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In a solemn but peaceful mood, the students went to pay their respects to Poland. Ten abreast down the broad Danube quays they marched to Petofi Square, named after National Hero Sandor Petofi, a poet who sang songs of national liberation and in 1848 drew up the manifesto that launched Hungary's revolution against the Habsburg monarch. The yeast of rebellion among young Hungarian intellectuals had been fermenting these past few months in a group called the Petofi Club. A voice in the crowd shouted a line from a Petofi poem: "We vow we can never be slaves." Idol Smashing. The Petofi spirit spread like wildfire. All over Budapest there were demonstrations. Student manifestoes demanded religious freedom, the release of Josef Cardinal Mindszenty, the public trial of Rakosi and his lieutenants, sweeping economic reforms. One demanded that the Russians explain what they had done with Hungarian uranium. The Marseillaise and the Kossuth anthem (after Kossuth, another hero of 1848) were sung in the streets. Thousands of cadets, later joined by 800 Hungarian officers, swung out of the military academy to join the students. As if by magic, hundreds of placards appeared bearing slogans: RUSSIANS GO HOME. LET US FOLLOW THE POLES, etc.
In the square where the life-size statue of General Josef Bern stands, honoring the Polish officer who fought for Hungary's freedom in 1848, 200,000 people crowded around a latter-day poet named Peter Veres, silent mover in the Hungarian Writers' Union. He stood at the foot of the statue and read out a manifesto demanding complete freedom of speech and press, a new Hungarian government, release of political prisoners, and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary. The national flag — minus the Red star and hammer crossed by an ear-of-wheat emblem — was draped around the statue. The national anthem was sung.
The crowd, swollen by workers, soldiers and yet more students, and orderly until this moment, began to thrill for action. There was another statue in Budapest, as hated as this one was revered. By 1951 the Russians had cleared away the World War II ruins of Regnum Marianum, the famed Roman Catholic church, and erected in its place a 25-ft. bronze statue of Stalin. There he stood, in baggy pants and handlebar mustaches, symbol of Hungary's servitude. One of the manifestoes had called for the removal of the statue. The crowd decided to do its own idol busting.
Surging down Stalin's Boulevard, mounting the marble base of the statue, they flung ropes around Stalin's neck, but the old dictator stood fast. Then a group of workers appeared bearing ladders, cables and acetylene torches. Melting through the metal knees, they brought the statue crashing to the ground. Immediately the bronze corpse was set upon by people with hammers and metal pipes who smashed pieces off the statue. Said one wrecker: "I want a souvenir of this old bastard."
Students and workers had been tearing the Soviet emblem from national flags, pulling down illuminated Red stars from public buildings, distributing mimeographed resolutions and broadsheets. But their mood became ugly when the news flew around that Party Leader Erno Gero, back from Belgrade, had spoken on Radio Budapest condemning the demonstration and calling their demands for more freedom "reactionary provocation."