Welcome back to another deep dive. Today, we
are starting somewhere. Well, somewhere incredibly
grim. I want you to picture a cemetery in Budapest.
Right. It's called the New Public Cemetery, and
we're in a very specific part of it, Section
301. And the date is June 1989. Exactly. And
there's this massive crowd. I mean, something
like 200 ,000 people. Just a sea of humanity.
It was one of those moments where the air just
feels heavy. You know, the entire country is
holding its breath. And Section 301, well, it
wasn't a place of honor back then. Not at all.
It was dumping ground. It was the overgrown,
forgotten corner where the regime buried the
people they wanted everyone to forget. And they
were all there to dig someone up. Imre Nagy.
But when I was reading through the source material
you sent over, the details of how they found
him, it just it stopped me cold. I mean, we talk
about political enemies being silenced, but this
was this was something else. It's the kind of
detail that sounds like fiction, but it's documented
fact. When they finally exhumed the body, they
found him buried face down. Face down. Face down.
And. It gets worse. How does it get worse than
that? His hands and feet were bound with barbed
wire. Barbed wire in the grave. In the grave.
Yeah. I just, I don't understand that. Yeah.
Why? What is the point of that? He's dead. He's
been executed. Why? Why the wire? Why bury him
face down? And that's the question that really
sets the stage for everything we're going to
talk about today. Burying someone face down isn't,
you know, standard procedure. Obviously not.
It's actually an old superstition in that part
of the world. A superstition? Yeah. You bury
a man face down so his spirit can't find its
way back to haunt the living. It's an act of
pure fear. No. And the barbed wire, that was
hatred. That was a message. It said, even in
death, you are our prisoner. You are a criminal.
You don't deserve rest. That is genuinely terrifying.
It implies that the people who killed him were,
what, still scared of him? 30 years later? They
were. And rightly so. Because this man, Imri
Nagy. He was the ghost that haunted the Hungarian
communist regime for three decades. But here's
the part I'm having trouble wrapping my head
around. The paradox of it all. Imre Nagy wasn't
some capitalist crusader from the West. He wasn't
a spy for the CIA. He was a communist, a lifelong
card carrying comrades. Let's build the future
kind of communist. That's the central tension.
He wasn't an outsider. Yeah. He was one of them.
He was a man who spent years in Moscow. Right.
He even worked for the Soviet secret police at
one point. He was a true believer. And yet he
ends up being the face of the 1956 revolution
against the Soviet Union. He becomes the ultimate
martyr for Hungarian independence. It's just
a massive pivot. How do you go from being an
NKVD informer, which we definitely need to get
into that because that is a bombshell, to being
the guy they're burying face down in the dirt
for defying them? To understand that, we can't
just look at the statue of the hero. We have
to look at the messiness of the man. We have
to look at the compromises, the fear, and the
slow, reluctant radicalization. So our mission
today is to figure out who this guy actually
was. Was he a hero, a traitor, or, you know,
something much more complicated? I think he was
both at different times. And that's what makes
him so fascinating. Okay, let's go back, way
back, before the revolution, before the barbed
wire. Let's go to 1896. He's born in Kapusvar.
This is still the Austro -Hungarian Empire. What
kind of world is he born into? He's born into,
well, the bottom rung of the ladder. His father
was a carriage driver for the local county office.
His mother was a maid. So working class. Deeply.
These are people who had left the peasantry to
move to the town. But they were barely, and I
mean barely, scraping by. So not part of the
intellectual elite. Oh, far from it. Nagy didn't
grow up discussing philosophy in salons. He grew
up seeing his parents work themselves to the
bone. And that peasant identity, that connection
to the soil, to the little man, that never really
left him. You can almost see it in the pictures
of him. You can. Even when he was prime minister,
he wore these slightly ill -fitting suits. He
had that big walrus mustache. He looked like
a genial grandfather from the village, not a
dictator. And I saw a note that he wasn't exactly
a star student either. No, not initially. He
actually dropped out of the gymnasium, which
is, you know, like the academic high school.
Right. Because he wasn't performing well and
the family just didn't have the money. He became
a locksmith's apprentice. A locksmith. That's
a very practical blue -collar start for a future...
revolutionary leader. It crowns him, doesn't
it? Yeah. He did eventually go back to school,
a commercial trade school, and he did better.
But just as he's starting to figure out his life,
history intervenes. 1914, World War I. The machine
that just chewed up an entire generation. Exactly.
Nagy is drafted into the Austro -Hungarian army
in 1915. He's sent to the Italian front first.
And we have to imagine what that was like. The
Isonzo battles were horrific. Just brutal, yeah.
Trench warfare in the mountains. He gets wounded
there. But he recovers. And then, talk about
bad luck, he gets sent to the Eastern Front to
fight the Russians. And this is where the story
really takes a turn. Because he doesn't just
fight, he gets captured. Right. It's 1916. The
Brusilov Offensive. This was a massive Russian
attack that just shattered the Austro -Hungarian
lines. Nagy is wounded again. shrapnel in the
leg, I believe, and he's taken prisoner by the
Imperial Russian Army. Okay, so picture this.
You're a Hungarian boy, a locksmith, you're wounded,
and now you're being hauled off to Russia. And
not just anywhere in Russia. They send him to
Siberia. Camp Berezovka, near Lake Baikal. Deep,
deep Siberia. And you have to understand the
atmosphere of these POW camps. It wasn't just
sitting around playing cards. These camps were
huge. overcrowded, and they were boiling with
political agitation. Because this is right around
the time the Russian Revolution is kicking off,
right? 1917. Exactly. The world is collapsing
outside the fences. The czar is overthrown. The
Bolsheviks are rising. And inside the camps,
you have these red agitators coming in, talking
to the prisoners. And what are they telling them?
They're saying, why are you fighting for the
emperor? Why are you fighting for the rich men
who sent you here to die? They don't care about
you. Join us. Join the revolution. And for a
poor kid from Kaposvar, that must have sounded
pretty good. It did. He listens. He's young.
He's from a poor background. And the Marxist
message makes perfect sense to him. It explains
why he's hungry. It explains why his father was
poor. It gives him a framework for the whole
world. So he makes a choice. He does. By 1918,
the Russian Civil War is raging, and Nagy chooses
a side. He joins the Red Army. He joins the guys
who captured him. He joins the ideological movement.
He fights in the Russian Civil War for the Bolsheviks.
He officially joins the Communist Party in 1920.
He is by this point fully radicalized. Now hold
on, because this is where we hit the first major
controversy. The dark rumor. I saw this in the
notes and I genuinely did a double take. There
is a file or an allegation called the Urovsky
document. Ah, yes. The Romanov execution. Tell
me if I'm reading this right. There is a theory,
a serious theory at one point, that Imran Nagy
was one of the guards, or maybe even one of the
executioners, who killed the Tsar and his family
in that basement in Ekaterinburg. That is the
allegation. It's one of those historical phantom
stories that just won't die. Because if that's
true, I mean, that changes everything. The man
who becomes a hero of liberty was the guy who
shot the Romanov daughters. Okay, so let's break
it down. The rumor comes from lists of names
found later on, and there was a name Imran Nagy.
on a list of people in the squad. Right. And
for a long time, anti -communist historians and
even some Soviet propagandists later on used
this to paint him as a ruthless butcher from
the very beginning. But is it him? Imre Nagy
sounds like it could be a pretty common name
like John Smith in Hungary. That's exactly the
problem. Nagy just means big or great. It's incredibly
common. And Imre is a standard first name. So
what do serious historians think now? Serious
historians, people like Ivan Plotnikov, who have
combed through the actual archives of the Romanov
execution, have largely debunked this. The actual
execution squad was mostly ethnic Russians, Yurovsky,
Nikolin, Medvedev. There were some Latvians involved,
but the idea that our Imre Nagy was there is
almost certainly false. So it's a case of mistaken
identity that got weaponized. Most likely. There
were plenty of Hungarian POWs who joined the
Bolsheviks. But the chances of him being in that
specific basement at that specific time are slim
to none. Still, the fact that the rumor even
exists tells you something. It does. It tells
you that he was in the mix. He wasn't on the
sidelines. He was a soldier for the Bolshevik
cause. No question about it. Okay, so he probably
didn't kill the Tsar. But he's a trained revolutionary
now. The Civil War ends. It's 1921. And he goes
back to Hungary. He returns home. But Hungary
has changed, too. There was a brief communist
revolution in Hungary in 1919 under a guy named
Bela Kun. But it failed miserably. It was crushed.
So now there's a right -wing authoritarian government
in power. And communism is illegal. So Nagy is
basically an undercover agent. In theory, yes.
He's supposed to be building these secret underground
networks for the party. But here's the funny
thing about Emre Nagy, and this is a recurring
theme. He was terrible at being a spy. The locksmith
couldn't pick the lock. He just didn't have the
temperament for it, for all the cloak and dagger
stuff. He was an open guy. He liked to talk to
people. He got a job at an insurance company,
the first Hungarian general insurance, and tried
to organize trade unions. But he was clumsy about
it. He kept getting arrested. He just struggled
with the whole clandestine lifestyle. And I read
somewhere that he actually got in trouble with
the party for being too legal. Yes. This is crucial
to understanding it. He was expelled from the
party briefly for... Right deviancy. Right deviancy.
That sounds like a completely made up condition.
What does that even mean? Well, in the rigid
world of 1920s communism, left usually meant
radical, violent, revolutionary. Right. Meant
moderate, reformist, willing to compromise. Okay.
Nagy argued that instead of doing all this illegal
underground stuff that just got everyone arrested,
they should try to work legally. Maybe run for
parliament. Push for land reform through the
existing system. And the hardliners hated that.
They despised it. They thought it was soft. They
thought it was bourgeois. So they kicked him
out. He eventually got back in. But this tag
of being a rightist, a moderate, it stuck to
him for his entire life. So he's struggling in
Hungary. The police are watching him. He's failing
at the underground stuff. So in 1929, he decides
to get out. He goes back to the mothership. He
goes to Moscow. And this begins really the most
difficult, the most dangerous, and I think the
most morally complex period of his life, the
Moscow years, 1930 to 1944. The era of Stalin.
The Great Terror. It's hard to overstate how
dangerous Moscow was for a foreign communist
in the 1930s. It was a death trap. Stalin was
paranoid. He was purging everyone. The Hungarian
Communist Party in exile was absolutely decimated.
Really? Oh, yeah. Bela Kun, the leader. Executed.
Most of leadership. Shot or sent to the gulag.
It was a meat grinder. If you looked at someone
the wrong way, you disappeared. If you didn't
clap loud enough at a speech, you disappeared.
But Nagy didn't disappear. He survived. And not
only did he survive, he worked at a prestigious
institute, the International Agrarian Institute.
How did he pull that off? And this is the part
that really hurts the hero narrative. This is
where we have to talk about Agent Volodia. Agent
Volodia. That was his codename. That was his
codename. In the late 1980s, after the archives
opened up a bit, documents came out that confirmed
what many had suspected. From 1933 to 1941, Imre
Nagy was an informer for the NKVD. The Soviet
secret police. Stalin's secret police. I want
to pause here because this is heavy. We're talking
about the man who is supposed to be the symbol
of freedom. And he was snitching on his friends
to Stalin's executioners. That is the reality.
The files are there. He supplied information.
He wrote reports on his fellow Hungarian exiles.
Do we know? Do we know if anyone died because
of what he wrote? It's murky. The files list
names of people he reported on. And yes, some
of those people were arrested and executed, whether
his report was the smoking gun or just one piece
of a much larger puzzle. But he cooperated. There
is no doubt that he cooperated. Yeah. The NKVD
files praise him. They called him a qualified
agent with great initiative. They liked him because
he was that genial, sociable guy. People trusted
him. He would have a drink with you, listen to
your complaints about the party, and then he
would report it. God, that's chilling. It's almost
worse than being a thug. It's the betrayal of
intimacy. It is. But, and I'm not excusing it,
just trying to contextualize it, you have to
ask yourself. What was the alternative? In Solon's
Moscow, you had two choices. You cooperate or
you die. There was no third option. Nagy was
a survivor. He had a wife, a daughter. He chose
survival. It's the classic totalitarian trap.
Everyone becomes complicit because everyone is
terrified. So this stain, this secret, he carries
it with him. I think it ate away at him. Some
historians argue that his heroism in 1956 was,
in a way, an attempt to wash away the sins of
Moscow years. A redemption arc. Maybe. But the
Soviets didn't see it that way at the time. To
them, he was a loyal asset. That's why when World
War II ends and the Red Army liberates Hungary,
they bring Nagy back with them. Because they
trust him. They think, here's a guy we can trust.
He's Volodya. He's our man. So 1945 comes around.
The Nazis are defeated. The Soviets are in control
of Eastern Europe. Nagy comes back to Hungary,
and he gets a big job. Minister of Agriculture.
And this is where the good Nagy really starts
to emerge. Hungary at the time was a country
of massive inequality. You had these huge estates
owned by aristocrats and then millions of peasants
with basically nothing. Right. Nagy oversees
the land reform. He breaks up the biggest states
and gives land to the peasants. Which must have
made him incredibly popular. He was a hero to
the countryside. For millions of people, Nagy
Imre... became a household name, not because
of some complex ideology, but because he gave
us our farm. It was tangible. But he also had
a stint as minister of the interior. That's the
police. That's the hard power. Yes. And we can't
ignore that part. He wasn't innocent there either.
He oversaw the expulsion of ethnic Germans from
Hungary after the war. How many people are we
talking about? Hundreds of thousands of people
kicked out of their homes, forced to leave just
because of their ethnicity. So again, we see
the duality. He's giving land to one group with
one hand and kicking another group out with the
other. He's a functionary of the state. But he's
still not the top dog yet. There's someone above
him, the villain of our story, really. Machias
Rokosi. Oh, Rokosi. If you were casting a movie,
Rokosi is the cartoon villain. Short, bald, thick
neck, and absolutely ruthless. He actually bragged
about being Stalin's best disciple. I've heard
the term salami tactics associated with him.
What was that? That was his phrase. He described
how he destroyed all the non -communist parties
slice by slice, like you'd cut up a salami. First,
you accuse them of being fascist. Then you arrest
their leaders. Then you ban their meetings slice
by slice until there's nothing left but the Communist
Party. And under Rakosi, Hungary was a nightmare.
A total police state. The AVH, the secret police,
was everywhere. People were disappearing in the
middle of the night. There were show trials.
It was basically the Moscow Terror. Imported
directly to Budapest. But then 1953 happens.
Stalin dies. And the earth moves. Stalin's death
changed everything. The new leadership in Moscow,
Khrushchev, Malenkov, they looked at Rokosi and
they thought, this guy is too intense. He's going
to cause an explosion. They wanted to de -escalate.
They wanted a softer communism. So they call
the Hungarian leadership to Moscow. And they
basically tell Rokosi, you're done being prime
minister. We need someone nicer. And who is the
nice face of Hungarian communism? Imre Nagy,
the land reform guy, the peasant grandpa, the
moderate. So Nagy becomes prime minister in 1953,
and he introduces what he calls the new course.
What was that? It was like opening a window in
a stuffy, smoke -filled room. The new course
was all about shifting focus away from heavy
industry, building tanks and steel mills, and
towards consumer goods. Things people actually
need. Food, clothes, housing. He stopped the
terror. He closed the internment camps. He released
political prisoners. He made life, well, livable.
He gave people hope. He did. For the first time
in years, people weren't terrified of a knock
on the door at 3 a .m. And for that, the people
loved him. But the party apparatus, the hardliners,
they hated him for it. And Rikosi was still lurking,
right? He wasn't gone. No, this was the problem.
Rikosi was forced to give up the prime ministership,
but he was still the head of the party. So it
was this constant power struggle. Good cop versus
bad cop. And Nagy, being the rightist, the moderate,
he just didn't have the killer instinct that
Rokosi had. So what happened? How did Rokosi
win? The winds shifted in Moscow again. The hardliners
got a bit more influence back. Rokosi seized
the moment. He went to Moscow, whispered in their
ears that Nagy was incompetent, that he was destroying
the socialist economy, that he was weak. And
the Soviets bought it. They did. In April 1955,
Nagy is fired, sacked. And not just fired, but
stripped of all his positions. He's kicked out
of the party. He's a nobody again, a non -person.
That must have been devastating for him personally.
Personally, yes. He had a heart attack. He became
very depressed. But politically, it was the best
thing that could have happened to his legacy.
How so? Because it made him a martyr while he
was still alive. If he had stayed in power, he
would have had to make compromises. He would
have eventually disappointed people. But by being
kicked out by the hated Rakosi, he remained pure
in their minds. He became the symbol of everything
that could have been. The great hope. The great
hope. The intellectuals, the writers, the students,
they all rallied around the idea of Imre Nagy.
Which brings us to 1956. The pressure cooker
is just about to blow. Yeah. Khrushchev gives
his secret speech condemning Stalin. In Poland,
there are riots. And in Hungary, people are starting
to talk loudly. And this is where the Petufi
Circle comes in. Yes, named after Sandor Petufi,
the great poet of the 1848 revolution. It started
as a debating club for young communists, but
it just turned into an explosion of dissent.
What were they debating? Everything. They were
openly criticizing the regime. Thousands of people
would show up to these debates. Nagy didn't go.
He was always very cautious. But his name was
on everyone's lips. We want Nagy back. We want
the new course. And that leads us to October
23rd, 1956. The day it all begins. It starts
as a student protest. A solidarity march for
the Poles. They have a list of 16 demands. Free
press. Free elections. Soviet troops out. And
number one on the list. Bring back Imre Nagy.
The crowd grows. Workers join in. It becomes
massive. We're talking 200 ,000 people. They
march to the parliament. They are chanting for
Nagy. Nagy Imre! Nagy Imre! Now you'd think Nagy
would be thrilled. This is his moment. The people
are calling for him. But he wasn't. He was terrified.
Why? You have to remember, he's an old Bolshevik.
He believes in party discipline. He sees a disorderly
mob in the street. And he thinks, anarchy. He
thinks counter -revolution. Right. He didn't
want to lead a rebellion against the party. He
wanted to reform the party from within. So the
students basically have to drag him to the parliament
balcony. It's dark. The square is packed. He
steps out to speak, and he makes a huge, huge
mistake. He leans into the microphone, and his
first word is, comrades. Oh, no. You can just
feel the air go out of the crowd. Exactly. The
crowd erupted. They whistled. They booed. They
shouted back, we are not comrades. We are Hungarians.
That is such a telling moment. He was still speaking
the old language and they had moved on. He was
completely out of touch with the mood on the
street. He gave this boring wooden speech telling
everyone to go home and wait for the central
committee to make a wise decision. The crowd
was just deflated. They wanted a firebrand. They
got a bureaucrat. But the crowd didn't go home.
They went to the radio building. The secret police
opened fire and suddenly. It's not a protest
anymore. It's a revolution. It's a war. The Soviets
panic. They send in the tanks that night. And
in a desperate attempt to calm things down, the
party reinstates Nagy as prime minister the next
morning, October 24th. So he's back in charge.
But is he really? Not at all. He's a prisoner
in the party headquarters. He's surrounded by
hardliners. He doesn't even have a clear picture
of what's happening on the streets. He signs
or is tricked into signing a decree establishing
martial law. So he's ordering them to shoot the
protesters? Effectively, yes. He goes on the
radio and calls the fighters counter -revolutionaries.
This is his low point. The freedom fighters on
the street feel completely betrayed. They think
Nagy is just another Soviet puppet. And for a
few days, he kind of was. For the first three
days, he was a puppet. He was trying to find
a socialist solution. He was trying to negotiate
with the Soviets to stop the shooting, but he
was also telling the rebels to surrender. He
was straddling the fence and the fence was on
fire. So what changed? How do we get from that
hesitant, out of touch guy to the hero who gets
buried face down? This is the period of the 12
days of freedom. Right. It's the period between
roughly October 25th and November 4th. This is
where the real transformation happens. Nagy starts
meeting with delegations from the streets. He's
actually talking to the rebels. He's talking
to workers, councils, students, even some of
the fighters. And he starts to see the reality
of the situation. He realizes these aren't fascists
or CIA agents like the propaganda was saying.
Right. He sees they are workers. They are students.
They're the people he always claimed to represent.
And then he sees the brutality of the Soviets
firsthand. On October 25th, there's a massacre.
right in front of the parliament building. What
happened? Soviet tanks just opened fire on an
unarmed crowd. Hundreds die. That shook him to
his absolute core. So he has a choice. Stick
with the party that is massacring his people
or side with the people against the party. And
he chooses the people. It's a slow turn, but
by October 28th, he makes his move. He announces
a ceasefire. He orders the Hungarian army to
stop shooting. He goes on the radio and... This
is key. He stops calling it a counterrevolution.
What does he call it? He calls it a national
democratic movement. He validates them. He completely
validates them. And then he starts dismantling
the dictatorship piece by piece. He dissolves
the AVH, the secret police. Can you imagine the
relief that washed over the country? The organization
that had terrorized them for a decade was just
gone. That's huge. But he goes even further.
On October 30th, he announces the end of the
one -party system. This is the point of no return.
He forms a coalition government. He brings in
non -communists from the old Democratic parties.
He is, for all intents and purposes, creating
a democracy. And the Soviets, what are they doing
while their satellite state is going completely
rogue? It's fascinating. For a few days, they
are actually hesitant. Khrushchev is oscillating.
At one point, they actually start to pull their
troops out of Budapest. They issue a declaration
saying they are willing to discuss the relationship
between socialist states on a more equal footing.
So for a moment, it looks like it might work.
For a moment, just a shimmering moment, it looked
like Nagy might pull it off. It looked like they
had won. I can't imagine the euphoria in Budapest.
The tanks are leaving. The secret police are
gone. The newspapers are free. It was pure joy.
People were tearing the communist emblems out
of the Hungarian flies. That's where you get
that famous image of the flag with the hole in
the center. It was a symbol of freedom. But the
Kremlin is watching and the hardliners in Moscow
must be screaming, we are losing Hungary. They
are. And not just Hungary. They were terrified
of the domino theory. If Hungary becomes a democracy,
what about Poland? What about East Germany? Their
entire empire could collapse. And then the Suez
crisis happens. How does that play into it? The
West gets completely distracted. Britain, France,
Israel are invading Egypt. The world's attention
shifts. Khrushchev decides. This is our chance.
We have to crush this. So the tanks turn around.
October 31st. Reports start coming into Nagy's
office. Massive columns of Soviet armor are crossing
the border back into Hungary. They weren't leaving.
They were preparing for a full -scale invasion.
Nagy confronts the Soviet ambassador, right?
A young Yuri Andropov. Yes. Andropov, the future
leader of the USSR. A very cold, calculating
man. Nagy summons him and asks, what are these
tanks doing? And Andropov lies to his face. He
says, oh, it's just routine maneuvers. Don't
worry about it. But Nagy knows. He sees the noose
tightening. And this pushes him to the final
fatal decision, November 1st. The declaration
of neutrality. Break this down for us. Why was
this the absolute red line for Moscow? Nagy realized
he couldn't win a military fight against the
Soviet Union. It was impossible. His only hope
was diplomacy. So he makes this dramatic announcement
that Hungary is withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact,
the Soviet military alliance. You know what else?
He declares Hungary a neutral state like Switzerland
or Austria. And he sends a desperate appeal to
the United Nations for protection. He's trying
to take Hungary off the Cold War trust board
entirely. Exactly. He's saying we are West. We
aren't East. We are neutral. Just leave us alone.
But to the Soviets, this was the ultimate treason.
You can reform your economy, maybe, but you cannot
leave the military alliance. That was a direct
threat to their security. That seals his fate.
And the West. The UN. Did they answer the call
for help? No. Radio Free Europe broadcast all
these words of encouragement, which tragically
led many Hungarians to believe help was on the
way. But Eisenhower wasn't going to risk starting
World War III over Budapest. They were on their
own. Sunday morning, November 4th, Operation
Woolwind. 4 .am. A massive artillery barrage
hits Budapest. 60 ,000 Soviet troops, thousands
of T -54 tanks, jets strafing the streets. It
was an overwhelming, brutal force. Nagy goes
to the radio station for one final, desperate
broadcast. I have the text here. It's just haunting.
This is Imre Nagy speaking. Our troops are fighting.
The government is in its place. It's one of the
most famous and heartbreaking speeches in Hungarian
history. But... It was also a bit of a lie. A
lie? How so? The part about our troops are fighting.
In reality, Nagy had issued an order to the Hungarian
army not to resist. Why would he do that? He
knew it would be a slaughter, a pointless bloodbath.
He wanted to save lives. The people who fought
back heroically in the streets were civilians,
kids with Molotov cocktails, workers with hunting
rifles. The regular army mostly stood down on
his orders. And the part about the government
is in its place. Also not true. Minutes after
that broadcast, he and his inner circle left
the parliament building and fled to the Yugoslav
embassy. He ran. He sought asylum. He thought
the Yugoslavs... Being these independent communists
under Tito would protect him. And while he's
holed up in the embassy, the Soviets install
a new leader, Yanos Kadar. Kadar, another tragic,
complex figure. He'd been with Nagy during the
revolution, part of his government, but at the
last minute he defected to the Soviets. He rode
back into Budapest on a Soviet tank. He was the
puppet that Nagy refused to be. So Nagy is in
the embassy. The revolution is being crushed
in the streets. Thousands are dead. And Kadar
wants Nagy out of that embassy. Kadar negotiates
with the Yugoslavs. He signs a document, a formal
written guarantee of safe conduct. He promises
that if Nagy and his group leave the embassy,
they will be allowed to go home freely. No arrest,
no harm. I feel like I know exactly where this
is going. It's a trap. A blatant, cynical trap.
November 22nd. Nagy and his group pack their
bags. They board a bus that is supposed to take
them to their homes. But it doesn't. It doesn't.
The bus drives a few blocks and then it's surrounded
by Soviet armored cars. Russian officers jump
on board. They kidnap him on Hungarian soil.
Where do they take him? They fly him to Romania
to a place called Snagov, which is a kind of
resort town. They hold him there in a villa under
guard. This is the part of the story that is
often skipped, but I feel like it's crucial.
He's in captivity for months. What are they trying
to do to him there? They're trying to break him.
This is the psychological battle. Kedar and the
Soviets. desperately needed Nagy to resign. They
needed him to sign a piece of paper saying, I
was wrong. The revolution was a counter -revolutionary
mistake. Yanos Kadar is the legitimate leader.
If Nagy did that, it would legitimize the whole
bloody invasion. And remember, this is the guy
who compromised before. He was Agent Volodya.
He knew how to play the game to survive. That's
what they were counting on. They thought... He's
an old Bolshevik. He knows the drill. He'll confess.
We'll give him a nice retirement dacha. Everyone
moves on. But he didn't. He refused. He absolutely
refused. He argued with his captors. He wrote
memos. He said, I am the lawful prime minister
of Hungary. You are the traitors. He found this
backbone of steel that maybe he never had before.
He knew that if he signed that paper, he would
be betraying the memory of all the kids who died
on the barricades. That is the redemption, isn't
it? The spy who refused to come in from the cold.
It is. He sealed his own death warrant with that
refusal. Kadar realized Nagi would never cooperate.
And as long as Imre Nagi was alive, Kadar's rule
was illegitimate. So they bring him back to Budapest,
1958, for the trial. A secret trial. No press.
No public. Just a room full of party loyalists
acting as judges. The charges were, of course,
treason and organizing the overthrow of the People's
Democratic Order. Did he defend himself? He did.
He took notes. He argued legal points. He never
begged. When the death sentence was read, he
didn't ask for clemency. He famously said, I
do not appeal the court's decision for mercy.
He left the judgment to history. June 16th, 1958.
They hanged him. In the prison courtyard. And
then the burial, the final insult. They put his
body in a packing crate. They buried him in the
prison yard under a pile of trash. Years later,
they secretly moved him to Section 301. They
wrapped the wire around his hands and feet. They
buried him face down. They put a fake name on
the cemetery register. They tried to erase him
from the face of the earth. But Kadar, he stayed
in power for 30 years. They say he was haunted
by what he did to Nagi. There's a story. Probably
apocryphal, but it tells a deeper truth. That
towards the end of his life, when Kadar was old
and senile, he would wander around his house
looking for Imre. He could never escape the ghost.
And then, 1989, the whole Soviet system is crumbling.
Gorbachev is in power in Moscow. The Hungarians
are pushing for change again. And the first thing
they demand is the truth about 1956. They demand
a proper burial for Imre Nagy. The regime, weak
and collapsing, had to agree. They exhumed the
body. And we are back at the beginning, June
16th, 1989, Heroes Square in Budapest. It wasn't
just a funeral for a man. It was the funeral
of the entire communist dictatorship. Six coffins
on the dais. Nagy and his martyred colleagues
and one empty coffin to represent the unknown
revolutionary. I watched the footage of this.
The speeches were fiery. And there's this young
guy with long hair and a beard, a very young
Viktor Orban. The very same. The current prime
minister of Hungary. Back then, he was a young,
liberal student leader, and he gave the most
radical speech of the day. He was the one who
openly demanded that the Soviet troops go home.
Now, he connected Nagy's memory directly to a
free, democratic future. It's just amazing how
history rhymes, how these figures reappear. Nagy
was the bridge from one era to the next. He was.
That funeral broke the spell. It's almost a Shakespearean
ending. Kadar died. literally died on the very
day that the Hungarian Supreme Court officially
rehabilitated Imre Nagy. Wow. It's like the country
couldn't move on until it was gone. But the story
isn't over. Because recently, in the last few
years, Nagy has become controversial again. He
has. In 2018, the Orban government had the statue
of Imre Nagy moved. It used to stand on a little
bridge near the parliament looking towards the
building. A very poignant, powerful spot. And
they moved it. They moved it to a less prominent
location on a nearby square. Why? I thought Orban
basically launched his career at Nagy's funeral.
He did. But politics changes. The current government
narrative in Hungary is very, very anti -communist.
And Nagy, well, he was a communist. It's an awkward
fact for them. They want to emphasize the pre
-communist nationalist history of Hungary. So
what did they put where Nagy's statue used to
be? They put up a reconstruction of a monument
to the victims of the 1919 Red Terror, the first
failed communist revolution. So they're swapping
one historical memory for another. A communist
martyr replaced by the victims of communism.
Exactly. For the modern Hungarian right wing,
Nagy is a communist hero. And that's a contradiction
in terms. They respect his sacrifice in 1956,
but they don't want to celebrate his ideology.
It just goes to show that history is never really
settled. It's always being rewritten to fit the
needs of the present. And that leads to the biggest
question of all, I think. The great what if.
If the tanks hadn't come back, if the West had
helped, if Nagy had actually succeeded, what
kind of Hungary would he have built? Well, he
didn't want capitalism. He wasn't trying to be
like America. He wanted a third way. He wrote
about it while he was in captivity. A socialism
that was democratic, that had multiple parties,
that respected human rights, but still kept the
major industries in the hands of the people.
A national communism independent of Moscow. Could
something like that have even worked in the middle
of the Cold War? In 1956? Probably not. The Cold
War was too frozen. The polarization between
East and West was too extreme. But it was a beautiful
dream. A dream that you could have equality without
tyranny and national independence without capitalism.
Imre Nagy. The locksmith. The soldier. The spy.
The prime minister. The martyr. A man of incredible
contradictions. A man who did terrible things
to survive and then did a magnificent thing and
died for it. And maybe that's why his story sticks
with us. He wasn't a saint. He wasn't born a
hero. He was a flawed human being who, when the
ultimate test came, finally found his courage.
And that's all we can really ask of anyone, I
suppose. Well, this has been quite a journey.
From the Siberian POW camps. to the streets of
Budapest. I don't think I'll ever forget the
image of that barbed wire. It's a reminder that
the truth always surfaces eventually, even if
you try to bury it face down. Thank you for listening
to The Deep Dive. If you want to know more, check
out the show notes. We've got links to some of
the original footage of the 1956 revolution.
It is absolutely worth watching. Until next time,
keep digging.