It is 60 years since the intervention of the Russian Army snuffed out the brief beacon of the Hungarian Revolution in ashes, blood and dungeons. The magnitude of the events forbids the thoughtless categorisation of the Hungarian Revolution in terms of defeat or victory. The reasons why this workers’ uprising was so devastatingly defeated so that, within a short time, the peace of the grave had set in and why self-empowerment (via the creation of workers’ councils – CWO) did not lead to the ability of revolutionary organisations to appear, lie rooted in the hopes and dreams of those that made the uprising. And these hopes and dreams are still difficult to decode, as they have lain buried under the ballast of a successful ideological idealisation for decades.

ARevolution burned itself into the pages of the history of failed revolutionary uprisings and counter-revolutionary terror and shone a lurid light on the darkness of the ‘50s on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Beyond the depoliticised general public, the fragmented, colourless remnants of left grouplets often demonstrate their lack of understanding. For them, the Hungarian Revolution was a false revolution at the wrong time and in the wrong place. Either because they believed that the state-capitalist countries had positive characteristics in comparison to the Western countries (which were then booming), or because they distorted the everyday details of the Hungarian Revolution. The execution of members of the secret police (in which even old fascists had found a new field of activity) is, for example, still depicted in junge