http://www.stampandcoin.co.uk JANUARY 2016 47T
he underlying stamps
used for the Sopron
overprints belong
to a series issued by
Hungary in 1951
(seventeen stamps)
and 1953 (nine more), celebrating that
nation’s rebuilding plan. The plan was
certainly needed – Eastern Europe’s
infrastructure had suffered even more
than Britain’s in the War – but the
examples on the stamps show it to have
been a pretty soulless business.
The art on offer in the Mátyás Rákozi
Cultural Institute on the 60 fillér stamp
would have been similar. Rákozi was
Hungary’s de facto leader from 1949
to 1956. An admirer of Stalin, he
attempted to build his own personality
cult – as well as having a Cultural
Institute named after himself, Rákozi
had three stamps issued for his sixtieth
birthday in 1952. American writer John
Gunther described him as ‘the most
malevolent character I ever met’.
However by 1956, change was in
the air. Stalin had died in March 1953;
in February 1956 his excesses were
denounced by Russia’s new leader,
Nikita Khrushchev, in a ‘secret speech’
to the Party elite. The secret soon got
out. Did this mean the end of repressive
rule in Eastern Europe?The 1956 Sopron overprints of Hungary tell a sad story, of youthful idealism
soon to be trampled underfoot. Chris West investigates the background of this
intriguing stamp set in his ongoing series of stamp storiesStamp stories
‘Yield not your Country..!’
Hope that this might be the case grew
in Hungary when Rákozi was removed
from office in June (he was exiled into
what is now Kyrgyzstan). That autumn,
students returning from vacation began
to form protest groups, calling for more
liberalisation. In several universities,
including that in Sopron, a city near the
Austrian border, they refused to join the
official Communist student union and
formed their own.
These overprints were made by
Sopron students on 22 October.
They went on sale in the town and
postally used versions exist, though
mint copies are much more common- for reasons which will soon become
apparent. The overprinted words
mean ‘Yield not your Country’, and
are from ‘Szózat’ (Appeal), a poem
that dates from Hungary’s attempt to
break free from the Habsburg Empire
in the 1830s and 1840s (Hungary
eventually became independent in
1849). The poem, set to music,
became an unofficial national anthem.
The day after the overprints were
made, a huge rally took place in
Budapest. A statue of Stalin was toppled.
The Soviet Army was called in, but met
with fierce resistance and made a tactical
retreat. On 28 October, reformist Imre
Nagy was made leader, a gesture that
Moscow hoped would calm things.
However Nagy proved too radical
a choice, and started talking about
leaving the Warsaw Pact (the Soviet
version of NATO). On 4 November,
the Red Army invaded a second time,
with greater ruthlessness. By the end
of the month Hungary was a Soviet
satellite again. During that month,
many Sopron students fled across
the border (including most of the
Forestry Department, which then
relocated to the University of British
Columbia, where lectures were given
in Hungarian until 1961).
Sopron later played its part in the
ultimate ending of Soviet rule. In
August 1989, a ‘Pan-European picnic’
was organised at the border near
the town, where the Iron Curtain
was thrown open for several hours:
anyone could just stroll across it (many
Easterners chose to stroll one way).
Thee months later, the Curtain had
fallen (an event celebrated in the first
stamp of the new, democratic republic).
I don’t know if any of the students who
made the 1956 overprints attended the
Sopron picnic. Maybe they all escaped
back in 1956. But if they didn’t get
away then, I like to think they attended
the event – they would have been in
their fifties – and enjoyed it to the full.The Hungarian
overprints translate as
‘Yield not your country!’
the second line of the
Hungarian National
Anthem. The following
year many European
countries issued stamps
or surcharged values
to help raise funds for
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