The Prague Spring and Détente: How the Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia Helped to Reduce Tensions

[And now for Part II of our series on Eastern (Czecho and Hungary… so actually Central?) European reform movements from a U.S. foreign policy context during the Cold War! Apologies again for the Roman numerals; OpenOffice does that automatically for some reason. It’s the second-to-last piece of my undergraduate career (looking forward to posting my senior thesis here… after it’s finally done). I guess I should do something about Poland ’89 after graduation and make a trilogy out of this!]

By the late 1960’s, the lines drawn between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in Europe were static, and the hegemons at the head of either bloc had turned to expanding their influence and power in the third world where young, post-colonial states could be bought with arms and aid. The United States, under the Johnson administration, was mired in the Vietnam War; the Soviet Union, on the other hand, had just undergone a transition of leadership from Khrushchev to Brezhnev in 1964, and memories of Khrushchev’s heavy-handed brinksmanship, particularly in Cuba in 1962, led the new Politburo to toe a more moderate line.ⁱ By 1967, Soviet influence in the Middle East, where it had invested considerable energy and resources in building ties with the Arab states, was crumbling under the pressure of a strong Israel following its victory in the Six Day War.ⁱⁱ The United States, however, found itself in a similar situation of declining influence: by the waning years of the decade, there were over 500,000 American troops fighting in Vietnam, and domestic unrest in the United States over the war was at an all-time high.ⁱⁱⁱ Add to the equation domestic economic issues in the U.S.S.R. and the deteriorating ties between the Soviets and the Chinese, which would result in a border war in March 1969 across the Ussuri River,^iv and the two superpowers were all but ready to sit down at the negotiating table. A shock came to the Soviets in 1968, though, as their dominance of Eastern Europe was, as before in 1956 in Budapest, threatened by a reform movement in one of their satellites: Alexander Dubček’s so-called “Prague Spring,” a top-down reform movement of the communist system in Czechoslovakia, threatened the stability of the status quo in Europe. Dubček’s reforms, which resulted in press restrictions being lifted and culminated with rumors and talk of multi-party democracy, forced Brezhnev’s hand and triggered the Soviets into action. The ensuing Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia and occupation, as well as the declaration of the “Brezhnev Doctrine,” initially threw a wrench in the détente process: the outgoing Johnson administration had little to discuss, and the newly elected Nixon administration was reluctant to deal with the Soviets. Ultimately, however, the fallout from the invasion effectively forced the Soviets to sit down with the U.S., and a war-weary America was more than willing to oblige them.^v The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia was a defining moment in Soviet foreign policy and in the Soviet-American relationship in the 1960’s, and it set the stage for a major reduction in tensions in the following decade by giving the United States an edge at the negotiating table.

In the lead-up to 1968, the United States was plunged knee-deep in the Vietnam War. The war had been escalating consistently under President Johnson since 1964, when the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution effectively gave the president carte blanche to conduct the war as he saw fit. A military coup in South Vietnam in 1963, approved by the CIA and executed by a cabal of South Vietnamese officers mere weeks before President Kennedy’s assassination, allowed a military government with neither a long term strategy nor any working cohesion to come to power in place of Ngo Dinh Diem’s unpopular regime.^vi This caused incredible weakness and instability in the South Vietnamese government, and forced the United States to make a much more devoted commitment to prevent its ally’s collapse: by the end of 1965, more than 184,000 American troops were on the ground in South Vietnam with more on the way.^vii An arrogant American foreign policy, guided by the assumption that what Johnson’s administration accomplished in the Dominican Republic could be replicated in Southeast Asia, allowed the United States to ratchet up its involvement rapidly.^viii Discontent and anti-war sentiments ballooned at home; morale plummeted among American troops and the American people. Until 1968, the administration asserted that victory was not only possible, but also right around the corner. Then, in January 1968, came the Tet Offensive: the resulting fallout caused the Americans to scale back their bombing campaign of the North and rethink their strategy. With discontent so high, President Johnson opted to not seek reelection, and he withdrew from the 1968 presidential race.^ix American prestige was reeling.

The Soviet Union was in a similar situation: its humiliation in 1962 from Cuba had led Brezhnev to seek a massive rearmament program and military buildup, but his investment in the Arab states of the Middle East also expanded. The 1967 Six Day War, which was a resounding victory for the Israelis, did not sway the Soviet commitment to the Arab states: they desperately continued to pour money into Syria and Egypt to maintain some influence in the region, and as a result Soviet foreign policy in the Middle East was held hostage by radical Arab nationalists.^x At the peak of the Six Day War, the Soviets sent Alexei Kosygin, a member of Brezhnev’s inner circle in the Politburo, to Glassboro, New Jersey to meet with President Johnson. The Americans were, at this time, ready for far-reaching talks to reduce tensions because of their involvement in Indochina, but Kosygin was not prepared for serious talks, especially since Moscow was in the process of building up its nuclear arsenal to reach parity with the United States.^xi Coming events would see the Soviets much more eager to return to the table not long after the failed attempt to reach a consensus in Glassboro.

With the turmoil unfolding in the third world, Europe, as divided by the Iron Curtain, was relatively quiet. Since 1956, the order established in Europe had remained unchallenged by either side: the Eisenhower administration had learned the hard way what encouraging revolutionary sentiments in Eastern Europe would do to the Soviet Union’s temper. A storm was brewing in Europe’s heart, though, on the eastern frontier of NATO’s border with Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia was a unique case in 20^th century Europe: it was the last democratic state in Europe east of the Rhine river prior to the Second World War, and it was also the first nation sacrificed to appease Hitler’s appetite in 1938.^xii After the war, it was the last Eastern European state to fall to Communism, where the democratic coalition government was forcibly overthrown in 1948 by a coup d’état, and a new constitution was drafted that solidified the dominance of the Communist Party.^xiii Through the 1950’s and early 1960’s, the Czechoslovak Communists followed a similar trend as the other European Soviet satellites: they consolidated their power through suppressing dissent and dismantling the opposition through a series of show trials and police crackdowns. In contrast to the rest of the Eastern European satellites, though, the Czechoslovak political system was remarkably stable. Stalinism endured in Czechoslovakia well after Stalin’s death in 1953; the regime in Prague survived revolts in Berlin and Warsaw, as well as a revolution in Hungary, without wavering.^xiv By the mid 1960’s, the Czechoslovak government had begun to loosen its grip. A growing desire for change among intellectuals reached a climax in June 1967 at the Congress of Czechoslovak Writers, and at student demonstrations in Prague in October of the same year.^xv

The government acknowledged these calls for reform, and on January 5, 1968, Antonin Novotny resigned as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia after fourteen years in that position.^xvi He was replaced by Alexander Dubček, a relatively obscure Slovak politician who had risen to the leadership of the Slovak branch of the party. Novotny further resigned from the Presidency of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in March. In April 1968, “The Action Program of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia” was adopted at the plenary session of the Party’s Central Committee, and was titled “The Czechoslovak Road to Communism.” The Action Program broadly outlined proposed political and economic reforms, and placed an emphasis on the government’s desire to bring Czechoslovakia into the “scientific-technical revolution.” The Program featured a proposal for a complete overhaul of the Czechoslovak legal system, which for the first time since the 1948 coup would guarantee certain rights and safeguards for individuals within the criminal justice system.^xvii The Action Program also promised to guarantee the rights to free speech and free press, which were unheard of east of the Iron Curtain. Overall, it shifted the focus away from the Party, which was mentioned briefly and vaguely, and instead concentrated on the state organs, particularly the National Assembly.^xviii The Assembly was to become a veritable legislature, rather than a rubber stamp assembly, and it would play a large role in instituting the proposed reforms. From April to June, the government made preliminary steps towards implementing the Action Plan, but public opinion often made demands that went much further than the moderate reforms proposed.^xix The Czechoslovak government, with the liberalization of the press, had essentially started rolling a boulder down a mountain: once it gained momentum, it would be very difficult to stop without a great amount of force.

The response in American foreign policy and intelligence circles was noticeably measured: the United States had been burned in 1956, and the lessons learned made them reluctant to rock the boat in 1968. A telegram from Washington to the U.S. embassy in Prague on February 13, before the Action Program was even published, indicated the policy direction that the United States would take:

Since political, social and economic situation in Czechoslovakia still very unclear and obviously in state of flux, believe our posture at moment should in general be one of responsiveness to positive Czech approaches without attempting to precipitate Czech action.^xx

This attitude of cautious optimism was guided by the assumption that Dubček would seek a more independent foreign policy from the Soviet Union, which would necessitate warming relations with the West. A month later, on March 21, Walter Stoessel, then Deputy Assistant Secretary for European Affairs, met with Dr. Karel Duda, the Czechoslovak Ambassador to the United States. At this meeting, Ambassador Duda foreshadowed the Action Program that would be unveiled at the Central Committee Plenum on March 28, and briefly mentioned some anticipated reforms: he specifically mentioned that, despite the Vietnam conflict, the new leadership in Prague would, as expected, “wish to improve relations with the United States.”^xxi The ambassador also brushed away concerns over intervention from the Soviets. A later telegram from Prague to Washington explicitly stated that they “hoped that lessons were learned on all sides from 1956,” and the embassy staff in Prague assured the State Department in Washington that they trusted the Czechoslovak government to remain cool, and to not undertake drastic changes that might provoke the ire of the Soviets.^xxii

As the reforms progressed, Brezhnev watched them nervously. The free press and democratic reforms in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic were quickly becoming an existential threat to the Soviet Union’s hegemony over Eastern Europe; Brezhnev’s Politburo viewed the growing reform movement in Prague as a major challenge to the stability of Communism in the East, just as the Hungarian Revolution had been in 1956. The reforms in Prague were a revolution from the top-down, though, and there was no violence or strife: where the Hungarian Revolution was an explosion of popular passions, the Prague Spring was characterized more as an intellectual exercise driven by writers and students. Ambassador Duda had dismissed concerns of an intervention in his March meeting with Stoessel, but he had acknowledged that, in the event of strife or violence, an intervention would not be inconceivable.^xxiii While there was no civil strife, and the divisions that existed within the Czechoslovak government between reformers and hardliners were relatively tame, it would not keep the Soviets from finding strife to “help” alleviate. By May there were already signals showing: reports from Poland and East Germany told of massive Soviet troop movements towards the Czechoslovak border on May 9, 1968.^xxiv Prague publicly brushed this off as a military exercise that it had been alerted to beforehand, but the message from Moscow was received loud and clear around the world: shots had been fired across Prague’s bow. The U.S. government continued to keep a close eye on the situation, but it refrained from giving any real encouragement or assistance to the Czechoslovakians. A dispatch from the U.S. embassy in Moscow on July 11 described that Dubček’s government was coming under intense Soviet pressure to contain their “democratization” because of fears from Brezhnev that the Czechoslovak reforms could spill into not only the other Eastern European satellites, but also into the Soviet Union itself. Brezhnev publicly protested any interference in internal Czech affairs, but the embassy staff pointed out that a harsh media campaign by the Soviet government against Czechoslovak liberalization was in full swing.^xxv A memorandum written on July 22 recorded a conversation between Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Deputy Under Secretary of State Charles E. Bohlen, and Soviet Ambassador Anatoliy Dobrynin. During their conversation, Ambassador Dobrynin insinuated that the U.S. was involving itself in the “Czech situation” in a NATO plot involving the CIA. Rusk denounced the accusations, and went on to say that “no one knew better” than the members of the Soviet Union’s diplomatic mission to the U.S. the restraint that the American government had exercised regarding the situation in Czechoslovakia. The report made special mention that Dobrynin appeared considerably worried, unlike his “usual genial self.”^xxvi

Although the United States had firmly followed a wait-and-see strategy regarding Dubček’s reforms, Brezhnev was fearful that a Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia would provoke NATO into a war in Europe, and he hoped to utilize political options to pressure Dubček to back down before it was too late. Brezhnev’s own allies in Poland and East Germany, Gomulka and Ulbricht respectively, pushed for an invasion because they feared instabilities in their own countries that might be triggered by Czechoslovak reforms. On the 26^th and 27^th of July, the Soviet Politburo set a provisional plan for the invasion of Czechoslovakia with the understanding that negotiations would continue until they were exhausted. Their attempts failed, though, and on the 21^st of August, 1968, the Kremlin gave the order: the Red Army, along with forces from other Warsaw Pact states (with the notable exception of Romania) were unleashed on Czechoslovakia.^xxvii Still the 20^th of August in Washington, an emergency meeting of the National Security Council was called at 10:15 p.m. to address the crisis: all around the table, the Soviets’ actions were met with surprise.^xxviii President Johnson remarked that he called the meeting after being informed personally by Ambassador Dobrynin that the Soviet Union was intervening in Czechoslovakia “at the request of the Czechoslovak government.”^xxix On the night of the invasion, the NSC, at the suggestion of Secretary of State Dean Rusk, decided to immediately summon the Soviet ambassador again to clarify the situation. President Johnson also decided to consult with NATO allies that night, and the next day the UN Security Council convened to discuss the invasion.^xxx A statement released by President Johnson on the 21^st condemned the “tragic news from Czechoslovakia,” and urged a Soviet pullout, but otherwise did not make demands nor urge the Czechoslovak people to action.^xxxi Even at the peak of the crisis, the United States pursued a non-confrontational route for fear of provoking the Soviets to repeat the bloodbath that was Budapest.

The invasion was luckily, by comparison to Hungary in 1956, relatively bloodless. The invading Warsaw Pact armies did not meet armed resistance from Czechoslovak forces, who were ordered by the government not to resist.^xxxii The citizenry were encouraged by their government to engage in passive and non-violent resistance. Aside from strong vocal opposition to Soviet aggression, the West was noticeably silent, whereas in Hungary they had goaded the revolutionaries to take to the streets with Molotov cocktails and submachine guns. There were some casualties, but they were mostly students gunned down by Soviet conscripts who had lost their nerve or were inexperienced with crowd control; Czech and Slovak blood spilled on the streets of Prague did unite the nation in hate, though, and the month long occupation was epitomized by the Soviet soldiers not receiving the warm welcome they had been promised by their superiors. Morale among the invading troops was low as the Czechs and Slovaks rejected them outright rather than welcoming them as liberators as had been expected.^xxxiii The reaction in the West was just as careful and measured after the invasion as it had been before: apart from discussion at the United Nations, the U.S. government remained publicly more or less silent on the issue. It would be some time after the invasion that the Americans would reap the benefits of the corner that the Soviets had backed themselves into.

In the autumn following the invasion, the Soviet Union announced the Brezhnev Doctrine: Brezhnev declared in November 1968 that it was the right and duty of the Soviet Union to intervene in any state where the Marxist-Leninist system was imperiled by the threat of a new capitalist system taking over.^xxxiv The invasion itself had, at least outwardly, appeared to be a resounding success: even American policymakers, specifically Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, were impressed by the efficiency and swiftness with which the Soviet military had secured Prague and the surrounding countryside, and they discussed how this indicated a rising Soviet military strength in Eastern Europe.^xxxv The invasion was not a success, though; it was a massive gamble on the part of Moscow, and the Soviets would pay the price. The rising schism between China and the Soviet Union was exacerbated by the intervention, and it painfully strained the once monolithic force of world Communism that now appeared to be crumbling. Rising discontent in Romania and Yugoslavia against the Soviets also became more pronounced, and even on Red Square itself there was a historic protest against the invasion.^xxxvi Brezhnev had hoped that the invasion would stifle the yearning in Eastern Europe for reform and democracy; while it did so forcefully, the spillover of liberal ideas from Czechoslovakia had, as he had feared, been even worse than from the revolutions in Poland and Hungary in 1956.^xxxvii It was obvious to the Kremlin that these forces of dissidence were still at work under the surface, and that the invasion of Czechoslovakia could not possibly stamp it out completely. The Brezhnev Doctrine was a brave facade to portray the Soviet Union as strong and secure in its position in Eastern Europe, but the Soviet leadership was well aware of the reality of the price they would have to pay if they were forced to implement it again.^xxxviii Considering the need to avoid further conflict, and the loss of Chinese support, the foreign policy directive of the Soviet Union in the 1970s was to avoid at all costs implementing the Brezhnev Doctrine again. This meant improving relations with the United States and NATO was imperative in order to avoid economic sanctions and instability in Europe; this meant détente could proceed.^xxxix

As in 1956, the Soviet police action in Czechoslovakia came in the run-up to an American presidential election. The 1968 election was a landslide victory for Republican Richard Nixon, who was ushered into office on a wave of anti-Vietnam War fervor. Notably, Nixon was Eisenhower’s Vice President at the time of the Soviet invasion of Hungary, which put a special distaste in his mouth for the intervention in Czechoslovakia: in 1970, Nixon was reluctant to deal with Brezhnev with the fallout of 1968 in recent memory. His opportunity to make his move came before he took office, when in 1969 shots were fired across the Sino-Soviet border. In 1971, Nixon’s National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger traveled to China secretly; Nixon followed publicly in 1972.^xl By opening relations with Beijing, Nixon hoped to play the two Communist powers against one another in an attempt to permit a graceful American exit from Vietnam. In the meantime, his warming with China put additional pressure on the Soviets, who had by this time reached parity in strategic weapons stockpiles with the United States. Early in his presidency, Nixon had announced the development of a new anti-ballistic missile program in response to the growing Soviet arsenal.^xli With these factors in play, the Soviets had no choice but to sit down at the table and resume talks regarding arms reduction: the SALT I agreement was signed in 1972, and with it came an underlying principle of the détente process that would characterize Nixon’s administration: that neither side would attempt to take a unilateral advantage over the other.^xlii Curiously, Nixon proceeded to do just this, and he moved to press his advantages with his relations with China and Iran, among other states, to secure an advantage for the United States while maintaining an atmosphere of cooperation with the Soviets. The steps had been made in the right direction, though, towards developing mutual trust, and the foundation was laid for a further reduction in tensions between the two superpowers.

Ultimately, the Prague Spring and ensuing Soviet intervention did nothing to change the status quo in Europe, but the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968 did much to give momentum to the détente process and to influence the course of the Cold War in the following decade. While both superpowers were receptive to negotiations prior to the Soviet invasion, the Soviets were more hesitant than the Americans to commit to serious talks. The loss of prestige that the Soviets suffered as a result of their aggressive attempt to roll back liberal reforms in their sphere of influence had a major impact on their ability to negotiate from an advantageous position. By 1970, a new administration was in power in Washington, and its priority was withdrawal from the conflict in Vietnam. American prestige had been wounded by the Vietnam conflict, but Nixon’s administration had fresh political capital to play with and Henry Kissinger’s realpolitik to guide policy. With these assets, Nixon was able to position the United States in a way that made the Soviets, already suffering from loss of influence in the third world and teetering on shaky ground in their own backyard, unable to refuse rapprochement with America. The newly minted Brezhnev Doctrine, retroactively applied to Hungary 1956, was built on lies and bluffs: the Soviets could not possibly afford to invade another one of their satellites, especially within what was supposed to be their inner ring of buffer states. While their military might had reached both conventional and strategic parity with the United States, the Soviets were unable to exercise that might without risking either an all-out war or a dramatic disintegration of their bloc. Soviet relations with the Chinese were also crumbling, and were made worse by their invasion of Czechoslovakia. With the loss of their largest land border as a friend, the Soviets had little choice but to warm up to the West or risk economic repercussions in response to their aggressive containment policy. Brezhnev, in 1972, went on to give credit to his invasion of Czechoslovakia: “Without [the invasion of] Czechoslovakia – there would have been no Brandt in Germany, no Nixon in Moscow, no détente.”^xliii While his reasoning for giving credit to the intervention was more an exoneration of himself as the executioner of Czechoslovakia rather than a public acknowledgment of a weakened Soviet position, his assertion was true. The Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia was a calculated risk by the Kremlin to stem the tide against the disintegration of their sphere of influence in Eastern Europe; while they were successful in containing the spillover into their other satellites and border territories, the Soviets expended immense political capital and sacrificed a large amount of prestige to do so. The new administration in Washington, under the direction of Nixon and Kissinger, pounced at the opportunity to press their advantage and to create a new balance of power in the Cold War.

i Vladislav Zubok, A Failed Empire (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 193-95

ii Ibid. 200

iii John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 144

iv Ibid. 149

v Ibid. 153

vi Ibid. 133

vii Ibid.

viii Stephen E. Ambrose and Douglas G. Brinkley, Rise to Globalism, 9^th ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2011), 206

ix Ibid. 221-23

x Zubok 200

xi Ibid.

xii Harold Gordon Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 10

xiii Ibid. 11

xiv Zbyněk Zeman, Prague Spring (New York: Hill and Wang, 1969), 13

xv Philip Bergmann, Self Determination: The case of Czechoslovakia 1968-1969 (Lugano-Bellinzona: Istituto Editoriale Ticinese, 1972), 19

xvi Ibid. 20

xvii Ibid. 21-22

xviii Skilling 221

xix Ibid. 225

xx Telegram From the DoS to the Embassy in Czechoslovakia: 13 February 1968 <http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v17/d55&gt;

xxi Memorandum of Conversation between Dr. Karel Duda and Mr. Walter J. Stoessel: 21 March 1968 <http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v17/d56&gt;

xxii Telegram from the Embassy in Czechoslovakia to the Department of State: 25 March 1968 <http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v17/d57&gt;

xxiii Memorandum of Conversation between Dr. Karel Duda and Mr. Walter J. Stoessel: 21 March 1968

xxiv Harry Schwartz, Prague’s 200 Days (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), 142

xxv Telegram from the Embassy in the Soviet Union to the Department of State: 11 July 1968 <http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v17/d65&gt;

xxvi Memorandum of Conversation between Anatoliy F. Dobrynin, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and Deputy Under Secretary Charles E. Bohlen <http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v17/d70&gt;

xxvii Zubok 208

xxviii Notes of Emergency Meeting of the National Security Council: 20 August 1968 <http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v17/d81&gt;

xxix Summary of Meeting between President Johnson, Anatoliy Dobrynin, and Walt Rostow: 20 August 1968 <http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v17/d80&gt;

xxx Notes of Emergency Meeting of the National Security Council: 20 August 1968

xxxi Statement by President Johnson on Czechoslovakia: 21 August 1968 <http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/19/1968-08-21g.pdf&gt;

xxxii Bergmann 34

xxxiii Schwartz 212-13

xxxiv Gaddis 150

xxxv Summary of Meeting of Johnson Cabinet: 23 August 1968 <http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v17/d85&gt;

xxxvi Gaddis 153

xxxvii Zubok 209

xxxviii Gaddis 153

xxxix Ibid.

xl Gaddis 151

xli Ambrose 230

xlii Ibid. 231-32

xliii Zubok 209

The United States and the Hungarian Revolution: The Death of Rollback

[Apologies for the endnotes being Roman numerals, but they auto-converted when copied from the original text.]

The year 1956 was a tumultuous year on the international stage, but this proves particularly true when studying United States foreign policy at the time. It was a year of many unknowns for the United States, as while the Cold War had already gained momentum in the wake of the Korean War, U.S. policy was still in its developing stages for coping with the new postwar order. The Eisenhower administration had the legacy of Truman’s eponymous doctrine to work with, however questions still lingered over how that doctrine, that the United States would support any nation being threatened with takeover by an armed minority (implicitly meant to refer to Communists), would be implemented. Although the Truman Doctrine was initially a major step towards containment policy, as espoused by George Kennan in his 1946 Long Telegram,ⁱ in 1956 the policy of rollback was still popular in many Washington circles. Rollback was popularized within the United States government by NSC-68, a document published in 1950 by the National Security Council that called for unprecedented peacetime military spending and an increasingly coercive and confrontational attitude towards the Soviets.ⁱⁱ Rollback was essentially the policy of pressuring the Soviets out of Eastern Europe, possibly through military means, and, in effect, liberating the nations that had previously been “liberated” by the Soviets at the end of the Second World War. At the time of its writing, NSC-68 speculated on the development of Soviet thermonuclear capabilities;ⁱⁱⁱ by 1955, however, the Soviets had tested their first air-dropped thermonuclear weapon, and had bombers capable of reaching American targets.^iv This complicated matters significantly for American strategic planning and diplomatic policy, and made rollback appear increasingly less likely. In 1956, the United States had a tenuous, but stable, relationship with the Soviet Union. Stalin’s death in 1953 had opened inroads for an understanding to be reestablished between East and West, and by February 1956 the Soviet leadership officially renounced expectations of “imminent war” with the West.^v Khrushchev had worked to consolidate his power in the wake of Stalin’s demise, and had reoriented the Soviet Union through his de-Stalinization efforts such that it appeared peaceful coexistence between the two superpowers would be, in some way, possible. Six months after the renunciation of Stalin’s long-standing paranoia, however, came a shock that terrorized the Soviet leadership, and left the Eisenhower administration stunned: on October 23, 1956, the powder keg that had been simmering in Hungary exploded with incredible ferocity. What had started during the day as mass student demonstrations quickly spread throughout Budapest, and escalated between eight or nine o’clock that night into open combat in front of the state broadcasting headquarters.^vi What ensued was a period of tension between the Soviets and Americans, and the events that transpired in Budapest sent shock waves through both Moscow and Washington. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 came at a pivotal point in time in the United States-Soviet relationship, and it had a lasting impact on the United States’ relationship with the Soviet Union and its satellites, particularly in the development of containment policy and the abandonment of rollback and liberation as strategic goals.

There are several factors that contributed to the ferocity of the Hungarian Revolution, but there are two factors which stand out considerably from the myriad of background influences. The first was the repressive rule of Hungary’s “Little Stalin,” Matyas Rakosi, which was characterized by purges^vii and economic instability and stagnation.^viii The second, in the immediate run-up to the outbreak of fighting in Hungary, was the appointment of a reformist in Poland, Wladyslaw Gomulka, as the First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party. Gomulka was able to negotiate a troop reduction agreement with the Soviets, which emboldened Hungarians who were resentful of the continued military occupation of their nation by the Red Army.^ix Following the death of Stalin, and with the support of the Soviet Presidium, Imre Nagy, a moderate reformist, was appointed Premier in Hungary on July 4, 1953; early in his tenure Nagy introduced numerous changes to the country’s economic system.^x Rakosi, however, maintained his post at the head of the Party, and the two clashed frequently.^xi Rakosi was eventually able to win back the favor of the Soviet Presidium, which put Nagy’s liberal tendencies under intense scrutiny by Moscow. Nagy suffered a minor heart attack, attributed to stress, in January 1955, effectively removing him from his capacity as Premier.^xii Nagy was expelled from the Hungarian Politburo and Central Committee three months later.^xiii Nagy, however, would be redeemed. Khrushchev’s address to the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the so-called “Secret Speech,” in February 1956, although not published in the Eastern bloc, denounced Stalinism and the “cult of personality.”^xiv Rakosi, as a pupil of Stalin, was in trouble. After months of internal conflict, mainly between the intelligentsia and Rakosi’s Stalinist Politburo, Rakosi was dismissed from his post at Khrushchev’s request on July 18, 1956. Erno Gero, a close associate of Rakosi’s, replaced him as General Secretary.^xv The buildup of discontent centered around the character of Imre Nagy, who the nation thought of as their only hope to deliver them from the repression of the current government. When news of the reinstatement of Gomulka in Warsaw reached Budapest, the Hungarians immediately wondered: “why can the same not happen here?” The shakeup of the Hungarian Communists’ leadership, as well as the installation of a liberal-leaning government in Poland, gave the Hungarians the audacity to begin asking these sorts of questions.^xvi Nagy was aware of the coming storm, and when news of the demonstrations reached him at his country home on the morning of October 23, he made his way back to his villa on Orso Street in the center of Budapest. That evening, Nagy arrived at the Parliament building in Budapest where an angry mob armed with torches shouted for his reinstatement as leader. Nagy convinced the people to return to their homes peaceably, and they begrudgingly obliged him.^xvii News, however, arrived of shots being fired outside the headquarters of the state radio station. The violence quickly escalated: rebels raided state armories, and policemen and soldiers who were averse to fighting their own countrymen laid down their weapons. The rebels demanded Nagy be installed as both Premier and General Secretary of the Party. This put Nagy in a very precarious position as Moscow’s eyes were drawn to him.^xviii

The United States was keenly aware of the brooding sentiments among the Hungarian population during this period. A report was prepared in January 1956, one month prior to Khrushchev’s secret address, for U.S. Army Intelligence by Georgetown University. It examined Hungary’s suitability as a “potential theater for Special Forces operations.”^xix The report acknowledged that Hungary had widespread dissidence, with popular support of the regime estimated at less than 10% of the population in 1954. It also concluded, however, that the nature of dissidence in Hungary did not pose an immediate threat to the state’s health.^xx Passive resistance, the report asserted, was “perhaps more common in Hungary than in any other European satellite,” but there was no evidence to suggest active partisan activity or organized resistance against the Communist regime.^xxi The Georgetown report was also cognizant of the problem surrounding the youth in Hungary, who would become the driving force behind the uprising later that year. “Contrary to early predictions of Communist success in the indoctrination of youth,” it states, “the whole youth program has been far from successful, and the resistance of youth is one of the most serious problems facing the Communists.”^xxii The report attributed the lack of active, organized resistance movements and partisans to a problem of geography, which is also why it concluded that Hungary, despite its high levels of discontent and passive resistance, was not suitable for U.S. covert operations. The report stated that the nature of Hungary’s geography, as a landlocked and mostly flat nation, did not lend itself well to the execution of covert activities, as there were few places for operatives to conceal themselves.^xxiii

Mention of unrest in Hungary was again raised in American foreign policy circles days before Rakosi’s dismissal as Premier in July 1956. On July 12, the National Security Council met to create a new draft policy statement toward Eastern Europe: NSC-5608. In the minutes to the meeting, Vice President Nixon is quoted as saying that he would be “most reluctant” to follow any policy that followed George Kennan’s line that “there was essentially nothing we could do about the unhappy status quo now existing in the Soviet satellites.”^xxiv Nixon asserted that it would be a great error to use terms in the draft that would potentially discourage democratic elements in the Eastern bloc. The Vice President himself, in a sense, supported rollback, at least rhetorically, to buck the hold of the Soviet Union over its satellites. During the meeting, Nixon commented that it “wouldn’t be an unmixed evil, from the point of view of U.S. interest,” if the Soviet Union were again to come down hard on the satellites of Eastern Europe. He clarified, though, that it would be more desirable for the ongoing trend of liberalization in Soviet-satellite relations to continue.^xxv Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles, younger brother to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, responded to Nixon’s mention of another possible Soviet crackdown by pointing out “indications of considerable unrest in Czechoslovakia and Hungary,” and said that U.S. attention had been diverted from these developments by the more “spectacular events” in Poznan, referring to the revolt in Poland that ultimately resulted in the re-installation of Gomulka to power in Warsaw.^xxvi The conversation at this meeting of the NSC foreshadowed the events of autumn 1956, but the U.S. intelligence community did not predict the uprising. Because it was not suitable for operations, Hungary remained largely under the radar.

It is apparent, judging by the Vice President’s comments, that, up until this point, rollback was still considered a feasible and, perhaps, a preferable option when compared to containment. In fact, when the Eisenhower administration took the reigns from Truman in 1953, statements made by the new Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, suggested a more aggressive American foreign policy on Eastern Europe. Dulles promised to support an “explosive and dynamic” policy of “liberation.”^xxvii The rhetoric, however, did not match the substance of the administration’s policies: in 1954, Eisenhower decided that no moment “would be right to start a war,” and asserted that the United States would only retaliate against Soviet aggression. Both Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson and Secretary of State Dulles came to argue for containment, but a tension developed within U.S. foreign policy by the time the uprising of 1956 exploded. On the one hand, the United States had not changed its rhetoric, and actively encouraged the Eastern European states to break away from the Soviet hegemony. On the other hand, the United States privately refused to offer any sort of military support to states which did attempt to run the gauntlet of Soviet resolve. What resulted was a U.S. foreign policy characterized by psychological operations, inflammatory propaganda, and covert operations to disrupt Soviet control.^xxviii While the notion of rollback was popular in Washington, there was little enthusiasm for actually trying to implement it: the risk of open armed confrontation with the Soviets resulting from it was too high for the administration to seriously consider it. While the administration more or less formally rejected rollback as a viable policy in 1953 with the adoption of NSC-174,^xxix the spirit of liberation was still popular. Rather than propose forceful liberation of Eastern Europe, the Eisenhower administration continued to pursue the goals of rollback through covert means. The rhetoric associated with liberation from Dulles and other high-ranking officials continued, and it sent ambiguous messages to the populations of the Eastern bloc nations. These ambiguous messages had disastrous results in Hungary, where the people expected more support from the United States once their revolution had begun.^xxx

Because of both the affirmation from the report prepared by Georgetown that fostering a resistance movement in Hungary via covert means was untenable and the ambivalence of the Eisenhower administration towards the liberation of the Eastern European states, the United States was, in a sense, caught with its pants down when shots erupted in Budapest. American strategic planners had been completely unprepared for the possibility of armed rebellion and street fighting against the regime, and the ferocity of the rebellion quickly caught Moscow’s attention. On the night of the outbreak, the Soviet Presidium held an emergency meeting. Marshal Georgy Zhukov, then Soviet Minister of Defense, delivered the following assessment of the situation in Hungary: “A demonstration by 100 thous. in Budapest; the radio station is on fire.” All members of the Presidium except Anastas Mikoyan, Minister of Foreign Trade, approved of Khrushchev’s suggestion to send troops to put down the uprising.^xxxi The next day, on October 24, Soviet tanks were blockading the streets of Budapest.^xxxii Eisenhower was quick to denounce Soviet intervention, and he expressed sympathy for the Hungarian people. On October 26, the NSC was convened to formulate a strategy to forestall a major Soviet crackdown. The U.S. decided to attempt to negotiate a settlement, knowing that its own options were limited. The arrangement called for a neutral state, along the lines of Austria or Finland, to be established in Hungary.^xxxiii From the start, Eisenhower ruled out military intervention in support of the rebels, and even ruled out a CIA proposal to covertly drop arms and supplies into Hungary.^xxxiv American officials, along with the British and French, had brought the issue before the United Nations Security Council on October 28. On October 29, however, much to the dismay of the American government, hostilities broke out on the Sinai peninsula at Suez. The British and French joined the conflict, to the chagrin of the Americans, on October 31, and moved for the issue of Hungary to be presented to a special session of the UN General Assembly which would cover both crises.^xxxv The Americans blocked their efforts, however, and both crises remained on the Security Council’s agenda.

The U.S. was confident that its negotiation strategy was proving successful: on October 30, Marshal Zhukov spoke in favor of withdrawing Soviet troops from Hungary.^xxxvi Convinced that the threat of a Soviet crackdown was averted, the Eisenhower administration focused on the pressing Suez Crisis. French and British actions behind the scenes of Suez had infuriated Dulles: “Just when the Soviet orbit was crumbling and we could point to a contrast between the Western world and the Soviets, it appeared the West was producing a similar situation.”^xxxvii On November 1, just as the focus was shifting towards Suez, the Soviets reversed their previous decision. Negotiations between the Soviets and Nagy had proven fruitful, and an agreement had been reached both for the independence of Hungary and the removal of Soviet troops, as encouraged by the United States.^xxxviii The Soviets, however, reversed this agreement days later, just as life was returning to normal in Budapest. The Soviets were concerned that, if the Hungarians were to leave the Warsaw Pact, as Nagy intended, what would keep the Czechs or Poles in line?^xxxix Nagy had essentially forced the Soviets’ hand, and on November 4, 1956, the second Soviet intervention began. The first intervention had been relatively small, and was carried out by troops already stationed in Hungary; the second was an outright invasion.^xl With a flick of its paw, the Russian bear was able to crush the revolution and install a new regime under Janos Kadar.

Throughout the crisis, American rhetoric had encouraged the Hungarian rebels to continue fighting for their freedom. This was the tragic side effect of America’s “liberation” propaganda: while the U.S. government assured the world that it was committed to the goal of an independent Central and Eastern Europe, it did not publicly advertise the fact that it was not committed enough to risk a military engagement with the Soviets. The rhetoric, however, convinced the fighters on the ground otherwise.^xli The crisis, as it developed prior to the second Soviet intervention, was in some ways exacerbated by Western influences such as the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, which delivered messages of encouragement to the fighters. A survey of fleeing refugees in 1957 indicated that one-half of U.S.-bound refugees expected American intervention on behalf of the rebels because of the content broadcast over the radio.^xlii American officials, however, were well aware of the fact that the Hungarians, without some sort of cease-fire or compromise, were fighting a suicidal battle. No effort was made to suggest to the Hungarians that Dulles felt they did not have a chance; even after the second invasion on November 4, the RFE and VOA broadcasts urged the rebels forward.^xliii

After the Soviet invasion on November 4, American diplomatic circles still did not yet count themselves out of the Hungarian crisis. A telegram from the American Ambassdor to Italy, Clare Boothe Luce, was forwarded through the U.S. Embassy in Paris to President Eisenhower. In it, Luce made a passionate plea for Eisenhower to make some sort of public move in support of the Hungarians, making the following comparison: “Franco-British action on Suez is a small wound to their prestige but American inaction about Hungary could be a fatal wound to ours.”^xliv In a move mirroring the previous attempt by the French and British, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Henry Cabot Lodge unilaterally submitted a draft resolution to the General Assembly to condemn the Soviet actions in Hungary, thus circumventing the Soviet veto on the Security Council.^xlv By this time, however, the Suez crisis had put the United States in a remarkably awkward position. Richard Nixon explained after the conflict: “We couldn’t, on one hand, complain about the Soviets intervening in Hungary and, on the other hand, approve of the British and the French picking that particular time to intervene against Nasser.”^xlvi Eisenhower very boldly ordered the French, British, and Israelis to withdraw from Egypt, both to distance the United States from a blatant imperial power-play and to try to refocus world attention on Hungary.^xlvii He also had to prevent the Soviets from threatening intervention in the Middle East, and to do so he invoked the Soviet invasion of Hungary. On November 5, the Soviets offered that the United States and Soviet Union join forces to put an end to the Suez Crisis. The implied threat in the rejection of this scheme, which the Soviets surely expected, was unilateral intervention by the Soviets.^xlviii Eisenhower instead issued a public statement that asked the states of the Middle East: “Do you want the Soviets in the Middle East doing what they are now doing in Hungary?” The statement committed the United States to maintaining the United Nations mandate, and implicitly threatened the Soviets that any unilateral action over Suez would not be tolerated. That evening he asked for a preliminary consultation with congressional leaders in case he was forced to ask Congress for a declaration of war, and the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean was put on full alert.^xlix This all occurred on the eve of the 1956 U.S. Presidential election; the Hungarian Revolution was effectively crushed, but tensions had reached a record high. On November 7, amid Eisenhower’s landslide victory in the election, a cease-fire in Suez was declared, and fears of Soviet intervention began to fade.^l The UN General Assembly had voted to issue ultimatums to both the Soviets in Hungary and the combatants in Egypt; only in the latter case did the involved parties heed the will of the UN.

Ultimately, the revolution in Hungary was crushed wholly under the Soviet jackboot in an unprecedented display of force. Not since the Second World War had the Red Army’s fury been unleashed in such a monstrous display; at the peak of the invasion on November 4, over 200,000 Soviet troops and 4,000 tanks were streaming into Hungary.^li The United States was ultimately powerless to stop the onslaught with force, considering it lacked sufficient conventional forces in Eastern Europe, as well as the means to transfer said forces to Hungary without violating either Czechoslovak territory or Austrian neutrality. Additionally, Eisenhower was, wisely, unwilling to risk a military confrontation with the Soviets, especially a nuclear exchange. The remarkable violence which the Soviets used to suppress the uprising showed the United States firsthand the lengths that the Soviet Union would go to preserve its hegemony in Eastern Europe. This realization, combined with Eisenhower’s ultimate inaction in Hungary, effectively hammered the last nail in the coffin of rollback doctrine: the doctrine of liberation proved to be a “deadly sham.”^lii Although actual military intervention had been ruled out from the start, liberation of the Eastern European states was abandoned as an ultimate strategic goal. The invasion of Hungary by the Soviet Union, and the refusal of the West to involve itself more heavily beyond rhetoric, also caused many to come to the realization that, despite common illusions, a system of Eastern and Western spheres of interest, based on the acceptance of a post-war settlement, did exist, and was in practice.^liii While the Suez Crisis threatened the cohesion of the North Atlantic Alliance, the brutality of the Soviet response also legitimized the need for it. NATO was founded to counter Soviet aggression in Europe, and while Hungary was, ostensibly, already within the Soviet sphere of influence, the Soviet assault was the realization of the aggression that NATO feared. The Soviet Presidium acknowledged this: Matvei Saburov reminded his colleagues during the deliberations to renew the assault on Hungary that action against the rebellion would “vindicate NATO.”^liv It became obvious to the NATO powers that the Soviets would not be leaving Europe anytime soon, and that significant changes in Eastern European regimes were contingent upon significant changes within the Soviet ruling establishment. This would prove true come 1989, when Gorbachev’s release of the satellites resulted in the fall of each of their Communist governments. Until that time, however, the United States used the lessons it learned in 1956 to commit itself to implementing containment worldwide. The invasion of Hungary confirmed that the Soviet threat to Europe was real, and fundamentally changed the outlook of the United States when encouraging dissidence in Soviet satellites. From 1956 onward, the United States was consciously aware of the violence the Soviets were willing to perpetrate as the memories of Hungary lingered on the West’s conscience.

 

i Robert Griffith and Paula Baker, Major Problems in American History Since 1945 (Boston: Wadsworth, 2007), 39-42

ii Ibid., 51-54

iii Ibid., 52

iv John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 68

v Vladislav Zubok, A Failed Empire (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 94

vi Paul Zinner, Revolution in Hungary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), 239-240

vii Paul Kecskemeti, The Unexpected Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961), 18-19

viii Ibid., 40

ix Ibid., 142-143

x Tibor Meray, Thirteen Days that Shook the Kremlin, trans. Howard Katzander(New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1959), 17

x iIbid., 21

xii Ibid., 28-29

xiii Ibid., 32

xiv Zinner, 203

xv Ibid., 214-215

xvi Meray, 60-61

xvii Ibid., 80-82

xviii Ibid., 87-91

xix Hungary: Resistance Activities and Potentials, Project No. 9570, prepared by Georgetown University, 5 January 1956, 3
<http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB76/doc1.pdf&gt;

xx Ibid., 5

xxi Ibid., 4

xxii Ibid., 11

xxiii Ibid., 23-24

xxiv Minutes of 290^th NSC meeting, July 12, 1956, 12 July 1956, 2
<http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB76/doc2.pdf&gt;

xxv Ibid., 4

xxvi Ibid., 4

xxvii Laszlo Borhi, “Rollback, Liberation, Containment, or Inaction? U.S. Policy and Eastern Europe in the 1950s,” Journal of Cold War Studies, no. 1.3(1999), 88-89

xxviii Ibid., 69-71

xxix Ibid., 89

xxx Ibid., 90

xxxi Working Notes from the Session of the CPSU CC Presidium on 23 October 1956, 23 October 1956, Wilson Center Cold War International History Project, 1956 Hungarian Revolution Collection

xxxii Meray, 96-98

xxxiii Borhi, 98-100

xxxiv John Patrick Diggins, The Proud Decades (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), 302

xxxv Csaba Bekes, “The Hungarian Question on the UN Agenda,” Hungarian Quarterly (Spring 2000)

xxxvi Borhi, 100

xxxvii Ibid., 101

xxxviii Meray, 160-161

xxxix Ibid., 198-199

xl Ibid., 236-237

xli Ibid., 115-116

xlii Borhi, 81

xliii Ibid., 109

xliv Clare Boothe Luce, Telegram From the Embassy in France to the Department of State, 4 November 1956
<http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1955-57v25/d165&gt;

xlv Csaba Bekes, “The 1956 Hungarian Revolution and World Politics,” Wilson Center CWIHP Working Paper No. 16, 23
<http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/ACFB4E.pdf&gt;

xlvi Borhi, 105

xlvii Wm. Roger Louis, “Dulles, Suez, and the British,” John Foster Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War, ed. Richard Immerman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 135

xlviii David A. Nichols, Eisenhower 1956 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 245

xlix Ibid., 246

l Ibid., 258-289

li Ibid., 239

lii Diggins, 302

liii Bekes (CWIHP), 6

liv Zubok, 117