INSIDE EUROPE
As is so often the case when confronted by rebellion, the
Government veered wildly between concession and coercion.
The ÁVH attempted to disperse the protests, only to end
up besieged by them. When Hungarian troops were called
out to relieve the police, they promptly defected. Rákosi’s
replacement, Ernő Gerő, fi rst condemned the protesters, then
called in Soviet forces to suppress them, before fi nally fl eeing
the country as the protesters descended on the Parliament. The
supreme confusion in the government allowed the country to
descend into a three-way brawl between the rebels, loyalists
and Soviet troops. The latter withdrew as a new government
formed under Nagy, who vowed to remove all Soviet troops
from Hungary and withdraw from the Warsaw Pact. Yet
success proved fl eeting. On 4 November, the Soviet Army
occupied Hungary, and by 9 November, the revolution was
over.
The Soviet invasion of Hungary was the fi rst instance
of inter-state war in Europe since 1945. The Charter of
the United Nations (UN) had committed that organisation
“to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”.
Yet whilst the UN played a prominent role in defusing the
simultaneous Suez Crisis by instituting the fi rst international
peace-keeping operation in history, it failed to take any
substantive action on Hungary. Its only response was a
special investigative committee, whose report – delivered fi ve
months later – was as predictable as the subsequent Soviet
denunciation. Even the United States, whose statesmen had
preached the liberation of Eastern Europe, were prepared only
to defend the frontiers of the free world, not advance them.
France, Germany and the United Kingdom would not act
without US leadership, especially after the debacle of Suez.
The delimitation of Europe into distinct spheres of infl uence
was accepted as a fait accompli.
Yet for the Soviets, the episode proved a Pyrrhic victory.
The suppression of the Hungarian uprising shattered the
unity and solidarity of the worldwide socialist movement.
European communist parties suff ered schisms over the matter,
with defectors denouncing supporters of the Soviet action
as ‘tankies’. As the correspondent for the British communist
party’s offi cial newspaper noted, “I was heart-sick to see the
army of a Socialist State make war on a proud and indomitable
people.” In retrospect, Hungary was the fi rst crack in the
veneer of the Eastern European monolith, which widened with
the later Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and
culminated in the total collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989.
Over six decades since the Revolution, the underlying
patterns in European security remain disturbingly relevant.
Just as the brutal intervention in Hungary destroyed the
dream of a peaceful post-war world, the crisis in Ukraine
since 2014 has shattered the pretensions of a new world order
after the Cold War. Appropriately enough, the agreements
guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity were signed in
Budapest; this Budapest Memorandum proved no more
eff ective in preventing Russian aggression against Ukraine
than the Warsaw Treaty did in preventing Soviet aggression
against Hungary. Realists such as John Mearsheimer have
accused the US and Western Europe of unrealistically
encouraging Ukraine to politically and economically distance
itself from Russia only to shirk from taking responsibility
once this inevitably prompted retaliation. For its part, Russia
has once again found itself relying on brute force to prevent
the perceived secession of a friendly state into the enemy
camp, having failed to do so by its powers of persuasion
and attraction. 1956 shook the socialist world; 2014 drove a
wedge between the Orthodox Slavic community of Russia and
Ukraine, and sent a shiver throughout the post-Soviet region
that Russia has sought to consolidate under its leadership.
Above all, the logic of spheres of infl uence remains prevalent:
a zero-sum contest in which any gain for one side means an
irretrievable loss for the other.
The Hungarian Revolution therefore remains of great
relevance to considerations of contemporary international
relations. Its tragic lessons appear unheeded even by those
states which were parties or bystanders to the original confl ict.
First, rhetoric without responsibility can infl ame and prolong
crises by raising unrealistic expectations of imminent action
and assistance. Second, ideological frameworks of foreign
policy can blind decision-makers to the realities of a situation.
The Hungarian uprising was ultimately not about the Cold
War but domestic factors of discontent emerging from a
fundamentally unsustainable socio-political system. The
Soviets suppressed the symptoms of this malaise without
addressing the cause, to their ultimate undoing. Third,
polarisation and international rivalry can magnify disputes
beyond their actual signifi cance. The fate of a small country
of less than 10 million people was elevated to a threat to the
strategic interests of its superpower neighbour, justifying
military action.
It was not so much Hungary’s secession from the Warsaw
Pact but its potential realignment towards the Euro-Atlantic
community which drove the Soviet response. Wherever
competing regional orders come into confl ict, front-line
states will be subject to intense external pressures which
traduce their sovereignty, autonomy and freedom of action.
As we witness the emergence of a new multipolar order, the
rise of multiple power centres must not become the catalyst
for a grand carve-up of regional states into captive spheres.
Otherwise, the next Hungary might not be in Europe.
* Mark Duncan is a Graduate Student at the Faculty
of World Economy and International Aff airs of the Higher
School of Economics in Moscow.
Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Diplomatist • Vol 6 • Issue 10 • Oct-Nov 2018, Noida • 19