British Opinion on Hungary [1956]

THE FORCIBLE SUBJECTION of Hungary by Soviet armed forces has roused among the immense majority of British intellectuals, as among almost all who are politically conscious, feelings of very deep horror and revulsion. This extends to those who had been fellow 20 travellers and even to not a few members of the Communist Party. The reoccupation of Hungary by Russian troops and the accompanying acts of repression have exhibited Russian Communism to all the world as a brutal, ruthless, hypocritical, and treacherous, conquering imperialism. The last straw was the breach of faith in regard to Nagy

This is by no means the first time that the Soviet Government has been guilty of similar atrocities. The treatment of Russian peasants during the period of collectivizing was at least as brutal and on a larger scale. The treachery that has characterized recent Russian actions in Hungary was neither more degraded nor more horrible than that which characterized 30 Russian action in Poland in the years 1944-5. Two instances of this treachery were peculiarly notable: the first was the failure to relieve Warsaw, when the Russians were in a position to do so without difficulty, because they chose to wait until the Polish forces, which had been fighting the Nazis, were exterminated; the second, which occurred while the United Nations was being inaugurated at San Francisco, was the imprisonment of Polish democratic leaders who had gone to Poland on the faith of a Russian safe-conduct. The East Germans, after a gallant insurrection, were reduced to sullen obedience solely by Russian tanks. But none of these past actions had as powerful an effect on British public opinion as the suppression of Hungary. This is partly because the facts about Hungary are better known; but even more because, since the denunciation of Stalin by the Soviet leaders, it had seemed as if they were entering upon a new era of comparative liberalism in which co-existence would not be difficult, and even cooperation not always impossible. It was not irrational to hope that the rigours of the Cold War were coming to an end and that the increase in Russian productivity might be devoted less to armaments than to raising the standard of life. All these hopes, the 10 Soviet leaders have killed. We are back where we were in the days of Stalin, except that Western mistakes have, meantime, permitted a great increase of Russian power and influence.