Sure! Here are some not “think tank” sources on these subjects! Opposition parties being removed from running in the election due to communist party pressure, soviet troops deporting the secretary of the Smallholders’ Party, blackmailing an elected prime minister into exile, communists being able to vote like 15-20 times aka blue-ballot election fraud, another source

NYT is a capitalist propaganda rag too, though. They’ve been called out numerous times for willingly participating in pro-imperialist narratives, especially in Palestine recently.

Forcing every peasant into giving their land to coop’s and requiring such an insane plan requirement that didn’t leave you enough seeds to replicate the next harvest as well was a failure

The communists socialized production, and committed an error afterwards. It sounds like you’re arguing that production shouldn’t be socialized at all, and that socialization caused the error, not the mistakes in calculation. There’s good reason crop yields in all socialist countries went up overall post-collectivization.

Fascists were indeed jailed and executed, but you miss the point. The revolution didn’t happen because the communists executed Arrow Cross Party members and such, but because the Communist Party won in a fraud, instilled fears with ÁVH, produced famine due to the failure of collectivization, issued massive censorships, not being able to leave the country as a hungarian, making staged show trials (László Rajk) and conveniently sending anyone who dares to question the government to Gulags, not just straight up fascists.

The counter-revolution happened because lingering fascist elements from a decade ago were emboldened by the west, and while there were some legitimate greivances, the character of the counter-revolt was fascist and western supported. Kinda like what’s happening in Iran recently, legitimate greivances twisted into extreme fascist violence. Socialism was amazing for the Hungarian People’s Republic overall, achieving astounding economic growth and development.

If we are think tank-ing, then Comrade’s Library is also a think tank source. Hearing the word “progressive” and sending people to work camps only getting 1 soup per day in Siberia, Recsk or other places doesn’t sound too progressive to me.

Comrade’s library isn’t a source, it’s a book repository. That’s like debunking a public library as a source when I tell you to read a book housed within it. Soviet prisons were quite progressive overall, and pretending the only ones that existed were the ones in harsher conditions is classic propagandizing, exaggerating extremes and pretending they were the norm. The soviets even abhored using handcuffs as being too barbaric. Read the book.

Yes, I can see that the CIA funded the Radio Free Europe. I have expressed all the others previously.

Then it shouldn’t be surprising that it emboldened the fascists, just like Fox News with the Jan 6 rioters in the US Empire.

Both the west and the soviet bloc had a proven track record to support their ideologies or give a huge prestige blow to eachother. Everything was explained earlier, but fascism didn’t outweigh the socialistic ambition of the revolution, especially seen by the leadership and antisemitism being in small isolated incidents.

Fascism absolutely outweighed the minor progressive side, especially considering the “progressive” side still ultimately wanted to liberalize the economy and sell out to the west. This sparked one of the largest migrations of Hungarian Jews out of Hungary since the Holocaust itself.

Overall to me it seems you are upplaying the amount of antisemite, fascist, Horthy sympathizers in the Revolution from an incredibly biased source from Aptheker, who was even removed from his communist party, making up facts, and conveniently not mentioning relevant informations trying to paint the 1956 Revolution as an event made by fascists and the west, and trying to pretend that anyone who questions the Communist Party is a fascist, even if they are socialists and not a hardliner stalinist.

You’re downplaying the role of fascism in Hungary, as though they all disappeared after 1956. The fact is, the overwhelming majority of those oppressed by the communists were fascists, hence the widespread pograms and Jewish flight from Hungary.

Anyone who does election fraud, state-wide censorship, sending anyone to work camps, eliminating the option to emigrate, doing propaganda 24/7, and shooting into civilians is a monster to me. Maybe if Lenin wouldn’t have died so early, we wouldn’t have seen the light of stalinism. Who knows.

The fascists were doing worse in Hungary, at a far larger scale. Stalin continued Lenin’s legacy. You’re confusing the incredibly tumultuous period post-war with the entirety of the socialist experience.

The only good thing I can say about you is that the commie apartment block program was a really great investment, even if they were poor quality, it did make considerable amount of subsidization into these to have something for people to live in, even there was like 6 people in 1 small apartment.

And these massively progressive programs extended to education, healthcare, development, jobs, and more. The fascists wanted to take them all away.

And on the other hand where 47% polish people are living better and 35% are worse isn’t mentioned in Poland’s wiki. How convenient.

Poland is a seperate conversation, and too benefited dramatically from socialism while having serious problems with fascism.

This 72% of are regarding the Kádár era, which is indeed true according from my grandma’s and parents’ statements, however this doesn’t mean that economic life was great all times. At Rákosi people had to resort back to a ticket based system in order to get basic food like bread, where the last ticket system was in WW2 or WW1, mainly due to the force of collectivization and industrializations in an agricultural country with plenty of farmable land.

Nobody ever said economic life was great at all times. Coming out of World War II and dealing with the political instability of lingering fascism was immensely destructive. The Kádár era was better not because Kádár was a better person, but because socialism had had longer to solidify.

Additionally this poll was made in 2009, 3 years after the deviza crisis in Hungary and 1 year after the 2008 bank crisis.

Not many polls regarding socialism are made, further the longer we are removed from the dissolution of socialism in Europe the less reliable polling results become.

Luckily Kádár wasn’t as a hardliner stalinist like Rákosi, but he especially prioritized wellbeing in order to not experience another 1956 again. Life did improve around the mid 60s, especially by abolishing the collectivization efforts. It seems private farmland ownership works better than having everything in the state.

Rákosi also prioritized wellbeing, you can’t just snap your fingers in a post-war, post-fascist environment to make things better. Rákosi was more of a hardliner, and this over-reliance on soviet-style economy without adhering to Hungary’s conditions did slow growth, but it was still positive. Selling out to the IMF was disastrous, as this contributed to the decline in socialism and its dissolution.

Even if hungarians lived in goulash communism, it was still forbidden to act against the government, critiquing the soviet occupation, talking about 1956, questioning Kádár, etc

Again, simply letting western media have their way with Hungarian public opinion and provoke another 1956 would have been another tragedy.

There were more hospitals, subsidizied house programme, starting to be able to attend vacations, seeing some whitelisted western media, but only those which aligned with communist interests, like the Bud Spencer + Terence Hill movies. (These are simple but pretty entertaining movies, I can easily recommend Who Finds a Friend Finds a Treasure) We can also thank for the Information Age for better living, where basically all countries improved by it worldwide.

Socialism indeed produced good results for the people, as did the internet.

Unfortunately after the oil crisis, Kádár wasn’t able to retain the current living conditions, so he had to resort into a debt spiral indefinitely. This caused the start of massive inflation, especially after the regime change. Also emerging unemployments

Selling out to the IMF was avoidable, and exactly where even the “progressive” elements in the 1956 counter-revolution were heading. You’re arguing for disaster to have come earlier.

Also collectivelly all the eastern bloc countries have lost their companies due to the western items were usually much better, like Trabant, Lada (still exists tho, but not as popular anymore), Ikarus etc. Maybe if we would have remained non-communist, then we would have had more competent companies, who knows.

Building up industry in lesser-industrialized countries took time. China is now overtaking the rest of the world, but it didn’t happen overnight. If the Eastern Bloc was never socialist, then they would have had the slower growth they had post-socialism.

EDIT: Atleast we can hopefully agree, that the current monopol corpos such as Google, Amazon, etc. are downright evil.

Sure, I believe that, but it seems that you’re more aligned with them than against.