Andrew Grove

  b. 1936 | Hungarian entrepreneur

At The Bottom

— 1956

Grove... despaired for his country's future under even tighter Soviet control.

On 4 November 1956 — two days after his 20th birthday — Andrew Grove awoke in his Budapest, Hungary home to the sound of artillery fire, which sounded like “wooden planks being dropped.”  Having lived through the Second World War, Grove knew immediately what he was hearing.  “My heart started pounding,” he wrote many years later.  “I jumped out of bed and ran into the Big Room.  It was still dark outside, but my parents were already up and wrapped in their bathrobes.  My father was intently fiddling with the radio.  No one said anything.  We all knew what was going on.” Soviet forces, already stationed inside Hungary, had just driven to the edge of Budapest to suppress an anti-communist uprising that had toppled the pro-Soviet government the previous week.  The Soviets were unwilling to allow one of its Warsaw Pact satellites to go its own way, and they were prepared to brutalize the Hungarian people in order to regain authority.  Several shells struck Grove’s house that night, damaging the roof and courtyard.  The next day, Soviet troops arrived and demanded to be boarded in his family’s home.  The Hungarian Revolution was over, and Grove — a young university student at the time — despaired for his country’s future under even tighter Soviet control.