BOOK REVIEW: TANKS FOR THE MEMORIES
By Anna Porter
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
December 9, 2006 Saturday
Journey to a Revolution:
A Personal Memoir and History
of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956
By Michael Korda
HarperCollins, 221 pages, $32.50
Twelve Days:
Revolution 1956:
How the Hungarians Tried to Topple
Their Soviet Masters
By Victor Sebestyen
Weidenfeld & Nicholson,
340 pages, $39.95
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian revolution, the
ill-fated attempt of a country to wrest itself free of the control
of its Soviet masters. As usual with such events, it’s resulted in
a flurry of books. The two discussed here, a personal memoir and a
magisterial history, are both well worth reading.
Michael Korda’s prose, like the man himself, is casually and
effortlessly elegant, with just a hint of the mid-century ennui,
a genteel sense of British outrage at the brutality of the less
well mannered. His Journey to a Revolution breaks into two almost
equal parts.
In the first, Korda gives his own breezy version of Hungarian history,
briefly and charmingly told, despite the bloodshed and general
unpleasantness of successive revolutions and confusing events,
culminating in Hungary’s even more confusing participation in the
Second World War. The second, and more original part, tells of Korda’s
journey to the Hungarian Revolution. He travels in the company of three
other similarly inclined friends, all Oxford undergraduates, seeking
adventure. They pack their jaunty VW bug with a few randomly selected
drugs that they imagine could come in useful in a hospital for treating
shooting victims, and a couple of hampers of delicatessen – salami,
ham, cheeses – just what a revolution might need in an emergency. To
make sure they are not taken for ordinary rabble, they affix a Union
Jack to the roof of the car. Given how they look, of course, there is
little danger of being mistaken for anything other than what they are.
"Christopher Lord wore a ‘British Warm,’ suede chukka boots, a heavy
astrakhan fur hat. . . . Roger Cooper a naval duffel coat and Russian
fur hat . . . I wore my RAF sheepskin flying jacket," and so forth.
In preparation for departure, they have a few drinks, and Korda meets
with Graham Greene in the Ritz Hotel Bar for last-minute advice.
Greene features several times in the book, though only by reference.
He does not make another personal appearance, but hey, if he were my
family friend, I’d be inclined to mention him quite a lot, too.
Korda’s father, Vincent, and uncle Alexander, both celebrated film
people, drop by even more often as concierges bow and scrape at
the mere mention of the name Korda – such a magical name, and so
reminiscent of wonderful times past.
Once the jolly group arrives at the Hungarian capital, not much
happens to any of them, though the revolution unfolds as it did, Korda
providing cheerful commentary in Isherwood-camera-style on surrounding
events, grotesque dead bodies, Russian tanks – he seems to be rather
impressed with Russian tactics – collapsed buildings, ineffectual
barricades, students of about the same age as the Oxford adventurers,
but less well dressed and carrying guns. Throughout the tale, Korda
remains quite disengaged, if fascinated by his surroundings.
The medicines are delivered, the fine food is shared, there are a few
tense moments in the bar of the hotel, when the Russian tanks shell
nearby barricades, and the Oxford friends return to the safety of
the West, leaving the Hungarians to mop up the blood and survive –
many did not exactly survive – the ensuing Soviet-style retribution.
Journey is a fast, entertaining read for all those who don’t wish to
know a whole lot about either the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 or its
victims. For me, a Korda fan since reading his wonderful Charmed Lives,
the joy was in his style.
Twelve Days, by Victor Sebestyen, is a brilliant book. Even those
thoroughly bored with the Hungarian Revolution will find new insights,
lively writing and an intriguing cast of characters, many of whom
had made only shadowy appearances in other books and in films. Here,
they are refreshingly alive and credible.
I found the usually monolithic Soviets individually fascinating.
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, insecure in his hold on power, spent
sleepless nights pondering what to do about this breakaway outpost
of the vast empire. His friend, Anastas Mikoyan, "the neatly dressed
Armenian," tried to stop the brutal Soviet retaliation to the point
of threatening to resign from the Communist Party. Soviet ambassador
Yuri Andropov successfully misinformed both sides in his struggle to
restore a Stalinist regime in Hungary.
In the book, the terrifying, murderous KGB chief Lavrenti Beria takes
on human proportions as he complains about the Hungarian secret
police, and obese, "pasty-faced" prime minister Grigori Malenkov
comments on Hungary’s economic disaster under the rule of old-world,
Russian-trained communist Matyas Rakosi. While the Hungarians
are fighting in the streets, the Soviet leaders are fighting among
themselves, not only about what to do with Budapest but, more important
for them, over who will inherit Stalin’s mantle.
In the end, after days of hesitation, Khrushchev decides on massive
force, not so much because of a belief in Hungary’s importance to
the Soviet Union’s well-being, as because they all worry that if
Hungary is allowed to exit, next would be Poland and Czechoslovakia
and Romania. The dominos will fall one by one. Already there were
sympathetic demonstrations in all of those countries; closer to home,
the inherently independent-spirited Georgians (observe their current
battle with Vladimir Putin), the Ukrainians, and writers and university
students in Moscow are carrying on with crazy notions that the Soviet
army must stay out of Hungary.
Hungarian political figures of the time are portrayed by Sebestyen
with clear-eyed fairness and telling detail. Imre Nagy, the martyred
prime minister of those few days, the "old man" to his followers,
hesitates, mumbles, trips over his own loyalties to the party and
misses every opportunity to avert the disaster. The rotund, neckless
Rakosi, his former colleague and predecessor, overplays his hand and
loses both his position and what he regarded as his legacy. There
is a wonderful scene in Moscow when Rakosi finally realizes he will
be sacked. Erno Gero, his former lieutenant, "tall, thick-lipped,
almost skeletally thin," misses his one chance at pleasing his Soviet
masters by allowing the revolution to foment while he vacations abroad.
Sebestyen displays his formidable talent both for quick character
sketches and political analysis. Unlike the Hungarian leaders, he does
not miss his opportunity to allot a fair share of the blame for the
massacre – to U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower, for his eagerness
to reassure the Soviets that the United States had no interest in
intervention, while CIA-backed Radio Free Europe broadcasts urged
the rebels on to the barricades.
Sebestyen attributes the fact that the United States did not anticipate
the events to bad intelligence (still bad, after all these years)
and Eisenhower’s preoccupation with the coming U.S. elections.
Finally, he knocks the British for their total engagement with the
Suez Crisis and the appalling impotence of the UN.
While his sympathies lie with the revolution, its often bombastic
leaders do not escape Sebestyen’s sharp pen. He paints Jozsef Dudas,
who had "spent nearly a quarter of his life in various prisons," as a
preposterous figure who tried to take personal power, and who barely
"kept his delusions of grandeur under control."
Gergely Pongratz (nicknamed Bajusz, whiskers or moustache) showed no
compunction about sending children, armed only with Molotov cocktails,
out against Soviet tanks. There was no organized central revolutionary
council, little or no communication among the various groups and,
apart from the students’ original Sixteen Points, no clarity on
future demands. Ultimately, what they all held in common was the
urgent desire to see the Soviets gone – the only demand Moscow could
not and would not countenance.
Sebestyen was born in Budapest, but his inspiration stemmed from his
childhood in Britain. As a kid, he overheard his parents discussing
the revolution: whether 2,500 Hungarians had died in vain, whether
the post-1956 heavy-handed reprisals of Janos Kadar’s regime, the
executions, the long jail terms, the party purges, constituted a
"victory in defeat."
Twelve Days’ lead-up to the events of that October starts with October,
1944, in the Kremlin apartment of Joseph Stalin, where Churchill and
the Soviet leader seem to settle the future of Eastern Europe after the
Second World War; it ends with an assessment of how Soviet savagery
in November, 1956, reduced the Hungarians to sullen resistance,
despite the softening of harsh rules and a slow economic recovery,
and how it fractured communist parties worldwide.
It was a decline that led, inevitably, to the crumbling of the Iron
Curtain and the loss of the empire itself.
Anna Porter is a publisher and the author of The Storyteller, and a
former Hungarian refugee.