How Bad Could Hungary '56 Get?

And just how widespread is your interpretation? Widespread in Communist circles maybe. - Merryprankster

That isn't fair, as that amounts to discrediting his opinion based on his ideology. If you disagree you can put forward your argument. I'm communist, but I wouldn't belittle your replies to the thread if you put forward a very pro-NATO view. To accuse someone else of twisting the truth in their analysis due to ideological bias is counterproductive.

Anyways, it is impossible that Yugoslavia would intervene. While the Yugoslav army was a significant force, Yugoslavia had little to no war industry to fight the Soviets with (If we're saying that the Yugoslavs will be protecting the Hungarians from the Soviets), and have relatively little urban fighting experience, despite excelling at guerrilla warfare (mainly rural/semi-rural based).

NATO had already started shipping troops home and whilst the Soviets wouldn't really be expecting to fight the US, I believe the Red Army would push aside NATO ground forces relatively easily. I can even see the Russians occupying France, although obviously a Soviet Sealion is ASB.

The West still has naval and air superiority though, and the bombs of course, but I think its a common misconception on this thread that A-bombs are nation destroyers, especially for large nations like the USA or USSR. neither have the capability they would have in the sixties to annihalate every major city of their opponents at once.

But because of Soviet strength in Eastern Europe and the Suez crisis, I think its extremely unlikely that NATO would attack.
 
Look at the things Sam R. is actually saying and how they contradict reality (see the non-nuking of the USSR for one) and believing things for ideological reasons becomes obvious.

Rollback was big mostly under Truman, and yet the USSR didn't get bombed when it was easier and safer.

And he called anti-Soviet rebels "reactionary," which is a big clue.
 
And he called anti-Soviet rebels "reactionary," which is a big clue.

I think you are very strongly reading into my writing a projection of an imaginary.

The group I described as reactionary was specifically "the CIA funded minuscule reactionary "rebel" movements in West Germany." Have you actually read the stuff being produced under the Captive Nations funding stream coming out of Germany? I suggest you do. They suggest rather firmly that the core problem leading to 1956 is Trianon. I referred to this group in explicit contrast to the Imre Nagy Institute in Belgium.

Perhaps I need to make myself crudely clear: fascists, in the broad sense of Horthyites, and individuals who wished to roll back social ownership of goods, to roll back the freedom of the peasantry, eliminate the Trianon borders, to purify the nation, and to occupy areas of Romania; were a minority. If you have a problem with the very common social science conception of aims like these being "reactionary," then I'm not sure why you're engaged in discussing a mid twentieth century social history what-if. Perhaps Victoria II, which also describes similar aims, as "reactionary" is some kind of homogenous crypto communist bogey to you.

In contrast, while the interpretations of socialism in the 16 points were varied; the vast majority of armed and self-governing Hungarians agreed that social property needed to be maintained; that comprehensive systems of access to social wealth and the good things in life like housing needed to be maintained and expanded; and that the role of social decision making in economic planning was a good thing.

Usually these ideals were explicitly contrasted to the actual nature of Soviet-style life in Hungary under Gero and Rakosi; and Nagy's limited period of reform began during the revolution to be pointed at as better. Nagy was not widely esteemed prior to October 1956 for various reasons, largely connected with the kind of doubt a modern public has in the capacity of a state for real action.

There is a large variety of opinion within the revolution around what the sixteen points mean. There was a very very large body in favour of a communist revolution (MEFESZ leadership, the rump DISZ organisation, the nascent "Student's Party", The Writers Union under Hay, Gimes in the HSWP before 3 November and the HDIM after, much of the SDP rank and file and underground network). As in, they were in favour of a society where economics and much of politics was coordinated through self-governing workers councils, with a plurality of parties.

The second largest opinion was for something like the existing economic system, accepting that workers councils had taken over the factories and were unstoppable, but with a stronger parliament. The public Smallholders line and Anna Kethley's SDP's formal position was something like this. A large body of rank and file SDP activists also felt something like this. There is evidence of an emergent conflict between this "line" and the prior "line" in the workers councils; which had a head kept on it because it was irrelevant to the fighting and the strike.

Finally, there was a vague hope that "socialism" actually just meant "nicer capitalism and a parliamentary democracy." This shows up in some geographic councils, particularly ones in areas without significant manufacturing or extraction industry. Some of the material coming out of the Gyor council's members resembles this. Even this line draws a future path for Hungary that is in line with the fantasy of social-democratic Sweden (not the reality).

Given that I've repeatedly referred to the central role of participatory democratic workers councils demanding control of production in the revolution; I think your claim that I have characterised the anti-Soviet rebels as reactionary is unsustainable. I'd also suggest that you look at the composition in October of the parties that I suggest would form a coalition in parliament after elections. Even the Smallholders were calling for the continuation of social property and lauding the workers councils.

yours,
Sam R.
 
When you were talking about "reactionary" rebels in Germany, I thought you meant East Germany, had made a typo and said "West," and were bashing the people who rebelled there as well.

(The ones who were the subject of the "dissolve the people and elect another quip.")
 
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