“The Communists Come to Power in Hungary”
Hungary is located in what is considered central Europe with its capital city, Budapest, lying towards the northern part of the country. Contemporary Hungarian history is marked with two periods of totalitarian rule. In the years of 1939-1945 Hungary was subjected to Nazi occupation and the rise of Hungary’s own fascist party, the Arrow Cross party. Through 1944-1950 Hungary was liberated by the Red Army and the rise of communism began to take its hold on the war-torn nation. Many contributing factors have caused and allowed the communists to come to power. This paper’s purpose is to identify and evaluate the events leading up to the communist takeover and how the communists
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Throughout World War II Hungary’s fledgling communist party was receiving large amounts of support from communist Russia, and this became a key factor that assisted the Soviets in gradually seizing power. Furthermore, R.J. Crampton stated that after the war the communist agenda was becoming more and more popular with the citizens of many of the Eastern bloc countries because they witnessed the failure of capitalism and how that gave rise to fascist regimes and a Holocaust (213). Also, the idea of equality and shared economic wealth appealed to the poverty-stricken nation. Another crucial factor that allowed Soviet Russia to be a decisive force in opposition to the Nazis was that east Europeans wanted to restructure society and erect a front against fascism and believed a socialist agenda would help them do that. It is easy to understand why communism became a popular option to the devastated nation of Hungary, not only did Soviet Russia provide a new, optimistic outlook on society but they also became the dominant political force in the country.
After the Red Army liberated Hungary from Nazi occupation, they too occupied Hungary and began to exert their control over the nation. Since Hungary belonged to the Soviet sphere of influence they were soon forced to model their government after communist
The December of 1991 marked the end of the Soviet Union—and with it, an entire era. Like the February Revolution of 1917 that ended tsardom, the events leading up to August 1991 took place in rapid succession, with both spontaneity and, to some degree, retrospective inevitability. To understand the demise of Soviet Union is to understand the communist party-state system itself. Although the particular happenings of the Gorbachev years undoubtedly accelerated its ruin, there existed fundamental flaws within the Soviet system that would be had been proven ultimately fatal. The USSR became a past chapter of history because it was impossible to significantly reform the administrative
The era that preceded the formation of the Soviet Union was earmarked with social unrest, famine, and failed governments. After many struggles, many smaller soviet republics joined to form a large conglomerate nation, known as the Soviet Union in 1922. Vladimir Lenin, leader at the time, replaced the failing capitalist government with a communist government. . At the end of WWII, most of Eastern and Central Europe’s countries were being occupied by the soviet army. They came to be controlled by the Soviet government and pulled back behind an “iron Curtain”. Winston Churchill’s famed Iron curtain remark refers to the countries that fell under the spell of the Soviet Union and shut out the western world ways of capitalism. The countries of
The Soviet Union ran this portion of Germany with an iron fist; they built ginormous walls to keep their citizens from going into other countries territories. People of Hungary were trying to escape from the communist leader’s rule. A British political cartoon references what was happening in Hungary by showing Hitler’s dead body and a solider with the sickle and hammer emblem on his helmet, representing the Soviet Union (Document G). With all the people fleeing and fearing their lives, the United Nations did nothing but stand by and let it happen. This was showing that the only help the United States gave these people after the terror of WWII was to be under the rule of a ruthless communist party. Although this was one of the first ways the United States and United Nations gave more land to Communism, it was not the last by a long
World War II shocked and dismantled many Eastern European countries leaving Europe in a state of shock, with many unanswered, open ended questions. Buildings were blown up, streets cracked, people slaughtered, and governments destroyed. As turmoil struck Eastern Europe, an opportunity arose for a new political system to come into power. However, this process is never a simple one; two common political ideologies fought to control the heart of Europe. Capitalism led by the Western Allies, funded by the United States Marshall Plan, spread providing a short time of economic prosperity. The American’s plan however could not venture as far east as West Germany with Moscow’s direction of Communism led by Joseph Stalin and he took over a large portion of Eastern Europe with many open statements and empty promises. These two ideologies caused an enlarged time of tension stemming from the drastically different values they were known to embrace, leading to a horrific time known as the cold war.
Throughout all of the valiant efforts of Hungarian Students and workers the Hungarian revolution had begun only to see hundreds die and thousands more leave with fatal casualties. The only way the Hungarians could fight back was to take up arms and fight back with as much force as possible and eventually they did succeed only to watch all of their hopes a dreams crushed when the soviets returned to decimate the Hungarian Freedom Fighters within a matter of a few short days. The Soviet Union’s Reign had only ended when the Berlin wall was demolished in 1989 when other countries finally realized that the Communist were also a very large threat to the rest of the world, which bring me to yet another point in history when the same efforts concluded to very fruitful rewards.
The demands, “adopted at the storm meetings held at the universities” (Doc 1) call for freedom in harsh and extreme tones. Instead of compromise with communists, the students request for the “withdrawal of all Soviet troops from Hungary” (Doc 1) and to have “no interference in Hungary’s internal affairs” (Doc 1). As an alternative to Soviet rule, the students desire for Hungary to be in control of its internal affairs. The people of Hungary wish for “equal rights for individual farms and cooperative members” (Doc 1). Hungarians envision a life without communist rule intervening with the responsibilities of the country and demonstrate the idea by “[cutting] out the hated hammer and sickle that the Communists had placed at [the] center [of the Hungarian flag]” and proclaiming that they have created a new flag of freedom. ( Doc
There is not a single country in this hemisphere which has not been penetrated by the apparatus of International Communism … The Communist conspiracy is not to be taken lightly. It’s agents operate under the iron discipline of the Soviet Communist Party acting as the self-proclaimed “General Staff of the World Proletariat.” The agents themselves, in order to gain a following pretend to be reformists seeking to eradicate the evils which exist in any society.
While Subject 12-M admits in his interview that opposition to the Communist Party is dangerous, many other factors spark comparisons between his attitudes toward communism and the November revolution. He had said that only about 5% of the population were satisfied with present conditions so it is no surprise that “Rebel Patriots stormed toward freedom, Communist henchmen reaped the frightful wrath they had sowed.” Furthermore, the experiences that Subject 12-M had in 1944 and 1945 when he was not yet a man certainly cemented a feeling of hatred toward his Russian oppressors. This steadfast opposition toward communism was not his alone though.
Hungary had a head start on the other former communist-bloc countries in terms of adopting economic reform measures
The Soviet Union post World War II intended on expanding their political power via communism under a guise of spreading Marxist thought; thus transforming Marxist ideology into “a tool of Soviet domination in Poland” (Aleksandrowicz, 101). They did this through the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) a
Even as Reagan clashed Marxism in Central America but, the USSR was crumbling. In reaction to severe economic difficulties and rising political uproar in the Russia, the Premier ‘Mikhail Gorbachev’ took office in 1985 and then announced two strategies that redefined Russian’s association to the rest of the realm: ‘glasnost’ or political honesty, and ‘restructuring’ or economic development. Soviet impact in Eastern Europe diminished. In 1989 every former communist government in the county swapped its government with a non-communist any. In November of that year the “Berlin Wall” the utmost evident sign of the decades long Cold War was to end with demolished, just done two years after Reagan had defied the Russian premier in an address at Brandenburg
In conclusion, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 resulted in the death of more than 2,500 Hungarians. Many of the attitudes and occurrences at the time, such as Khrushchev’s brutality and the general unrest under the Soviet Union’s control of countries and their freedom were large factors in the revolt. The West makes no attempts of intervention; Hungary was already under the power of
Moscow, U.S.S.R. 19 September, 2020. Instead of in our world when it collapsed in 1989, the Soviet Union managed to pull through the tough time, but now it couldn’t. Rioters crowded the streets, attempting to penetrate the defenses of the buildings holding state officials. Only the KGB remained loyal to its government, while the U.S.S.R.’s enemies watched smugly, and the Warsaw Pact Nations defected to NATO. A civil war in Cuba ended communism there, and Anti-Communist factions in all nations were at strong points.
The 20th century in Europe was filled with war and revolution along with political and economical change. The destruction caused by World War II remained prominent in eastern European countries even years after the war ended in 1945. For years the Soviet Union fought for communism while NATO did everything they could to prevent it. Although communism slowly released its grip on the eastern European countries in the late 20th century, western countries still looked down upon these ex-communistic states. After reading the memoir “Café Europa: Life After Communism.” by Slavenka Drakulic, one can infer that not only were the people of Eastern Europe a bit eager to assimilate and conform to Western culture but also there was a sense of dominance
The Czechoslovakia revolution mainly occurred because the communist government had many conflicts with the citizens but before the revolution, when communism was just beginning, the citizens wanted that type of government. On the contrary, during and after the revolution, the people of Czechoslovakia favored a more democratic government where the power resides in the people, not just rulers. The communist ways began in 1948 when “Benes gave in to communist demands and handed his cabinet over to the party” (Communists 1) after many acts of protest that he could no longer control. Many people fought to change their government in their country to go from a parliamentary democracy to a communist government. They wanted to change their form of