Hungary: Russia's Pyrrhic Victory

Hungary: Russia's Pyrrhic VictoryAuthor(s): Denis SmithSource: The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science / Revue canadienned'Economique et de Science politique, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Feb., 1958), pp. 110-118Published by: Wiley on behalf of Canadian Economics AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/139123 .

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Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science

volved in resource utilization, and of choice between growth and stability or control involved in dependence on foreign markets and capital, are dealt with

only in certain concrete cases, and there they are blurred and compromised. Probably this is asking too much of what is, after all, only a preliminary report-and only a royal commission. The enduring value of the Commission's investigations will depend not on its reports, but on the contribution of its

special studies to knowledge and on the effect of the concentration of so much talent on the study of Canadian problems in stimulating maturer reflection and research.

HUNGARY: RUSSIA'S PYRRHIC VICTORY*

DENIS SMIIT

University of Toronto

THE Hungarian Revolution of 1956 is documented in two books published in the spring and summer of last year. The first is a comprehensive collection of

speeches, documents, radio reports, and newspaper articles arranged chrono-

logically to trace the uprising from its first stirrings in the Petofi Circle and the

Literary Gazette to its prolonged and anguished death under the Kadar re-

pression. Its method is impressionistic, designed to convey the hope, determina- tion, uncertainty, and desperation of the participants in two weeks of national revolution, and to "observe a revolution and a war with a thousand eyes" (p. 7). It succeeds in transmitting the mood of the revolution by careful

editing of the selections, many of them eloquent and impassioned; and it

develops a much more complete picture of the revolt than most North Americans could imagine from newspaper and radio reports during the uprising. It leaves many questions unanswered, and some unasked; the editor, Melvin J. Lasky, presents the collection with its ambiguities unresolved. He does not attempt to draw his own conclusions from the incomplete evidence that he has collected. The book does, as the editor hopes, tell the story of the

tragedy with directness and sympathy. It implies more than it says. The focus is on Budapest from October 23 to November 4; there are only

scattered reports from other centres in the country where the revolt flared at the same time. The fact that, in many cities, the revolution was bloodless before the second Soviet intervention is not given prominence. After the moment-by- moment diary of events between October 23 and November 4, the less detailed

chapters, "Aftermath" and "Epilogue," are anticlimactic, but this is highly appropriate. After the Russian treachery of November 4, the slow return to repression could be nothing but anticlimactic and inevitable. Mr. Lasky's collection is valuable for its varying perspectives, and doubly useful in North

*The Hungarian Revolution. A White Book. Edited by MELVIN J. LASKY. London: Martin Seeker and Warburg Limited, for the Congress for Cultural Freedom. 1957. Pp. 318. $5.00.

Report of the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary. United Nations, General Assembly, Official Records, Eleventh Session, Supplement no. 18 (A/3592). New York: United Nations. 1957. Pp. viii, 148. $2.00. (Hereafter referred to as United Nations Report.) Vol. XXIV, no. 1, Feb., 1958

volved in resource utilization, and of choice between growth and stability or control involved in dependence on foreign markets and capital, are dealt with

only in certain concrete cases, and there they are blurred and compromised. Probably this is asking too much of what is, after all, only a preliminary report-and only a royal commission. The enduring value of the Commission's investigations will depend not on its reports, but on the contribution of its

special studies to knowledge and on the effect of the concentration of so much talent on the study of Canadian problems in stimulating maturer reflection and research.

HUNGARY: RUSSIA'S PYRRHIC VICTORY*

DENIS SMIIT

University of Toronto

THE Hungarian Revolution of 1956 is documented in two books published in the spring and summer of last year. The first is a comprehensive collection of

speeches, documents, radio reports, and newspaper articles arranged chrono-

logically to trace the uprising from its first stirrings in the Petofi Circle and the

Literary Gazette to its prolonged and anguished death under the Kadar re-

pression. Its method is impressionistic, designed to convey the hope, determina- tion, uncertainty, and desperation of the participants in two weeks of national revolution, and to "observe a revolution and a war with a thousand eyes" (p. 7). It succeeds in transmitting the mood of the revolution by careful

editing of the selections, many of them eloquent and impassioned; and it

develops a much more complete picture of the revolt than most North Americans could imagine from newspaper and radio reports during the uprising. It leaves many questions unanswered, and some unasked; the editor, Melvin J. Lasky, presents the collection with its ambiguities unresolved. He does not attempt to draw his own conclusions from the incomplete evidence that he has collected. The book does, as the editor hopes, tell the story of the

tragedy with directness and sympathy. It implies more than it says. The focus is on Budapest from October 23 to November 4; there are only

scattered reports from other centres in the country where the revolt flared at the same time. The fact that, in many cities, the revolution was bloodless before the second Soviet intervention is not given prominence. After the moment-by- moment diary of events between October 23 and November 4, the less detailed

chapters, "Aftermath" and "Epilogue," are anticlimactic, but this is highly appropriate. After the Russian treachery of November 4, the slow return to repression could be nothing but anticlimactic and inevitable. Mr. Lasky's collection is valuable for its varying perspectives, and doubly useful in North

*The Hungarian Revolution. A White Book. Edited by MELVIN J. LASKY. London: Martin Seeker and Warburg Limited, for the Congress for Cultural Freedom. 1957. Pp. 318. $5.00.

Report of the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary. United Nations, General Assembly, Official Records, Eleventh Session, Supplement no. 18 (A/3592). New York: United Nations. 1957. Pp. viii, 148. $2.00. (Hereafter referred to as United Nations Report.) Vol. XXIV, no. 1, Feb., 1958

110 110



America because it concentrates on European news sources. The reports of Polish and Yugoslav observers, published in newspapers in their own countries, are surprisingly objective and free from the cant that might be expected from Communist observers watching a revolution against a Communist state. The excerpts from the Moscow press and radio before the second Russian attack distort the revolution to prepare the Russian people for the brutality of November 4. Moscow's conciliatory hints from October 30 until the second attack are, in retrospect, heartless deceptions; but they are only minor flourishes to the basic ruthlessness that dictated the major Soviet policy of armed suppression.

The United Nations committee was charged, in a typical United Nations euphemism, with examining "the problem of Hungary." The report presented in June, 1957, by a committee representing Denmark, Australia, Ceylon, Tunisia, and Uruguay does not, however, soften its conclusions. It unani- mously condemns the Soviet Union for its armed aggression on the Hungarian people in violation of the guarantees contained in the Hungarian peace treaty, the United Nations charter, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The committee finds no justification for the attack in the terms of the Warsaw Treaty, which was cited by both the Russian and the Hungarian governments after the first Russian attack on Budapest. No evidence was received by the committee that the Hungarian government actually did invite Russian intervention on October 23 and November 4; there is strong circumstantial evidence suggesting that on both days the Russian military attack was made on Soviet initiative, and presented as a fait accompli to the Hungarian administration.

The United Nations report, in its unadorned language of understatement, presents a more damning condemnation of the Russian and the puppet Hungarian governments than does the Lasky collection. In analytical pattern, the report details the origins of the uprising, its course in Budapest and throughout the country, the aims of the insurgents, the two military inter- ventions and their political circumstances, the structure of the revolutionary government that was created before November 4, and the effect of the Soviet suppression on Hungarian political independence. The story is remarkable and painful.

To this outside observer, who was guiltily preoccupied at the time of the revolution with the problem of what the West could do to help Hungary, and who was distracted by Suez, these two books are a means of seeing the revolution from the inside, and without distraction. Whether the West could have intervened to prevent the second Soviet attack remains undecided, and is vitally important in the calculation of future Western policy toward the satellites; but we can now see that to the man firing at Soviet tanks it was hardly a concern. The revolution, like all revolutions, aroused hopes that could not be realized, and this was one of them. The prospect of Western aid was not what gave the Hungarian Revolution its heart. The revolution was a national revolution set off by national conditions, by eight years of terror, near poverty, and national humiliation that could no longer be borne, and by hints of liberalization in Hungary after the Khrushchev speech. The whole

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Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science

story can almost be seen in the context of Russian imperialism in Eastern

Europe, and without considering the relation of the West to the immediate events.

Readers. in North America may be surprised, too, to find virtually no references to Suez. The Hungarians were preoccupied, and unaware of the other crisis; the incomplete evidence indicates that the Russian decision to crush the rebellion, or at least to be ready to crush it, was taken before the

Anglo-French ultimatum to Egypt, and was therefore uninfluenced by it.' As early as October 20 and 21, the Soviet army constructed pontoon bridges near Zahony on the Hungarian-Soviet border. The Russians seem to have been

prepared before the outbreak to deal more sternly with Hungarian demands than they had with those of Poland. Some newly arrived units of the Russian

army took part in the first Soviet attack on Budapest early in the morning of October 24; and from October 29 to November 4, there were continuous

reports of the entry of large Soviet army units from Czechoslovakia, Russia, and Romania. These army movements do not rule out the possibility that

they were intended at first to be only a show of force. The United Nations committee concluded from their evidence: "It may well be that, immediately before the second intervention, the political and military authorities of the USSR differed regarding the best way of meeting the unusual circumstances which had arisen, and that the military authorities at no point abandoned the belief that the only way to resolve the difficulties which had arisen in

Hungary was by force." (par. 185, p. 27) The conflicts of opinion in the Soviet

government were probably more complex than this. Only the members of the Politbureau know the answer; what cannot be doubted is that the Franco- British-Israeli attack did divert the world's attention from the horror of

Hungary, and did, in the eyes of Asian and Middle Eastern nations, forfeit Britain's and France's ability to speak with moral authority against Russia.

Both accounts of the revolution agree on its inherent purity and modera- tion. There were, for a few days, some lynchings of members of the security police (the A.V.H.), and of persons suspected of working with the A.V.H. There were many instances in which mobs merely detained A.V.H. members, or when the police protected them from angry crowds. Responsible leaders of the revolt called repeatedly on the population not to murder members of the security police, and A.V.H. members had such faith in the goodwill of the

revolutionary government that by October 31 they were giving themselves up voluntarily for questioning and trial. Many store windows were broken, but there was no looting in Budapest. At the end of October, open collection boxes were placed unguarded in the streets to raise money for treatment of those injured in the first days of the revolt. Although the workers used the strike as a weapon against the government, essential services were not in-

terrupted in Budapest until after the second Soviet attack. Throughout the revolution, farmers near Budapest supplied the city, at little or no charge,

1George Mikes, in his book The Hungarian Revolution (London, 1957), argues con- vincingly that the Russian Politbureau was split over its Hungarian policy, first favouring a peaceful withdrawal, and only on October 30, after Eden's ultimatum, deciding to crush the revolt by force.

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with food. There was no evidence of Hungarian acts of vengeance against individual Russian soldiers, and much evidence of sympathy for the Russians, even though the Russian occupation was the chief target of the revolt. There were no anti-Semitic overtones, although anti-Semitism had deep roots in Hungary. After the first days of anarchy a new administrative system of revolutionary councils in the cities and regions, and workers' councils in the factories, was rapidly established. In spite of the flood of new political parties in the few days of freedom, the voice of the country was unanimous for certain basic goals. The prospect of party conflicts in the future did not weaken the unity of the nation.

The propaganda of the Kadar government and Soviet Russia pictured the revolution as a popular movement that fell under the influence of reactionary counter-revolutionaries who sought to restore the Fascist system. The varia- tions on this pathetically inadequate theme were that thousands of Fascist

emigres, trained as saboteurs and foreign agents in West Germany, had been

infiltrating the country since October 23; that the uprising was controlled by the imperialist nations of the West; that the feudal landowners and capitalists dispossessed in the post-war reforms were returning to power. These stereo- typed reactions suggest the moral exhaustion and dogmatic blindness of those who uttered them; the claims certainly did not deceive the Freedom Fighters, who knew what their own objectives were. Western observers, particularly in North America, may have drawn the same kind of mistaken conclusion as did the Russians. The special photographic report on "Hungary's Fight For Freedom," published by Life Magazine, for instance, identified the insurgents interchangeably as rebels, patriots, or anti-Communists. In the atmosphere of the Cold War, the term "anti-Communist" has come to mean, among other things, membership in the Western alliance and support for capitalism. The West, like Russia, has its misconceptions. Russia tends to regard any threat to her imperial power as a Western capitalist threat; the West tends to regard any revolt against Russia as a move into the Western capitalist fold. The Hungarian Revolution fitted neither the Russian nor the Western political world view. It was not "anti-Communist" in the Russian or the Western sense. History has the infuriating habit of confounding preconceptions.

The intellectual leaders of the revolt were members of the Communist party and many of them were sincere Marxists. Two members of the Writers' Association who led the ferment for freedom of speech during the summer of 1956, Peter Veres and Julius Hay, did so while reaffirming their faith in the Marxist creed. The revolutionary Prime Minister, Imre Nagy, who had the universal support of the people by November 3, was a former Communist Prime Minister, a member of the party since 1918, a man who had spent a dozen years in exile in the Soviet Union, and who had only a few weeks before been publicly reinstated in the party. Many of the trusted members of the revolutionary councils and workers' councils were party members. General Pal Maleter, Nagy's new Minister of Defence and the leader of the rebels at Kilian Barracks, was ". .. a product of Communist training both military and otherwise. He still wore his little partisan star of 1944 . . . at a time when the whole officers' corps was dragging off its Soviets-style epau-

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lettes."2 The revolt, at all stages, was against Russian imperialism and the totalitarian rule of the Communist party, not against the Communist creed or individual party members. The socialist reforms carried out by the party- the land reform and the nationalization of industry-were accepted by the whole population. Bela Kovacs, leader of the Independent Smallholders'

Party,3 wrote in his party newspaper on November 1: "Let no one dream of the old world returning: the world of the counts, the bankers and the capitalists is gone forever."4 Premier Nagy expressed the united wish of the nation for a democratic system of government based on socialism. The former landowners and capitalists had lost all influence in the country: this much of the Communist programme was popular and irreversible. Indeed, the revolution-

ary organizations in the factories, the workers' councils, were designed to ensure democratic management of the factories by the workers, a promise that the Communist party had made and not fulfilled.

Radio Free Miskolc described the Hungarian goal as a "middle way" between Communist and Fascist tyranny. The aims were national independence, neutrality, parliamentary government, and democratic socialism. The models were Western political freedom, empirical Yugoslav socialism, and the neutralism of Austria and Switzerland. In a democratic system, the Com- munist party would undoubtedly lose the first free elections; the revolutionary Communist leaders realized this, and were prepared to give up power peace- fully. George Lukacs, a respected Marxist philosopher, said to a Polish corre-

spondent that a new Marxist party must be built in the country.

The new Party will not be able to expect rapid success-Communism in Hungary has been totally disgraced. Collected around the Party will probably be small groups of progressive intellectuals, writers and a few young people. The working class will prefer to follow the Social Democrats. In free elections the Communists will obtain five percent of the vote, ten percent at the most. It is possible that they won't be in the Government, that they will go into opposition. But the Party will continue to exist; it will save the idea; it will be an intellectual center, and after some years or some decades from now, who knows. ... .5

The desire of the Hungarians to retain the nationalized industries and the land reform was coupled with a realistic perception of Hungary's strategic and economic position. If she were independent, she would remain friendly with Russia. Hungary's economy is now tied to that of Russia and the whole satellite system, and could not be easily reoriented. The country lies in the traditional Russian sphere of influence, a buffer against invasion from the West. Hungary, in the best circumstances, could hope for no more than

neutrality between the power blocs; even this, she learned, was more than Russia would grant. The unanimity of view during the revolt probably assured that if Russia had not attacked, the country would have become just

2Lasky, ed., The Hungarian Revolution, 215, quoting Basil Davidson in The Times of India, Bombay, Nov. 24, 1956.

3Which received 57 per cent of the popular vote in the last free elections in 1945. 4Quoted iu United Nations Report, par. 140, p. 19. 5Lasky, ed., The Hungarian Revolution, 159, quoting Viktor Woroszylski in Nowa

Kultura (Warsaw), Dec. 2, 1956. Professor Lukacs might be less optimistic about the future of the party after the new repression.

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what it aimed to be-independent, free, socialist, and neutral. The revolt can only be described as "anti-Communist" in the sense that it was directed against the power of the Hungarian Communist party and Russian Communist imperialism. Even these aims were moderately expressed: there would have been no White Terror against Communist party members if the revolt had succeeded, as there was in the 1919 reaction against the Bela Kun r6gime. The mass of the active insurgents were persons under thirty, who rejected the pre-1945 system which was beyond their experience, and the post-war totalitarianism of the Communist party.

The grievances of the Hungarian people are a classic catalogue of complaints against Russian Communist dictatorship. If the Russian leaders are wise, they will study the United Nations report painstakingly, and draw from it the inevitable lessons. The report does conclude that many Soviet soldiers in Hungary understood the complaints. Soviet officers who questioned deported Hungarians, it reports, appeared sympathetic with the prisoners, and curious to know what had caused the revolution. If these sympathies pene- trate deeply in the Soviet Union, they may have their effect on policy toward the satellites.

The precise complaints of the Hungarian people stood in refreshing con- trast to the vague admissions of the Communist party that it had committed "errors," "mistakes," and "violations of socialist legality" in the past. The peasants desired freedom to leave the collective farms, and an end to com- pulsory deliveries of farm products to the state. The factory workers desired trade unions that served the interests of the workers, not the state; the right to strike; real control of factory management through workers' councils; and abolition of constantly rising production-norms. The intellectuals and students desired freedom of speech, of assembly, and of the press. Julius Hay expressed the wish, and responsibility, of the writer:

It should be the writer's prerogative to tell the truth. To criticise anybody and anything. To be sad. To be in love. To think of death. Not to ponder whether light and shadow are in balance in his work. To believe in the omnipotence of God. To deny the existence of God. To doubt the correctness of certain figures in the Five Year Plan. To think in a non-Marxist manner. To think in a Marxist manner even if the thought thus born is not yet among the truths proclaimed to be of binding force. ... To dislike certain leaders. To depict troubles without finding the means of remedying them....6

The internal political aim of the revolution was the logical complement of the economic and intellectual aims: political freedom. The rebels called for complete freedom for all political parties, free elections, dissolution of the security police, and the release of political prisoners. As the revolution gathered force, it was evident that one overriding condition was the key to all the hopes of the rebels: the withdrawal of the Soviet army from Hungary, and the ending of Hungary's subordination to the Soviet Union. Hungary was breaking out of the physical and spiritual bondage of inferiority to a foreign master. She had been ravished for eleven years by the Russian tyrants and their native puppets, and sought to restore her self-respect and honour. Her

sLasky, ed., The Hungarian Revolution, 23.

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international aims were economic as well as political: the revolutionaries desired to know the terms of secret trade-agreements with Russia, and to revise them to serve Hungarian interests.

These are the grievances that Russia must face in every satellite. The policy of liberalization might have met some of the economic and intellectual demands, but the pressure valves are difficult to control once they have been

opened. Since the new repression, Russia has probably forfeited, in Hungary if not in all the satellites, the chance of coming to terms with the people on a gradual loosening of control. The legacy of November is bitterness and

desperation on both sides; changes, whatever they are, are likely to be con- vulsive. The barricades on the streets are gone, but the barricades are up in men's hearts. Compromises may be reached in the factories and government offices, but they will be crude products of extortion by both sides. As long as the Soviet army remains in Hungary, the Kadar government and Soviet Russia will gain most of the withered fruits of this extortion game.

Russia continues to back herself into a dark, dead-end alley in Hungary, where the only instruments of communication are long knives. Her basic touchstone of policy may be the economic and military importance of Hungary to Russia. But the clear-sighted Russian might ask whether Hungary has any real economic and strategic value today. Since the revolution, Russia has been forced to pour economic assistance into the country. The uranium from the Pecs mines, perhaps, is what Russia cannot surrender. The country is a military liability. Before the revolution, its army could not be counted loyal to Russia; now it has no army. The Soviet troops appeared liable to catch the same

spirit of resistance that inflamed the Hungarians. Today, in the tightened repression, the Soviet army must be open to even greater demoralizing in- fluences. But even if the Soviet leadership can be credited with a minimum of goodwill and cool political wisdom (which seems doubtful), it faces a terrible dilemma: the paths of liberalization and of repression, at this late

stage, both lead to violence. The Hungarian Revolution adds to common knowledge of the methods and

extent of Russian control in the satellites. The principle of Soviet policy in

Hungary (although perhaps not in Poland) is, apparently, that any action

necessary to maintain Russian dominance is justified. Mr. Mikoyan and Mr. Suslov were the grey eminences of the revolution, flitting between Moscow and Budapest to apply the decisions of the Politbureau in Hungary. Mikoyan was present at the meeting of the Hungarian Presidium on July 18, 1956, at which Rakosi "resigned" from his position as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist party.7 Mikoyan and Suslov were in Budapest on October 24, 25, and 26, in active consultation with Mr. Gero, then First

Secretary; they were at the meeting on October 25 that decided that he should be replaced by Mr. Kadar.8 They were in Budapest again on November 1 to consult with Kadar and Ferenc Miinnich, ostensibly on the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary; but significantly, after this visit of the Russians, Mr. Kadar's movements became circumspect, and he with- drew from active participation in Imre Nagy's government. On the night of

7Ibid., 34. 8United Nations Report, par. 254, p. 38.

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November 3-4, hours before the second Soviet attack, General Ivan Serov, Chief of the Soviet Security Police, personally appeared to arrest the Hun-

garian military delegation led by General Maleter, then meeting with Russian

representatives at Russian invitation. From October 23 to 26, several in-

dependent sources testify that Imre Nagy, although then Prime Minister, was held prisoner by the A.V.H. and the Soviet army in the headquarters of the

Hungarian Communist party. His radio speeches and interviews in these days were made in the presence of armed guards; and he was not present at the

meetings with Mr. Mikoyan and Mr. Suslov that were deciding the fate of his

country. After November 4, the country was under the direct control of the Soviet military command. Mr. Kadar did not appear in Budapest until November 6 or 7 after a visit to Moscow and Prague;9 Soviet army com- manders throughout the country were issuing decrees without pretending to channel them through Mr. Kadar's government. In the months following the

repression, Mr. Kadar's powerlessness was constantly demonstrated. The workers' councils gave up their negotiations with him because they realized that he could not accept their demands if he wished to; he was forced by Soviet fiat to break off negotiations with members of opposition parties (aimed at broadening his government); his written promise of safe conduct to Mr.

Nagy was ignored by the Russians when they kidnapped Nagy's party as it left the Yugoslav Embassy on November 22. Mr. Kadar depends for his

position and his life on the new security police and the Soviet army; if he is realistic he cannot expect to have any independence. Such are the cold facts of what Mr. Kadar calls "proletarian internationalism, respect for equality, sovereignty and national independence, non-interference with each other's internal affairs"0--the principles, in his unusual view, of Soviet-Hungarian relations.

Critics of the United Nations have, they believe, undeniable proof of the U.N.'s weakness in its reaction to the Hungarian Revolution. What relief did the General Assembly debates bring to the rebels who fought until their ammunition was exhausted? Why was no United Nations force dispatched to

Hungary? Why were no United Nations observers in the country after October 23? The United Nations might certainly have done more than it did in the early stages of the revolt. Could not the General Assembly have sent a peace observation commission by air to Budapest after Premier Nagy's appeal to the Secretary General on November 1 for a guarantee of Hungarian neutrality?"1 Why was the Special Committee on Hungary not set up until January, 1957?

Beyond the effort to gain information on the revolt, and publicize the situ- ation, the United Nations as an entity was powerless. Decisions not to inter-

9Ibid., par. 297, p. 47. lOlbid., par. 360, p. 59. 1lThe terms of the Uniting for Peace resolution of 1950 provide for a peace observation

commission which may be sent to any part of the world, with the approval of the local government, to investigate and report on international tension that threatens world peace and security. Adlai Stevenson asked President Eisenhower in a letter on November 4 to support a peace observation commission, and the General Assembly did ask the Kadar government to admit U.N. observers. But when the Nagy government would have admitted U.N. observers with haste, the General Assembly did not respond.

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vene were national decisions based on political calculation, and to blame the United Nations for the timidity or short-sightedness of national governments is to avoid the real issue. Even the reluctance of the Security Council to dis- cuss the revolution, from October 23 to October 30, seems the result of a Western desire to avoid any step that might provoke Russian retaliation in

Hungary or set off a world war. It is slight consolation to know that the

Hungarian people did not wish Western help if it meant a world war. But the United Nations did perform a vital function: it focused world

attention on Hungary. The debates in the General Assembly and the report of the Special Committee have had an incalculable effect on public opinion. The

report will become a basic source in the library of Marxist disillusionment. The United Nations, too, was a focal point for Hungarian ideals during the revolt. Mr. Nagy's government appealed, not directly to Western governments, but to the United Nations, for a guarantee: Hungary looked to the United Nations as an independent body, not as an instrument of either of the power blocs. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was repeatedly cited by the rebels in defence of their claims for freedom. The idea of the United Nations gave strength to Hungarian hopes; as long as men value freedom, they must en-

courage such hopes. What did the Hungarian Revolution achieve? The superficial prospect is

dismal: thousands of people killed and deported, two hundred thousand

persons in exile in the West, Hungarian industry disrupted, thousands of homes destroyed, and the outcome a repression more severe, and a government less popular, than in the era of Stalin and Rakosi. By any standards that do not take account of men's minds, the revolution was a catastrophic failure. But revolutions do not leave the world the same as they find it. This was the first overt national revolution against a Communist government, an event that is inconceivable in terms of Marxist dogma. To the folklore of Communism that hallows the Paris Commune and the Finland Station are now added the less attractive symbols of Kilian Barracks and Csepel Island. Soviet Russia may make new efforts to rally the youth of the world at greater Moscow youth festivals, but the mask is less likely to deceive. The creed has failed in the one essential aspect in which any creed must succeed: as a moral guide to action in the world. The revolution has forced observers in the West, the satellites, and Soviet Russia, to take a new look at the principles that guide Russian policy. Deception and hypocrisy have been revealed, and the true face behind them is not a handsome one. This revelation may be the beginning of a new force for liberalization in the satellites and in Russia that the Soviet government will be unable to resist. Whether the Soviet leaders resist or not, the delicate evolution will surely be scarred by new violence. Unless, however, the Soviets are willing to commit genocide (a prospect that cannot be dis- missed) the path of evolution in Communist Europe is set. History is made by its turning points, and men can truly say, as did a Polish writer in the tragic November days, "Tell me what you think about Hungary and I will tell you who you are...."12

12Lasky, ed., The Hungarian Revolution, 272, quoting Zycie Gospodarce, Warsaw, Nov. 26, 1956.

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Documents

Hungary: Russia's Pyrrhic Victory