In Vienna one day last week a Telex machine, ominously silent for almost a week, suddenly sprang to life. Slowly and with much stuttering an unknown keyboard operator in Budapest hammered out the following message:
BUDAPEST IS IN FERMENT TODAY. HUGE MASS DEMONSTRATION HANGS OVER CITY. TEN THOUSAND WORKERS FROM INDUSTRIAL AREAS ARE MARCHING ON PARLIAMENT. RUSSIAN AGENTS TRIED TO STOP THEM BUT HAVE BEEN BRUSHED ASIDE. THEY BLOCK ALL BRIDGES AND SPECIAL PATROLS ARE AROUND PARLIAMENT BUILDING.
From a dozen other sources, as the day went by, came confirmation of the astonishing news that Hungary, far from lying down under martial law, was alive and kicking its Soviet bosses. The mighty Red army had been unable to halt the paralyzing general strike of the incredible Hungarians, who abandoned street fighting after perhaps 25,000 Hungarians lost their lives, but found other ways to resist.
Both sides faced the other with harsh alternatives. Said a Soviet commander, listening to a Budapest workers' committee presenting its demands: "We approve of the right to strike, but we have many ways of bringing it to an end." Soviet field police seized the bank accounts of struck firms, arrested leading Hungarian journalists, imposed tight electric-power and food controls. Strikers had their own methods of enforcing the strike: they fired shots in front of buses that resumed running, and with hand grenades drove back workers who appeared at one factory.
At the great Csepel iron and steel works, strike leaders told the Russians they had mined all the factories and that if the Russians began shooting workers they would blow up the whole industrial area. At Miskolc (pop. 200,000), coal miners set up a volunteer organization to keep order, mined only enough coal to keep kindergartens and hospitals heated. At Gyor, when some workers said they would go back to work, the town's bakers told them there would be no bread.
Workers' councils, mindful of shortening supplies of food and the lack of heat, met with Soviet commanders. A return to work, under certain conditions, might have been arranged but for the news which flashed through Budapest one day last week: the Russians were deporting Hungarians. Soviet police had been seen going from house to house arresting young rebels. Now the grapevine reported that at least 180 boxcar loads of Hungarians had been deported in a few days. Notes dropped by young deportees along the railroad tracks had been picked up. One of these, copied and circulated all over Budapest, read: "We are 1,500 and we shall be transported to Russia."
The news incensed Hungary. On this day even the diehard Communists producing the party newspaper Nep Szabadsag went on strike. Even though the Russians had brought railroad workers from Russia to run the trains, the trains were stopped.
A group of rebels raided a railroad station, released 1,000 young students.