OSA / Collections / RIP / 1956

1956 | In Hungarian Introduction OSA holdings Part I Part II Part III Part IV Selected Filmography See also 1956 Digital Archive Other OSA RIPs

Introduction

By István Rév, Director, OSA Archivum

Perhaps it is not an exaggeration to say that beside the collapse of communism – that is, the ultimate aim of the work done by Radio Free Europe (RFE) – the 1956 Hungarian Revolution was the main event in the history of RFE. For a few days it seemed that the transitory life of communism was over, that the agreement allegedly reached in Yalta among the great powers did not have a binding force – at least the West would not take it seriously –, and in the light of the Revolution, the mission of the Radios, both in hindsight and with an eye to the future, would be historically justified. During the days of the fighting, all 29 transmitting stations of the Radios worked round the clock. For the first time, the Radios had correspondents working behind the Iron Curtain. In one sense, what occurred can be seen as the earliest example of a modern media news event, when the working of a media organization was able to shape those very events that it was covering.

The 1956 materials in the Open Society Archives (the archives of the Research Institute of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) are unique. The Archives holds transcripts of those RFE programs which reflect both the events as well as the reactions to the local coverage of those events, along with transcripts of local radio station programs that reacted and responded to the programs of RFE. The documents give voice to this strange dialogue, and illustrate how this correspondence in the air shaped the events covered by the different radios at different locations.

The Revolution played an unusual role in the life of the Radios in another way: it forced a major review of the Radios' broadcasting. Accusations about the Radios' influence on the Revolution were published – not only in Hungary and in the Soviet-Union but even in Germany, Austria, Sweden, and in the United States – in the immediate aftermath of the events. Following the publication of these articles both the US Congress and the government of the Federal Republic of Germany initiated an investigation about the role of the Hungarian Desk during the revolutionary events. The main thrust of the accusation was that the Radio played a role in the military campaigns; this was founded on the alleged fact that the Radios reported the coming of military help, namely, the coming of the US and/or UN troops.

In response to these accusations, the Radios conducted extensive audience opinion polls among both members of the refugee community and persons still in Hungary, and initiated an internal investigation. This was the first serious test of the role the electronic media could play in shaping important events. From this angle, the Archives' holdings on 1956 have much broader significance than just documenting the extraordinary events in a Communist country. (Looking back, one can argue that the “liberation policy” or “liberation rhetoric” of certain Western governments – as a consequence of which the Hungarian public had real grounds to expect foreign military help –, together with the lack of any serious military help during the Revolution, greatly contributed to the surprisingly quick consolidation of the post-Revolutionary communist restoration. The public understood that communism was there to stay, that Yalta should be taken seriously, and that communist rule would not be just a passing episode in history.) The Open Society Archives holds all the important documents of these investigations, together with a high number of private letters to the Radios that both praise and criticize the work of RFE during the Revolution.

In the Archives there are unique and important interviews conducted during and immediately following the events with participants of the Revolution, with refugees, with people from all parts of the Hungarian society concerning both the revolutionary occurrences, and about everyday life under communism. We have a special body of telegrams sent daily from Austrian refugee camps to the Radios' headquarters in Munich, reporting the changing situation as it unfolded, the rumors among the refugee community, and the first interviews with the exiles. What is especially interesting is not so much the factual accuracy of these reports, but the way in which Western journalists play up to the often peculiar expectations of the newly exiled Hungarians. From these reports it is possible to grasp how the West was perceived by these people who had been living behind the Iron Curtain.

The Open Society Archives is exceptionally rich in contemporary local papers, documents of the Revolution in the countryside, and transcripts of local, usually very short-lived radio programs. It is unusual that these are not exclusively Budapest-centered but cover different parts of the country, especially Western Hungary where the Revolution had a more immediate and important impact than in other parts of the country.

Analysts and broadcasters at the Hungarian Desk became almost obsessed, and understandably so, with the Revolution and its aftermath. Thanks to this unprecedented interest in the subject, their files contain clippings of almost all the important and less important articles published in relation to and about the Revolution up to the very termination of the Hungarian Desk in 1993. On file is every single mention of the Revolution in whatever context, both from the Hungarian and international press. These include transcripts of radio broadcasts in different languages, volumes of news items from dozens of countries regarding commemorations, remembrances, reminders or historical lessons drawn from these events in Hungary. The files contain valuable information about the post-Revolutionary trials, including court reports and lists and biographies of the victims. Based on these records it is possible to see, study and even write the history of communism – and not only of communism in Hungary – from the perspective of the aftermath of and reaction to the 1956 Revolution. I would even go as far as to say that it is difficult to write a realistic history of communism without consulting with these holdings.

The files contain important analysis about the reaction of the Western communist parties, the consequences of the Revolution and of the severe bruising taken by the international communist movement. The anniversaries and commemorations are also extensively covered in the materials. It is possible to observe not only the development of the Hungarian communist narrative but even the way the Western press came to terms with the events, and how the Western journalists tried to explain their growing sympathy to Kádár in the light of the memory of the Revolution. (“Hungary is the happiest barracks in the communist camp; they have their goulash communism; Kádár would be the only communist leader to be returned to office by a democratic election; despite the lack of Western help, the Revolution was a success (!); the sufferings were not in vain; Kádár became a liberal as a consequence of 1956; when we love him, we are not traitors of the memory of the heroic Revolution”). The materials are also an important source for those who are interested in the history of the East-West relationship during the different phases of the cold war.

The Archives inherited a rich body of documents produced by and related to the diverse group of Hungarian exiles, their struggles and activities, especially those, which relate to the Revolution, and their efforts to keep their memories alive. This contains all the important documents of the Hungarian opposition in connection to 1956. One can see how the memory of the Revolution was initially suppressed and then trace its resurrection as an historical occurrence, the re-emergence of 1956 from the shadow of forced amnesia. The Archives has all the important samizdat documents published in connection to 1956, and materials about all the unofficial commemorations before 1989.

The archival materials naturally follow the fate of 1956 into the post-communist period. The interested researcher could make some telling and interesting observations about how the tone, evaluation, interpretation and assessments regarding the events have changed with the passage of time and change of leadership. What's more, these fickle scribes were sometimes the very same persons who played an active role in developing and maintaining the counter-revolutionary narrative. It is possible to follow the disintegration of the unified story of the Revolution as it was illegally remembered before 1989. 1989 was the date of the birth of several competing, sometimes exclusive interpretations of the Revolution, based partly on new recollections. New material that resurfaced after 1989 and that could serve as the basis of new interpretation is also stored in the holdings of the Open Society Archives.

The holdings at the Archives are broader than the original RFE collection was. The Archives succeeded in finding and attracting some important additions to the original core documentation, especially from the period of the post-Revolutionary restoration. The Archives is making efforts to build research resources about the communist representation of the Revolution after 1956, the ways the counter-Revolutionary interpretation has facilitated the communist historical and political narrative. The Archives continues to broaden the work of the people who worked at the Radios, and tries to expand the immensely valuable archives they assembled in difficult times. A few years ago the Archives received the personal papers of Andras Hegedus, Prime Minister of Hungary between the first and the second Imre Nagy government, who was the Prime Minister in office still on 23 October 1956 when the revolution started. His papers covers the years of his exile in the Soviet Union during and after the revolution and his subsequent career as a sociologist and finally his activities in opposition to the restored regime. More recent acquisitions related to 1956 include a substantial digital archive, publicly available without restrictions on the Archives website (www.archivum.ws): digital copies of hundreds of long interviews from the collections of Columbia University, the Hungarian National Library, documents of the International Rescue Committee from the Hoover Institute Archive, declassified CIA documents from the National Security Archive, Washington D.C., The Zwack family collection (newspaper clippings from the time of the revolution), so called "background reports" from the RFE collection related to the history and afterlife of the 1956 revolution, evaluation and information items, etc. The creation of the digital archive has been generously funded by Donald and Vera Blinken; supported by the U.S. Embassy in Budapest, Columbia University, New York, Google, the National Security Archive, Washington D.C., the National Széchényi Library in Budapest, and Mr. Peter Zwack.