Posted on 11/19/2006 4:33:45 AM PST by Nextrush
The Soviet armies took the city center of Budapest quickly on the morning of November 4, 1956 but fighting continued for some days in other parts of the city.
Soviet tanks and aircraft were used to break resistance in the industrial areas of Budapest and in other cities.
Guerilla fighting was also going on in the countryside for several weeks.
Some 200-thousand refugees fled to Austria and Yugoslavia.
Meanhwile, the Yugoslav Embassy conducted negotiations to get Imre Nagy out of its embassy in Budapest and received assurance from the new Hungarian Commnist leader Janos Kadar for safe conduct of Imre Nagy and other Hungarians who sought refuge in the embassy.
On the evening of November 22nd a bus took Nagy and the others from the embassy under those assurances but the vehicle ended up going to a Soviet military headquarters with Yugoslav diplomats ordered off.
Nagy was tried secretly in 1957 and executed in secret. It is estimated that 300 people were executed after the revolution. Thousands of others were jailed. The fighting in Hungary killed at least several thousand people although estimates have varied (If anything they were higher).
The Soviet Union was able to keep Hungary as a slave state, but at a relatively small price. Western Europe was turned off to Communism enough not to vote it in, but England and France were also discredited as world powers because the United States economically held the trump card.
The Soviets pushed the idea that their military threats stopped Anglo-French-Israeli military action in Egypt. But the Soviets didn't have the military capability in the Middle East and were tied down in Hungary.
Their propaganda war continued and Communism found more fertile ground in Africa and Asia as Britain and France fell back after Suez.
The Soviets were able to spread and develop Communism in many places, from Cuba to Angola, from Vietnam to Ethiopia in the next 25-30 years until the era of Ronald Reagan began to turn the tide back.
The United States stood in the middle of a carrot and stick policy aimed at using money to buy support from the newly emerging nations of what soon would be called the "Third World." Joining with the Soviets to oppose Anglo-French intervention in Suez was aimed at winning "hearts and minds."
When John Foster Dulles cut off the Aswan Dam funding from Egypt causing their seizure of the canal and the intervention of British and France, he thought he was going to move Egypt away from the Soviet Union. That wouldn't happen for another 20-25 years.
And as for Dulles, the verbal anti-communist told 'New York Times' reporter Kennett Love the idea of using American military force to intervene in Hungary was "madness."
This containment policy didn't stop the Communist expansion and the rise of peace movements to disarm the United States.
The United States was constantly trying to negotiate with the Soviet Union and cut trade deals for the next 25 years.
Eisenhower ran against a nuclear test ban treaty as Adlai Stevenson (Democrat candidate) proposed in 1956.
By 1960 both major presidential candidates (Nixon and Kennedy) pushed the test ban. The fear of nuclear war had shifted public opinion enough apparently plus the Nixon visit to Moscow and Krushchev visit to the United States signalled "warmer relations."
Communism thrived in this kind of environment with its followers like Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro, and Ho Chi Minh enjoying great fame and success in the decades to follow. The Soviet tide washed over a lot of the world in the 1960's and 1970's.
Until the emergence of Ronald Reagan, Communism led by the Soviet Union was allowed to exist and expand without being challenged or opposed. Defeating it was unthinkable in the eyes of policy makers.
BTTT
Bump for later reading. My mother and grandmother made it across the Hungarian border during this crisis and were brought to the US. 28 years later, I was born.
So, thank you, USSR? I think...
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