Why did the Hungarians protest and react so much about Khrushchevs secret speech?

Upvote:2

What was written above is all correct; may be just some psychological addendum to it: a basic dogma of communism was from the beginning on (that means before 1917), that the Communist Party, and especially Lenin and later also Stalin are always right. Always. It was especially hard to keep that up in the 30s and 40s of the 20th century, when people who were previously highly regarded were suddenly told to be Western spies and agents. For example Leo Trotsky or Kamenev or Zinovjev or ... And people, who were regarded previously very low were suddenly not that bad. For example Adolf Hitler, with whom the Soviet Union has signed an agreement, and practically the Soviet Union has delivered goods to Nazi Germany just until the day of Germany's attack in World War II. The Krushchev speech was from the point very important that it was the very first time in history when a leading communist official has spoken out that

  • Stalin was not always right
  • it was bad that Stalin has made cleanings among Communist Party members, and has jailed or let kill party members based upon fake accusations

So the speech was attacking a basic ideological point upon which the Communist doctrine was built up: it said that the Communist Party has acted in some cases not right and unjust.

One "interesting" detail of Krushchev's speech: it has attacked Stalin's fake handling of members of the Communist Party, but it has not spoken about the millions and millions of non party members in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe who were also handled in a similar way.

Upvote:5

Khrushchev gave his speech to a closed session of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 25 February 1956. The contents of the speech was subsequently disseminated to a select group by being read to groups of party activists and “closed” local party meetings.

Even though knowledge of the speech was limited to a select group, that was enough to cause a sense of shock and disillusionment throughout the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc. It damaged Stalin’s reputation and, more importantly, it damaged the perception of the political system as a whole.

In June 1956, Mátyás Rákosi, was forced to "resign" as General Secretary of the Party under pressure from the Soviet Politburo. Rákosi had previously described himself as "Stalin's best Hungarian disciple" and "Stalin's best pupil". With the denunciation of Stalin, Rákosi's days were clearly numbered. He was replaced by his former second-in-command, Ernő Gerő.

After Rákosi's resignation, students, writers, and journalists became more active (and more critical!) in politics. Students and journalists started a series of intellectual forums discussing and debating the problems that Hungary then faced. The forums became incredibly popular with thousands of participants. The debates generated protests, and those protests grew. They came to a head in October 1956.

The Hungarian Revolution began on 23 October 1956. It was driven by the students who had participated in the forums.

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