The Revolt in Budapest

...On the basis of the accounts published, it seems extremely difficult to disentangle the two, since either pseudo-Communists were in reality motivated by nationalist bitterness or genuine, though schismatic, Communists were merely making use of nationalist motifs to attract the masses...

...It is evident—that is, grosso modo likely—that there were two main strands, or two basic needs, in the uprising: national reaction and Party revolt...

...But if it was, whom were the insurrectionists trying to bamboozle...

...Many of the reporters quoted thought this was just a clever tactical disguise...

...Only a few accounts in this book sufficiently highlight another quirk in the intellectual background of this pathetically abortive movement: the curious fact that in the actual on-the-spot improvisations of the rebels there was a definite overtone of the Russian revolutionary tradition itself...

...The Kremlin...

...We all know that everything, seen by Alexander the Great was also seen by the charger that bore him...

...As a whole, therefore, it must bear the defect of all "spontaneous" accounts —their fragmentariness...

...Such a resume, in the tradition of streamlined contemporary journalism, has been provided by this "white book," edited by Melvin J. Lasky, editor of Der Monat in Berlin...

...5.00...

...Comment on the behavior of the Kremlin itself seems superfluous...

...This inescapable "internal contradiction" made it impossible to create a body of original, coherent and magnetic ideas around which the movement, which undoubtedly began spontaneously, could rally...

...In the case of the Hungarian uprising, this inchoate quality is all the more perplexing because of a political ambiguity that seems to an outsider to smother the rationale of the movement and reduce the unprecedented courage of its participants to a sort of basic incoherence...

...This theme—arresting in its dislocation of historical continuity—was adequately commented on, to my knowledge, chiefly in the Neue Ziir-cher Zeitung, a paper rather skimpily represented in this collection, which relies heavily on publications in English...

...For what can we say of a national uprising that demanded—from the Soviet Union—a return to Leninism...

...Put inversely, it may have been this inherent contradiction in the situation of the insurrectionists that—apart from Soviet material power -doomed the movement...

...Conversely, it was the Kremlin's rigidity that provoked the crisis in the first place, and simultaneously prevented any foresight...

...But that meant that the slogans actually expressed became in fact dishonest, and in the event confusing...

...National distress and embitterment...

...How can we explain the fact that the central, indeed almost the sole leadership seemed to be incarnate in the figure of Imre Nagy, himself a perfectly orthodox figure of the Communist party apparatus...

...On the other hand, if there is any comfort to be drawn from this disaster, it may be just this development of spontaneous dissidence within the Soviet framework, so that even under the vast pressure of the apparatus it may be possible to extract some of the fruitful elements in the socialist tradition—even under the Communist party—and through them discover the seeds of change...

...The confusion inherent in this kind of kaleidoscopic record is further compounded in the case of Hungary by the warping factor present in all accounts, due to the variety of apologetic targets...

...essentially it did no more than demonstrate once again that it is very far from having attained the flexibility that might have enabled it to cope effectively with the unforeseen...

...any compilation of this kind raises as many questions as it answers...

...But politics is more than the tally-sheet of a shambles...

...This is later reconciled— there is...

...At first sight, the attraction of the round-up might seem to be the spontaneity of a direct and elemental reaction to life itself by the actual participants—an "immediate" and unadorned expression in some sense of the "real" event...

...It provides us, in fact, with another instance of the dilemma facing all Leninist parties from the point of view of agitation...

...the young boys and girls who smashed themselves against Soviet armor were attempting to put into effect something they had been taught in Stalinist-inspired history courses...

...for the serious historian probing the ultimate political meanings of the Hungarian tragedv...

...Point 2, for instance, of the Seven Demands of the Writers' Association on October 23, which helped kindle the flare-up, reads: "We want true and sincere friendship with our allies—the USSR and the People's Democracies...

...Or that, at a moment when passions burst into flame against an obviously detested foreign power, no formulated demands charged the Soviet Union as such with anything but the mistakes, misdeeds and villainies of a few individuals...

...Indeed, despite the praiseworthy zeal of its editor, it is—viewed from the vantage-point of whatever the "event" was—already very much worked over, selected and arranged...

...Simply accusing Rakosi and Gero of bestiality reduces the ideological element to zero...

...If, on the other hand, they had to adopt Leninist disguise in order to entice otherwise unsympathetic masses, that would be a most disconcerting testimonial to the efficacy—despite everything—of Soviet indoctrination...

...To be sure, an accurate enough account can be made by eye-witnesses of people killing each other with guns, bombs, etc...

...Here, a compilation like this falls at once between two stools: It is not, on the one hand, an exhaustive record of all the data that presumably could have been assembled...

...It is essentially an analysis of the interplay of social interests, and as such transports us instantly beyond the impressions of the retina into what is at the very least a realm of deduction if not of downright metaphysics...

...Memoirs of the Russian Revolution" The Hungarian uprising has been hashed over so often during the past year, and all the expected political reactions have been expressed with such inevitability, that a comprehensive resume of the events themselves is highly welcome...

...For surely this is the oddest and most contradictory element in the uprising—that nearly all demands actually expressed took this "sincere," apologetic line of Marxist reference...

...Contemplating this blood-bath with the facile wisdom of hindsight, it may be hazarded that it might have been this failure to attack the Soviet Union root arid branch that enabled the Kremlin to develop any propaganda line at all...

...In this way, presumably genuine Socialists appealed to foreign Socialist opinion by reassurances as to the genuineness of their socialist feeling, while bour-geios opinion for its part was reassured that it was the Hungarian national spirit, independent of or hostile to socialism, that was venting itself against a foreign oppressor...

...Or rather—this is the baffling irony of it all—of the official Stalinist myths about 1917 and 1905...

...If so, they must have been of a truly paralyzing naivete...

...The wealth of the material makes for a useful reference work, which many future scholars will doubtless use as their starting-point...

...It is just this primordial ambiguity that is clarified least of all by eyewitness accounts...

...This can only be realized on the basis of Leninist principles...

...A macabre illustration of life's debt to art...

...What, then, is there to rally around...

...And yet...

...If all factions in a movement claim the identical heritage, the odds would seem to be on the side of the regime in power...

...This book, assembled rapidly in order to satisfy the passionate interest aroused by this heroic tragedy, makes a diligent attempt to encompass the dramatic events of the last week of October and the first week of November 1956, on the basis of an immense variety of news reports, radio broadcasts and post-facto summaries, all to a large extent based on eye-witness accounts...

...For what do the eyes alone see...

...nor is it, on the other, a systematic exposition and analysis of such data...

...For what is it that "happens" when it happens...

...That is to say...

...For if the insurrectionists claimed to be orthodox Leninists, professing an earnest desire to remain on friendly terms with the socialist fatherland, how c ould they wrest the intellectual initiative from the Kremlin, for a whole generation the repository of Leninist tradition, doctrine and pathos...

...of course, no intellectual contradiction—with the ferocious hatred of the more repulsive apparatus figures like Rakosi, Gero, etc., to say nothing of the actual instrument of repression, the AVH...

...But the very variety of the excerpts, coming as they do from random, individual sources, somehow allows the events to slip through the crevices of the compilation...

...One is reminded of a threadbare device of the Stalinist myth-makers: maintaining the basic structure intact while deflecting all resentment and hatred against a handful of scapegoats...

...A large book, handsomely printed and illustrated, it is more vivid reading than anything comparable on the subject, including the celebrated UN report...