It is very curious that most of the key momentous changes of European History & thus the events we note as watersheds of our social development - were spontanous & un-planned or even the results of "accidents".
50 years ago today young people took to the streets of Hungary & kicked off a popular revolution. No-one really knew what they wanted & no-one really remembers if they had leaders & what their names were. It proved to be the event which confirmed that the Warsaw Pact states of Europe would have to follow the stalinist isolationist path laid out just a few years before in the former East German state & sectored Berlin. It is odd how the Hungarian revolution began, as odd as how the Berlin wall came down (the result of a mistakenly read statement at a press conference). The brutality shown them was the same brutality that kept half of our continent in bonds till only recently.
When thanks to a quick run of really very good Eurovision song competition winners with chirpy easy to understand choruses -stalinism disappeared & now all we have are a few James Bond movies with no special effects & dodgy casio watches & car gadgets.
Of course they don't tell you that in school. They credit the fall of stalinism to the EEC & the good work of the polish pope. But at end it was unsustainable just like Capitalism will be someday .
But one thing is certain. We must all be very glad Stalinism ended. & that Kruschev didn't get an -ism or Andropov for that matter though Andropov went on from being Soviet ambassador to Budapest & thus a sort of Soviet equivalent of Negroponte to being head honcho of the USSR. & that's when he tried to kill the polish pope. (you see how it all comes together?)
And oh yeah! the Americans did nothing. Don't forget that either.
from Wikipedia :-
{ "On the afternoon of October 23, 1956, about 20,000 protesters convened next to the Bem statue. Péter Veres, President of the Writers’ Union, read a manifesto to the crowd, the students read their proclamation, and the crowd then chanted the censored "National Song" (Nemzeti dal), the refrain of which states: "We vow, we vow, we will no longer remain slaves." Someone in the crowd cut out the communist coat of arms from the Hungarian Flag, leaving a distinctive hole and others quickly followed suit. Afterwards, most of the crowd crossed the Danube to join demonstrators outside the Parliament Building. By 6 p.m. the crowd had swollen to more than 200,000 people; the demonstration was spirited, but peaceful.
At 8 p.m., First Secretary Ernő Gerő broadcast a speech condemning the writers' and students' demands, and dismissing the demonstrators as a reactionary mob. Angered by Gerő's hard line rejection, some demonstrators decided to carry out one of these demands - the removal of Stalin's giant statue from its place near to Heroes' Square. By 9:30 p.m. the statue was down and protestors placed Hungarian flags in the boots atop the pedestal." }
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Revolution_of_1956