23 October
Commemoration of the
1956 Hungarian Revolution

23 October
Commemoration of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
(National holiday in Hungary)

On October 23, 1956, the events in Budapest marked the beginning of the Hungarian people's revolution against the dictatorship and their armed uprising against Soviet occupation.

In the second half of October 1956, protests against the communist dictatorship, mainly led by university students, spread throughout the country. On October 23, these protests in Budapest escalated into a revolutionary mass movement. What started as a demonstration of solidarity at the Bem statue quickly transformed into an anti-government mass rally. The crowd marched to the Parliament, where nearly two hundred thousand protesters gathered to hear Imre Nagy's speech, in which he promised reforms. Meanwhile, the protesters toppled the Stalin statue on Dózsa György Street, a symbol of the communist dictatorship.

By evening, the situation at the Hungarian Radio building had become a siege, and the rebels, who had gained access to firearms, occupied the building by dawn. The revolution was violently suppressed by Soviet troops, and the retribution by the Kádár regime, which was installed by the Soviet Union, followed soon after.

Naturally, following the crushing of the revolution, not only was it forbidden to celebrate October 23, but even referring to it as a revolution was prohibited. The official stance at the time was that an "counter-revolution" had occurred, organized by "reactionary" and "criminal elements." The memory of the revolution could be kept alive openly only by those who had emigrated abroad, while inside Hungary, it could only be discussed in secret.

In the late 1980s, as the system began to weaken, the true history of 1956 started to come to light. In 1988, people began demanding the rehabilitation of Imre Nagy and the executed martyrs, and in 1989, a year later, Imre Nagy and his companions were reburied in a ceremony attended by hundreds of thousands of people.

The symbolic significance of October 23 became evident when, on October 23, 1989, the then interim president, Mátyás Szűrös, proclaimed the founding of the Third Hungarian Republic in front of a hundred-thousand-strong crowd at the Parliament. The new, democratically elected National Assembly officially declared October 23 a national holiday in 1991.