Twenty years ago -- on June 16, 1989 -- Hungary buried a man and, in doing so, buried communism. Church bells tolled across the land. Truth had conquered power.

The coming months will see a crescendo of anniversary commemorations of communism's end, culminating with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. For many, Americans especially, it was a glorious moment, emblematic of the West's victory in the Cold War, a victory that seemed to come out of the blue. But if you watched the Eastern bloc's disintegration from the ground, as I did over that fateful year, you know that the process was far longer and more complex than most people realize. Often, it unfolded unnoticed in little melodramatic chapters.

One such chapter, now legend, is the story of Imre Nagy, hero of the infamous 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Much like Czechoslovakia's Alexander Dubcek in 1968, he had sought to give socialism a human face, only 12 years earlier. As the world watched in horror, Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest to put down the dangerous experiment in democracy. Hungarians rose up and barricaded the streets, battling the invading forces in fierce fighting over three weeks in the late autumn of 1956. More than 2,000 Hungarians died; 200,000 fled into exile. Lured from their haven in the Yugoslav Embassy with a promise of safe passage, Nagy and other leaders of the uprising were abducted by the Russian secret police, interrogated, tortured and, after a mockery of a show trial, hanged as "counterrevolutionaries."

The regime buried the rebel leaders in unmarked graves, the whereabouts of which were officially a state secret. But Hungarians knew: Plot 301, a spot tucked away in a remote and overgrown corner of a cemetery on the far outskirts of the capital. They also knew how the Hungarian communist leader, Janos Kadar, and his henchmen had lied -- lied about Nagy's death, about their collusion with the Soviets in suppressing the uprising, and about rewriting history to cover up their infamy.

For Hungarians, it was a powerful memory, all the more so for being repressed. And so, in the winter of 1988 and early 1989, the memory of Nagy also became a weapon, wielded to devastating effect by a rising generation of young communist party reformers liberated by that great agent of change in Moscow, Mikhail Gorbachev. On that sunny June day of reckoning, 20 years ago, history came down to a clash of symbols. A courageous group of dissidents, backed by like-minded reformers in the communist party, decided to set the record straight and give the patriots of 1956 the recognition they deserved -- a state funeral.

Standing amid the crowds at the ceremony, I was struck by its exquisite political choreography. The stage was the iconic National Gallery on Heroes Square, its columns swathed in black and hung with green, white, and red Hungarian flags, each with their center cut out -- a farewell to the hated Soviet hammer and sickle, excised as the revolutionaries of yore had done. On the ascending steps were six black-draped coffins. Five contained the exhumed remains of Nagy and four others executed with him. One stood eloquently empty. "In the sixth casket we bury communism," shouted the charismatic, wild-haired leader of an opposition student movement who, in less than a decade, would be freely elected prime minister.

At this the multitudes cheered. Patriotic music swelled. The funeral of Imre Nagy had just become a popular referendum on Hungary's future -- and its communists lost decisively. The hard-line party boss, Karoly Grosz, had feared as much. A few days earlier, he summoned his ruling Politburo and instructed them to stay away. Normally, his word would be fiat. But this day, several top officials opposed him -- including his prime minister, Miklos Nemeth, who announced his intention not only to attend the funeral but serve as an honorary pallbearer.

Grosz could scarcely believe his ears. Nemeth might be prime minister, but Grosz was the general secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party. He was the power! There was a moment of tense standoff. Then the top commie broke. "Go, then, and be damned!" Grosz practically spat -- and stalked from the room.

This was a turning point in a way that the far more public funeral was not. Nemeth went to the funeral and stood, ramrod straight, by the side of Hungary's fallen heroes. Within weeks, Grosz was gone, jettisoned by a communist party desperate to save itself. By late October, just as the Berlin Wall was poised to fall, it disappeared into history. After 33 years, Hungary would finally win its long-awaited revolution and, before the year was out, regain its rightful place in a newly free world.