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October 30

Recognizing that the existing situation was untenable, Imre Nagy announced on the radio in the afternoon that the one-party system was abolished (or rather, acknowledged that it had ceased to exist.) A coalition ‘government cabinet’ would take over the running of the country, he said. Realizing that only the government had a chance of exercising central control, the head of the HWP, János Kádár, also joined the new body.

October 30 was undoubtedly the first day of consolidation, for which the HWP Central Committee resolution of October 28 had only laid the foundations. Revolutionary councils formed in the remaining few counties, taking over the control of local administration. They received firm support from the local press and radio, which were controlled by armed units of soldiers and civilians, organized as a local national guard. Most administrative institutions clearly supported the revolution by this time, including the local revolutionary councils (which had replaced the local-government system), the police, the law courts and the mass media. Only the government represented a slightly different line, but even this had come closer to the line being taken in the rest of the country than it had been before October 28. The party’s change of direction and the disbanding of the ÁVH left the Soviet army as the one force still threatening the revolution’s gains.

The talks at the Budapest police headquarters in Deák tér (5th District) led to the formation of the Preparatory Committee of the Revolutionary Armed Forces Committee, by representatives of the army, the police and the armed rebels. The purpose was to establish the national guard as the new armed security force and provide it with a central command.

Following an order issued the previous day by Lieutenant General Károly Janza, revolutionary military councils formed to keep order and defend the gains of the revolution, demonstrating that the army supported the people in their uprising. Officers of the Rétság armoured corps freed the Hungarian primate, Cardinal József Mindszenty, from house arrest at Felsõpetény. The rechristened Free Kossuth Radio went on the air, setting out to provide authentic, impartial information.

The radio building in Bródy Sándor utca (8th District) during the revolution. The banner reads ‘Hungarian Free Radio’ Imre Nagy’s address on the radio was followed by initial appeals from the newly reconstituted political parties. These all had serious problems to overcome. First, there was the question of past conduct. Antagonisms arose between those who had spent the communist period in obscurity and those who had been (or appeared to have been) fellow travellers. Many of the armed rebels took exception to the reappearance of the parties, feeling that others were trying to muscle in on their victory. Some opposed the new parties and party politicking because they thought it might endanger the national unity produced by the revolutionary struggle. This point was raised in the newspaper Új Magyarország (New Hungary) by the novelist and playwright László Németh, who had joined the steering committee of the revived National People’s Party (Petõfi Party).

The Independent Smallholders’ Party elected a provisional governing body. Its head was considered to be Béla Kovács, whose political stance was to take the coalition period of 1945–7 as a pattern. This implied that the 1945 general elections, as the last free parliamentary elections, should be recognized as a basis and the Smallholders restored to pre-eminence. The party was prominent in organizing the Capital City National Committee, a revolutionary body designed to direct events in Budapest and forming an important factor in the consolidation.

The Social Democratic Party also chose a governing body, with Anna Kéthly in the chair. This received immediate international recognition and a representative was invited to the meeting of the Socialist International on November 1 in Vienna. The party’s reappearance placed a question mark over the legitimacy of the HWP, which had resulted from the merger of the Hungarian Communist Party and the Social Democrats in 1948, and speeded up its collapse, which brought the prospect of national reconciliation closer. On October 30, a member of the HWP Presidium, Zoltán Szántó, was among those who proposed the dissolution of the HWP, since it was tainted by the old regime, and the foundation of a new party capable of representing the new policy in an authentic way. However, the Presidium could still not bring itself to dissolve the party at this stage.

Representatives of the National Peasants’ Party met on October 31 at Vajdahunyad Castle, in Budapest’s City Park (14th District), where they resuscitated the party in the absence of their previous leader, Ferenc Erdei, who had held ministerial posts under the communists. They underlined their break with the recent past by adopting a new name, the Petõfi Party, after the poet Sándor Petõfi, an instigator of the revolution on March 15, 1848. This implied both support for revolution and a continuing link with the writers.

The clear achievements of consolidation on October 30 were coupled with some serious challenges. Among these were measures taken to attack and limit the power of the central authorities, which were trying to take control again. The first edition appeared of a newspaper entitled Függetlenség (Independence), published by the Hungarian National Revolutionary Committee led by József Dudás, which had formed the previous day. This organization differed from the other revolutionary councils and committees in considering and naming itself as a national body, with aspirations to be a counter-government. Indeed the paper bore a banner headline on October 30 declaring, ‘We do not recognize the present government!’ Many people were criticizing the cabinet announced on October 27 because it still contained cadres who had served Rákosi, but the Hungarian National Revolutionary Committee was the only one to demand a new government altogether. It proposed that this should contain representatives of the freedom fighters and elected members of the Committee, as well as Imre Nagy, János Kádár and Béla Kovács. The Committee even turned to the UN Security Council, calling for recognition as a warring party, the provision of a ceasefire commission, and ‘financial, and if need be military aid’ for Hungary. It anticipated Imre Nagy by two days in repudiating the Warsaw Pact and declared Hungary’s neutrality after the Austrian pattern. It also made efforts to gain acceptance as a sovereign <sovereignty> government at home. Declaring itself the leader of the revolution, it called on representatives of the country’s revolutionary councils and committees to attend a mass meeting in the Budapest Sports Hall on November 1, where a kind of revolutionary parliament would be held.

The offices of the newspaper Szabad Nép on the corner of József körút and Blaha Lujza tér (8th District), taken over by the Dudás group as its headquarters Although Dudás had no appreciable forces behind him, he managed to join members of the Revolutionary Committee of the Hungarian Intelligentsia in obtaining a meeting with Imre Nagy on the same day, aimed at clearing up misunderstandings as rapidly as possible. Thereafter his paper (now entitled the Magyar Függetlenség—Hungarian Independence) continued to attack the government, but drew a distinction between Imre Nagy on the one hand and the fellow travellers of the Smallholders’ and National Peasants’ parties on the other, who were called upon individually to resign.

News of similar threats arrived from Gyõr. The Gyõr National Council, headed by Attila Szigethy, had been founded on October 26 to cover Gyõr-Sopron County. This repeatedly expressed support for Nagy and his policies, but the radicals in the city persistently urged the Council to turn against the Nagy cabinet and form an alternative government. Keen to win over the radicals by meeting some of their demands, Szigethy agreed on October 28 to invite representatives of the revolutionary councils in Western Hungary to a meeting on October 30, to agree on a common assessment of the situation and on the tasks ahead. There were understandable fears in Budapest that an alternative government might form in Gyõr. Whether Szigethy succeeded in preventing this would depend on the mandates that had been given to the delegates attending the meeting. Otherwise, the country might even split in two like Korea. The dangers were increased by an incident in the afternoon of the 30th. Lajos Somogyvári, claiming to represent the young freedom fighters of Budapest, arrived in Gyõr with a body of armed men, intent on establishing a new government with himself at its head. This was dangerous because he echoed demands that were already being voiced in the city, and the regional meeting later in the day would make a suitable forum for proclaiming such a government. Only firm action at the city’s largest factory prevented an attempted coup: the workers’ council at the waggon factory mobilized to support the national council. After Somogyvári and his men had been removed, the meeting established the Transdanubian National Council, to ensure ‘complete implementation of the revolution’s demands’. The Council did not aspire to be an alternative government or act on the government’s behalf, only to convince the executive to take the remaining measures required to bring full social reconciliation. It demanded the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Hungarian territory and a declaration of the country’s neutrality. The next day, Szigethy negotiated personally with Imre Nagy in Budapest, where they agreed fully in their assessments of the situation and their ideas for the future.

The events in Gyõr may have contributed to Imre Nagy’s announcement on October 30 that an inner cabinet had been formed. This omitted the Rákosi-ite cadres, whose presence in the government was being widely criticized, and gave greater weight to representatives of the 1945–8 coalition parties. However, this still did not make the government adequately representative of the democratic, revolutionary organizations. Partly because Nagy relied on personal ties, the former coalition politicians he chose for the new cabinet had not been in the forefront of their parties in the coalition period. In many cases, their activity at that time or their later collaboration with the communists meant they could no longer represent their old party to the extent that Nagy imagined or hoped. The reconstituted National Peasants’ Party was not prepared to accept or cooperate with Ferenc Erdei, though he had been included in the cabinet as its representative. Over the next few days, the Smallholders showed suspicion of Zoltán Tildy, to whom Nagy had given the important post of deputy prime minister with the rank of a state minister. Tildy was not elected to the party’s nine-member provisional steering committee and could take as referring to himself a critical article that appeared in the party’s Kis Újság (Little Newspaper) on November 1. The Social Democrats had yet to nominate a politician to represent their party in the government. This left Béla Kovács of the Smallholders as the only authentic representative of the fact that other parties were being drawn into the government, and he had already been a member of the October 27 cabinet. Very few people appreciated the fine distinction between having ‘non-communist-party persons’ in the government and including representatives of the coalition parties.

Although the attempts to oust the government were countered, there was a third danger facing the leadership on October 30: mob violence. The Soviet and Hungarian military units guarding the premises of the HWP Budapest Committee in Köztársaság tér (8th District) withdrew at dawn on that day. The revolutionaries had taken over several district party buildings on the 29th, as the troops withdrew and the ÁVH was disbanded. On the 30th, armed rebels arrived in Köztársaság tér with a similar purpose. The Budapest party headquarters were seen as one of the main centres of resistance to the revolution, not least because the ÁVH officers defending it had taken several prisoners in recent days. A delegation found its way in, but instead of talks, a gun battle ensued. As news of the clash spread, growing numbers of local armed units arrived in the square to lay siege to the building. There was bitter fighting, during which the defenders even fired on Red Cross workers tending the wounded. When news of the engagement reached the authorities, five army tanks were sent to save the party building. However, these were not linked by radio, and two of them never arrived at all, as the crews had no local knowledge. Those that reached the square were confused at finding a Hungarian tank fighting on the rebel side and began to bombard the building as well. That decided the battle. The defenders ceased to resist. Members of parliament leaving the building—two army generals and Imre Mezõ, the secretary of the party committee, who sympathized with Imre Nagy—were shot down straight away. The crowd that stormed the building brought out into the square the defenders they found, most of them ÁVH men. Several were immediately shot or lynched.

László Elek, a conscripted soldier serving in the ÁVH, is lynched outside the Budapest party headquarters on October 30, 1956 Many members of the organized armed groups present tried to save the prisoners, in some cases snatching them from the hands of the enraged crowd, but their interventions could only reduce the number of victims. After the party building had been captured, the crowd broke up the furniture and burnt books and documents in the square. Then began several days of fruitless searching for rumoured secret underground prisons. The siege and the subsequent mob justice cost 23 lives. During the next few days, all the revolutionary organizations spoke of the need to keep the revolution pure and condemned the lynchings. On October 31, an ÁVH captain was killed by a crowd in Budapest, but the mob violence died down with the fulfilment of the final point in the revolutionary demands (the declaration of neutrality) and the establishment of a revolutionary force to impose law and order, the unational guard. ^[1]