Two European invasions: Hungary 1956, Ukraine 2022
While we are witnessing the rumble of Russian tanks on Ukrainian soil, we should not forget that all this happened before: 66 years ago the Russian military committed similar atrocities while occupying every square inch of a sovereign country. The country attacked then was Hungary. The country being attacked now is Ukraine.
Why does Russia do it? Firstly, out of habit. For the last few hundred years of her history, Russia has habitually been swallowing neighbouring territories and seems unable to wean herself off the habit. If we want to be more accurate we could say that the evidence can be obtained by considering the growth of the surface area of the Russian Empire between the rules of Ivan the Terrible, some four centuries ago, and of the equally terrible Josef Stalin. The increase in area was by a factor of about 3,000 per cent.
Secondly, the Russian need for security is higher than that of any other country. I could give an illustrative example. Assume that in the 1950s Russian tanks overrun Europe up to the Pyrenees. Russia would then have demanded that Spain disarm and stop endangering Russia’s security.
In the third place Russia has a most obedient population, accepting dictatorship as their favourite form of government. (Remember Joseph de Maistre’s dictum, in a letter about Russia’s 1811 constitution: Every nation gets the government it deserves.)
Hungary in 1956 was a case, we could say a text-book example, of de Tocqueville’s principle: that revolutions by an oppressed minority against an oppressive class/country occur not when the oppression is strong, but when it is in the process of getting tamed.
After the Second World War Hungary was under Stalin’s thumb. When Stalin died there was some scramble for power among the leaders. Khrushchev came out at the top. In January 1956, at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he read out a list of Stalin’s crimes to a shocked audience. Subsequently, he introduced a series of reforms intended to make Communism less oppressive, perhaps even more liberal. A good example was to allow Solzhenitsyn’s first masterpiece, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, to be published.
In response to developments in Russia, liberal ideas took quickly root in Hungary. By the autumn of 1956 politics was freely discussed in the press and particularly in the Petöfi Circle. The idea was “Communism with a Human Face”, well before the Czechs discovered it. And then on the 23rd of October 1956 students of the Technical University (my wife among them) went out onto the streets to demonstrate. The last time this had happened in the Communist block was in East Germany in 1953, three years previously, when demonstrating workers were shot by the authorities.
In Budapest the student demonstration set off an avalanche. By the time darkness fell, 100.000 people were demonstrating in front of the Parliament, demanding a government led by Imre Nagy, a reform Communist. By 8 pm I was also at the square. It was hopeless to find Marianne. I walked to the Varosliget to see what was happening there. I was just in time to see Stalin’s statue tumble.
That was too much for the Russian leadership. They decided to intervene militarily. It turned out that their troops available in Hungary were not up to the task. So they bided their time while they brought in reinforcements. For the next 12 days they said they were happy to evacuate their forces from Hungary, but needed to agree on the timetable of the withdrawal. They put some genuine plans in front of the Hungarian negotiators, but after moving a sufficiently large armada into Hungary they stopped the negotiations in a manner that will be to the eternal shame of the Russian leadership. When the Hungarian negotiators appeared for the next round of talks the Soviet side promptly arrested them and a little later, after a brief show trial, executed them.
The Russians’ relations with the Ukrainians was also a classic case. It would have been familiar to Aesop as proven by his Lupus et Agnus (The Wolf and the Lamb) fable, in which the wolf claims that the lamb wronged him in order to be able to eat the other with a clear conscience.
What is going on in Ukraine at the moment is a pure power game, based on the superiority of the Russian military apparatus. In 2014 they simply occupied Crimea and two Russian-speaking parts of Eastern Ukraine. Then, more recently, Putin came to the conclusion that Ukraine had no right to be an independent country. He decided to invade Ukraine by land, sea and air, and that’s the situation today.
There are of course many similarities between the invasion of Hungary and of Ukraine. It could fill several good-sized books. I mentioned some above. In what follows I only want to add the reaction of the United Nations. Then and now, the Security Council could not pass a valid resolution because it was vetoed by Russia. Then the resolution was put in front of the General Assembly. In 1956 It was accepted by fifty countries with eight against it.
Let us recall the exact verbs used in some of those resolutions. In November 1956 the General Assembly:
Calls upon the government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to desist forthwith from all attack on the people of Hungary and from any form of intervention, in particular armed intervention, in the internal affairs of Hungary.
Calls upon the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to cease the introduction of additional armed sources into Hungary and to withdraw all of it forces without delay from Hungarian territory.
Affirms the right of the Hungarian people to a government responsive to its national aspirations and dedicated to its independence and well-being.
Requests all members of the United Nations and invites national and international humanitarian organisations to cooperate in making available such supplies as may be required by the Hungarian people.
The resolutions accepted for Ukraine in 2022 sound similar. The General Assembly:
Reaffirms its commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders.
Deplores in the strongest terms the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine in violation of Article 2(4) of the Charter.
Demands that the Russian Federation immediately cease its use of force against Ukraine and to refrain from any further unlawful threat or use of force against any Member State.
Demands all parties to facilitate rapid, safe and unhindered access to humanitarian assistance for those in need in Ukraine and to respect human rights.
In 1956, fifty member states were in favour with eight against it. They were Albania, Bulgaria, Belorussia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union and Ukraine. They were all Communist states at the time. Had any of them voted against it they would have shared the fate of Hungary.
By 2022 the UN had many more member states. Out of 193 as many as 141 voted for the resolution. Five voted against it, thirty-five abstained. Those voting against it were failed states like Eritrea, Syria and North Korea. Belarus was also among them, a co-invader. Among those who abstained was China. I suppose it is a good result. China could have voted against the resolution to strengthen the position of Putin, their comrade-in-dictatorship. Some reason for rejoicing is that the ex-Soviet states Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan had the courage not to vote against the resolution.
However, the abstentions of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are greatly worrying. Can’t they recognise an invasion when it is happening right in front of their noses? The likelihood is that they will accommodate Russia as soon as some opportunity presents itself. To accept cut-price Russian gas and oil might be too much of a temptation.
So will that UN resolution stop Russian aggression? I think it will be about as effective in maintaining peace as was the resolution of the League of Nations against Germany after the remilitarisation of the Rhineland in 1936.
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