Khrushchev and the 1956 hungar essays

Khrushchev and the 1956 hungar essays The overlapping crises in Hungary and Poland in the autumn of 1956 posed a severe challenge for the leaders of the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU). After a tense standoff with Poland, the CPSU Presidium (as the Politburo was then called) decided to refrain from military intervention and to seek a political compromise. The crisis in Hungary was far less easily defused. For a brief moment it appeared that Hungary might be able to break away from the Communist bloc, but the Soviet Army put an end to all such hopes. Soviet troops crushed the Hungarian revolution, and a degree of order returned to the Soviet camp. Newly released documents from Russia and Eastern Europe shed valuable light on the events of 1956, permitting a much clearer and more nuanced understanding of Soviet reactions. This article will begin by discussing the way official versions of the 1956 invasion changedand formerly secret documents became availableduring the late Soviet period and after the Soviet Union disintegrated. It will then highlight some of the most important findings from new archival sources and memoirs. The article relies especially heavily on the so-called Malin notes, which are provided in annotated translation below, and on new materials from Eastern Europe. Both the article and the documents will show that far-reaching modifications are needed in existing Western accounts of the 1956 OFFICIAL REASSESSMENTS BEFORE AND AFTER 1991 The advent of glasnost and new political thinking in the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev led to sweeping reassessments of postwar Soviet ties with Eastern Europe. As early as 1987, an unofficial reappraisal began in Moscow of the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Initially, these reassessments of the 1968 crisis did not have Gorbachevs overt endorsement, but the process gained a...