“What is our foremost task today? For the workers’ councils to take actual power in every factory and workplace, because, in social terms, the workers’ council is entitled to all the rights of an owner. Only now have the factories, banks, and land truly become theirs. Let us take great care of them and never surrender them to anyone again. Let us strengthen, consolidate, and organize the workers’ councils and their national federation. Naturally, some still hope that economic difficulties will cause the councils to fail within a few months. Let us show them that this is not true. We can cope with these difficulties better than the old bureaucratic, administrative system.”[1]

Sándor Karsai, chairman of the District X workers’ council, speaking at the final meeting of the Greater Budapest Central Workers’ Council on December 8, 1956.

In 1989, the events at the end of October and beginning of November 1956 had to be recognized as a revolution, with all its consequences, which was the greatest shift in Hungarian historical consciousness. The most important element became rehabilitation: honoring those executed and compensating the still-living victims. Another urgent task was clarifying the extent of retribution, reassessing the background events and what happened between October 23 and November 4, and documenting the final armed resistance. When Imre Nagy and his associates were reburied, one of the speakers at the ceremony in Heroes' Square was Sándor Rácz, chairman of the Greater Budapest Central Workers' Council (KMT), who could have embodied the workers' councils' ideal of self-managing socialism; however, his words revealed that he had long since drifted away from this ideal and later sympathized with the views of right-wing parties after 1989. Liberal ideas played the leading role—that is, anticommunism, liberation from Soviet and Rákosi oppression, multi-party parliamentary democracy, joining the West, and a wish for neutrality. This perfectly aligned with mainstream political aspirations. November 4, 1956, the Soviet invasion and the formation of Kádár's government, was mourned and continues to be mourned by crowds everywhere as an end, as the loss of freedom and independence. The armed resistance and its heroes, the "Pest boys" fighting in the rear guard, were glorified.

The workers’ council tradition was upheld and promoted by just one small New Left civic organization, the Left Alternative Association (BAL). Its founding charter stated that it must connect with workers’ aspirations for self-government, which both the state and capital had obstructed over the previous 150 years. The association’s broadest task was to explore the theoretical and practical possibilities of a society built on cooperation between productive, self-governing communities, organizing itself at the technical and scientific level of its time. It approached 1956 in the same spirit, rejecting both the state-socialist past and bourgeois restoration, and regarding itself as the heir to the workers’ councils’ aspirations. I also served on BAL’s coordinating body. To substantiate our position, we quickly published the most important documents then available, first in Kritika and then in the emerging left-wing journal Eszmélet. These included the Presidential Council’s (NET) Decree-Law No. 25 of 1956, which legalized enterprise workers’ councils, together with the KMT’s objections; the trade union proposal to establish a Council of Producers as parliament’s second chamber; and the KMT specialist committee’s draft organizational structure for national chambers.[2] Our articles sought to highlight the growing movement for social self-government and collective ownership organized from below, rather than the assumption of political tasks. Against the NET decree, we argued that the rejected KMT proposal could have opened the way to a different distribution of ownership and a society-wide experiment in a self-managed market economy. The documents published in Eszmélet went beyond individual enterprises to address the brief debate about transforming economic management as a whole.

In 1989, our only available account of the workers’ councils’ role was the English historian Bill Lomax’s book, published in the West.[3] Against the counter-revolutionary paradigm, it argued that the revolution had not ended with the Soviet military intervention on November 4, 1956. What followed was more than rearguard action: a second phase had begun, in which workers themselves and the councils representing them played the decisive role. Once armed resistance was crushed, they turned to their most fundamental instrument, the general strike. Spontaneity quickly gave way to conscious action, which for a time proved successful. The workers’ council system created a structure that secured their power. They not only expressed their political will but also effectively represented their economic interests. Moreover, they proposed an arrangement capable of replacing the bureaucratic party-state system. Council members were not released from their regular work, and they exercised oversight over officials. We may call this a workers’ state. Lomax summarized his argument as follows: the workers’ council system shattered communist-dominated state power at a single stroke,

“and opened the way towards a society that had been the original goal of Marxism and socialism — where hierarchy gives way to equality, political institutions are replaced by popular bodies, political rule becomes social power, and ‘government over people is replaced by administration by the workers.’”[4]

There was, however, an official “scientific” position.[5] It drew on a substantial body of sources inaccessible to ordinary people and even to historians. Its argument began by claiming that the workers’ councils had been organized from above and heavily influenced by intellectual groups, such as members of the Writers’ Union, and by István Bibó, whom it classified as a bourgeois politician. In this account, the KMT was the central organ of the counter-revolution, playing an almost exclusively political role. Its character was defined by demands for a multiparty system based on the conditions of 1945, free elections, restoration of the right to strike, and freedom of the press and speech. It was anti-Soviet, hence nationalist, and advocated neutrality, taking Austria and Switzerland as models. It did not demand a workers’ government. Its ideas were confused and bore anarchist traits. It also wanted higher wages and corrupted workers through food provision, product sales, aid, and the abolition of performance-based pay. The author exaggerated irregularities in the re-election of workers’ councils as well. Overall, the official historical account did more than label the councils revisionist: it portrayed their intentions as bourgeois and therefore, by the understanding of the time, counter-revolutionary. By the second half of the 1980s, and especially in 1989, this view was already considered anachronistic and discredited.

1989–1992

After 1990, two factors shaped assessments of the workers’ councils of 1956. One was the consolidation of November 4 as the revolution’s endpoint, with the council movement portrayed as a worthy but entirely hopeless attempt. The other was the failure of workers’ councils and attempts at worker ownership in the years after 1989, swept aside by the overwhelming force of bourgeois restoration.

Let us first examine the second factor. In the summer of 1989, the tripartite talks sidelined economic questions, although BAL invoked the tradition of the 1956 workers’ councils to raise the issue of owners’ and employees’ interests.[6] A workers’ council movement nevertheless emerged in late 1989 and early 1990. Lacking a working-class base, the Hungarian Democratic Forum embraced it with an eye to the elections. A Workers’ Forum convened in Pesterzsébet in February 1990 asserted workers’ right to ownership and autonomy, demanding that a law on workers’ councils be drafted and submitted. A meeting of the Solidaritas trade union and the Social Self-Government Movement soon took similar positions. The Hungarian Socialist Party’s (MSZP) election posters also proclaimed “Workers’ ownership!”, but that counted for nothing after its electoral defeat.

However, political influence did not last long. In the spring of 1990 election campaign, József Antall already referred to workers' councils as temporary. All parties were interested in establishing capitalist relations. The concept of socialism had become so compromised at that time that it could no longer even be mentioned in its form of self-management. (If what happened was socialism, then there is no more socialism.) Everyone hoped for the establishment of a humane form of capitalism based on private ownership.

The National Federation of Workers’ Councils (MOSZ) did exist, but the government “took it over” and organized new enterprise council elections in autumn 1990, which the former management won. Antall’s government had a strong interest in gaining trade union influence, so MOSZ became a trade union and joined the Christian-social trade union federation. The Employee Share Ownership Program, enacted in June 1992, bore no resemblance to the ideas of the 1956 workers’ councils. In privatization it primarily benefited managers: they bought workers’ shares cheaply and then sold many of the companies they had acquired to Western capitalists.

In the end, neoliberal-inspired policies and concepts played the decisive role. László Thoma summarized the events of the regime change in 2004 as follows:

“The workers’ council movement had no historical chance: the legitimate political forces shunned whatever was genuinely rooted in 1956 within it like the plague. Every party, every political force needed a version of 1956, and only as much of it as would legitimize itself; everything beyond that was deemed diabolical.”[7]

Historical approach

For a long time, the history of the workers’ councils received little attention. In his 2006 book, Paul Lendvai described it as “repeatedly forgotten”, even though its protagonists were workers. Or perhaps precisely for that reason? Imre Nagy and the revisionists dominated attention to 1956. Later, state-security terror, mass shootings, and reprisals took centre stage, fitting into a political narrative that saw the heroes of 1956 in the armed insurgents.[8] Textbooks did discuss workers’ councils, particularly the events surrounding the Greater Budapest Central Workers’ Council, but treated them as resistance or rearguard action rather than an integral part of the revolution. Their importance was, of course, acknowledged. Alongside them, much emphasis was placed on the underground activities of parties and intellectuals: István Bibó’s memorandum, leaflets, the Writers’ Union, and the émigrés. Sometimes authors adopted the émigrés’ terminology and spoke of a period of dual power after November 4. Péter Gosztonyi, for example, wrote:

"The role and political weight of the workers' councils constantly increased at the end of November and in December. They were almost 'a state within a state'!" [9]

Rearguard Battle?

In his 2006 book, Paul Lendvai aptly calls the KMT period a “second revolution” when discussing the general resistance.[10] He borrowed the phrase from the émigré Miklós Molnár’s book, published in Paris in 1966; Bill Lomax also used it. Although Lendvai considered this form of resistance hopeless, he showed that Kádár’s supporters were powerless against the popular will for almost a month. The councils played a decisive role in factories, towns, and even counties until mid-December. Their influence in the factories was much greater than in October. Lendvai also noted that after the turn of the millennium the “second revolution” had been “repeatedly forgotten”.

László Varga was among the first historians to turn to the workers’ councils. He too rejected the blanket description of events after November 4 as rearguard action, since the workers believed the revolution’s achievements could be preserved. He dated the period of rearguard action, a kind of “moral stand”, to December 8, 1956, after the banning of territorial workers’ councils. Only then did the possibility of an organized general strike as an effective means of resistance capable of limiting government power disappear.

The term “rearguard action” matters because on November 4, 1956, the emergence of the Kádár government and the second Soviet military intervention ended the phase of the revolution oriented towards the bourgeois-democratic and independence aspirations of 1945. From the perspective of the Soviets and their allies, the prospect of departure from the Soviet bloc had vanished; for the revolutionaries, the hope that UN troops would arrive had disappeared. Armed resistance proved hopeless. Force was no longer an effective instrument, neutrality had become impossible, Soviet troops remained at least temporarily, and multiparty elections were a distant prospect. Circumstances had changed radically, and so had the objectives. Yet the self-organizing movement — to put it more grandly, the revolution — continued.

In István Bibó’s view at the time, the need for safeguards against the dangers of an orthodox capitalist, anticommunist, and old-conservative restoration had to be recognized. At the same time, young people, workers, and soldiers, the overwhelming majority of whom identified as socialists, had to be given the opportunity to realize their aspirations.

The only realistic hope remaining was to win a democratic socialist alternative instead of the bourgeois-democratic model; that is, the Yugoslav example and model came to the forefront, transforming towards self-managing socialism organized from below.

This was especially true after the Presidential Council’s decree-law, published on November 22, 1956, legalized enterprise workers’ councils. For the surviving revolutionary forces that had not been driven underground, this was the only opening available. It marked the revolution’s second phase, in which the councils played the decisive role. Their principal instruments were political: strikes, above all the threat of a general strike, and negotiations with the government aimed at compromise.

Several historians use the term “dual power” to describe the situation,[11] which itself suggests a new phase of the revolution. The term assesses the situation in terms of governing power, but a qualification is needed: the preponderance of power lay with the Soviet army and the government, making the relationship asymmetric.[12] They even prevented the establishment of a National Workers’ Council as a counterweight. Nevertheless, the remaining revolutionary bodies could be seen gravitating towards the workers’ organization. The essential issue was the objectives: a shift from bourgeois democracy to democratic socialism. This could accommodate Soviet troop withdrawal, a degree of independence, Imre Nagy’s return, recognition of the right to strike, and a certain interpretation of press freedom. The KMT’s nationwide appeal of November 15 already demanded free elections between parties committed to socialism. It did not envisage the return of large capitalist holdings and landed estates, or armed war against communists. The socialization of state property — what we might call economic power — and the form of workers’ participation became the central questions. Of course, the tactical struggle for influence continued from day to day.

László Varga stressed that Yugoslavia provided the model for workers’ councils, and that the official media had promoted it since August 1956. Indeed, trade union and SZÖVOSZ delegations visited Yugoslavia, followed by a top-level MDP delegation on October 15–22. Reports described the workers’ councils and the functioning of the institutions in as much detail as possible. On October 19, Ernő Gerő and János Kádár even visited a workers’ council at a Zagreb factory and attended its meeting. What picture of the Yugoslav system did newspaper readers receive?

The Yugoslav model

In the one or two months preceding October 23, the Hungarian-Yugoslav relationship changed dramatically. Instead of insults, the press presented an attractive image of our southern neighbor. Reports on workers' councils were particularly appealing; this institution was portrayed as an effective participatory organization for employees in virtually every important matter of the enterprise, and its mass and democratic nature was praised (with biennial re-elections and 260,000 participants nationwide). The significance of workers' councils was enhanced by the autonomy of enterprises, market competition, and the fact that directors were selected through an open competition by the workers' councils. There was even a debate in the air about introducing workers' councils. The Executive Board of SZOT rejected this possibility, but Népszava published János Kornai’s speech in full; indeed, he argued in favor of creating organizations of the type of workers' councils. [13]

Readers were informed about the functioning of the bicameral legislative power, one house of which was called the Council of Producers. In Yugoslavia, although the standard of living was lower than at home, the dynamism of development was commendable; society as a whole was more open to the West, supplies in Belgrade were good, openness was greater, and the system was more tolerant even towards peasants – this could be read in the press.

Even in retrospect, Yugoslavia ranks among the world’s fastest-growing economies from the 1950s to the 1970s. It not only caught up with Hungary but also overtook Portugal, Spain, and Greece. As József Juhász points out, unsuccessful economic reforms were not the principal immediate cause of its disintegration.[14] It is understandable that in 1956 our southern neighbour’s succession of achievements captured many people’s imaginations.

Awakening class consciousness

Remarkably, within 2-3 days after October 24th, workers' councils spread like wildfire, although it is true that the SZOT's "sudden" about-face and its call for their establishment on the 26th played a role. However, the first workers' councils were formed even before the trade union center issued its statement,

and this resulted in lightning-fast mass formation across the entire country.

The unexpected change in the attitude of the working class might still today cause great surprise. Six years were more than enough to gain the experience that they were not the owners of the factories, but rather the servants of bureaucrats and the party-state. The provisional workers' councils did not only organize themselves and make political statements; they also took action: they removed leaders who did not please them and appointed new ones. For example, from the 18 factory units of the Csepel Iron and Metal Works, 250 people were expelled from the plants. The MDP (generally the parties) were expelled from workplaces, workers' food supply was organized, factory guards were established, elections were organized in the plants to elect permanent councils, and they even made contact with each other.

A few days after November 4, armed resistance was rendered impossible, and on the 7th, when the Kádár government took office, it appointed the heads of ministries and major authorities, banned military councils, and deprived revolutionary committees of their right to act. Two days later, preparations for the organization of state security forces began; the government took control of the police and the army, introduced expedited criminal proceedings. The next day, János Kádár declared on the radio that the uprising had been suppressed. However, he maintained the demands of the revolution: the withdrawal of Soviet troops (if not immediate), the legitimacy of the October demonstrations, the rectification of past mistakes, and the dissolution of the ÁVH. He left the question of a multi-party system pending, especially since such systems were operating in China, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Poland, albeit strictly under the leading role of the communists. Imre Nagy could return to government at any time — so Kádár said.

The preponderance of power lay with Kádár and his associates: the coercive apparatus and the mass media were in their hands. On the other side stood the revolutionary bodies and workers’ councils, the latter legalized by a government decree on November 13. Demonstrations were hardly a viable option, since first the Soviets and then the security forces could disperse them by force. Against a general strike, however, the government was powerless. Workers’ councils organized regionally to strengthen their position. The Greater Budapest Central Workers’ Council was also established, reaching almost every factory and capable of organizing a general strike.

Thus, the second phase of the revolution depended on the influence of the workers' councils.

The workers’ councils rejected both a restoration of Rákosi’s system and a capitalist restoration. This appeared to provide a basis for negotiations with the government; everything else was negotiable. In the talks, the government either refused concessions or evaded demands, postponing Soviet troop withdrawal. The decisive issue became the nature of socialism. The SZOT also had its say. Self-management, organization from below, and the ruling party’s sphere of authority were the central questions. In other words, the possibility of an independent Hungarian path within the Soviet bloc — “national communism”, in the terminology of the time — was on the agenda.

Other organizations were weak; their statements had at most symbolic significance, such as the Writers' Union or the Hungarian Intellectual Revolutionary Council led by Zoltán Kodály and established on November 21. The question arises why no significant university student movement emerged, unlike in Western Europe in 1968. Moreover, here too university student organizations were formed, but instead of focusing on armed resistance, they concentrated on maintaining order. Consequently, the armed groups disbanded almost immediately. A crucial factor was that students, as the most mobile layer, fled en masse to the West, causing the most active segment of their population to disappear from the campuses. Teaching naturally ceased in the institutions. Raids were conducted in dormitories, and several remaining student leaders were arrested. Thus, the leaderships of MEFESZ revived, but their scope was rather narrow and marred by internal disputes. It was not until December 20 that a national congress could be convened, but by then their demands had become quite restrained. The terror continued with ongoing arrests, and gradually communist youths took control. Education was only resumed at the end of January or early February 1957.

Returning to the workers' council movement: Kádár's regime prevented the establishment of the National Workers' Council with Soviet armed forces on November 21 – in response, the KMT called for a general strike. The government dismissed these demands, yet on November 22, newspapers carried on their front pages the Presidential Council’s aforementioned decree-law on workers’ councils; thus, many believed that the authorities had committed themselves to self-managed socialism. This was considered a partial success for the workers' council activists. Moreover, further negotiations ended in compromise. Kádár recognized the KMT as a consultative body and promised to submit the appointment rights of directors again to the Council of Ministers; on the other hand, the workers' council delegation urged workers to resume work immediately while maintaining the right to strike.

The debates shifted towards the details of the operation of the workers' councils. One issue was the scope of power of the plant-level workers' councils. The central problem was the appointment of directors: should this be done by the ministry or, through a competitive system, by the workers' council? However, the ideas went even further. Népszava published the trade unions' proposal [15] for the Council of Producers, which it recommended as the second chamber of Parliament; this body would be formed by sectoral workers' councils and would deal exclusively with economic issues. There were also debates regarding the competencies of ministries versus local workers' councils. The KMT proposal stated that industry chambers built upon workers' councils should assume ownership rights. Industry chambers should be organized into a National Chamber of Industry. Farmer councils organized according to territorial principles should form agricultural chambers and establish a National Agricultural Chamber. Similar organizations could be formed in other sectors, such as a National Chamber of Commerce. Together, these would constitute the National Economic Council, the body of economic legislation. The implementation of laws would be the responsibility of ministries and administration. This proposal envisioned the entire economy as a self-governing system in which production units would naturally enjoy autonomy, much like in Yugoslavia. There was no time left for detailed consideration, development, and discussion of the draft.

Kádár and his associates severed ties with the provisions of their November 4th declaration on December 8. They sought to take the weapon of the strike, the opposition’s only significant instrument, out of the workers’ councils’ hands. To prepare for this, they dissolved the revolutionary committees and similarly named organizations on December 5, launching a wave of arrests. With the established armed forces and police power, they ruthlessly dispersed protest demonstrations. Upon witnessing this, the KMT issued a strike call, to which the government responded by outlawing the territorial workers' councils. The arrest of their leaders commenced. On the 11th, martial law was declared, factory guards were disarmed, and on the 12th, public security detention was ordered. However, Kádár declared in Pesterzsébet that the enterprise workers' council would become a fundamental institution of the system.

With the elimination of the revolution’s centre of power, only rear-guard actions remained.

Local workers’ councils held out for a while. Centralization soon brought a return to Rákosi-style economic management, making their existence impossible. The resignation of the Csepel Iron and Metal Works Workers’ Council on January 8, 1957, may be seen as symbolic.[16] The defeat of the Hungarian self-management experiment reflected Soviet imperial interests and the policies of the Soviet Union’s domestic allies. In return for substantial material support from the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) and China, Kádár and his associates could not afford even the smallest turn towards the Yugoslav model.

Assessment

The history of workers’ councils has now been clarified by historical scholarship. Zoltán Ripp is right to assess their contribution as follows: “One of the most important, and certainly defining, features of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was the outstanding role of the workers’ councils. This was not simply because the working class provided the revolution’s main social force, expressed organizationally through the councils, but because they also formulated its most distinctive programme.”[17] Yet in the next sentence he says that they “proved their strength in the resistance following the revolution’s suppression…” The question therefore remains open: should we regard the period from November 4 to December 8 as rearguard action, or as the revolution’s second phase?

Along with several other historians, I regard this period as the second phase, that of self-managed market socialism. Amid the overall decline, the advance of workers’ self-management continued until the debates of early December. Although Kádár ordered the rationalization of state structures and preparations for economic reform, reducing the influence of workplace party organizations was no longer discussed. By late spring 1957, he had halted even the preparations for reform. A transformation along Yugoslav lines would have required courage. Its prerequisite could have been to treat workers’ councils as partners rather than enemies, following Imre Nagy’s example and using the councils to build a mass base. On November 8, that possibility vanished altogether. The struggle for self-management was over.

I agree with Tamás Gáspár Miklós that 1956 was Eastern Europe’s greatest left-wing movement. But we cannot understand its greatness without including the month and more after November 4. A full assessment of society’s appropriation of the revolution’s moral and political legacy is still lacking. Intellectual and moral resources — a living tradition, secure social democracy, and national renewal — can be built only if we recognize and accept the aspiration to self-management as its distinctive characteristic. The tradition of 1956 combined national identity with social equality and equal rights. Moreover, experiments in self-management repeatedly emerge within global capitalism, and Hungary’s 1956 was one of their worthy precursors.

[1] — Archives of the Institute of Political History, fond 290, archival unit 58.

[2] — Feitl István: Törvényerőre emelt önigazgatás. 1956, Magyarország. Kritika, 1989-10; Feitl István: A magyar munkástanácsok és az önigazgatás 1956-ban. Eszmélet, 2 (1989-11).

[3] — Bill Lomax: Magyarország 1956-ban. Paris, 1982. Together with István Kemény, he also compiled a selection of documents published in Paris in 1986.

[4] — Lomax, cited above.

[5] — Molnár János: A Nagybudapesti Központi Munkástanács. Kossuth Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 1969.

[6] — See: Szabó András György: A munkásönigazgatás magyar hagyománya: az 1956-os munkástanácsok. Eszmélet, 137.

[7] — Thoma László: A baloldali esélyekről. Eszmélet, 61 (2004), 146.

[8] — At the clandestine conference of 1986, János Kis also placed the history of the workers’ councils within an account of the prolonged rearguard struggle. Kis János: Az 1956–57-es restauráció. In: A forradalom előzményei, alakulása és utóélete. Tanulmányok és kronológia. Paris–New Jersey, 1987, 120–163.

[9] — Gosztonyi Péter: Föltámadott a tenger… 1956. Herp, München, 196.

[10] — Paul Lendvai: Forradalom tabuk nélkül 1956. Napvilág Kiadó, Budapest, 2006.

[11] — The term “dual power” is used, for example, in: Kahler Frigyes – M. Kiss Sándor: Kinek a forradalma? Püski–Kortárs, Budapest, 1997, 168.

[12] — Gulyás Martin: „Szocializmust akarunk, de magyar úton”. Munkástanácsok 1956–1957-ben. Corvina Kiadó, 2022, 130–134.

[13] — Legyen szava a vállalati kollektívának. Kornai János. Népszava, 1956-10-18. János Kornai’s contribution to the discussion organized by Népszava.

[14] — Juhász József: A délszláv háborúk. Napvilág Kiadó, Budapest, 1997, 80. Károly Attila Soós had already drawn attention to the profound contradictions in the waves of economic reform. (Soós Károly Attila: Gazdasági reformok bevezetése és részleges visszavonása: a Jugoszláv példa. Medvetánc, 1–2, 1981.)

[15] — Hozzuk létre a Termelők Tanácsát! Népakarat, 1956-11-29.

[16] — Tóth Eszter Zsófia: A Csepel Vas- és Fémművek munkástanácsának története (1956–1957). Múltunk, 4 (1999).

[17] — Ripp Zoltán: 1956. Forradalom és szabadságharc Magyarországon. Korona Kiadó, Budapest, 2002, 125–126.

Featured image: Újpest Bay, the slipway at the Ganz Shipyard. Workers prepare to launch the hull of a floating crane. Source: Chuckyeager tumblr / Fortepan.