SOME LESSONS OF THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION

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• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP60-00594A000100090005-2
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• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 2, 2004
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• Content Type: STUDY

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SOME LESSONS OF THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION
(A tentative Analysis)
"Budapest is no longer merely the name of a city; henceforth
it is a new and shining symbol of man's yearning to be free."
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Second Inaugural Address.
A. INTRODUCTION
1. The popular uprising against the Communist dictatorship in
Hungary, October - November 1956, has been the most dramatic -- and
presumably the most effective -- blow inflicted upon the world Communist
movement thus far. The official communist explanation, denouncing the
uprising as "counterrevolution", "fascism" and "imperialist intervention",
to the West appears to be quite incomplete, is largely confined to
2. We need a more comprehensive analysis of the Hungarian revolution,
of its underlying origins and driving forces as well as of its role in
contemporary history and of its significance for the immediate future.
We need such an analysis, first of all, to counteract the world-wide
Communist propaganda drive which distorts the truth, accuses the West and
blackens the memory of the victims. But we need such an analysis also in
order to derive from the Hungarian revolution whatever lessons we can
learn which will assist us in our world-wide fight against Communism and
for freedom. Finally, we need such an analysis to offer encouragement
and realistic guidance to the active minorities in Hungary and .in the
other Satellite countries, in the Soviet Union and perhaps-even in
Communist China, who will continue to yearn for freedom, even after Moscow's
terror'has temporarily subdued the Hungarian revolution with ruthless
brutality.
3. For these purposes, the present paper offers at least a working
hypothesis. It is intended to stimulate discussion and to encourage
intelligence collectors, interrogators, reports officers, researchers and
analysts to obtain the missing facts, to confirm or to disprove the
assumptions made here, and to lay thus the ground for a more definitive
analysis to be prepared in the not too distant future.
B. CHARACTER AND ORIGIN
1i. The Hungarian events became a true revolution, in every reasonable
interpretation of this term -- and were not merely an uprising or a rebellion.
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They involved major-portions-of the entire country, not only a city or a
district. The-revolutionaries aimed-at a-eeomplete change-of the-political,
social ant.economic regime. They managed to paralyze the most vital
economic activities of the country for weeks and they deprived the govern-
ment of its power to rule -- a power which was-restored only through the
wholesale-use of the Soviet Army. The revolutionary character of the-
events and the extent of popular participation are also ex ressed in the
huge casualty figures: neutral observers estimated
that 25 -. 30,000 Hungarians -- plus several t ousan ovie soldiers --
were killed, for this small country of 9 million inhabitants a com-
paratively greater loss than the 300,000 dead of World War Two in the U.S.
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5. Three principal causes appear to have provided the basic
.motivations for this revolution. First, the spread of unrest and hope
throughout the Soviet Orbit which began with the death of Stalin (unrest
in East Germany and in Czechoslovakia, June 1953) and which intensified
after the 20th CPSU Congress in February 1956 (unrest in Soviet Georgia,
Poznan riots, student movements in Prague and Moscow). These events
encouraged the fierce nationalism which had characterized all of Hungary's
modern history. Hungarians are no Slavs and have therefore no traditional
basis for an understanding with Russia (unlike, for instance, the Czechs
or the Bulgarians). On the contrary, Russians and Hungarians have clashed
before, notably when the Tsarist Army helped to suppress-the Hungarian
revolution of 1848. In both World Wars, Hungarians and Russians fought
on opposite sides. Nationalist symbols (the flag,,the anthem, the coat
of arms) played a significant role throughout the recent events.
6. The second cause was unquestionably economic. Hungary's limited
resources were. ruthlessly exploited for the benefit of the Soviet Union:
M. Francois Fejto, Hungarian historian, suggests in a book, "The Hungarian
Tragedy", just published in Paris, that this revolution would be known
as the "Uranium Revolution", since the revelation of a secret agreement
between the Rakosi regime and the Soviet Government, granting the latter
the exclusive right to exploit the recently discovered uranium mines, is
described as a major factor in touching off the uprising. The Communists
had started a program of forcible industrialization in a country
particularly ill suited for heavy industry (e.g. that they had built huge
steel works for which both the coking coal and the iron ore had to be
imported). Collectivized agriculture, too,was a total failure, causing
constant food shortages in a country which was once a major food exporter
and famous. for its opulent cuisine.
7. The third cause -- and this is significantly different from other
Satellite countries, notably from Poland, presumably also from Czechoslovakia was the inability of the Hungarian Communist Party to cope with the situation.
That party was neither a power in its own right as, for instance, the Yugoslav
CP, nor was it capable of absorbing the gathering momentum of nationalist
unrest, as the Polish CP had succeeded in doing. When the storm broke, it
proved unable to subdue it with the governmental, military or police forces
under its own control, as the CPSU had repeatedly done, beginning with the
Kronstadt uprising, 1921. The Hungarian CP was not even able either to
monitor adequately or to interpret correctly the events leading to the
revolution: that is, the party leaders presumably noticed the ferment but
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they underestimated its seriousness and expected to be able to cope with
it. The same is apparently true of Moscow, judging from the shock of
pained surprise and confusion with which the Soviet Government and the'-GPSU
reacted to the first revolutionary events.
8. This last fact -- that Moscow, too, was taken by surprise --
causes us to inquire into the reasons for the failure of Moscow's own
intelligence services -- of the Soviet Government,'-of the Red Army and of
the CPSU -- to alert the top leaders in time. Has the downgrading of
the R.I.S. since the execution of Beria lowered its efficiency? Have
Hungarian agents proved disloyal to their Soviet masters? Did the
revolution come so suddenly -- or were its preparations undertaken with
such a high degree of.security -- that even an efficient I.S. could not
report on it (or penetrate it) until it was too late? Or were the reports
simply disregarded by the Moscow top echelon, just as Stalin had disregarded
the intelligence warnings about Hitler's impending attack in 1941?
,9. The history of the Hungarian Communist Party helps to explain
why the first full-scale revolution in the Soviet Orbit occurred in
Hungary -- instead of in any of the other Satellite countries which in
terms of industr.ialization,.past democratic experiences or traditions of
active hostility against Russia would have seemingly offered much better
chances. The Hungarian CP started at the end of World War One, as in most
European countries: but unlike most of the others, it did not gradually
emerge from the radical, left, anti-war wing 'of the Social Democratic
labor movement -- the way in which Communist Parties started in Germany,
Italy, Czechoslovakia or France. Instead, the Hungarian CP was organized
by a small group of "brainwashed" prisoners of`war', returning from Russian
captivity_ under the leadership of Bela Kun and it plunged immediately
into the short-lived, violent adventure of setting up a Soviet Republic.
10. This dictatorship, precariously established in the vacuum created
by the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and by the absence of
strong democratic forces, was a desperate attempt to come to the aid of
the isolated Russian Soviet Republic. The violence, senseless destruct-
ion and conflicts with neighboring countries which accompanied this
coup and its end, gave Hungarians the first, bitter foretaste of
Communism in practice. Bela Kun fled to Russia where he was liquidated
during the great purges. There' was never an effective Communist under-
ground in Hungary. At the end of World War Two, the advancing Soviet Army
imposed a few surviving Hungarian Communists, brought back from Russia,
upon the defeated country. Even under strong Red Army pressure, the
Hungarian CP polled only 17% of the popular vote in November 1945-
11. These fatal weaknesses were not remedied during ten years of
post-war rule: the continued presence of Russian-troops made it seem
unnecessary for the Hungarian Communist leaders either to develop
governmental strength of their own or to extend their party organiza-
tion to the "grass roots", in order to support their dictatorial rule
with an effective mass basis, a necessity which even a second-rate
dictator like Peron understood better. It is unlikely that the Soviets
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intentionally kept the Hungarian CP weak and dependent; if this had been
their guiding principle in dealing with Satellites, it would have shown
in the other countries, too. Moreover, Stalin and his successors had
every reason to trust Rakosi?s loyalty -- as shown by Khrushchev's
extreme reluctance to sacrifice Rakosi to Tito?s"insistent demands.
12. Lack of-.a mass basis also explains why the Hungarian regime,
unlike other Communist governments, had to admit politically "unreliable"
persons to sensitive positions, as army officers, senior government
officials, engineers and skilled workers in key factories, etc. On paper,
the Hungarian CP and its auxiliaries, the National Front, the trade unions,
the Communist Youth League, etc., were hugely inflated mass organizations.
But the percentage of true, devoted, trained Communists among these many
hundreds of thousands of "paper soldiers" was so small that no really
effective control was possible: therefore, as subsequent events have
shown, the revolutionary cadres could mature under the very eyes of the
cruel, but inefficient dictatorship.
C. REVOLUTIONARY ORGANIZATIONS
13. Information thus far available makes us assume that the revolution
was spontaneous. However, our information is not comprehensive enough to
make this already a final, definitive conclusions We have yet to
investigate fully the possibility that there might have been some planned
preparations in advance. If there were clandestine.groups prior to
23 October and if some of their leaders or active members have since
escaped to the West, they may have avoided any reference to such preparations
in their public statements, for obvious security reasons. Intelligence
debriefings of escaped revolutionaries., as reviewed prior to the writing of
this paper, have not covered this question -- but it appears vitally
important to obtain true, complete and detailed answers, not merely for
the sake of historic accuracy but, far more important, for our guidance
in future revolutionary situations against a Communist dictatorship.
14. There have been two major, middle-of-the-road political parties
in Hungary, the Social Democrats and the Smallholders. Both had been
compelled at the end of World War Two, under pressure by the Soviet
Occupation Forces,to participate in the early stages of the "people's
democratic" regime. In the 1945 elections, they had polled far more
votes than the Communists. After the dictatorship seemed sufficiently
consolidated, the two parties were gradually eliminated and their leaders apart from a few "collaborationists" -- either fled into exile, or were
imprisoned or quietly removed from any political activity.
15. The Hungarian Communist regime had attempted already before
October to bring certain non-Communist political, leaders, especially
Social Democrats, back into the government or at least into prominent
positions in the National Front. At that time, this had looked like a
rather ineffective application of the new popular front tactics,
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proclaimed at the 20th CPSU Congress and had no significant success
whatsoever. In October, both parties emerged briefly into the open and
negotiated with Imre Nagy about participation in a new government. There
is, however, no evidence that either of these parties had maintained an
effective underground organization during the years of Stalinist dictator-
sTiip, let alone that such an underground actually prepared the uprising.
16. A great deal of the visible fermentation which created the psycho-
logical atmosphere for the revolution took place in overt organizations of
the regime, notably in writers', students' and youth organizations. Youth
naturally resents regimentation more fiercely than their elders, especially
in those European countries where there is traditional tension between the
generations -- and Communist indoctrination of youth had been rather
ineffective. Writers, on the other hand, have been the articulate vanguard
of intellectual unrest in most modern revolutions. Such developments in
these groups were possible because the CP did not effectively control any
of these organizations, either in terms of ideological domination, or in
terms of discipline and security supervision. There were oppositional
discussions, demonstrations, resolutions. But available intelligence does
not show that there'were any clandestine preparations for an uprising in
any of these groups.
17. The Communist claims that the uprising was engineered by a
counterrevolutionar , fascist conspiracy, supported -- if not'altogether
initiated -- by the imperialist West, are contradicted by all factual
evidence at hand. Of course, some individuals who took an active part
in the revolution have a background in the days of the Horthy regime:
for instance, army officers who joined the freedom fighters or.provided
them with weapons, have been officers in Horthy's army -.4 but they
had been acceptable to the Communist regime, or else they would have
not been retained in their military ranks. There is no indication,
moreover, that these officers had formed a conspiracy intent upon
restoring the autocratic regime of Horthy's "regency" or pursuing other
truly counterrevolutionary or fascist aims.
18. Western propaganda -- broadcasts, leaflet balloons, mailings had been reaching Hungary to the same extent as they had reached the other
Satellites. This propaganda had presumably helped to slow down and to
weaken the consolidation of the Communist regime and had to a certain
extent encouraged oppositional thoughts and hopes -- but it had not
prepared or provoked the October uprising. Such preparation would have
flagrantly contradicted the conviction shared by at least the U.S. and
by the vast majority of Western public opinion
at large -- that peace-time revolutions against a Communist dictatorship
were impossible and hopeless and could only lead to ghastly bloodshed
and destruction.
19. There has been, to the best of our knowledge and belief, no
contact between any anti-Communist Hungarian exile group -- or any other
Western organization, official or unofficial -- and the revolutionary
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forces inside the country (especially prior to 23 October) which might have
involved any planning for the coming. revolution, any training, any arms
shipment, or the like. Some such contacts may have been established after
the revolution had erupted into the open and such incidents may be exploited
by the Communists-- especially, if they will hold show trials -- to prove
their contention about the "counterrevolutionary" and "Western imperialist"
origin of the uprisings. However, since any such contacts began only after
the 23rd of October, they cannot have possibly inspired or caused the up-
risings: they only attempted either to assist the revolution or to
exploit it for their own political ends. Moreover, the few incidents of
this kind thus far reported were all of comparatively low level and of
limited scope and their significance must not be overestimated.
20. We conclude therefore -- at least tentatively and pending receipt
of divergent information -- that the Hungarian revolution was generated
spontaneously, that it had not been planned or prepared by any organization
either inside or outside the country and that its actual outbreak surprised
its active. participants as much as the regime which it attacked or the
foreign observers on either side of the Iron Curtain. This-conclusion is
strongly supported by the evidence: the revolutionaries did obviously not
follow any preconceived plan, no effective central leadership emerged and
a multitude of heterogeneous groups, apparently established at the spur
of the moment, remained autonomous in their policies, tactics and leader-
ship until the bitter end.
21. Despite this spontaneous, makeshift, uncoordinated character,
the revolution wrested all real power from the Rakosi-Geroe regime and
would undoubtedly have won a lasting victory, if it had not been for the
massive military intervention of the Soviet Army. But the Soviet Army was
present in strength, and the determination of the revolutionaries to
.attack its units, while proof of defiant heroism, betrays at the same time
a fatal lack of the sober realism which has characterized all victorious
revolutions. Even the limited, short-lived success of the uprising,
however, appears to refute Lenin's doctrine that a revolution cannot be
won without a rigidly centralized organization of professional
-revolutionaries -- a doctrine which the West had unquestioningly accepted
as valid. And since no centralized clandestine organization was expected
to survive under a totalitarian dictatorship, the West had virtually
abandoned hope for any victorious uprising inside the Sino-Soviet Orbit.
22. Incidentally, this assumption may have been-strongly influenced
by the experience with Hitler's totalitarian dictatorship, the only one
of its kind which we have been able to study from its beginning to the
very end: the few internal uprisings in the Nazi empire were ruthlessly
quelled and a World War was required to bring Hitler's rule to its down-
fall. But Hitler, at the time he unleashed World War Two, was far from
having reached the "saturation point" which the Soviet Empire reached
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at the time of Stalin's death, if not already at the end of World War Two.
Our experience with Hitler did not cover the "advanced" phases of a
totalitarian dictatorship which we now observe in the Sino-Soviet Orbit --
since he took a "short-cut" to oblivion which Stalin was able to avoid.
If the Nazi empire had managed to survive 4+0 years like the Soviet Union,
we might have witnessed successful uprisings against Hitler's heirs, too.
23. The lack of a centralized revolutionary organization prior to
the open uprisings may even be considered one of the most significant
reasons for the initial successes of the Hungarian revolution. The
absence of such an organization insured complete surprise. It made it
impossible for-the internal security agencies to penetrate the
revolutionary organizations'(while even Lenin's Central Committee of the
Bolshevik Party had been penetrated by the Tsarist Okhrana). -The lack of
such an organization also prevented "leaks" from among the conspirators
or any of the advance dissensions which have beset most revolutionary
movements.
D. TACTICS AND TECHNIQUES
24. In the first phase of the uprising, paramilitary action was
predominant; in the second phase -- after the massive development of Soviet
troops made.open streetfighting increasingly hopeless --, emphasis shifted
to strikes and other forms of non-violent resistance in the cities
accompanied by guerilla action in forests and mountains. During both
phases, there was propaganda through all available media and political
action on every level.
25. In the streetfighting in Budapest, the Hungarian revolutionaries
performed not only with reckless courage but also with unexpected technical
skill: as shown by the ratio of Russian to Hungarian casualties, the
number of Soviet tanks and guns destroyed or captured, and the length of
revolutionary resistance against crushing Red Army superiority in weapons
and numbers. We had always assumed that resistance forces must be given
large-scale training and must be equipped from the outside before they
can engage in active operations-- an assumption largely based on our
experiences with resistance movements during World War Two. In Hungary,
however, there were apparently enough revolutionaries who either were war
veterans or had received paramilitary training by the Communists themselves
especially in Communist youth and students groups. They obtained ample arms
and ammunition either from surrendering units of~the Hungarian armed forces,
or from the workers in armament plants, or by seizing police and military
stores.
26. This remarkable paramilitary performance may have been somewhat
facilitated by the attitude of the Russian garrison troops who confronted
the revolutionaries in the first days of the fighting and who apparently
did not relish the task of killing civilians, including women and children,
among whom they had lived for some time. Reports of refusals to fight and
of defections among these troops are contradictory and incomplete, but
there is no doubt that the-military repression got underway only after
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those garrison troops had been replaced, by numerous new Red Army units,
hastily transported into Hungary and reported to have been composed
largely of Asiatic troops.
27. These general facts of the fighting are already very significant:
however, if we are really to learn from the Hungarian revolution, we need
many more details and a far more searching analysis of the tactics and
techniques of the fighting. Were the heavy initial losses of the Soviet
forces inevitable, were they due to low morale, to faulty leadership or
to superior tactics on the part of the revolutionaries or could they have
been caused by any original intention of the Soviets to restrict bloodshed
and military action as much as possible? How does the streetfighting in
Budapest compare with other recent instances of an armed uprising against
superior military forces, such as the Warsaw uprising against the Nazi in
1944 or the battle of Madrid in the Spanish Civil War? Would better train-
ing, better organization, better equipment of the revolutionaries have
materially affected the outcome -- and how? In other words, we need
professional, detached critiques of the fighting, from the viewpoint of
both the military expert and the professional revolutionary.
28. The strikes and the formation of workers' councils, first in the
factories but later also on a regional and even nation-wide level, were
equally surprising. We had always assumed that labor unions in a Communist
state are rigidly controlled by the Communist Party and Government and that
they can never be turned into a revolutionary instrument -- but this
assumption has been effectively refuted in Hungary (and, to a certain
extent, also in Poland). The general strike succeeded in paralyzing the
country, its transportation services and its essential industrial production,
including public utilities. Some of the strikes broke out spontaneously,
others seem to have been organized by the unions whose Communist control
may have been merely nominal from the beginning or whose party bosses had
gone into hiding, leaving the organizations to the workers themselves.
29. The revolutionaries engaged in active psychological warfare from
the very beginning. An attack on the Budapest radio station was one of the
first overt acts. Several regional stations served the revolutionary
cause for weeks (see also the documentary publication of the Free Europe
Committee, "The Revolt in Hungary", covering the period from 23 October
to 9 November 1956). Revolutionary groups published newspapers, leaflets
and posters and their views were echoed in the "official" press, too.
These publications were apparently produced more or less overtly, during
the days when the revolutionaries controlled most of the country and even
later, before complete and effective controls by the Red Army and their
puppet dictatorship had been restored.
30. It would be important to discover whether there had been any clandes-
tine publications or radio stations inside Hungary prior to 23 October or
whether any revolutionary groups continued to use clandestine presses or
clandestine transmitters after they had been driven off the overt media by
Soviet military force. These questions will have to be answered in close
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connection with the broader question of planned preparations for the up-
rising and of the more or less underground continuation of revolutionary
activities, after the open streetfighting, the open. demonstrations, etc.
had become impossible.
31. At the same time, we ought to know more about the relationship
between all propaganda efforts, overt or clandestine of both the
revolutionaries and of the opposing Communist regime -- on the one hand
and the political and military events on the other hand: did propaganda
provoke military action or was it merely "background music" to a chain of
events which would have taken place in any case? In line with our
assumptions about the spontaneous character of the revolution, there is
reason to believe that the basic nationalistic, anti-Russian and anti-
Communist emotions were decisive and that any manipulation by a deliberate
propaganda effort rather secondary. Here again, we ought to know more.
It is, for instance, safe to assume that the propagandists who were
active during the uprising -- inside or outside the country -- contributed
substantially more than mere news and commentary. The more precisely we
can establish the true role of propaganda in the Hungarian revolution
(how much of it was "cause" and how much "effect", or even mere "side show"
and why), the better for our propaganda efforts not only aimed at denied
areas, but everywhere.
E. PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS
32. Many, far too many pieces of the puzzle are still missing (or
unidentified), as the foregoing discussion proves. It is therefore too
early to arrive at final, binding and definitive conclusions. However,
while continuing to hunt for the missing pieces, we must already have at
least a working hypothesis, to guide our day-by-day interpretation of the
Hungarian events and our operational efforts against the Soviet Orbit and
against World Communism at large. Such a working hypothesis is outlined
below.
33. Any effort to interpret the Hungarian revolution might be based
on a close comparison with the Russian Revolution of 1905. It is under-
stood that the drawing of this historic parallel does not imply that the
two events are fully identical. The Russian Revolution arose primarily
from social and constitutional grounds, while the Hungarian revolution
was essentially a fight for national independence. In the Russian
Revolution, people were largely divided according to class lines:
industrial workers and revolutionary intelligentsia against the ruling
minority of the semi-feudal Tsarist regime; in Hungary, it was virtually
the entire people against a foreign oppressor and his indigenous minions.
But despite these and other differences, we cannot help noticing a
surprising degree of close similarity.
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34. In both cases, the initial impulse was provoked by external events:
1905, Japan's victory over the armed forces of the Tsar -- 1956, the "de-
Stalinization" which began formally with the 20 CPSU Congress in Moscow. In
both cases, the most dangerous weapon of the revolutionaries, wasthe-mass
strike and the forming of workers councils "from the grass roots up". In
both cases, the government felt initially too weak to subdue the revolution
by brute force and made seemingly far-reaching concessions to purchase time --
1905, in order to bring combat troops back from the Far East, 1956, to
bring new Soviet Divisions into Hungary. In both cases the government abandoned
any pretense of negotiations as soon as it again felt strong enough to
suppress the revolution by force, canceled all concessions (including some
of those made prior to the actual outbreak) and took revenge for its temporary
defeat by excessive severity and brutality in the latter stages of the
repression. In both cases, the revolutionaries were comparatively
inexperienced, lacking unity of organization or of purpose and were split
into a variety of ideological and regional groups and factions.
35. The Government against which the Russian revolution of 1905 arose
was, of course, the Imperial Government of the Tsar and the Communists were
on the side of the revolutionaries. In 1956, the Russian Communists were
the government against which the revolution was aimed: worse still, they
were the government of Imperial Russia, ruling Hungary like a colony, and
bringing in Russian troops after their Hungarian puppets had proven utterly
incapable of controlling the situation. Since the Communists still pretend
to be revolutionaries and to combat imperialism and colonialism -- their
most effective pretense outside the Orbit, especially in neutralist Asia
and the Middle East -_, they felt (and continue to feel) exceedingly uncom-
fortable in this repressive role, just as they felt very uncomfortable in
June 1953, when the impotence of their East German puppets forced them to
commit armored divisions of the Red Army against striking and demonstrat-
ing workers.
36. Their hysterical screams about "counterrevolutionary conspirac,P
and "imperialist plot" must not be allowed to obscure the truth that the
Communist dictatorship stands in 1956 (presumably not only in Hungary,
but also, in varying degrees, in the other Satellites, if not in the
Soviet Union itself), where the Tsarist regime stood in 1905. A reactionary
police state, ruled by a narrow upper caste of bureaucrats, militarists
and managers, separated by an unbridgeable gulf from the broad masses of
the people, from workers and peasants and even from the youth which has been
educated under the close control of the regime.
37. This gives us -- and the peoples who continue to suffer under
Communist rule -- the courage of the conviction that the Hungarian
Revolution of 1956, though drowned in blood, has not been in vain, just as
the Russian revolution of 1905 retained its tremendous historic
significance, despite its complete defeat. The Tsarist regime refused to
learn the lessons of 1905 and was therefore totally destroyed only twelve
years later. The Communist rulers of today seem equally unable and
unwilling to learn their lessons: every day now, we see them reviving the
worst features of Stalinist terrorism to crush the last sparks of Hungarian
unrest. The revolution of 1917 did not follow "automatically" the
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revolution of 1905: external events such as World War One and the internal
factors, including the underground activities of the Bolshevik Party con-
tributed to bring it about. We cannot anticipate any "automatic" end of
Soviet-Communist rule, either, but have to consider the factors which are
likely to cause it, including our own possible contributions.
38. We need hardly worry whether the suppression of the Hungarian
revolution makes future uprisings -- in Hungary, in other Satellites or in
the Soviet Union itself -- "impossible". The Hungarian revolution
occurred even though we had assumed that "it could not happen there" and
it seems logical to concede that future uprisings may occur anywhere in
the Orbit'. However, before this happens, the Communist empire might
plunge us into World War Three -- deliberately or inadvertently -- just
as Hitler caused World War Two. There is, to be sure, the significant
difference (noted in para 22 above) that Hitler started that war six
years after he had come to power, that is, at a stage where no potential
revolutionary forces inside his empire had developed --.while the Soviet
Orbit has already reached a much later state than the Nazi Reich ever
attained. And if World War Three does not materialize and "October 1917"
comes in Hungary or throughout the Soviet empire: might not the ultimate
victor be an "anti-Communist Lenin" and might not the cure be even worse
than the disease?
39. The question whether revolutionary moves increase the danger
of war leads us also to study the interrelationship between the Hungarian
events and British-French military action in Egypt. If it had not been
for that action, Soviet repression of the Hungarian revolution might have
come-less abruptly, since the Soviet rulers would have undoubtedly
preferred to build a .better cover for their imperialist intervention which
hurt their cause throughout the world. The events in Egypt appear to have
given them the impression that they would have to fight a maj'ar war almost
immediately. Nasser's defeat as the result of military action) after all
Soviet promises of support, after their huge arms shipments, etc. would
have meant a fatal loss of face for the Soviets, not only in the Arab
countries, but throughout the Asian-African nations -- that is, it would
have blocked Moscow's chances for expansion in almost every conceivable
direction. Such a prospect is obviously unacceptable to any dictatorship.
However, in the long run, the Soviets would have suppressed the Hungarian
revolution by military force (the only force left to them there) in any
case, even without the Egyptian crisis. The threat of a major war did
not originate in Hungary.
4+0. The emergence of an "anti-Communist Lenin" -- 1....e..a. leader.' of
an anti-Soviet movement which would replace Moscow's present dictator-
ship with another type of aggressive, totalitarian rule, whether
reminiscent of Fascism or establishing an entirely new "--ism"--
is a possibility deserving careful study. In every revolution,,the
radical extremists have an advantage over the moderates: the Jacobins
over the Girondists, Lenin over Kerensky. In World War Two, the Western
powers were forced to support dictator Stalin against the aggressor,
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dictator Hitler: we defeated Hitler, but we did not win the peace. Any
long-range analysis of revolutionary movements in the Soviet Orbit
ought to keep in mind that the enemies of our enemies are not necessarily
or automatically our real friends. It should be understood, however,
that any development which breaks up the present "monolithic unity" of the
Sino-Soviet Orbit is likely to be in the interest of the West, even if the
political regimes in the several, no longer united countries are
individually "unfriendly". For the same reason, we have considered Titoism
a development in our favor, not because Tito's brand of Communism is
necessarily "better", but because he weakened the cohesion of the Soviet
Bloc.
41. If we convey our interpretation of the Hungarian revolution and of developments in the Soviet Orbit and in world affairs at large to the leaders or potential leaders and activists of the Anti-Communist
revolutionary forces on either side of the Iron Curtain, if we establish
a (necessarily covert) working relationship with these forces, thereby
encouraging ideas of freedom, democracy and international cooperation,
we might be able to assist the forming of a "new order" in that part of
the world which would be compatible with world peace and our country's
legitimate interests. Such a "new order" might be quite different from
our traditions of parliamentary democracy, but it might eliminate -- or
at least reduce -- the danger of an "anti-Communist Lenin" or of any
new form of aggressive dictatorial rule taking the place of the present
Soviet System.
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