When Peter S. Ujvagi was 7, he and his brothers and sisters emigrated with their parents from Hungary to the United States. They fled their motherland after Soviet troops invaded the country to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
In the summer of 1956, with Hungary’s mismanaged economy in tatters, the Hungarian government began to signal to the United States that it wanted to improve trade ties. Unrest began to rise in the country, which at the time had one of the most repressive communist regimes in Eastern Europe.
“I remember listening to Voice of America and Radio Free Europe… before the revolution, in a darkened apartment with the shutters shut,” Ujvagi told the Kyiv Post.
On Oct. 23, 1956, a crowd of 20,000 people, mostly students, staged a peaceful demonstration in Budapest. The night before, their leaders had drawn up a list of 16 demands. Among them were demands for a new government and free, multi-party elections.
The rally grew into a nationwide uprising against Soviet domination. The revolt almost succeeded, but the Soviet Union on Nov. 4 sent in its troops to re-establish the Kremlin’s control, and the revolution was quashed by Nov. 10. Some 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet troops were killed.
After the Soviet invasion, Ujvagi’s family made three attempts to flee Hungary – on the third attempt they made it to Nikolsdorf in Austria, arriving there on Dec. 25. After a short stay in an Austrian refugee camp, the family travelled on to Toledo, Ohio.
“The days between Oct. 23 and when we arrived in America on June 4, 1957 are very much engraved in my mind,” Ujvagi said. “We talked about those days a lot with my parents and brothers and sisters.”
Revolution fallout
At the time of the failed Hungarian Revolution, the United States offered asylum to 30,000 Hungarians. This quota was entirely filled in less than four months, by March 1957. The refugees have since became valuable assets to the countries that gave them asylum.
Ujvagi, for instance, grew up to be a U.S. politician – a state representative of Toledo, Ohio. He also played a significant role in helping the U.S. government establish trade with Hungary after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989.
Now he’s still working in the Toledo City Council. He says he’s lived a decent life on foreign soil, as have many of his compatriots whose families emigrated to other countries after the revolt. And this October, many will mark the 60th anniversary of the failed Hungarian Revolution – an event that changed their lives an separated them from their homeland.
Proud holiday
“People with rifles against tanks – it was uneven fight,” First Counselor at the Hungarian Embassy in Ukraine András Deák told the Kyiv Post. “We still have a few survivors. Those people were very heroic. It was not possible to be successful, because (Hungary) was a small country, occupied by the huge Soviet Union.”
Over the years, Oct. 23 has become a Hungarian national holiday and “in fact, it is one of the proudest ones in Hungary,” Deák said.
Balázs Jarábik, a Hungarian visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank, who specializes in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, says there are many reasons for this.
“It’s because it was bloody, desperate, and anti-communist – and because it was not successful,” Jarábik told the Kyiv Post. “Hungarians – similarly to the Ukrainians – are proud of their rich but often tragic history. As the Hungarian national anthem says: ‘God bless the Hungarians, they who have suffered all sins.’”
According to consul general of Hungary in Berehove, Endre Szalipszki, the revolution was a turning-point – Hungary started changing.
“There were a few days when Hungary reckoned the revolution had won,” Szalipszki told the Kyiv Post. “This was a glorious page in our history. It was the first nail in the coffin of the Soviet system.”
Refugee influx
Commemoration of the failed uprising only became possible once the Soviet Union had collapsed – before that, the revolution was a forbidden topic. Children were taught that what happened in 1956 had been a counterrevolution that had to be suppressed.
After the Soviets crushed the revolt, there was a massive outflow of intellectuals from the country. Most moved to Austria first – as did Ujvagi’s family – and then looked for a place to settle down permanently.
According to NATO documents that were declassified in 1996, by March 1957, four months after the failed revolution, approximately 120,000 people had fled Hungary as refugees to Austria alone. It is estimated that in total 200,000 Hungarians fled the country – to Yugoslavia, France, the United Kingdom and even Ukraine.
The 2001 census of the Ukrainian population recorded more than 150,000 Hungarians living in Ukraine, including descendants of the 1956 refugees and Hungarians who have been living on what is now Ukrainian territory, in Zakarpattya, since it was part of the Kingdom of Hungary, which was founded in the year 1000.
Now, according to Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó, the country faces an influx of refugees to its own soil – people fleeing the war-torn Middle East, seeking a new life in the European Union, which Hungary joined in 2004.
“International law says very clearly that the right to a safe life is a human right,” Szijjarto said in a speech at the 71st session of the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 23.
“But it is not a human right to pick the country you would like to live in.”
Ukrainian parallels
Revolutions have their common features, but these are few in the case of Ukraine’s EuroMaidan Revolution and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, according to Ukrainian political scientist Taras Berezovets.
“In contrast to Ukraine, Hungary did not receive any support,” Berezovets told the Kyiv Post. “And, of course, there weren’t any reforms in Hungary until 1991. On the contrary, there was a toughening of the ruling regime.”
Jarabik agrees: “You can draw some parallels, but these may sound artificial – for many Hungarians at least.”
He told the Kyiv Post that for him the main difference is obvious. “The 1956 Hungarian Revolution ended with occupation, while the EuroMaidan sparked Russian aggression – not occupation.”
And while Hungarians like Peter Ujvagi and his family, and hundreds of thousands of others, were left with little choice but to move abroad, Ukrainians can stay and build their own country, Jarabik said.
“Compared to Hungarians in 1956, Ukrainians can decide their own future.”
