A day after student protests in Budapest exploded into open revolt, Soviet armored units entered the Hungarian capital to crush the uprising, only to face fierce resistance from armed civilians, students, and defecting soldiers. The rebellion, sparked by demands for reform and the withdrawal of Soviet troops, briefly succeeded in installing reformist leader Imre Nagy before a second, larger Soviet invasion in November crushed it decisively, killing thousands and sending 200,000 refugees fleeing abroad.
The revolt had ignited the previous afternoon when a student march in Budapest, demanding free elections and the return of reformer Imre Nagy to power, swelled to hundreds of thousands and turned violent after secret police fired into the crowd outside the radio station. By the early hours of October 24, Soviet tanks stationed in Hungary since the war rolled into the capital under orders to restore order, expecting the kind of swift, cowed capitulation they'd seen in other satellite states.
Instead, Hungarians fought back with Molotov cocktails, captured weapons, and improvised barricades. Teenagers rolled barrels of lubricating oil onto boulevards to send tanks skidding. Hungarian army units, ordered to help suppress the revolt, defected in large numbers and joined the insurgents instead. Nagy, installed as prime minister that same day, tried to ride the wave of popular anger while negotiating with Moscow.
For a few heady days it looked as though the impossible had happened: a Warsaw Pact nation shrugging off Soviet control. Western radio broadcasts encouraged Hungarians to believe help might come. It never did. On November 4, a much larger Soviet force returned and crushed the uprising within days, executing Nagy after a secret trial two years later. The episode became a bitter lesson for a generation of Eastern European dissidents about the limits of Western support.