Already on November 2nd, 1956, the weekly news magazine Viikkosanomat devoted three spreads to international news photographs from Hungary under the headline "October Revolution".
"The colossus of Stalin’s statue has been toppled in Budapest, and a worker has put his shoe down on the nose of the deceased man. Another one is using a file to remove half of the moustache", read a picture caption on the opening page.
An extensive spread of photographs in the following week’s issue spoke of the toppling of the uprising under the headline "Dear friends. We will die for Hungary and Europe." Aatos Erkko, editor-in-chief of Viikkosanomat, wrote a grim comment: "Hungary is gone".
"The yearning for freedom of small and oppressed nations has again received a blow, from which it is difficult to recover", Erkko wrote, adding a reminder of Finland’s upcoming Independence Day in December.
In the two issues that followed, journalist Simopekka Nortamo, who got into Budapest in early November, described his dramatic experiences.
On the first days at the border with Austria, all Hungarian rebels had wanted to shake the hands of two Finnish journalists. One complained of a shortage of weapons and asked: "Couldn’t Finland supply their brother nation with some, as the large countries of the west do not dare to do so?"
On the Hungarian side, people were eager to speak with foreigners and asked if the UN might send aid to the fighters, Nortamo said. "The atmosphere was much the same as it was in Finland, when it waited for aid from Western powers in 1939."
In Budapest Nortamo was hardly able to leave the Hotel Astoria for all of the street fighting, and a few days later he moved to safer quarters in the British Embassy. For information he largely depended on his personal observations, and on rumours.
In a yard in Budapest Nortamo offered a cigarette to an elderly building janitor, which the old man then criticised as too mild.
"If I do not like a Finnish cigarette I can throw it away", the caretaker pondered. "And you can certainly understand, but a Russian cannot understand something like that. If a Russian likes something himself, he orders you to like it too. This is what this Hungarian revolution is all about."
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 6.10.2006
