(3 of 6)
Shouts of "Out with Gero" and "We want Nagy" were heard. A student and workers delegation went to the radio station, requested that its demands be made public. "We want to tell the world the truth," said a woman. Security police arrested the delegation. The crowd stormed the building, but the police opened fire, killing and wounding several attackers and driving others back with tear gas. A group of students, mounting the balcony in front of the building, carried the fight into the upper floors. The body of a dead man wrapped in the national flag was carried through the street.
Trucks filled with Hungarian soldiers stood by, and seven heavy tanks, manned by Hungarian soldiers, rumbled into the area around midnight. Soldiers, students and workers fraternized. A tank bearing Hungarian colors came through the crowd. Cried the Hungarian colonel standing in the open hatch: "We are unarmed! We came to join you, not to oppose the demonstration." Soon students and workers were flourishing Tommy guns. "The army is with us!" they shouted. Barricades were built in the street that night. Carnival had become revolution.
Ring of Tanks. Well apprised of the danger in Hungary, Moscow had moved new Soviet military units across the Hungarian-Carpathian border a few weeks earlier, now had five divisions in Hungary under Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, whose armies swept across southern Europe from the Volga to Vienna in World War II. With Hungary's internal security forces (an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 men), this was enough to hold down Hungary—provided the 15-division (280,000 men) Hungarian army did not defect. The fact that the Hungarian soldiers were proving unreliable was the bad news for the Kremlin. Some time in the next 48 hours the U.S.S.R.'s Presidium Members Anastas Mikoyan and Mikhail Suslov flew into Budapest, fired Gero and Hegedus, put in Imre Nagy and Janos Kadar (see box). At the same time they ordered the Soviet forces to crush the rebels.
Budapest (pop. 1,750,000) woke early next morning to the sound of machine-gun fire as a column of 80 Soviet tanks rolled into the city and took up positions covering all bridges, boulevards and public buildings. Other tank forces ringed the city. At dawn martial law was imposed on the whole country, a 24-hour curfew on Budapest. Trains and streetcars stopped running, telephone communication with the outside world was cut.
Radio Budapest (evidently operating from a new location) announced: "Soviet troops are here under the Warsaw pact. They have been asked to put their lives at stake for the peaceful Hungarian people and to protect them from counterrevolutionaries. When order is restored, they will return to their garrisons. Workers of Budapest, accept these Soviet troops as your friends." But the announcer betrayed Soviet nervousness by appealing to all Hungarian soldiers "who had become separated from their units" to report back.