ABSTRACT
In the 1950s, the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party resided in a building at Budapest's Republic Square, just steps away from the "Erkel" music theatre and Rakosi Street, a boulevard running from what the war had left of Elizabeth Bridge to Pest's Eastern Railway Station. On 30 October 1956, one of the most brutal killings of policemen and communist functionaries took place right in front of the party headquarters. "The 1956 revolution," wrote Miklos Krasso, a philosopher and disciple of the great Gyorgy Lukacs, "from its beginning was condemned to vindicate the thought and deeds of each and every political faction in Hungary: socialists, anarchists, liberals, fascists, and conservatives." Jozsef Antall, the conservative prime minister and a historian by profession, underscored the importance of acknowledging that 1956 had always been a controversial issue both within Hungary and among emigrants. Hungary's accession to the European Union in 2004 caused a considerable number of descendants of emigrants of 1948 and 1956 to return.
