The Hungarian Revolution of 1956
On 23 October 2026 Hungary marks seventy years since the revolution of 1956. This film tells what happened: how Hungary came under a Soviet-backed dictatorship after the Second World War, how Stalin's death and Khrushchev's secret speech opened a crack, how students wrote sixteen demands and marched, why shots at the radio building turned a protest into an armed uprising, how Imre Nagy's government declared neutrality, and how a second Soviet intervention on 4 November crushed it while the world watched Suez. It gives each side's account in its own words, the casualty estimates historians use, the 200,000 refugees, and why the same October was called a counter-revolution until 1989. Follow the march across a map of Budapest, step through the twelve days, and trace the refugees' routes.
Twelve days in Budapest
Seventy years since the revolution of 1956.
A Soviet-backed state
Hungary after the Second World War.
The new course
Stalin dies, and Moscow lets Hungary try something softer.
A year of hope
Khrushchev attacks Stalin, and Poland pushes back.
Sixteen points
Students write down what they want.
The march
From a statue of a Polish general to the Parliament.
Shots at the radio
A protest becomes an uprising.
The first intervention
Soviet tanks enter the city, and the country rises.
The tanks pull back
For a few days it looked as if the revolution had won.
Neutrality
Hungary tries to leave the Soviet alliance, as war breaks out at Suez.
Morning, 4 November
The Soviet army returns in force.
The cost
Estimates of the dead, and what came after.
Two hundred thousand
The exodus across the border.
What to call it
A word that held for thirty-three years.
Twelve days
What the revolution left behind.
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