Now It Is Told

The inside story of the Hungarian Revolution was told at last.

Western observers, flooding across Hungary's broken-down frontiers last October and November, reported the Battle of Budapest in vivid and memorable detail, witnessed the spontaneous unity of the Hungarian people and the intrepid actions of the Freedom Fighters and the Workers' Councils (TIME'S Man of the Year, Jan. 7). What was not told, because not known, was the story of what went on behind the shell-pocked fac,ades of Budapest's official buildings during the freedom fight. What happened inside the Communist leadership? At what point did the Russian MVD and the Soviet army take over? Last week a U.N. committee, which has been investigating Soviet intervention in Hungary, published a report that gave as thoroughgoing an answer as history will probably ever have.

Newly spelled out, the Hungarian Revolution is a story of Communist government at gunpoint during the first four days of Hungary's brief week of freedom, of a desperate series of compromises and expedients by which the Soviet military leaders managed to keep some hold on the reins of government while their heavy divisions, long held in preparation, could be brought up. Premier Imre Nagy emerges, not as the leader of the insurrection, but as a pliable tool of the Russians who suddenly took a chance on a situation and found himself a hero. It is a tale of bleak treachery at a "peace" banquet, of secret visits by trigger-happy Soviet bigwigs, of political abduction.

The Soviet Union did everything to prevent the story's being told; it sealed up Hungary's borders and even denied entry to the U.N. committee. But among the 193,000 people who had fled the country, the committee found many who had played intimate roles in party and government, before and during the Revolution. Under exhaustive examination, these witnesses produced all the evidence needed, coupled with the voluminous documentation provided by Communist and revolutionary press reports, for the committee to make a clear-voiced indictment of Soviet intervention in Hungary.

Its conclusion: "A survey of the movement of Soviet forces shows that . . . there existed a definite plan for the reconquest and military subjugation of Hungary. This plan in fact was carried through fully. Contrary to the contentions of the Soviet government that the Hungarian revolution was inspired by Capitalist elements residing outside Hungary, the committee cannot but conclude that the Hungarian resistance to the second Soviet intervention was a heroic demonstration of the will of the Hungarian people to fight for their national independence."

U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge urged a special meeting of the 24 U.N. members who had voted to get up the committee for a full discussion of its findings.

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