The Relationship Between East and West (71)

An intensive study of the international aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution using archival sources has yet to be done. However, drawing upon the sources presently available and the work already accomplished on the subject, it is worth attempting to produce a rough sketch of the impact of the Hungarian (and Polish) events of October-November 1956 on international politics, especially upon the relationship between East and West.

The most obvious outcome of the failed Revolution in international political terms was that the Western states’ lack of response proved once and for all their unconditional acceptance of the post-war European status quo, despite all earlier propaganda. This was a great consolation for the Soviet leadership: beyond the tacit agreement they had held with the Western states up until that point, the non-response of the West in November of 1956 gave them full assurance that should any future conflict occur within the boundaries of their empire, they would have a completely free hand, without any concern of Western interference. In this respect, the Hungarian Revolution was to the advantage of the Soviet state. The uncertainty factor instilled by American psychological warfare—i.e., from the declared goal of the Eisenhower Administration to bring about the “liberation of the enslaved nations”—which had seemed to threaten the Soviets’ East-Central European buffer zone, practically disappeared.

It is clear that the Hungarian Revolution and its repression did not cause a real crisis in world politics. Simply put, it did not lead to a direct conflict between the two opposing superpowers and their military blocs. The general public, however, believed that the events represented a serious crisis; the ardent liberation propaganda that the Americans had pursued with such intensity right up until October 1956 had left many with the belief that such an event as the Revolution would necessarily result in conflict and political crisis between East and West. The firm public stance of the Americans against the Soviet intervention, the debates and resolutions of the emergency session of the UN General Assembly, the concurrent Suez crisis, and the Soviet missile threats, suggested to many observers that the Hungarian Revolution was in fact a serious crisis in the relationship between the superpowers.

Consequently, the real significance of the Hungarian Revolution in terms of international politics was never clearly recognized by the public, neither in the Western states nor in the Eastern bloc. On the contrary, the parallel events in Hungary and Poland and the Suez crisis did, and still do, facilitate mythical interpretations of the West’s inaction. These explanations, instead of seeing the West’s non-response as a result of the general acceptance of the post-Yalta status quo, attempt to portray it as being due to one or other exceptional situation that only applied to the particular case of the Hungarian Revolution. Thus oft-quoted arguments were conjured up: that the crisis in the Middle East prevented the Western states from presenting a united front against the Soviet Union, or that the American leadership was occupied with the upcoming presidential election, or that Secretary of State Dulles was taken to hospital during the most critical days, or that the American troops were prevented from deploying to Hungary by geography alone.

The Hungarian Revolution and its suppression disturbed for a brief moment the détente process that had been developing since 1953, but by and large it did not halt the process nor even influence its later development. The tensions that the Soviet intervention and its ensuing Western reproaches caused were largely confined to the level of propaganda expressed at UN meetings. All this had no impact on the United States’ (or France and Britain’s) and the Soviets’ readiness for negotiation, and so consequently the spring of 1957 brought the revival of a mutual political discourse. By the end of that year, intensive preparations for a summit were underway.

Within these few months, however, the relationship of the two superpowers underwent a radical, unprecedented change that completely redefined world politics. By the summer of 1957, the Soviet Union had developed the first generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles and in August, they conducted the first successful test of those missiles and then launched the first satellite, Sputnik. The new Soviet missiles posed a threat not only to Western Europe but directly to the territory of the United States, whose strategic invulnerability vanished overnight. In this way, the so far theoretical balance of power had begun to become real and from then on the arms race was only a question of which party could threaten its adversary with more missiles. This turn of events increased to an almost irrational extent the self-confidence of Soviet leaders, Khrushchev most of all. Although they were willing to negotiate, and even often initiated talks, they were standing on basically different ground and negotiating from a much stronger position. Between 1955 and 1956, when the Soviet-American relationship had undergone its most spectacular improvement since 1945, the Soviet Union was interested in reaching an agreement with the United States, especially concerning the arms control—even if that required significant compromises. From the middle of 1957, on the other hand, the Soviets tried to use the negotiations merely for political gain and to improve their own position. The dramatically changed strategic situation, and most importantly the newly confident position of the Soviets, led to the abandonment of calls often heard in the late fifties for “total disarmament” for the frenzied arms race of the sixties and seventies.

Taking all this into account, perhaps it would not be a completely ungrounded hypothesis to say that if the Hungarian Revolution had not disturbed the détente process by halting the negotiations for these crucial few months, the superpowers might have been able to come to an agreement resulting in a lower rate of armament and consequently reduced world tension in the following decades. There is, however, another argument that could be made, similarly based upon the question of what might have happened if the détente process had not been interrupted by the events of 1956. According to this line of reasoning, the burdens of the arms race, which were dictated by the Americans, would have been averted or at least delayed. This arms race, the argument continues, virtually crippled the Soviet economy and possibly led to its utter collapse. Such a political development, therefore, could have lengthened the era of stagnation by decades, and naturally, concludes this line, the fall of the Eastern European Communist regimes could not have happened at the end of the eighties. Both arguments have compelling elements, and, as is the case with all historical “what if” questions, there is no way of knowing which scenario would have played out.

The UN and the Third World (72)

The only forum of international relations where the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution gained considerable significance was the UN. The second emergency session of the General Assembly (the first one was dealing with the Suez crisis) on November 4, 1956, initiated by the United States, and the 11th session of the General Assembly during November and December, produced several resolutions asking the Soviet Union to withdraw their troops and the Kádár government to receive the UN secretary-general and UN observers. Since the Hungarian government refused to cooperate, the UN had no chance to investigate the situation on the ground. To get around the problem, the UN set up a special committee in January of 1957 to compile a report on the exact course and nature of events in Hungary, based upon the accounts of those who had taken part in the Revolution and then fled to the West, and upon any other sources available at the time. The report, completed by June of 1957, evaluated the uprising as a spontaneous and instinctive expression of the Hungarian nation’s striving for freedom.(73)The emergency session of the General Assembly endorsed the report with an overwhelming majority in September. Nevertheless, they repeatedly failed to enforce any decisions regarding Hungary and the Hungarian question fruitlessly continued to be on the UN agenda year after year until 1962.(74)

What lay behind the UN policy towards Hungary was first and foremost the intention of the American diplomatic forces to regain some of the prestige they had lost during the Revolution from their inaction. The Eisenhower Administration wanted to show the world and the American public that while they could not risk a crisis of superpowers to help the cause of the Hungarian Revolution, after its suppression they were willing to commit themselves thoroughly to make the aftermath somewhat bearable. But all this had to be done in a subtle way so that the condemnation of the Soviet intervention would not jeopardize the détente process that had had such promising results in 1956, and which the US government was determined to develop further. The UN General Assembly provided an ideal playground for this political see-saw game, given that its resolutions were far from being coercive measures, especially not when they condemned a superpower or its allies. Since this was a well-known fact in Moscow, the Americans were hoping that the Soviets, who had never shown the least concern about international public opinion, would not be seriously distressed.

Under these circumstances, the Hungarian question should have been on the agenda for a few months, maybe even a few years, but certainly not until the early sixties. Nevertheless, two important factors in international politics, both reinforcing the strategic position of the Soviet Union, steered the UN into a different direction. One of them, the Suez crisis, was not an actual conflict between the two opposing dominant military blocs, yet its aftermath was to have a significant impact on the superpowers’ relationship in the long run. Rectifying the shaky situation in the Middle East, even though the Untied States had the lion’s share of this process, unexpectedly worked in the Soviets’ favor in the end. Most of those African and Asian developing countries who had declared their solidarity with Egypt had also condemned the Hungarian intervention, but their real point of interest was to see how certain regimes would react to the Western “imperialist aggression” against a vulnerable developing country. The fact that the United States for the first time in the history of the Western alliance publicly opposed Britain and France in the UN made a far less significant impact upon Third World countries than did the Soviet missile threats, which were carried out with a brilliant sense of timing. The missile threats seemed to suggest that the Soviet Union was not afraid of getting involved in a military conflict with the West when the freedom of a neutral state was at stake, even though Moscow had only decided to send telegraphs to the French, English, and Israeli leaders on 5 November, when the American intervention had already made it obvious that the crisis would be solved without much further ado.

The other important factor behind the long duration of the Hungarian issue on the UN agenda was the launch of the Sputnik satellite, which demonstrated to the whole world that the Soviet Union had surpassed the United States in a crucially important field of scientific and technological development. The Soviet Union had been showing the inclination for a peaceful East-West relationship already, but this event had increased their international prestige to an extent comparable only to the popularity of the Red Army during World War II.

These two factors, the missile threats in the Suez crisis and the launch of Sputnik, created such favorable circumstances for increasing their influence in Africa and Asia that the Soviets could not help but take advantage of the situation.

The American leadership, on the other hand, was—understandably—deeply worried about this turn of events. As described in Chapter I., the Eisenhower Administration had never considered liberating the Eastern European countries with force but they had maintained the Truman Administration’s overall policy of “containing” the expansion of Communist influence, and had several times acted within this framework (e.g., Guatemala, Taiwan). In the last half of the fifties, they found themselves facing the imminent danger that the Soviet Union would exploit their newly improved position and to expand their influence peacefully, using the United States’ own policy of providing economic and financial aid. This is why, from 1956 and 1957 on, the primary aim of US foreign policy was to arrest the development of Soviet influence in the Third World, and to correspondingly increase American presence there. The UN General Assembly provided an ideal arena for this; the Americans kept the Hungarian question on the agenda as a device of this political objective.

The heated polemics in the General Assembly over the years were not supposed to make the Soviet Union change their ways—there was less than a slim chance that the “defendant”, pleading guilty, would withdraw its troops from Hungary and leave the country to its own course. Instead, the intent was to convince the “jury”, i.e. the non-aligned states, and to cajole them into accepting or preserving Western political ideology. This is a plausible explanation of why the 1968 Czechoslovakian intervention—since it would not have aided similar Western designs—never became “the Czechoslovakian question” in the UN.

The United States (75)

In the aftermath of the Revolution, the US government found itself under attack by the Western press. The Administration was accused of first having urged the Hungarians to revolt and of subsequently having abandoned them in the event. By the middle of November 1956, the US leadership had come up with an answer to its media critics; they claimed that while government officials had always been deeply concerned about the “enslaved nations”—and had continuously expressed this concern—they had never encouraged suicidal uprisings.(76) This explanation was hardly convincing, yet its significance should not be underestimated. It was no less than a clear and open admission that, should a similar uprising occur in the future, Eastern Europe could not expect any help at all from the United States. At the same time, the Administration’s explanation also demonstrated that the American propaganda machine could no longer capriciously alternate between the themes of “liberation” and “peaceful liberation.”

Following the events of the Polish crisis and the Hungarian Revolution, US policy towards Eastern Europe was reformulated on a new, more reserved, basis. (77) Apparently, the basic principles of this new policy had been in the making as early as the summer of 1956. The Hungarian and Polish events (with their dramatically differing outcomes) simply reinforced the fact that the US was not able to make more than limited tactical moves in the area of Eastern Europe. The new US approach toward Eastern Europe, which aimed to “soften” the regimes, was the beginning of a policy that lasted until the late eighties. Western states exerted political influence and pressure on Eastern governments through economic support, allowances, loans, and cultural and interstate relations—with the aim of encouraging those Eastern regimes to pursue more liberal domestic policies, and to remain independent from the Soviet Union in foreign affairs as much as possible. But all this happened within an official—not only de facto but increasingly de jure—recognition of the European status quo by the West (Helsinki, 1975). Therefore, the “liberation” of the enslaved nations only cropped up in a limited context after 1956—that is within the long-term competitive struggle between the two opposing political and economic systems. The idea was that in this contest, the Western democracies would eventually emerge as victors, which would inevitably result in the disintegration of the Soviet Union, which, in turn, would naturally bring about the collapse of East European regimes, and thus their “liberation”.

The American leadership was already operating under this new pragmatic policy in the UN when dealing with the Hungarian crisis. Following several years of ineffectual US condemnation of the Russian intervention in the General Assembly, secret negotiations were initiated between the US government and the Kádár regime in 1960. The direct result of this dialog was that the Eisenhower Administration allowed the Hungarian question to be removed from the General Assembly’s agenda in December of 1962 in exchange for which the Hungarian government in 1963 granted a general amnesty to the majority of those who had been imprisoned because of their participation in the 1956 Revolution.(78)

The Soviet Union (79)

Understandably, the Soviets disapproved of the Hungarian place on the UN agenda, and so, in their irony-proof style, they accused the Western states of intervening in Hungarian internal affairs. Moscow had expected the American leadership to show indifference toward the issue in public, just as they had pragmatically acknowledged that the Soviet Union pacified a turbulent situation in a country within her sphere of influence. Following the logical supposition, which later proved to be true enough, that international politics in the future would be determined largely by the opposing two superpowers, the Soviets had hoped that the United States would subordinate comparatively minor issues such as the Revolution to the overall US-Soviet relationship.

This effort is manifest in a telegram that Bulganin sent to Eisenhower on 5 November, 1956 which pressed for joint military action by the superpowers to solve the Middle Eastern crisis and at the same time answered the American President’s missive of the previous day with a dismissal of the issue of Soviet intervention in Hungary as the exclusively internal affair of the two states concerned. Two days later, the Soviet Prime Minister telegrammed his congratulations on Eisenhower’s reelection. This was not only something unprecedented in the Cold War up to then; it had further significance in as much as Soviet propaganda had “supported” Eisenhower’s Democratic opponent Adlai Stevenson during the Presidential campaign. To emphasize their interest in continuing the détente process, Soviet leaders sent a proposition to the American government on 17 November which suggested substantial reductions in current and future arms levels. The Soviet standpoint seemed to be more flexible on several issues than it had ever been. Naturally, these well-timed political steps were intended to mitigate the international disapproval of Soviet intervention, yet it would be a mistake to dismiss them as mere propaganda—in actual fact the Soviet Union was already preparing for a new type of cooperation between the superpowers.

The conditions of this cooperation, however, were significantly undermined by the debates over the Hungarian issue in the UN General Assembly, where the leading states, especially the US, were compelled to condemn the Soviet intervention in Hungary. The Soviet leaders, who had never been concerned with international public opinion in the Stalinist era, now found it quite uncomfortable that the “peace-loving Soviet Union” was being continuously denounced as an aggressor for months and years at all levels in the UN. Again, it did not annoy the Soviet Union in respect to their relations with the Western world; they were worried that keeping the Hungarian issue on the agenda would have an unfavorable impact on their so-far promising relationship with the developing countries. In the battle for influence over the Third World, however, the Suez crisis was of substantially larger importance than the Hungarian Revolution. Consequently, the Soviets won this popularity contest, at least in the short term. The Western expectations that the brutal suppression of the Revolution would convince the developing countries of the real nature of Soviet power were unfulfilled. On the contrary, Soviet influence in African and Asian countries reached its peak after 1956, during the sixties.

What happened to Imre Nagy and his followers after 4 November, 1956 undoubtedly damaged the Soviet-Yugoslav relationship. The Yugoslav leadership decided to cooperate with the elimination of this group from the Hungarian political arena only to hasten the consolidation of the jeopardized Communist regime. Nevertheless, Tito considered the political asylum that he had granted Imre Nagy and his colleagues in the Yugoslav Embassy in Budapest as a temporary solution simply to get them out of the way. He hoped that, once order could be restored and things returned to normal, they would be readmitted and be allowed to have a stake in Hungarian politics again. The reasoning behind this desire was that, should Imre Nagy get back to the leadership, the national-Communist, Tito-friendly policy which Nagy had pursued before October 1956 would be to some extent integrated into the new political system.

Yet the Kádár-Nagy compromise that the Yugoslavs thought was a historical imperative could not be realized in those circumstances, which meant that the grant of asylum soon landed Belgrade into a political minefield. The joint machinations of the Hungarian and Soviet leaderships—the deportation of Nagy and his colleagues to Romania immediately after their voluntarily emergence from the embassy in late November, 1956, despite written guarantees to Tito—created a precarious situation for Yugoslavia in the eyes of international public opinion. The Yugoslavs could do nothing but react vehemently to the kidnapping of Imre Nagy and his advocates. There was soon a flurry of sharply-worded diplomatic notes between Belgrade and Moscow and Belgrade and Budapest. In the end, both parties were unavoidable forced onto a track that led to a second deterioration of Soviet-Yugoslav relations. Of course, the Imre Nagy case cannot be said to be more than a catalyst in this process, as the worsening of diplomatic relations was primarily the consequence of the Soviets’ realization by early 1958 that Yugoslavia would never return to the Soviet bloc, and—even worse from Moscow’s point of view—the fact that Belgrade had begun to demand a more and more active role among the non-aligned states.(80)

In the Soviet Union, de-Stalinization halted for a short time after the Hungarian Revolution. Hard-liners in the government, referring to the Hungarian example, were able temporarily to prevent further liberalization. However, following the unsuccessful coup in the summer of 1957, Krushchev, reinforced in his position, re-initiated the policies begun by the 20th Congress of the CPSU. The results of this liberalization campaign were numerous and long-lasting changes in the “building of socialism”—though the bases of the Stalinist political and economic system were left more or less untouched—up until the First Secretary’s downfall in 1964. Thus, the failure of the de-Stalinization process commonly associated with Khrushchev and that leader’s discharge was not the result of a temporary anti-reform tendency following the Hungarian Revolution. Rather, Khrushchev failed in the end because of his leadership style, his increasingly capricious and unpredictable political moves which jeopardized the Soviet Union’s internal and external stability.

Of course, from a moral point of view, the Revolution did reveal that the Soviet Union, which had been making a lot of effort during those years to appear as a reliable and civilized actor in international politics, was only able to restore their power in Hungary with cold force reminiscent of the Stalinist era. However, despite this obvious black mark on their record, the Soviets’ international reputation was hardly effected. In fact, the Soviet Union’s prestige was much more determined by the process which had started in 1955-56 and reached its peak in the sixties in which it emerged as a credible superpower rival/partner of the United States. The Americans’ overt acknowledgment of the European status quo in 1956 contributed to the new give and take relationship between the superpowers. As a consequence of this trend, the intentions of the two superpowers and the state of their relationship increasingly determined the developments of international politics.

The Eastern Bloc (81)

When analyzing the international consequences of the Hungarian Revolution, it is extremely difficult to determine how and to what extent did the suppression of the uprising influence the relationship between the Soviet Union and other Eastern European Communist states. Undoubtedly, a new kind of relationship emerged between the Soviet Union and her allies after 1956, but this cannot be entirely ascribed to the Hungarian Revolution. The basic principles of this new confederate policy, in keeping with the post-Stalinist model, were already visible in the Soviet government’s official statement of 30 October, 1956. The declaration—contrary to previous interpretations—was not merely an improvised gesture to pacify the Eastern European crisis. The document, which had been in preparation for months, was intended to redefine the relationship of the allied states, and was only amended to suit the specific situation of that October.

In actuality, the 30 October declaration can roughly be considered as the “constitution” of the post-Stalinist model. It provided a broad outline for the Soviet Union’s East European allies of their possibilities and limitations, and established new equations for political control and economic cooperation. The guidelines for the Bloc countries that the Soviets established in October of 1956 remained more or less operative well into the late eighties.(82)

The declaration promised no less than “a steadfast policy that realizes Lenin’s principle of equal rights of nations.” This included respect for the sovereignty of individual states and consideration of the historical past and national characteristics of each country. In imperial parlance it was a codification of a political relationship more flexible than that which had existed previously but that was still far from being equitable.

The new relationship between Moscow and its East European allies also included the recall of Soviet advisors. After 1956, the system of direct Soviet control exerted through these locally placed agents was refined to a more sophisticated system of “remote control”. The Soviets also replaced the vaguely disguised economic arrangement which had amounted to little more than Soviet exploitation with one that distributed both benefits and liabilities more evenly.

Of course, along with all the elements of new Soviet flexibility that the 30 October declaration brought, there were also clearly set the limits defining which changes would be possible and tolerable—reforms were permitted, provided they maintained socialist ideology (i.e., the Soviet Bolshevik system) and the confederate structure (i.e., the Soviet empire). This is why the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution was in fact in accordance with the Soviet government declaration—something denied by many at the time. That aspect of the declaration was simply put into practice on November 4.

One specific article in the declaration which promised that the Soviet Union would look into the question of Soviet troops stationed in Eastern Europe was included in reference to the Polish and Hungarian events of October 1956. The promise was certainly intended as a political tranquilizer, but later the same issue, which was originally adopted more or less as a response to the crises, became a determining factor in Soviet confederate politics. The Western states’ unconditional acceptance of the post-war European status quo and the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe at the time of such a critical situation as the Hungarian Revolution significantly increased the Soviet Union’s security and, at the same time, altered the reasoning behind the stationing of Soviet troops abroad. This is why Soviet troops could be withdrawn from Romania in 1958—the geo-political situation of that country ensured that the Soviet political model would be maintained and Romania would remain a solid member of the Soviet bloc.

On the other hand, in Czechoslovakia, where Soviet troops had been absent since the end of 1945, the political crisis which erupted in 1968 was one that the Soviet leadership could only resolve with a military occupation. In order to justify this action, no legal ground was needed; the Soviets had only to allege that the socialist system in Czechoslovakia was in danger and thus needed “protection”.

In the last few years, scholars have established that at the time of the Hungarian Revolution and directly after its suppression, there were numerous events in nearly all East European states and in the Soviet Union itself that demonstrated significant public sympathy for the Hungarian cause. These manifestations of political dissent, with the exception of those in Poland, met with varying forms of retaliation: dismissal, expulsion from the Party, arrest, detention, imprisonment, even execution. The reaction of the increasingly nationalistic regime in Romania provides a conspicuous example of these campaigns conducted throughout Eastern Europe against those who had supported—or who were simply accused of having supported—the uprising in Hungary. The government there seized the opportunity to eliminate unreliable or dissatisfied political elements, and also used the situation to justify further persecution of the Hungarian minority. The Romanian regime executed more than twenty people, imprisoned or interned thousands. Altogether, several tens of thousand people were affected by the large-scale political retaliation in Romania.(83)

In the decades following 1956, the Hungarian Revolution had several legacies in Eastern Europe: first, the leaders of the various East Europe regimes learned from the example of Imre Nagy and the Party opposition that attempts at radical reform can easily lead to the collapse of the Communist political monopoly and, second, they learned that in such cases the Soviets would not hesitate to restore order by the most brutal means. Beyond these basic lessons, the Hungarian Revolution also demonstrated that the leadership in Eastern Europe could ignore social demands and public opinion only at their own peril. Even though they had seen that any threatened regime could rely on Soviet help in the event of some political crisis, that leadership, which would be held responsible, could also expect to share the fate of the Gerõ group in Hungary, that is, to be replaced.

In this way, the Hungarian Revolution, by setting such a drastic example, contributed to a large extent to the success of the attempt—which had begun at the 20th Congress of the CPSU in February 1956—to build a post-Stalinist model of Communism in the Soviet Union and throughout East-Central Europe. The Polish crisis of October 1956, with it contrasting positive example, also strengthened the same trend; it demonstrated that a limited campaign of moderate reforms, which did not directly threaten the political system or indirectly threaten the security of the Eastern military bloc, could be realized even against the will of the Soviet leadership. More than anything else, this experience motivated the Czechoslovakian Communist reformers in 1968. It is another matter that, unlike Gomulka, they were unable to limit social changes to a level that the Soviets could tolerate.

The final legacy of the events of 1956 and shortly after were that they effectively brought to an end any ideas that still existed in Eastern Europe that the Soviet yoke could be thrown off by active revolt. The inaction of the West, the cruelty of the Soviet intervention, and finally the irrationally broad scale of retaliation all combined to dispel that illusion. Over the decades that followed, this understanding became the basis of all self-regulatory reform activities in Eastern Bloc states. While consciously taking the security interests of the Soviet Union into account, those wishing for change worked gradually but effectively to liberalize the Communist system. They no longer aimed to overthrow it.

Public Opinion in the West (84)

The Soviet intervention in Hungary had its strongest effect on those in Western societies who had harbored illusions regarding the Soviet Union. For left-wing thinkers who had seen the Soviet Union as the model for, or supporter of, socialist society, the Hungarian Revolution provided a test of whether or not it would be possible to realize a socialist system which managed to incorporate the practice of Western political democracy and the principles of common property and social equality. This is why the brutal suppression of the Hungarian Revolution had such a negative effect not only upon the Western European Communist parties but upon the left-wings of socialist and social democratic parties as well. As a consequence of 1956, the New Left and Euro-Communist movements of the sixties decisively detached themselves from Soviet influence and sought other models for their ideal of socialism.

Aside from those in the Left, most in the West saw the Hungarian Revolution as an oppressed nation’s instinctive strike for freedom, an anti-Soviet and anti-Communist uprising. Accordingly, these people, who took part in often violent demonstrations condemning the Soviet intervention, protested not so much against the Soviet invasion—which after all was the expected reaction from a superpower—as against the passivity of their own governments. The long-running liberation propaganda of the United States, widely considered the leading power of the Western world, had led many to believe that the West would naturally help any attempt for freedom behind the Iron Curtain, such as the Revolution was. Understandably thus, the Western public was stunned to witness the plight of the Hungarian people, who could never have expected much sympathy because of Hungary’s role in the Second World War, as they revolted against the immensely superior power of a world empire, jeopardizing their lives, existence, and families in a heroic, tragic, and—according to political logic and common sense—irrational struggle for freedom, all the while the governments of the West did next to nothing.

Freedom was the most abstract of ideals in the Western world, and the most important one at the same time, though also something for which the citizens of the consolidated post-war states no longer had to sacrifice their lives. The general public of the West had to face the fact that their governments, by pursuing a passive foreign policy and protecting the interests of their own societies, had failed in their roles as paragons of liberty. It became obvious that the West—with its pragmatic political considerations—would not risk conflict for the ideal of liberty.

The failure of the West to act in 1956 brought to many the disillusioning realization that the self-created socio-political image of the Western democracies—that they were the ultimate supporters of universal democratic principles—was not entirely true. This awakening perhaps partially spurred the radicalization in the sixties of certain elements of Western society—especially within the younger generations. In this way, the Hungarian Revolution, with its brief history of triumph, tragedy and finally disillusionment, indirectly but with much certainty contributed to the last “anti-capitalist revolt”: the student movements of the sixties.

(1) During the last few years I conducted archival research on East-West relations in the 1950's and on Western reaction to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution in the following archives (most important files and collections):

Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

Dulles. A. W.: Papers.

Dulles. J. F.: Papers..

Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas

Eisenhower D. D.: Papers as President of the United States. (Ann Whitman File)

Eisenhower, D. D.: Records as President. White House Central Files. Confidential Files

Jackson. C. D.: Papers.

White House Office, Office of the Staff Secretary: Records of Paul T. Carroll, Andrew J. Goodpastor, L. Arthur Minnich. and Christopher H. Russell.

White House Office. National Security Council Staff: Papers,

Dulles, J.F. Papers

National Archives, Washington, D.C.

National Security Council Reports, RG 273.

Department of State, Central Decimal Files, RG 59

Records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, RG 330.

Papers of Admiral Radford, RG 218

Records of U.S. Department of State. Office of Public Opinion Studies, RG 59.

United Nations Archives, New York, N. Y.

PSCA Confidential Notes, Chronological Summary regardig Hungary, Andrew Cordier File.

National Security Archive, Washington, D.C.

Public Record Office, London, Kew

Cabinet meetings, Prime Minister A. Eden papers

Foreign Secretary S. Lloyd papers,

Foreign Office, General Correspondence

Magyar Országos Levéltár, Budapest (Hungarian National Archives)

Records of the Hungarian Labourers Party and the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party

Minutes of the Council of Ministers

Ministry for External Affaires

Official and other publications of primary sources were also of great help in preparing my work, from which I relied mostly on the following works:

Documents Diplomatiques francais 1956. Tome III.(24 octobre-31 décembre). Paris, Ministére des Affaires Étrangéres, 1990 (henceforward related to as DDF 1956 Tome III.)

A "Jelcin-dosszié". Szovjet dokumentumok 1956-ról. (The Yeltzin File. Soviet Documents on 1956) Szerk. (ed.) Gál Éva, Hegedûs B. András, Litván György, Rainer M. János. Budapest, Századvég K.--1956-os Intézet (1956 Institute), 1993.

Hiányzó lapok 1956 történetébôl. Dokumentumok a volt SZKP KB Levéltárából. (Missing Pages from the History of 1956. Documents from the Archives of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party.) Vál., az elôszót és a jegyzeteket írta (ed.): Vjacseszlav Szereda és Alekszandr Sztikalin. Budapest, Móra 1993.

Döntés a Kremlben, 1956. A szovjet pártelnökség vitái Magyarországról. (Decisions in the Kremlin, 1956. Soviet Politburo Debates on Hungary.) A kötetet szerkesztette (ed.): Vjacseszlav Szereda és Rainer M. János. A bevezetô tanulmányt írta: Rainer M. János. A dokumentumokat fordította: Gál Éva. Budapest, 1956-os Intézet (1956 Institute), 1996.

Documents diplomatiques francais 1956. Tome III. (24 octobre--31 décembre). Paris, Ministére des Affaires Étrangéres, 1990.(henceforward: DDF)

Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955--1957. Eastern Europe. Volume XXV. Washington D. C. United States Government Printing Office, 1990 (henceforward: FRUS 1955-1957 Vl. XXV.)

Haraszty--Taylor, Eva ed. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956. A Collection of Documents from the British Foreign Office, Astra Press, Nottingham, 1995.

Titkos jelentések 1956. október 23.--november 4. (Secret Reports) A dokumentumokat válogatta (ed.): Geréb Sándor, Hírlapkiadó Vállalat, Budapest 1989

Top Secret. Magyar-jugoszláv kapcsolatok. 1956. Dokumentumok. (Documents on Hungarian-Hungarian Relations, 1956.) Az iratokat gyûjtötte, válogatta, szerkesztette és a bevezetô tanulmányt írta (ed.): Kiss József, Ripp Zoltán és Vida István. Budapest, MTA Jelenkor-kutató Bizottság, 1995.

United Nations. Security Council. Official Records (Eleventh Year), 734th--755th Meetings inclusive. New York: 1956.

United Nations. General Assembly. Official Records. First and Second Emergency Special Sessions, 1--10 November 1956. Plenary Meetings and Annexes. New York: 1956.

United Nations. General Assembly. Official Records. Eleventh Session (1956--57). Plenary Meetings. Vol. I (12 Nov. 1956 -- 8 March, 1957, 574th -- 617th Meetings). New York, 1956-1957.

United Nations. General Assembly. Official Records. Eleventh Session. Supplement No. 18 (A/3592), "Report of the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary." New York 1957.

Zinner, Paul E. ed. National Communism and Popular Revolt in Eastern Europe: A Selection of Documents on Events in Poland and Hungary, February--November 1956 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956)

(2)The most important works I could rely on are: Miklós Molnár: Budapest 1956. A history of the Hungarian Revolution. George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London, 1971; Radványi, János: Hungary and the Superpowers. The 1956 Revolution and Realpolitik. Hoover Institution Press, Stanford, California 1972; Vali, Ferenc. Rift and Revolt in Hungary. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1961.; McCauley, Brian: Hungary and Suez, 1956: The Limits of Soviet and American Power. Journal of Contemporary History 16 (October 1981) pp. 777--800;

(3)This working paper is based on the following publications: Csaba Békés: The 1956 Hungarian Revolution and World Politics. The Hungarian Quarterly 36:138 (Summer 1995), 109-121. and Békés Csaba: Az 1956-os magyar forradalom a világpolitikában. Tanulmány és válogatott dokumentumok. (The 1956 Hungarian Revolution and World Politics. A Study and Selected Documents) 1956-os Intézet (1956 Institute), Budapest, 1996.

On certain aspects of the topic there have been published some works based on research in the recently opened archival sources, of which I could rely on the following:

Calhoun, F. Daniel: Hungary and Suez, 1956. An Exploration of Who Makes History. University Press of America, 1991.

Campbell, John C.: The Soviet Union, the United States and the Twin Crises of Hungary and Suez. In: Suez 1956. The Crisis and its Consequences. ed. W. M Louis-R. Owen, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989. pp. 233-253.

Marchio, David, James: Rhetoric and Reality: The Eisenhower Administration and Unrest in Eastern Europe, 1953--1959. University Microfilms International, 1992.

Muszatov, Valerij: Szovjet politikai beavatkozás és katonai intervenció Magyarországon 1956-ban. (Soviet Political and Military Intervention in Hungary in 1956) Múltunk, 1991. 4. szám, pp. 159--170.

Rainer M. János: Szovjet döntéshozatal Magyarországról 1956-ban. (Soviet decision-making on Hungary in 1956) In: Évkönyv II. Budapest, 1956-os Intézet, 1993 (Yearbook for 1993, 1956 Institute) pp. 19--38. and by the same author: The Yeltzin Dossier: Soviet Documents on Hungary, 1956. Bulletin, Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington D.C., (henceforward: CWIHP) issue 5. Spring 1995.

(4)On the establishment of spheres of influence and on the role of East Europe in the Cold War see: Francois Fejto: History of the Peoples Democracies. New York, 1971.; Lundestad, Geir. The American Non-Policy Toward Eastern Europe, 1943--1947. New York: Humanities Press. 1975; Walter LaFeber: America, Russia and the Cold War 1945-1975 Third Edition, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York, 1976; The Fate of East Central Europe - Hopes and Failures of American Foreign Policy, ed. Stephen D.Kertesz, University of Notre Dame Press, 1956; Benett Kovrig: The Myth of Liberation - East Central Europe in U.S. Diplomacy and Politics Since 1941, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973; Caging the Bear: Containment and the Cold War, ed. Charles Gati, The Bobbs-Merill Company, Inc., 1974; John W. Spanier: American foreign policy since World War II, Second revised edition, Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, 1965; John C. Campbell: American Policy Toward Communist Eastern Europe: The Choices Ahead, Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1965; Melvin P. Leffler, David S. Painter eds. Origins of the Cold War. An International History. Routledge, London and New York, 1994; John Lewis Gaddis: Strategies of Containment. A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy. Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, 1982.; Charles, Gati: Hungary and the Soviet Bloc, Durham, Duke UP, 1986; Kovrig, Bennett: Of Walls and Bridges: The United States and Eastern Europe., New York University Press, 1991.

(5)Albert Resis: The Churchill-Stalin Percentage Agreement on the Balkans. In: American Historical Review 1978: April pp. 368-387.

(6)On post war Soviet foreign policy see the following Russian publications based on the use of new archival sources: Sovetskaja vesnaja politika v retrospective 1917-1991 (Soviet Foreign Policy in Retrospective 1917-1991) Ed. A. O. Chubarian, Nauka, Moskva, 1993. ; Sovetskaja vesnaja politika v godi hlodnoj vojni (1945-1985) (Soviet Foreign Policy in the Cold War years 1945-1985) Ed. L.N. Nezhinskij, Mezdunarodnaja Otnashenija, Moskva, 1995. , Vladimir O. Pechatnov:The Big Three after World War II: New Documents on Soviet Thinking about Post War Relations with the United States and Great Britain. CHIWP Working Paper No. 13.

(7)For the History of the European peace settlement following the Second World War see: Stephen D. Kertész: The Last European Peace Conference, Paris, 1946, University Press of America, 1985

(8)For a recent account on the topic see: Stephen L. McFarland: The Iranian Crisis of 1946 and the Onset of the Cold War In: Origins of the Cold War pp. 239-256.

(9) For a recent presentation of the history of the Korean War see: Richard Whelan: Drawing the Line: the Korean War 1950-1953. Boston, Little, Brown and Company, 1990, while for new findings on the origin of the war see several articles by Kathryn Weathersby, Chen Jian, Evgueni Bajanov, Alexandre Y. Mansourov and others in issues 3, 5 and 6-7 of the CHIWP Bulletin.

(10)William G. Hyland: The Cold War. Fifty Years of Conflict. Times Books, Random House Inc. New York, 1981. p. 59.

(11)For a classical survey of Soviet Foreign Policy see: Adam B. Ulam: Expansion and Coexistence; Soviet Foreign Policy 1917-1973 New York, 1974. For recent accounts on the topic based on the use of new Soviet archival sources see the two publications mentioned in note No. 6. and Politicheskie krisy i konflikty 50-60.h godov v "Vostochnoj Jevrope" (Political Crises in Eastern Europe), Moskva, 1993

(12)The Warsaw Pact was established on 14 May, 1955, while the Austrian State Treaty was signed on 15 May.

(13)Brian McCauley op. cit. p. 786.

(14)For the findings of recent scholarship on the Berlin uprising see: James Richter: Reexamining Soviet Policy during the Beria Interregnum. CHIWP Working Paper No. 3.; For the US response see: Christian Ostermann: The United States, the East German Uprising of 1953, and the limits of Rollback. CWIHP Working Paper No. 11.

(15)Sir William Hayter, British Ambassador in Moscow sent reports to London on a document in preparation, regulating Soviet-Satellite relations from as early as May, 1956. For the first publication of this finding see: Csaba Békés: New Findings on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. CWIHP Bulletin, Issue 2, Fall 1992 p. 2.

(16) Hiányzó lapok, p. 40 Mikoyan's report to the CPSU CC, July 14, 1956.

(17)Micunovic: Moscow Diary, July 15, 1956 note.

(18)For the most important accounts on the policy of the Eisenhower administration vis -a - vis Eastern Europe see: Kovrig, Bennett: The Myth of Liberation; John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War, ed. Richard H. Immerman, Princeton University Press, 1990; Kovrig, Bennet: Of Walls and Bridges; James David Marchio: op. cit.; Borhi László: Az Egyesült Ållamok Kelet-Európa politikájának néhány kérdése 1948-1956 (Some Aspects of American policy toward Eastern Europe). Történelmi Szemle 1995:3.

(19)For surveys on British and French policy toward the region see: Joseph Frankel: British Foreign Policy 1945-1973, Oxford In University Press, 1975; Hanrieder, Wolfram F. and Graeme P. Auton: The Foreign Policies of West Germany, France & Britain. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,Inc., 1980.; White, Brian: Britain, Détente, and Changing East-West Relations. Routledge, London-New York, 1992.

(20)In the US a new policy paper on Eastern Europe, replacing NSC 174 was adopted by the National Security Council in July, 1956. See: NSC 5608 and NSC 5608/1, FRUS Vol. XXV pp. 190-194 and pp. 216-221 respectively. For the changed attitude of NATO countries see: Public Record Office, London, Kew, Foreign Office General Correspondence FO 371 (henceforward: PRO FO 371) 122081 N 1059/9. The British NATO delegation to the Foreign Office on the October 24 meeting of the NATO Council, October 24, 1956.

(21) According to a public opinion poll among Hungarian refugees in AustriaI the great majority (96%) of the interviewed persons had expected some kind of US support, and of these 77% believed that it would be military support. International Research Associates, Inc. Hungary and the 1956 Uprising, Personal Interviews with 1,000 Hungarian Refugees in Austria, February, 1957 as cited in: Marchio op. cit. p. 417.

(22) PROFO 371 122378 NH 10110/175 Minute by Thomas Brimelow, Head of the Northern Department, 25 October, 1956; National Archives, Washington D.C. Department of State, Central Files, 764.00/10-2556. Printed in FRUS vol. XXV. 1955-1957 pp. 280-286. Transcript of a teletype conversation between the US legation in Budapest and the Department of State, 25 October, 1956.

(23)Izsák Lajos: Az 1956-os forradalom pártjai és programjaik. (Political Parties in the Revolution and their programs.) Múltunk 1992: 2-3. pp. 102-124.

(24) Imre Nagy: On Communism. In Defence of the New Course. Thames and Hudson, London, 1957.

(25) The Soviet delegation which arrived in Budapest on 24 October consisted of Politburo members A. I. Mikoyan and M. A. Suslov, KGB head I. Serov and deputy chief of staff M. S. Malinin. While Mikoyan and Suslov conducted talks with the Hungarian leaders, Serov and Malinin were staying in the country incognits so the fact of their presence in Hungary during the Revolution was revealed only by the Soviet archival sources declassified in 1992.

(26)In Warsaw on October 19 the 8th Plenum of the Polish United Workers Party elected W. Gomulka the first secretary of the party in spite of the intervention of Khruschev and other Soviet leaders who flew to the Polish capital to present the anticipated changes in the leadership. Eventually the crisis situation, threatening with the danger of Soviet military intervention was resolved by a compromise: the Soviets accepted the new Polish leadership, while Gomulka assured Moscow that the political reforms in Poland would neither jeopardize the basis of the communist regime nor the unity of the Soviet bloc.

(27)A "Jelcin dosszié" Telegram of Mikoyan and Suslov to the CPSU CC 25 October, 1956. p. 51.

(28) Hiányzó lapok...Telegram of Mikoyan and Suslov to the CPSU CC 26 October, 1956. p. 111.

(29)For the text of the declaration of neutrality see: P. Zinner op.cit. pp. 463-464

(30)For the text of Nagy's telegram to Hammarkskjold see: ibid. pp. 462-463.

(31)For the text of Nagy's November 2 telegram to Hammarkskjold see: ibid.

(32)Rainer M. János: Nagy Imre külpolitikája (The foreign policy of Imre Nagy) Magyar Nemzet 1991 VII. 15. and Döntés a Kremlben p. 91.

(33)For the discussion of the Soviet Politburo with Kádár and Münnich on november 2 and 3 see Döntés a Kremlben pp. 75-82 and 88-90 respectively.

These recently published Soviet sources reveal, however, that it was not János Kádár's original intention to form a counter-government when he left together with Ferenc Münnich for the Soviet Union on 1. November. On their first meeting with the members of the Politburo on 2 November Kádár was trying to convince the Soviet leaders that still there was a chance for the peaceful consolidation of the situation in Hungary. However, by the next day, when they met again - this time the Presidium was supplemented by Khrushchev and Malenkov as well - he recognized that the decision had already been taken in Moscow and the alternative for him remained only whether he was willing to collaborate or not.

(34)On the first Soviet intervention on 24 October, 1956. see: Az 1956. október 24-i moszkvai értekezlet (The 24 October, 1956 Moscow meeting) Közli Hajdu Tibor In: Évkönyv I. Budapest, 1956-os Intézet, 1992 (Yearbook for 1992, 1956 Institute) pp. 149-156. For the English text of the minutes on the meeting see: Hungary and Poland, 1956. Khrushchev's CPSU Presidium Meeting on East European Crisis, 24. October, 1956. Introduction, Translation and Annotation by Mark Kramer In: CWIHP Bulletin, issue 5. Spring 1995.

(35)Hiányzó lapok... Telegram of Mikoyan and Suslov to the CPSU CC 26 October, 1956. p. 112

(36)The importance of the first three factors is emphasized in Rainer M. János: The Yeltzin Dossier... p. 25. while my attention was drawn to the role of the mass media in this respect by Peter Kende.

(37)For the English text of the Soviet Government's declaration of the 30th of October, 1956 see P. Zinner op.cit. pp. 485-489. The declaration is analyzed in Cahapter III.

(38)The recently discovered minutes of V. N. Malin, head of the General Department of the Central Committee on the meetings of the Soviet Politburo in October-November, 1956 were published in Hungarian in: Döntés a kremlben... For the Russian text of the same documents see: Kak resalis "voprosi Vengrii" (ed.) Vjacheslav Sereda, Istoricheski Archiv 1996:2. pp. 73-104. (Part I) The second part of the documents is to be published soon in issue 3 of the same journal.

(39)A special collection of East German, Czechoslovakian and Romanian documents relating to local reactions to the events in Hungary is in the possession of the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution in Budapest. The East German documents were selected by Rainer Barth, while the Czechoslovak sources were placed in the Hungarian National Arcives as a result of an official exchange of historical documents between Prague and Budapest. Romanian Politburo documents on the Hungarian crisis were published by Mihai Retegan: Conducerea P.M.R. si evenimentele din Polonia si Ungaria, 1956, Archivele Totalitarismului 1995:1 pp. 137-162.

(40)On Polish reactions to the Hungarian Revolution see the works of János Tischler: A lengyel pártvezetés és az 1956-os forradalom. (The Polish Party Leadership and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution) In: Évkönyv III., 1956-os Intézet Budapest, 1994 (Yearbook for 1994, 1956 Institute); Magyar-lengyel kapcsolatok a korai Kádár-korszakban, 1958 nyaráig. (Hungarian-Polish Relations in the Kádár era till the Summer of 1958) In: Évkönyv IV., 1956-os Intézet, Budapest, 1995 (Yearbook for 1995, 1956 Institute); Revolucja wegierska 1956 w polskich dokumentach. Opracowat János Tischler. Dokumenty do Dziejow PRL zeszyt 8. Institut Studiów Politycznych Polskej Akademii Nauk, Warszawa 1995.

(41)The Malin notes reveal that the members of the Chinese delegation, apart from other discussions with the Soviet leaders, took part at the Politburo meetings on 24, 26 and 30 of October.

(42)On Yugoslav policy towards the Hungarian Revolution and its aftermath see: Micunovic, Veljko: Moscow Diary, London. Chatto and Windus, 1980.; Varga László: Moszkva--Belgrád--Budapest. A jugoszláv kapcsolat 1956. október--november In: Jalta és Szuez között. (The Yugoslav Connection October-November, 1956 In: Between Jalta and Suez) Budapest, Tudósítások Kiadó 1989; Pierre Maurer: La réconciliation sovéto-yougoslave 1954-1958: Illusions et désillusions de Tito. Cousset (Fribourg), Delval, 1991.; Ripp Zoltán: Belgrád és Moszkva között. A jugoszláv kapcsolat és a Nagy Imre-kérdés (1956 november--1959 február) (Between Belgrade and Moscow. The Yugoslav Connection and the Imre Nagy issue.) Budapest, Politikatörténeti Alapítvány 1994.; Top Secret ...

(43)With the exeption of Poland. See p. 38.

(44)FRUS 1955-1957 Vol. XXV p. 274.

(45)FRUS 1955-1957 Vol. XXV p. 273.

(46)Eisenhower Library, White House Office, National Security Council, Staff Papers. Minutes of the 301th meeting of the National Security Council, October 26, 1956. Printed in: FRUS 1955-1957 Vol. XXV. pp. 295-299.

(47)Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, Administrative Series. Harold E. Stassen to Eisenhower, October 26, 1956. Quoted in: FRUS 1955-1957 Vol. XXV. p. 305.

(48)Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, White House Telephone Conversations Series, Memorandum of Conversation between Eisenhower and Dulles, October 26, 1956; Printed in:

FRUS 1955-1957 Vol. XXV. pp. 305-306.

(49)For the full text of the speech see: Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, J.F. Dulles Papers, printed In: Department of State Bulletin 5 November, 1956.; selected parts of the speech printed in: FRUS 1955-1957 Vol. XXV. pp. 317-318.

(50)United Nations. Security Council. Official Records. 734th-755th Meetings inclusive. New York, 1956.

(51)FRUS 1955-1957 Vol. XXV p. 328.

(52) FRUS 1955-1957 Vol. XXV p. 351.

(53)FRUS 1955-1957 Vol. XXV p. 330-335

(54) NSC 5616. US Policy toward Developments in Poland and Hungary. October 31, 1956. An unsanitized copy of the document is in the National Security Archive, Washington D.C. The idea of mutual troopwithdrawal was very likely included in the document on Harold E. Stassen’s initiative, who prepared a minute on 29 October proposing exactly the same plan. (Eisenhower Library, White House Office, NSC Staff. OCB Central Files). Stassen’s proposal was published by Csaba Békés: Demokratikus eszmék és nagyhatalmi érdekek. Egy megvalósulatlan amerikai javaslat az 1956-os magyar forradalom megsegítésére. (An Unrealized American Plan to Support the Hungarian Revolution in 1956) Holmi, 1993:10. pp. 1402-1408.

(55)Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, NSC Series. Minutes of the 302nd meeting of the National Security Council, November 1, 1956. Printed in: FRUS 1955-1957 Vol. XXV. pp. 358-359.

(56)PRO FO 371 122081 N 1059/9. The British NATO delegation to the Foreign Office on the October 24 meeting of the NATO Council, October 24, 1956.

(57)PRO FO 371 122380 Telegram No. 180 of the British NATO delegation to the Foreign Office on the October 27 meeting of the NATO Council, October 27, 1956.

(58)PRO FO 371 122063 NH 1012/26 British Embassy, Paris to the Foreign Office, No. 392. October, 27, 1956.

(59)PRO FO 371 122379 NH 10110/221 Minute by Sir John Ward, October, 27 1956.

(60)PRO FO 371 122808 NS 1051/96 Foreign Office minute, November 1, 1956.

(61) Conf. Miklós Molnár: Budapest 1956. p.203.

(62) The most important recent publications on the Suez Crisis based on declassified archival sources are: Richard Lamb: The Failure of the Eden Government. Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1987; Suez 1956. The Crisis and its Consequences ed. W.M. Louis - R. Owen, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989; Keith Kyle: Suez. Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1991; The Suez-Sinai Crisis 1956, Retrospective and Reappraisal ed. S.I. Troen - M. Shemesh. Frank Cass, London, 1990; Mordechai Bar-On: Challenge and Quarrel. The Road to Sinai - 1956 (Hebrew), 1991. - The 22 October date is mentioned in the contemporary diary of the Israeli Prime Minister In: The Diary of Ben Gurion In: The Suez-Sinai Crisis 1956, p. 308.

(63)Ben Gurion op. cit p. 315.

(64)FRUS 1955-1957 Vol. XXV pp. 290-291.

(65)PRO FO 371 122378 NH 10110/188 Foreign Office minute, October 26, 1956.; DDF 1956 Tome III. p. 19.

(66)For the story of the secret talks of the three Western Great Powers on the Hungarian situation see: Csaba Békés: A brit kormány és az 1956-os magyar forradalom (The British Government and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution) In: Évkönyv I., 1956-os Intézet, Budapest, 1992 (Yearbook for 1992, 1956 Institute). pp. 19-38. and A magyar kérdés az ENSZ-ben és a nyugati nagyhatalmak titkos tárgyalásai 1956. október 28. - november 4. (Brit külügyi dokumentumok). (The Hungarian Issue in the UN and the Secret negotiations of the three Western Great Powers - British Diplomatic Records) In: Évkönyv II., 1956-os Intézet, Budapest, 1993 (Yearbook for 1993, 1956 Institute). pp. 39-71.

(67)United Nations. General Assembly. Official Records. First and Second Emergency Special Sessions, 1--10 November 1956. Plenary Meetings and Annexes. New York: 1956. Minutes of the plenary meeting on November 4, 1956. A/3286.

(68)Eisenhower Library, Dulles Papers, General Memoranda of Conversations Series. Minute of discussion between Harold E. Stassen and John Foster Dulles, 26 October, 1956. Printed In: FRUS 1955-1957 Vol. XXV. p. 305.

(69)Report of the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary. United Nations, New York 1957.

(70) The treatment of the Hungarian issue in the UN is thoroughly analyzed in János Radványi: op. cit.

(71)Marchio op. cit. 417-418.

(72)For the presentation of the changes in the Eisenhower Administration's policy toward Eastern Europe see: Ibid. chapter 9.

(73)For the story of the Hungarian-American secret talks see János Radványi's book. From March 1962 he was chargé d’affaires of the Hungarian legation in Washington and was personally involved in the negotiations.

(74)See footnote 42.

(75)See footnote 37.

(76)See footnote 39.

n(77) p.13

n(78)p.19

n(79)p.69

n(80)p.72

o(81)p.76

o(82)p.77

o(83)p.81

o(84)p.85