This Sunday, the 23rd of October is a very important national holiday in Hungary. It is not only the official day of the declaration of the Republic of Hungary in 1989 (previously it was the People’s Republic of Hungary with as most of you probably know a communist regime). But in 1989 that certain day had a symbolic meaning: the 23rd of October in 1956 was the day the revolution in Hungary started. But the intervention of the Soviet armies put a bloody end to the revolution and Hungarians had to wait another 33 years to move into a democratic republic (fortunately without violence at the regime change in 1989). You can read about the 1956 Hungarian revolution on the Wikipedia page.

The event also caused gained huge international attention, the “Hungarian Freedom Fighter” was even the persona of the year in Time magazine for 1956 (the second “abstract” figure receiving the person of the year title).

In Hungary the celebrations of this major national holiday is never without conflicts. So I though it is worthwhile to check out how some of the blogs report about the celebrations of the this important day in 2005.

“Városi Visszhang” [in English: Urban Echo] from Szentes reports with pictures about the celebrations. The mayor is also quoted as: “1956 is a personal holiday. There are still people alive from those who witnessed and suffered the events of that period. We don’t judge it as the 1848-49 revolution. The time of objectivity has not arrived yet.”

“Egy székely Budapesten” [in English a: A szekler/székely from Budapest] shows a Hungarian video clip from a leading Tv channel’s news coverage on the celebrations. You can see how the celebrations is used for contemporary political fights and how people strongly emotional about the 1956 revolution disturb the speech of leaders whom they don’t feel worthwhile to talk about those events. The blogger adds: “We – from Transylvania – always get surprised on how you “celebrate” here in Budapest”.
[Henrik’s note: I can totally related to this, I also think using such a holiday for daily politics is disgusting, but next year is election year so try explaining this to any politician…]
In his next entry he takes this back as he says those celebrations were neither without squabble in Transylvania.

As “Basahalom” writes, Debrecen city’s municipality has received honours form the 56 Association. This honour is represented by a Hungarian flag with a hole in the middle [Henrik’s note: this picture is not from the original article, but I wanted to add one for you to see it.], this symbol was used during the 1956 revolution when the communist blazon was removed from the middle of the flags. The honour is given to municipalities that (according to the assessment of the 56 Association) show progressive acts for the purity of public life and for environmental culture. But here is the catch: On the other side Basahalom feels that due to recent decisions at the municipality none of the two criteria stands.

“Déli Riporter” reveals the catchwords of 23rd of October, 2005. For the two major parties in Hungary: a) it is “Rebirth” for the right wing and b) “Birthday” for the left wing. The blogger adds: “Why does even holidays has to have catchwords? A holiday is a holiday.” … “hands off from these for: political happenings, demonstrations, campaigns and congresses.”

“Pocakos News” decided to take another perspective on 1956. That is the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne . As he writes: ” I was shocked, when during the Athens Olympics -when the Hungarian media was describing the history of previous games – most of the materials published showed and reflected the history-falsification of the Kádár regime [Henrik’s note: János Kádár was a communist leader after the revolution].”
So you may ask, what does it have to do with the revolution? Pocakos explains (this is short summary of his great article):
The time of the games was planned between 22 November and 8 December. But the whole event was endangered by the events at Suez Crisis and the Hungarian revolution.
The travel of the Hungarian team was burdened with troubles, but finally their plan could set off from Prague on the 6th of Nov. Many wanted to return to Hungary at that time as they have heard about the attack of the Soviet army on out country, which started on the 4th of November. And when the first wave of Hungarian sportsman arrived to Melbourne, the local Hungarian community waited them with black armbands, flowers and singing the National Anthem. And in this times when their homes were tortured in fire and blood, and it was almost impossible to get any news from home, the members of Hungarian Olympic team won 9 gold, 10 solver and 7 bronze medals. And of those 172 members of the team, 49 have decided not to return to Hungary.

Update:
Kelt pointed me to a short entry on Moshi-Moshi where the president of the Hungarian Socialist Party is quoted as following: “For us, remembrance is not recalling the past“. Moshi somewhat rightfully asks the question: “But what?”
Kelt actually sent a letter to party president Hiller asking the same question about the definition of remembrance. As of 29th of October, not reply has been received by Kelt.

Finally a real unique piece posted by “Egy székely Budapesten” recorded from a popular TV program. It is song from Elvis from 1956 in the “Ed Sullivan Show”, where Elvis was showing his sympathies to the Hungarian freedom fighters!!! The first 30 second is the Hungarian introduction, the show starts at around the 30th second. (The voice of Ed Sullivan is also partially Hungarian dubbed but you can get a few words of it in English in the beginning that shows the intentions.) During the Elvis song, you can see some historic footage of the revolution too!

[Henrik’s note: 23 October, 2006 will be the 50th anniversary of the ’56 revolution, so check back in a year to see how that ]

(The referenced blogs are in Hungarian)

Tags:
1956
Revolution