“Or I should say,” Caroline corrected herself, “the aristocrats, landed gentry and the clergy of Hungary were in control of everybody else in Hungary’s destiny. The country remained pretty much a semifeudal state. A small percentage of the people owned a large percentage of the land; there were great numbers of landless peasants, though some peasants did hold small tracts of land. There were no real democratic traditions, no universal suffrage and little middle class. The aristocrats—who ruled—resisted reform. There were a few who cried out for change, but most were willing to maintain the status quo. As regimes of the interwar period go, theirs wasn’t as appallingly authoritarian as some, but it certainly wasn’t anything to brag about.

“When Hitler came to power in Germany, he agreed with Hungarian revisionists that their country had been robbed under the terms of Trianon, and Hungary was seduced into collaborating with him. Germany returned some of the territories Hungary considered rightfully its own. In turn, Hungary participated in the German war, but as little as possible.

“They were trying to play both sides against the middle,” Caroline concluded. “The Hungarian fascists—the Arrow Cross Party—didn’t come to power until Hitler finally invaded in late 1944.

“In 1945, Germany made what amounted to its last stand against the Russians, and Budapest—yet again—was largely destroyed in the bloody battle.

“And the Russians stayed.

“Between the end of World War II and the uprising in 1956, the Communists consolidated their power— viciously. Under the Stalinist-styled personal dictatorship of Mátyás Rákosi, Communist Hungary was set up precisely on the Soviet Union model. It didn’t matter whether the Soviet model fit the circumstances of the country or the wishes of the people; that was the way it was going to be. There were excesses and abuses of every kind—arrests, tortures, show trials, executions, forced collectivization, forced industrialization. Even churches were made subservient to the state. Church-sponsored schools were abolished, priests were arrested, religious orders were dissolved—and, in a vastly unpopular move, the Roman Catholic cardinal was imprisoned.

“The terror against the people was carried out by the state secret police, the Államvédelmi Hivatal, or the ÁVH.

“Then, in 1953, Josef Stalin died, and the thaw began.”

Caroline said, “Rákosi, being Stalin’s most devoted student, was more or less out on his ass, but nothing happened overnight. Attempts were made at reforming the system, but they were either too moderate or short-lived, and Hungarians became increasingly fed up with Soviet interference in their affairs. When, in 1956, Poland stood up to Khrushchev with some success, Hungarians began to believe they might actually be able to oust the Russians. Fat chance.”

As Caroline explained, events leading up to the outbreak of violence in October were many and complicated: “Numerous books have been written on this period. From what I could gather, though, what actually happened depends in large part on who’s doing the telling. If you’re a Communist, you believe it was a counterrevolution inspired by revisionists, capitalists, warmongering fascists—anybody and anything but yourselves and mistakes you might have made. If you’re a democratic socialist, you believe it was a revolt against the excesses of communism, but no one wanted to return to the conservative governments of the past. If you’re a conservative, you believe it was a heroic struggle for freedom, a battle to oust communism and restore democracy. I don’t know, Ash. It was probably all those things. What’s clear is Hungarians wanted the Soviets out.