Hungary's rebels strike back

By Michael Leidig and Karl Peter Kirk in Budapest

VETERANS of the 1956 Hungarian uprising against communism are suing the country's Socialist Party for compensation for the suffering they endured after their revolution was crushed by Soviet tanks.

The Association of '56 Rebels is claiming 120 billion forints (about £320 million) and has asked a court in Budapest to freeze the party's assets and properties as part of a civil prosecution. It says it wants the Socialist Party, which was founded by reformed Communists, to pay 300,000 forints (£800) for every year one of its members spent in prison for taking part in the failed revolt - plus compensation for the families of those executed.

Tibor Hornyak, a former revolutionary and the association's president, said: "Why should we ask the state for compensation when these sentences were carried out on the orders of the Communist Party?" The pro-democracy uprising in Hungary in 1956 started when secret police fired into a student protest - turning a peaceful demonstration into a revolution.

The Hungarian army joined the revolutionaries, with military depots and munitions factories handing out arms. Prisons were broken into, and dissidents, such as Cardinal Joszef Mindszenty, were released and took control of the uprising, along with Imre Nagy, the reformist prime minister.

Soviet troops in the country pulled back, but when Nagy announced Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and asked the United Nations to recognise his nation as a neutral state, the Red Army massed tanks on the border and then invaded.

On November 4, they entered Budapest, and after two weeks of fighting that claimed 3,000 lives, a new Soviet-backed "revolutionary peasant-worker government", consisting entirely of Communists, was established. About 200,000 revolutionaries fled the country, but many others remained and were either imprisoned or were among the 3,000 executed under the new regime.

Nagy was hanged in 1958, while Cardinal Mindszenty sought refuge in the United States embassy in Budapest where he remained for many years. Mr Hornyak, who was jailed for 12 years for his role in the rebellion, said his group was not prepared to let the politicians simply forget the past.

He said: "In 1990, there was a cosy deal among the political elite that the Communists would not be brought to account. We are putting an end to that - even if we have to do it through a civil case."

Mr Hornyak, 73, was imprisoned in the infamous Szeged prison, where the current national president, Arpad Goncz, was also held. Mr Hornyak said: "No one can tell me this is in the past. I still hear the cries of the condemned as they were dragged off to be executed.

"We know of 16,700 people who had sentences ranging from 10 years to death. What we are asking for is not much - given what they did to us. When they put me inside they also took everything I owned. I had nothing when I was released in an amnesty in 1963. Now it is our turn."

If his association wins its case, the plan is to distribute the money among its members. The organisation says that many have to get by on pensions of £100 a month, which, Mr Hornyak says, is not even enough to pay for medicines to treat the injuries they suffered after 1956.

The association now believes that it has enough evidence to prove that it was the Communist Party - and not the courts - that decided who should live or die, and that the Socialists, as legal successors to the Communists, should pay compensation. For its part, the Socialist Party says it has completely broken with the past and has managed to win the trust of many Hungarians.

After a poor showing at elections in 1990, it came back to win an overall majority in 1994, but was ousted in 1998 by the current Centre-Right coalition. Speaking in Vienna last week at a meeting of European Socialists, the Hungarian Socialist Party president and former foreign minister, Laszlo Kovacs, said: "I cannot comment on the matter. It has taken us completely by surprise. We are looking into it."

The 1956 survivors are also suing the smaller, far-Left Workers' Party, which broke from the Socialists in 1989. It has denied any responsibility for what happened after the revolution. A Workers' Party spokesman, Gyorgy Zimner, said that, even if the courts ruled in favour of the association, it was the Socialist Party that should pay.

The court case is likely to last for up to two years, with the first hearing not expected before September. When news of the case was announced, a memorial to the victims of the 1956 uprising in central Budapest was vandalised, and many are suggesting that it might now be better to put the past to rest and concentrate on the future.

But with moves also under way in Hungary to bring new prosecutions against secret police officers who fired at the crowds of demonstrators and started the initial riot, Mr Hornyak believes that there is a growing demand for justice - and that this time the old rebels will prevail.