So what exactly did Rákosi do wrong? Was there a different Hungarian communist that could've been a better replacement for him, or was he one of the best ones?
So what exactly did Rákosi do wrong...
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he was barely even a communist. He did literally nothing right. Béla Kun would have been a better replacement, but people with actually sound ideas had to be executed.
Rákosi was a left wing activist in his early years during the Horthy regime but he was arrested and probably tortured to piss. By the time the soviets arrived he was a broken man with nothing left, but vengance. He started fucking purges agains kulaks, something that didn't even fucking exist in Hungary. The way he executed collectivization was both inconseqvential AND extremely damaging. He did nothing to stop to soviets from (quite literally) taking all of Hungary's industry with them. And let's not even talk about his personal cult.
He was incompetent, insane, and unstable. The only reason he was kept around was probably because he didn't ask questions and didn't talk back.
Wasn't Rakosi part of Kun's faction among the Hungarian emigres in the USSR?
Complete mismanagement of the economy, idiotic collectivization policy with people being labeled kulaks for political rather than economic reasons, unnecessarily cruel policing, the party having no internal and collective life.
Interesting. What's the source?
What the actual fuck?
You know shit was fucked up when even Beria was worried about too many people getting purged.
It should be telling that even after the 1956 uprising was suppressed he was never allowed to return to Hungary. As others said he provides a perfect example of what not to do. He engaged in sweeping repression of nonexistent Titoists and Trotskyists, sending many committed and innocent party members (including veterans of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, Spanish Civil War, and anti-Nazi resistance). He mismanaged the economy to the point where standards of living in 1956 were lower than they were when the communists took power, he brutalized peasants and alienated much of the Hungarian rural proletariat who were both workers and smallholders. He instituted an industrialization regime that Hungary was physically incapable of sustaining without dramatically lowering wages to pay for factories and machinery. Basically he tried to copy Stalin’s policies exactly despite the fact that conditions in Hungary were totally different and unsuitable for them. There were no kulaks to eliminate, there was no Trotskyist faction within the party, there was no need to industrialize to survive, and there was a great deal of overlap between peasants and workers. On top of it all corruption was also rampant. If you want a really good description of his idiotic policies I’d recommend you read “The Worker’s State” by Mark Pittaway.
B-b-but american twitter tankies told me it was a fascist counter-revolution!
He literally ended the great purge
If you say so Paedo.
It also goes into great detail about how Rakosi’s policies so impoverished workers that the only way to make ends meat was informal bargaining at the factory level that included wages paid in goods. This was all done off the books so it also meant that much of the data planners were working with was inaccurate, which caused the economy to falter even more, which made workers rely even more heavily on informal payment in a vicious cycle.
Hungarian but against the revolution of 1956. Part of the issue just to touch on the revolution bit was that Kruschev did his anti Stalinist
speech denouncing him. What effect this had is that then it turned people in Hungary against him.
Thing is besides from Nagy none of the revolutionaries were really Communist or had communist ties. Only Social Democrat at the best. And call it anecdotes or whatever but I have seen fascists praise our 56 revolution has some sorta anti communist revolt to be praised fascist ball even uploading one of their songs.
What always made me suspicious about them is their logo was the communist symbol of Hungary cut out, wanted prominent communists on trial they accused of being Stalinists, and wanted "open and free elections" which sounds more like they wanted lib-dem bourg type of government.
Only thing really communist was the Nagy guy who used to be a hard core Bolshevik but had been changing his mind at this point.
Communism bad.
Rakosi didn't need Khrushchev's help to turn the Hungarian people against him, he was already deeply unpopular before the Secret Speech.
Not true at all. Communist party members featured prominently both in Nagy's government and on the barricades. The Social Democrats were old school socdems, and would be considered demsoc's by today's standards. They, together with the communists, held the majority of positions in Nagy's government. Even the non-socialist parties admitted that socialism as a system was popular with the people, and that it couldn't be dismantled. Furthermore none of the demands of the revolutionaries were particularly reactionary, their main concerns were the establishment of proletarian democracy and national independence (i.e. an end to Soviet meddling in Hungary's internal affairs). No prominent revolutionary group of member of the government was advocating a return to private ownership.
Yeah and some liberals try to claim Marx as their own.
The symbol was designed by Rakosi and associated with his government. Its replacement with the Koussouth emblem was just the adoption of symbolism in line with Hungary's own revolutionary traditions.
They wanted specific individuals that were high ranking in Rakosi's government put on trial.
They wanted multi-party elections within the context of a socialist economy, which is not the same thing as returning to bourgeois democracy.
If you think that going over the specific policies of Rakosi's government and examining their effects on society is the same as denouncing communism then you might be a dogmatist. There was literally nobody, not even hardcore MLs, that was willing to defend Rakosi after 1956. Denying his incompetence is delusional.
Thee are two of their demands that already strike out. Selling Uranium on the world market to west and NATO, and the other is literally stating to let ALL political parties even the conservative and fascist ones to join in.
See the above
They wanted some fascist war criminals to be returned, how nice :^}
Again Hungarian, I have great respect for what the Soviets did in kicking the fascsits out, would not be opposed to statues of the 48 revolution as well.
This demand was vaugley worded that it could mean both to continue a collective farming or privatization.
Literally CIA nibber tier stuff, just let the western media in. Radio Free Europe will cause no harm and lead people away.
They never replaced a symbol. They just used the flag WITH THE SOCIALIST SYMBOL CUT OUT.
Literally who and when. Most of them hate Marx and try to distance him. It still does not negate the fact open fascists are praising the Hungarian revolution and use it as a good selling point.
Again people in the communist party they did not like.
Another Hungarian here. This is obvious bullshit. Just to name a few communists participating in the revolution: György Lukács, the most famous Hungarian communist philosopher wasn't just one of the leaders of the Hungarian Soviet of 1919 but a member of Nagy's revolutionary government and his daughter started organizing a revolutionary Leninist party during 1956; György Moldova, the most widely read Hungarian author alive, an avowed communist writer participated as a young communist in 1956; Gyula Illyés, a committed and internationally known anti-fascist poet took part in 1956 as well. These are just the most obvious examples I can think of. I have communist friends whose grandparents were either illegal communists during the Horthy regime or took part in the International Brigades in 1936 and participated in 1956 as well. The masses themselves – and this is rather telling – did not demand the restoration of private property or a market system. They perceived Moscow to be meddling in Hungarian international affairs: the politburo did insist that Rákosi resigned and Nagy take over, just to change their minds again and ask for Nagy's resignation a bit later… Fuckups were committed on both sides: Rákosi's inner circle (his "troika") were completely incompetent in their economic planning and brutal in their policies and were removed from the rest of the party and hence from the masses, while Nagy's first government enjoyed popular support only to be overturned by Moscow, then Khrushchev's famous speech gave the final push and the masses of Hungary as one of the weakest links (Poland comes to mind as well) at that time took to the streets and things started escalating quickly. Yeah, they did lynch a few ÁVH officers on the streets, but keep in mind that 1 in 10 Hungarians – workers, students, members of the intelligentsia – were prosecuted by them. It didn't help either that Hungary – a severely war torn country itself – agreed to pay reparations of US$200 million to the Soviet Union, roughly taking up 20% of its annual budget for several years. This, mixed with the falling real wages of the workers somehow didn't exactly portray the Russians as a brotherhood nation…
The problem with this kind of reasoning isn't that its anecdotal, but that it relies on the fascists incoherent ideology as a reference point. It is no coincidence that at the time of the regime change since Kádár's legitimacy was based on the myth of destroying the fascist counter-revolution fascists readily accepted this myth and took it up as their own point of identification. It is no coincidence either that 30 years later many right wingers (including the governing Fidesz party) started distancing themselves from Imre Nagy, removing his statues and fine-tuning once again history books to be less favorable towards him… The guy was an avowed Marxist-Leninist.
The masses identified the symbol with Moscow because the Rákosi government didn't actually make their lives easier under the banner of communism. I, too, would have wanted several 'prominent' communists to face trial, especially after the fabricated Rajk trial which was a pure political spectacle that killed die hard communists. It was a pure opportunist masquerade: dressed up in the Stalin regime's ideologemes of "dealing with trotskyist and titoist wreckers" (a wink to Moscow that we are good bois) Rákosi got rid of his communist opposition.
I'm not convinced either that a multi party DoTP is possible, and even Nagy wrote self-criticisms in his Snagov Diary feeling remorse over bringing back the multi party system. Again, the problem is more nuanced. While in 1919 the Hungarian revolution was truly organic and backed by the proletariat the post WW2 transition towards socialism took the form of a putsch. Creating legitimacy for your regime under such dire and unorganic conditions is exceptionally hard, and Rákosi & co. fucked up badly.
Did the Soviet Union have the right to tell Hungary what it can and can't do with its own resources? This is clearly an issue of national self-determination.
The fascist parties had already been disbanded after the war, and the moderate centre right parties like the Smallholders still refused to advocate for a return to socialism. Furthermore, if the people support socialism then there is nothing to fear from free elections. Again, there's also a difference between a multi-party socialist democracy and a bourgeois democracy. There mere presence of bourgeois parties in a socialist democracy doesn't make the system bourgeois.
Ah yes, because every Hungarian POW was in the Arrow Cross. It's not as if any of them were ordinary peasants/workers that were conscripted and were still wasting away in POW camps years after the war was over.
Are you saying that workers shouldn't be allowed to freely express their opinions in a worker's state?
Yes they did, Nagy officially changed the Hungarian flag to the tricolour with the Kussouth emblem in the center (absent the crown and cross). This symbol was used by Hungarian revolutionaries in 1848. During the second Soviet attack beginning Nov 4th, rebel forces painted the Kussouth emblem on vehicles to identify them as their own. The flag with the hole was only used temporarily.
The game Assassin's Creed Syndicate features a watered down, basically liberal Marx as a character. In addition its widely known that bourgeois regimes have a tendency to appropriate radical historical figures for their own ends.
Many communists were among those calling for punishment. Again, the demands were for specific individuals to stand trial for specific crimes, not just random repression of party members, which is actually what Rakosi had been doing in the purges of the early 50s.
*refused to advocate for a return to capitalism.
Nagy started moving away from ML and I mentioned that in one of my first posts, that he started to mellow out and go more left com.
Seeing what the advocated and the above they may have been right.
Forgot this part:
This doesn't necessarily mean that they wanted to sell it to NATO, you silly asshole. This whole paragraph refers to (my above mentioned) war reparations to the USSR and to the fact that Rákosi started building steel factories in a country with no steel, and the Russians took advantage of the fact. (Pic) is what "at world market prices" means in the above context, not getting fucked over by big brother in Russia, in other words. It does not say that they wish to sell it to the West, it only says that they wish to sell it at prices that are not unfair.
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When one of the first things you consider is trading with the USA.
The irony is that Rákosi and hislot actually managed the worst inflationary crisis in human history quite well. they just fucked everything else up.
Saying 56 was fascist because fascists hold it up as their own and believe it to have been anti-communist is literally like being the retards who believed Zig Forums and were ready to denounce the yellow vests over the few fascist flags that were spotted and Zig Forums claiming they were /theirguys/ for a few weeks.
So, let's get this straight,
HoW cOuLd ThIs HaPpEn! ThEy MuSt Be FaScIsTs!
It's not an issue of what you support, it's an issue of a country having the right to conduct its own trade relations as it chooses. I.e. it's an issue of national independence. So I'll ask you, do you believe in the right of nations to self determination under socialism?
M8 the widespread repression by Rakosi was well documented, even by pro-Soviet writers. Kadar himself acknowledged that Rakosi persecuted many innocent people and committed communists. Furthermore this gets into the more abstract question of freedom of workers to criticize the government that supposedly represents them, a freedom which they definitely did not have under Rakosi. How can worker's be the ruling class if they can't even make demands of their own government? Democracy and socialism are inseparable, and democracy can only function with freedom of the press.
I already gave you my argument. It's a common tactics of bourgeois forces to co-opt radical people or events for their own ends. When some radlib SJW wears Che shirt, is this proof that Che was a liberal? It's also worth mentioning the Orban recently took down a statue of Nagy, which he presumably wouldn't have done if he was so into the revolution that he represented. Fascists may try to appropriate the uprising, but they will do so selectively, and not embrace it as it actually existed. This shouldn't surprise anybody, as selective historical memory has always been a part of fascist thinking.
Yes but that doesn't change the fact that under the government established by the uprising, the Kussouth flag was the official state symbol.
Ah yes they're only communists if they agree with you in every way. Read a fucking book m8, Rakosi was an utter baffoon, there was nobody willing to defend him. Even Herbert Aptheker, the most famous Western defender of the Soviet intervention, denounces him as an incompetent revisionist and a tyrant.
Why are you here if you're not going to argue in good faith? It's obvious that this isn't what I'm saying. I'm saying that most Hungarian soldiers in the war weren't fascists, just like most Germans weren't Nazis.
That snippet you're citing from wikipedia doesn't accurately paraphrase the source it cites. The source cited there is the UN report on the uprising and intervention that was released in 1957. The paragraph cited reads as follows,
That same report also states that
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Exactly. See above (Fidesz).
Credit where credit's due.
This. Beria did nothing wrong.
MADE BY BESPECTACLED BABYSITTER GANG
Nobody is doubting that the West tried to take advantage of the situation, but that's not the same thing as it being ideologically aligned with capitalism. The Kaiser tried to take advantage of the October revolution as well. I guess this makes the Bolsheviks German agents in your eyes?
I can tell from the "sources" that Jucheposter is citing that he doesn't actually know shit about Hungary 1956 and is just pulling stuff from wikipedia.
t. wrote a 60 page paper on the 1956 Uprising
Oh this reminded me of an old meme of a some pasta called Beria Penne and a clip of an user doing an exaggerated italian Beria impression, i wish i'd saved it
The USA praised the revolution and shilled propaganda for it with hopes that they would at least weaken the Soviets but one of their programs is they wanted to sell it to the world market. TO THE USA.
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Not to mention that the Bolsheviks had to campaign against and punish severely Jewish pogroms during the civil war. According to that genius Juche poster's logic because there were a few anti-semites in 1917 this could potentially color 1917 as a whole as a fascist counter-revolution. As far as I know there were like 2-3 instances of anti-semitic lynchings in rural cities in a country of 9.5 million that went through decades of fascist propaganda. Obviously these have to be magnified way out of proportion to claim that 1956 was fascism manifest.
They're libidinally invested in the party line of a non-existent state, what's important is it feels opposed to it and therefore must be bad.
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You intentionally distort the historical progression of 1956. The protests did not start because of NATO propaganda, the protests started because there were legitimate grievances against Hungarian and USSR socialist governments. The shootings on the street did not start because of NATO propaganda, but because the events escalated rapidly in a country deep in poverty. Only after these events did the US start shilling the "keep up teh good work, gais, we'll be there soon to liberate you" BS while it literally had no intentions to intervene because it was bogged down in the Suez Crisis.
Actually it was about how Gyorgy Lukac's concepts of class consciousness and reification can be used to explain why the uprising happened, and how the uprising itself was an example of proletarian praxis according to Lukacs understanding.
It wasn't CIA backed, in fact the CIA had almost no infrastructure in Hungary. This is according to their own documentation, which states
PDF related, page 2.
Never said that but NATO hungrily jumped on them and then supported it hoping to weaken the Soviets at best and at worst get influence on their government.
My main issue is that people when bringing up the Hungarian revolution don't know this or don't care (since they were already anti Communist to begin with) and how limp wristed the people behind it here.
AND YOU FUCKING ADMIT IT.
Do I really need to say that if NATO is suddenly starting to toss your salad that people shouldn't be suspicious?
He was talking about how NATO and Radio Free were doing work in there. Regardless CIA did try to work their way to the best of their ability in that revolution which you and Lenin hate ignore.
Was Lenin a German agent?
The problem isn't that you made a few non sequiturs here and there, but that your arguments consist of nothing but a series of obvious fallacies. What you are doing is textbook low-effort shitposting.
LMAO sorry I missed that in the long rants but that argument was retarded.
I use that example to mock German monarchists that the only thing Willy has a legacy for is making the USSR.
Regardless this argument you are trying to make doesn't fit for:
Willy didn't want Lenin in his nation and did not think that a Soviet state would even happen, just wanted to knock the Empire out.
NATO literally saw the revolution as a potential that could be leaned toward more Socdem and trade with them for that yummy uranium for more nukes, saw them as a good way to put a thorn in the side of the Soviets, and at worst could be an ally.
Its just embarrassing to see people try to justify why the Hungarian revolution was good bois while also trying to not answer the problems with them being shilled by NATO.
I never quite said they were fascist however I did say that fascists have supported them… and a lot. Regardless its still my point that when your only pals seem to be fascists and NATO, perhaps there is some self reflection to do.
No you get asshurt at inconvenient facts.
Depends as some of them did and you are forgetting those elements. Socdems still had pull in them as well as open elections to non socialist parties. In all honestly Hungary would have probably been GORBACHEVED.COM given all the things surrounding it.
Yes, NATO saw the potential for that, and they were working to bring that about, but it wasn't what the revolutionaries wanted. They wanted neutrality and the ability to control their own resources. Are you saying that you believe that the USSR had the right to determine Hungary's foreign policy, and what they could do with their own resources?
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Nice spook. What matters is the material impact people have with their actions, not what they want.
Lenin wasn't in Germany, he was in Switzerland, the deal was explictly to transport him across Germany to Russia, not so that he would not be in Germany but so that he would be in Russia. And yes the intention was to weaken or remove Russia from the war.
Yet you do not apply this to Hungary, why is it not the case in your mind that NATO equally saw the hungarian revolution as weakening the structural integrity of the eastern bloc and the soviet grip on it, regardless of whether it would result in a socialist or capitalist hungary? NATO certainly hoped it would result in a capitalist, pro-NATO hungary but this certainly wouldn't have been a requirement for their support, weakening the soviets, even in terms of international prestige, which is what a quote you posted earlier states, would be entirely enough.
Liberals wear Che shirts therefore Che was a liberal.
Those elements were utterly insignificant. None of the parties in Nagy's cabinet were calling for a return to capitalism, not even the non-socialist parties. Bela Kovacs was the leader of the Smallholders party, which was the largest non-socialist party in the country, and even he said
Among the rank and file of the revolution, there were no demands for a return to capitalism, as shown by the UN report which stated
Yes seeing that we are now and NATO and still don't have that freedom.
To sell to the USA and on the world market. It posed a threat USA what they wanted.
As for the revolutionaries they themselves seemed to have no idea what they wanted, with social to liberal democracy kicked around.
Right, and the material impact of Soviet policy in Hungary was that Hungarian workers didn't have control of their own government, something completely antithetical to the ends of socialism.
Since it doesn't apply to Hungary but I already explained above the differences in the too.
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Communism was put in place there by the Soviets to begin with. None of us already got a choice in Communism. Nor do I see us voting it in again or in any libdem state and only via revolution will it probably happen.
Which is what I find funny about this to begin with. Hungarians would have probably kept the fascist government if not for Soviet intervention.
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as I said way, way above
And yet plenty of socialist countries maintained independence from both the Eastern and Western blocs.
Where do they say they want to sell it to the US? They say that they want Hungary to have control over its own uranium reserves, which is part of their basic self-determination as a state. Also that demand came from the 16 Points, which was a series of demands issued by a student union before the uprising, it wasn't constitutive of the entire program of the rebels.
Which is part of the reason why it was such a shitshow between 1948 and 1956. The communists never had a mandate from the workers or peasants. You can't impose socialism on a country and expect it to function properly.
So this is all just a question of your national-masochist fantasy borne out of self-loathing? lmao
And since you seem to have problems with reading comprehension as well: I'm pointing out contradictions in your rambling and unorganized text.
So would have Poland, Romania, Hungay, etc every vote in Communism? What has been the success of Communism in the west being voted in?
If they weren't couped by USA first, ask South America. Yugoslavia was allowed to exist for a time since it did trade with the west, until it started to fracture but we know how that does.
Literally who would be the biggest buyer of one of the ingredients needed to make nukes?
I rephrase what I said above on how well being voted in has worked for you guys and not being crushed, couped, or subverted?
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It is quite a sight, isn't it? It is true that the highest % of leaders in any socialist government with Jewish backgrounds was in Hungary. They lived through illegality, the holocaust, and liberation by the soviets. They were severely traumatized and feared and mistrusted the nation they started to govern and they trusted and copied Russia unconditionally. The less we become what we were and more like the Russians, the sooner the better.
Zizek says somewhere that the sad lesson of ww2 is that victimhood doesn't purify you morally, it makes you a shittier person in most of the cases. Even to this day I know Jewish communists in Hungary (some turned liberal after the regime change) who although never lived a single day under the Horthy regime they continually trigger themselves "the nazis coming any day now" which is a form of elitism on their part and mistrust of them dirty workers.
All you're saying then is that it was impossible for socialism to survive in those countries, which is absolutely true. Socialism failed there in large part because the governments were completely unaccountable to their people, and not supported by the masses of those countries. If the people in a country don't support socialism, then the material conditions there are unsuitable for it, and it will fail if imposed.
Because – guess what – we fucked up in 1919 as well. Lukács speaks about this openly. Instead of following the Bolsheviks example of first distributing land to the peasantry we skipped the crucial step and started collectivizing immediately and the peasants did not understand how this better served their interests compared to Feudal times. We waged the war in 1919 with proletarian and patriotic (anti-trianon treaty) support only, without having a significant peasant backing.
Which reminds me: it is exactly your kind of ignorantly aggressive attitude that stops us from learning from our own historical mistakes.
Only mistake made was not killing enough Americans and reactionaries tbh.
Most of the world population hates socialism, Eastern Europe in the 20s and 30s and 40s no different. That there would be any social upheaval. Russia was already a good example of that with having to deal with turning a literal reactionary Empire into a Soviet state and then dealing with leftist infighting.
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Source?
You do realize that Beria was the key role behind many of the pardonings and compensations for those unjustly imprisoned during the purges by Yezhov and Yagoda right?
Just because Rakosi was an idiot does not make the 1956 uprising something to celebrate. Waht may have started as workers protesting against mismanagement was quickly seized upon by former bourgs and nationalists of Hungary and used to throw it into anti-communism.
Shane Mage (an anti-soviet), “What a cruel, cynical joke of history this seems to be! The Hungarian revolution is hailed lyrically by the rulers of the ‘West,’ the worst enemies of socialism and of the Russian revolution. The men who surrounded the infant Soviet Republic with a ‘cordon sanitaire’ of steel and fire, who hailed Hitler and Mussolini as bulwarks against Bolshevism, who stood by with smiling ‘neutrality’ while Franco murdered freedom in Spain, whose hands are still stained by the crimes of Algeria, Suez, Guatemala—the ‘Free’ world gleefully hands its poisoned bouquets to the freedom fighters of Hungary.” —“The Meaning of Two Revolutions” (reprinted in the 1959 Young Socialist Forum pamphlet, The Hungarian Revolution)
Imre Nagy and his bedfellows were the Gorbachev and Yakovlevs and Yeltsins before 1991 was even imagined. Their claim of 'freer communism' was a false front, just as the claims of Gorbachev to 'return to Lenin's principles' were a lie.
Some good things to read:
web.archive.org
voencomuezd.livejournal.com
The Truth about Hungary: facts and eyewitness accounts by A Belokon and V Totstikov
kara-murza.ru
workers.org
sosinet.hu
shurigin.livejournal.com
TL;DR: Hungary was mismanaged, but precisely because the USSR WASN'T keeping a tight grip on the Warsaw Pact. Rakosi was an idiot but the 1956 opposition went from simply removing such a fool to outright reactionary tendencies and murder
The 1919 Hungarian soviet was pretty nationalist TBH and Nagy himself was a
Right, and if the population doesn't support socialism, any attempt to impose it on them will fail. The Hungarian communists should have worked to build greater popular support and taken power with a public mandate rather than seizing it without even a plurality.
In Russia the Bolsheviks specifically waited until they had a popular mandate in the worker's councils. That was why they succeeded, they had the support of the people.
>>Most of the world population hates socialism, Eastern Europe in the 20s and 30s and 40s no different.
Stop making shit up.
"What is surprising is not that so-called “totalitarian” methods of winning friends and influencing people were displayed in these lands during and after their liberation, but that dictatorial devices were not employed more extensively. Moscow had the power (at the risk, to be sure, of a rupture with the Atlantic Powers) to give unqualified support to Communist groups and to Sovietize this whole vast region. With judicious moderation, it refrained from doing so. In no case did its program precipitate civil war within the lands freed by the Red Army, despite widespread resentment at requisitions by Soviet troops who lived off the land."
Schuman, Frederick L. Soviet Politics. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1946, p. 526
That’s a non-sequiter. The communists never received enough votes to form the government, and never had a popular mandate.
That's a load of horse-shit judging by polls. More than 50% of people in ALL ex-Warsaw Pact and Soviet countries view their socialist past in good light, including Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. The numbers would be higher but are diluted because of liberal pederast teens who think the Soviet Union was mordor and thus hate socialism without knowing anything about it. These liberast teens are also supported by the reactionary capitalist governments and are the louder voice in public sphere.
You do realize that if the majority did not support them or give popular mandate they would not have gotten into power correct? Aside East Germany of course, all these countries were pro communist during the rest of the 40s because they had been liberated BY the communist Red Army. Hell in 1948 Hungarian proletariat resisted a reactionary attempt to remove the communists. In 1956 however, because Roksy in the OP didn't think shit through people got tired of it and decided to take action. This was quickly used as a free ride for reactionaries to churn up conflict and try and remove the government rather than reform it, leading to stupid shit like destroying Stalin Statues and Red Stars. That is what a Color Revolution does, take a legitimate movement representing the people and turn it into a reactionary fuck-fest. The same shit happened in 1968 and in 2014 and again and again. Populism is a very dangerous thing and hopes and habits make people follow dangerous paths.
They do now sure, but if you look at those numbers over time they've risen quite a bit since 1989 and 1991. In other words, socialism was deeply unpopular in those countries at the time of its collapse, and its only once the shitty reality of capitalism set in that people began to realize that it wasn't so bad.
Why not? There are plenty of governments who rule without a public mandate. Furthermore the actual election results of from 1947 definitively show that the communists had nowhere near majority support, only polling at 22.25%.
Except the revolutionaries weren't making any demands for the return to capitalism. In fact at every opportunity the coalition parties and revolutionary councils affirmed their support for a socialist planned economy.
false equivalency, now whose using fallacies?
Bullshit. This whole argument sounds like those people trying to justify Rojava selling out to the USA.
Neither did Gorbachev
If you're going to rip off Peter Fryer just post the damn link to his cherrypicked work and stop talking.
And of course we're back to the UN report… FFS this shit AGAIN.
All the "witnesses" were part of the opposition or otherwise linked to it. Not a single main witness from the other side, not a single damn testimony, just piles upon piles of "muh suppression". The UN was under the thumb of the USA, and the USSR's power was minimal, especially as it was viewed as a part of the events and therefore was largely excluded from the committee. Considering how the UN ignored and continues to ignore multiple violations and other such things done by the USA, Israel and Saudia Arabia yet continually attacked the USSR for supposed violations I find it highly questionable.
It's not a false equivalency at all. If liberals praising Che doesn't make Che a liberal, then why does fascists praising the 1956 uprising make it reactionary?
It's true though, all significant players in the revolution affirmed their support for socialism.
Except with Gorbachev we have actual policies to point to to prove that he facilitated the return of capitalism. With Hungary and Nagy you're just speculating on what might have happened.
Kadar literally didn't allow the UN to send investigators into Hungary to ask pro-government supporters about their version of events. The fact is that all the declarations and programs of the revolutionaries, and all the parties involved in Nagy's government explicitly rejected a return to capitalism. Your entire argument rests on speculation about what might have happened, and dismissal of sources that contradict your narrative. It's pretty telling that even Soviet politburo documents from October 1956 reveal that the primary Soviet concern wasn't preserving socialism in Hungary, it was preserving Soviet geopolitical power. Khruschev himself stated his reasons for intervening, saying
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Except he appointed them to do the purges and later "revealed" them to be the bad guys, taking the blame.
It was way beyond mismanagement, but welcome to the thread, I guess.
Yeah, and the Leninist lesson here is that when there's a mass movement you should either let the former bourgs take it over or bring in the tanks, right? No other options, like, say, building a popular support behind the socialist leadership the masses actually want! Also, "nationalist" in this context is highly dubious, as has been pointed out several times ITT. The national self-determination of Hungary was the question, and the putsch backed by the USSR as a method of getting into power did not help in this regard.
Maybe read the thread before you start spamming your links?
Yes it is.
They don't praise him, they don't even know who he is. He's a fucking icon that liberals foggily connect to being 'radical' and so connect to that. Che was supported by the USSR, and not liberals in his time. liberals today DON'T support him they just wear his face because they don't know who he is. Those who do squeal like pigs about how evul he was.
When Hitler began repressing communists he also reaffirmed that he was socialist and against bankers and capitalists…
Because HE WAS IN POWER FOR LONG ENOUGH TO ENACT THEM. Nagy was in power long enough ONLY to start proposing the same kind of succ-dem legislature that would start returning them to capitalism when he was removed. Do you really think capitalists are some kind of caricatures who openly declare their pro-capitalist views while not in power? Of course not, they're assholes, not idiots.
Source? Also I'd reckon the reason for that is because he probably trusted the UN ad the international community even less after the events that had transpired
Nope, it rests on the sources I posted above, the USA's own foreign policies in relation to 'soviet satellites' and on the experiences of 1991 and 1968 that show exactly what happens if you let what happened in 1958 play out longer.
Convenient of you to cut out the bits of the quote that didn't go along with your argument… see the soviet politburo docs you mentioned are online free to read.
''"We should reexamine our assessment and should not withdraw our troops from Hungary and Budapest.(3) We should take the initiative in restoring order in Hungary. If we depart from Hungary, it will give a great boost to the Americans, English, and French—the imperialists. They will perceive it as weakness on our part and will go onto the offensive.
We would then be exposing the weakness of our positions. Our party will not accept it if we do this. To Egypt they will then add Hungary.(4) We have no other choice. If this point of view is supported and endorsed, let’s consider what we should do."''
This is exactly in line with SOCIALISM. Yes geopolitics but also SOCIALISM. Soviet Geopolitics and the insurance of socialism are more or less one and the same. If the USSR had left Hungary as it was NATO would have taken more action. As it was they simply jeered at the Soviets for 'repressing' the people when glorified social democrats crying falsely to be "real communists" tried to take power.
Prior a Leninhat poster stated tha several old-communists from the 1919 Soviet were part of the Revolution. The 1919 Soviet was far less socialist than the USSR ever was, and avowed communists can still be traitors. General Vlasov was an awarded General and communist but he betrayed the USSR because he didn't feel appreciated enough. Yeltsin was also once a very adamant communist who did much while working as a local politician… then he destroyed the USSR in a drunken stupor. This is the same "muh old bolsheviks" argument that people use to try and bash the Moscow Trials, except in reverse.
What I'm missing in your rendition of the events is the complete lack of mention of communists in the picture. There was a communist party in Hungary at the time, there was a popular communist candidate demanded by the people. To send in the tanks instead of fighting for recapturing the populace through politics with the resources we had is the most impotent act imaginable. The reality was that the party was already removed from the people and was too afraid to engage them and reform itself and Moscow feared Nagy and chose again over and above the people its candidate.
I wouldn't say that 1968 was the same. 1956 set a precedent. While there was some (rather insignificant, but still, think about the worker councils established) hope in Hungary for true reforms, in 1968 it was pretty obvious that it will be a choice between East and West.
Two things. At least you don't downplay their original good intentions, even possible revolutionary potential as some do, pointing out correctly that the US only later perverted them for its own purposes. Saying that 1956 was a color revolution, however, is ahistoric at best, leaving aside what I just said about our own communist wasted responsibility in said situation.
Just how did you come up with this conclusion?
And here we go again. Yezhov and Yagoda were not appointed solely by Stalin. Moreover they had agency of their own and were perfectly capable of omitting information from him. MOreover Stalin did not 'order' any purges, the purges were a result of over a decade of industrial sabotage and espionage leading to a crackdown to try and eliminate the 5th Column. This grew out of proportion due to lack of communication. This led to some innocents being swept up in the chaos. yagoda and Yezhov acted out of their own misguided reasoning and they had the power to take down Stalin himself, many of those presiding over the purge were caught up in it as well and their violations of rights and other actions meant that they paid for their actions. This whole "muh Stalin concerted it all in some conspiracy" is childish and based on a holly-wood 80s action movie take on how government works.
The tanks only encircled the city and prevented the marauding from spreading into the country and thus minimizing civilian casualties, dolt. You speak of building popular leadership in a very naiive way. You do realize that it is easy to fall into populism as the supporters of Nagy did, right? And populism, not matter the superficial similarities is NOT socialism. You can call it that all you like, but it does not make it so.
Oh piss off, they were backed by the USSR AFTER getting into power. The USSR only came to maintain the peace and prevent civil war. Frankly following your complaints the USSR should have simply just removed Rakosy and taken direct control to prevent any stupid mismanagement since Rakosy didn;t know what he was doing and Nagy was a Succdem.
And falsely so.
I've been a part of the thread since the beginning idiot.
Ok
That's not the only thing Nagy was doing, no?
Stop whining about the reparations. Germany not only had to pay more but also handled the problem far better and their government was quite independent from the USSR. The Berlin Wall was built on THEIR initiative AGAINST Khruschev's wishes. And the DDR prospered and didn;t have the shit Hungary had. Just admit it, ALL political sides of Hungary in 1956 were either idiots, reactionaries or radical liberals, who either didn't know how to run a country or were liberalizing it prior to a return to capitalism.
The USSR's involvement in Hungary was minimal. They came INTO a situation and moderated it. They supported Nagy as long as he kept in line with socialism. He was removed because he began succ-dem crap. The same kind of succ-dem reforms that Gorbachev started and which led to 1991.
If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck…
That only happened after the Hungarians had their tremendous fuck up. The USSR gave Eastern Europe a free hand in their elections as I cited in a quote. Whoever got in power in Hungary after WW-2 was their blame, not the USSR. The USSR chose the new leaders because it was clear that Hungary's communists were divided and aimless and rife with liberals, all of whom couldn't make a good decision to save their lives, let alone save the sorry state of Hungary.
Yes but usually those are purged from the Revolution as it continues, not grows with it.
Hungary wasn't a Revolution it was a minor revolt. It't like calling the Kronschdat Rebellion a "revolution".
Violence in a Revolution is supposed to something that is required because of struggle. Lynching random government people is not revolutionary and I certainly don't remember the Hungarian Government lynching people in return. Shooting and fighting? Yes, but not lynching and murder. Killing on the battlefield and killing an unarmed man as a mob is not the same and trying to equate that is a pathetic defense.
They had their forces there since before Nagy took power and they sent them in because Nagy was going full Revisionist. If they had let him free reign there the best case scenario would be like Romania and worst case scenario it would leave the Warsaw Pact and join NATO.
No.
That doesn't mean they didn't support the government either. Again look into the Third Wave Social Experiment. Over the course of 5 days a teacher demonstrated how easy it is for fascism to get popular support. It doesn't matter whether they had a say or not if they thought that they did and were for it anyway.
Was Horthy committing war crimes and creating ghettos by hand? NO! PEOPLE DID IT. Your argument could be used to justify fucking General Vlasov. The Germans, unlike Hungary (apparently by your statements) accepted the reparations because they LET IT HAPPEN. Workers may not be the ones calling out orders for genocide but they can be held accountable if they follow them.
The reparations against Hungary were a meager percentage of what the USSR lost. Imagine ALL of Hungary burned down to complete rubble 10 times over and you still wouldn't have 1/5th of the loss the USSR suffered. Soviet reparations were light and their subsidies to the Hungarian state more than made up for it. The mismanagement of the Hungarian state was not their fault.
Hungary was not that badly damaged. Most of its cities were intact. it did not lose 20 million people, it did not have its crops burned down out out of spite or its women and children shut in basements and burned alive. that did not happen to them but did happen to the USSR and far worse.
Hardly. The Germans never expressed anything like that and they had far heavier reparations. Hungary got off almost scot-free in comparison.
So what you're saying is that the Soviets should have exerted MORE control? Because Rakosi's "salami tactics" were theirs and theirs alone. Hungary let these people into power while the USSR intentionally keeps its hands as much out of it as possible and then you blame the Soviets that you fucked up? Eh?
LOL see the bottom of this link, PEW is included in that list of polls: quora.com
And he got in power. The Soviet moved in when Nagy began succ-dem reforms that would have led to a mini-1991 in Hungary.
Because he was a shallow populist who took advantage of the people's unrest and unhappiness to get support.
And why is that? My source of Kara Murza specifically goes over the history of Color Revolutions.
Actually it was due to the army starting to defect to them as well, The Czars had just fucked up so badly that finally even the military was siding with them.
You ignore my point that we would not even be having this conversation as there would not even be a socialist framework in Hungary without the Soviets
Your characterization of the purges is ridiculous. Typical Grover Furr stlye dindu nuffin apologia. We have the official state archive documents showing that the politburo created purge quotas to be met monthly for each region (see document 170 in Arch J. Getty's Road to Terror), which meant basically that there had to be found an arbitrary and predefined x thousand "criminals" per month per region and "proven guilty" and executed swiftly. Even the criminal categories became nonsense and defined intentionally in blurry terms by 1937. We have Stalin on record removing or reprimanding local leaders for not meeting the quotas, and, when popular backslash followed he signed the documents for their removals to be able to portray himself as the nice and friendly Koba who just happened to find out that some leaders were abusing the populace.
Keep fighting those straw men.
"Marauding" aka. self-organized workers councils distributing commodities and planning production. "Only encircled" aka. pic related.
Workers control isn't populism. It was exactly the incompetence of the government that lumped together all social strata in opposition. A communist party should have strived to work with and represent the proletariat and peasantry, cutting it off from the rest of the reaction.
At whose behest? Gerő? Rákosi? They USSR didn't want them anymore. Kádár? The local population didn't even know him. It's either the USSR picking and choosing its favored candidates over and above the Hungarian workers contributing to the civil war it – in your characterization – strived to prevent, or against the candidate wanted by the Hungarians, waging an open war against them.
It was literally "nazis bad, so suck it" - the quote.
No they didn’t. They moved in after the massacre of AVH agents on October 30th because it made them look weak (ie unable to protect their agents in Eastern Europe). Their main concerns were maintaining a strong image on the world stage and keeping Hungary in the Warsaw Pact. On this second point it’s also important to remember that they made the decision to invade on October 31st, before Nagy actually declared neutrality. So the invasion wasn’t a response to a declaration of neutrality, but meeely the suspicion that Hungary may do so. The declaration itself was issued on November 1st only after the Soviets began moving troops back into the country in violation of previous agreements. This isn’t speculation either, Khrushchev told the politburo why he wanted to launch a second intervention, and he explicitly cited the USSR’s geopolitical standing as the main reason as shown here
Besides, what socdem policies are you even referring to? Nagy didn’t carry out any privatizations (although ironically enough Kadar did). It was never about preserving socialism because socialism wasn’t under threat, it was about maintaining the Soviet Union’s geopolitical interests. It was the USSR’s version of the American coups against socdems to preserve US strategic interests.
Oh, right, right. Did the American bourgeois government drop the nuke? Nope! Pilots did it! Who created those planes? PROLES!
GOTCHA, MARXIST THEORY OF THE STATE!
Exactly how far did Hitler reach when the USSR's landmass is concerned? 30%? 40%? Putting aside Hungary's WW1 territorial (hence significant economic and population) losses, two armies (one enslaving, one liberating, yet, for obvious reasons, both destroying the infrastructure) crossed the country completely from west to east then east to west, destroying approximately 40% of the the total infrastructure, 40% of railroads and 54% of industry, while Hitler only reached western Russia and Ukraine. In terms of populace% loss Hungary was third behind Poland and Russia.
Your characterization, again, is very romantic.
lol
We are talking about a country of 9+ million people, you dig?
Several economists note that the redevelopment of the DDR lagged behind the West exactly because of the reparations. 20% of the yearly budget for years is hardly scot-free in any book keepers notes, but sure, whatever justifies your insanity.
>
No you whine and bitch like a libcom with "muh evil Stalinists, why don't you like NATO inspired movements."
I was bringing up that without the fact the Soviets got to these nations after WW2 there wouldn't be a socialist government in any of them as it is unlikely any communist party would get voted in.
If you had more then two functioning brain cells you would know. Instead all you and the anarshit is whine and bitch and moan while not giving any of us a reply on how you can justify NATO shilling the 56 revolution and even admitting they wanted more liberal types of communist in order to build of a taste for liberalism over time.
All you and the anarkid do is piss and moan.
Maybe if you’d bother to actually demonstrate how NATO opportunism in Hungary was qualitatively different from German opportunism in Russia. In both cases neither imperialist force wanted the revolutionary ideology to succeed, they only exploited the chaos caused by social unrest. I guarantee you that if a hardcore anti revisionist ML uprising had come along to kick Khrushchev out the US would have supported it. They formed an alliance with China to control the USSR for fuck’s sake, does that make Mao a NATO agent?
If you can’t tell the difference between proletarian democracy and liberalism then you are beyond saving.
Really nigga? Are you this dumb. I already went over it at least twice now. For starters that the CIA and USA radio programs in Europe that were designed to spread liberalism over the nation. The revolution was to their advantage and with the goal to try and make it their own.
Willy sending Lenin into Russia was him being tarted and going "IDK hope this works" and Wilhelm was known for incredibly stupid decisions and tactics he made diplomatically.
One was done by a state with a good intelligence apparatus and a long term goal.
The other was some senile monarch not knowing what the fuck he was even doing. The sad part is this is your only attempt and goal and you know its bad.
You literally can't read huh? In what I have linked, the U.S stated its strategy was not to even be openly anti communist or Soviet. But its goal was to overtime try to make it that more "liberal" and "open" forms of communism would be accepted until it could be watered down to basically socdem reforms.
You are still tarted. They didn't even have an alliance, but the infamous Nixon Mao pic was on trade deals.
Tbf, I'm pretty sure Mao was senile when he wrote that drek.
I guess we should have supported Israel, the UK, and France in the Suez Crisis then.
最后,经过一个世纪,中华民国是社会主义。
*dies minutes after*
Yeah and? That’s just a difference in tactics, not strategy. If the Germans had been printing Bolshevik pamphlets would that have made Lenin a German agent?
And the revolution in Russia was to Germany’s advantage, and they tried to leverage it to their own ends, and were arguably much more successful in doing so than the US was in Hungary, considering they got Brest-Litovsk out of it.
That’s not a qualitative difference, it’s just a difference in the sophistication of the operation. Fundamentally they were the same thing, an imperialist power trying to sow discontent inside a rival power to gain an upper hand. Do you know what a qualitative difference is? It means a fundamental difference in what it actually is, not differences in the tactics used, which is all you’re describing.
Actually their plan was to promote greater independence from the USSR to weaken the eastern bloc, they weren’t particularly concerned with the domestic policies of these states, just that they left Moscow’s orbit. What you haven’t done is shown why this invalidates the legitimate grievances of Hungarian workers in light of Rakosi’s abysmal tenure as leader. Is this your idea of freedom from capitalism? Where workers of a small weak country shut up and take whatever bullshit is piled onto them from an occupying foreign power? You’re working with a Marcyite mentality that basically puts the geopolitical power of the Soviet Union above all other concerns. According to this logic no matter how shitty or revisionist the USSR was, no matter how far it strayed from socialism, we still have to support it in EVERYTHING that it does. Ironically enough however it was only Khruschev’s treachery that drove Hungary to declare neutrality, they could have easily been brought back into the fold under Nagy. At this point you aren’t even promoting socialism or Marxism anymore, but instead reducing class struggle and worker’s liberation to national power politics. So why don’t you admit that you don’t actually care about workers and instead admit that you just fetishize the Soviet state, even when it acted against the workers?