The Hungarian Student, 1957 (1. évfolyam, 2-8. szám)
1957 / 4. szám
16 The Hungarian Student RESOLUTION 1: PURPOSE OF THE REVOLUTION Many comments have been made in all parts of the world about our Hungarian Revolution. Some persons, servants of the Soviet Union which put down the Revolution by force of arms, try to say that the Hungarian Revolution was not a popular revolution, not a spontaneous revolution, not a people’s revolution. To those who say such things, either knowing or unknowing servants of the Soviet Union, the Association of Hungarian Students in the United States makes these statements: (1) The leaders of our organization were leaders of Student Revolutionary Committees in the universities of Hungary, chosen by our fellow students to bring an end to Soviet colonialism in Hungary. Freedom of the press. (2) Our membership encompasses students of many political viewpoints; many of us believe that the regime which ruled Hungary from 1948 to 1956 made great improvements in the Hungarian way of life which should be preserved; but it is not in our politics that we are united and it is not because of politics that we fought the revolution ; we fought the revolution because we saw that (a) The Communist regime did not admit a concept of individual freedom. (b) Under the Communist regime the traditional freedom of our universities, our right to study what we chose and our right even to attend the university if we were well qualified, was trampled upon and left unrecognizable. (c) So all-pervading were the inroads upon personal life made by the Communist government that one could not read, write or talk with freedom. Who seconds the nomination? (d) No government, regardless of the work it does, can be tolerated when it is a government imposed by force and against the will of the people, ignorant of basic freedoms, and subservient to the interests of a colonizing power. (e) We could not maintain our basic dignity as human beings if we lived unprotesting under the Communist regime; we could not do our duty as students and scholars if always, in the pursuit of truth, we were forced to fear government intervention and fear for our lives and our families if we spoke what we believed to be true. These views we share in common; we differ among ourselves in the kind of government we would have preferred in place of the totalitarian Communist rule of force. But we all agree that the government of the future must preserve liberty and freedom and must allow for free expression of the will of the people. (3) Hungarians are in an almost unique position. During World War II we were forced to live under one totalitarian regime, perpetrated upon us by the force of German arms under the Nazi regime. After 1948 we found our government again totalitarian, again no longer truly “our” government but instead the colonial rule of a foreign power maintained both by Hungarians pledged to serve the Soviet Union and by Soviet troops which have resided in force in our country from the end of World War II continuously until the present day. We have lived under both kinds of totalitarianism, fascist and communist, and we know that no totalitarian regime is consistent with the pursuit of learning. University students, wherever they are true to the demands of truth, must work for an atmosphere of study which is free from insistent partisan demands of totalitarian forces. The vote-counting is still in process, but everyone is excitedly trying to predict the results.
