his "dissertations," as he called the memoranda to the Hungarian CP over the previous few months...
...Our troops are fighting...
...This was Imre Nagy's last order to the armed forces...
...Because of his belief in the decency of the Soviet government and his lifelong commitment to humane and peaceful policies, Imre Nagy in fact ordered me to issue no directives to fight but, on the contrary, to do my utmost to prevent Hungarians from shooting back at Russians wherever possible without undue loss of life...
...The very next day I met four persons, two of them old acquaintances...
...In time of revolution there is no worse enemy than rumor and I was determined to prevent it at all costs...
...they included long- and short-term prisoners, Fascists and Democrats...
...Whatever the truth was, the Ambassador survived and Soviet aggression proceeded nakedly, as aggression—and not as a crusade to avenge a dead ambassador...
...Ambassador Andropov Tesfs our Nerves and our Readiness There were several telephones on my desk in the Headquarters of the National Guard of Hungary...
...Andropov's imagination...
...Two small aircraft were kept in readyness there, at the government's disposal...
...So the headquarters was moved to Nagykovacsi, a small town some 30 miles west of Budapest...
...The Soviet Ambassador's presence in the Prime Minister's office at the very hour of his government's vicious attack is comparable to the presence of the Japanese mission in the U.S.A...
...Is this Kiraly Bajtars [Comrade in arms...
...I saw you last at the great maneuvers you organized at Verpelet, when you were commander in chief of the infantry...
...I explained my mission and my gratification that the Embassy was not under "siege...
...Until the withdrawal was completed, the Hungarian government would be responsible for supplying Soviet troops with food, lodging, transportation, and fuel...
...Thus the idea of international Communism and his devotion to the Comintern and to the Soviet Union possessed this hard-working, intelligent man, body and soul...
...Do you remember the thunderstorm that broke loose while you and your staff were standing on a hill, and you all ran for the buses parked there...
...The avalanche could no longer be stopped...
...The second massive Soviet attack had been launched against Hungarian freedom and against the government of the people's choice...
...The government will not engage in open war with the Soviet Union...
...The Ambassador smiled hypocritically...
...I'll make immediate arrangements...
...He hoped that the end would come fast and with the least loss to his people...
...This operation was completed during the second half of November...
...You look thinner, but I recognize you...
...The government is at its place...
...The Hungarian people looked upon Gero as another Muscovite, another proconsul of the Kremlin, just like Rakosias indeed he was...
...From the town of Zahony, where the most important rail link with the Soviet Union crosses into Hungary, we had received reports that Soviet forces, with a preponderance of heavy armor, were pouring over the Hungarian countryside...
...About an hour ago I sent an answer to Mr...
...Excerpts from Anti-Militarist in Arms, a book in progress...
...He informs me that if the Hungarian government is not in a position to protect foreign embassies and if the peaceful diplomatic labor of the Soviet Embassy cannot be safeguarded by the Hungarian government, then the Soviet Embassy will appeal to the Soviet Supreme Commander in Hungary for protection of the Embassy...
...Imre Nagy was a patriot...
...The idea of a flat lie at a moment of such high drama just did not occur to me...
...I used the word "operation" because that was what I thought it would be...
...Any major strategic move in Hungary—even of a purely defensive nature —would be viewed by the Soviet authorities as a hostile move against the Soviet Union...
...I dialed and I heard Imre Nagy's voice...
...I conveyed Imre Nagy's reply to the Ambassador...
...Before my friends could put their plans on my behalf into effect, the revolution broke out...
...Superior Soviet forces discovered the location of the headquarters and on November 11 opened a heavy assault on it with tanks, jet fighters, artillery and infantry...
...No other alternatives existed...
...And he watched me, curious to see the impact of this information...
...Yet the Stalinist officers on the General Staff sabotaged preparations for even this minimal defensive system...
...If he felt he needed added protection, I told him I could strengthen the usual security arrangements in that district—which I had, in fact, already done...
...But now we were each to be brought before an obscure state attorney—our names were in the lottery...
...Guerrilla war, just like conventional war, was outside the realm of reality for the Hungarian government in 1956...
...This court condemns the accused on all four counts to a sentence of death by hanging, and as secondary sentences to be stripped of his rank, be cashiered from the People's Army, and stripped of all his political rights for ten years...
...at the headquarters of the Soviet Supreme Commander in Hungary in Tokol, a town on Csepel Island in the Danube, some ten miles south of Budapest...
...but it was scattered in several different directions and only a small section reached its proper sector...
...then it became Stalin Avenue...
...Imre Nagy speaking...
...I intended to tell them to disperse at once, and if they refused, I was going to call in my force and smash them...
...I did indeed tell him that some old women came into the building, looking for new living quarters because their homes were destroyed in the recent unfortunate events...
...How do you feel about it...
...Nagy informing him that my government has accepted his suggestion and that our delegation is prepared to attend such meetings this afternoon...
...For four years we had neither seen one another nor been allowed to correspond...
...In view of this, the Hungarian government, rather than try to prepare for an all-out defensive war against the Soviet Union, strove by all possible means to forestall Soviet ag gression...
...They told me to ask them for any political data whenever I might need it...
...It is a threat of immediate armed intervention...
...Should it call on the nation to resist the Soviet aggressors in a guerrilla war, start armistice negotiations, or just lay down arms...
...Telling lies puts you in contempt of court...
...By this time I could no longer get through to Imre Nagy...
...Do you want more time to get back into the swim of things...
...And clothes had to be found for me...
...It was November 2, an ominous day of news about the movement of Soviet troops toward the capital...
...I inform the people of the country and world opinion of this...
...When we tried to get in touch with the delegation, we could not get through...
...In the mean time, the Chief of the Army Staff, Major General Istvan Kovacs, reported to me on the course of events (in my capacity as President of the Revolutionary Committee for Na tional Defense...
...But perhaps even he did not know...
...Despite the peaceful intentions and actions of the revolutionary government and indeed of the whole people, the leadership of the Hungarian armed forces still had to take certain defensive measures...
...Should we meet again later...
...I added to my escort of Freedom Fighters two tanks and a squad of mechanized infantry and sped ahead to find out for myself the whereabouts and strength of the "enemy...
...He had to make his five-minute plea on the basis of what he had heard in court...
...It is up to the government to make such decisions, not to the military leadership...
...I was a second lieutenant, in charge of a platoon of men that were there too...
...So did the tidings of the June mass meeting of the Petdfi Circle (the organization of young Hungarian intellectuals and students), where members of the Circle had openly condemned the Party leadership before several of Hungary's top Stalinists...
...We are already in a position to bring pressure to bear on the Stalinist leadership...
...The Hungarian delegation called my staff twice late that evening, but after midnight no further word came...
...Thus I wore several hats during the revolution and tried in all loyalty to Imre Nagy to fulfill the duties of the commands bestowed upon me...
...During our next few days at the headquarters on Szabadsighegy, it was clear from the regrouping of Soviet troops that an all-out attack against the hill was being planned...
...The heavy traffic of peacetime Budapest was still absent from the streets, so that we reached the barracks just about as the tanks and mechanized infantry were ready to move...
...Four years ago...
...No, I don't need any more time to get my bearings," I replied...
...The Freedom Fighters, wherever possible, must refrain from returning enemy fire...
...Should it be necessary, The Hungarian delegation was authorized to drop this condition and to sign the agreement arrived at during the first session of the talks...
...The divorce was granted, and I was taken back to jail...
...of sabotaging the training of officers of the Army...
...Up to the last minute Imre Nagy believed that he was not witnessing an act of infamy, but an unintentional disaster...
...There are Soviet tanks in the immediate vicinity," I reported...
...But as the days passed, that hope faded away...
...We bade a polite farewell and I took my departure...
...they must not prevail...
...Death," I replied...
...I guarantee that no one with malicious intent will be able to get near the Soviet Embassy," I said...
...Not even at my trial had I felt such suspense as at that moment...
...They do not seem to be attacking us but are turning toward the Parliament building" (where Nagy's office was...
Vol. 13 • November 1966 • No. 6
