[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 12]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 16500]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              COMMEMORATING THE 1956 HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, October 23, 2015

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, today marks the 59th 
anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution against Soviet tyranny. 
Though the Soviet tanks put down the uprising that time, it lit a torch 
of resistance that the communists could never put out and ultimately 
democracy prevailed. I submit the following remarks by Marion Smith, 
Executive Director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, at 
an event last evening commemorating the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

              Commemorating the 1956 Hungarian Revolution

                           (By Marion Smith)

            [From Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation]

       For a few days in 1956, Budapest became the capital of 
     freedom. The city, which was gutted and nearly destroyed by 
     the ruthless military showdown between Soviet and Nazi troops 
     in World War II, became the city of hope and heartbreak in 
     1956. The Hungarian nation's patriotic glory and enviable 
     spirit broke the yoke of the Soviet Empire, if only for a few 
     days.
       Ruszkik haza!--Russians, go home!--a crowd eventually 
     growing to 300,000 demanded as young people, who had 
     everything to lose, gathered in the heart of the city. 
     Hungarians began to tear off red stars from buildings, they 
     toppled the statue of Stalin in front of the Hungarian Radio 
     and tore out the Soviet symbol from the middle of the 
     Hungarian flag, framed pictures of Lenin, Marx and Stalin 
     were gathered on the street and burnt in bonfires. The flames 
     of freedom lit up the nights.
       The Soviet military stationed in Hungary was considerably 
     large. It should have been relatively easy to put down what 
     the regime called a fascist ``counter-revolution''. But it 
     wasn't. Moscow underestimated the resilience of the people 
     and the determination of Hungarians to fight. For their 
     freedom, for their family, for their life.
       From the West, Hungarians received sympathy and prayers. 
     But not much more. And yet, these mostly young patriots 
     succeeded in driving out the Soviet tanks all the way to the 
     outskirts of Budapest. A free and democratic Hungary seemed 
     within grasp.
       But the Communist Politburo in Moscow was not yet ready for 
     a breakup of the Iron Curtain and on November 4, Soviet tanks 
     rolled through the city. 30,000 troops and more than a 
     thousand tanks eventually put down the lightly armed 
     civilians of Budapest.
       The Soviets gave Hungary a new leader, Janos Kadar. He 
     announced over the radio that the ``Hungarian Revolutionary 
     Worker-Peasant Government'' was formed to protect Hungary's 
     ``socialist achievements''. And people who disagreed, people 
     who took a part in the fights had to pay the price. For many, 
     the ultimate price. Some were simply shot on the streets like 
     dogs, some disappeared in the middle of the night, some spent 
     years in the prisons at Andrassy ut 60, where the House of 
     Terror today commemorates the brutality of the communist 
     secret police.
       Although the system was dubbed ``goulash communism'' for 
     its more relaxed policies that allowed for some dissent, the 
     one-party system, political censorship, food shortages of a 
     centrally planned economy, and the arbitrary coercion of 
     citizens by state officials remained until the very last days 
     of the regime.
       Almost sixty years after the Hungarian revolution, and more 
     than 25 years after the regime change, it is more important 
     than ever for Hungarians and Americans alike to remember that 
     communism was not a beautiful utopia. It was and is an 
     ideology that enables tyranny. Communist regimes everywhere 
     systematically killed a portion of their own people as a 
     matter of policy in peacetime, denied citizens their basic 
     rights, robbed them of their food and of their labor, and 
     tore families apart in maintaining a police state.
       The mass exodus, one of the largest the U.S. has seen at 
     the time, of political dissenters from Hungary on the heels 
     of the 1956 revolution revealed the true intolerance of the 
     ``socialist dream''.
       The Victims of Communism Foundation, through our Witness 
     project tells true stories about life communist regimes. To 
     understand the depth and scope of the evil of communism we 
     have to listen to those who knew it all too well, those like:
       Bela Krasznay who spent nearly eight years in the notorious 
     Recsk labor camp during the 1950's as a political prisoner 
     due to his family background (landed-owners and military 
     officers).
       Janos Horvath who served as the youngest member of the 
     Hungarian parliament in 1948, was imprisoned for four years 
     by the communist regime because of his political beliefs only 
     to return to the Hungarian parliament, becoming its oldest 
     living member until his retirement in 2014.
       Livia Gyarmathy who was ordered by the state to become a 
     chemist, despite wanting to go to medical school and 
     eventually became a filmmaker, and produced the first ever 
     film about the Recsk labor camp--the Hungarian Gulag.
       Daniel Magay, whose idyllic childhood was wrecked when 
     communist authorities targeted his father, a popular 
     landowner. Though his efforts to escape communism brought 
     Daniel to the 1956 Olympic Games and, eventually, San 
     Francisco, Daniel remains deeply shaped by having grown up 
     under that brutal system.
       We must not think that the fall of the Soviet Union meant 
     the ``end of history'' or even the end of communism. As 
     Charles de Gaulle, the former French president said: ``Stalin 
     didn't walk away into the past, he dissolved into the 
     future.''
       Today, one fifth of the world's population lives in a one-
     party communist state.
       This very summer, new statues of Stalin have been erected 
     in several Russian towns by Russia's Communist Party whose 
     leader promised new statues in Irkutsk in Siberia and to 
     Eastern Ukraine.
       In Donetsk, where the Soviets are responsible for the death 
     of millions of Ukrainians in the period of forced starvation 
     known as Holodomor, a new cult of Stalin is on the rise with 
     new street posters of the bloody murderer on display.
       Russia is eager to display the red flag with hammer and 
     sickle as a sign of past glory at sporting events from the 
     Sochi Olympics to the FINA World Championships in Kazan. All 
     this while Russian authorities have shut down the Soviet era 
     archives, revised children's text books and harassed or 
     jailed historians or journalists who dare to tell the truth 
     about life in the Soviet Union.
       And in our own country, a country that spent more resources 
     on fighting communism than any other country in the world, we 
     see a shocking lack of understanding from teenagers and young 
     adults who do not know the basics of 20th century history. 
     They don't understand how bankrupt the Marxist ideology 
     actually is and why the struggle we as Americans took against 
     communist imperialism was and is worth it.
       The simple lesson of the Cold War is that there is 
     absolutely nothing romantic, cute, or enviable about the 
     socialist system and the communist utopia. Few nations know 
     this better than the Hungarians, whose torn red white and 
     green flag became, in 1956 a symbol for a universal desire 
     for freedom. And so it remains today.

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