A great many people have benefited from the fact that the 1956 Hungarian Revolution was remembered with surprising vividness for many years by the people of Poland. I am thinking particularly of those young Hungarians who followed in the footsteps of the seventeenth-century Protestant preacher Márton Csombor Szepsi and were thus able to recover in Poland the national self-respect which had been proclaimed on the streets, squares, and graves of the Fall of 1956. In compensation for oblivion enforced in János Kádár's Hungary, the Polish experience gave everyone fortunate enough to enjoy it a profound moral and intellectual foundation.
The Hungarian "nomads" of the 1960s have also been called the "hitchhiker generation". Much has been said about the influence on them of Polish society, which was regarded as free and outspoken, and capable of recalling and evaluating recent historical events independently of the official standpoint, and of passing on such views to the young within the family. The Hungarian response to Polish cinema and literature, to the Wroclaw and Warsaw jazz festivals, and to Polish theater enhanced the traditionally good relations between the two countries. Many members of the "hitchhiker generation" learned to speak Polish, a facility they retain to this day.
The image of Hungary in Poland extended far beyond the famous Golden Football Team of Fe renc Puskás. The names of Imre Nagy, Pál Maléter, and József Mindszenty were uttered with the same reverence by the lorry-driver, the patrol-boat commander who defied official orders by treating foreigners to a trip on board his craft, the gentleman-driver--reminiscent of the yacht owner in the Polanski film Knife in the Water--inviting travellers into his luxury car, and a casual host who turned out to be the secretary of the local party committee. In Poland, which was battling with a growing moral, political, and economic crisis in the 1960s, there was an almost unshakeable national consensus about the Hungarian Revolution and a deep respect for the Hungarian people.
The obligatory route of first-time hitchhikers like myself ran north, from Cracow via Warsaw to Gdan'sk, and back again via Poznan' and Czes,tochowa to Zakopane. We encountered the most enthusiastic reactions from the otherwise almost Prussianized people of Poznan' when they discovered that we were Hungarians. And that was not easy to miss, because we flagged down cars with makeshift Hungarian flags painted on any old piece of paper we could lay our hands on--often with the same efficiency as traffic policemen. The events of 1956 led the people of Poznan' informally to adopt Budapest as their twin city. They also considered it quite natural to name a street after the Hungarian boy hero Péter Mansfeld, sentenced to death and executed on 21 March 1959, eleven days after turning eighteen, i.e. coming of age. Péter Mansfeld might well have been the elder brother of the child martyred in the workers' uprising in Poznan' on 28 June 1956, 13-year-old Romek Strzalkowski, who was shot dead. In a remarkable display of historical symbolism, Péter Mansfeld Street opens into Romek Strzalkowski Street.
These unusual historical study trips not only made our generation aware of the Poles' demonstrative sympathy for the Hungarian "rebels" of 1956, but also of the fact that back in the Fall of 1939 both the Teleki government and people in Hungary had shown great sympathy for Poland, when she was destroyed by the Hitler-Stalin alliance.
János Tischler, a historian on the staff of the Institute for the Research of the 1956 Revolution, tracked down over 30,000 pages of documents on the subject of 1956 from the Archive of the Polish Foreign Ministry, the Central Archive of the Polish Ministry of the Interior, the Central Polish Military Archive, and the Modern Documents Archive. (The latter also contains the documentation of the United Polish Workers' Party, Church archives, and the Archive of Polish State Radio). Tischler was aware that he was in a race against time to record the testimonies of influential eye-witnesses. Still, his venture yielded an audiotape containing over three hundred hours of conversation with outstanding figures, including the now-deceased Jerzy Albrecht, Secretary of the Central Committee, and Stefan Jedrychowski, member of the Politburo. He also talked to Walery Namiotkiewicz, Gomulka's secretary; Artur Starewicz, Head of the Press Agency of the Central Committee; and, last but not least, to Adam Willman, former Polish Ambassador to Hungary. János Tischler placed a notice in the press asking for information concerning Hungarian-Polish relations and contacted every Pole who responded.
Tischler's documentary volume begins with an Introduction sketching all the major issues of Hungarian-Polish history which converged in the Fall of 1956. It views the events of the Hungarian Revolution, the formation of successive governments under Imre Nagy, the first few months of the Muscovite counter-revolution led by János Kádár. It then goes on to examine the repercussions in Poland to the execution of the Prime Minister and his associates, who suffered martyrdom for trying to protect the integrity of the 1956 Revolution and the Hungarian people. Tischler details both the news from the Polish Embassy in Budapest and from Warsaw, from the Headquarters of the Central Committee, the so-called "White House."
The dispatches continually arriving on the desk of the Polish Ambassador to Hungary outlined the situation throughout the country, and immediate events around the Embassy building which resounded for days to the sound of continuous gunfire (it was actually once hit by a round of machine-gunfire).
The Polish Ambassador, Adam Willman, a thoroughly decent man, felt a deep sympathy for the Hungarian Revolution and its heroes; but at the same time he was a diplomat, and well aware of the political interests of Poland. Adam Willman was posted to Budapest in 1955. Unlike its Hungarian counterpart under Rákosi, the Polish Foreign Ministry continued throughout the 1950s to represent itself and the country by employing true professionals, not just politically reliable but ill-informed party activists.
János Tischler divides his material into four sections according to the nature of the documents. The first part contains coded telegrams from the Budapest Embassy of the People's Republic of Poland to the Polish Foreign Ministry, and ambassador's orders dispatched by the Polish Foreign Ministry to the Polish Ambassador in Budapest. Time-span: October-December, 1956. The second part contains the minutes and related annexes of meetings of the Politburo of the United Workers' Party of Poland related to the events in Hungary. These documents reveal the political course taken by Gomulka and Poland's party leadership with regard to 1956 and its aftermath.
The documents in the third section are essentially reports on what the Polish people--including soldiers and party members--thought of the Hungarian Revolution and their reaction to the second Soviet intervention, and subsequent news of the abduction of Imre Nagy and his associates.
Part Four describes the shock and outrage provoked in Poland by the news of the execution of Imre Nagy and his fellow martyrs. Right from the start Gomulka himself was no exception; he is said to have flown into a rage upon being informed by telephone of the hangings. He may have felt that if the elections to the Central Committee Plenum held between 19 and 21 October had taken a wrong turn he could have met the same fate as Imre Nagy. (According to the evidence presented in Part Three this view was shared by a significant number of Poles.)
After 22 October, Gomulka personally read
and evaluated the most important coded telegrams dispatched from the Polish
Embassy in Budapest. After 26 October, the ambassador's reports were supplemented
in the evening by news and reports from Roman Kornecki and Marian Bielicki,
who flew to Budapest on the first Red Cross plane that day. Kornecki was
the special correspondent
of Trybuna Ludu, Marian Bielecki a Polish
Radio correspondent. At the end of the month several Polish journalists
travelled to Hungary on planes carrying aid and medical supplies: Hanka
Adamiecka of the Young Communists' Weekly Sztandar Mlodych, Leszek Kolodziejczyk
of the daily Zdeg.ycie Warszawy, Zygmunt Rzezuchowski of the press agency
Interpress, Stanislaw Glabinski of the Polish News Agency, Boguslaw Reichhart
of the Workers' News Agency, and Wiktor Woroszylski of the cultural weekly
Nowa Kultura. Together with Bielicki they stayed in Budapest until 11 November,
when they were all expelled from Hungary for informing the Polish public
of the events in Hungary as they happened rather than as the Kádár
government wanted to present them. They arrived in Hungary as ordinary
communists and returned to Warsaw (by a circuitous route via Belgrade)
as convinced supporters of the Hungarian Revolution and Imre Nagy. We owe
it to their honest and committed writings, reports, radio broadcasts, and
presentations describing the drama of the betrayal that the memory of those
historic events in Hungary would never be sullied in the eyes of the Polish
people.
The tone of the reports of Polish journalists describing the events which unfolded in Hungary after 4 November is well illustrated by Marian Bielicki's report for Polish Radio on 8 November, one day after Kádár's arrival in Budapest. This report was countersigned by Ambassador Willman:
Budapest is being massacred. I was in the city center, where the heaviest fighting took place. The deadly fire of the Soviet artillery has shattered the main roads. Houses are on fire. Bodies lie in the streets. I saw three artillery shells destroy a burning house whose residents were lucky to escape alive.
In the Seventh District most side streets are still held by the defenders. A tank that entered one of these streets at night has been immobilized.
Fighting is also going on in the workers' districts. Communists are fighting fiercely. The whole population supports the defenders, threatening to strike if they lose.
The terror raging throughout the city has increased the people's hatred of the system.
Hospitals are crowded. There are problems with medical supplies. There are severe food shortages, although some farmers are risking their lives trying to get their produce to Budapest.
More than 5,000 have been killed and 50,000 wounded, mostly civilians. None of the Kádár group's appeals have gained any support. Even if Budapest is starved out, the battle for freedom in Hungary will not end.
To be passed on to other editorial offices.
Help the Hungarians in their just fight
for freedom.
Reports of a similar tone and content automatically recalled to the Polish people the Warsaw uprising of 1944, and led them to connect the actions of the Soviet army in Hungary and their Stalinist ruthlessness with Hitler's brutality. The indifference of the West to the fate of both the Warsaw and Budapest uprisings seemed to evoke other parallels.
The best-known report was Wiktor Woroszylski's Budapest Diary 1956. In December 1956 censorship prevented the publication of its final chapters. What could not be prevented, however, was the author's tour of the country--together with other Polish journalists who had visited Hungary--during which he shared his Hungarian experiences with large audiences.
On 28 October 1956 more important Polish representatives than mere journalists paid a visit to Budapest. Given the seriousness of the situation, Gomulka sent Deputy Foreign Minister Marian Naszkowski and Artur Starewicz, a deputy member of the Central Committee, on a fact-finding trip. Their mission was "to influence Imre Nagy and János Kádár to put a stop to changes at a certain level," and to condemn Gerô for having called in the Soviet army "to restore order."
The 28 October meeting of the Central Committee declared its support for the Imre Nagy government and its program. This means that Gomulka saw an ally in the Hungarian head of state, whose political career was in some respects similar to his own. Naszkowski and Starewicz met Imre Nagy and Kádár on two separate occasions and informed the Politburo of the outcome of their visit to Hungary as early as 30 October, the day of their return home. They stressed that "after the withdrawal of Soviet troops the implementation of the Nagy government's program can commence."
However, Gomulka was concerned at Imre Nagy's
announcement that Hungary would leave the Warsaw Pact, declare its neutrality,
and ask the four great powers to guarantee this neutrality. The major priority
of Poland's leader was to calm down a heated population which now harbored
hopes similar to those of the Hungarians. Gomulka considered the steps
taken by Imre Nagy dangerous. He was afraid that his fellow Poles, fired
by the Hungarian example, might try to follow suit. Still, he was the only
leader in the socialist camp to express reservations about the Soviet intervention
announced by
Khruschev in Brest-Litovsk on 1 November.
In a manifesto issued on 4 November, the Polish leadership announced to
the world that intervention was not the way to deal with what was essentially
Hungary's internal business. Nevertheless, they also instructed the Polish
Ambassador to the UN to vote against the draft resolution submitted by
the US delegate condemning the Soviet military intervention. When the Polish
people found out that UN Ambassador Michalowski had voted in support of
the Soviet Union and the Kádár government, influential Polish
intellectuals demanded the immediate resignation of the Foreign Minister,
Adam Rapacki.
To be fair, it must be said that Gomulka delayed establishing closer ties with the Kádár government as long as possible, and repeatedly declined the latter's attempts at rapprochement. For the interim the Polish party was prepared to negotiate only with the Kádár government's trade minister over the 100 million zlotys of aid that the Central Committee had voted for Hungary, which they wanted delivered as soon as possible. The Kádár government urgently needed coal supplies because of the coal miners' strike.
Polish aid sent to Hungary between 26 October and 19 November exceeded two million USD in value, twice the amount of aid received by Hungary from the rest of the world. Even Gomulka and his fellow party leaders were outraged by the treacherous abduction of the Imre Nagy group.
In early December Gomulka found a way to embarrass Kádár. György Marosán gave an interview to the French communist daily, l'Humanité. In his usual simplistic and strident manner, he asserted that the imperialists had struck at the two weakest links in the socialist chain: Poland and Hungary. This statement was deliberately interpreted by the Poles to mean that Gomulka had been brought to power by the imperialists. On 3 December, Ambassador Willman angrily protested to Kádár about Marosán's allegation, forcing him to make a lengthy excuse in which he admitted that "Marosán sometimes doesn't think through what he is saying."
It must be emphasized that despite the tightening of censorship and the gradual bolshevization of Gomulka's internal policy, Poland was the only country within the socialist bloc to oppose the publication of a translation of the so-called White Book--an official collection of lies about the 1956 uprising--and the hosting of a photo exhibition about 1956 arranged for propaganda purposes by Kádár's Foreign Ministry. This exhibition was regarded by the advisors of the Communist Party Central Committee as a particularly primitive example of anti-revolutionary propaganda.
Gomulka managed to delay visiting Kádár's Hungary for eighteen months. He downplayed his official visit in May 1958 by describing it as a detour on the way to Sofia and Bucharest. Before his arrival in Hungary, Gomulka also demanded that no action be taken against Imre Nagy during his stay in Budapest. Kádár acceded. Today we know that Kádár actually deceived his guest.
Gomulka was the only Eastern bloc politician who tried his best to intervene with Khruschev to save Imre Nagy. The Polish leader was aware that the decision was effectually in the hands of the Soviet head of state. Gomulka had only one card to play, a weak one: he argued that the execution of Imre Nagy would cause immeasurable damage to the workers' movement. Why did he embark on this doomed attempt? Was he subconsciously grateful to the Hungarian Revolution, for diverting the attention of the Soviet party leadership from himself in those days? After all, the Soviets only reluctantly allowed him to retain his post as First Secretary and head of the Polish state.
The official silence in Poland following the execution of Imre Nagy was broken by Gomulka after only twelve days. In his speech given at the Gdan'sk shipyard, however, Gomulka, like a "disciplined soldier of the party," declared that "Imre Nagy, who was a revisionist, and under pressure from the rising wave of counter-revolution and anti-democratic powers, had moved step by step towards capitulation to the counter-revolution, granted its demands, and caused the destruction of the socialist regime in Hungary". In speaking like this, Gomulka was probably exhibiting a reflex action of self-defence, since news had appeared in the international and in the Polish press of his resignation in protest at the execution of Imre Nagy. Some papers alleged that he was being forced to resign for the same reason. Gomulka's Gdan'sk speech was more than welcome to both Khruschev and Kádár.
The Polish people did not share the sentiments expressed by Gomulka's Gdan'sk speech, which he addressed to them partly as a warning. In Eastern Europe Imre Nagy and his fellow martyrs were openly commemorated for the first time in Poland --in Katowice--two days after their execution and thirty-one years before the political and social landslide of 1989 made the same thing possible for Hungarians. The 20 June 1958 edition of the Hungarian sports paper Népsport reported on a friendly football match played two days earlier in Katowice--on a Wednesday afternoon--between Budapest Honvéd and Ruch Chorzów of Poland. The Budapest team won 3:1. "It was a thrilling game from start to finish. The match was dominated by Honvéd, but the home team attacks were a persistent threat. The star footballer Machosa played a great part in the victory by scoring a magnificent hat-trick." The report omitted to mention a detail recorded in an informer's report delivered to the relevant department of the Central Committee: before the kick-off, the 15,000 fans crowded into the Katowice sports stadium demanded that they be allowed to pay homage to the memory of the Hungarian martyrs who had been killed two days before by holding a minute's silence. Reports reveal that a number of factories in Poznan' paid their respects in a similar fashion.
There could be no more eloquent evidence of the change of heart taking place among members of the Communist Party and the spiritual drama experienced by politically engaged people than a letter, dated 20 June 1958, addressed to the Central Committee by Bronislawa Piasecka, a member of the Polish Youth Communist Organization since 1928 and later of the Communist Party of Poland. Piasecka's one-line message, enclosed with his party membership card and medal for distinguished service, read as follows: "Instead of flowers, I hereby place my party card and medal on the graves of Imre Nagy and his associates."