October 23

[wiseheart]

...is the most important event in modern Hungarian history. It's the day when - 47 years ago - people arose against the totalitary system. A few weeks later the Soviet army marched into the capital and stamped the insurrection into the bloody (I mean it literally, not as a curse word) soil.


People have hoped that the so-called free countries, led by the United States, would help us, or at least protest. None of that happened. Of course, we had no oil. We were just an insignificant little country, placed strategically in the middle of Europe, on the very border between the elated West and Eastern barbarism. We were not worth endangering the status quo.

When all this happened, I was barely 2 weeks old, and we didn't even live in Hungary back then. When we moved here, in 1965, I was taught in school and afterwards, up to the late 1990es, that what happened in October 1956 was a revisionist effort to turn our land back to capitalism. It was described in gory details what the criminals, who were left out of prison alongside the political captives, did to people.

Now, 12 years later, I'm told in equally gory details what the evil state police did to the revolutionaries. That some of those criminals were actually the heroes of the insurrection.

I'm sure the truth is somewhere in the middle. Politics work that way. The only certain fact is, that while our people were told to rise up and get rid of the Soviets (very much like a mouse or an ant is told to rise up and beat an elephant to bloody pulp), nobody ever moved a finger to help us. Or even raised their voice to tell the Soviets that there had no right to interfere.

Excuse me when I'm not eager to believe any big words coming from the big countries any more. I wish our politicians wouldn't, either. We could do well enough without sucking up to Bush and his croonies.

Comments

[jilba.livejournal.com]

Agreed! Bush is in Australia right now, and I wan't particularly impressed by his speech in parliment. I know exactly what you mean about the American government (not the people!) picking whom they help. Do we really believe anything would have happened in Iraq if they had no oil? Nope, like the brave and determined people of Hungary they would have been left to sort themselves out!

Jillian's comment

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Was emailed to me. The LJ shows that I have one comment on this entry. Why doesn't it show up when I click on it?

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

Oh, your comment *did* show up, after all. Must have been an LJ glitch, then.

Erm... Jillian, your addie is still bouncing, according to Edhellond. I tried to send you a message, but obviously, Yahoo chose to bounce *that* one back as well.

Would you mind to pop in and de-bounce yourself? ;)

[(Anonymous)]

It's quite telling that you alluded to Iraq - the failed 1991 revolt by the Kurds, when the US army was expected to help but instead was ordered to pull out, is (I suppose) sadly reminiscent of the crushing of the Hungarian uprising.

Of course, we British have no right to feel superior, being the colonial power that created, and messed up, modern Iraq in the first place!

I hope you managed to celebrate the *eventual* self-determination alongside remembering that tragedy.

Gemma

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

I just wish we could let go of all that hatred. That after nearly half a century, we could let go of the past and turn toward the future. But our politicians - many of which weren't even alive in 1956 - are still preoccupied with calling each other names than with moving this unfortunate little country forward.

Politics are really disgusting.

[jilba.livejournal.com]

Thanks for telling me Soledad, but I've already fixed it; yahoo told me itself, and I went and did it straight away!