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BOX-FOLDER-REPORT: 36-4-26
TITLE:             Budapest 1956 Revisited
BY:                C.A.
DATE:              1979-1-30
COUNTRY:           Hungary
ORIGINAL SUBJECT:  RAD
THEMATIC SUBJECTS: Hungary--1976-1989, Hungary--1956 Revolution--Retrospection, Hungary--Literature

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EAST --BUDAPEST 1956 REVISITED F-534

Munich, 30 January 1979 (RAD/c.a.)

More than 20 years have passed since the Hungarian revolution
of October 1956, but the list of the literature dealing with the
event is still not closed. Just a few days ago, a new and important
contribution to that literature was published in Paris under the
title Au nom de la classe ouvriere (In the Name of the Workers'
Class) [1] The author of the new book is Sandor Kopacsi -- in
1956 he was the police chief of Budapest and played a leading
role in the revolution on the side of Imre Nagy. After a long
prison term he succeeded in emigrating and is now living in
Canada. 

Kopacsi's book is important for at least two reasons. So
far almost everything published in the West on the Hungarian
October of 1956 was written by intellectuals, scholars, politicians,
people with a middle class background. Kopacsi comes from a
different social setting. He was a genuine worker and in his early
years also a dedicated Communist. His book is a sincere account
of his disillusionment with the dogma that the Soviet Union,the
party, and Matyas Rakosi were always right and of his gradual
identification with the cause of the revolution. Kopacsi's
testimony, how he saw the situation deteriorating from inside, 
from a key regime post, is one outstanding aspect of the book.

The second is the description of the Imre Nagy trial.
Kopacsi does not really add anything new to what is already known
about the factual events of the revolution, but he does reveal,
for the first time, how the long agony of the imprisoned
revolutionary leaders actually ended. The official announcement
of Nagy's execution, as well as a later statement by Janos Kadar,
asserted that the trial had taken place in Budapest. But no
outsider knew for sure whether this was so or merely a
face-saving device on the part of the regime. Kopacsi's book resolves
that longstanding doubt: the Imre Nagy trial was held in Budapest,
the court and the executioners were Hungarian regime people, but
the concept itself [of putting the group on trial] was born in and
supervised by Moscow. The author speaks with authority, since he
himself was one of the defendants in the Imre Nagy. trial.

A Wavering Communist

But before going into these details, it is necessary to return
to Kopacsi's career. He was a perfect workers' "cadre": his father
was a metalworker and. a staunch, pro-Soviet Socialist; the son,
too, was a metalworker, a convinced Communist, and a partisan who
fought against the Nazis and for the Soviets. Young Kopacsi was
deeply convinced, as was his father, too, that the Soviet Union
represented the best interests of the workers, the loftiest hopes
and ideals of mankind. After the war, he was recruited into the
new police force (not identical with the political security police),
and because of his impeccable pedigree and devotion to the party

--------------
(1) Robert Laffont, Paris, 1979.

EAST (1) -- BUDAPEST 1956 REVISITEDF-535

he made speedy progress in his career. In the spring of 1956,
with the personal and enthusiastic approval of Rakosi, Kopacsi was
appointed police chief of Budapest with the rank of
colonel -- a post with considerable authority and influence.

Rakosi did not know, however, that at that time Kopacsi's
communist idealism was already wavering. The first event that
made him wonder about the party's course was the arrest of Laszlo
Rajk and of many other leading figures he thought were good
Communists. But the real shock came after the death of Stalin, when
the prisoners were set free and some of them told Kopacsi about
their tribulations and tortures. It turned out that in essence
all this was the work of the security police. An attentive
Kopacsi could now watch from the inside how they developed into a
state within the workers' state, not responsible to anybody except
a few arrogant Stalinists at the top with well-known Soviet secret
police connections. He also realized that there existed a network
of Soviet advisers in the "liberated" country who controlled
everybody and everything, and who reported directly to what is
today called the KGB center in Moscow.

Many Communists, even in privileged positions, began to
question the soundness of Rakosi's policy, his loyalty to Hungary,
the sincerity of the Soviet "fraternal" help. In the person of
Imre Nagy they detected a communist leader whose concept of
socialism promised a better protection of Hungarian interests and
a more democratic government. Kopacsi was one of those Communists
who set their hopes on Nagy. But his "conversion" was a slow,
painful process, and the account of his break with the "old" and
identification with the "new" makes fascinating reading.

The author admits that it was not easy for him to give up
his youthful ideals. For a long time he thought that the regime
would be able to reform itself from within. In 1953 he welcomed
Imre Nagy's first government, without being entirely committed to
him. "I admired Imre Nagy very much," Kopacsi writes, "but I was
still attached to Rakosi. After all, he was our eternal father,
the wise, irreproachable, beloved head of our country." Kopacsi's
secret hope was that the two men would be able to find a way to
mutual, fruitful co-operation. What followed is well known: with
the help of his Soviet -- probably KGB -- contacts, Rakosi succeeded
in ousting Nagy and in concentrating all power in his own hands
again. He planned mass arrests to get rid of all his critics in
the party and intellectual circles. The whole country was shocked
and infuriated. Like many others, Kopacsi, too, joined Imre Nagy's
camp.

Comrade Serov

On the fateful day of 23 October 1956, as police chief of
Budapest, Kopacsi attended a high-level meeting which was convened
to decide how to handle the street demonstrations directed against
the totally compromised regime. At that meeting a suggestion was
made that the police force should be deployed against the still
peaceful crowds in Budapest, but the police chief objected to such
a brutal step. His behavior was immediately and sharply denounced

EAST (2) --BUDAPEST 1956 REVISITED F-536

by another participant, the chief Soviet adviser in Hungary. The
latter branded the demonstrators agents of fascists and imperialists.
Kopacsi retorted: "Apparently the comrade adviser who has just
arrived from Moscow has not had enough time to familiarize himself
with the situation in our country. We have to explain to him that
the demonstrations were not instigated by 'fascists' and 'imperialists,
but by university students, by our best workers, by the cream of our
intelligentsia. They want to have their rights and want to express
their sympathies for Poland." Kopacsi did not know, however, that
the Soviet "adviser" he rebuked was Ivan A. Serov, head of the KGB,
who had come personally to Budapest to take over control of a
politically explosive situation. In less than two weeks Kopacsi
and Serov met again, but under quite different circumstances.

In between there was the revolution. On the basis of what he
saw from his vantage point in Budapest Kopacsi can only confirm
the claim of many other revolutionary leaders and authors that
two events were mainly responsible for turning what was originally
a peaceful protest movement into a bloody military conflagration
between Hungarians and Soviets: the first was the shooting by the
security forces at demonstrators in Budapest and the second the
intervention of Soviet armored units in the strained situation.
Who invited the latter to intervene? Kopacsi has no definite answer.
But since the units were part of the Soviet forces stationed in
Hungary, in his view a simple order from the Soviet general staff
could have sufficed to set them marching against the Hungarian
capital. Serov's earlier comment at the Budapest meeting left
no doubt about how at least one influential segment of the Soviet
leadership felt about the events in the small Danubian country.

A few days later Kopacsi was selected by Janos Kadar to become
a member of the top leading body of the new communist party,
cleansed of its Stalinist elements, and on November 2, he, was
elected deputy commander of the patriotic revolutionary militia.
By this time, however, the same Kadar, who headed the reorganized
party, disappeared from Budapest, only to be brought back by the
Soviets a few days later and put in charge of the new regime
established by them. The duplicity of the Soviet Union since the
beginning of November was evident: at the same time that it agreed
to withdraw, its forces from Hungary, massive reinforcements were
being moved in. On 4 November 1956 they launched a counterattack
and, unavoidably, the revolution collapsed. Imre Nagy and his
closest associates took refuge in the Yugoslav Embassy and Kopacsi
wanted to join them there. But he was captured on the street by
Soviet troops and after an attempt by Soviet Ambassador Yurii v.
Andropov, a former friend of the Kopacsi family, to bring him over
to Kadar's side failed, he was escorted to Soviet headquarters.
It was there that the author's second meeting with the chief Soviet
adviser took place. This time the latter introduced himself as
General Serov, head of the KGB -- the same man who, the previous
night, had arrested the members of the Hungarian armistice
delegation. Now he ordered the arrest of Kopacsi and assured the rebel
police chief that he, Serov, would do his best to send him to the
gallows.

EAST (3) -- BUDAPEST 1956 REVISITEDF-537

A Trial "Made in Moscow"

This is where the second, and, from historic point of view,
more significant part of Kopacsi's book -- essentially the first
detailed report on the Imre Nagy trial -- starts.

After his arrest, Kopacsi was transferred from Soviet
headquarters to the Fo-utca Prison in Budapest. Imre Nagy, the head
of the revolutionary government and his friends were also brought
there, but only after long wranglings. As is known, they were
forced to leave the Yugoslav Embassy, and instead of being able to
return to their homes, as promised, were arrested by Serov's
men and sent to Romania. For a while the Soviet leadership did
not know quite what to do with the strange exiles in Romania, and
then, although today this sounds almost unbelievable, upon Peking's
(more exactly upon Chou En-lai's) insistence, Khrushchev decided
that a trial should be held and the strictest sentences imposed upon
the "culprits."

Some time in early 1957, Nagy and seven of his closest associates
were detached from the considerably larger group kept in Romania
and sent back to Budapest, to the Fo-utca Prison. With Kopacsi
they now numbered nine and were put in separate cells on the fifth
floor of the building. Very soon a Soviet adviser, a certain
Colonel Boris Shumilin, set up an office on the same floor -- he
became the chief manager of the trial who reported directly to
Moscow, to Serov and Andropov.. Serov was still head of the KGB
(he was replaced a few months after the Nagy trial), while Andropov,
the former Ambassador to Budapest, was in charge of the CPSU CC
department dealing with the communist and workers' parties of the
socialist countries (and, by the way, is the present chief of the
KGB). Shumilin worked with Hungarian assistants -- one for each
defendant. The assistants' task was to persuade their clients of
their own guilt and to induce them to co-operate with the public
prosecutor. In Kopacsi's case, this would have meant disavowing
his role in the revolution and providing direct evidence against
Nagy. The struggle for the revolutionary leaders' free will went
on for months. One of them, Geza Losonczy, minister of state in
the last Imre Nagy government, literally lost his mind under the
harassment and, according to Kopacsi, became such an embarrassment to
the organizers of the trial that they got rid of him, with the help
of an injection.

Dress Rehearsal

A dress rehearsal of the trial was held in the prison in
February 1958. The defendants were not told, of course, that
the only aim of the effort was to test the result of their
brainwashing. In the courtroom, all the officials, the prosecutor, the
judge, the guards, etc., were Hungarian -- Shumilin watched the
proceedings from a distant observation point. Despite his and his
staff's long preparatory work, the interrogation of the defendants
got out of hand: they all stuck to their conviction that the Imre
Nagy government was a legal government, that it did not conspire
with the "imperialists" and "fascists" against the Soviet Union, that
it had no intention of overthrowing the socialist order in Hungary.
Its goal was reform. One of the accused, Jozsef Szilagyi, was

EAST (4) --BUDAPEST 1956 REVISITED F-511

especially obstinate in defending the revolution, and threw a real
clinker into the efforts of the prosecution. On the second day,
the judge recessed the trial, and never showed up again, because,
. shortly thereafter, he suffered a heart attack. But Szilagyi had
to pay the highest price for his performance. Shumilin decided
that he should be tried separately; after a very short, almost
summary proceeding, he was condemned to death and executed.

The brainwashing resumed -- the intent was obvious: to close
the books on the affair as soon as possible, and this with exemplary
punishments. Kopacsi's lawyer was informed, by reliable sources,
that, in addition to Imre Nagy, three other defendants were singled
out to be condemned to death, and that his client was one of them.
Kopacsi's family mobilized his worker friends, and more than 700
signed a petition to Kadar, asking the party chief to save his life.
Kadar, whom a few years before Kopacsi had helped get out of a very
difficult situation, consented to make the attempt, on condition that
the petitioners withdraw their signatures; he did not want to act
under any semblance of pressure. that request was fulfilled, and,
 one day, with Ferenc Munnich, the nominal prime minister at his
side, the Hungarian party leader picked up the red phone and
dialed a Kremlin number. Khrushchev and Mikoya were on the other end
of the line. After a discussion of about one hour, the Soviet leader
gave in: Kopacsi's life could be saved, if he were willing to help
the prosecution.

Kopacsi had only a vague idea, and that only from some cautious
gestures by his lawyer, of what was going on around his person. And
he also noticed that the "line" of Shumilin's assistant suddenly
changed: he made hints that, after all, Kopacsi could save his
life, if he would renounce his role of hero and dissociate himself from
Imre Nagy and his team. "Evidently," Kopacsi writes, "the Russians
wanted to separate me from my friends.. It was part of the ritual
of the Stalinist trials to have, in each batch, one or two persons
designated to introduce some nuances into the monotony of the absolute
guilt' . . . A deceived worker -- that was the role Moscow
envisaged for me. I had nothing but disdain for their sinister
trick ... I was resigned to die ..."

Imre Nagy: "I Have to Pay with My Life. . ."

But, then the lawyer came again, and, with a firm voice, told
Kopacsi that he should plead guilty at the trial. The lawyer
also assured him: although Imre Nagy himself would naturally plead
not guilty, he did not expect all his friends to follow his example.
Kopacsi was caught between the pressure from Shumilin's assistant,
that of his lawyer (and, most probably, from his family), and the
remonstrations of his own conscience. As if the prison authorities
suspected his hesitation, they forced him to take strong tranquilizers,
which suppressed his qualms and put him into an almost apathetic
mood.

One morning -- it was 14 June 1958 -- the group was again
taken to the same big room of the Fo-utca Prison. This time, in
addition to the "people's court," there was also a large audience
waiting for the arrival of the defendants. It consisted of the

EAST (5) -- BUDAPEST 1956 REVISITED F-539

members of the new leadership of the country, headed by Kadar
himself. With the exception of a few, all of them were "compromised"
in one way or another by the events of October 1956, and the chances
were that their names would come up in the course of the proceedings.
The Soviets knew this, of course, and this must have been the main
reason why they ordered the regime leaders to attend the Imre Nagy
trial, Kopacsi speculates. It was a way of reminding them of their
dependence on Moscow's "benevolence." In., Kopacsi's opinion, Kadar's
position was so strong by that time that he could have called off
the entire punitive procedure against the revolutionary leaders.

The trial was short. Imre Nagy clung to his well-known
position. Twice in his life, he said, in 1953 and 1956, he wanted to
save the honor of the word socialism in the Danubian Valley. He
failed. The first time against Rakosi, the second time against the
superior power of the Soviet Army. "In this process, permeated
with passion and hatred," Imre Nagy went on, "I have to pay with my
life for my ideas. . . I am sure that history will pass judgment
upon my murderers."

As for the rest of the proceedings, only Kopacsi's questioning
need be mentioned. As he said, the "court" wanted to play him up as
a "misguided worker." The only "concession" he made was to admit
that Imre Nagy, his writings, and his ideas had a considerable
influence upon him, and that he, Kopacsi, "had failed clearly to
recognize the subtlety of all the events." The verdict followed
the next day, 15 June 1958. Imre Nagy and two others. Colonel
Pal Maleter and the journalist Miklos Gimes, were condemned to
death. Kopacsi got a life sentence and the remaining three long
prison terms. It was after the verdict that Kopacsi saw Imre Nagy
for the last time. Nagy refused to submit a plea for clemency and
was escorted out of the room. But, before he reached the door, he
cast a short glance at Kopacsi, and the latter had the feeling
that the old man wanted to tell him something. "Something important,
as if of a private character." In the morning -- it was 16 June
1956 -- Imre Nagy and his two friends were executed. The chief
hangman refused to do the job, and left it to his assistant. Kadar was
allegedly forced to watch that somber event, as well. He showed
up there in the company of Serov and Shumilin.

A Look Back at Budapest

After seven years in prison, Kopacsi was pardoned, as a result
of an amnesty. It was now the party that wanted to punish him, and
arranged for the former police chief of Budapest a job as a lathe
operator in a factory. Old friends warned him that his life was
not safe and that both the Hungarian and the Soviet authorities
were following all his moves with a watchful eye. He succeeded in
obtaining an emigration passport and left with his wife for Canada,
where his daughter had been living. Judging from the concluding
portion of the book, as a private individual, Kopacsi seems to feel
happy in the circle of his family. But, as a political being, he is
full of doubt and twinges of conscience. He is convinced, and this
is a consolation for him, that the ideas of Imre Nagy elicited a
process of rethinking in the communist movement, which is today known
under the name of Eurocommunism, and, in the course of this process,

EAST (6) -- BUDAPEST 1956 REVISITED F-540 

many party members have revised their negative views about the
Hungarian revolution. Certainly, his book, as an authentic
worker's testimony from and about Budapest, will even broaden
this process. 

But, as far as the future is concerned, Kopacsi is not
particularly optimistic. He explained his motives in greater
detail in an interview given to Artur London. [2] One sentence from
it deserves to be quoted in full: "I sympathize, no doubt about it,
with Eurocommunism. I think, however, that the existence of the
Soviet Union will prevent its realization." Probably not many
Eurocommunists will agree with Kopacsi's view, but knowing
something about the man's experiences with the Soviet Union, they will
hardly be surprised by it.

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