Imre Nagy, Radio Address Announcing the Formation and the Program of a New Government. October 28, 1956
During the course of the past week-bloody events took place with tragic rapidity. The fatal consequences of the terrible mistakes and crimes of these past 10 years unfold before us in these painful events which we are witnessing and in which we are participating. During the course of 1,000 years of history, destiny was not sparing in scourging our people and nation. But such a thing has never before afflicted our country.
The government condemns the viewpoints according to which the present formidable movement is a counterrevolution. Without doubt, as always happens at times of great popular movements, this movement too was used by criminal elements to compromise it and commit common criminal acts. It is also a fact that reactionary and counterrevolutionary elements had penetrated into the movement with the aim of overthrowing the popular democratic regime.
But it is also indisputable that in these stirrings a great national and democratic movement, embracing and unifying all our people, developed with elemental force. This movement aims at guaranteeing our national freedom, independence, and sovereignty, of advancing our society, our economic and political system on the way of democracy-for this is the only foundation for socialism in our country. This great movement exploded because of the grave crimes committed during the past historic period.
The situation was further aggravated by the fact that up to the very last, the party leadership had not decided to break finally with the old and criminal policy. It is this above all which led to the tragic fratricidal fight in which so many patriots died on both sides. In the course of these battles was born the government of democratic national unity, independence, and socialism which will become the true expression of the will of the people. This is the firm resolution of the government…
The government wishes to rest in the first place on the support of the fighting Hungarian working class, but also, of course, on the support of the entire Hungarian working population. We have decided to work out a broad program, in the framework of which we wish to settle old and justified demands and rectify damages to the satisfaction of the working class, among other things on the question of wages and work norms, the raising of minimum pay in the lowest wage brackets and of the smallest pensions, taking into account the number of years worked, and the raising of family allowances …
The Hungarian Government has come to an agreement with the Soviet Government that the Soviet forces shall withdraw immediately from Budapest and that simultaneously with the formation of our new Army they shall evacuate the city’s territory. The Hungarian Government will initiate negotiations in order to settle relations between the Hungarian People’s Republic and the Soviet Union, among other things with regard to the withdrawal of Soviet forces stationed in Hungary, in the spirit of Soviet-Hungarian friendship and the principle of the mutual equality and the national independence of socialist countries.
After the reestablishment of order we shall organize a new and unified state police force and we shall dissolve the organs of state security. No one who took part in the armed fighting need fear further reprisals. The government will put proposals before the National Assembly for the restoration of the emblem of Kossuth as the national emblem and the observance of March 15 once again as a national holiday.
People of Hungary!
In these hours of bitterness and strife one is prone to see only the dark side of the past twelve years. We must not let our views become clouded. These twelve years contain lasting, ineradicable, historic achievements which you, Hungarian workers, peasants, and intellectuals, under the leadership of the Hungarian Workers Party brought into being by virtue of hard labor and sacrifice. Our renascent popular democracy relies on the strength and self-sacrifice which you have displayed in our founding labors and which constitute the best guarantee of our country’s happier future.
Source: Paul E. Zinner, ed., National Communism and Popular Revolt in Eastern Europe (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956), pp. 428-32.