Research and the discussions over forty years have produced a huge volume of publications that deal with practically every aspect of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Questions are asked, and some of the answers are given.

Time itself is of great assistance, historians continuously interpreting and reintrepeting events, hindsight shedding light on new aspects. The picture becomes more complete as new detail and analysis become available; it is also being seen in an ever new light from a different perspective with an ever shifting emphasis.

For a long time, the events of 1956 straddled the dividing line between politics and history. Even nowadays, albeit less frequently and insistently, attempts are still made to exploit them for political purposes. In the meantime, the 1956 Revolution is gradually losing the force it derived as a focus of feeling to which political appeals might be directed in the search for support and for the definition of political goals and principles.

Public opinion in Hungary and abroad, all too much absorbed by daily concerns, entertains a variety of often inarticulate notions about the events of forty years ago. Three markedly different schools of thought have crystallized since 1989, reflecting current political divisions. They are apparent in the language used, in the very terms under which the events of 1956 are subsumed.

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In the first version there was a reform movement which started in 1953, closely associated with the name of Imre Nagy. It culminated in a popular uprising in 1956 with the aim of restoring political freedom and national independence. Imre Nagy, finding his true place and function as head of the national government, eventually became the recognized leader of a revolution which tried to realize what socialism stood for by establishing workers' councils and other institutions of direct democracy. This interpretation of the 1956 events was almost exclusively dominant in Hungary until the reburial ceremony of Imre Nagy and his associates in 1989.

Then the second version emerged. The Hungarian nation, having engaged in an underground war of active and passive resistance against the Soviet invasion since 1944 exploiting temporary confusions within the Communist Party launched a fight for freedom in the fall of 1956 to shake off Soviet and Communist rule, with the aim of returning Hungary to its traditional Christian and national foundations under the guidance or inspiration of the Prince-Primate, Cardinal Mindszenty.

Even before 1989, however, there was a third version current in reform-Communist circles which is noticeably gaining ground today. Soviet imperial politics -  so it ran -  and the sectarianism of the Rákosi regime, followed by a weak, vacillating party leadership and intellectual hysteria led to an uprising in 1956, which was then successfully exploited by some reactionary and counter-revolutionary forces who wanted to do away with socialism. This, as opposed to the other two views, seemingly does not want to take into account the wide-spread public hatred of the one-party regime. Those who advocate this interpretation refer to the general acceptance later of the politics of Kádár and conclude that 1956 was more like a road accident that happened when the vehicle was already moving in the right direction.

Many who exploit 1956 for political purposes adopt only one or another of the above views. A historical approach, on the other hand, can find something valid in all three. Uprising, revolution, and a fight for national freedom are not exclusive of each other and were in fact all present and intertwined in what happened in 1956.

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