1989: Hungary’s Peaceful Revolution

A communist red star is removed from a factory in Budapest in 1989.

This October 26, 1989, photo was taken three days after Hungary proclaimed itself a democracy after 40 years under Soviet-backed communist rule. The image is one of several that plot the momentous events that transformed Hungary 35 years ago.  

 

Unemployed men wait for odd jobs in Budapest in 1988.

Despite being relatively free compared to other countries in the Eastern Bloc, by the late 1980s Hungary’s economy was withering. As much as 17 percent of the population was living in poverty according to World Bank estimates  and suicide rates in the country were the highest in Europe.
 

A demonstration is held in Budapest against the destruction of villages in Transylvania on June 27, 1988.

In June 1988, police in Budapest allowed tens of thousands of demonstrators to protest against plans in Romania to destroy thousands of villages in Transylvania, a largely ethnic Hungarian region. Romanian ruler Nicolae Ceausescu intended to resettle Transylvania's villagers into state-run “agro-industrial” centers.

Hungarian crowds gather on the monument at the center of Budapest’s Heroes Square to protest Romania’s "rural systematization program."

The Transylvania protests awoke a long-dormant spirit of resistance in Hungary. A protestor later recalled, "Of course we went because we cared about the Hungarians in Transylvania, but mainly we went because we hated the communists."
 

Miklos Nemeth (center right, facing camera) is photographed soon after he was named prime minister of Hungary in November 1988.

In March 1989, Miklos Nemeth, the country’s young prime minister, confided to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow that Hungary would soon hold free elections. Gorbachev made clear he disagreed with the move, but vowed, "there will be no instruction or order by us to crush it.”

Nemeth told his advisers after leaving the Kremlin that "we have at least a silent supporter...in Moscow."

Nemeth meets with Gorbachev in the Kremlin on March 3, 1989.

The Kremlin’s new leadership was allowing the Soviet Union’s satellite states to forge their own paths in what became known as the “Sinatra Doctrine,” after Frank Sinatra’s song My Way. 

Soviet soldiers depart Hungary in June 1989.

Beginning in April 1989, thousands of the 65,000 of Soviet troops stationed in Hungary began to return to the U.S.S.R. under a plan that would drastically reduce the number of Soviet soldiers in Hungary.  
 

A worker cuts the fence between Hungary and Austria. 

In May 1989, a 240-kilometer-long fence along Hungary’s border with Austria was deemed more trouble than it was worth. The expensive barrier was equipped with sensors designed to detect people fleeing into the West but by 1989 the fence was increasingly problematic. Automated alarm rockets were being triggered by wild animals, or nothing at all.
 

Hungarian border guards pack up the "iron curtain" during its removal from the Austrian border in May 1989.

“I erased that item from my budget,” Nemeth later recalled of the decision to dismantle Hungary's border fence with Austria.  

 

Mourners surround the coffin of Imre Nagy and another victim of the Soviet crackdown on Hungary's 1956 revolutionaries. 

In June, tens of of thousands of people gathered as Imre Nagy, the former communist prime minister of Hungary was reburied with full honors. Nagy had sided with the revolutionaries in Hungary’s 1956 anti-communist uprising.
 

Huge crowds gather at Nagy’s reburial ceremony.

Amid the 1956 uprising, Nagy had called in vain for Western help as Soviet forces moved in to crush the revolution. Nagy was hanged, then his body dumped face-down in an unmarked grave on the outskirts of Budapest.

At Nagy’s reburial, speakers, including a 26-year-old Viktor Orban, called for free elections that would result in all Soviet troops leaving Hungary.

East German refugees sleep alongside their Trabant cars in Budapest. 

With Hungary’s dramatic shift toward freedom in 1989, thousands of East Germans enduring the constant snooping of the Stasi secret police began driving east. Hungary was one of the “fraternal socialist states" East Germans were permitted to travel to.
 

East Germans flee from Hungary into Austria on August 19, 1989, during the “Pan-European Picnic.”

Thousands of East Germans began fleeing Hungary into Austria, including some 600 in a single day during a festival-like protest branded the Pan-European Picnic on the Austria-Hungary border. The exodus, which was soon openly permitted by Hungary, sparked furious protest from East Germany, which claimed its citizens had been "seduced and paid to emigrate...to slander our state."
 

A man holds up a newspaper proclaiming Hungary becoming a democratic republic on October 23, 1989. The headline declares the day an "overdue, but by no means belated victory."

Hungary’s parliament soon approved changes to the country’s constitution that opened the door to free elections. The country’s acting president, Matyas Szuros, announced to a crowd of thousands below the parliament building, “'I solemnly declare that as of today, October 23, 1989, Hungary is a republic and its name is the Republic of Hungary."