It first appeared that the revolution might succeed. Our Radio Free Europe had been urging the captive nations in Eastern Europe to throw off their Russian chains, and we had implied we would help. We did not lift a finger for them after that initial encouragement, which was absolutely heartbreaking for this 14-year-old. As it turned out, the Soviets responded with crushing force on Nov. 4, 1956, killing thousands of brave Hungarians and installing a repressive leader.
That, however, is not the end of the story. I traveled to Hungary in 1964 to see how things stood. Almost everywhere I went, you could see that the embers of freedom were still burning. The guides, border guards and many folks on the street were friendly and pleased to see Americans. Some made guarded, but favorable, reference to the uprising. It was a marked contrast to the gloomy atmosphere and armed military presence I encountered in East Berlin and Czechoslovakia, which were also under Soviet occupation. While the uprising failed, the Soviets applied a lighter touch of suppression in Hungary because of it.
Hungary was finally freed of Russian control when the Soviet Union crumbled in December 1991. The country enjoyed a period of democracy until Orban began turning it into a dictatorship. The legacy of the Hungarians’ desire for freedom gradually grew in response, resulting in Orban being cast from power by a two-thirds vote in the April election — too much to overturn with false claims of election fraud.
The other two members of the strong-man troika should take heed. Putin has such a strong grip on power that it may be hard for Russians to topple him, although the populace has become restive because of the more than 1 million dead and wounded suffered in his Ukraine war. It is not too late, however, for Americans to take heart from the Hungarian freedom-lovers and forge our own rebirth of freedom during this 250th commemoration of our casting off the chains of the British monarch.
The U.S. has a tradition of freedom more deeply ingrained than the good people of Hungary. Americans need to organize, resist and vote to reject the repressive agenda being imposed by America’s member of the strongman troika. A strong voter turnout for the May primary and November general election is critical to getting the job done.
Jones is a Vietnam combat veteran who served eight years as a Republican Idaho attorney general (1983-91) and 12 years as a justice on the Idaho Supreme Court (2005-17). He also publishes at substack.com/@jjcommontater.