Seventy years after the counterrevolutionary events of 1956, Hungary remains a powerful reminder that the struggle between socialism and capitalism does not end with the overthrow of bourgeois power. The restoration of capitalism was not an abstract possibility, nor was the danger of counterrevolution confined to external imperialist intervention. It could also emerge through the exploitation of internal contradictions, political mistakes and the advance of opportunism within the communist movement itself.
Yet seven decades later, the social-democratic magazine Jacobin presents a seemingly radical interpretation of 1956 that nevertheless echoes a central premise of dominant bourgeois historiography. In a recent article, Adam Fabry and Anita Zsurzsán portray the uprising as an authentic working-class revolution, presenting Soviet intervention as the suppression of a movement for socialist democracy. Their argument, however, elevates the genuine aspirations of sections of the Hungarian working class into the defining character of the entire uprising, while minimizing the political forces that sought to turn the crisis towards the dismantling of socialism.
The serious mistakes committed under Mátyás Rákosi cannot be ignored. Economic imbalances, bureaucratic arbitrariness, coercive practices and weaknesses in the relationship between the Hungarian Workers' Party and the masses had generated widespread dissatisfaction, including among industrial workers. These problems demanded correction, not concealment.
But the crisis was aggravated by another decisive factor: the advance of opportunism and revisionism within the communist movement itself.
The ideological confusion following the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, particularly Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin, contributed to the weakening of revolutionary principles and encouraged political tendencies that increasingly questioned the foundations of socialist power.
In Hungary, the revisionist current associated with Imre Nagy presented its political orientation as a democratic renewal of socialism. Under slogans promising a more national and supposedly democratic socialist system, it blurred the distinction between correcting the shortcomings of socialist construction and dismantling its political foundations.
This confusion did not remain confined to party leadership circles. It also influenced sections of the working class, particularly those already disillusioned by economic difficulties and bureaucratic practices. Workers who sincerely wanted to improve socialism could therefore find themselves supporting political developments whose consequences they neither anticipated nor desired. This is essential to understanding the workers' councils, which occupy such a central place in Jacobin's argument.
The authors emphasize their emergence in industrial centres such as Csepel, Miskolc and Dunapentele, presenting them as evidence that the uprising was fundamentally socialist. They also point to workers who identified their cause with socialism, opposed fascist excesses and demanded greater participation in political and economic decisions.
These facts establish genuine working-class participation, but not, by themselves, the class character of the entire uprising. The councils were politically heterogeneous, combining demands for workplace democracy and the preservation of socialist property with opposition to Soviet troops and calls for far-reaching political changes. Even after November 4, workers continued striking and organizing against the intervention and the government headed by János Kádár.
Such resistance reflected genuine grievances, but also the depth of the political confusion into which the crisis had developed. A worker could sincerely believe he was fighting for socialism while supporting forces and political demands that objectively weakened socialist power. That is precisely why opportunism is so dangerous: it can turn legitimate dissatisfaction into support for a political course fundamentally opposed to the interests it claims to defend.
Meanwhile, the uprising was moving far beyond demands for reform. Bourgeois political parties re-emerged, armed anti-communist groups gained ground, state institutions disintegrated and Nagy announced Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. The struggle had become one over the country's political orientation and the survival of its socialist system.
The violence accompanying these developments cannot be overlooked. On October 30, armed insurgents attacked the headquarters of the Hungarian Workers' Party in Budapest's Republic Square. Captured defenders were brutally murdered, and their bodies subjected to public humiliation. These atrocities, documented by Western photographers, exposed the presence of forces prepared to physically eliminate communists.
Imperialism, for its part, did not have to manufacture the crisis. The United States and its allies could exploit existing contradictions, encourage anti-Soviet sentiments and promote political developments favourable to the weakening of socialism. Through propaganda, political pressure and psychological warfare, Western imperialism sought to turn Hungary's internal crisis into an opportunity to undermine socialist power and open the road towards capitalist restoration.
This does not mean that every protester was an imperialist agent or that Washington directed every armed group. The danger arose precisely because genuine popular discontent, revisionist disorientation and organized counterrevolution became intertwined. It was under these circumstances that the Soviet intervention of November 4 took place.
No communist should regard the entry of Soviet troops into a socialist country, with the suffering and loss of life it entailed, as something desirable. It was a painful development, reflecting both the gravity of the crisis and the failure to resolve its contradictions politically.
By early November, the breakdown of established authority, armed anti-communist violence and the growing influence of counterrevolutionary forces had created the danger of prolonged internal conflict, potentially leading to civil war and further bloodshed.
The Soviet leadership faced an exceptionally difficult decision. While Jacobin emphasizes Moscow's fear of a workers' revolution from below, the danger of counterrevolutionary forces consolidating power made intervention appear necessary from the standpoint of defending socialism. It was an odious necessity, a bitter decision whose human cost should neither be concealed nor separated from the circumstances that produced it.
The Kádár government subsequently faced considerable resistance, including from workers' councils whose leaders were subjected to arrests and other coercive measures. These developments cannot simply be explained away. Yet neither do they establish that a victory of the uprising would have produced a more democratic socialism rather than a fundamentally different political and social order.
The following decades of socialist construction in Hungary, with significant advances in industry, agriculture, education, healthcare and living standards, also belong to the historical record. They cannot be erased from the assessment of the country's post-1956 development.
There is, moreover, a revealing contradiction in Jacobin's interpretation. The authors criticize the appropriation of 1956 by Viktor Orbán's nationalist right. Yet their own reading shares with the dominant bourgeois interpretation a crucial emphasis: the struggle against Soviet-backed socialist power becomes the central narrative of emancipation, even if the political objectives attributed to that struggle are fundamentally different.
But Jacobin's familiar social-democratic, anti-Soviet framework allows the authors to recognize the mistakes of socialist construction while overlooking the contradiction at the heart of their argument: the socialist aspirations of sections of the working class did not necessarily coincide with the political direction of the forces gaining influence in the uprising.
The restoration of capitalism in Hungary in 1989–1990 offers another historical lesson. It was facilitated not primarily by foreign military intervention, but by the advance of opportunist and revisionist forces within the ruling party itself, whose political course contributed to the dismantling of socialism. Although the circumstances were different, this later experience demonstrated how the weakening of revolutionary principles and the transformation of communist parties from within could open the road to capitalist restoration.
The tragedy of 1956 was not that Hungarian workers demanded improvements in their lives or greater participation in socialist administration. Such demands deserved serious attention. The tragedy was that genuine grievances were exploited amid deep political confusion, allowing counterrevolutionary forces to gain ground and placing socialist power in mortal danger.
The decisive question is therefore not whether workers participated in the uprising, nor whether many of them sincerely believed they were defending socialism. They did. The question is which political forces were gaining the upper hand, whose class interests were being advanced and what social order their victory would have made possible.
By avoiding that fundamental distinction, Jacobin turns a contradictory counterrevolutionary crisis into a romanticized tale of proletarian emancipation. Its interpretation may conform to the magazine's longstanding hostility towards Soviet socialism, but it offers little understanding of the actual lessons of Hungary in 1956.
* Nikos Mottas is the Editor-in-Chief of In Defense of Communism.
