Comrades,
The Fourth International, which includes in its ranks oppositional Communists in thirty different countries in the world, including the Soviet Union, and which for more than 20 years has conducted a merciless struggle against capitalism and Stalinism, sends its fraternal greetings to the victorious masses of Hungary.
Greetings to the heroic workers and students of Budapest! You have shown that the inflexible and united will of the working people is stronger than all the modern arms of oppression!
Greetings to the valiant workers and poor peasants of the country, to the insurrectional councils of the workers, soldiers, and students of the innumerable towns and villages of Hungary where the power has passed into the hands of the working people!
Eternal glory to the martyrs of your great insurrection, which has written a glorious page in the history of the international labor movement!
Hatred and contempt for the rotten clique of bureaucrats who tried to save their regime through the firepower of Russian tanks, passing over the corpses of hundreds of massacred Hungarian workers! This clique has nothing in common with communism, with socialism.
Your victorious revolution is not finished; it has hardly begun.
But the deaths of the martyrs of bureaucratic madness must not be in vain.
The power which is today in the hands of the Hungarian people must never again be lost.
The workers and students of Budapest, of Miskolcz, of Debreczen and Salaegerczegs did not rise in order to see the old masters of Horthy's Hungary, the capitalists and landlords, take the place of the ruling bureaucratic clique.
Today, in the giddy spirit of the victory just won, this danger does not seem essential to you. But tomorrow, across the open Austrian border, a whole flood of emigrants will return to the country; not only our Social Democratic comrades—who, as representatives of a working class party, must in our opinion benefit from all the rights of the democracy of the councils, even though we opposition communists do not share their political ideas—but also the representatives of the darkest reaction will come.
The discussions on a new Constitution, a new army, and a new government must not be carried on behind your back and without your active participation.
What you want is a political revolution, the overthrow of the dictatorship of the bureaucracy, the exercise of power by the toiling people as a whole, and not a social counterrevolution, not a return to private capitalism and great landed estates, not an end to planned economy and industrialization.
This is why we call upon you to show the greatest vigilance, permanently, and to take the only road which can guarantee the fruits of your victory:
In each factory, in each neighborhood, and in each town, set up a council of workers, soldiers, and students.
In each village, set up a council of poor peasants.
All legislative and executive power should repose exclusively with these councils, elected in free elections, meeting openly and under the control of all the toiling people.
All armed power should be wrested not only from the Stalinist secret police, but also from the old officers; this is why you should call for the dissolution of the police and the permanent army; all weapons should be given to the workers, organized into workers', students', and poor peasants' militias.
Have no confidence in any Parliament which would appeal to the old and new political connivers. All executive and legislative power in the state should be in your hands, victors of October 23. Demand the immediate convocation in Budapest of a congress of workers' councils of all Hungary, which would take power in the whole country!
Only such a congress of councils, with the delegates working under your constant control, subject to recall at any time if you do not agree with their decisions, will be a truly democratic expression of the will of the working people of Hungary!
Only such a congress of councils can draw up a new Hungarian constitution which should incorporate the following principles:
—All power is based on the councils democratically elected by the workers and poor peasants.
—All private acquisition of land and of the major means of production and transportation remains forbidden by law.
—The overall economic plan is set up, administered, and controlled with the democratic participation of all the producers.
—No state functionary receives a higher salary than that of a skilled worker.
The Hungarian Democratic Republic of Councils is an independent state which is in the camp of the working people and which should in a sovereign way, without the presence of foreign troops and without the meddling of a foreign power, decide on its international trade treaties and its treaties with other states.
These measures should be taken by the Congress of Councils of all Hungary. We opposition communists, who have been savagely persecuted for thirty years by Stalin and the Soviet bureaucracy; we, who have seen our leader Leon Trotsky assassinated by Stalin's minions, say to you again in the name of hundreds of thousands of Soviet communists who struggled and struggle today against the bureaucracy: don't be fooled by the promises of international capital! The British, French and American capitalists did and do commit the same infamies in Malaya, Kenya, North Africa, Korea, Guatemala, and Egypt that the bureaucrats committed in your country.
The task of defending the international expansion of the socialist conquests requires you to remain closely linked with all the workers' states, but like the Polish and Yugoslav peoples, on the basis of absolute independence and equal rights.
Hungarian Communists,
The recent weeks and the recent days were a terrible awakening for you. What seemed unbelievable before has now come true: your criminal leaders, with Erno Geroë at the head, have sought to keep their power, not against the counterrevolution but against the working class, by using the most sordid methods of bloody terror. With sudden violence, the correctness of all the criticisms and all the warnings of Trotsky and the left Communist Opposition, who from 1934 on predicted the inevitability of a political revolution against the bureaucracy's power to exploit and oppress, was verified for you.
Think of the odious crimes of your former leaders. Remember Lenin's warning: The only tactics, the only maneuvers which are permissible are those which reinforce the self-confidence and class-consciousness of the workers and not those which weaken it! Think of the principles described by Lenin in State and Revolution concerning the workers' state: a government of councils in which the masses of workers must possess democratic rights to the greatest degree, not of less rights than under capitalist democracy!
Remember Lenin's warning that in a workers' state which is deformed in a bureaucratic way, the trade unions must absolutely defend the rights of the workers against the state and the right to strike and demonstrate must be absolutely guaranteed.
There is no reason to despair or resign oneself. It was not the cause of communism which met a defeat in Hungary, but the cause of an inhuman bureaucratic system which the best communists have consistently fought for decades.
The time has come to draw the lessons of these bloody experiences.
Close ranks! Introduce in your party an unlimited democracy as well as freedom for conflicting opinions and tendencies. Study and spread the works of Leon Trotsky and the International Communist Opposition, which should be published and sold freely in Hungary.
Under the leadership of Stalin and Rakosi, the cause of communism was soiled and dishonored! Under the banner of Lenin and Trotsky communism will be victorious in your country and throughout the whole world!
If you, in the vanguard of the working people and on the basis of the broadest proletarian democracy, are willing to wage a struggle today for the Hungarian Republic of Councils, independent and democratic, the future is yours.
The demands of true proletarian internationalism today more than ever mean international coordination of the struggle against capitalism, imperialism and the bureaucracy. Long live the new Communist International! Long live the Hungarian section of the Fourth International!
Workers, students, soldiers, Communists of Hungary!
All of toiling humanity has its eyes on you. The fate of hundreds of millions of people may depend on how ready you are to advance on the path of socialist democracy and not to tolerate any retreat either toward Stalinist dictatorship or toward exploitative capitalism.
With the greatest confidence in the consciousness which you yourselves have of your responsibilities and in your socialist conviction, we cry out to you:
Long live the Hungarian Republic of Councils, independent and democratic!
Long live the world socialist revolution!
The International Secretariat of the Fourth International (World Party of Socialist Revolution)
October 30, 1956