of 24 October two important emissaries arrived
from Moscow, Mikhail Suslov, the party ideolo-
gist, and Anastas Mikoyan, the oldest member of
the Politburo to have survived Stalin’s purges, a
man of negotiating skill and adaptability. They
agreed with Nagy that Soviet intervention had
been a mistake and consented to the dismissal of
Gerö and his replacement by Kádár. The Kremlin
saw a ‘Polish solution’ as the lesser evil, despite
the danger of allowing the uprising to spread
disaffection to Czechoslovakia, Romania and
Bulgaria. That did not happen. Nor was there a
Polish solution in Hungary.
Nagy was being swept along by the rising and
the committees and organisations springing up
all over Hungary. His success in securing the
withdrawal of Soviet troops from Budapest only
created the illusion that the mass protest of
Hungarians against communist autocracy and for-
eign occupation had succeeded. A heady Hungar-
ian nationalism asserted itself. Nagy tried to ride
the revolutionary wave in order to direct it into
less dangerous paths. On 29 October Suslov and
Mikoyan were back in Budapest. The following
day Nagy announced that Hungary would return
to a multi-party system, making a decisive breach
with communist (though not necessarily socialist)
rule. But when he gave way to the demand that
Hungary should withdraw from the Warsaw Pact,
the writing was on the wall. The Kremlin could
not afford to lose total control or to take the risk
of being replaced in Hungary by the West. Anglo-
French preoccupation with Suez made the Russian
decision to intervene easier; it was equally clear
that the US would restrict itself to diplomatic
protests. What the Soviet leaders had to weigh
was the effect of their decision whether or not to
intervene on Eastern and central Europe. The
Warsaw Pact and Russia’s whole position was
in jeopardy. The Chinese, Bulgarian, Romanian
and Czechoslovak leaders were urging interven-
tion; Poland was busy with its own affairs and
Yugoslavia could not oppose the Soviet Union in
Hungary. So the Kremlin decided on the repres-
sion of the Hungarian rising.
The pretext for intervention was provided by
Kádár. The first secretary had left Budapest
and had broken with Nagy, whose supporters
he condemned as counter-revolutionaries. On 3
November 1956 Soviet tank divisions returned in
force. The Hungarians, who had hastily armed
themselves, were joined by only a few detach-
ments from the Hungarian army. Civilians were
resisting trained troops and the Russian suppres-
sion of Hungarians fighting for independence and
democracy could be seen on Western television
screens. The fight lasted long enough to influence
Western opinion against the Russians. In the West
it also opened the eyes of many communists and
fellow travellers, who now left the party. Nagy and
the Hungarian military commander Pal Maleter
were arrested while negotiating (they were later
tried and executed). Soviet tanks showed no
restraint this time but pulverised any building
from which rifle fire was heard. Thousands of
Hungarian refugees fled to the West, and armed
resistance in Hungary was soon crushed.
Kádár, carried to power on the back of Soviet
tanks, now worked to restore some semblance of
credible Hungarian independence. He accepted
that the Kremlin would not permit any demo-
cratic multi-party government or Hungarian neu-
trality. Provided, however, that the Kremlin could
be reassured on these two crucial points, then, as
in Poland, the Kremlin would allow Hungary
some degree of autonomy and freedom to choose
its own path. That was Khrushchev’s policy and,
to the surprise of the West, Kádár at first very cau-
tiously and then much more boldly charted the
course of Hungarian autonomy within the Soviet
alliance. In economic policies, Kádár followed a
new course, less repressive, less rigidly centralised,
allowing some scope for private enterprise and so
eventually turned Hungary into the most liberal
and, for a time, most prosperous communist
state. Kádár’s realistic nationalism and his
country’s growing prosperity in the end more rec-
onciled the Hungarians to his regime, which had
saved them from the threat of another Soviet
intervention.