Slavonic and East European Review

SEER,Vol. 8o, No.4, October 2002 1956 Reconsidered: Why Hungary and Not Poland? JOHANNA GRANVILLE As the French moralist FranSoisde la Rochefoucauld (I 613- I 68o) wrote, 'although men flatterthemselveswith their great actions, they are usually the resultof chance and not design'. The differentcourses of events in Poland and Hungary in October 1956 have long intrigued scholars.Why did the Soviet Union intervene in Hungary but not in Poland? A simple reason for the Kremlin leaders' forbearance in Poland may be that the simultaneous eruption of the Hungarian revolution a chance occurrence, in part - distractedthem. More sophisticated explanations have developed among three groups of historians. One group of Cold War historians has explained Soviet actions by focusing on the two countries' different historical experiences . They posit that, for the Russians, dealing with the Hungarians was a 'novel experience', since no part of Hungary had ever been under Russian rule. The Second World War, they add, was less traumatic for Hungarians than for Poles.' A second group has emphasized individual personalities, arguing that the outgoing heads of the Stalin-eraleadership,EdwardOchab in Poland and Erno Gero in Hungary, shaped events the most.2 Others in this group argue, alternatively,thatWladyslawGomulkaand StefanCardinalWyszy'nski Johanna Granville is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Clemson University. Research for this article was supported by long- and short-term grants from the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) and the Woodrow Wilson Center, East European Studies division. ' See Adam Bromke, 'Poland' (hereafter, Bromke), in Bela K. Kiraly and Paul Jones (eds), T7he Hungarian Revolution ofi956 inRetrospect, Boulder, CO, 1978 (hereafter, Kiraly and Jones), p. 89. Also, Ferenc A. Vali, Rift andRevoltinHunga?, Cambridge, MA, I96 I, p. 264. Gyorgy Litvan points out that Hungary 'had nothing to lose by its actions' because it was the only East European satellite whose communist leaders 'did not bring any "wedding gifts" from Moscow', unlike Poland (given land once part of eastern Germany) and Romania (given Transylvania). See Litvan, 'A Forty-Year Perspective on I956', in Terry Cox (ed.), HungagyI956 -Forty Years On,London, 1997 (hereafter, Cox), pp. I9-20. 2 See G. H. N. Seton-Watson, 'Introduction', in Kiraly and Jones, p. 3. See also Joseph Rothschild, ReturntoDiversity:A PoliticalHistogyofEast Central EuropeSinceWorldWarII, New York, I989, pp. 157-59; Francois Fejto, A HistogyofthePeople's Democracies. Europe SinceStalin, London, I971, p. 52; and Michael Checinski, Poland:Communism, Nationalism,Anti-Semitism, New York, I 982 (hereafter, Checinski), p. 122, n. 30. A great number of excellent scholarly monographs exist on the Hungarian Revolution which cover additional important aspects, including the Suez crisis, the Chinese role, and Soviet documents published in Pravdaon 31 October I956, on 'Friendship and Cooperation with Socialist States'. Given the limited scope of this article, however, I will focus exclusively on the Polish and Hungarian events themselves. JOHANNA GRANVILLE 657 were wiser, bolder leaders, better able to deter Soviet aggressionthan were Imre Nagy and CardinalJozsef Mindszenty.3Still a third group has argued that, in contrast to the Poles, the Hungarians alarmed the Soviet Union by going too far, especially by declaring neutrality, withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact, and establishing a multiparty system.4 Nearly a decade has passed since communist bloc archivesopened, and thus perhaps it is appropriateto take stock and ask: do the new documents drasticallyalter these older explanationsof the Poland and Hungarian events?This articlewill compare the events in Poland and Hungary closely, drawing on recently declassified documents from Hungarian, Polish, and Russian archives. I will conclude that the documents do not alter the older interpretationssignificantly.Nevertheless ,the documents do yield a more nuanced view of Gomulkaand Nagy and the ways in which they interactedwith their colleagues and theirconstituencies. Historians can easily challenge the first explanation (that dealing with the Hungarians was a 'novel experience' for the Russians). It is beyond the scope of this article to compare at length Polish and Hungarian relations with the Soviet Union. However, historians can easily point, for example, to the I849 tsarist invasion to help the Austrians suppressthe Hungarian revolution; the communist regime under Bela Kun (March-July I9 I9); and the experience of the thousandsof Hungarian POWs in the USSR, many of whom were not 3 See Paul Kecskemeti...