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Early on the fifth day of the revolution, the Soviet leaders made a crucial decision: they agreed that Hungary should have a new government in which two (out of 28) ministers would be nonCommunists. Premier Nagy announced that Bela Kovacs would be Minister of Agriculture, and Zoltan Tildy Minister of State. Both men were members of the Smallholders Party, which took 57% of the popular vote in the 1945 free elections but was later squeezed out of existence by the Communists. As first President of the Republic, aging (66) Zoltan Tildy's record was undistinguished, and he had resigned in 1948 when his son-in-law was charged with spying (and later executed).
But the name of Bela Kovacs was something for Nagy to conjure with. A husky, muscular peasant from Pecs, a good speaker, Kovacs was the organizational genius of the Smallholders until arrested in 1947, forced to "confess" and shipped off to Siberia. Earlier this year, after nine years in Soviet prison camps, he returned to Pecs, where he was living quietly, avoiding politics. His appointment was as much a surprise to him as to everyone else in Hungary. Said a Hungarian: "He comes as close as anyone we know to being an anti-Communist." The question was, had nine years of prison broken the 49-year-old Kovacs' spirit?
"Freedom Radio" stations in Pecs, Miskolc and other cities, while critical of the overwhelming Communist majority in the new Cabinet ("Men who had sold out to the Soviet Union"), seemed ready to settle for "a general election," i.e., the new government was acceptable provided it was as an interim one.
Nepszava, trade union newspaper, pleaded that the general pardon, now extended by Defense Minister Karoly Janza to all who capitulated, be extended to "Soviet soldiers who had come over to the people"—indicating where the Soviet leaders' fundamental weakness might lie.
On the sixth day of Hungary's people's revolution, rebels were in control of much of the countryside, but Soviet tanks, withdrawing to the outskirts of Budapest, left behind a crushed city, ringed by Soviet steel. Moscow announced that it was ready to negotiate a withdrawal of all Soviet forces from Hungary. To cold, bone-weary rebels, Communist Radio Budapest broadcast: "Please, please stop. You have won. Your demands will be fulfilled."