The uprising had been spontaneous.

I have always believed that if it had been carefully organized in advance, it probably would never have happened because the authorities would have stopped it before it began.

Instead, events moved faster than anyone could control.

Students began developing demands. Crowds occupied the radio station. Demonstrations expanded. People who had been afraid to speak suddenly discovered that thousands of others shared many of the same feelings.

The leader the crowd wanted was Imre Nagy.

Nagy was not an outsider to the Communist system. He had previously served as prime minister and was himself a Communist, although he was regarded as a moderate.

That tells you something about the atmosphere of those days.

People knew what they were against much more clearly than they knew exactly what should replace it.

There is an old Hungarian joke:

If you meet one Hungarian, that's a Hungarian. Two Hungarians mean sex. Three Hungarians mean four political parties.

During the revolution, that joke seemed particularly appropriate.

We appeared to have something like twenty-five political parties and nobody could say with certainty what everyone wanted.

For several days there was tremendous excitement and hope, but I would not describe it as complete euphoria.

There were too many questions.

If the existing government disappeared, what would come next?

Would Hungary remain Communist?

Would it become independent from Russia?

Who would lead it?

Would the Russians accept any of this?

Nobody really knew.

There was no single revolutionary leadership capable of answering those questions.

I spent one day at the university during this period, although I no longer remember exactly which day it was.

I volunteered to guard a room that had been converted into a weapons depot. Various weapons and ammunition had been stored there, and I stood guard for approximately six hours until someone arrived to replace me.

Afterward I returned home.

For several days, I hardly went anywhere.

We waited to see what would happen.