Description
Why did Hungary's Communist regime, backed by seemingly impregnable power, succumb almost immediately to an uprising of popular forces in October 1956? Does this successful revolt (successful in the sense that it could be overthrown only by Soviet military intervention) have any implications for the future of other Communist satellites? Specifically, are there factors of political instability that can be said to be inherent in all Communist regimes - indeed in totalitarian governments in general? A number of clear and convincing answers to these questions are offered in this study of how Hungary upset the longstanding myth that successful mass revolution was impossible in a totalitarian police state.
The record of dictatorial rule not only in the Soviet Union but in Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany generally seemed to indicate the impossibility of even the mildest manifestations of anti-regime feelings, let alone of large-scale revolt. The political history of the smaller Central European states that had been turned into satellites of the Soviet Union seemed to furnish additional proof of this thesis, since in each of these countries the Communists represented only a small and unpopular minority. Yet massive police power eventually gave them uncontested dominance.
An analysis of the impact of totalitarianism upon the various social groups in Hungary - Communist intellectuals, non-Party intelligentsia, workers, peasants, and students - yields many of the reasons why the Hungarian revolt ellite countries failed. A savage intra-Party purge, carried out between 1949 and 1951, seemingly established the unchallenged supremacy of the Stalinist leader, Mâtyâs Râkosi. After Stalin's death, however, disruptive tendencies began to manifest themselves, with the new leadership in Moscow playing off one Hungarian Communist faction against another.
In the concluding chapters the events in Hungary are compared with the milder uprisings that occurred in several other European satellite countries between 1953 and 1956, and some general observations are made concerning the conditions under which revolution may break out in states where political power is highly centralized.
Mr. Kecskemeti is a Senior Research Associate of The RAND Corporation, and the author of Strategic Surrender (Stanford, 1958)
This is a reproduction edition from a scanned copy of the following original edition:
Title The unexpected revolution: social forces in the Hungarian uprising
Rand Research, The Rand Corporation
Author Paul Kecskemeti
Publisher Stanford University Press, 1961
Length 178 pages
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