Socio-Psychological Roots of Discontent: Paradoxes of 1956

Gyáni, Gábor (2006) Socio-Psychological Roots of Discontent: Paradoxes of 1956. Hungarian Studies, 20 (1). pp. 65-73. ISSN 0236-6568

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Abstract

In the paper we seek to trace and better understand the surprising sociological components of the '56 revolution. The paradox lying in the heart of the revolutionary events concerns the fact that the social groups most closely involved in the political mobilization included the formerly faithful communist, later “revisionist”intellectuals, the university students and the industrial working class. They had previously been considered as the primary social basis and legitimation force of the communist political regime. Still, they were to become the main motor of initiating the disobedience almost before 23rd of October and, in addition, “did the revolution”thereafter. What could be the reason of their discontent causing the first “revolutionary”schock to a political regime which regularly defined and declared itself to embody the social(ist) revolution? The explanation is based on a sociological consideration (the mobility trap) combined with a psychological reasoning (the sense of guilt, the bitter feeling of being deceived, and the unfulfilled expectations) and the whole argument will be placed into the specific historical context specified either by Hungary's road from '53 to '56, and the global developments of the communist world in the course of 1956.

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