“Knowing my father, he would not be in favor of an unconditional ceasefire. He would admit that the situation is serious, but not hopeless, because unlike in 1956, when there was no chance for Western help, today you can count on the support of NATO and the Western world.” This is what Judit Kopácsi, who lives in Toronto, said when asked by our paper. The daughter of Sándor Kopácsi, the former police chief of Budapest and the deputy commander-in-chief of the 1956 revolutionary national guard, answered our questions by e-mail.
– A responsible representative of the Hungarian government recently made a statement that the Soviet troops sent to crush the 1956 revolution should not have been confronted. According to your memories, what position did your father and his colleagues take on this issue?
– I can answer this with the words of Béla Király, who was my father’s superior in 1956 as commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary National Guard. After my parents emigrated, they spent a lot of time together, I often witnessed their conversations. And, of course, I collected and read a lot of literature and documents about this era. There was no universal resistance to Soviet aggression. The Soviet Union started an armed intervention against our country at dawn from October 30 to 31. The declaration of neutrality on November 1 was a consequence, not a cause, of the Soviet intervention – as a war without a declaration of war. This war sought to overthrow the legitimate Hungarian government. It was a war between socialist countries, since the overthrow of the socialist system was not included in the program of the revolution.
On November 3, 1956, the Hungarian-Soviet negotiations on the details of troop withdrawals were still in full swing in the Parliament, where the Soviet negotiators promised to stop the occupation.
Jutadomb was one of the few events in 1956 where the Hungarians – the soldiers of the 51st Air Defense Artillery Regiment led by Colonel János Mecséri and national guardsmen from Soroksár – successfully confronted the invading Soviet troops. On November 4, on the orders of Pál Maléter, the soldiers of the Esztergom Artillery Regiment closed the Soroksári road at Jutadomb, so that possible military movements would not disturb the negotiations with the Soviets in Tököl. Maléter and the Hungarian military delegation were arrested, and the Soviet military convoy left with them in the direction of Soroksár. The Ávós accompanying them noticed the gunners and opened fire on them. The Hungarian soldiers retaliated, as a result of which seven Soviet soldiers lost their lives. The Red Army attacked Hungary with 60,000 soldiers and 2,000 armored personnel carriers in Operation Whirlwind. The Russians lost 11 soldiers at Juta Hill. During the retaliation, the same number of Hungarian soldiers were sentenced to death.
On November 4, Imre Nagy, assessing the balance of power, did not order resistance. Agreeing with Béla Király, my father acknowledged that there was no way to defend against such an overwhelming force. As patriots, they faced the facts and refused to cause more victims with unnecessary bloodshed. But I consider it extremely important to point out that the events in 1956, both in the countries occupied by the Soviets and in the Middle East, were controlled by the narrowest Soviet leadership, and it was only in the interest of the Soviet Union to provoke a seemingly bloody Hungarian “counter-revolution” at the same time as the Suez crisis. , which he was then able to suppress with enormous force, citing the Warsaw Pact, thereby demonstrating his military power to the world.
This reminds me of the story when Móricka kills her father and mother so that she can attend the Sunday dinner organized for the orphans. Because the idea of the Hungarian revolution had not even been born when the Soviets already decided our fate a year earlier and artificially provoked atrocities. In the majority of cases, Imre Nagy’s government could only delay the events, such as in October 1956, when my father played the role of a firefighter, extinguishing one flare-up after another. On October 25, he dispersed a crowd outraged by the atrocity in front of the Parliament in front of the Deák square headquarters alone, with kind words, and on October 30 he also offered his help to Imre Mező during the fights in Köztársaság tér, which was rudely rejected.
I think it is time to face the past and realize what the three main issues were for the Soviet Union in 1956: the pre-emptive strike on the Soviet side to the West, then Suez, the encirclement operation that precedes the main strike, and the Hungarian case, which also gave the Soviet Union an opportunity to “rush to the aid” of another socialist state in Hungary and other socialist countries for the sake of the Warsaw Pact, to recognize its military hegemony, and at the same time to demonstrate its military superiority to the West.
Source: nepszava.hu
