Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - Second time as forced (500daysplus)

Episode Date: July 11, 2023

Citizens armed only with Molotov cocktails battle with Russian tanks on the streets of… Budapest.  In November of 1956 Russian troops invaded Hungary. The revolution was crushed and thousands of Hungarians fled. Will history repeat itself? We talk with Réka Pigniczky about her memory project, a film series dedicated to the Hungarian revolution. Also: Branko Marcetic compares America’s response to the events of 1956 with our current posturing over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. ps. Your host will be visiting Hungary this August to report on 1956 for our upcoming 8 part mini series, get in touch if you have any Budapest tips

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. This installment is called Second Time as Forced. When Russian tanks started rolling into Ukraine in the spring of 2022, I couldn't help but see a number of striking similarities and parallels to November 1956. Now, I've mentioned this a few times now, but here at TOEHQ, I'm hard at work on a story that's set in the second half of the 1950s during the Cold War. And a key event in this story is the Hungarian uprising that takes place in the fall of 1956, an uprising that was crushed by the Soviets.

So I guess you could say I was kind of primed to see the parallels, but still they were striking. Once again, a massive Russian army was invading a smaller country. Once again, people were leaving everything behind to escape the destruction and violence. And once again, we were seeing citizens armed only with Molotov cocktails, fighting with tanks. There are hundreds and hundreds of people here in Dnipro who have come to the center of town and they are in the process here in this section of making

Molotov cocktails. This is Ukraine 2022. And they're making it according to a recipe that has been distributed by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. And this is Edith Lauer talking about how her mother helped the revolutionaries make Molotov cocktails in Budapest when the Russians invaded in 1956.

My mother, who was a pharmacist, was on duty almost at all times. And that duty eventually included providing alcohol and bottles, empty bottles for Molotov cocktails and eventually, sadly, included attending to young injured freedom fighters. I actually think Molotovs were invented in 1956, but they're not. They were invented by the Finns in like 1928 or something. But anyway, they became popular in 1956. And I couldn't believe they're using Molotov cocktails in Ukraine right now. I'm like, are you kidding? Have we not advanced our anti-tank technology and we're still using Molotovs? I still can't believe it, honestly. And this is Reka Pignitsky. That bit with Edith Lauer is from a film she made about 1956.

My family is from Hungary and I was born in the U.S. and they fled after the revolution of 1956. And so that totally just stamped our whole being. My colleague and co-founder in this is Andrea Lauer-Rice. She's also a child of a 56er. And she and I have been doing projects about 1956 since, I don't know, 25 years. Rick is a journalist and an educator, although she likes the term visual storyteller. Her main body of work is something she likes the term visual storyteller. Her main body of work is something she calls the Memory Project. The Memory Project is actually an archive. The

idea in the Memory Project is any Hungarian who fled or was a refugee from Hungary after World War II and 1956. These are people's personal memories of how they lived in the 1950s or under oppression, what happened in 1956, why they left, how they left, what was it like crossing the border, what was it like arriving, and then how they lived the other two-thirds of their lives in a completely foreign land, always sort of kind of thinking about going home. Yeah. So as I told you in the email I sent you, I found the Memory Project because of a story that I'm working on that's set in the 1950s. And after Russia invaded Ukraine, I found myself thinking a lot about the similarities. And I often found myself wondering, you know, wow, I wonder what Rekha thinks.

And then I think the other day, I just realized I should just reach out. So I can ask you. Well, I'm glad you did. Because it is actually, it's super eerie. You know, and I'm in Hungary now, just literally 10 hours from Kiev. And I remember when it all happened. That's when I, you know, this film of mine was kind of rolled out this year. And we were showing it and everybody says, and I, you know, we all think that it's like when you're hearing these soundbites about the Molotov cocktails, about the refugees, about standing on the barricades. It's literally 1956. Yeah. When it comes to the refugees, the similarities are really striking. A couple of weeks ago, I heard an interview with a woman on the radio, a Ukrainian who had escaped to Germany.

And she really wanted to stress how grateful she was that she was able to get out and her gratitude to Germany for welcoming her and giving her support. But what she really wanted to make clear was that she didn't want to leave Ukraine. Yeah. She didn't want to be a refugee. It was a choice that she was forced to make. Yeah, no. And that's really important because I think that like in 1956, so there's always kind of been this sort of animosity, unspoken, unresolved, we're working on it, animosity between those people who left in 56, some of whom, if they would have stayed, would have been imprisoned or hanged, like my dad. But like my mom's family, they chose to leave. They lived by the border. They chose to leave because their life was already difficult because

they were from the wrong class. And because they just knew they'd have a shitty life if the Soviet Union came back, which they did. So they chose, but the Hungarians seem to think, the ones here, they think, oh, you left in 56, you live in the US, man, you're so lucky. You are there, you're living in LA, you're in Hollywood, you know, and your life is golden. You're just having a great time out there. And then the Hungarians are like, what? I mean, this was so hard for us to, you know, finish our education, to get a job, to support our children. We didn't speak the language. But then they accused those Hungarians who didn't leave of being communists. So it's like, oh, you stayed because you're OK with the system. Now, with Ukraine, I think it's different.

I mean, it's eight. It's over eight million now. So they cannot all going to stay outside their country of 40 million. I mean, they, they want to go back. Yeah, that's what I was trying to get at, you know, the simultaneous pain and gratitude that the woman was trying to express on the radio. But, you know, she sounds just like Maria Temeservi, a woman you feature in your film. This clip is in Hungarian, so it's kind of hard to sample here. But what she's talking about is how when she left Hungary, she had nothing but the clothes on her back.

She didn't speak any other languages. It was a total step into the unknown. And the way she recounts her bravery, it's just so moving. Thank you. And I know her quote, I don't know, like 10 times I edited that and I cried. She is able to express that feeling the best. She says, how bad does it have to be behind you? How lack of, you know, what is that lack of hope or that pain or that terror that's so bad that it's still, you know, that it's better to go into the unknown where you don't know the language, you don't know where you're going. That's, you know, you're going there. So it's got to be pretty bad behind you for you to take that step. And she was very conservative. She was like, oh my God, I'm terrified. I don't want to go. Her husband at the

time or her fiance was involved in the revolution and they didn't have a choice. Yeah. So Rekha, obviously this is a story in flux. We don't know what the outcome of this battle between Russia and Ukraine will be. But that said, I'm wondering what stands out to you the most right now, besides the obvious similarities with, you know, what's going on with the refugee situation? What stands out the most? One thing is to do sort of a comparative analysis and a dry sense and say, wow, this is really kind of similar. But the other one is sort of sad because like here we are 65 years after 1956. And I swear to God, it seems like the same thing is happening. The same thing will happen to the Ukrainians. And this was in the beginning. I thought this, I thought, oh, that's

it. They're going to, it's like November 4, 1956, all over again. The Russians are going to come back. The Soviets are going to come rolling in again and crush them like a bug. And they didn't. So now the story is different. I mean, when it first started unfolding, I thought, oh, it's 1956 all over again. And I already had a cry ahead of time for the Ukrainians because I thought, man, you're going to be toast because these guys won't stop. This was very sort of very like slang the way I just put that but that's what i was feeling i was feeling like duck and cover it's gonna be ugly and man now i envy them because they stood up and they're able to stand up or you know i'm sure it's different because it's not the soviet union anymore and it's not a small little hungary and what's the biggest difference i'm gonna ask you

what do you think the biggest difference is between 1956 and what's happening in Ukraine right now? Wait, you're making me answer my own question. Yeah. Okay. Well, I would say it's the amount of support that the Ukrainians are getting from the West. No, they've had support from the West. Let's just back up and look at 1956. There was no support.

The key difference between 2022 and 1956 is, as Reka emphatically pointed out, after the tanks rolled in, the Hungarians got no support from the West. But in the months leading up to the revolution, the U.S. pumped massive amounts of propaganda into Hungary via two radio stations that it covertly operated, Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe. And many of the Hungarians who tuned into these radios came to believe that the U.S. had its back. In other words, once they took up

arms and Molotov cocktails in the name of freedom, the West would not let them down. Debate over exactly what was said on the CIA radio stations raged for decades. The U.S., of course, insisted that it had never promised anything. But in the 90s, recordings of the actual broadcast turned up. And the US was forced to admit that it had made a few errors in judgment. But one thing that's never been in dispute is what happened after the Soviets invaded. The US made it crystal clear that Hungary would get no support. There's a study that was published in 2012 from within the Defense Department where they looked at some of the decision making,

some of the behind the scenes stuff that was going on. When the Eisenhower administration, which you remember was a Republican administration, kind of nominally more hawkish on the Cold War than the Democrats at the time, how it decided to respond. Branko Marsitek is a writer for Jacobin and the author of a recent piece for Current Affairs in which he compares the U.S.'s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine with the U.S.'s response to the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. It was this overriding concern to avoid getting into another world war and of course

to avoid any sort of nuclear configuration which could be disastrous. Yeah, now I appreciate how difficult it is for people who weren't alive during the Cold War to grasp just how frightened everyone was about the possibility of nuclear war. But at the same time, it's pretty clear that we're in more danger today. I mean, I heard someone on the radio the other day talking about the possibility of tactical nukes being used in Ukraine. And spending all this time in the Cold War history, I just have a cognitive dissonance. It doesn't seem real to us uh it seems like an abstract thing um but if if the us and russia ever started firing nukes at each other uh it would be very difficult to stop that from just basically turning out turning

into an all-out nuclear war you know everyone is killed everything is destroyed. No one wins. So in the face of these risks of global annihilation, President Eisenhower decided to act with caution when the Soviets invaded Hungary in 1956. What exactly does that mean? Some would say that the U.S. response was too cautious because there was a concern within the government about everything, you know, even going to the UN to try and make an initial at the UN, there was a concern that is this going to escalate things? Is this going to actually

provoke an even harsher response against the Hungarians? So this is totally different from today, because when it comes to the aid and the arms and even the sanctions, the West doesn't seem to care if any of this crosses a line with Putin. In fact, it almost seems as if we're taunting him, especially with the intelligence that we're providing to the Ukrainian forces. Exactly. The reaction is very different. And right now,

we're sort of seeing a constant drip by drip escalation in Ukraine's war effort, giving them intelligence to kill Russian generals, to sink the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, doing cyber warfare on their behalf. Diplomatic aid as well, up to offering things on the table that we made sure not to offer in 1956 right exactly and and whereas uh you know 1956 the it couldn't have been more different uh there was this this real real concern that you know every action that we do is it going to lead to some sort of escalation or counter move from the Soviets that actually could end up being worse and they could draw us into a world war and in the end I mean I mean Eisenhower was even reluctant to send humanitarian aid which I think you know in hindsight I would say that's too cautious and a mistake.

But I think that shows the kind of prevailing mindset that existed then versus the one that exists now. So in that report that you write about in your current affairs article, we learned that Eisenhower was also very worried about what the Soviets might do if they felt like the West was forcing their hand. Can you talk about how this view of the Soviets also informed our extremely cautious response? Eisenhower apparently did not view the Soviets as rational actors, which is interesting because, I mean, I think they were. And of course, rational does not mean good and moral. It means that you're thinking from a standpoint of what were your rational interests here? What's the most logical thing to do to secure your interests? Eisenhower apparently did not see them that way.

He saw them as more akin to Hitler. Let's pause on that because I think it's very important to point out that saying someone is akin to Hitler means you think that they are ready to take the world out with them rather than suffer defeat. Yeah, exactly. So I just, you know, we have to point out the historical dissonance of this phrase being used right now at this moment because we're hearing it all the time, you know, that Putin is just like Hitler. But if we truly believe this then well it seems like instead of you know trying to escalate things we also would be looking for a way to diffuse the situation you're right i mean in uh 1956 there was a lot of uh concern about making sure you know soviets have an off-ramp we hear that a lot right now. But now the idea is very denigrated. This idea that basically by trying to give Putin some kind of dignified exit from this mess that he's gotten

himself in, that that's somehow pro-Putin, that that's somehow helping the Kremlin and so on and so on, you know, all the usual kind of stupidity that's thrown around right now. There's this kind of insistence on outright victory that, you know, it's not enough to just end the war. Actually, that would be a kind of appeasement in itself to actually bring the war to a close with some sort of mutually agreeable settlement. Instead, there should be outright victory and Russia needs to be militarily defeated defeated despite the fact that they do have the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons on the planet so one of the most intriguing aspects of the american response to the hungarian revolution is the timing it all goes down in november, just as the 1956 American presidential election is coming to a close. So Eisenhower, who's up for re-election, is under immense pressure, you know, not to look weak on communism, not to look weak on the Soviet Union.

But yet he totally stands his ground. He even says no to the CIA, who want to send in covert troops and aid. You know, he's just not scared of anyone calling him a coward or a traitor. But fast forward to 2022, you know, today, none of these pressures exist. You know, we're not in an election cycle. And the Republicans most definitely aren't pushing Biden to act. In fact, some of them seem like they're on Putin's side. But still, we seem to be bumbling forwards towards war with our fists in the air, ready to prove how tough we are.

How do you make sense of this? I think that for me was the most shocking and fascinating thing about this whole episode. The political discourse and political thinking has shifted in a much more radical direction, you know, basically mirroring some of the most hawkish elements of the Cold War. That's become the entire discourse and the kind of the people who are advocating the kind of thing that Eisenhower ended up doing are cast as kind of fringe and extremist and ultimately marginalized and you don't really hear that at all. I think it's a very different political climate now and and I really want people to think about what that means that if the political climate now is more unfriendly to the idea of diplomacy

and de-escalation than the height of the Cold War and the Red Scare. I mean really think about what that means for what our political culture is right now. you have been listening to benjamin walker theory Everything. This installment is called Second Time as Forced. This episode was written and produced by me, Benjamin Walker. It featured Rika Pignitsky and Branko Marsetic. You can find links to their work on the show page at theoryofeverythingpodcast.com. The Theory of Everything is a proud founding member of Radiotopia, home to some of the world's best podcasts. Find them all at radiotopia.fm.