Contemporary outrage and historic pride linked up this week in Hungary. Dan McLaughlin reports from Budapest on a political liar who is likely to survive
'Fifty-six, fifty-six!" chanted rioters rampaging through Budapest this week, but invoking the spirit of that hallowed year is a dangerous business in Hungary.
The rallying cry gave spurious nobility to a few hundred men who wrecked cars, shops and the state television centre, and brawled with riot police who knew many of them by name from Saturday afternoon brawls outside Budapest football grounds.
Some drunken thugs also roamed the city in October 1956, no doubt, when Hungarians rebelled against their communist rulers, but the failings of the few have been obliterated by the collective heroism of a nation that paid in blood for its defiance. Thousands died when Soviet tanks crushed Hungary's bid to escape the Kremlin's grip, making 1956 a synonym in eastern Europe for revolt against a mighty foe, for national pride, for principled resistance and for moral victory in bitter defeat.
When students massed outside Budapest's radio station in 1956, they wanted 16 demands to be read out on air; when rioters stormed the TV centre this week, they ransacked offices before settling down to eat the contents of the staff canteen.
A news producer who confronted the mob sowed panic among its shaven-headed leaders by asking them exactly what they wanted.
What they came up with, he recalled, was something like "[ Prime Minister] Gyurcsany out; new elections; glory to Greater Hungary and promotion for their favourite football club." When they were finally driven out, the men vandalised a monument to Soviet troops killed liberating Hungary from the Nazis, and waved flags and chanted slogans popular with the country's ultra-nationalist, anti-Semitic groups.
The year 1956 is a touchstone for Hungarians, the most glorious and tragic moment of a tumultuous 20th century, when they were on the losing side in two world wars and lost two-thirds of their territory under the 1920 Treaty of Trianon.
For the right-wing, it has also served as a historical stick with which to beat the Socialists, who emerged from the Communist Party after 1989 and who are now led by Ferenc Gyurcsany, a former communist youth member who became a millionaire tycoon. Hungary's conservatives and most of its many poor loathe Mr Gyurcsany for his money, power and communist past, three things that make him an ideal hate figure for nationalists who tend to view the Socialist party as secret Stalinists in sharp suits. It is a short logical step for the extreme right to equate rioting against a dishonest Socialist premier with fighting the Soviet occupier, but the mob faces stiff opposition in its bid to hijack the spirit of 1956 ahead of next month's anniversary of the uprising.
Each night this week, a few hundred young men have incited 10,000-15,000 people to abandon their peaceful protest outside parliament by the River Danube and join them in laying waste to Budapest - and they have been ignored every time.
Most demonstrators demanding Mr Gyurcsany's resignation have rejected the extremism of the far-right, hooligan element, and in doing so implicitly condemn its attempt to cloak rank thuggery in the memory of 1956.
The main Fidesz opposition party, which has courted nationalism to win votes, appears to have learnt the lessons of past failure and is distancing itself from the violent protests, and insisting on a peaceful, political solution to the current crisis. After being comprehensively outmanoeuvred by Mr Gyurcsany before April's general election, Fidesz has spotted a trap the Socialists were laying for his perennially hotheaded party ahead of the potentially crucial October 1st local elections.
Opinion polls show Mr Gyurcsany's popularity climbed this week, as most moderate Hungarians look aghast at the running battles in Budapest and associate them to some extent with Fidesz and its radical fringe.
Realising that it was being partly blamed for the riots, Fidesz has cancelled a huge march today that would have put great pressure on the prime minister, but which also raised the spectre of major violence that could have badly tarnished Fidesz's image.
The party seems aware of the danger of lighting the nationalist flame in a volatile atmosphere, thick with anticipation of the 50th anniversary of the 1956 uprising and with rancour at cutbacks, tax rises and Mr Gyurcsany's extraordinary admission of deceit. It is still unclear how a tape of his "mea culpa" reached the state broadcaster, but the theories are myriad.
Such was the speed and calmness of his response to the leak, that many Hungarians think he authorised it himself, to prove his determination to make painful reforms and clean up politics, or to provoke a violent response on the streets that would discredit Fidesz and help his Socialists halt falling ratings before the local elections.
Suggestions that party enemies leaked the tape are undermined by the total support he has received from all the other top Socialists, and no one has accused Fidesz or other opponents of illicitly recording the speech or acquiring and releasing a copy of it.
Whether or not he leaked the tape himself, Mr Gyurcsany has shown characteristic chutzpah in refusing to resign, after admitting the Socialists did nothing to fix a failing economy and then lied about it to win re-election. With apparently unwavering party support in parliament, Fidesz cannot force out Mr Gyurcsany in a no-confidence vote; and he has shown no inclination to bow to the demands of 15,000 protesters outside the building who want him to go.
If his admission has achieved anything, it has surely made it impossible for any Hungarian leader to avoid the tough austerity measures that economists prescribe to balance a woefully overspent budget and to get the country on track to adopt the euro.