1 - INTRODUCTION

Summary

The major was dragged over to a tree by several fighters. His ankles were tied and he was strapped to one of the lowest branches. He kicked at the rope and paper forints fell from his pockets. In a few seconds the winds scattered more money than a worker could have saved in years. His body was only three feet from the ground. The revolutionists gathered leaves and paper and piled them under the suspended major. He screamed and pleaded for mercy. He cried out that he would cooperate with us and would tell us all the AVH names we wanted. But the students and workers just laughed at him. They brought the other AVH police over at gunpoint to watch. They lit the fire. As the flames licked at his hair, the AVH men turned white at the sight. They were led away to be locked up.

(Beke 1957, 50)

Laszlo Beke wrote this in “A Student Diary: Budapest October 16–November 1, 1956.” Beke participated in the Hungarian Uprising, by far the bloodiest of the anticommunist protests in the history of communist rule in Europe (Beke 1957). The revolution ended with the Red Army effecting a massive crackdown on anticommunist forces followed by widespread repercussions against the revolution's organizers. The revolutionists' casualties vastly outnumbered those for the Soviet-backed regime.

The Budapest insurgents did not realize their main goal of returning democracy to Hungary until 1989, when a wave of democratic transitions transformed East Central Europe.