Fire at the Parliament in 1956

From the Hungarian Wikipedia page [1]

**During the 1956 revolution** , it is still not known exactly how many protesters lost their lives in the firefight that took place in front **of the Parliament building .** The crowd gathered on Kossuth Square consisted of a mixed composition of civilian protesters. Next to the men stood women, children, and old people. The news of the carnage played an important role in the fact that the people of the country and Budapest sided with the revolution and the armed struggle. **This was the bloodiest event of the revolution in Budapest, which was called "Bloody Thursday"** on October 25, 1956 is known as the science of history. Various sources estimate the number of dead from a few dead to thousands. The fact-finding commission set up under the leadership of the legal historian Frigyes Kahler came to the conclusion that the massacre was a kind of signal to the armed forces, which thereafter - until the turn of the party leadership starting on October 28 - tried to ruthlessly deal with local movements against the dictatorship supported by the Soviet army .

## The events

On the morning of October 25 , the third day of the revolution, a peaceful, unarmed crowd of several thousand (from three to thirty thousand according to different sources) demonstrated in front of the Parliament . Most of them came from the mass demonstration in front of Astoria , accompanied by three Soviet tanks, which the demonstrators climbed onto as a sign of friendship. The other part of the crowd was made up of workers from peripheral districts who could not get to their workplaces because public transport was stuck.

As the demonstrators were marching towards the Parliament, they were confronted by a column of Soviet tanks, which included two representatives of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (SCP), PB members Anastas Mikoyan and Mikhail Suzlov , as well as KGB Chairman Ivan Serov and Mikhail Malinin (wd) . transported the commander-in-chief of the Soviet forces in Hungary. They were on their way to the headquarters of the Hungarian Workers' Party (MDP) in Akadémia Street, where they took part in the meeting of the Central Management (KV) starting after ten o'clock. Under pressure from the Soviet delegates, the KV acquitted Ernő Gerőfrom his position as party leader, and elected János Kádár in his place.

After the outbreak of the revolution, Antal Apró was entrusted with the leadership of the Military Commission, giving him full power *"to protect public buildings and centers of power, if necessary at the cost of armed struggle and blood sacrifices"* .

Meanwhile, the crowd protesting on Kossuth Square chose a delegation to present their demands in the Parliament, but the government guards and a company of the Ministry of Defense's military regiment, supported by seven T-54 Soviet tanks lined up in front of the Parliament, kept the protesters away from the building. The events experienced earlier at Astoria were repeated, the demonstrators tried to make friends with the Soviet soldiers, handed out bilingual leaflets, and quite a few even climbed on top of the tanks standing guard.

A few minutes after 11 a.m. , General Ivan Aleksandrovich Serov [ 5] , who was the chairman of the KGB between 1954 and 1958 and whose leading position, together with Beria, included the Kalmyks , Chechens, Ingush, Karachay and Crimean people from 1943 to 1944 in the mass deportation of Tatars - he decided to go to Kossuth tér for an inspection.

He was covered by several Soviet and Hungarian officers and a tank. Seeing the crowd friendly with the Soviet soldiers, Serov gave the order to fire warning shots, which caused great panic in the square. In a situation that became opaque, the Soviet armored personnel carriers lined up in front of the Parliament responded by targeting the buildings opposite the square, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Museum of Ethnography . Some of the crowd tried to take cover behind the arcades here, others II. They tried to find shelter at the equestrian statue of Ferenc Rákóczi . That's when Báthory Street appearedfrom the direction of another Soviet tank, which had already fired targeted shots at the protesters huddled near the statue. First, he fired grenades at today's Vértanúk square, then retreating towards Nádor utca , he fired another series of shots. This action claimed the highest number of deaths.

After the carnage, for the first time in the October 27 issue of the newspaper *Igazság* , the newspaper of the revolutionary army and youth , the claim that the volley was fired from the roof of the Ministry of Agriculture's building was fired by ÁVH-many can be held responsible. Later, this version probably became fixed in the public mind, but there is no clear evidence that the people of the state defense were actually present in the building. On the other hand, one of the security squads of the Orosház border guard unit (the so-called 'green Ávó') was present on the square, which took part in the shooting under the direction of ÁVH lieutenant colonel Zoltán Szalay, they shot at the demonstrators near the Soviet tanks standing in front of the Parliament. According to historians' research, the main cause of the carnage was either the Soviet tank arriving in the second wave, but the exact instructions given to it are still unclear, or it was the volley of fire fired by the 'green Ávó' at the unarmed crowd. [7] Likewise, it is uncertain whether the ÁVH unit present in the square initiated the volley fire.

The confusion was further exacerbated by the fact that one of the border guard subunits arriving to reinforce the party center on Akadémia Street accidentally got into a firefight with the ÁVH members and the Soviet soldiers staying there. The room where Soviet leaders Mikoyan and Suzlov were having a meeting was also hit by gunfire - probably from the weapons of a Soviet tank . At that time, one of the members of the delegation protesting in front of the party building, Zoltán I. Tóth, academician historian and dean of the Faculty of History of ELTE , lost his life. His companion, Péter Hanák , a historian and university professor, survived his injuries.

Tamás Farkas, employee of MTI , remembers the view of the square after the carnage: *"The stop of the second tram was in the same place where it is today, and the part facing the Parliament was not full of flowers and bushes, as it is today, but beautiful grass and copper . It was made like a park, and there were a lot of people lying there. I have no idea if there were 20 or how many... And there was Peter lying. That's how I knew that he was dead, that the poor guy was in a very stretched position, his legs were tucked under him. His blond hair was dirty ...."'*

## Number of victims

There is no reliable data on the number of victims. After the firefight, the downtown hospitals were full, but the injured were brought to the Central Ambulance Station building in droves. Their number can only be determined approximately, because in addition to the professional professionals of the Emergency Service, lay volunteers also participated in the care and transportation of the injured and dying, so the exact patient documentation of the time was not available. [12]

According to the research of András Kő and Nagy J. Lambert, at least 75 people lost their lives in volleys and shootings at and around the Parliament (14 in the hospital) and 284 were injured [ *source?* ] . According to their summation, 61 people lost their lives on the square, and another six border guards, two policemen, two river guards, two government guards and two Soviet soldiers also died.

Some witnesses reported twelve loaded trucks carrying the victims of the barrage from the square. Researcher Teréz Körömi collected the names of 234 victims. Edit Kéri estimates the number of those killed on the square at 1,000, and Tamás Mikes counted 820 dead on October 24, together with an acquaintance, in the Kerepesi cemetery, piled in 50-meter piles. [ *source?* ]

## The victims [ edit ]

Among others, Péter Gárdos , MTI 's photojournalist trainee, was killed by the volleys in Kossuth Square.

## The 50th Anniversary [ edit ]

Representatives of 47 countries - including the King of Norway, eighteen heads of state, two prime ministers and several presidents of parliament, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, the Duke of Belgium, the President of the European Commission, as well as representatives of NATO, the Council of Europe, the Red Cross and the UN - were invited to the official commemorations. they were waiting for the Parliament. On October 23, 2006, unannounced demonstrations began throughout the city of Budapest, which culminated in clashes between the police and anti-government protesters starting in the afternoon. [16]

## Literature

* Vjacseszlav Szereda, Aleksandr Sztikalin (editor): *Missing pages from the history of 1956 (Documents from the archives of the former SZKP KB)* , Móra Ferenc Youth Publishing House, Budapest, 1993, ISBN 963-11-7085-3