Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 2: You're weekly podcast that actually comes out twice a week
Speaker 2: that I've been calling a weekly podcast the entire time.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and my guest today is
Speaker 2: Mio Wong. Hi.
Speaker 3: Hello, Hello, Hello, I'm back. We're doing it again right now,
Speaker 3: doing the Revolution.
Speaker 2: I know it's funny, how excited I am about this
Speaker 2: failed revolution, but it, like whatever, it genuinely changed an
Speaker 2: awful lot of things about world history and very positive ways.
Speaker 2: And like what also changed world history? I don't have
Speaker 2: to pivot to introducing Sophie. I can just introduce Sophie. Hi, Sophie,
Speaker 2: you're my producer.
Speaker 1: I want a good pivot. What do you mean, give
Speaker 1: me a good pivot?
Speaker 2: Ah? Okay, Uh, what's that behind you? It's a different topic.
Speaker 2: Our audio engineer, Rory, how was that?
Speaker 1: You did it?
Speaker 3: Hi? Ri?
Speaker 1: Hiri?
Speaker 3: Hi?
Speaker 2: RORI me and we can't continue until you say, Hi, Rory.
Speaker 2: It's my one obsession. Oh I missed it. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2: I I just said it really high set.
Speaker 1: I was like, Hi, Roy, Yeah, and here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Zoom fucking gates that out.
Speaker 2: Zoom. Hey wait a minute.
Speaker 1: Does it let me do any of my fun little
Speaker 1: squeaky things. It's so mean. I'll get to like a
Speaker 1: good squeak in in an episode and then nobody else
Speaker 1: will hear it besides my dogs.
Speaker 2: Oh r, I p the squeaks, but not the dogs.
Speaker 2: The dogs are great.
Speaker 3: The dogs are great.
Speaker 2: My dog is incredibly happy about the fact that the
Speaker 2: sun stays out and the weather is warm. In a
Speaker 2: couple months he will not be as happy because the
Speaker 2: weather will be too warm. But for now, literally, he
Speaker 2: just spends all of his time sitting in the yard
Speaker 2: just staring at the sky happy and it rules.
Speaker 3: That's so cute.
Speaker 2: And I can see him from the like when I'm
Speaker 2: washing dishes, i can see him. I can see my
Speaker 2: yard for my I'm just but like and he's just
Speaker 2: like happily staring at nothing, and I'm just like, this
Speaker 2: is nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when it gets too warm, just you know, put
Speaker 1: him in the car and drive many hours, many hours.
Speaker 2: Air condition I'm air conditioning outside.
Speaker 1: No, I'm just trying to trick you into bringingtront a visit.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's true, because you all summers are nicer.
Speaker 1: Yeahin tra rain tra.
Speaker 2: Well, I get to do these things because there's a
Speaker 2: decent standard of living where I live for now, but
Speaker 2: it's quickly dropping. And actually that's not true. It's really
Speaker 2: bad here. Everyone I know is completely broke. But where
Speaker 2: else there was a bad time that had a revolution.
Speaker 2: This will sound really prescient a year from now, or
Speaker 2: wildly optimistic. It will sound naively optimistic or prescient. It's
Speaker 2: only real. Two options is hungry in nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 2: So you have the po TOFI circle right, and they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: we should what if conditions were slightly improved? And they
Speaker 2: call for protest. That's a solidarity protest with the workers
Speaker 2: on trial in Poland for the revolt that I was
Speaker 2: talking about. The you know, the uprisings are starting to
Speaker 2: happen around the especially the satellite states. They're rarer inside
Speaker 2: the USSR, although they happen there too. Hungarian officials go
Speaker 2: back and forth constantly about whether or not they're going
Speaker 2: to let this happen. So all of these groups at
Speaker 2: first and there's a period where they're allowed to do it.
Speaker 2: So all these groups, including the official Young Communists, meet
Speaker 2: up on October twenty third, and they march to the
Speaker 2: Statue of Joseph Bem who was a Polish guy who
Speaker 2: had joined the Hungarian fight against the Austrians in eighteen
Speaker 2: forty eight. And I really like this. I like that
Speaker 2: the thing that kicks off the revolution is a solidarity
Speaker 2: march for another country. And I like that the symbol
Speaker 2: that they go to is the statue for the Polish
Speaker 2: guy who threw down for the Austrians, you know that
Speaker 2: as they go off to go throw down for the Poles.
Speaker 3: Yep, yeap.
Speaker 2: The Minister of the Interior was like, oh, we got
Speaker 2: to cancel this. But then the government was like, oh shit,
Speaker 2: it's too late. And so they're like, never mind, you're
Speaker 2: allowed to do it. And so there's this thing that
Speaker 2: when the government tells you can't do something, if you
Speaker 2: get enough people, the government says, never mind, you're allowed to.
Speaker 2: Quite often, every single marsh that has ever attempted to
Speaker 2: get a permit that like probably shouldn't have tried to
Speaker 2: get a permit. It's like I was like doing wh
Speaker 2: flashbacks to the seat the DNC sixty eight, all the
Speaker 2: permitting bullshites like ah, yes, many such cases.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It turns out power concedes nothing without a demand, does
Speaker 2: Frederick Douglas put it, sometimes if you demand, they will concede. Shit, yeah, no, yeah,
Speaker 2: if you if you present force, it doesn't have to
Speaker 2: be violent force. It has to be force that is
Speaker 2: capable of mass disruption. That is what puts the state
Speaker 2: in a situation where they want to negotiate with you
Speaker 2: instead of crush you. Sometimes it puts them in a
Speaker 2: position where they want to do both. Has this about
Speaker 2: to happen to all of these people? So the government
Speaker 2: they're like, all right, you're allowed to do it. But
Speaker 2: they get on the radio and they're like, this is
Speaker 2: counter revolutiontionary. Revolutions famously counter revolutionary. Oh uh huh. There's
Speaker 2: a hundred thousand people at this march. I am a
Speaker 2: little bit. I've read multiple sources to say those one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand people, But there's like they say one hundred
Speaker 2: thousand people also for the Polish one. I think this
Speaker 2: is just a nice round number that people reach for.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's just like a large Yeah, you need
Speaker 3: a large number, you just yeah.
Speaker 2: And they probably don't have like a press helicopter that
Speaker 2: has like freedom of this press and is like doing
Speaker 2: the crowd counting and stuff, you know, And that's always
Speaker 2: like it's.
Speaker 3: Hard to count crowd sizes, like it just is.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: The way that they do it is that they you
Speaker 2: pick like a city block, and you count the number
Speaker 2: of people in it, and then you like count if
Speaker 2: it's a march, you then like count the number of
Speaker 2: blocks worth of people that go through that block. It's
Speaker 2: really I used to think about the stuff all the time.
Speaker 2: He's to go to protest like every day, and uh,
Speaker 2: and everyone's really bad at guessing anyway, whatever, I think
Speaker 2: we all know this, Okay. When I was a young
Speaker 2: radical and counting lots of protos, I didn't give student
Speaker 2: protests and protesters enough to do. I bought into the
Speaker 2: lie that mainstream media sells us, which is that college
Speaker 2: protesters are just like people playing at politics with no
Speaker 2: real impact. This is a lie. I think fewer people
Speaker 2: buy into this lie these days. For example, the day
Speaker 2: before we recorded this, police broke down the doors of
Speaker 2: multiple student activists houses in Ipslante, Michigan, because students living
Speaker 2: there had been involved in pro Palestinian protests.
Speaker 1: You were close, ips Lanny.
Speaker 2: Ips Lanny. We should leave in me being wrong. I
Speaker 2: think it's funny. Maybe it's not, do you know what ips.
Speaker 1: Lanny's famous for.
Speaker 2: The cops that broke down the door.
Speaker 1: So for having a water tower that looks like a penis.
Speaker 2: Oh that's funny too.
Speaker 1: Spent a lot of time there.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, Well you in the future probably have more
Speaker 2: information about this than I do. But turns out now
Speaker 2: that I read history books all day, I know that
Speaker 2: student protests are invaluable because they're the start of a
Speaker 2: really large percentage of revolutions, in particular once they connect
Speaker 2: with the working class. So these hundred thousand protesters, they're
Speaker 2: marching around the big Dick water No wait, no, different
Speaker 2: time and place. These hundred thousand protesters they start by
Speaker 2: going to Parliament and saying shit like we want m
Speaker 2: Ra Nag back, basically bring back the new course right
Speaker 2: because nog has been set aside, which I think is
Speaker 2: the name of the frengie with working class ethics in
Speaker 2: Deep Space nine. But I don't know if that's related
Speaker 2: or not. I like to imagine this is where we
Speaker 2: get to that the Mia hack and fraud has never
Speaker 2: seen Deep Space nine thing and every trans girls and
Speaker 2: trying to show it to me, and I'm like, would.
Speaker 3: I have time?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's okay, it's it's fine. It's nineties TV. There's
Speaker 2: like so many good like Xena or Buffy or Deep
Speaker 2: Space nine. Like there's like so many good like you
Speaker 2: can see where good stuff came out of it. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: actually I like Deep Space nine more than anything else.
Speaker 2: I just said, Yeah, Buffy has yeah, structural issues. But
Speaker 2: you know, the list of demands besides, of course, a
Speaker 2: season two of Firefly, which no one's demanding anymore, because whatever.
Speaker 2: The list of demands of these protesters in nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: six is to quote in paraphrase from the Movement Communist Report,
Speaker 2: the Belgian and French Communist Report, which, by the way,
Speaker 2: it's in the sources. It has some of the most
Speaker 2: complete Like here's a list of every council they set up.
Speaker 2: Here's a list of all of the militants. Here's a
Speaker 2: list of all of these things. It's very sourced and
Speaker 2: it's very backed up. These claims about like you know,
Speaker 2: it was mostly workers or whatever. Anyway, Okay, there are
Speaker 2: a list of demands. They want new party leadership elected,
Speaker 2: they want nog as prime minister, they want mul party elections.
Speaker 2: They want to get the Russian troops out, they want
Speaker 2: economy led by people who specialize in economy and not
Speaker 2: the Communist Party, which makes a lot of sense, right,
Speaker 2: You're like, we're all in like an economic tailspin. We're like,
Speaker 2: what if instead of picking the economy based on ideology,
Speaker 2: we picked it on like how we get to eat
Speaker 2: the most bread, you know, relax agricultural quotas and support
Speaker 2: independent producers, a review of all political trials, and like
Speaker 2: releasing people. And this one's interesting. They wanted to use
Speaker 2: the eighteen forty eight Hungarian flag, which is the red,
Speaker 2: white and green stripe, but without the red star and
Speaker 2: crossed hammer and wheat that the Communist one had. And
Speaker 2: they actually win this the next year, I believe, but
Speaker 2: nothing I've read, I know, nothing I've read since. And
Speaker 2: then they won their demand. But as I was trying
Speaker 2: to like read about the flag, I was like, wait,
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty seven, it switched over back again. So
Speaker 2: they win the most symbolic one, and they want freedom
Speaker 2: of speech in the press, and so they've got this
Speaker 2: march and they go to the radio station because that's
Speaker 2: where propaganda is getting sent out over the airwaves. And
Speaker 2: I've read that they tore down a stalin statue on
Speaker 2: the way. I've read that they like split up in
Speaker 2: a two different groups, and one group went tore down
Speaker 2: the Stalin statue and one went to the radio station.
Speaker 2: Both of these things happened. Couldn't promise you the linearity
Speaker 2: of it. They reached the radio station and the AVO,
Speaker 2: the secret police that's been around since Nazi times and before,
Speaker 2: are guarding the place, and for a while it seems
Speaker 2: like no one will be allowed in. Then finally the
Speaker 2: police led a delegation inside. They're like, all right, you
Speaker 2: can send a couple people inside. And then two hours
Speaker 2: go by and they're like, where are those people we
Speaker 2: sent in? And the crowd was like, well, what the fuck?
Speaker 2: And so they maybe lunged forward and the AVO opened
Speaker 2: fire with machine guns.
Speaker 3: Oh Jesus fucking Christ, Oh.
Speaker 2: God, the crowd grabbed the machine guns and shooting at
Speaker 2: the station. Two hundred protesters were killed, forty cops were killed,
Speaker 2: and the revolution begins.
Speaker 3: Also, I just want to point out that this is
Speaker 3: like a perfectly American twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five
Speaker 3: moment of like every time a Polesta Union camment would
Speaker 3: send a negotiators to negotiate with the university that arrest
Speaker 3: the negotiator. It's like the only the worst people in
Speaker 3: history do this, shits like us in the Soviets society,
Speaker 3: great great stuff, great stuff.
Speaker 2: The British did a lot of Like Yeah, the thing that, like,
Speaker 2: in my mind was always an exaggerated thing for fiction,
Speaker 2: which is you get together a peace conference where you
Speaker 2: invite all of the enemy leaders, especially if they're sort
Speaker 2: of like the Scottish clans or whatever, right, and you
Speaker 2: bring them all in one place and then you just
Speaker 2: poison them all and murder them all or whatever. I
Speaker 2: always thought that was like hack fiction. Shit, No one
Speaker 2: was that evil. I've read across that, run across that
Speaker 2: like at least three times while study in the British Empire.
Speaker 2: It's like like the worst people in all history.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Finnished Americans. So it's like, God, really terrible.
Speaker 2: I hate it.
Speaker 3: We hate it.
Speaker 2: And so the Hungarian army was sent to put them
Speaker 2: down outside the radio station, and the soldiers were like, actually,
Speaker 2: you can just have our guns instead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would rather not start massacring a bunch of
Speaker 3: my friends, Like fuck.
Speaker 2: This, And so some of them like gave the crowd
Speaker 2: their guns and then left, and some of them were like, no,
Speaker 2: I'm actually just like with you, and I'm using my gun,
Speaker 2: but I'm irritating. Eventually they seize the radio station and
Speaker 2: do you know what they started advertising, I mean, broadcasting
Speaker 2: demands to buy the products and services support the show.
Speaker 2: They were ahead of their time. They were supporting Wow.
Speaker 3: Wow, the first podcasters.
Speaker 2: I know. Yeah, before this, no one had mattresses or
Speaker 2: therapy or gambling anyway, the origin of the modern world. Truly,
Speaker 2: here's the mads and we're back. And so yeah, they
Speaker 2: were like, we're having this revolution now. And at this
Speaker 2: point workers had been part of this first march, but
Speaker 2: it was largely a student ish, like youth march kind
Speaker 2: of thing, you know. But as soon as it kicks off,
Speaker 2: the workers are like, all right, let's do it. And
Speaker 2: fortunately they've all been industrializing, so they all work at
Speaker 2: like gun factories and shit, yep, and so they're just like, here,
Speaker 2: we brought you all the guns we made. Here's a
Speaker 2: fucking tractor trailer full of the guns.
Speaker 3: Yeah, those rules, and then.
Speaker 2: They all start building marricads. Of course, according to the
Speaker 2: communist press at the time, these folks weren't revolutionaries. They
Speaker 2: were armed bandits.
Speaker 3: Oh they didn't even have the Nazi line yet they
Speaker 3: were on armed bandits. Oh yeah, incredible, incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, I took them a while to develop the
Speaker 2: technology of calling them Nazis.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, And it's funny because I like the arm
Speaker 2: bandits one. Because this is, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 2: this is like code for people who dislike our authoritarian rule,
Speaker 2: but specifically when communists and socialists and anarchists dislike their rule.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because this is the thing I said about Makno
Speaker 3: like in the Russian Revolution. I was like, what hold on,
Speaker 3: I've seen this one before.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, and you can still find it today on
Speaker 2: Twitter dot com when it readirects to x IS people
Speaker 2: claiming the fucking the Ukrainian anarchists and probably these people
Speaker 2: are all bandits. But as you pointed out, now they've
Speaker 2: moved on to calling these people Nazis. Except I'm getting
Speaker 2: ahead of myself, because do you know what they've first
Speaker 2: the communists first said about all of this, nothing's happening,
Speaker 2: nothing's happening. Very sure.
Speaker 3: I got in one gut in one.
Speaker 2: Despite four hundred and fifty people being arrested, two hundred
Speaker 2: protesters killed, forty cops killed by day two. The communist
Speaker 2: press buries the story, or, to quote internal documents, Comrade
Speaker 2: Khrushchev recommends that we not cover the situation in Hungary
Speaker 2: and our press until the cause of everything have been
Speaker 2: well clarified. Oh my god, I can't say anything because
Speaker 2: we don't know what We don't want to get it wrong.
Speaker 2: So just not tell anyone, ye.
Speaker 3: Journalism practice. Yeah, yeah, So simply do not report of
Speaker 3: massacres like yeah, because we don't know what caused them. Like,
Speaker 3: who knows where those bullets came from. They could have
Speaker 3: like flown at it. They could they could have flowed backwards.
Speaker 2: Who knows.
Speaker 3: Look magic for the sky, capitalist demons, You never know.
Speaker 3: Bullets come so many places.
Speaker 2: They've been celebrating and shooting into the air and it
Speaker 2: doesn't fell down.
Speaker 3: They felled out, Yeah, rained from the sky.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And uh. And and Nog, who the crowd is
Speaker 2: ostensibly supportive of, he did not start off supportive of
Speaker 2: this revolution. He was immediately put into power to mollify
Speaker 2: the rebels, so they actually get one of their demands,
Speaker 2: like right off, they're like, all right, Nog's in charge again.
Speaker 2: Partly because like Nog is like, not not their guy,
Speaker 2: you know, like the Soviets, They're like, eh, we didn't
Speaker 2: like your new course thing. We put in a strong guy.
Speaker 2: But Nog wasn't anti communist or something like that, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And so immediately he's in power, and his whole line
Speaker 2: for the next week is like, stop fighting. We will
Speaker 2: punish anyone who revolts. The revolution is over. We won
Speaker 2: go home. Oh, no one listened to him.
Speaker 3: That rules. That rules, because that shit works. Sometimes people
Speaker 3: sometimes will be like, hey, it's over, you've won, go home,
Speaker 3: Go home. And then I know, like the refreshing continues.
Speaker 3: But good for them, good for them.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting too, because this is the line by
Speaker 2: which people are able to kind of spin a web
Speaker 2: of deceit around the Hungarian revolution, is that they're able
Speaker 2: to kind of be like, oh, it all sort of
Speaker 2: revolved around Nog. He's the leader of it and all
Speaker 2: of this stuff, and it's a way to ignore the workers'
Speaker 2: councils that are about to get started.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's also like they dragged him, kicking and
Speaker 3: screaming in to the revelation.
Speaker 2: Life totally totally, and he's he probably knows this is
Speaker 2: the end. Of him, you know, like, yeah, Russian forces
Speaker 2: show up right the fuck away by day two, October
Speaker 2: twenty fourth, because they were stationed about fifty miles away already,
Speaker 2: because Hungary was already an occupied nation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which, by the way, I just want to point out,
Speaker 3: like how ue hinged, Like having other countries station their
Speaker 3: armies in your country is not a normal thing. That
Speaker 3: is only a thing that happens to like colonies and
Speaker 3: countries are being occupied. Like that's like I feel I
Speaker 3: feel like he just has not God mentioned here, but
Speaker 3: mia the United States does that all over the world.
Speaker 3: Uh huh uh huh. Totally normal things on the military
Speaker 3: basis of all of these countries, Completely reasonable and normal.
Speaker 2: But if you don't like the USSR, that means you
Speaker 2: like the United States.
Speaker 3: I am going to become the joker. Yeah. No, that
Speaker 3: because like I imagine you sign this like we're all packed
Speaker 3: and you're like, all right, we all got each other's backs,
Speaker 3: and you're like, you know what it is.
Speaker 2: It's just like the end of season four of Lower
Speaker 2: Decks is what it is. But I don't want to
Speaker 2: spoil it, but if you watch season four of Lower Decks,
Speaker 2: you'll know what I'm talking about anyway. I just watched
Speaker 2: the episode last night again.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah.
Speaker 2: But yeah, they're like, oh, we're all equals, and they're
Speaker 2: like just getting some people are more equal than others.
Speaker 2: So people start fighting. There's hundreds of tanks and thousands
Speaker 2: of soldiers from the USSR suddenly in Budapest and around
Speaker 2: the country, and people just start fighting them, and they
Speaker 2: come really close to pulling it off. For the first
Speaker 2: week they they win the first week. They're dismantling tanks
Speaker 2: with kitchen utensils. I do not know what that means,
Speaker 2: but I ran across it that rules.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just like just imagining someone with like I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, so like immediate thing, it's like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: they're unscrewing bolts with knives or something. But now I'm like, no,
Speaker 3: they got a rolling pin. They're going like this, They're
Speaker 3: just whacking it. They're just whacking it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, here the rules, and it just specifically said they're
Speaker 2: dismandling tanks with kitchen utentils and gasoline. I suspect that
Speaker 2: gasoline was more useful in this project.
Speaker 3: Probably, Yeah, yeah, ghasoline very useful substance for dis mantling
Speaker 3: a tank, as many people have learned.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of molotops going on, and they're
Speaker 2: not mollified by Nog and honestly, they kind of don't
Speaker 2: like him very much anymore at this point. And when
Speaker 2: it really becomes a revolution isn't just that they've had
Speaker 2: some of their demands met. It's that the workers and
Speaker 2: students get together and set up a revolutionary Council, which
Speaker 2: is made up of representatives elected by local councils from
Speaker 2: all of these different workplaces and shit like that.
Speaker 3: That rules there, the rules. It's so awesome. I didn't
Speaker 3: know the students were involved in this. That's so cool. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I don't know as much about student councils during this.
Speaker 3: I know about the student's involvement in setting all of
Speaker 3: this up, and I know about later they're gonna have
Speaker 3: soldier councils as well. But yeah, so they get together
Speaker 3: and the Revolutionary Council calls for a general strike and
Speaker 3: they're like, do not put down your weapons, do not
Speaker 3: be mollified by Nog. And the general strike sweeps Budapest
Speaker 3: in much of the country, and I've read it described
Speaker 3: as total, like just incredible. Yeah, the revolutionary councils are
Speaker 3: built from delegates coming from the workers' council, soldiers councils,
Speaker 3: and peasant councils. They go around and disarm all the
Speaker 3: secret police. They start sending delegations to nog who's like, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 3: we'll please, we'll make it better. Just just put down
Speaker 3: the guns and let us be in charge of you again.
Speaker 3: I swear you know. People from the country side started
Speaker 3: delivering food directly into the city bypassing the state apparatus
Speaker 3: of like food distribution. They finally did it. They finally
Speaker 3: did the think of Potkins said in the Conquest of Bread,
Speaker 3: where you have to get people from the country. I
Speaker 3: had to send food to the cities. They finally did it.
Speaker 3: Finally did it. I guess the anarchists has Spain did it.
Speaker 3: But like wow, it's amazing, it's amazing the whole thing.
Speaker 3: They could have saved the Russian Revolution from the beginning.
Speaker 3: They actually did it. Yeah, they really are doing the
Speaker 3: Russian Revolution. But like they're actually like doing it, like
Speaker 3: they saw out the councils. They're like allying with the peasants.
Speaker 3: They have food moving into the cities. It's amazing, I know,
Speaker 3: it's like, it's like one, if the Russian Revolution didn't suck.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wow. And what's annoying is because if the Russian
Speaker 2: Revolution had done it this way instead, it wouldn't have
Speaker 2: had the Red Army as its enemy, and so they
Speaker 2: probably would have won, you know. Yeah, And so some
Speaker 2: folks started divving up the land. They sort of a
Speaker 2: lot of places decollectivized, but i'd like back into small
Speaker 2: holders and things like that. Other places were like, fuck, yeah,
Speaker 2: our collective is finally in charge of itself. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: had like bottom up control of the collectivized farms. One newspaper,
Speaker 2: The Observer, wrote, quote, although the general strike is in being,
Speaker 2: there is no centrally organized industry, the workers are nevertheless
Speaker 2: taking it upon themselves to keep essential services for the
Speaker 2: purposes which they determine and support. So yeah, the general
Speaker 2: strike people are actually working. They're just working for the
Speaker 2: revolution to continue. The quote workers' councils and industrial districts
Speaker 2: have undertaken the distribution of essential goods and food to
Speaker 2: the population in order to keep them alive. It is
Speaker 2: self help in a setting of anarchy that rules. Yeah. Ah,
Speaker 2: that's so.
Speaker 3: Cool, And it's also it's a really interesting look at
Speaker 3: A question that I get a lot is like, if
Speaker 3: everyone goes on strike, how are you going to feed people?
Speaker 3: And the answer is, you don't just go on strike,
Speaker 3: you take control of everything. Yeah, this has happened a
Speaker 3: bunch of times in long term general strikes around the world,
Speaker 3: including the Seattle nineteen nineteen nineteen. Yeah, general strike that
Speaker 3: continued like all the essential services. Yeah, there's a great
Speaker 3: FDR line where he calls this is like after Seattle,
Speaker 3: but he calls the US. It's like the I forget
Speaker 3: how many states ahead of the times, it's like the
Speaker 3: forty eight states of the Seattle Soviet because.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, So as the revolution goes on, more and
Speaker 2: more of the Hungarian army is defecting, and they get
Speaker 2: like whole like fucking leader people with all the troops,
Speaker 2: and they're like starting to like get mortars and not
Speaker 2: a lot of them, but like they're starting to get
Speaker 2: some heavy weaponry. And the Soviet troops keep massacring unarmed demonstrators.
Speaker 2: Because it's a weird mix, right, It's like there's a
Speaker 2: kind of a war going on, but there's also just
Speaker 2: like big unarmed demonstrations happening everywhere.
Speaker 3: You know, and so of course they're shooting that, they're
Speaker 3: shooting the workers in this This is like this is
Speaker 3: always the most like horrifying elements of this to me
Speaker 3: is just the number of like Okay, when you're fighting
Speaker 3: the Nazis, right, like you know from the beginning that
Speaker 3: these people want to kill you, right, Like that's you
Speaker 3: know that that's what they are, the Nazis. But it's
Speaker 3: like there's just something viscerally horrifying to me about like
Speaker 3: just the communist parties feeding the working class to the
Speaker 3: machine guns. Yeah, which just I don't know, because it
Speaker 3: just brings me to such a profound sense of grief
Speaker 3: and just like horror that like you're doing this to
Speaker 3: the people that you're supposed to be like liberating, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: what the fuck is wrong with you people?
Speaker 2: Oh God, there's gonna be a good quote about that
Speaker 2: later from one of the people who fought in this revolution,
Speaker 2: Ugh Onward. On April twenty sixth, the rebels do what
Speaker 2: all good revolutionaries do, and they open the prisons, and
Speaker 2: if you read some reports that are kind of trying
Speaker 2: to like whitewash the whole thing, they're like and then
Speaker 2: they freed all the political prisoners, which is true, but
Speaker 2: they did that by freeing all of the prisoners that rules.
Speaker 3: That absolutely rules, Like we love that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's way better that way. They freed a
Speaker 2: seventeen thousand because also, like you're in an authoritarian regime,
Speaker 2: Like I already I think all prisoners are political, period,
Speaker 2: but like when you're an authoritarian regime, they're like extra political.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And people, the longer you've lived into one of
Speaker 3: these regimes, the easier it is to understand where there's
Speaker 3: you know, because you could just like watch your fucking
Speaker 3: neighbor being dragged off. But like in the US, there's
Speaker 3: like this I don't know it. People are really precious
Speaker 3: about like there being a justice system that like sends
Speaker 3: guilty people to this punishment they deserve instead of the
Speaker 3: thing that actually happens, which is just like we're torturing
Speaker 3: a bunch of people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think about this comic all the time, some
Speaker 2: web comic that was like oh yeah, don't go into
Speaker 2: my basement. There's a guy down there, and you're like,
Speaker 2: wait what They're like, ah, I'm trying to steal my
Speaker 2: car a liile. I guess I'm just keeping him locked
Speaker 2: in the basement. You're like, that sounds monstrous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, like.
Speaker 2: And they free seventeen thousand prisoners in total, a quarter
Speaker 2: of whom are quote unquote political prisoners. The rest are
Speaker 2: quote civil prisoners. From the freed prisoners, they learn about
Speaker 2: all the torture and nightmarish conditions in the prisons.
Speaker 3: Oh god. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And meanwhile, so the Tanky line on this revolution is
Speaker 2: that it was all a CIA plot and or fascists
Speaker 2: and or before his arm bandits, and before that it
Speaker 2: wasn't even happening whatever. I looked into this as much
Speaker 2: as I could. I wanted to figure out where the
Speaker 2: like kernel of truth might be. I spent way too
Speaker 2: long in this particular part of it. I wanted to
Speaker 2: spend more time about them dismantling tanks with kitchen utensils.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it was not a CIA plot. There are
Speaker 2: a ton of recently declassified documents from the US and
Speaker 2: the USSR about this whole revolution. The CIA had only
Speaker 2: one agent in the country. Eisenhower was sympathetic to the rebels,
Speaker 2: but didn't actually want to help because he didn't want
Speaker 2: to turn the Cold War hot. There was one avenue
Speaker 2: of Western intervention in the revolution Free Radio Europe. Free
Speaker 2: Radio Europe was a series of propaganda radio stations that
Speaker 2: would broadcast over the Iron Curtain with very specific state
Speaker 2: controlled plans to disseminate specific propaganda, which is a very
Speaker 2: you know, it's the kind of thing that we got
Speaker 2: mad at these union for doing. We were doing too, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: we that gets air quotes. There was a scathing internal
Speaker 2: report in December nineteen fifty six, which is after the revolution,
Speaker 2: is more or less crushed about how the Hungarian section
Speaker 2: of Free Radio Europe kind of went rogue and off
Speaker 2: script from what they were supposed to do. I don't
Speaker 2: know if this is the US just trying to cover
Speaker 2: its ass, but this is an internal skating report, not
Speaker 2: a public one, so I think they were genuinely annoyed
Speaker 2: about Free Radio Europe Hungary being like, yeah, revolution, here's
Speaker 2: how to dismantle a tank, like, you know, like yeah,
Speaker 2: partly because it's a lot of people who had lived
Speaker 2: in Hungary, who had had the FLEA, who were running
Speaker 2: these radio stations. Yeah, so they're probably going off script.
Speaker 2: Free Radio Europe pushed the revolution hard, and they did
Speaker 2: so unjustly and by lying as well. They broadcast lots
Speaker 2: of specifics about how to defeat tanks and fight gorilla insurgencies,
Speaker 2: but they heavily implied that Western help was on its way,
Speaker 2: that if the rebels centralized their military structure, NATO would
Speaker 2: show up and throw down and it would be a real
Speaker 2: war and they would have allies in it. This was
Speaker 2: never going to happen. This was false hope. So that's
Speaker 2: the like I can genuinely say, like that was foreign intervention.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, yeah, But it's also like, you know, you
Speaker 3: could see what they're trying to do here, right, which
Speaker 3: is like they don't like NATO doesn't actually want a
Speaker 3: state run by workers councils, no, like appearing there, Like
Speaker 3: that's also a really bad look end for those So
Speaker 3: you know they're trying to be like, well, if you like,
Speaker 3: if you make like a Western style army, like we'll
Speaker 3: help you.
Speaker 2: And it's like, yeah, totally. By October twenty eighth, they've
Speaker 2: negotiated a ceasefire because they did really well without Western
Speaker 2: help for a long time. They negotiate a ceasefire to
Speaker 2: the Moscow loyalists, and the government take off to Moscow
Speaker 2: and they fucking defeated the Soviets and it seems at
Speaker 2: that moment the real decision is like, do we take
Speaker 2: moderate reforms from NAG or do we keep fighting to
Speaker 2: win it all? Do we want actual freedom and bottom
Speaker 2: up organization or do we want like socialist democracy. That
Speaker 2: seems like they're two options on the table. By October thirtieth,
Speaker 2: the Soviets have left Budapest and the Revolutionary councils with
Speaker 2: reservations are like, fuck it, we'll take NOG. We'll take
Speaker 2: NOG with like multi party democracy, like all of our demands,
Speaker 2: et cetera. Right, And during all of this, the borders
Speaker 2: finally open up to Yugoslavia and Austria. Since Austria is neutral,
Speaker 2: most people want to leave to go that way. Western
Speaker 2: journalists of various stripes come into the country to cover
Speaker 2: what's happening, which I gotta admit, I've gotta be fucking
Speaker 2: bravest shit, right, because you're like, oh, the border's open,
Speaker 2: pretty sure. The border is only opened for a moment, right, Yep,
Speaker 2: ye for.
Speaker 3: A little bit of time. It's like, yep, we're going
Speaker 3: into a war zone to do something not the smartest,
Speaker 3: but yeah, someone's.
Speaker 2: Got to do it. It's like darting under like a
Speaker 2: closing garage door, you know, like and it's one of
Speaker 2: the most important things that came out of the revolution
Speaker 2: was the fact that Western journalists of different political stripes,
Speaker 2: including communists, went there and saw firsthand what was happening. Yeah,
Speaker 2: now that there's freedom of press, Like literally they've only
Speaker 2: had this revolution for a week, there's suddenly twenty five
Speaker 2: daily papers.
Speaker 3: I really are communists. Anyone who argus these people aren't
Speaker 3: communists I know, does not know. Paul right.
Speaker 2: Probably half of them are just like the Hungarian Workers
Speaker 2: Socialist Party of Hungary whatever, aryan.
Speaker 3: Socialist Workers Party, which is a different entity.
Speaker 2: They hate each other.
Speaker 3: They have been ancient. They have an ancient, one day
Speaker 3: old enmity with the Workers Party.
Speaker 2: The new government cabinet is made up of a couple people,
Speaker 2: the Communists who are former Communist Party but they're no
Speaker 2: longer calling themselves. That have three members, the small owners
Speaker 2: have two members. There's one peasant seat and one Social
Speaker 2: Democrat seat. That's the like I don't know if that's
Speaker 2: what I was going to stay, but that was there, like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, we're doing this today, you know, so not
Speaker 2: a right wing revolution when you could like maybe be
Speaker 2: like the two small owners, but like, probably not. They
Speaker 2: might just mean that you can actually have a small
Speaker 2: business in a socialist society if you like don't employ
Speaker 2: wage labor and whatever. Anyway, what does this new government do? Well,
Speaker 2: they actually go all the way with it. They formally
Speaker 2: announced that they're leaving the Warsaw Pact on Halloween. Well
Speaker 2: it gets announced in the morning, but the meeting was
Speaker 2: on Halloween.
Speaker 3: Hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they announced that they're leaving the packed to become
Speaker 2: a neutral country, and they beg the UN for help.
Speaker 2: So this is the other thing about the US intervention.
Speaker 2: They fucking begged for US intervention. That's all they wanted.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not I'm sure everyone, but this is
Speaker 2: their hail Mary. They have taken control of their own government.
Speaker 2: But Russia has a lot of fucking military yeah, and
Speaker 2: international help is not coming. The Western nations leave Hungary
Speaker 2: and the Hungarian people to the Red Army. But do
Speaker 2: you know what would have saved them?
Speaker 3: The products and services support this podcast all bulletproof if
Speaker 3: you wear Nope, probably can't say that, Nope, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: you know what, maybe the ads are unrelated to the content.
Speaker 2: You all ever thought about that? I think about it
Speaker 2: all the time. It keeps me up at night.
Speaker 3: Here's the ads, and we're back.
Speaker 2: So the revolutionary council system doesn't just give up because
Speaker 2: it's important endorse noog. It's not like, oh, weve endorse nog,
Speaker 2: like time to dismantle. That's all we were gonna do.
Speaker 2: They're like, no, we are going to create essentially a
Speaker 2: dual power system. We are going to continue to have
Speaker 2: this as a sort of political entity. They get together
Speaker 2: and they put together a nine point program, including things
Speaker 2: like the factory belongs to the workers, and the supreme
Speaker 2: element of authority is the workers Council, elected democratically by
Speaker 2: the workers. Shit like that, Holy shit, they're doing communism,
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, to the horror of the Western and
Speaker 3: the Eastern world.
Speaker 2: They're doing the thing. Yeah exactly. A nag is like, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: it's probably Please just go back to work and please
Speaker 2: go back to work. And then the workers councils they're
Speaker 2: like playing nice with the government. But I think I
Speaker 2: think they're trying to just like flex a little bit.
Speaker 2: They're like, all right, we're going to return to work
Speaker 2: on November fifth. Guy fox masks suddenly appear on all
Speaker 2: their faces at the same time. On October thirty first,
Speaker 2: Moscow seemed to give up. They published a statement that
Speaker 2: read quote, the Soviet government is prepared to enter into
Speaker 2: the appropriate negotiations with the Government of the Hungarian People's
Speaker 2: Republic and other members of the Warsaw Treaty on the
Speaker 2: question of the presence of Soviet troops and the territory
Speaker 2: of Hungary. And then later that same day they're like, no,
Speaker 2: never mind, let's just kill them all.
Speaker 3: Great great stuff from the Soviets. It's incredible, incredible organization.
Speaker 2: And we have their like meeting notes from when they
Speaker 2: got together and decided to kill them all.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And they were afraid of losing There's two things they
Speaker 2: were afraid of. They were afraid of losing face in
Speaker 2: front of the world. Because on October twenty ninth, the UK, France,
Speaker 2: and Israel had invaded Egypt in the Suez Crisis in
Speaker 2: order to regain control of the Suez Canal, which I
Speaker 2: will pretend like I know more about, but I don't.
Speaker 3: Oh it's I will say, if you want to go
Speaker 3: reading too that it is a very very funny example
Speaker 3: of like France in the UK, as these like dying empires,
Speaker 3: having a temper tantrum and trying to be like real
Speaker 3: big boys one last time and then just getting absolutely rolled.
Speaker 3: It rules. It's like, it's really really it is the
Speaker 3: closest thing the British did to Brexit before Brexit, Like
Speaker 3: it's like their last imperial temper tantrum before they ceased
Speaker 3: to be a relevant world power.
Speaker 2: So poor timing for the Hungarians of that happened because
Speaker 2: Russia is now like, oh, we like really extra, can't
Speaker 2: lose face to the West right now. But so they're
Speaker 2: afraid of looking weak. But in the same document, this
Speaker 2: is not the way they phrased it. But thanks to
Speaker 2: the terrible internal echo chamber of Communist party politics, the
Speaker 2: communist officials were afraid of losing face in front of themselves.
Speaker 2: The other Soviet leaders.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: They were like, ah, I can't be the because they've
Speaker 2: just survived the Great Purge, right They're like, oh, if
Speaker 2: I don't not only tow the party line, but like
Speaker 2: push it, I'm gonna fucking die.
Speaker 3: This is a terrible system, Like don't organize the Great Purge.
Speaker 3: You can just like no, like if there's a stalin,
Speaker 3: you can just shoot him, like he'll die. Like, if
Speaker 3: you shoot him with enough bullets, the man will die.
Speaker 3: You don't have to do the great purge. You can
Speaker 3: skip them.
Speaker 2: He's made of steel.
Speaker 3: I could get a really big bullet. Is the thing
Speaker 3: are re fiercing rounds? Yeah, there's a little green tip,
Speaker 3: go right on through there. Yeah yeah, And like it's
Speaker 3: why echo chambers are dangerous, because echo chambers allow you
Speaker 3: to take whatever is the most radical position, and it
Speaker 3: will continue to the You'll push your own little Overton
Speaker 3: window further and further. And it's why, like radicals of
Speaker 3: all types, including anti authoritarians, need to stay in contact
Speaker 3: with people who disagree with them. You need to talk
Speaker 3: to people. It's the social equivalent of touch grass is.
Speaker 3: You should probably talk to your neighbors if your idea,
Speaker 3: if you're if your neighbor isn't like a right wing bigot,
Speaker 3: and if you're afraid that your idea sounds really wacky
Speaker 3: to your neighbor, that doesn't mean that you're wrong, but
Speaker 3: it means you need to think about it. You know,
Speaker 3: like you still might be right. The ideas that I
Speaker 3: have are absolutely.
Speaker 2: Wacky by society standards, but like, yeah, I'm immune to
Speaker 2: echo chamber effects. Fortunately, because the only person around me
Speaker 2: doesn't talk, he barks a lot. I've actually decided I
Speaker 2: hate airplanes because of my dog, who barks at airplanes
Speaker 2: all day. That's my real That's not true. I don't
Speaker 2: hate airplanes, but Rentrell does. I figured it out, though
Speaker 2: I probably already said this on air. I think the
Speaker 2: reason he barks at all the birds in the airplanes
Speaker 2: is that he's like one of his million working dog
Speaker 2: mutt things is keeping chickens safe from hawks and so like,
Speaker 2: when he was around a bunch of chickens, I was
Speaker 2: afraid he was gonna do a murder on the chickens,
Speaker 2: but instead he was just trying to herd them, which
Speaker 2: did not work. Chicken anarchists and narco chickenism, Yeah, but
Speaker 2: I think he would. He would absolutely keep him safe
Speaker 2: from hawks because no hawks come near my well, they
Speaker 2: circle overhead because I live in the villa nowhere. But anyway,
Speaker 2: what also circles this isn't an ad pivot. What also
Speaker 2: circles around Budapest are.
Speaker 3: Russian tanks who good tradition terrible thing. Yeah, Russian troops
Speaker 3: started circling Budapest on November first, there's more of them
Speaker 3: this time. Last time it was hundreds of tanks and
Speaker 3: thousands of soldiers and they won, not the Russians but
Speaker 3: the Hungarian people. This time there are six thousand tanks
Speaker 3: and two hundred thousand soldiers. Oh my god, which is
Speaker 3: a lot. Yeah. What's the population of Budapest at this point?
Speaker 3: Like I don't know?
Speaker 2: Oh, wait, I did know, because they incorporated it. It's
Speaker 2: like a million and a half because they one of
Speaker 2: the things that they did is incorporated like a bunch
Speaker 2: of the surrounding suburbs all into one city.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So that's like, don't do math on air. I
Speaker 3: just had an episode where I said, don't do math air.
Speaker 3: Now I'm attempting to do math on the air. One
Speaker 3: in six there are like like a sixth of the
Speaker 3: population under is like one soldier for every six random
Speaker 3: people in Boodfest good lord and uh. On November fourth,
Speaker 3: at four fifteen am, nineteen fifty six, the Russian tanks
Speaker 3: roll in. This is like the moment of tanky ism. Yeah.
Speaker 2: At five twenty am, nog announces this on the air
Speaker 2: that this invasion is happening. A couple hours later, he
Speaker 2: flees to the Yugoslav embassy in Budapest. He doesn't flee
Speaker 2: the city, he goes to the embassy of another country,
Speaker 2: and for a week the revolutionaries fight like hell. By
Speaker 2: November third, the Russians have taken over the country more
Speaker 2: or less, and a Soviet puppet named Cotter takes his
Speaker 2: oath of office, despite the fact that nag never resigned,
Speaker 2: he was just hiding in the embassy. The battle is fierce.
Speaker 2: It devolves men and women both. One worker said quote,
Speaker 2: they gave out arms to whoever wanted to fight. When
Speaker 2: the person was tired, she left her combat position and
Speaker 2: went home, keeping her weapon or not. Everything rested on
Speaker 2: commitment and confidence. The average fighter's political position was, according
Speaker 2: to one witness quote, Yugoslav socialism plus the workers councils.
Speaker 2: I don't know enough about Yugoslavian socialism. It is confusing
Speaker 2: to me because I haven't done an entire episode about it.
Speaker 2: But it's like non Soviet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like less repressive, more like it's like a
Speaker 3: weird kind of like system of co ops with like
Speaker 3: a strong state element to it, so there's like more
Speaker 3: workers control there.
Speaker 2: This is the one that played up that wanted to
Speaker 2: be friends with the United States and shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, but they also but because of just a
Speaker 3: bunch of stuff that happens, like there are also a
Speaker 3: lot like there are like workers' councils. There is that
Speaker 3: like run things, but they're not like completely in control,
Speaker 3: and there is still like a central government, and so
Speaker 3: they're actually weirdly that they end up taking a lot
Speaker 3: of anarchists principles were like if you read books about it,
Speaker 3: we'll talk about like Yugoslavia and self management like a
Speaker 3: very sort of anarchist sense, and this was like one
Speaker 3: of the just actually like the tendency that's like the
Speaker 3: closest to like the revolution in Algeria I was talking
Speaker 3: about where the fuhone the workers councils was Okay, they
Speaker 3: were looking at this, but also like the the thing
Speaker 3: about it is that like it is also a market economy,
Speaker 3: so they are also like competing ainst each other. So
Speaker 3: it's it's very weird, a very very weird system that
Speaker 3: also was being held together by subsidies to a large extent.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it was it was like one of the
Speaker 3: things I was considered just like the other poll against
Speaker 3: like the US and the Soviets, was like the system
Speaker 3: of like, yeah, you like sort of have democratic stuff,
Speaker 3: you can manage your workplace, and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that this is what kind of what
Speaker 2: they mean in this context when I say Yugoslav socialism
Speaker 2: is that the like non Stalinist socialism plus these workers councils,
Speaker 2: the military leader as much as there was one, and
Speaker 2: this actually might have been only for one fighting unit.
Speaker 2: The way that a lot of this was written was
Speaker 2: fairly confusing. There was a forty nine year old to
Speaker 2: livery driver named Yano Sabo, and he had fought in
Speaker 2: the nineteen nineteen revolution and was a fierce anti Stalinist.
Speaker 2: He said, quote, this is the quote I promised to
Speaker 2: you earlier. Quote the Russian soldiers that we kill are
Speaker 2: as much heroes as we are. It is the crime
Speaker 2: of the leaders which makes us fight against each other.
Speaker 2: And if that doesn't sum up my position on authoritarian communism,
Speaker 2: I don't know what does.
Speaker 3: God what a line? Oh my god? Is that is
Speaker 3: really something?
Speaker 2: And he got the same do as most of the
Speaker 2: Bolsheviks who fought in the revolution. He was executed by communists.
Speaker 3: Oh god, yeah, yeah, this this is the vertical problem
Speaker 3: of communists, is that you will be killed by other
Speaker 3: communists yep, for the crime of doing communism yep, where
Speaker 3: is the crime of toscreeing with someone? Which?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, whichever, the further.
Speaker 3: In you go, the more likely did you getting killed?
Speaker 3: I guess this is This is a brief resurgence of
Speaker 3: the old days of being killed for the crime of
Speaker 3: doing communism versus the middle period of being killed for
Speaker 3: being a slightly wrong kind of Bolshevik.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for being friends with Stalin but in the wrong way. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's like you tossed off Bria.
Speaker 2: Like yeah. So A ton of the rebels in the
Speaker 2: Hungarian Revolution were veterans of the Russian Revolution and or
Speaker 2: the Spanish Civil War, but most were under twenty years old,
Speaker 2: so most were new to this Jeese.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They fight like hell, but they are outmatched and they
Speaker 2: are alone. The miners in the north of the country,
Speaker 2: where they actually have some hills, hold out the longest,
Speaker 2: as do the densest workers neighborhoods in the major cities.
Speaker 2: The last stronghold in Budapest is a hospital that is
Speaker 2: taken by force on November sixteenth. The workers' councils keep
Speaker 2: organizing despite the military force being defeated, they try to
Speaker 2: coordinate better and better despite losing the war. A lot
Speaker 2: of Red Army soldiers defect over the course of those revolution.
Speaker 3: Oh that I never heard that part. It makes sense, Like.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's funny because it's like every time I
Speaker 2: hear about the Red Army putting down actual workers, I
Speaker 2: hear about them defecting, you know, but not not enough
Speaker 2: of them. Yeah, not enough of them.
Speaker 3: It's just a few.
Speaker 2: Which is funny because it means not like the Red
Speaker 2: Army is famous for a couple of things. One you
Speaker 2: can't invade the country U. Two they'll just send zerg
Speaker 2: swarms of people that they don't care if live or die.
Speaker 2: And three they defect a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because it sucks. It turns out the army sucks.
Speaker 2: And then usually they're like sending you after people who
Speaker 2: actually are closer to your own ideology than the people
Speaker 2: that are trying to get you killed.
Speaker 3: I remember I read an account, and this is a
Speaker 3: really badly sourced There's an account talking about like the
Speaker 3: troops they sent in who like literally the thing that
Speaker 3: they were told by their commanders was that like they
Speaker 3: like they were literally fighting like a resurrected version of
Speaker 3: like the s s and that, like like the actual
Speaker 3: Nazis from World War two had like taken control again
Speaker 3: and they get there where they're like what the fuck,
Speaker 3: Like hold on, we why we're shooting work?
Speaker 2: Yeah, like march on those mines and kill the miners
Speaker 2: and you're like wait what what?
Speaker 3: Hold on?
Speaker 2: I read some marks a while ago, and I think
Speaker 2: it's just said something about not doing that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. No, in order to liberate the politaria, you must
Speaker 3: liberate them from life with bullets. This is called socialism. Yeah,
Speaker 3: totally back to weird Christianity. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So there were right wing and anti Semitic components to
Speaker 2: the revolution, they were never anything approaching a majority force
Speaker 2: within it, as best as I can tell by reading
Speaker 2: a lot of different sources, including like Jewish sources that
Speaker 2: I think would have wanted to be anti communist. The
Speaker 2: primary source for the idea that the whole thing is
Speaker 2: a nationalist, anti Semitic revolt comes from not the Tankies,
Speaker 2: famous Holocaust denier David Irving.
Speaker 3: What David Irving is the guy you invented the things.
Speaker 2: I don't know if he invented it, but at least
Speaker 2: the way it's talked about comes from a poorly sourced
Speaker 2: book he wrote in nineteen eighty one about the Hungarian Revolution.
Speaker 3: God, oh, why is everything David Irving? He's the fucking
Speaker 3: fire bombing a Dresden guy, Like, you know, why is
Speaker 3: the worst guy? Oh my god, I hate him so much.
Speaker 3: Oh David Irving, jump scare. I was not prepared for this.
Speaker 3: Yeah no, oh, this is like this is like opening
Speaker 3: your door. There's just like a barrel of shit there.
Speaker 3: Like it's the worst surprise ever.
Speaker 2: And it also means that when people are like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's anti Semitic this revolution, which is like one of
Speaker 2: the things that tankies will sometimes try and claim about it,
Speaker 2: it is it was just literally repeating David Irving Holocaust.
Speaker 3: Their courts the Holocaust, and I are like, great, great stuff,
Speaker 3: incredible things here. Yeah, oh good god.
Speaker 1: Oh no.
Speaker 2: And so there was anti Semitism in the ranks of it. However,
Speaker 2: Jews fought on both sides of the revolution. Like one
Speaker 2: of the things is that, I mean, it's funny because
Speaker 2: almost no one in this story is really justly Jewish, right,
Speaker 2: most of them are communist atheists, but like whatever, all
Speaker 2: that shit is complicated. But so a lot of the
Speaker 2: Communist Party leaders who had fled were Jewish, but so
Speaker 2: were a ton of the people running these workers councils
Speaker 2: and doing all of the fighting and like, and Jews
Speaker 2: were also in the secret police, so some of them
Speaker 2: were getting killed. But then as Vic's you pointed out,
Speaker 2: there's like the famous photo of the like, we killed
Speaker 2: a Jewish person, but it's actually a Christian who was
Speaker 2: a Christian, Okay, Like, Yeah, and so I believe that
Speaker 2: there was some anti Semitic graffiti. The only real the
Speaker 2: thing I can point to that was anti Semitic that
Speaker 2: happened comes a little bit later, and it was not.
Speaker 2: It was actually after the revolution failed, Jews fought on
Speaker 2: both sides, which is the easiest thing to believe ever,
Speaker 2: for anyone who has ever read about Judaism in Eastern
Speaker 2: Europe and especially Eastern European communism. The oppression is mounting
Speaker 2: wherever the Soviets control, Suspected rebels are hanging from bridge
Speaker 2: is everywhere. And yeah, Cotter, the guy in charge meets
Speaker 2: with a new Central Workers Council of Greater Budapest on
Speaker 2: November fourteenth, and the workers say, we want the Soviets
Speaker 2: to leave, we want secret ballot, multi party elections. We
Speaker 2: want democracy, we want socialist control of the factories. We
Speaker 2: want to legalize the unions. We want freedom of press, association,
Speaker 2: and religion. And Cotter is like, nah, fuck you. I've
Speaker 2: read a couple different versions of this, but I did
Speaker 2: find one that's quoting him directly. He said, you have
Speaker 2: the right to not recognize my government. That doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: I am supported by the Soviet army, and you're free
Speaker 2: to do what you want. If you don't work, that's
Speaker 2: your business. Here in parliament, we will always have food
Speaker 2: and lighting. So he's like, I'm gonna win, is what
Speaker 2: he's saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He also said basically, you can't have a National workers
Speaker 2: Council because we already have a worker's government. Oh oh.
Speaker 2: Then on November twenty second, agreed to leave the embassy
Speaker 2: because he was promised that he would be Okay, Oh,
Speaker 2: don't do that. No, Like, no, no, this is like
Speaker 2: the same thing as like when what's his name, Progovian?
Speaker 3: Proosian?
Speaker 2: Is that his name?
Speaker 3: Oh? I don't know the guy he led that weird
Speaker 3: Wagner rule, Like got on an airplane to Africa.
Speaker 2: It's like, don't get on that plane. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: Like CEILR.
Speaker 3: James writes this about Walter Rodney, who's the guy who
Speaker 3: wrote how Europe Underdeveloped Africa, and like he knew like
Speaker 3: Celia James, uh, people who don't know Seelar James's. He's
Speaker 3: a weirdly very influential like black Marxist writer in historian.
Speaker 3: He's also like all of his friends basically in like
Speaker 3: the Pan Africa's this group that he's like part of
Speaker 3: the founding of, like go on to like liberate the
Speaker 3: colonies in Africa, and so like he knew Walter Rodney
Speaker 3: and he wrote a speech about it, and it was
Speaker 3: like Walter Rodney, Buddy, why the fuck did you get
Speaker 3: in that car? They were obviously going to kill you, Like, buddy,
Speaker 3: why did you do this? And it's it's just like
Speaker 3: I don't know, like people throughout history keep doing this
Speaker 3: and they keep dying, and it's really horrible and tragic.
Speaker 2: It's like, I mean, at some of what you're like,
Speaker 2: I bet he's probably like, well, at some point I
Speaker 2: gotta leave this embassy. You know, at some point they're
Speaker 2: either coming in to get me, Like I don't know,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I was going through his head. But
Speaker 2: he was arrested and he was flown to a secret
Speaker 2: prison in Romania. He was convicted of treason and he
Speaker 2: was hanged, with the ostensibly nice Krushchev saying that he
Speaker 2: was killed quote as a lesson to all other leaders
Speaker 2: in socialist countries, so like, very explicitly, the lesson is,
Speaker 2: do not try to be a socialist country not under
Speaker 2: the control of the Soviet Union. It is a bare threat.
Speaker 2: He was buried in an unmarked grave with his hands
Speaker 2: and feet tied up in barbed wire. Jesus, And I
Speaker 2: don't know whether they did that before they hanged him
Speaker 2: or not, but which case, it's very Jesus.
Speaker 3: He that's yeah, what, oh my god.
Speaker 2: Like By November nineteen fifty seven, the workers' councils were destroyed.
Speaker 2: They actually held on for about a year, but their
Speaker 2: organizers kept getting arrested and often executed.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: All told, somewhere between twenty and fifty thousand Hungarians were
Speaker 2: killed in the fighting, and about three to seven thousand
Speaker 2: Russians were killed. Twenty two thousand people were convicted for
Speaker 2: participating in the revolution, and at least two hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty nine were executed around two hundred thousand Hungarians left
Speaker 2: the country while the Iron Curtain was down, which is
Speaker 2: actually one of the main other things that they accomplished.
Speaker 2: These twenty to fifty thousand Hungarians who died in that
Speaker 2: fighting helped get two hundred thousand people out of the country. Like,
Speaker 2: they didn't retake their country, but they helped get two
Speaker 2: hundred thousand people out of this nightmare country. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: border wasn't fully closed again until March nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 2: and this diaspora is called the fifty six ers. When asked,
Speaker 2: there was like a poll, the majority said the reason
Speaker 2: they left was because of fear because of this is
Speaker 2: not surprising, but you know, it was fear of reprisals
Speaker 2: and imprisonment and deportation to the USSR or within the USSR,
Speaker 2: A huge percentage of the people who'd been in the workers'
Speaker 2: councils fled. At one point, I think the only Western
Speaker 2: military action of the entire revolution, a Hungarian fled across
Speaker 2: the border to Austria and a Soviet soldier came after
Speaker 2: him crossed the border to try and keep this guy
Speaker 2: from running. So an Austrian soldier shot the Soviet soldier
Speaker 2: dead is the only border patrol person I've ever heard
Speaker 2: of where I'm like, I like you. Twenty thousand of
Speaker 2: the people who fled were Jews, which is very disproportionate.
Speaker 2: Best as I can tell, based on what I've read,
Speaker 2: most Jews weren't fleeing the supposedly anti Semitic revolution, but
Speaker 2: because they were part of this revolution and they feared
Speaker 2: the return of Soviet control.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But the one anti Semitic thing that I can point
Speaker 2: to that happened once they were in the refugee camps,
Speaker 2: there were anti Semitic riots when Hungarian non Jews decided
Speaker 2: the Jews were getting special treatment or whatever.
Speaker 3: The fuck Jesus fucking Christ.
Speaker 2: They were like, ah, you're getting first pick of country
Speaker 2: because we're weird and never changed fucking anti semitism. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I actually read a lot about the refugee camps
Speaker 2: and they're like kind of the best case scenario that
Speaker 2: I've ever read about, and like people were like, like
Speaker 2: there was a humanitarian worker, was like, never in my
Speaker 2: life have I seen people being like, all right, who
Speaker 2: wants Sweden get on this bus? Who wants you know, Germany?
Speaker 2: Get on this bus?
Speaker 3: Uh huh?
Speaker 2: And the Cool People Award for the week. The sides
Speaker 2: of the Hungarians who do this revolution goes to Austria.
Speaker 2: Austria went into overdrive to help people escape. They declared
Speaker 2: that they were going to offer asylum as early as
Speaker 2: October twenty eighth, like only a couple days after the
Speaker 2: revolution started.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: They set up two hundred and fifty seven refugee camps
Speaker 2: and volunteers poured in. These were like not concentration camps basically,
Speaker 2: as far as I can tell, volunteers like poured in
Speaker 2: both from Austria and internationally to help the refugees.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: And this was they were a neutral power, This wasn't
Speaker 2: a NATO power, and they had a socialist Minister of
Speaker 2: the Interior. And yeah, so the revolution failed. People learned
Speaker 2: the truth about the USSR. Peter Fryar was a journalist
Speaker 2: for the Daily Worker, a UK Communist Party magazine.
Speaker 3: Oh, I was wondering, group we're going to get to him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has only got a couple of line or
Speaker 2: so in it. Yeah, he wrote what he saw and
Speaker 2: about the censuring of his reports because the Communist Party
Speaker 2: of the UK was like, now you can't say any
Speaker 2: that shit. And he was kicked out of the Communist Party,
Speaker 2: and now we all know it tanked because they're the
Speaker 2: people who are like but I like censoring Peter Fryar's reports.
Speaker 2: Ever since, the world has tried to deny that it
Speaker 2: was a revolution led by workers councils. The USSR wants
Speaker 2: us to believe those capitalists. The US wants us to
Speaker 2: believe those capitalists. The revolution has been recuperated by Hungarian nationalists.
Speaker 2: At the fiftieth anniversary commemoration, the officials didn't mention the
Speaker 2: workers or their organization and reduced it to trade unionism.
Speaker 2: But if you want to know the ins and outs,
Speaker 2: there's among the sources in this episode. In the show notes,
Speaker 2: there's a libcom article with Storming Heaven in the title
Speaker 2: that has more than you want to know about all
Speaker 2: of those so much and has down to the details
Speaker 2: of the points of unity of like this council versus
Speaker 2: that council, and the organizational methods, and it's amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's the Hungarian revolution.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, you know, there's a lot of I guess
Speaker 3: I in some sense I have like like girl who's
Speaker 3: read a book about China, This looks like China brain,
Speaker 3: But you know, I think there's there's a really interesting
Speaker 3: thing that happens here where again, like like all of
Speaker 3: you know, the the establishment of workers councils the control
Speaker 3: production gets described by the liberal press as liberalization. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's not what liberalism is. Hold on, yeah, hold on,
Speaker 3: liberalism does not support the formation of the workers councils
Speaker 3: to sees controlled the media production. That is in fact communism.
Speaker 3: Like and it's interesting you see this this tendency like
Speaker 3: play out throughout the course of the of the twentieth century,
Speaker 3: where like the actual thing that's happening is that there's
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, like I said, you're like four
Speaker 3: or five currents, but there's there's always at all times
Speaker 3: in the capitalist countries and in the communist countries, like
Speaker 3: a third current they're fighting against, which is the tendency,
Speaker 3: which which is the workers councils. And this is a
Speaker 3: bunch of what like the uprisings in France May sixty eight,
Speaker 3: and this happens in Italy a bunch of times in
Speaker 3: sixty eight and again in like seventy seven, and in
Speaker 3: all of these different countries in like Spain and Algeria
Speaker 3: and like all of these different places, there are these revolutions.
Speaker 3: You see this also in like between like the prog
Speaker 3: Spring and Czechoslovakia, like all of these places for workers councils,
Speaker 3: and everyone goes, oh, these are liberal capitalist revolutions, and
Speaker 3: they're not. They're like that. There are revolutions that are
Speaker 3: about like like they are communists, right, they are communists.
Speaker 3: They want communism, they are, but you know, but they
Speaker 3: take all of the things that they were told about communism,
Speaker 3: about communism being the workers control the means of production
Speaker 3: very seriously, and they're like, Okay, how do you do this.
Speaker 3: You do this by you know, managing production democratically through councils,
Speaker 3: and this tradition of like the annihilation of memory. Like
Speaker 3: I wrote a piece a few years ago called When
Speaker 3: Communists Crushed the International Workers Movement. That's like sort of
Speaker 3: looking at this stuff. The thing that this reminds me
Speaker 3: a lot of is the way that Tanneman is rem
Speaker 3: We're like Chhaneman is also a protest starts with the
Speaker 3: student protest and then very quickly, just unbelievable numbers of
Speaker 3: workers show up, right, and you know, you have some
Speaker 3: similar things of workers showing the arm themselves. And if
Speaker 3: you read the reports of like what these people are
Speaker 3: talking about on the interviews they're giving, like they are
Speaker 3: also talking about like democratic control on the factories, and
Speaker 3: this is just gone for the matream accounts of it.
Speaker 3: Everyone remembers, like Channleman as a student protest that was
Speaker 3: for liberal democracy. And this is like the last of
Speaker 3: those kinds of things where, you know, because it's convenient
Speaker 3: for every side right for it to have been sort
Speaker 3: of like pro western like capitalist pro democracy protests. There's
Speaker 3: a whole lineage of movements that it's just that we're
Speaker 3: not that, We're never that didn't really want that, and
Speaker 3: like Ganlemen and at least you can point to the
Speaker 3: students and go like, well some of them wanted that,
Speaker 3: but right, you know, there's this whole lineage of these
Speaker 3: things that are workers troupments that just get erased because
Speaker 3: it's politically inconvenient for everyone, and because the idea that
Speaker 3: like you and the other people at your workplace who
Speaker 3: do the work should run it is so dangerous that
Speaker 3: everyone is willing to just like throw aside all of
Speaker 3: the ideological differences they have with each other. Would be
Speaker 3: like fuck it, eat shit.
Speaker 2: No, it makes sense. I mean It's like one of
Speaker 2: the things I've always realized, and not that these people
Speaker 2: are anarchists, but in this you know, anyone who desires
Speaker 2: state power and authority is always going to hate people
Speaker 2: who want actual democracy or want actual you know, bottom
Speaker 2: up control of society. And like, it's interesting because one
Speaker 2: of the things that I think about, I'm trying to
Speaker 2: think about why I'm doing this Tanky episode right now,
Speaker 2: because like, honestly, I am personally trying to get over
Speaker 2: some of my biases around some of this stuff, because
Speaker 2: I believe that the real threat right now is fascism.
Speaker 2: Right Fascism has captured the state power of the United
Speaker 2: States is the most powerful military of the world has
Speaker 2: ever seen. That's bad, you know, And but I think
Speaker 2: a lot of it for me get summed up in
Speaker 2: that quote from the forty nine year old truck driver
Speaker 2: who you know, was a military leader of the revolution,
Speaker 2: which is that like, when I think about the average fascist,
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, this person isn't in it for good reasons.
Speaker 2: Is doing a bad thing for bad reasons. And when
Speaker 2: I think about the average Tanky, I am thinking of
Speaker 2: someone who is doing a bad thing for good reasons.
Speaker 2: And I think that that difference matters, and I think
Speaker 2: that what we can try to do is challenge them
Speaker 2: on being like, well, don't do these things that keep
Speaker 2: happening historically where you all do really bad things. Stop
Speaker 2: doing the really bad things. Yeah, and go ahead.
Speaker 3: Well, I said, this is like, this is like these
Speaker 3: are conversations that are very difficult and suck. But like
Speaker 3: I kind of I almost weirdly think about it as
Speaker 3: it's almost like it's like de radicalization work in some sense. Right,
Speaker 3: there's something that you do on a personal level with
Speaker 3: the personal relationship you have with people, but also you know,
Speaker 3: like some of the people who I trust the most
Speaker 3: in my life are people who either like used to
Speaker 3: believe the stuff or believe some of it. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: you can, you know, you can do a lot of
Speaker 3: work to make sure that someone who's in it for
Speaker 3: the right reason and also has come to hold a
Speaker 3: bunch of very weird beliefs from like a bunch of
Speaker 3: shit on Twitter can be someone who you can trust
Speaker 3: to like watch your back as the fascist descent, and
Speaker 3: that's a really valuable thing. And like, both sides of
Speaker 3: this revolution are communists, so you can't hold one side
Speaker 3: up and then say, and I therefore hate communists, right
Speaker 3: because you're like, well, I just said I like one
Speaker 3: side of this, you know, and so we can challenge
Speaker 3: people to be the right side of this. And and
Speaker 3: I think for me the answer is political pluralism. Like
Speaker 3: I think that, you know, one of the things is
Speaker 3: you pointed out, like, Okay, so there's like sometimes capitalists
Speaker 3: within these movements or whatever, And there's capitalists in right
Speaker 3: wing people within this movement absolutely, just actually to a
Speaker 3: less degree than I actually thought going in. I still
Speaker 3: supported the revolution because I'm like, well, I believe in
Speaker 3: political pluralism. But but I think that one of these
Speaker 3: things that they're fighting for is like non forced collectivization.
Speaker 3: They're like, we want to collectivize because we want to collectiviz, yeah,
Speaker 3: not at gunpoint. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like, and if someone wants to go their own way
Speaker 2: and have a small farm where they're not exploiting anyone,
Speaker 2: let them do it, because the systems that you create
Speaker 2: to prevent someone from doing that are so much more
Speaker 2: evil than whatever harm is caused by a small producer.
Speaker 3: You know. And I don't know, well, and I think
Speaker 3: there's there's another principle there where it's like in a
Speaker 3: functional society, you can have political disagreements with someone that
Speaker 3: don't end in people being marched off to prison cells
Speaker 3: and execution plots. Right, Like, that's a thing that you
Speaker 3: should be able to have and it's not a like
Speaker 3: you must let Nazis exist. But also like I don't know, like,
Speaker 3: look what's happened to Eastern Europe after the Soviet block
Speaker 3: felt like were they were they successful in defeating like
Speaker 3: destroying Nazism in Eastern Europe forever? Like No, Yeah, you
Speaker 3: can't actually kill people's ideas, and you shouldn't kill people
Speaker 3: for their ideas even if they're awful terrible ideas. You
Speaker 3: can only prevent them from doing terrible things with it
Speaker 3: because of their ideas. Yeah, anyways, that's that's the moment
Speaker 3: we're in now. We are now in the people with
Speaker 3: terrible ideas have taken power. We need to stop them
Speaker 3: from doing it.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and we need to make common cause with the
Speaker 2: people that I just spent two hours trash talking.
Speaker 3: Hoorah. And so we have we have a podcast about this.
Speaker 3: It's called a could Happen Here. It's every day. It's
Speaker 3: actually like there's so many episodes you can listen to them.
Speaker 3: It's great. It's on wherever fine podcasts are sold, sold,
Speaker 3: distributed that one. Yeah, I'll sell you it could happen
Speaker 3: here for three bucks an episode. Just benmo me and
Speaker 3: I will send you an MP three file. I would
Speaker 3: see about as much as that Bundy as I would
Speaker 3: if someone, if fucking company was selling it.
Speaker 2: So like you know, I love to say that Sophie.
Speaker 3: No Ah no censored by the corporate media.
Speaker 2: Well that's it for this week, and when we come
Speaker 2: back next week we will have more Cool People Who
Speaker 2: Did Cool Stuff. That's always the outro we use. I
Speaker 2: don't know what you're talking about. Bye, everyone that was weird.
Speaker 2: I liked it. Thanks.
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