Freedom fighter returning to Hungary

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By Steven Martens | Sunday, October 15, 2006 12:52 AM CDT | () comments

CLINTON, Iowa — For a few fleeting days in 1956, the people of Hungary had hopes of a life free from the rule of the Soviet Union during a fledgling revolution that began Oct. 23 with a group of students.

Mike Bukta of Clinton remembers it well. He was there, chanting in the streets, making speeches denouncing the Soviet rule and, soon after the revolt was put down by the Soviet troops, fleeing his homeland in fear for his life.

Bukta, 76, left Friday to return to Budapest, where he will attend events to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution.

Bukta’s family lived on a farm just outside of Budapest. In 1956, he was 26 years old, living near Budapest and working at a shipyard where many of his co-workers were lawyers, judges and other intellectuals who had been removed from their previous jobs by the Communist Party. One man who had been a supreme court judge was put in charge of safety at the shipyard.

“They were very intelligent people,” he said.

Clara Orban, a professor of Italian and French at DePaul University in Chicago who is organizing an exhibit about the 1956 Hungarian Revolution at the university, said the Communist government frequently removed high-paid intellectuals from their jobs to equalize pay among the people.

Orban said the 1953 death of Soviet leader Josef Stalin gave Eastern European countries hope for reform.

Reform movements in other parts of Europe, such as Austria and Poland, gave the Hungarian people hope for change, Bukta recalled.

“Everything was boiling at that point,” he said.

On Oct. 23, students and other Hungarians marched through the streets of Budapest to the Parliament building and radio building. The protest turned bloody when state police fired into the unarmed crowd in front of the radio building.

“There was shooting all over the place,” Bukta said.

The Hungarian people took up arms and fought back.

Bukta recalled being part of a group that helped tear down a bronze statue of Stalin and break it into pieces with sledgehammers. Bukta said he had a piece of the statue, but dropped it.

For a few days, it appeared the revolution might succeed, Orban said. Soviet soldiers who had grown accustomed to the Hungarian people were reluctant to shoot them. Hungarian Prime Minister Irme Nagy promised reform and took steps to break away from the other Warsaw Pact nations. But the success was short-lived.

On Nov. 4, the Soviets invaded, and five days later the revolution was put down.

Bukta remembers the night the Soviets returned.

“I said, ‘If I’m living in the morning, I’m leaving,’ ” he said.

He did just that. Knowing he would be a target of the Soviets and the police for his role in agitating against Soviet rule, he walked through Budapest to his parents’ farm and from there to the Austrian border. In all, he said he walked about 150 miles to flee Hungary. About 200,000 Hungarians fled the country in the wake of the revolution.

After spending some time in a refugee camp in Austria, Bukta made his way across Europe to Liverpool, England, where he boarded a ship bound for Canada. He moved to Hamilton, Ontario, where he found a factory job and lived with his aunt.

Bukta said he was plagued by nightmares after his escape to Canada.

“My aunt in Hamilton kept asking me, ‘What is the matter with you, you keep screaming in your sleep,’ ” he said.

His family who remained in Hungary fared worse. Bukta said police searching for him arrested his brother, Steve, by mistake and gave him a severe beating.

“Steve is still complaining about his back, he was beaten so bad,” he said.

Others left behind were jailed, tortured or executed, Bukta said, part of an effort on the part of the Soviet Union to make an example out of Hungary for other countries under Soviet control.

Bukta arrived in Clinton in 1967. Now retired from Lyondell Chemical Co., he and his family have been back to Hungary several times, both before and after Communism finally fell in Hungary in 1989.

He will be joined later this week by his wife, Iowa Rep. Polly Bukta, D-Clinton, for the observance.

Bukta said he has been planning the trip back for the 50th anniversary of the revolution for a long time and is proud of his role in his home country’s history, but has mixed feelings about attending the commemorative events.

“I’m not going to find my friends,” he said.

Steven Martens can be contacted at (563) 659-2595 or smartens@qctimes.com.