dr2641.jpg

Two Funerals and Our Freedom

The recent deaths of Béla Király, who commanded Hungary's freedom fighters in 1956, and of the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski, whose break with Stalinism inspired many intellectuals to abandon communism, recalls their legacy for today's Europe. They, together with Nikita Krushchev, paved the way for the Continent's freedom and unification.

MOSCOW – My great-grandfather, Nikita Khrushchev, has been on my mind recently. I suppose it was the 50th anniversary of the so-called “kitchen debate” which he held with Richard Nixon that first triggered my memories. But the funeral last week in Budapest of General Béla Király, who commanded the Hungarian Revolution’s freedom fighters in 1956, and this week’s funeral in Warsaw of the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski, whose break with Stalinism that year inspired many intellectuals (in Poland and elsewhere) to abandon communism, made me reconsider my grandfather’s legacy.

The year 1956 was the best of times and the worst of times for Khrushchev. His “secret speech” that year laid bare the monumentality of Stalin’s crimes. Soon, the gulag was virtually emptied; a political thaw began, spurring whispers of freedom that could not be contained. In Poland and Hungary, in particular, an underground tide burst forth demanding change.

Hungary, of course, had its short and glorious revolution. That first war among socialist states shattered the myth of inviolable “fraternal” bonds between the Soviet Union and the captive nations of Eastern Europe. But Khrushchev never envisioned the breakup of the Soviet empire as part of his thaw. So the Red Army invaded Hungary – on a scale larger than the Allies’ D-Day invasion of Europe in 1944.

https://prosyn.org/EHKDPIW