a= RASA PRR ase. Ta SA > INTERVIEW WITH PREMIER KADAR ~%& —- 4d “they _ The first is the shortcom- 7's that actually existed in © methods of leadership of © Hungarian Working peo- Hes? party and government, ‘}ethods which seriously af- “cted the bonds of the party government with the | 7asses, the second cause is that le it was correct to see Ortcomings the way in which Fiyaed Were criticized was bad. ) example, people inside the : ‘i ty who saw the shortcom- Oe most clearly were wrong 7, carrying on the discussion ‘Mtside the party. a Likewise there were ques- aS that could have been ‘Mtlled within the government 4{t which were talked about Mthe streets. Tarte third cause was that Counter-revolution, encour- “Sed by certain imperialistic tes, chose the most oppor- ot © moment and made use the whole movement for its wa ends. . These three.causes were no- gable throughout the course _, *Vvents and in the different } > %Ups of people who took part A them, Bice: iy Tt is true that in the first ) gconstration on October 23 ; w Slogans put forward were ,! the democratisation of the Marty and the government, slo- 4S that were not against so- “alism, _ But from the very first ®ning the hand of reaction ’ felt. Most of the students © took part in this demon- pation had no intention of ben erowing the regime. They 1e€ved it was a spontaneous » | “Vement. »» But certain facts — such as €s’ declaration. admitting - it was known in advance what was going to happen in 7 4 ceery—show the truth of © matter.” : th dar went into great detail Sut the course the October €monstrations took. Sum- : ‘Mrizea, this is his explana- tion: After the fighting was over, & people with arms were fies: : af Sy in front of the house Hern Gero, former first sec- : ty of the Hungarian Work- People’s party. They were d where they had got t guns. They declared that on the Hiss: at midday, before the ig poration, they were told yl this evening to a certain ’e on Szabadsag Hill and Will find hidden arms.” By SAM RUSSELL BUDAPEST .. . Strife has Young people who had dem- onstrated before the monu- ment of General Bem (Polish hero of Hungary’s 1848 revo- lution) were sent off obvious- ly by plan in three directions. The first group went to parlia- ment with a list of demands. The second attacked the Stalin statue. : The third was sent to the radio station to insist on the. broadcasting of their 15 de- mands, and it was there that the first shots were fired. It is important to under- stand the events—to know that it was the demonstrators who opened fire on the soldiers who were guarding the radio. The soldiers had received a formal order not to use their arms. Next day Hungarian troops sent to protect differ- ent posts had only blank cart- ridges, and the tanks ‘had noth- ing with which to fire. The government had done all in its power to avoid blood- shed, Soldiers guarding the radio who were attacked that first evening demanded that the order to fire be given so that they could defend them- selves. That order was given only when the officer commanding the defence of the radio was killed. But while the demonstrators were being’ sent off in three directions, other forces had al- ready gone into action. After 7 p.m. the following events took place: An armed group took pos- session of the International Telephone Centre. Another group got hold of a truck depot of 60 vehicles. A third attacked the party newspaper Szabad Nep and its printing press. nger triumphed BUDAPEST In a sensational statement outlining for the first time the whole course of events ‘ha Hungary, Premier Janos Kadar has declared that if counter-revolution had triumph- M there would have been a danger of a w orld war. nae _ What happened was not only necessary tor the defense of socialism, but of Peace, Kadar said in an interview given to foreign correspondents here. again left scars on the city A fourth stormed a lamp plant which had been convert- ed to arms production. A fifth attacked a munitions dump on Timoth Street. Then with the trucks, the counter- revolutionaries went to Timoth Street to the lamp factory and earried off a large quantity of arms and munitions. Things began to take place on a bigger scale. It was clear that this was a well prepared military campaign — far from what the young students who had started the demonstration had _ believed. After this,.events developed rather differently in Budapest from the way they did in the provinces. In Budapest the battle be- came more and more difficult and confusing, as the govern- ment, the army and the other units of Hungarian defence and the Soviet Army wished to reduce bloodshed to the minimum. : The defense forces never at- tacked and only protected the posts that were in danger. It wasn’t a question of a battle fought along military lines, as a certain number of unarmed demonstrators were still carried away by slogans for democratization which masked the activities of the counter-revolutionaries. The order given not to fire in these conditions only caus- ed confusion among the Hun- garian soldiers. Under the shelter of the un- armed demonstrators the arm- ed group attacked their objec- tives and the defense forces and disarmed them. Soldiers even left their tanks without battle—and then it be- came apparent that in this so- called peaceful demonstration there were people who knew how to drive tanks and knew where they. were. going in them. In the provinces it was quite different. In the towns, dem- onstrators used slogans which did not refer to the socialist cause. After the’ demonstrations, people went home. During this time armed groups of 20 to 50 men rushed rapidly from village to village —10 or 15 villages in several hours — massacring all the Communists they found, presi- dents of the local councils, members of the police, ordin- ary workers and peasants. The counter-revolutionaries who were behind the move- ment maneouvred with great skill. Perhaps there was never a counter-revolution so clev- erly carried out. They took great pains not to reveal their real aims but marched behind slogans of a revolutionary kind, not against socialism. As soon as they thought the game was won, they aban- doned this camouflage. It was then that the worst White Ter- ror openly took place and from then on the truth became clearer. Many combatants began to give up their arms. The terror- ists pretended to be in favor of a cease-fire, which was only applied unilaterally to the de- fense forces of Nagy’s govern- ment. Soviet forces were with- drawn from Budapest. And it was then that the at- tack on the party centre of Budapest took place in which it is now known that 60 peo- ple, including Imre Mezo, sec- retary of the city party, were massacred. Indescribable scenes took place. Living men had their hearts and other organs torn out. A woman was kicked to death. . The attack was carried on in the same way at different centres. Thus began the counter-rev- olutionary massacres at Buda- pest and at Csepel. That after- noon the trees on Stalin Ave- nue and the woods of the town were full of hanged people. These events continued dur- ing the period of Nagy’s gov- ernment. Just before he and other leaders had taken their decis- ion to denounce the govern- ment and to put an end to the situation, posts were being handed out to everyone in the ministerial offices. Ambitions had been reveal- ed by reaction in the speech made by Cardinal Mindszenty on November 3, which called for a reversion to capitalism. A .eader of the party of small landowners, Istvan Szabo, declared it would work on its 1930 program—when Szabo owned over 3,000 acres of land. It was obvious that in this program agrarian reform played no part. Imre Nagy had allowed NOVEMBER 30, 1956 — himself to be drawn more and more to the right without look- ing to see what was happen- ing down below in the streets flowing with blood. Therefore, in order not to let the White terror continue and the power of the people be destroyed, the Kadar gov- ernment decided to ask for the help of the Soviet Army to save socialism and peace. The counter-revolution was defeated in several hours. In Budapest the desire to reduce destruction to the minimum meant that the retaking of sev- eral points of resistance lasted one or two more days. From this moment the coun- ter-revolution changed its tac- tics. It substituted for arms the call to boycott and strike. It was trying again to tdke refuge behind various slo- gans which could still influ- ence certain sections of peo- ple, including the working class. It was for example, asking for the return of Nagy at the head of the government. It was not difficult to guess where this idea. came from — Cardinal Mindszenty (now in the U.S. legation)—who was also expressing his preference for the Nagy government. These political maneouvres were combined with the after- math of the terror and the systematic spreading of false rumors. It was now a matter of mak- ing the truth known to the workers, who were left politi- cally confused by these events especially as a result of hear- ing only about mistakes or fail- ures. , Kadar concluded: “I have personally gone to speak to the workers in many factories, where I have shown that the working class must not allow itself to be led by ele- ments which are foreign to it and by foreign ideas. “Now there is no doubt that the large majority of workers want to return to normal life and work. “We are convinced of the sucess of the defence and the consolidation of the socialist victories in Hungary, of new progress with the correction of the mistakes of the past. “We will be understood by the people. The people know that the party was right on the fundamental questions of the nationalisation of factories, collectivisation of the land, and socialist construction. “The Hungarian people are proud of their Socialist re- gime and will not allow it to be destroyed. “If the counter-revolution- aries had triumphed in Hun- gary there would have been direct danger of a new war. “The facts prove that the aims were to penetrate a cor- ner of the camp of the Social- ist countries so as to compro- mise the whole. “Imre Nagy’s call to the United Nations under the pre- text of neutrality, in reality put Hungary .and other coun- tries on the brink of war.” PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 3 EDS AME AR I ain EG Rh