Vol. 4 No. 1 (2024)
Figures of the Crowd in Central Europe

Protesting, Destroying Symbols, Lynching, Onlooking, and Rallying: Figures and Functions of the Crowd during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution

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Éva Standeisky
National Széchényi Library, 1956 Institute and Oral History Archive, Budapest, Hungary
DOI: https://doi.org/10.47075/HSCE.2024-1.05

Published 2024-09-16

Keywords

  • mass phenomena,
  • crowd,
  • mass movements,
  • revolution,
  • mob,
  • demonstration,
  • mass psychology
    • ...More
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How to Cite

Standeisky, Éva. 2024. “Protesting, Destroying Symbols, Lynching, Onlooking, and Rallying: Figures and Functions of the Crowd During the 1956 Hungarian Revolution”. Central European Cultures 4 (1):84-108. https://doi.org/10.47075/HSCE.2024-1.05.

Copyright (c) 2024 Author(s)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Abstract

The paper discusses the activities, the behaviour, and the function of the crowd of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Based on contemporary documents, the study shows the characteristics of the mass movements of the 1956 Revolution. The main question is how the crowd, already explored theoretically by social psychology and other sciences, functioned in different settings: what types of gatherings and demonstrations emerged, how the local context and the social composition of the crowd influenced its behaviour, and how this was perceived by bystanders.

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