Andrew L. Urban
Two white, regular looking ambulances bearing the recognisable red cross symbol made their way through the demonstrators around the Hungarian Radio building on Bródy Sándor Street in Budapest on the night of October 23 / 24, 1956. The demonstration had turned violent around 9 p.m. on 23 October when ÁVH (State Protection Authority, the regime’s secret police) inside the building opened fire on the unarmed crowd who were demanding the release of a student delegation that had been sent in earlier with a list of demands for greater freedoms. Fighting intensified overnight: the ÁVH (roughly 260–280 strong, reinforced by some army units) held the building while a large, surging crowd of angry protesters (mostly students and workers) surrounded it.
But the crowd quickly became suspicious and stopped the vehicles, threw open the doors to discover secret police wearing white doctors’ coats over their uniforms – and hidden caches of arms; rifles, submachine guns, grenades – and ammunition. Reinforcements and replenishments. That’s how the demonstrators first came into possession of weapons.
The crowd overpowered the disguised ÁVH men and the weapons haul helped tip the balance. Protesters used the captured guns to press the attack. By dawn on 24 October they had stormed the building, captured or killed many of the ÁVH defenders and found the courtyard littered with even more discarded weapons—described by one witness as looking “like an arms factory’s yard.” As police cars and reinforcements arrived, crowds set vehicles on fire and wrested guns from officers.
By the morning of 24 October, over 50 Soviet tanks were ordered into central Budapest to intimidate the demonstrators, but the revolutionaries were already armed enough to fight back with captured small arms, Molotov cocktails, and even a few heavier weapons.* The process was chaotic and bottom-up—no central leadership directed it.
This single act of quick thinking and courage gave the revolution its first real firepower at the very place where the uprising began. Within hours, the news spread, soldiers and regular police defected in large numbers (handing over more weapons), and factory workers began delivering truckloads of arms from nearby depots and munitions plants. This incident remains one of the iconic early moments of the Hungarian Revolution: ordinary citizens turning the regime’s own trick against it and literally seizing the means to fight back.
History, again, shows how a spark can ignite a bonfire. Of particular interest is how the uprising revealed the previously invisible enemies of the regime, not only among the workers but the police, the army, even to a lesser extent the secret police. These ‘defections’ from the party line lifted fighting numbers but also morale.
The Hungarian Revolution was initially successful with a new political guard in charge (supported by the all-important radio service) and only crushed on November 4 when around 1,000 additional Russian tanks rumbled into Budapest.
Given the vastly different circumstances of Hungary in 1956 and Iran in 2026, why does this history matter to Iranians? Because it shows that a) the security apparatus of the ruling regime may not be as watertight as generally imagined and b) without outside intervention, determined and ingenious patriots can find ways to overcome even well armed ideology-driven regimes.
The Hungarian Revolution began as an unarmed response to the circumstances, and morphed into armed revolt when the opportunity presented itself.
In support of President Trump’s urging Iranians to rise up and overthrow the authoritative regime, there is a well-documented history of successful unarmed civilian uprisings (often called nonviolent revolutions or civil resistance campaigns) against armed, authoritarian regimes. These movements typically rely on mass protests, strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience, and withdrawal of cooperation rather than armed force, yet they have forced dictators, military juntas, or oppressive governments to relinquish power.
Research by scholars like Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan (in their book Why Civil Resistance Works) analysed hundreds of cases from 1900 onward and found that nonviolent campaigns were about twice as successful as violent ones in achieving their goals (e.g., regime change or major concessions). Nonviolent efforts also had a higher chance of leading to more stable, democratic outcomes afterward. Key reasons include broader participation, often attracting 3.5% or more of the population, moral legitimacy that makes repression backfire internationally and domestically, and the ability to fracture loyalty within security forces.
(The 3.5% rule is a concept from political science research on civil resistance (nonviolent protest and activism), popularized by Harvard professor Erica Chenoweth. It states that in historical cases of major nonviolent campaigns aimed at regime change or significant political transformation, no government has withstood a challenge when at least 3.5% of the population actively participated in a peak event (such as a mass demonstration, general strike, or widespread noncooperation). In the datasets analysed, every such campaign that reached or exceeded this threshold succeeded in achieving its core goals.
In 1986, millions of unarmed Filipinos gathered along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) in Manila to protest Ferdinand Marcos’s fraudulent election victory and 20-year dictatorship. Despite tanks and armed loyalists, crowds (including nuns praying in front of tanks) blocked military movements, leading to defections in the army. Marcos fled into exile, ending his rule and restoring democracy under Corazon Aquino. This is often cited as a classic “people power” success.
In 1987, huge, unarmed student-led protests in South Korea forced the military regime to hold direct presidential elections, ending decades of authoritarian rule.
In 1989, mass peaceful demonstrations (including candlelight vigils and marches) contributed to the collapse of communist regimes backed by Soviet tanks in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall and democratic transitions.
Other notable successes include the Singing Revolution in the Baltic states (1987–1991), which helped regain independence from the Soviet Union through songs, human chains, and protests; and various anti-colonial or anti-apartheid efforts with strong nonviolent components.
Chenoweth has emphasized in later writings (e.g., a 2020 discussion paper) that this is not an ironclad law or a guaranteed predictor—it’s a descriptive pattern and “rule of thumb” from historical data. Success often depends more on factors like:
- Sustained momentum
- Diverse and inclusive participation
- Strategic creativity (varied tactics that withstand repression)
- Building legitimacy
- Causing loyalty shifts (e.g., defections among elites, security forces, or bureaucrats)
Many successful movements achieved their goals without reaching exactly 3.5%, but crossing that level appeared to make failure extremely rare (or impossible in the studied cases).
Iran’s largest recent protest movement was the 2022–2023 “Woman, Life, Freedom” (Mahsa Amini) uprising, with protests over 100–160 cities and 132–143 universities across all 31 provinces. One detailed estimate put cumulative participants at least 2 million across the country over several months. The killing of the old tyrant Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and dozens of his lieutenants is likely to drive more and more jubilant Iranians into the street to protest loudly … until their numbers become the irresistible force to move the immovable object of Islamic oppression.
* I’m not sure of the date, but I remember the sight: a deformed figure, burnt all white, indicating severity (as I now know), lay at the bottom of a shell-hole in the ground between the tramlines of Thokoly Street with the damaged remains of his burnt out tank looming over him. My grandmother and aunt had taken me on a short ‘inspection’ outing not far from our apartment, during a lull in the fighting,
Andrew L. Urban escaped from Hungary during the Revolution; his father’s book, The 19 Days (Heinemann, 1957) is a broadcaster’s account of the Revolution.