On October 23, 1956, hundreds of thousands of Budapest residents took to the streets to demand political reforms, free elections, and the withdrawal of Soviet troops. Peaceful demonstrations quickly turned into an armed uprising. Within days, Hungary was on the verge of leaving the Soviet bloc. The Soviet leadership initially agreed to make concessions and withdraw troops from the capital, but then reversed course. On November 4, the Soviet army launched a large-scale military operation that crushed the uprising. Thousands of people died, and about 200,000 Hungarians left the country. Western governments condemned Moscow’s actions but stopped short of intervening. Why did Hungarians rise up against the communist regime? What made Khrushchev abandon compromise? Could the United States and Europe have helped the insurgents? And why, 70 years later, do the events of 1956 still provoke political disputes in Hungary? Historian Alexey Uvarov answers these and other questions about the uprising.
What was happening in the world in the fall of 1956?
By the mid-1950s, the Cold War had been underway for almost 10 years. After World War II, Europe split into two camps. The United States played the leading role in Western Europe, while communist regimes under Soviet control took power in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and East Germany. In 1949, the United States and its allies formed NATO; in 1955, the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries established the Warsaw Pact.
The confrontation extended beyond Europe. From 1950 to 1953, the United States and its allies fought in the Korean War against North Korea, which had Soviet and Chinese backing. By then, both superpowers had nuclear weapons and understood that a direct conflict between them could have catastrophic consequences.
Tensions began to ease after Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953. The Korean War ended, and in 1955, the Soviet Union withdrew its troops from Austria, which became a neutral state. That same year, the leaders of the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain, and France met in Geneva for the first time in 10 years. Their rivalry continued, but both sides sought to avoid a direct confrontation.
Soviet policy was changing, too. Stalin’s death set off a power struggle in Moscow that Nikita Khrushchev won. In February 1956, at the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, he delivered a secret speech condemning Stalin’s cult of personality and mass repression. At the same time, the Soviet leadership began talking about the possibility of national paths to socialism. Across Eastern Europe, this prompted public debate about possible reforms and loosening Moscow’s political control.
Dwight Eisenhower had been president of the United States since January 1953. His administration publicly advocated the “liberation” of Eastern Europe from communist rule, while the Washington-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe encouraged anti-Soviet sentiment. In practice, however, White House policy was far more cautious. In June 1953, Soviet troops had crushed an uprising in East Germany, and the United States had not intervened. American leaders decided that attempting to liberate Eastern Europe by force could lead to nuclear war. They therefore sought to weaken Soviet influence primarily through peaceful means.
The Suez Crisis erupted as events unfolded in Hungary. In late October 1956, Israel, Britain, and France launched a military operation against Egypt, whose president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, had nationalized the Suez Canal. The United States opposed its own allies’ actions, dividing the Western powers.
The fall of 1956 was a time of contradictions. The Cold War continued, yet the superpowers were seeking to avoid confrontation and had resumed contacts broken off under Stalin. Changes underway in the Soviet Union were raising hopes for reform in Eastern Europe. But no one knew what the limits of those reforms might be or how far Soviet leaders were prepared to go in supporting them.
What was Hungary like in the first half of the 20th century?
Until 1918, Hungary was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where it enjoyed considerable autonomy. The Kingdom of Hungary covered a much larger territory than modern Hungary, encompassing present-day Slovakia, Transylvania, and Croatia. After its defeat in World War I in 1918, Austria-Hungary disintegrated. Hungary became independent, and a republic was proclaimed in Budapest, but the new government could not hold on to power. In the spring of 1919, communists led by Béla Kun seized power. They proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic, which lasted a few months. Communist rule brought political terror and ended in defeat by the Romanian army.
After the communists fell, Miklós Horthy, a former admiral in the Austro-Hungarian navy, came to power. In 1920, Hungary became a kingdom again, but without a king. Horthy became regent and effectively ruled the country until 1944. His regime was conservative and authoritarian, though parliament and some political parties continued to exist. The country’s most pressing problem was the aftermath of the 1920 Treaty of Trianon: Hungary lost about two-thirds of its territory, and roughly a third of ethnic Hungarians found themselves outside its new borders.
The desire to recover those territories largely shaped Horthy’s foreign policy. Hungary gradually drew closer to Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, whose support helped it regain some of the lost lands from 1938 to 1941. The price, however, was participation in World War II on Germany’s side. In 1941, Hungary entered the war against the Soviet Union, and in 1943 its army suffered catastrophic losses on the Eastern Front.
In March 1944, Germany occupied Hungary, fearing that it would pull out of the war. With the active participation of the Hungarian authorities, more than 400,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz within a few months. That fall, Horthy tried to negotiate an armistice with Germany’s enemies but was removed from power. The Nazis replaced him with Hungarian far-right politicians from the Arrow Cross Party.
In February 1945, after a siege lasting almost two months, the Red Army took Budapest. The city had suffered extensive destruction, and Hungary was once again on the losing side of a world war. Its political future now depended largely on the Soviet Union, whose troops were stationed in the country.
What happened in Hungary between 1945 and 1956? Did it become a copy of the Soviet Union?
Hungary was treated as a defeated ally of Nazi Germany, so its reconstruction and political future depended on the victorious powers. Formally, the Allied Control Commission monitored compliance with the armistice, but Soviet representatives led by Marshal Kliment Voroshilov dominated the commission. Hungary also had to pay reparations, a substantial share of which was to go to the Soviet Union.
Initially, the country retained a multiparty system. Free parliamentary elections were held in November 1945. The Smallholders’ Party won about 57% of the vote, while the communists received just 17%. With Moscow’s support, however, the communists kept their places in the coalition government and retained control of key security agencies. Their leader, Mátyás Rákosi, gradually eliminated political opponents using what he himself called “salami tactics”: Opposition parties were weakened piece by piece as their leaders were accused of conspiring and engaging in activities against the state.
By the end of the 1940s, the communists had established complete control. In 1947, Soviet security services arrested Béla Kovács, a leader of the Smallholders’ Party, and Prime Minister Ferenc Nagy was forced to resign. In 1948, the communists absorbed the Social Democratic Party, and in 1949 a Soviet-style constitution was adopted. Hungary became a people’s republic, with one party holding a virtual monopoly on power.
A harsh dictatorship took shape in the years that followed. Rákosi, who called himself Stalin’s best pupil, established a system of mass repression. Opposition figures, clergy, intellectuals, and even members of the Communist Party itself were arrested. In 1949, former Interior Minister László Rajk was executed on fabricated espionage charges. Cardinal József Mindszenty, the head of Hungary’s Catholic Church, was sentenced to life in prison. Tens of thousands of people were sent to prisons and camps, and many families were forcibly expelled from cities.
At the same time, the authorities tried to restructure the economy along Soviet lines. Industry was nationalized, peasants were forced to join agricultural cooperatives, and resources went primarily toward the rapid expansion of heavy industry. The aim was to turn Hungary into an industrial hub for the Soviet bloc despite its limited raw material reserves. These policies led to falling living standards, shortages of consumer goods, and growing public discontent.
By the early 1950s, Hungary’s political and economic system largely replicated that of the Soviet Union under Stalin. The communist regime lacked broad public support and survived mainly because of the Soviet military presence. After Stalin’s death, the discontent that had built up began to surface more forcefully.
What happened in Hungary between Stalin’s death and the start of the uprising?
In March 1953, Soviet leaders began reassessing their policies in Eastern Europe. Moscow understood that repression and economic hardship were fueling public discontent and decided to move away from Stalin’s approach to foreign policy. In June, Hungary’s leaders were summoned to the Kremlin, where Mátyás Rákosi faced sharp criticism. He was accused of mass repression, excessive industrialization, and ruining agriculture. Moscow demanded that Rákosi hand the prime minister’s post to Imre Nagy while remaining leader of the Communist Party.
Nagy was a longtime party member who had spent many years in the Soviet Union. After World War II, he served as agriculture minister and oversaw a land reform that distributed large estates among peasants. On becoming prime minister in the summer of 1953, Nagy announced a “new course.” The authorities slowed industrialization, eased pressure on peasants, began releasing political prisoners, and gave greater priority to producing consumer goods. There was no talk yet of abandoning socialism or introducing a multiparty system, but the changes were substantial compared with previous policies. The reforms quickly made Nagy popular with the public.
But Rákosi remained party leader and opposed these policies. The outcome of his struggle with Nagy depended largely on who prevailed in Moscow. In early 1955, Khrushchev strengthened his position, while Georgy Malenkov, who supported Nagy, lost his post as head of the Soviet government. This enabled Rákosi to oust his rival from power. In April 1955, Nagy was removed as prime minister and later expelled from the party. Socialist Hungary’s leaders tried to return to their previous policies, but it was too late: Reform-minded writers, journalists, and party officials continued to push for change.
These movements gained momentum after the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in February 1956, where Khrushchev condemned repression. Rákosi, who regarded himself as a follower of Stalin, became even more vulnerable. Public debate intensified in Budapest, particularly in the Petőfi Circle, a discussion group named after the poet Sándor Petőfi, which drew thousands of participants. In the summer of 1956, the Politburo decided to remove Rákosi but installed his closest associate, Ernő Gerő, as party leader. Most critics of the regime saw this as merely a symbolic concession that fell well short of what was needed.
Tensions continued to mount. On October 6, the authorities allowed a ceremonial reburial of László Rajk, the party official executed in 1949 on fabricated charges. Tens of thousands attended, turning the ceremony into a mass demonstration against the Stalinist past. On October 13, Nagy was readmitted to the party. The leadership, however, still hesitated to undertake serious reforms.
The situation in Hungary was full of contradictions. Moscow had first supported reforms, then allowed them to be rolled back, and then once again advocated change and began de-Stalinization. Yet the people responsible for repression and harsh policies remained in power in Hungary. Hungarians increasingly doubted that the communists could carry out the necessary reforms, and soon they decided to take to the streets.
How and why did the uprising begin?
Events in neighboring Poland provided the spark. In October 1956, Polish communists decided to restore Władysław Gomułka to the party leadership. He had been removed from power and imprisoned under Stalin. Moscow tried to prevent his return: On October 19, Khrushchev and other leaders hurried to Warsaw, and Soviet troops began advancing toward the city. After negotiations, however, the Kremlin accepted the appointment of Gomułka, who promised to preserve the alliance with the Soviet Union. In Hungary, these events raised hopes that similar changes could be achieved at home.
On October 22, students at Budapest’s Polytechnic Institute drew up 16 demands for the authorities. They called for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary, Nagy’s return as prime minister, free elections, an end to censorship, and accountability for the country’s former leader, Rákosi. The students decided to hold a demonstration the following day in support of Poland’s reforms.
The October 23 demonstration began peacefully but quickly grew into a mass protest. Workers and other Budapest residents joined the students; by evening, hundreds of thousands of people were in the streets. Some demonstrators gathered outside parliament, demanding Nagy’s return, while others toppled an enormous statue of Stalin. Gerő, the Communist Party’s first secretary, went on the radio and accused the protesters of nationalism and hostile actions against the socialist system. His speech only fueled the anger.
Meanwhile, thousands of people gathered outside the state radio building. They demanded that the students be allowed on air to read their 16 demands. The building was guarded by political police, and the demonstrators’ representatives, who had been allowed inside for talks, had still not come back hours later. Rumors spread through the crowd that they had been arrested or even killed. Tensions rose as demonstrators demanded the delegation’s release and tried to enter the building. State security officers used tear gas and then opened fire on the crowd, which included unarmed demonstrators. Some people were killed, and others were wounded.
The authorities then lost control of the situation entirely. Protesters began arming themselves. Hungarian soldiers and police officers who refused to disperse the demonstration gave them some weapons; the protesters obtained others from warehouses and factories. Street fighting broke out around the radio building and continued through the night. Within hours, a peaceful demonstration had become an armed uprising.
How did the Soviet leadership respond? Did Moscow immediately decide to crush the uprising by force?
On the evening of October 23, as protests escalated into armed clashes, the Hungarian authorities asked Moscow for military assistance. Soviet leaders convened an emergency meeting at the Kremlin that night. Most supported sending in troops. Only Anastas Mikoyan opposed the move, believing that force would only deepen the crisis. The other Politburo members did not support him, however, and Soviet tanks entered Budapest on the morning of October 24. At the same time, Nagy was reappointed prime minister of Hungary in the hope that this would calm the protesters.
But sending in troops had the opposite effect: A local protest against the communist leadership became a national uprising against Soviet domination. Street fighting continued, and some Hungarian troops joined the insurgents. On October 25, demonstrators outside parliament came under fire on an even larger scale, and dozens of people were killed. The authorities were rapidly losing control of the country: Revolutionary committees sprang up in cities, and workers’ councils formed in factories.
Soviet leaders again tried to find a political solution to the crisis. On October 28, Hungary’s new prime minister, Nagy, announced a ceasefire, recognized the uprising as a national democratic movement, and promised to disband the political police. Moscow, in turn, agreed to begin withdrawing troops from Budapest.
Records of Soviet leadership meetings from October 28 to 31, 1956, reveal considerable hesitation. On October 28, for example, Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Bulganin called a full-scale military operation a “reckless venture,” a view supported by Politburo member Lazar Kaganovich. That same day, Khrushchev himself advocated a political solution, saying, “All we’re doing is shooting.” On October 30, Foreign Minister Dmitry Shepilov even suggested that Moscow stop dictating terms to Eastern European countries.
Soviet leaders changed course on October 31. They concluded that concessions had failed to halt the revolution: Communist Party rule in Hungary was rapidly crumbling, and Nagy’s government could no longer guarantee that the country would remain in the Soviet bloc. Meanwhile, the start of the British-French operation against Egypt reinforced Khrushchev’s fear that withdrawing from Budapest would be seen as a sign of weakness. Fear of criticism from the Soviet Communist Party’s conservative wing also played a role, as did confidence that the United States would stop short of military intervention. Khrushchev gave this explanation:
If we leave Hungary, it will encourage the American, British, and French imperialists. They will see it as weakness on our part and press forward. We would be exposing the weakness of our position. Our party would not understand us. We would then be giving them Hungary on top of Egypt. We have no other choice.
Moscow therefore abandoned compromise and decided to restore control over Hungary by force.
How was the uprising crushed? How many people died? And what kind of regime emerged in Hungary?
After deciding to intervene militarily on October 31, the Soviet Union began moving additional troops into Hungary. Dubbed Operation Whirlwind, the operation was led by Marshal Ivan Konev. About 60,000 Soviet troops took part in total. The plan called for seizing Budapest and other major cities simultaneously, disarming the Hungarian army, and taking control of key government institutions.
Meanwhile, Soviet leaders continued to pretend they were willing to negotiate a peaceful settlement. On November 3, Hungarian and Soviet representatives discussed a troop withdrawal. That evening, however, the Hungarian delegation, led by Defense Minister Pál Maléter, was invited to a Soviet military base, where KGB officers arrested its members. At dawn on November 4, the Red Army launched its offensive. Prime Minister Nagy managed to broadcast a radio message announcing the invasion before taking refuge in the Yugoslav embassy. Moscow announced the formation of a new Hungarian government led by János Kádár.
The Hungarian army was unable to mount organized resistance. Soviet troops quickly disarmed most of its units, leaving volunteer groups — mainly young workers and students — to do most of the fighting. Despite the Soviet Union’s overwhelming military superiority, street battles in Budapest continued for several days. The last major pockets of resistance were crushed by mid-November.
About 2,500 to 2,700 Hungarians died in the fighting, and roughly 20,000 more were wounded. A total of 669 Soviet soldiers were killed in action or died of their wounds. Another 51 servicemen were missing, and about 1,500 were wounded. Resistance continued even after the fighting ended: Workers’ councils organized strikes, demanding the restoration of the country’s independence. With Soviet support, Kádár’s new government gradually suppressed these protests.
Military defeat was followed by mass repression. Tens of thousands of people were convicted of taking part in the uprising, and about 230 were executed. More than 200,000 Hungarians left the country. Nagy, who had been promised safe passage from the Yugoslav embassy, was detained and taken to Romania. He was later returned to Hungary, where he was sentenced to death in a trial closed to the public. On June 16, 1958, Nagy was executed along with several associates.
Kádár remained in power for more than 30 years. The early years of his rule brought brutal repression, but the regime gradually softened. A broad amnesty was announced in 1963, and in later years Hungarians gained more economic freedom and greater freedom in their private lives than people in many other Soviet-bloc countries. This system later became known as “goulash communism.” Political power, however, remained in the party’s hands, Soviet troops stayed in the country, and the events of 1956 were officially regarded as a “counterrevolution.”
How did Western countries respond to the uprising? And why didn’t they help the Hungarians?
The uprising caught the United States and its European allies off guard. American intelligence services had not expected a mass armed revolt against the communist regime, even though the Eisenhower administration advocated the “liberation” of Eastern Europe from Soviet domination. The American-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe also encouraged anti-communist sentiment and called for resistance. Some Hungarians therefore expected the West to come to their aid if they rose up.
But as events in East Germany in 1953 had already shown, the United States had no intention of liberating Soviet-bloc countries by military force. Washington understood that such a confrontation could escalate into nuclear war. When the Hungarian uprising began on October 23, 1956, the White House therefore ruled out direct intervention almost immediately.
Instead, the Americans tried to find a diplomatic solution. Washington hoped that Hungary could become an independent, neutral state, following Austria’s example. Hungary would no longer be under Soviet control but would not join NATO either. On October 27, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles publicly said that Washington did not regard Eastern European states as potential military allies. American leaders hoped this would persuade Moscow to refrain from another military intervention.
The Suez Crisis complicated matters. As the uprising unfolded, Britain and France joined Israel in launching a military operation against Egypt, which the United States sharply condemned. Serious divisions emerged among the Western allies. The main reason Western governments refused to intervene militarily, however, was not the Suez Crisis but their unwillingness to risk a direct war with the Soviet Union.
American policy thus proved contradictory: Washington publicly supported the liberation of Eastern European countries but had no intention of going to war for them. As a result, some Hungarian insurgents waited for Western help that never came.
What form did Western support take, then?
Although Western countries ruled out military intervention, they publicly supported the uprising and condemned Soviet actions. British Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd told Parliament that the British government was following the Hungarians’ struggle for freedom with admiration. French Prime Minister Guy Mollet rejected Soviet accusations that fascists had organized the uprising. West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer called the Hungarian resistance an example of extraordinary heroism. Mass demonstrations in solidarity with Hungarians took place in European capitals.
The U.N. Security Council began considering the situation in Hungary as early as October 28, and after the renewed Soviet invasion on November 4, Western countries demanded the withdrawal of Soviet troops. Moscow, however, used its veto to block a resolution to that effect. The issue was referred to the U.N. General Assembly, which voted on November 4 to condemn the Soviet intervention and demand a troop withdrawal. In January 1957, a special U.N. committee was established to investigate the events. Its report confirmed that the uprising had been a mass movement against Soviet domination, rather than a Western-organized coup. But General Assembly resolutions were not binding, and the United Nations could not compel Moscow to change its policy.
The largest practical contribution was taking in refugees. After the uprising was crushed, more than 200,000 people — about 2% of the population — left Hungary. As many as 185,000 fled to neighboring neutral Austria, and about 20,000 more to Yugoslavia. Many crossed the border on foot without assistance. This was relatively easy because some of the border barriers between Hungary and Austria had been dismantled in the summer of 1956.
The Austrian authorities set up temporary camps and provided refugees with food, shelter, and medical care. With support from the United Nations, the Red Cross, and other international organizations, refugees began resettling in other countries. The United States, Canada, Britain, West Germany, and other countries took in tens of thousands of Hungarians. In total, about 180,000 refugees later moved from Austria and Yugoslavia to countries around the world.
How were the events of 1956 remembered in Hungary — and how are they remembered today?
After the uprising was crushed, the communist authorities led by Kádár officially called it a “counterrevolution” organized by enemies of socialism. Participants were persecuted, and public discussion of the events was tightly controlled. Over time, the authorities preferred to keep silent about the subject, since memories of the Soviet invasion called the legitimacy of the Moscow-backed regime into question. Nevertheless, the memory of the uprising lived on among emigrants and opposition circles, particularly through the circulation of samizdat — publications distributed outside state censorship — in the 1970s and 1980s.
The situation began to change in the second half of the 1980s, influenced by perestroika in the Soviet Union and reforms in Hungary itself. In 1988, Kádár was removed as party leader. In January 1989, Imre Pozsgay, a leader of Hungary’s Communist Party, publicly called the events of 1956 a popular uprising. A turning point came with the ceremonial reburial of Nagy and his associates on June 16, 1989, which drew about 250,000 people. A young opposition politician, Viktor Orbán, spoke at the ceremony, demanding the withdrawal of Soviet troops and free elections. On October 23, 1989, the anniversary of the uprising’s start, Hungary officially ceased to be a socialist republic.
After the communist regime fell, the 1956 revolution became one of the symbols of Hungary’s new democracy. In 1990, October 23 was declared a national holiday. Gradually, however, political groups developed different interpretations of the uprising’s legacy. Liberal politicians more often emphasized the struggle for democracy and political freedoms, while national conservatives stressed resistance to foreign domination and the defense of national independence. Nagy himself also became a subject of dispute: He had led the revolutionary government and been executed, but he had also risen through the communist movement and initially advocated reforming socialism rather than abolishing it.
Under Orbán, who headed the government from 2010 to 2026, the government’s official commemoration of 1956 increasingly emphasized national independence. Orbán repeatedly compared the Hungarians’ struggle against Moscow in 1956 to Budapest’s contemporary disputes with the European Union. In late 2018, a monument to Nagy was removed from a square near parliament and later installed elsewhere. The decision drew criticism from the opposition.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the memory of the uprising became the subject of fresh disputes: Orbán’s opponents pointed to the contradiction between his reverence for those who fought the Soviet invasion and his warm relations with Putin’s Russia. In September 2024, an adviser to Orbán said that if Russia invaded, Hungary should not follow Ukraine’s example of armed resistance, because the 1956 uprising had ended in tragedy. The remark prompted another wave of criticism. Orbán was forced to distance himself publicly from his adviser’s words, calling them a mistake.
The Hungarian uprising was one of the Cold War’s most dramatic events. It showed how sweeping the demands for change inspired by de-Stalinization could become, and how little change Soviet leaders were willing to allow. When Hungary’s place in the Soviet bloc came under threat, Moscow chose military intervention over political compromise. Despite their public support for the Hungarians, Western countries stopped short of a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union, limiting their response to diplomatic protests and aid for refugees.
The uprising was crushed, but its memory survived and, three decades later, played an important role in the fall of the communist regime. Yet the history of 1956 has not become a national symbol everyone agrees on: Politicians still interpret the uprising’s goals and lessons differently. Hungarians continue to debate what freedom, independence, and resistance to outside pressure mean today.
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Alexey Uvarov