THE leaders entered Hungary in 1944 with the Soviet tanks. Manipulating the masses' desire TOr genuine radical change and using the presence of the Russian military, the gradually eliminated its bourgeois and democratic rivals become the 'leading force' in the 1949.
The economic and transformations carried out by the increasingly CP-controlled regime between 1945 and 1949 had the support of the majority of the Hungarian workers. Toll That began change dramatically however 1948/49. The alienation of the working class from regime resulted largely from the economic policies pursued by the Stalinists in emulating the of rapid Gover mode dustrialisation. The workers were constantiv aggravated by the ever-increasing work while forced deliveries took their toll on the peasantry. Workers' discontent was with increasing repression.
Imre Nagy, Prime Minister during the later uprising, pointed out in his later Willie that: number of persons imprisoned is greater than ever before. But the most alarming fact is that the majority of those convicted come from working class, the industrial workers.' At the same time as the East German revolt in June 1953, which began protest against higher work-norms, there were strikes in some of the centres Hungary such as Csepel, later one of the centres of the '56 Socialist Challenge Between 1949 and 1952 the living SLaneare workers had actually fallen by almost 20 per cent, and by 1956 commentators describing LIUSL the mood of working class as one of seething discontent The factor which released this discontent and the explosion of 1956 was the crisis inside the Soviet bureauto 'de-Stalinisation'. by self-defence process carried out by the ruling elite against a rising tide of discontent in Soviet Union.
It was not a real movement of self-reform. But the relative stablitv of the soviel cracy Inedul that this cess did not provoke any mass upheaval in the Soviet Union itself, rather its explosive effect was felt almost immediately in after Eastern Europe.
CP Hew European satellite was much more isolated from society a whole Soviet counterparts, especially in Hungary. The CP was prac119 -tically non-existent at the time of the liberation in 1944. position of power depended on the presence of Russian backing In most visible military sense.
In addition, in the few years CP takeover, InCe bureaucratic elite had not yet succeeded in assembling a solid bureaucratic base, a privileged 'The aristocracy of labour tied the materially and ideologically.
bureaucratic apparatus the working class made it very when confronted weak any kind of mass social disconheightened LCHIL. It also contradictions, an explosion much more likely.
another factor in the impact ol de-Stalinisation Europe. Stalinist ship was imposed on Hungary by a foreign power, an important tact in a country where the 6 November 1931 •Page 8 nationalist traditions of the the War of were still very much alive.
The absence of militant and were Communist the Hungarian working class also contributed to the fact that the only step into the leadership of this provoked mass desire for political change was the liberal reformist wing the Stalinist itself. From 1953 onwards this This was a current was associated with the name of imre Nagy. the Elite The Nagy current was never really organised inside the rulbüreau- ing party. Nagy's commitment to the unity and rule of the party elite, and his opposition to any. kind of links with the popular masses outside the party, weakening of this current even in the East on the limited terrain of its own countries reformist project.
Nagy lilali typified the liberal bureaucratic element within the Stalinist apparatus. He Minister in 1953 on instructions from the Soviet leaders as part of the temporarv libera isatior and taken after the workers' uprising in East Germany. spent 15 years as a Comintern the functionary in the Soviet Union and was part of the ministration in Hungary from 1944.
firmly On the bureaucracy Stalin's death it was Nagy who delivered the the Hungarian ing Stalin as the 'great leader of humanity. • The the liberalisation in the Soviet the Union line Stalinist wing in Hungary led by Rakosi and led to Nagy's dismissal at the beginning of 1955.
Eastern He was brought back into leader- the party and government only after the beginning of the 1956 revOlL it off.
Independence traditions in the political current able to bureaucracy persona contributed to the represented and was made Prime He had CP admorning after eulogy in the Parliament, praisstrengthened the hard- in an attempt to head 25 years ag