It was almost World War III

18 October 2006

Fifty years after the Hungarian uprising, David Rennie talks to Bela Kiraly, now 94, who was urged to call for Western help — a call that could all too easily have sparked nuclear war

The man from the New York Times went away, without his scoop. Within days the revolution was crushed. More than 200,000 Hungarians fled into exile, among them General Kiraly, who was helped to escape to the United States by covert CIA agents. More than 250 Hungarians were hanged, among them Prime Minister Nagy.

On both sides of the Iron Curtain there were fierce debates about whether the outside world had betrayed Hungary. Older Hungarians still bitterly recall the ferocious call to arms beamed into their country by the US-funded Radio Free Europe, whose émigré presenters urged Hungarians to fight and defeat the Soviets. ‘Even today there are still a lot of people who believe that the West, particularly Radio Free Europe, promised everything to Hungarians,’ the general says. ‘It is true, you know. I was in the Buda mountains, and Radio Free Europe was on our portable radio, and there was a voice on it that addressed me personally. It said, “Bela Kiraly, stand against the Soviet Union, etc. etc.”’ He waves a weary, dismissive hand. ‘Why did the West not help us? The world could not do anything.’

The Soviets called the invasion that followed an act of fraternal assistance, requested by the Hungarian government. That lie still has the power to make Kiraly fume. Four years ago, in Moscow, he had the chance to debate whether there had been a Soviet invasion with one of the Russian officers who fought in 1956, General Yevgeny Malashenko. Malashenko blustered well, until he accused Kiraly of lying about coming under Soviet air attack in one of the last battles of the revolution, in the hills around Budapest. General Kiraly pounced, inviting the Russian to visit him in Hungary, and travel with him to the mountain in question. The top is still pockmarked with craters, General Kiraly told him. Some are filled with earth, and locals grow cabbages in them. One large crater was made into a septic tank. ‘Come to Hungary,’ he urged General Malashenko. ‘You can pee-pee into your own crater.’ His offer was politely declined.

Now General Kiraly is a grand old man of the revolution’s 50th anniversary celebrations. Arguably, some of the gloss has been taken off their official host, the prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, since he recently admitted lying ‘morning, evening and night’ about Hungary’s public finances, triggering a continuing string of street protests. The general insists he is apolitical, though he does venture the opinion that the anniversary could have been organised with more vim. What’s more, he adds, Hungarian schools have never taught the revolution properly. He blames years of communism, and idleness. ‘Probably I expect more from people because I am 94, but I work. Some people stop working earlier,’ he notes.

A final whisky is offered and the interview is over. The general has work to do, ensuring that the world does not forget Hungary’s revolution.

David Rennie is Europe editor of the Daily Telegraph and contributing editor of The Spectator.