The Hungarian Revolution

If Abrams was amazed at the Russians' lack of knowledge about the West, he was shocked at how little the Russian people knew about the real facts behind the Hungarian Revolution of late October and early November of last year.

In his Mirror series he reported that almost no one seemed to have heard of the United Nations Report on Hungary, and he stated that when he asked the people if they had read it, he received only blank stares.

"I tried to tell them about it, but they didn't believe me," he said. "'That could not be so,' was the normal retort. 'We know that only criminals, Fascists, and counter-revolutionaries fought, and that the Hungarian government asked our government to come in and help them.'

"Even when I took to reading the United Nations Report to large crowds," Abrams said, "the Russians had a difficult time believing that a whole series of events happened in Hungary which their government had deliberately chosen to hide from them. But they listened with avid interest to every word. And from all the later reports and reactions, I gathered that they passed the word along the grape-vine."

As he continued to address the crowds, Abrams began to realize that some of them, perhaps as many as 25 per cent, knew much more about the Hungarian affair than they dared to admit publicly. Slowly groups of men and women began to draw him aside for private discussions. One of these individuals was a professor at the University of Moscow, who explained the general ignorance by the fact that the Russian newspapers had suppressed all the real news about Hungary.

The professor related that one night, while he was attending a movie, the loudspeaker interrupted the show with the following official announcement: "The government wishes to announce the successful crushing of the counter-revolutionary and Fascist elements in Hungary and the restoration of the People's Government."

"All around me," the professor said, "people were applauding and cheering. A young girl sitting beside me clapped her hands and shouted, 'Oh, good, the Fascists have been destroyed!' But as for me, I started to cry. A few of us knew."

In the absence of any reliable news from official sources, these few had only gotten a glimpse of the truth, and that by rather haphazard means. A man and woman from Leningrad told Abrams that rumors concerning the real situation in Hungary had spread through the city after bottles were found along the railroad tracks, containing scribbled messages pleading for help from Hungarian youths being deported to Siberia.

This couple also told him of student unrest in Russian universities, but Abrams expressed difficulty in assessing the exact extent of such discontent. "I heard conflicting stories," he told the Mirror. "Some students from Leningrad told me there had been a protest meeting at Leningrad University. When it was over, 45 students were expelled and were seen no more. They just disappeared. Other students denied these stories.

"I was told by one of the heads of the Young Communist League that there were a number of resignations from the League in protest over the Soviet action in Hungary. 'But we then held a series of meetings and explained what happened in Hungary,' he said blandly, 'and there was not much trouble after that."

Abrams heard from other sources, however, that there actually was some trouble at these "explanation" meetings. He said one Moscow University student told him of a mass walk-out when the speaker kept avoiding direct answers to embarrassing questions. And this same student related that another meeting was abruptly called off when the students started asking pointed questions.

Another student told Abrams of the appearance of hand-printed wall-newspapers at many of the leading Russian universities. They would mysteriously materialize, tacked up on bulletin boards, demanding the truth and asking embarrassing questions. One student told Abrams that some of them had been seen only a month before the Festival, and another related how authorities had labored to track down and expel the students responsible.

The Hungarian Delegation

Occasionally, some of the Russians would doubt Abrams and would repeat the line they had heard on the revolution from the Hungarian delegates to the Youth Festival. To counter this, Abrams generally asked the people whether they really thought any supporter of the revolution would have been allowed among the Youth Festival delegates.