Cold War radio and the Hungarian Uprising, 1956

Abstract

Overseas broadcasting during the Hungarian uprising indicated a new phase in the relationship between the media and the international events they report. Mapping the course of the uprising for Hungarian and global audiences alike, the western radios occupied multiple broadcast, diplomatic, and cultural terrains. The anti-communist rhetoric of their output allied to their perceived influence on listeners behind the Iron Curtain made the Hungarian uprising a cause célèbre of international broadcasting: one that revealed both the strategic significance of cold war radio as well as the limits of its use as a tactical weapon.

Notes

Alban Webb is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) at the Open University. Correspondence to: Alban Webb, Faculty of Social Sciences, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK, MK7 6AA. Email: [email protected]

1 Gyorgy Litvan, ed., The Hungarian Revolution of 1956: Reform, Revolt and Repression, 1953–1963, (London: Longman, 1996), 57.

2 George Mikes, The Hungarian Revolution, (London: Andre Deutsch., 1957), 80.

3 George Mikes, The Hungarian Revolution, (London: Andre Deutsch., 1957), 80, 79.

4 Tony Judt, Postwar: a history of Europe since 1945, (London: Heinemann, 2005), 318; Johanna Granville, ‘“Caught with jam on our Fingers”: Radio Free Europe and the Hungarian revolution of 1956’, Diplomatic History, 29/5 (2005), 825, fn.; Gary Rawnsley, Radio Diplomacy and Propaganda: the BBC and VOA in international politics, 1956–64 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), 93.

5 BBC Written Archive Centre (WAC), Caversham, Berkshire. Summary of World Broadcasts, 4 November 1956.

6 United Nations, Report of the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary, General Assembly, Official Records: Eleventh Session, Supplement No.18 (A/3592), 1957, para.100. The accusation was made in the Hungarian White Book: The Counter Revolutionary Forces in the October Events in Hungary, Vol. 2, published by the Information Bureau of the Council of Ministers of the Hungarian People's Republic.

7 United Nations, Report of the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary, General Assembly, Official Records: Eleventh Session, Supplement No.18 (A/3592), 1957, para.100. The accusation was made in the Hungarian White Book: The Counter Revolutionary Forces in the October Events in Hungary, Vol.2, published by the Information Bureau of the Council of Ministers of the Hungarian People's Republic, paras. 130-1.

8 Judt, Postwar, 318; Brian Cartledge, The Will to Survive: A History of Hungary, (Tiverton: Timewell Press, 2006), 482.

9 WAC, E3/898/1, ‘Listening in Hungary’, 27 November 1957; WAC, E3/907/1, ‘Hungary and the 1956 Uprising: Survey Among Hungarian Refugees in Austria’, USIA, 15 February 1957. The figures come from a BBC questionnaire filled in by 220 Hungarian who had arrived in Britain after the uprising and 315 refugees questioned in Austria by a market research company commissioned by RFE.

10 WAC, E3/907/1, ‘Hungary and the 1956 Uprising, 15 February 1957. 84 per cent also said that they relied on foreign radio most for news of what was happening outside Hungary.

11 In particular, see: Rawnsley, Radio Diplomacy; Michael Nelson, War of the Black Heavens: the battles of Western broadcasting in the Cold War (London: Brassey's, 1997); Johanna Granville, ‘“Caught with jam on our Fingers”: A. Ross Johnson, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty: The CIA Years and Beyond (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press; Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010).

12 WAC, E3/898/1, ‘Listening in Hungary’, 27 November 1957.

13 Asa Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, Volume IV: Sound and Vision (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 480.

14 WAC, R1/82/3, G68, ‘The Principles and Purpose of the BBC's External Services’, 30 October 1946.

15 For a detailed examination of the origins of Radio Free Europe, see: Johnson, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. See also: Nelson, War of the Black Heavens, 39-46.

16 In the case of the BBC, see for example: The National Archive (TNA), Kew, London, CAB134/99, CI(49)11(1) ‘Trends of Communist Propaganda’, 21 July 1949; Alban Webb, ‘A Leap of Imagination: BBC Audience Research Over the Iron Curtain’, Participations, 8/1 (2011), 154-72: http://www.participations.org/Volume%208/Issue%201/special/webb.htm. For a comparative discussion of the challenge to audience research posed by the cold war, see: A Ross Johnson & R. Eugene Parta (eds.), Cold War Broadcasting: impact on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, a collection of studies and documents (Budapest; New York: Central European University Press, 2010).

17 WAC, E3/898/1, draft report on ‘Listening in Hungary’, 27 November 1957.

18 Which hosted a broadcast centre for VOA and RFE.

19 For a wider discussion of the historical and contemporary problems of audience research at the BBC World Service, see: Marie Gillespie, Hugh Mackay & Alban Webb, (eds.), ‘BBC World Service Audience Research, 1932-2011’, Special Issue, Participations: International Journal of Audience Research, 8/1 (2011): http://www.participations.org/Volume%208/Issue%201/contents.htm

20 WAC, E3/898/1, ‘Listening in Hungary’, 27 November 1957; WAC, E3/907/1, ‘Hungary and the 1956 Uprising: Survey Among Hungarian Refugees in Austria’, USIA, 15 February 1957.

21 By early 1957 the BBC had received 125 applications from refugees seeking work at the Corporation. WAC, E2/812/1, ‘Testing of Hungarian Refugees’, Memorandum from Administrative Officer, European Services to A.D.X.B.

22 WAC, E3/898/1, ‘Listening in Hungary’, 27 November 1957.

23 WAC, E3/898/1, ‘Listening in Hungary’, 27 November 1957

24 WAC, E3/898/1, ‘Listening in Hungary’, 27 November 1957

25 WAC, E3/907/1, ‘Hungary and the 1956 Uprising’, 15 February 1957. When asked how often they listened to foreign radio stations 67 per cent said that they listened to the BBC ‘frequently’ – 100 per cent of the BBC's audience in this group. The equivalent figures for VOA and RFE were, respectively, 67 and 81 percent – a reduction in their overall audience share.

26 WAC, E3/898/1, ‘Listening in Hungary’, 27 November 1957.

27 WAC, E3/898/1, ‘Listening in Hungary’, 27 November 1957

28 WAC, E3/898/1, ‘Listening in Hungary’, 27 November 1957

29 See, for example, a collection of his communications in: WAC, E40/154/1-2, Hungarian Uprising, October to December 1956. In addition, a significant number of Fry's telegrams during the uprising have been reproduced in: Eva Haraszti-Taylor, The Hungarian Revolution of 1956: a collection of documents from the British Foreign Office (Nottingham: Astra, 1995).

30 Rawnsley, Radio Diplomacy, 76.

31 The Israeli invasion of Egypt was launched on 29 October 1956 in collusion with Britain and France. This was followed from 31 October by a pre-arranged Anglo-French bombardment of Egyptian airfields and associated targets and, on 5 November, a ground assault on the canal, under the pretext of a police action to restore order. A ceasefire was called at midnight on 6 November.

32 United Nations, Report of the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary, para. 30. In addition to the BBC and FBIS sources, use was made of a source entitled, ‘The Hungarian Revolution and fight for Freedom in the Light of Hungarian Broadcasts’.

33 WAC, E40/233/1, Message broadcast by Budapest Radio on behalf of the Revolutionary Committee of Radio Budapest, 30 October 1956.

34 Rawnsley, Radio Diplomacy, 95; Cartledge, Will to Survive, 474.

35 WAC, E12/713/1, Notes by Our Observer by Anatol Goldberg, 3 November 1956.

36 Johnson, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, 94.

37 Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Could it have been different?’, London Review of Books, 28/22, 16 November 2006, 3.

38 United Nations, Report of the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary, para. 89.

39 TNA, F0371/71687, Russia Committee meeting, 1 April 1948.

40 Charles Gati, Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian revolt, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 97-8.

41 Charles Gati, Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian revolt, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 97-8, 100. Emphasis in the original.

42 Granville, “Caught with jam on our Fingers”, 815 & 818.

43 Johnson, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, 80.

44 Rawnsley, Radio Diplomacy, 81.

45 Nicholas Cull, The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American propaganda and public diplomacy, 1945–1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 132.

46 For more on the nature of this relationship in this period, see: Alban Webb, ‘Constitutional Niceties: three crucial dates in Cold War relations between the BBC External Services and the Foreign Office’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 28/4 (2008), 557–567.

47 TNA, FO1110/781, PR1021/121, Note by Storey, 9 June 1955; For more on the nature of this relationship in this period, see: Alban Webb, ‘Constitutional Niceties: three crucial dates in Cold War relations between the BBC External Services and the Foreign Office’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 28/4 (2008), 557-567, Macdonald to Overton, 22 June 1955; Ibid., Cope, Budapest, to Mason, 2 June 1955.

48 Rawnsley, Radio Diplomacy, 71.

49 Johnson, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, 108.

50 Nelson, War of the Black Heavens, 79.

51 United Nations, Report of the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary, paras. 128–9.

52 Cartledge, The Will to Survive, 461.

53 WAC, E3/907/1, ‘Hungary and the 1956 Uprising, 32. 96 per cent believed that “the Hungarian people expected aid from the West, and from the US, in the uprising”.

54 WAC, E3/907/1, ‘Hungary and the 1956 Uprising, 32. 96 per cent believed that “the Hungarian people expected aid from the West, and from the US, in the uprising”, 36.

55 Cull, The Cold War and the United States Information Agency, 132.

56 Rawnsley, Radio Diplomacy, 92.

57 Johnson, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, 105–7; Arch Puddington, Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000), 103–4; United Nations, Report of the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary, pp. 42–3.

58 Nelson, War of the Black Heavens, 74.

59 William Griffith, ‘Policy Review of Voice for Free Hungary Programming, 23 October – 23 November 1956’, 5 December 1956 in, Csaba Békés, Malcolm Byrne, János Rainer, eds. The Hungarian Revolution: a history in documents, (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2002), 466 & 477.

60 Puddington, Broadcasting Freedom, 105.

61 Granville, ‘Jam on Our Fingers’, 826; Johnson, ‘Setting the Record Straight’, 15.

62 Puddington, Broadcasting Freedom, 105.

63 Nelson, War of the Black Heavens, 77.

64 For a survey of the various reviews of RFE after the Hungarian uprising see, Johnson, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, 103–8.

65 Gati, Failed Illusions, 97.

66 WAC, E3/285/1 Listening Behind the Iron Curtain, 1947–55; WAC, R1/82/4, Ga2, ‘BBC Broadcasts in Russian’, 6 November 1946.

67 WAC, R1/92/2, G56 ‘Report by Director of External Broadcasting’, March 1956.

68 Bridget Kendall, ‘The BBC and the Fall of the Berlin Wall’, Witness Seminar, Bush House, London, 26 June 2009.