Free The Cold War: A MILITARY History by David Miller

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    This was taken as a signal that a national form of Communism would be acceptable to the Soviet leadership, and a student rally in Budapest on 22 October produced a fourteen-point manifesto demanding a similar system for Hungary. Next day a rally in support of the Poles started peacefully but got out of hand in the evening when an aggressive speech on the radio by Rákosi led to a confrontation between the crowd and the AVH (state security police), who eventually shot into the crowd.
    Revolutionary councils immediately sprang up all over the country, advocating three policies: nationalism, neutrality and the withdrawal of Soviet troops. The Soviet leadership, which regarded Hungary as an essential element of its defensive strategy, was alarmed, while the Hungarian Politburo tried to cover all eventualities by calling for Soviet troops and also reappointing the ailing Nagy as prime minister, even though he was opposed to Soviet intervention. When the Soviet tanks began to roll into Budapest in the early hours of 24 October they only made matters much worse, and a number were quickly destroyed by petrol bombs. Two representatives of the Soviet Politburo, Mikoyan and Mikhail Suslov, visited Budapest on 24–26 October and swept the Communist old guard aside, confirming Nagy’s appointment and replacing Gero by János Kádár. Nagy announced his new government on 27 October, the Soviet tanks left on 29 October, and Mikoyan and Suslov returned to Budapest on the 30th to announce that Hungarian sovereignty would be respected.
    This Soviet activity was in reality an elaborate camouflage, however, and military forces were massing for the invasion. But at this point external events intervened. On 29 October the Israelis attacked Egypt, and the British and French governments issued an ultimatum to the two sides to withdraw from the Suez Canal and sent an amphibious task force from Cyprus and Malta (30 October). This diverted world attention from events in Hungary, and the Soviet army used some 250,000 troops and 2,500 armoured vehicles to surround Budapest on 1 November. After apparently granting concessions (whose only purpose was to give its troops time to ‘shake out’ into battle order), the Soviet Union struck at midnight on 3/4 November.
    Budapest then became a violent and bloody battlefield as Hungarian freedom fighters tried to destroy the Soviet tanks and to kill or demoralize the Soviet troops. But, despite showing great courage and exhibiting considerable ingenuity in their methods of attack, the Hungarians were slowly but inexorably beaten by the organized might of the Soviet army. The main fighting was over by 14 November, and all resistance had crumbled by 30 November. About 25,000 Hungarians and 7,000 Soviet soldiers had been killed in the fighting, but the result was a foregone conclusion.
    CZECHOSLOVAKIA: 1968
    The Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 exhibited precisely what was meant by the new Brezhnev doctrine of ‘Socialist Commonwealth’. In the aftermath of the Second World War the Czechoslovak people as a whole were grateful to the Soviet army for their liberation from German occupation, while many still retained bitter memories of being ‘sold down the river’ by Britain and France in the Munich Agreement of 1938. As a result, the long-established Communist Party did well in the 1946 elections and took part in the subsequent coalition, providing the prime minister and the minister of police. Unlike in most other countries of eastern Europe, the Soviet army did not retain any troops in Czechoslovakia once the Germans had been defeated.
    The Communists gradually expanded their influence, and from February 1948 they provided an uninspiring and inefficient government for some twenty years, but growing popular unrest resulted in the appointment in January 1968 of Alexander Dub č ek as first secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party.
    Dub č ek promised reforms,