2,4 They understood because even for seven-year-olds, it was hard to remain innocent when looking at Zoltan's hands or listening to Andras and Ilona speak of the years  70 during the war when they had been forced into hiding in order to avoid becoming two more names on the long list of Hungarian Jews herded onto trains and sent to their deaths at Auschwitz.

3. 3,1 "Look at the flags," Katalin said, pointing out the hundreds of flags with the red crest of Soviet communism ripped from the center.

Judit followed her friend's finger until she was distracted by the sound of her mother's voice chanting "We want Nagy Imre! We want Nagy Imre!"

3.2 Ilona and thousands of others took up the call, insisting that Imre Nagy come out and address them. Imre Nagy was a faithful communist who had been granted power and then had it snatched away from him two years before because he was considered too liberal. To many he was a hero. To those in power he was a threat. To most loyalists, however, he remained the best solution. With Nagy in power, it was believed, Hungary would have more freedom than it currently enjoyed, but could still remain a good communist nation.

3.3 When Nagy stepped out onto the balcony, the crowd went wild. Katalin and Judit reached out and clasped hands, hanging on to their fathers and each other, looking up toward the balcony as if God himself had appeared. Katalin glanced down at her mother and saw tears in Maria's eyes. Andras, too, appeared misty as Nagy began to address them.

3.4 "We're not comrades," Zoltan shouted, his words flying over the crowd like a spark in dry wood.

All around them, thousands of angry voices echoed Zoltan's sentiment. Suddenly, a violent protest flamed throughout the square.

"Dear friends," Nagy began again. This time, he was greeted with uproarious approval.

3.5 Even Katalin recognized it as a phrase from an old Hungarian poem. She and Judit joined in, enjoying the sensation of being part of history.

Nagy held up his hands, asking for silence. In a voice trembling with emotion, he began to sing a hymn previously banned by communist edict: "God Bless Hungary."

4. 4.1 As Zoltan scanned the scene, listening to the masses intone their precious hymn, watching their faces brighten with a light only faith can provide, he thought his heart would burst with the elation he felt. It was as if someone had clothed his dreams in reality. How many nights had he prayed for a moment like this, a moment when his people would stand up and demand change? He turned, looking for Miklos, wanting to share this triumphant time with his brother. But Miklos was gone.

4.2 Several blocks away, down past the Elizabeth Bridge, Radio Budapest was under siege. Housed in a cluster of buildings near the museum park on Brody Sandor Street, the radio station served as a magnet for those who wanted an end to oppression. Students still charged from their experience at the Bem statue, those who had just left Kossuth tér exalted after hearing Imre Nagy speak, citizens who happened by and noticed a crowd gathering, youngsters on the scent of a fight—all drew together outside the thick wooden doors that guarded the enclave.

4.3 To many, the radio station was a symbol of their subjugation. Protected around the clock by a team of AVO sharpshooters, Radio Budapest functioned like an insistent nanny, force-feeding its children propaganda and lies even when they protested they had had enough, that they were full and couldn't stomach any more. It was the very center of communist control—run by the Council of Communist Ministers, manned by more than 1,200 people, all of whom were required to belong to the Communist Party. Before tonight, the only alternative had been Radio Free Europe.

4.4 At nine o'clock a group of university students stood outside the wooden gates, shouting that they be allowed to enter so they could broadcast their demands. Their request was denied. Enraged, the young rebels thrust toward the gates, heaving against the heavy doors, trying to push them open. In response, dozens of tear-gas bombs rained down on the crowd. Two enormous beacons clicked on, flooding the area with harsh white light, giving the AVO men inside the building and their spies out on the street a chance to identify the leaders of this insolent insurgency.

5. 5.1 A bellow of dissent roared through the air. Stones were hurled, aimed at the spotlights. In retaliation the AVO men aimed down into the mob, but they had machine guns in their hands, not stones. When they fired, lights didn't blink. Lives were snuffed out. Bodies fell. Women screamed. Frustrated, angry men shouted obscenities. The AVO continued to fire.72

5.2 Suddenly, an army officer leaped onto a truck and shouted at the gunmen, demanding that they stop the killing. From deep within the crowd, Miklos Gaspar watched in horror as a spray of bullets came from somewhere inside the building, tearing into the flesh of the well-intentioned soldier, jerking his body around until all the life within it had been spilled onto the truck in a deadly red pool.

5.3 Reaction was instantaneous. The crowd surged forward, beating on the doors. Miklos stood where he was. He was being knocked and jostled about, but still he didn't move. He couldn't. He was paralyzed by the obvious: Without weapons, their efforts were futile.

5.4 Just then, up from the southern part of the city, Miklos spotted a line of trucks driving into view. Within minutes, workmen from Csepel climbed down and began unloading arms and ammunition they must have stolen from the munitions plants in which they worked. As Miklos watched several of them erect machine-gun emplacements on top of the trucks, he noticed Mihai directing some of the activity.

6. 6.1 "Mihai," he shouted, running toward his brother-in-law. "What are you doing?"

"Joining the fight," Mihai said as he climbed up onto one of the trucks, aimed the heavy gun mounted there, and shot out one of the beacons.

From atop another truck, one of Mihai's fellow workers calmly destroyed the second spotlight.

6.2 Just then, an ambulance drove into the center of the square. Several of the men began waving at the driver, trying to steer him toward the wounded who had been pulled off to the side. But the driver bypassed the wounded and continued toward the door. Within seconds, the vehicle was surrounded. The driver stopped but refused to be questioned.

6.3 The crowd pressed against the window. Ignoring them, he stepped on the accelerator and started toward the doors. In doing so, he ran over someone's foot. When the crowd heard the victim's cry of pain, they mobbed the driver, dragging him out of the ambulance. Miklos and several others opened the back doors and climbed inside. Instead of medical supplies, the ambulance was stocked with guns and ammunition for the AVO.

7. 7.1  The minute the crowd realized they had an AVO man in their possession, years of pent-up fury was released. They jumped on him, beating him, pummeling him, paying him back for all those who had been abused by his organization of terrorists. Mercifully, someone stopped the carnage by shooting the helpless man.

7.2  Meanwhile, a group of young men had emptied the ambulance of its cargo, handing weapons to any man willing to take them. The men from Csepel armed themselves from their cache and joined their brethren. From the top windows a storm of bullets, from the guns Hungarians sardonically called "Russian guitars," rained down over the makeshift army.

7.3  Mihai and Miklos stood their ground. They tossed grenades. They instructed youngsters barely old enough to drive how to build protective barricades. They sent a team of Csepel workers and a few young boys into a nearby building to try to make their way inside the complex via a series of tunnels built during the war. They were determined to take the radio station.

7.4  Bela Kardos was not a revolutionary. He was a man of science, an intellectual who never really understood the essence of religious or political fervor. He lived his life according to formulas, not illusion. But that night, on October 23, Bela Kardos did not behave like a scholar. He acted like a zealot consumed with an intense hunger.

8. 8.1  He and Margit lived on Dozsa György street, a large boulevard that lined the southern edge of the main park in Pest. From their apartment they had a clear view of the massive metal statue of Josef Stalin. Tonight a crowd had gathered at the statue. Some were carrying torches. Others had long ropes. Others had brought their cars and were shining their headlights on the black image of the despot who had insinuated his malevolence into their lives. People were shouting slogans, decrying the Russian presence, demanding food, the end of the AVO, the beginning of freedom.

8.2  Bela was touched, but, as always, his natural restraint inhibited him. Yet the more he watched, the stranger he began to feel. It was as if the scene before him acted as a catalyst prompting the reorganization of his own molecular structure, rewiring his impulses, recircuiting his emotional system to74  respond to a new set of charges. Slowly, he was being drawn into the action, lured into the fray. When he saw two young men climbing to the top of the massive statue accompanied by raucous chants of encouragement from the crowd below, he found he could no longer resist the pull of rebellion.

8.3  He ran outside, followed closely by Margit and their three children. At first he stood back and watched as the climbers hoisted a huge cable and attached it to Stalin's head. As they slid down, Bela ran toward the cable, grabbing on, standing shoulder to shoulder with a group of workmen who were tugging on the line in a desperate attempt to bow the head of the heinous Stalin. Like a man possessed, he pushed his body beyond its limits. Though his hands were scraped and bloody and every muscle ached, he felt nothing but the exhilaration of the moment, welcoming the pain like a penitent.

9. 9.1  As he and the workmen continued to pull on the cable, and hundreds of hands continued to push, still others pounded against the iron with hammers and mallets. The sound was deafening, but to most it pealed like the bells of the basilica which had once occupied this very spot.

9.2 Like so many of those standing around her, Vera Kardos's immediate reaction had been to raise her hands to cover her ears, but just as she was about to press her hands against her head she stopped. She couldn't do it. It was wrong. To muffle the sound of Stalin's demise was a sacrilege. Though her head reeled from the earsplitting clamor, she endured, just as her parents and millions of others had endured the horrors of the dead dictator's regime.

9.3 Despite Herculean efforts, the statue refused to budge. Men heaved and tugged. Women flailed at its body, beating against it with their fists. Children kicked the massive boots that held the monster in place. Finally, three young workmen arrived with acetylene torches, which they immediately applied to the back of Stalin's knees. As the hot blue flame sliced the iron flesh of the hateful structure, Bela and the men on the ropes pulled again. This time, the behemoth lurched forward, slanting like a diver poised over a cliff. The metal at the knees continued to give, but death was too slow in coming for the bloodthirsty mob.

9.4 Matyas was young, but he was strong and able. Grasping the situation, he corraled several of his friends, rummaged about the trucks parked alongside the road, and ran to the back of the statue. Together, they jammed crowbars into one of the cracked metal joints, pumping up and down, seesawing furiously, until at last the evil giant fell head first into the square.

10.   10.1  Istvan screamed along with everyone else. He screamed so loud he felt as if his lungs would burst, yet when he listened for his voice, he heard only one voice made up of thousands infected with a nearly insane glee at the sight of their oppressor lying face down at their feet. Restraining his excitement, he watched as the hammers and mallets began again, this time bent on totally crushing the statue. Several people began shouting: "We want our church back!" Others shouted curses and vowed further vengeance. Istvan's blood coursed through his body as if the fear and exaltation he was feeling just then were racing for control of his being.

10.2  Just then, he noticed his mother walking toward the statue, her face set with a look he couldn't recall ever seeing before. With the dignified calm of a loyal subject about to pay obeisance to a monarch, she neared the head of the statue, stared down at it, and spat. The hammering stopped. The banging ceased. For a second that seemed like an eternity, silence prevailed. Margit's audience was stunned.

10.3  Many knew who she was—a highly respected chemist, a quiet, cerebral family woman—yet even those who didn't would never ever have cast her in this role. All activity remained suspended while people considered what she had done. Then, as if a hive had been slashed open, people converged on the statue like a mass of frenzied bees, buzzing around it, spitting at it, demanding that the hulk be turned over so they could spit in Stalin's face. They were crazed with revenge, fueled by the heady sensation of being free to release their rage.

11. 11.1  They might have continued for hours if not for the truck that backed up and stopped at the deposed statue. A group of students jumped out and tied the truncated mass to the back of the truck.

"Taking the old boy for a ride," the leader shouted back as he gave the signal for the truck to start.

11.2  Before anyone could object, the driver proceeded up Stalin Square, down Stalin Street, and into the center of town, dragging the offensive idol behind. Like the Pied Piper, the sound of the iron banging through the streets enticed more and more people to join the parade. Soon the bizarre procession moved toward the main boulevard that circled Budapest. Istvan, Mayas, Vera, Margit, and Bela Kardos marched arm in arm, shouting, brandishing sticks and stones and anything else they could find to express their disobedience.

11.3  As they crossed Rakoczi Street, they saw they were not alone in their conversion to lawlessness. Neighbors and friends who, like them, had always been upstanding, tractable citizens were rioting alongside a band of unrestrained students, trashing the building that housed the city's propaganda press, the communist newspaper, Szabad Nep ("Free People"). Within minutes the offices were in shambles, ravaged by bare hands eager to destroy the place they considered the house of lies.

12. 12.1  Like a plague of locusts, the mass moved next to the bookstore where university students were compelled to buy all their communist texts. Everyone, including the scholarly Kardoses, hurled bricks through the large windows that fronted the store, then jumped inside and began tossing the hateful tomes of propaganda and doctrine into a pile in the middle of the street. Several workmen doused the books with gasoline, creating an immense bonfire of hate. For five hours, students and children like Matyas, Istvan, and Vera, who had been taught to revere the written word, stood alongside their parents and pitched books into the conflagration, applauding as the communist lies burned.

12.2  As the flames of inchoate freedom rose higher and higher, the orange fingers of the blaze reaching toward the clear October sky, Bela Kardos called his family around him.

"This is a wonderful time," he said to them, raising his voice so he could be heard above the din. "But it's also a dangerous, frightening time."

12.3  Istvan nodded, secretly grateful that his father had validated those moments when he had felt nothing but fear. Instinctively, he grabbed hold of Bela's hand. From him, he drew strength. With him, he felt safe.

"As exciting as this is," Bela said, "as exhilarating as it feels to trample the symbols of those who have trampled all over us, do not think our insubordination will go unanswered. Oppressors don't like those who speak out or rise up or challenge them. They're going to fight back. And when they do, it's going to be ugly."

"I don't care," Matyas said, his fourteen-year-old face aglow with optimism. "I'm willing to fight to the end."