Throughout Eastern Europe
millions vowed to build the communist paradise.
They toiled to carry out orders
and plans dictated from Moscow.
They marched behind the banners
of Joseph Stalin.
March 1953.
The Soviet Union mourns the death of Stalin.
For almost three decades, Stalin ruled supreme.
How would they manage without him?
"It felt as if the whole world was about to collapse.
We wondered what was going to happen to us.
We thought of Stalin as our father
who would always look after us."
Stalin died without naming a successor.
A collective leadership emerged,
led by Georgy Malenkov,
Lavrenty Beria,
Vyacheslav Molotov
and Nikita Khrushchev.
Millions of Russians grieved for their dead leader,
even though his rule had been ruthless
and their own welfare neglected.
Stalin had transformed the Soviet Union
into a superpower.
But at his death, relations with America and the West
had seldom been worse.
"For 10 years the world has been dominated
by the malignant power of Stalin.
A new era begins,
an era in which the guiding spirit is liberty,
not enslavement, and when human relations
will be those of fraternity,
not one-man domination."
America too had a new leadership.
President Eisenhower,
Secretary of State Dulles
and Vice President Nixon
pledged that they would roll back
the frontiers of Soviet power.
Eisenhower and Dulles had accused
the Truman administration of being soft on communism.
Now they had the opportunity
to challenge Soviet power.
But could Eastern Europe be freed from Soviet domination
without a nuclear war?
"Dulles had talked about liberation,
but Eisenhower insisted that he do so,
that when he did so he'd couple it with,
by peaceful means,
and so it is not at all obvious
how liberation in the sense of rollback
could be achieved merely by peaceful means."
The Soviet empire extended across Europe into Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, Poland
and into East Germany,
which called itself the German Democratic Republic.
Stalin had chosen Walter Ulbricht
as the ruler of East Germany.
He headed a regime servile to Moscow.
After Stalin's death, Ulbricht pressed on,
rebuilding his part of Germany along Stalinist lines.
Heavy industry was built up
to meet the demands of the Soviet economy.
Workers were ordered to increase their output.
Everyday needs were neglected.
"The average person lived very badly.
If you're talking about the things everybody needs like
heating, coal, electricity,
these things were all rationed.
Electricity for domestic use was simply not available.
The morale of the population dropped to zero."
Like Stalin, Ulbricht tolerated no opposition.
The secret police, the Stasi,
had its informers everywhere.
Many churches were closed.
Censorship prevailed.
But East Germany was unable to stop
people deserting to the West.
Travel to the British, American and French sectors
of Berlin was open to East Germans.
Thousands simply packed their bags and left.
"The flow of East German refugees
to sanctuary in the Western sector of Berlin
reaches record proportions with news
of the death of Stalin.
Conditions are none too comfortable for these people
but they are happy to be beyond the reach of the Reds."
Undeterred, Ulbricht demanded renewed loyalty
from East Germans.
Alarmed, the new leaders in the Kremlin
ordered Ulbricht to soften his rigid policies.
He complied only half-heartedly.
The hated production quotas remained in place.
"If you were timed with a stopwatch to make a screw
and it took you four minutes,
you were now expected to do it in two and a half.
That was the shocking thing,
this raise in work quotas
and the pressure to produce.
It was all too much for working people."
Popular anger exploded.
Workers took to the streets of East Berlin.
"When we passed construction sites,
everybody - metalworkers,
locksmiths, masons, carpenters -
all joined us.
When we arrived at the city hospital,
there were several thousand people with us.
Banners appeared at the construction sites saying,
'Down with the work quota increases!'"
News of the growing unrest
soon spread to West Berlin.
"I was having lunch
in an open-air restaurant in West Berlin
on the 16th of June when a friend of mine,
who was in military government
and probably in intelligence,
drove past and said to me, 'Charles,
you ought to be in East Berlin.'
So I got into my car and I went over
and ran into the building workers,
who by that time had left the building sites,
were on strike
and were marching through East Berlin.
And where I caught up with them
was near the Friedrichstrassebahnhof station,
the main station right in the middle of East Berlin.
And by that time,
striking in itself was, was a political act,
was an act of rebellion,
but marching through the streets
was something more. It was almost
kicking off a revolution."
Strikes and mass demonstrations
erupted in East Berlin and throughout East Germany.
Demonstrators tore down the symbol
of Soviet domination, the hammer and sickle.
Government authority in East Berlin collapsed.
A senior East German communist,
Karl Schirdewan, was horrified.
"Ulbricht, Grotewohl, Herrnstadt and a few others
were all inside the Soviet headquarters
at Karlshorst.
They just sat there and talked among themselves
but nobody made any decisions.
Nobody called for a meeting of the central committee.
I thought the party was leaderless."
The demonstrators vented their anger
on all visible reminders of communist rule.
The Soviet authorities were astonished
that Ulbricht had allowed the crisis
to get out of control.
"When Ulbricht arrived at the Soviet headquarters
at Karlshorst, he telephoned Karl Schirdewan
and asked him what was going on.
Schirdewan reported that there were a lot of drunks
in the crowd
and they were smashing the windows
and were about to break in.
Ulbricht put the phone down and said in German,
'It's all over!'
He said it in a way which, in Russian,
roughly translates as, 'It's the end!'
I wondered what did it all mean.
Even if they smash the windows,
they have no weapons.
It will take us no more than five minutes
to sort them out."
"They were trying to elect a strike committee
from the leaders of the workers
when four Russian tanks drove into the square,
four abreast, and went straight for the crowd.
And I remember one man got caught
and was run over by a tank."
"We couldn't do anything against the tanks
with our bare hands and stones.
As soon as the firing started,
people began to drop down, wounded or dead.
The shooting broke up the demonstration.
For us the dream of freedom was over."
Soviet troops quelled the revolt
throughout East Germany.
At least 40 people were killed
and thousands were arrested.
It was the first time
that East German and Soviet troops
closed off the Soviet sector of Berlin
from the rest of the city.
"The British, the Americans and the French
were all for a quiet life.
Their concern was to have
security of the access routes to West Berlin
but they wouldn't get into difficulties
with the Russians.
That was all they were interested in.
They did not want to get involved."
With the situation stabilized,
East Germany's rulers set off for Moscow.
Outside of the Soviet bloc,
few countries recognized
Ulbricht's German Democratic Republic.
In the Kremlin, the ubiquitous Molotov
signed another agreement with the Germans.
Stalin's old cronies
- Malenkov, Voroshilov,
Khrushchev,
Bulganin,
Mikoyan
and Kaganovitch -
decided to stick with Ulbricht.
Carefully orchestrated for the cameras,
the Politburo bid farewell and good fortune
to their East German comrades.
One person was missing.
Stalin's secret police chief Lavrenty Beria.
The Kremlin claimed he spied for the West.
Later that year, he was executed.
In September 1953,
Konrad Adenauer was re-elected
as West Germany's chancellor.
Adenauer wanted his half of Germany
to become a partner in NATO,
the West's military alliance.
"We wanted a strong NATO as a defensive barrier
against the Soviet Union.
We also wanted to prevent any expansion
of the Soviet Union into Western Europe
We could only achieve these aims
if we had a West German army."
With American backing,
Adenauer persuaded Britain and France
to let their former wartime enemy into NATO.
"Gut morgen, Soldaten!"
Narration: In 1955,
West Germany was allowed to form an army.
The Soviets quickly countered West Germany's admission into NATO
by forming their own military alliance
the Warsaw Pact.
The pact formally bound the armies of the communist satellites
to the Soviet high command.
The new treaty legitimized the presence of Soviet troops in Eastern Europe
Both East and West claimed their alliances were defensive
both prepared for war.
But the Soviets wanted to reduce tension in Europe.
Molotov, the Kremlin's hard-line foreign minister,
was ordered to negotiate an Austrian peace treaty,
and the withdrawal of Soviet troops.
"Only Molotov spoke against it.
The others were more restrained.
He said, 'Why should we withdraw?
We're very comfortable there.'
That was his position.
But most of the Soviet leaders disagreed with him
and thought we have to make a goodwill gesture
and start talks in Europe."
In Vienna, Molotov joined John Foster Dulles
and the British and French foreign ministers
in signing a peace treaty.
Austria is free!
Britain, France, America and the Soviet Union
agreed to end their military occupation of Austria.
In return, the Austrians promised permanent neutrality.
Ten years after the end of the Second World War,
the West and the Soviet Union withdrew their troops.
Their departure encouraged some people to hope
hat one day Soviet troops might also pull out of Eastern Europe.
In the Kremlin power struggle,
Khrushchev had out-maneuvered Malenkov and Molotov.
In 1955, he led a Soviet delegation to Yugoslavia.
Khrushchev wanted to repair the damage Stalin had caused
by expelling President Tito's Yugoslavia from the communist bloc.
"My father, he thought that
these people fought against fascism
and really there's only one country in the Europe
who won itself, not by the help of the Soviet Union,
itself.
So he thought, I have to go there,
not invite Tito in Soviet Union, because we're big country
and we have to show them that we were wrong."
Tito's Yugoslavia remained the only communist country in Europe
independent of the Kremlin.
Inside the Soviet Union,
Khrushchev wanted to overcome the legacy
of Stalinist terror and hardship.
He put more resources into the production
of consumer goods and housing.
Thousands of political prisoners had been freed from the Gulag.
"My father was a strong believer in the Communism.
For him it was the best life to the people,
just like the heaven of the earth
and he many times repeat that it is impossible
to live in the heaven surrounded by the barbed wires."
Khrushchev used the 20th Soviet Party Congress
to end the hero-worship of Stalin
and expose the cruelties of his dictatorship.
During a secret session,
Khrushchev made a speech that astounded everyone present.
"When he made his speech, people in the hall started to groan.
There were shouts of 'Shame!'"
Stalin, Khrushchev told his audience,
had ordered the imprisonment and execution
of thousands of loyal communists,
workers, managers and soldiers.
No one - peasant or general - had been safe
from Stalin's terror.
"Khrushchev himself wasn't without guilt.
He had played an active part in Stalin's repressions in Ukraine
and in other parts of the country.
He had no moral right to speak about Stalin as if he himself was pure."
"He did not say anything new for me or for the majority of my friends.
He did not say everything that needed to be said
but we were happy that at least it was said.
He said it in a half-whisper, literally in secret.
It was not printed in the newspapers
but came out in a leaflet read at party meetings and sometimes outside.
We used to say - 'This is the beginning of truth.
Truth will win!'"
"This fear, this tormenting fear after Stalin's death, began to fade away.
After the 20th Congress it looked as if this fear would never return."
Khrushchev's secret speech was perfect propaganda
for the American-financed Radio Free Europe.
The text of Khrushchev's speech was broadcast after the CIA received
a copy from the Israeli intelligence service.
"They were just repeating for 24 hours,
one-hour speech over and over and over again.
And this was to the party people, who were brainwashed,
who were led to believe, and they did believe, that Stalin is God,
that he is, couldn't make any mistake,
everything he did was infallible.
Suddenly, they, their faith, their religion collapsed."
Poland was fertile territory for Radio Free Europe's message.
Stalinist policies had brought Polish workers close to revolt.
After years of shortages and hard work they wanted change.
In June 1956,
workers in Poznan demanded bread, liberty and freedom
for the Roman Catholic Church - and above all,
an end to the Soviet domination of Poland.
The demonstrators were met with Polish tanks
and Polish bullets.
Seventy-four people were killed.
Young protesters faced a show trial
to which foreign journalists were invited.
"What really shocked the government, the regime,
was that it was the workers who rose.
It was not the people that they were afraid of.
It was not the sort of ...intellectuals;
it was not people involved in politics;
it was real workers and they were disgusted.
So that was a terrible blow to the regime."
The uprising in Poznan fueled the spirit of rebellion.
Backed by Polish workers,
reformers in the Communist Party made ever more radical demands.
Some even called for the withdrawal of Soviet troops.
The reformers turned to Wladyslaw Gomulka,
a patriotic communist imprisoned under Stalin.
Without consulting the Kremlin,
Polish communists chose him as their new leader.
Fearful of an anti-Russian revolt,
Moscow ordered Soviet troops to advance on Warsaw.
And Khrushchev flew to Poland to teach Gomulka who was boss.
"We were both horrified and amused
because he behaved in a very strange way.
He was running around and shaking his fist.
He accused us of wanting to break away
and said they wouldn't allow it.
He was behaving very badly."
While Gomulka and Khrushchev argued,
Soviet troops positioned themselves, ready to strike.
America looked on.
"You are about to see the secretary of state, John Foster Dulles,
face the nation with questions from veteran correspondents
representing the nation's press."
"On the 17th of June 1953, Mr. Secretary,
the people of East Germany rose against the Communist regime and
the Russians were able to come in and repress
... suppress the uprising by means of armed force.
We at that time sat back and allowed this to happen.
Would we sit back again in a similar fashion if this ...if this
this kind of uprising were to take place in Poland?"
"Well, I do not think that we would send our own armed forces
into Poland or into East Germany under those circumstances.
I doubt if that would be a profitable or desirable thing to do.
It would be the last thing in the world that these people
who are trying to win their independence would want.
That would precipitate a full-scale world war
and probably the result of that would be all these people wiped out."
Because he had the backing of the Polish army and the Polish people,
Gomulka won his argument with Khrushchev.
Gomulka promised that Poland would remain
a loyal member of the Warsaw Pact.
In return he secured greater freedom of action in Polish domestic affairs.
As Soviet troops were ordered back to barracks,
Gomulka addressed the people.
Gomulka's promise of a freer, more Polish nation calmed the demonstrators.
"Gomulka told me a few years later that he had a conversation
with Soviet Marshal Zhukov, who had been drinking.
Zhukov said, 'We were so well prepared
that we could have been all over Poland in three days;
we had very detailed plans.'
And Gomulka replied, 'Did you plan how many people on both sides
would have perished?'"
"Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin..."
After Stalin's death,
Hungary had remained under the ruthless dictatorship of Matyas Rakosi.
"It was a saying at that time; it was like a joke.
There's only three kind of people in Hungary
- who was in jail, who is in jail
and who will be in jail, for political reasons."
Like Stalin, Rakosi killed and imprisoned his rivals,
but people were expected to cheer and conform.
The new Kremlin leadership disapproved of Rakosi.
A senior Soviet official was sent to deal with him.
"Mikoyan the Armenian wheeler-dealer arrived.
Rakosi and I went to meet him at the airport and took him back by car.
We were almost at the guesthouse when Mikoyan turned to Rakosi and said,
'The Soviet leadership has decided you are ill.'
Well, Rakosi didn't think he was ill,
but of course in those days illness was a political decision.
Mikoyan continued, 'You will need treatment in Moscow
so you will have to resign.'"
The Soviets allowed Andras Hegedus to remain prime minister.
But reformers in the Hungarian Communist Party
sought a leader more independent from Moscow.
They wanted Imre Nagy to take over.
Like Gomulka in Poland, Nagy was seen as a leader who would reform the party.
The Soviet Embassy in Budapest was uneasy.
"Ambassador Andropov sensed the possible danger and warned Moscow.
He sent a lot of telegrams, he made phone calls
and even went to Moscow himself.
He tried to warn everybody but it was all in vain.
Khrushchev thought he could cope with the situation."
Inspired by Gomulka's success in Poland,
thousands poured into the streets of Budapest.
Students and workers demanded free speech,
the disbanding of the secret police and the withdrawal of Soviet troops.
They paraded Hungarian flags with the communist emblem torn out.
"I was stopped halfway across Margit Bridge by women students.
One of them asked me for my army cap.
She pinned the Hungarian national colors to it
and thrust a leaflet into my hand.
It contained 14 demands.
I could agree with 13 of these demands but I couldn't agree with the 14th,
which called for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary.
This was a demand which we couldn't possibly achieve."
The demonstrators carried portraits of Imre Nagy.
Communist reformers urged him to take charge.
"Imre Nagy was suddenly taken from his home
to the Parliament.
And he spoke for some minutes.
He began saying 'Comrades'
and then the crowd roared and said, 'We are not Comrades.'"
Nagy had misjudged the popular mood.
Hungarians wanted immediate and radical change.
In the center of Budapest, an excited crowd toppled the monument to Stalin.
Nagy stayed silent when Hungary's tottering communist leadership
called on the Kremlin to crush the growing unrest.
"I got a telephone call from my divisional commander in Cegled.
He told me, 'You've got to go to Budapest - it's urgent!'
I asked, 'What are my orders?'
I was told that orders would be given when I arrived in the city.
We were approaching the city as dusk fell.
We thought that all that was needed was a show of force.
Then I heard a machine gun open fire
and the screams of a man who was wounded or dying.
Then I realized that things were going to get serious."
Armed civilians had prevented
Soviet tank re-enforcements from entering Budapest.
The Hungarians had equipped themselves with Molotov cocktails,
rifles, machine guns and enthusiasm.
"I don't know how the guns work
but one older man, his name was Pista Baczi,
he says 'Don't worry about it, I'm going to teach you!'
And then I looked at the gun was bigger than me!
They explained to me and showed me a couple of times.
And my very first time I had to use it
I close my eyes because, you know, for scared, I never use gun before.
So then
I now looked around and there was a couple of soldiers there
and they teared off from their uniform, they had stars,
the Russian stars, so they teared that off.
And they said, 'Don't worry about it, little girl. We'll take care of you!'"
"Quite a few times I want to go home.
Maybe the next bullet is going to be mine.
And I started to go. And when I saw the 14-, 15-year-old kids dead,
I said, 'I was in the service for two and a quarter years.
I know how to handle a gun.
And I'm going home
and I'm going to leave these kids to die for our country?'
The shame kept me there."
During four days of fighting the Budapest revolutionaries stood their ground.
There were heavy losses on both sides.
Imre Nagy arranged a cease-fire.
The Soviets agreed to withdraw their troops from Budapest.
The Kremlin hoped Nagy, now prime minister,
could restore communist authority.
But the patriot in Nagy was taking over.
Cautiously he decided to back the Hungarian revolutionaries.
"I'll tell you quite honestly - and this is not only my opinion,
this is what every revolutionary thinks,
at least the ones who dare express their opinions.
We only recognized Imre Nagy as our prime minister
when he actually acknowledged the revolution.
He announced, 'This is not a counterrevolution,
this is a fight for freedom.'"
During the fighting in Budapest, many people had taken refuge in cellars.
As they emerged they found much of their city in ruins.
The Hungarians thought they had won their revolution.
They came out to mourn their dead heroes.
Western correspondents flocked to Hungary to report on a victory.
"What do you hope will happen now?"
"We hope that our country will be entirely free
and we can work and we can have free connections with West..."
"People were enormously optimistic that life had changed.
Everywhere in the country the Hungarian tricolor was flying
with the middle torn out, the communist emblem torn out.
It was, seemed to be a completely liberated country."
Many Hungarians looked to America and the West to guarantee their revolution.
"Behind me is the Blue Danube in Budapest.
The scene is calm enough here
but the rest of this city is in a bloody turmoil.
For more than a week, the Hungarian rebels
have been attacking the signs of Soviet tyranny.
It's become a platitude to say
of the people that they've earned their freedom,
but it's the only thing that can really be said of the Hungarians today.
Whether they will be free is still in the issue,
but if sheer guts can win freedom, they'll win."
The West's attention was diverted by another crisis far from Europe.
An extraordinary military venture was beginning in the Middle East.
Egypt's Suez Canal was attacked by Britain, France and Israel.
America hadn't been consulted and was infuriated.
So too were Hungarians.
"We went to interview the head of the resistance in Gyor,
which is the main town in western Hungary,
and he gave us an interview. And then he said 'You have wrecked
- you the British and, of course, the French,
have wrecked our rising
by starting a war in the Middle East.
This will put the Russians in a position where they can, in effect, act
with impunity because every - the world's eyes will be on
on the Middle East and not on Hungary.'
So they were angry."
With the Soviet army no longer in the city,
the revolutionaries in Budapest took revenge.
Communist party offices were destroyed
the Red flag burned.
Secret policemen were strung up.
"With Imre Nagy in power,
there was an orgy of bloodletting in the streets of Budapest
and other cities.
I saw people being strung up by their feet,
people being publicly humiliated and trampled on."
The Soviets sent more troops into Hungary.
Prime Minister Nagy tried one last gamble.
With Austria in mind,
agy declared Hungarian neutrality
and divorce from the Warsaw Pact.
He hoped international pressure
would stop the Soviets crushing the revolution.
"Imre Nagy's government was not a legitimate one.
Therefore any decision it took concerning the Warsaw Pact,
which Hungary had joined according to its own laws,
was, to put it mildly, invalid."
Other communist states, especially China,
were urging Khrushchev to use force.
"It was a very complicated decision to my father
as he thought for three or four days.
He talk with the Chinese, with other representatives and
one time they decided not to use force and they told no.
We have to use force? Yes? No? Yes? No?
At last it was decision, yes to use it."
"We were told to get ready to re-enter Budapest
because the terror had started.
We were not a force of occupation.
Instead we were going in as saviors
to protect the people from banditry and terrorism.
We knew that the Americans might also enter the city from the West.
We asked our divisional commander, 'Could this mean war?'
He said, 'Yes. This could be the beginning of World War III.'"
On November the 4th, 1956, the Soviet army re-entered Budapest.
"I called up Imre Nagy. And I then tell that,
'Mr. Prime Minister,
all the signs we observe, the massive troop employment,
the unrestricted shooting and now the attack
against the final perimeter of Budapest;
all of this suggests to me that we are in war with the Soviet Union.
I recommend that you, as prime minister,
state for the nation, for the world,
that Hungary is in war with the Soviet Union, due to the Soviet aggression.'
He dressed me down practically
'No war with the Soviet Union!'"
Khrushchev had ordered the attack after the Americans had let him understand,
that as far as Eisenhower was concerned,
Hungary belonged in the Soviet sphere of influence.
Too late, Imre Nagy appealed to the world.
The Hungarian fighters waited in vain for Western help.
"And the fact that, if the West intervened,
it ran the high risk of generating a world war
really meant that we didn't want to see physical uprisings,
and the policy at least was don't, also don't create any hopes
on the part of the satellite countries that we will intervene."
"Radio Free Europe and they were saying,
'Hang on, two... three weeks, three more weeks,
we come in, we help you!'
So we fight for the last bullet, the last drop of blood
we was holding on to, and what happened was, they was lying to us,
nobody came."
The Hungarian Revolution was crushed.
Thousands were killed in the fighting.
Imre Nagy was executed.
Two hundred thousand Hungarians fled into Austria
before the frontier was sealed by Soviet troops.
The millions who stayed behind in Hungary were prisoners.
Khrushchev had re-enforced the Iron Curtain.
Subtitles by Juan Claudio Epsteyn
E-mail: epsteyn@hotmail.com