# Soviet Imperialism: an AFL-CIO panel on Budapest at Union Station, 1958

A Warren K. Leffler photograph for U.S. News & World Report, 24 March 1958, of a panel from the AFL-CIO "Soviet Empire" exhibit at Union Station in Washington. Headed "Soviet Imperialism," it pairs Budapest street photographs from November 1956 with a passage credited to the UN Special Committee on Hungary, 1957.

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      "Soviet Imperialism": exhibit placard on Hungary, 1956, at Union Station, Washington, D.C.

      Soviet Imperialism: an AFL-CIO panel on Budapest at Union Station, 1958
      1958 photograph of an AFL-CIO exhibit panel at Union Station, Washington, headed "Soviet Imperialism," quoting the UN Special Committee on Hungary.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Name-callingTestimonial
      DateMarch 24, 1958Made byAFL-CIO ("Soviet Empire" exhibit at Union Station, Washington, D.C.; photograph by Warren K. Leffler for U.S. News & World Report)MediumSigns and bannersCountryUnited StatesRegimeEisenhower AdministrationSourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceLibrary of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division , retrieved October 2, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. News & World Report photo; LoC: No known restrictions on publication) Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, LC-DIG-ppmsca-77971
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  A Warren K. Leffler photograph for U.S. News & World Report, 24 March 1958, of a panel from the AFL-CIO "Soviet Empire" exhibit at Union Station in Washington. Headed "Soviet Imperialism," it pairs Budapest street photographs from November 1956 with a passage credited to the UN Special Committee on Hungary, 1957.

## What the panel says

A free-standing board with a two-word headline. The large photograph is a tank in a Budapest street. Smaller pictures show a wounded woman and a fighter. Side panels, partly cut off by the camera, carry captions about a "lonely Freedom Fighter." The center is a long quoted passage, and it ends with a credit line.

SOVIET IMPERIALISM

Budapest, November, 1956

Soviet troops opened fire at 4:25 A.M. on 4 November. . . . [...] Soviet tanks began to move along the main boulevards, firing indiscriminately into houses to strike fear into the people and to force their surrender. [...] a Red Cross ambulance was destroyed by machine gun fire; the wounded and the nurses in it were killed. United Nations Special Committee on Hungary, 1957

Excerpt from the FRAME transcription, read from the Library of Congress master file. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. LC-DIG-ppmsca-77971.

## Who made it

The exhibit was the AFL-CIO's, a private federation of American labor unions, shown in a public railway station in the capital. The photograph is by Warren K. Leffler for U.S. News & World Report, dated 24 March 1958, now in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division with no known restrictions on publication. FRAME classes the source as open: the speaker is who it says it is.

## How to read it

FRAME tags the headline name-calling and the passage testimonial. The second tag is worth a closer look. The panel does not invent its account. It quotes a United Nations committee report and says so, which lets a visitor go and check. The headline is a judgement, and an argument can be had about it; the casualties in the quotation are reported evidence.

This is what open persuasion looks like in a free country. A union, not a ministry, put up the board. It named its source. Anyone walking to a train could stop, read, disagree, or keep walking. A USIA-distributed poster made the same point about Hungary in Manila the year before, in a handful of words and with no citation. The contrast is the lesson.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, "Soviet Imperialism": exhibit placard on Hungary, 1956, at Union Station, Washington, D.C., 24 March 1958.

- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection, LC-DIG-ppmsca-77971, photograph by Warren K. Leffler, loc.gov. Rights as recorded: no known restrictions on publication.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/afl-cio-soviet-imperialism-exhibit-1958/