ADVERTISEMENT
In which capital city was Josef Stalin's statue demolished on October 23, 1956, in a national revolt?
In 1951, on Joseph Stalin's (Russian = Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin) 70th birthday, a monument was completed as a gift from the Hungarian people in the capital Budapest. It remained in the city park standing 25 meters tall (82+ feet) in total, until the Hungarian revolt a few years later.
On October 23, 1956, around two hundred Hungarians gather in Budapest to demonstrate in sympathy for the Polish people who had just gained political reform. The Hungarian broadcast had issued sixteen demands over the radio, one of them being the dismantling of Stalin's statute. A hundred thousand Hungarian revolutionaries then demolished Stalin's statute that same day.
This uprising in Budapest spread and became a nationwide revolt against the Marxist-Leninist government of the 'Hungarian People's Republic' and its Soviet-imposed polices. Lasting from October 23rd to November 10th, this was the first major threat to Soviet control since the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics' (USSR's) forces drove Nazi Germany from Hungary at the end of WWII. The revolt was crushed when Soviet forces invaded Budapest on November 4th and over 2,500 Hungarians were killed in the conflict along with 700 Soviet soldiers.
The site of the former 'Stalin Monument' is now occupied by the 'Monument of the 1956 Revolution', completed in 2006 for the 50th anniversary of the historic revolt. October 23rd was declared a national holiday in Hungary in 1989.
More Info:
en.m.wikipedia.org
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT