On Anniversaries: October 23, 1956

Hungary is a small country, not often in the world news ("Is the capital Budapest or Bucharest?" people ask without embarrassment). But 40 years ago today, and for a few dramatic weeks thereafter, it occupied center stage in world affairs. On the night of October 23, 1956, a crowd led by students and workers, soon to be known as freedom fighters, toppled the colossal statue of Stalin that had dominated the main boulevard of Budapest for close to a decade. That act became the symbol of the 1956 uprising, a quasi spontaneous revolt against Soviet occupation (the Red Army had liberated Hungary from the Nazis in 1945, then refused to go home) and against the dictatorial rule of the Hungarian Communist Party led by Matyas Rakosi.

For a few days, hopes ran high: A new reformist government, headed by the "moderate" communist Imre Nagy, held out the hope of a more democratic, independent Hungary--"socialism with a human face," as the leaders of the Prague spring of 1968 were to proclaim. But in Budapest as later in Prague, that hope ended in disaster. On November 4, a huge fleet of Soviet tanks entered the Hungarian capital and over the next few days destroyed large portions of it. Imre Nagy and several members of his cabinet were tried for treason and eventually executed. Thousands more were imprisoned or killed during those years. Thousands fled the country, leaving behind split families, broken romances, interrupted friendships.

Why should we at Harvard, safe in our homes or dorm rooms in October 1996, care about what happened 40 years ago in a faraway country, where they speak a language that's not even Indo-European? For some of us, the answer is obvious: We know people--or are ourselves people--who have a link to Hungary or Hungarians. (Did you ever wonder how to really pronounce the last name of Professor Gregory Nagy, the popular teacher of "Heroes"? My own name doesn't show it, but like Greg Nagy, I was born in Hungary. Both our families left before 1956, when we were young enough to learn English without an accent.)

If the anniversary of the Hungarian uprising were of interest only to today's or yesterday's Hungarians, however, there would be no point in my writing this piece. The larger interest of October 1956 is that it throws into relief some of today's political conflicts, especially conflicts over national identity, not only in Hungary but by extension in any country where the past is a matter of negotiation. Which means, of course, every country.

For more than 30 years in Soviet-dominated Hungary, 1956 was a taboo subject--or if discussed at all, it had to be referred to as a "counterrevolution," more often than not preceded by the adjective "fascist." Then, after Communist Party boss Janos Kadar retired in 1988 (by then, the Party had changed its name to "Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party"), things changed: A government functionary announced that "new research in the archives" showed 1956 had been a popular uprising, not a counterrevolution. In June 1989, months before the official end of communism in Eastern Europe, Imre Nagy was given a state funeral in Budapest.

But times have changed again since then, more than once. In the spring of 1993, I spent six months as a research fellow at the Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study. After many hours of talking with Hungarian friends about their country's recent history, I began to understand just how complicated--and at times heartbreaking--was their relation to the past, including the heroic days of October 1956. In the years preceding and immediately following "the Change" (as Hungarians refer to 1989), October 1956 functioned as a single unifying symbol to all those who opposed the communist regime. By 1993, however, it was clear that the ideals associated with 1956--freedom of expression, desire for self-government, liberalization of politics and the economy--meant very different things to different people. The first free post-communist elections of 1990 had put a conservative party in power, some of whose members expressed openly racist, anti-Semitic views in Parliament and in the press. People began to realize that freedom of expression could mean skinhead demonstrations as well as democratic debate; self-government could mean an ugly strain of nationalism and xenophobia as well as independence; and economic liberalization could mean a "wild" brand of capitalism where a few people got immensely rich while the majority saw their prospects tumble.

All of this became crystallized in the fall of 1993, when Hungarians witnessed another state funeral, this time by the conservative government: the reburial of Hungary's former dictator, Admiral Miklos Horthy, who had died in exile in Portugal after the war. It was under Horthy, an ally of Hitler, that 600,000 Hungarian Jews were deported and murdered in Auschwitz in the spring and summer of 1944. Now, some of the same "dissidents" who had celebrated Imre Nagy were celebrating Horthy.

Curious and curiouser. Had the Communist propaganda about 1956 as the work of "fascist counter-revolutionaries" been right, after all? No: Nagy was not a fascist but a reformist communist, as were many of his followers. There is no doubt, however, that some of the 1956 "freedom fighters" were far to the right of Nagy, and some were probably admirers of Horthy. That is one reason why, in today's Hungary, it has become difficult to regard the 1956 revolution with the uncomplicated enthusiasm of pre-"Change" days. One young woman whose uncle disappeared in the October battles wrote to me recently: "The nationalists in 1993 claimed to represent '56, but what they were actually saying had nothing to do with what I thought my uncle had died for." Horthy's state funeral had brought home to her that the popular image of 1956 as a moment of heroic unity had involved a major lapse in collective memory: "After the Russians crushed the revolution, people's selective memory retained only the struggle against the oppressors and 'forgot' about the very real and important differences among whose who had fought." By 1993, those differences and their implications had become glaringly apparent. If some right-wing nationalists were to be believed, only white Christians deserved the name of "Hungarian"--Jews, gypsies and other minorities needn't apply.

Less than a year after Horthy's reburial, the parliamentary elections swept the conservatives out of office and brought back the "moderate" wing of the former communists, now called Socialists, who promised economic reforms. But on a visit to Budapest this past summer, all I heard were complaints: the gap between rich and poor was widening, and most people felt closer to the latter than the former. One woman in her forties, who works for a new "capitalist" enterprise, told me: "I come from a working-class family. Before 1989, my parents and I could count on several weeks' vacation each year. These days, there are no vacations for any of us." She didn't hesitate for long when I asked her whether she regretted the "old regime" (in this case, communism). "I hate to say it, but yes," she answered. Hers is not the majority view, but neither is it totally aberrant.

Today, as on every other October 23 over the past seven years, people are celebrating in Budapest, and even in Boston. To any thoughtful person, however, such celebrations are more an occasion for reflection than for pure rejoicing. The struggles over the memory of 1956 show that layers and layers of history must be peeled away and dealt with. Rampant nationalism and anti-Semitism in Hungary, as in the rest of Eastern Europe, predate the communist past, and so does a system of privilege based on wealth.

Anniversaries allow one not only to commemorate the past, but to prepare the future. That is the real lesson and the continued relevance of the Hungarian uprising, even for (non-Hungarian) Americans, even at Harvard.

Susan R. Suleiman, professor of romance and comparative literatures, just published Budapest Diary: In Search of the Motherbook.