unrest in Poland with the Poznan uprising and its suppression. Because of the composition of the student body at the time, comprising mainly working students, it cannot be compared to the average student in today’s Western Europe. The sympathies of these students lay with the Polish developments in Poznan. One of the slogans in Poland at that time was “Freedom and Bread”. The uprising in Poznan, like Janus, wore two faces. For many Polish workers, it was a question of improving living conditions and freedom. It was different for the bourgeois forces and reformers in the ruling Stalinist parties, which bet on a development of national independence and thus a broadening of their positions of power. It was the same in Hungary. The student demands, for press freedom,1949, and 55% of the population lived below the minimum for a sustainable existence. The daily wage of a rural worker in a state concern was insufficient to buy a loaf of bread. In roughly 15% of families there was fewer than one blanket per person. 20% of wage-workers did not possess a winter coat. This was the reality for the working class.

23 October 1956: from the Widening of Resistance to the Development of Workers’ Councils

On 23 October, student bodies organised a sympathy demonstration for the Polish population at the memorial to the Hungarian freedom-fighter Jozef Bem. The Ministry of the Interior first approved the demonstration, withdrew the approval the same day and then lifted its ban again as its political calculations changed. In the early evening, demonstrators