Marking the time

Dan Nolan | Thursday, 23 October 2008 Source: Budapest Times

Hungarians are big on remembrance, and the most important date on the calendar is 23 October, the date on which the Uprising against the Stalinist government in Hungary began in 1956.

At least 50 public gatherings had been registered with the Budapest Police at time of going to press to commemorate the 13-day-long state celebrations of the spontaneous nationwide rebellion, which was crushed by the Soviets on 4 November. Szabadság tér, Kossuth tér, Andrássy út, Bajcsy-Zsilinszky út, Erzsébet tér, and Corvin köz will all be closed to traffic throughout the day.

The official commemorations of 23 October, a national holiday since 1989, begin at Kossuth tér at 9.30 a.m, when the Hungarian flag will be raised in the presence of Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, House Speaker Katalin Szili, President László Sólyom, members of the diplomatic corps and various 1956 organisations.

Following that a minute’s silence will be held at 10 a.m. at the statue of Imre Nagy on Vértanúk tere. Nagy was reinstated as prime minister one day after the Uprising began, and was soon the “middleman” charged with the unenviable task of maintaining relations between the Hungarian public and Moscow. The statue is symbolically placed on the middle of a bridge, with the ill-fated Nagy standing in the middle, but looking towards Parliament. Nagy, a communist to the end, was hanged after being found guilty of treason in a secret trial two years later.

Party leaders will also visit plot 301 at Rákoskeresaztúri Újköztemeto (Rákoskeresaztúr new public cemetery), where Nagy and the other victims of 1956 are buried. Nagy was disinterred and reburied as a hero in the same plot in 1989, a highly significant step in the fall of communism in Hungary. In recent years MPs from the Hungarian Socialist Party and the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) have been egged at this event, despite the fact that Imre Mécs, a former liberal, and now a Socialist MP, was imprisoned and sentenced to death after 1956.

Viktor Orbán, the leader of Fidesz and District XII mayor Zoltán Pokorni will both speak to supporters of the centre-right party at Dísz tér in Buda’s Castle District. In June 1989 Orbán, then an unknown twenty-five-year-old liberal, made a barbed speech at Hősők tere demanding an end to “the Asiatic dead-end” thatHungary was in, as well as political liberty and the withdrawal of Soviet troops. The speech led to the rehabilitation and reburial of Nagy after his funeral, attended by over 100,000 people, that was partly organised by opponents of Hungary’s Communist regime.

Wreaths will be placed at the monument at 56-osok tere (the square of the ‘56-ers) next to Hosök tere), after which Imre Mécs will speak. An outdoor display, a cinema screen and street theatre will also be on the square from 24-26 October (10am-6pm). A gathering at the statue of the Pesti srac (guy from Pest) will be held in the afternoon. This monument (above right) depicts an impish young man dressed in a leather jacket and holding a rifle, reflecting the remarkably low age of the average 1956 insurgent.

Krisztina Morvai, an ex-Fidesz MP and now a prospective MEP for the far-right Jobbik party will address a crowd on 1956 and “the police abuse of 2006” at Deak tér from 3pm, with the radical-right militia, the Magyar Gárda, out in full force. British National Party leader Nick Griffin will also propound his opinions on “current political questions”, as will Jobbik and Magyar Gárda founder Gábor Vona.

For a more internationally-minded perspective on the events of autumn 1956, a photo exhibition entitled ‘56 Around the World will be held at Szabadság tér throughout the day.

The annual 23 October gala event will take place at the State Opera House on Andrássy út at 8 p.m.. Meanwhile the “Torch of Revolution” will be lit at Kossuth tér after a military parade. The flame in the marble block, placed here to mark the 40th anniversary of the Uprising in 1996, will be snuffed out on 4 November, marking the return of Soviet troops to the capital.