Erika Kornelia Szeles, Machine-gun Girl of the Hungarian Uprising

[Hawk1981]

On October 23, 1956, a student demonstration in Budapest, Hungary escalated to become a major confrontation with the ruling communist party and the state security police. Within days a nationwide uprising of impromptu militias had taken control of several cities and forced the national government from power. The new government disbanded the state security police and announced its intention to leave the Warsaw Pact, hold free elections and ask the Soviet Union to withdraw their troops from Hungary.

After initially agreeing to negotiate the withdrawal of troops, the Soviet Union launched an invasion of Hungary in early November to crush the uprising.

Erika Kornelia Szeles had turned 15 the previous January and was training as a cook at a Budapest hotel. When the uprising broke out, she and her boyfriend joined a militia in Budapest and participated in several skirmishes. Around November 1st her picture was taken by a Danish photojournalist, Vagn Hansen. Published in several magazines in Western Europe, Erika's photograph holding the machine-gun became one of the iconic symbols of the Uprising.

Fearing for her safety after the Soviet army invaded, Erika's friends convinced her to work as a Red Cross medic rather than as an armed militia member. While tending to a wounded friend, she was killed on November 7, 1956, during a firefight between Hungarian militia and Soviet soldiers.

 

[Hawk1981]

The uprising in Hungary and its initial success caught the United States by surprise. The main line of President Eisenhower's policy was to promote the independence of the so-called captive nations, but only over the longer-term. There is little doubt that he was deeply upset by the crushing of the revolt, and he was not deaf to public pressure or the emotional lobbying of activists within his own administration. But he had also determined, and internal studies backed him up, that there was little the United States could do short of risking global war to help the rebels. And he was not prepared to go that far, nor even, for that matter, to jeopardize the atmosphere of improving relations with Moscow.

Soviet Tanks Roll into Budapest, November 1956

Washington's role in the Hungarian revolution soon became mired in controversy. One of the most successful weapons in the East-West battle for the hearts and minds of Eastern Europe was the CIA-administered Radio Free Europe. But in the wake of the uprising, RFE's broadcasts into Hungary sometimes took on a much more aggressive tone, encouraging the rebels to believe that Western support was imminent, and even giving tactical advice on how to fight the Soviets. The hopes that were raised, then dashed, by these broadcasts cast an even darker shadow over the Hungarian tragedy that leaves many Hungarians embittered to this day.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

The Hungarian Revolution was a genuine uprising of the Hungarian people, including democratic socialist workers, and the violence on both sides (initially) and from the Soviet side after troops and tanks were sent in, had profound repercussions on West European Communist parties. Tens of thousands left the Communist movement in disgust, and the first shoots of “EuroCommunism” emerged. Leftist intellectuals, fellow travelers and also genuine “left communists” in Europe supported the “workers councils” of the Hungarian Revolution. Of course the violence, brutality and repression (continuing in the months after the uprising was put down) fell most heavily on Hungarians, and demoralized all reformers and democrats in other Eastern European countries.

At the same time the Cold War European borders were solidified, whereas earlier Khrushchev’s anti-Stalin speech, the emergence of independent Titoism, the neutrality agreements regarding Austria, all had left open hope that those borders might become more permeable and less militarized. The Hungarian government had supported Germany in WWII and the regime imposed on the country after the Soviet Red Army marched in quickly alienated itself from the non-Stalinist Democratic forces in the country, purging even its own ranks of all suspected “Titoists” or “Trotskyists.”

On the Soviet side some cover for their repression of the Hungarian freedom fighters was given by the almost simultaneous invasion and occupation of the Suez Canal by Great Britain, France and Israel. Since the invasion involved Western armies, that issue tended to dominated western attention (and especially “non-aligned” nations’ attention) in the months after the Hungarian Revolution. Eisenhower’s pressure eventually forced those three nations to withdraw their troops.