Should the United States Be Blamed for the Failed Hungarian Revolution?

In the summer of 2008, I traveled around Hungary with a group of twenty students. In every facet of society that we explored, a common theme and historical landmark was Hungary’s failed revolution of 1956. That year students in Budapest, Hungary launched a revolution against the Communist government. In the initial fighting Soviet forces withdrew from Hungary’s urban areas, and it looked as though the Soviets might give up Hungary. Ten days after the revolution began, however, Soviet tanks entered Budapest and recaptured the country.

Approximately 200,000 Hungarian refugees fled from the violence. When U.S. State Department and intelligence officials interviewed them, these refugees said they felt deceived by the United States and by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). They claimed the United States’ Radio Free Europe had broadcast messages of hope implying that Western military assistance was coming to help Hungary. From my time in the country—even 50 years later—I could see that many Hungarians still blame the United States for the failed revolution of 1956. I chose to analyze this topic for my American Foreign Policy class here at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey. In doing so I hoped that I could answer several questions.

Why did the United States not intervene? Why did the Soviet Union change its position and crush the revolution? And did the United States deceive the Hungarian people? In short, should the United States be blamed for the failed Hungarian revolution? Answering these questions requires an understanding of both U.S. foreign policy and the security of the Soviet Union in the Cold War, as well as an investigation of Radio Free Europe’s broadcasts in October 1956.

At the beginning of the Cold War, the United States dominant foreign policy strategy was containment of the Soviet Union—the Truman Doctrine. In a speech to Congress in 1947, President Truman promised that the United States would “support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures,”—“outside pressures” obviously referring to the Soviet Union.

When the Hungarian Revolution occurred nine years later, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower wanted to prevent a hot war with the Soviet Union, and he considered the United States’ economy its most effective weapon. When Hungarian students initiated their revolution, Eisenhower thus had a difficult foreign policy decision to make; Hungary fell within the Soviet Union’s accepted sphere of influence and intervention could escalate out of control. Moreover, maintaining control of Hungary did not qualify as Soviet expansion—they already owned it. As such Eisenhower ultimately decided not to intervene. Eisenhower’s decision risked emboldening the Soviet Union, but it also maintained the status quo without threatening the USSR’s internal security.

This last point is particularly important, and it requires an understanding of Soviet foreign policy. In 1956, The Soviet Union was becoming less monolithic. According to the recorded minutes of a meeting between the Soviet leaders on October 24, 1956, Nikita Kruschev argued that they should not overreact to the Hungarian Revolution. He explained:

“We are not living as we were . . . when only one party was in power. If we wanted to operate by command today, we would inevitably create chaos. . . . [W]e cannot permit this to turn into polemics between fraternal parties because this would lead to polemics between nations.”

Moreover, Kruschev thought military measures were not necessary because—in his view—the Hungarian Revolution was an economic, not ideological, struggle. Referring to a recent strike by laborers, he asked:

“Did they refuse to work because some ideological matters were unclear to them or because they were opposed to the Soviet regime? No, they refused because basic economic and social issues had not been resolved.”

This explains why the Soviet Union did not immediately crush the Hungarian Revolution. However, over the next week Soviet opinion changed because leaders, including Kruschev, began to see the foreign policy implications of an independent Hungary. On October 31, minutes from another meeting of Soviet leaders quote Kruschev as saying:

“We . . . should not withdraw our troops from Hungary and Budapest . . . If we depart from Hungary, it will give a great boost to the Americans, English, and French--the imperialists. They will perceive it as weakness on our part and will go onto the offensive.”

Indeed, the Hungarian Revolution’s failure was decided the moment Soviet leaders realized that losing Hungary would hurt Soviet prestige and bolster Western confidence. More to the point, if the more independent Hungarian government were to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact—one of the demands of the student protesters—the Soviet Union would lose a critical buffer country to protect it from the West, which was strategically unacceptable.

In retrospect, the Hungarian Revolution was a predictable failure. U.S. foreign policy was to prevent Soviet expansion through propaganda, not nuclear war. Likewise, Soviet foreign policy relied on an image of strength to protect against Western incursion, and the Eastern European buffer zone was the Soviet Union’s primary security concern. So why do Hungarians blame the United States and Radio Free Europe for their failed revolution?

Weeks after the Revolution, an internal investigation into Radio Free Europe’s broadcasts revealed there had been suggestions of a Western rescue given to the Hungarian people. According to the report, four broadcasts went beyond US official policy with statements like, if “the Hungarians hold-out for three or four days, then the pressure upon the government of the United States to send military help to the Freedom Fighters will become irresistible!” Another broadcast stated that, “Western reports show that the world’s reaction to Hungarian events surpasses every imagination. In the Western capitals a practical manifestation of Western sympathy is expected at any hour.” While there is no evidence that Radio Free Europe’s broadcasts incited the revolution, broadcasts delivered after the conflict began were more enthusiastic than US official policy warranted. The report concludes that, “We now see clearly that it would have been wiser never have to permitted such programs at all.”

I do not think the United States should be blamed for the failure of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Intervention would have contradicted the United States’ foreign policy and escalated tensions with the USSR—perhaps to a catastrophic level. Nevertheless, poor monitoring of Radio Free Europe led to false promises of Western assistance. How many of the two-and-a-half thousand Hungarians that died in the Revolution kept fighting when it would have been better to flee because they thought the U.S. and NATO were coming? The United States is not at fault for the years of Soviet control after 1956—nothing reasonable could have prevented this. But U.S. actions in Central Europe contributed to many people’s deaths. If I were Hungarian, I would be mad about it too.