On Oct. 23, 1956, students in Hungary conducted a large protest march in Budapest, demanding that the current communist regime of Matayas Rakosi be removed, that Soviet troops be withdrawn from the country, and that a new government led by communist reformer Imre Nagy institute economic reforms and guarantee political freedom. Similar protests had occurred earlier that year in Poland. And that same year, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had denounced Stalin in a “secret” speech at the Party Congress. In 1956, the foundations of the Soviet empire were shaking.
The protests in Hungary grew and stayed peaceful until Oct. 25 when the communist regime, assisted by Soviet troops, cracked down with armed force. But protesters pulled down Stalin’s statue in Budapest and removed Soviet flags and “red stars” from buildings. Radio Free Europe broadcasts encouraged the rebels. President Dwight Eisenhower issued a statement on Oct. 25 deploring intervention by Soviet troops and opining that the developments in Hungary showed the “intense desire for freedom” by the Hungarian people. The rebels were initially successful. Soviet forces began to withdraw on October 28th. A new reform-minded government under Prime Minister Nagy took power. It appeared as if Hungary would possibly be the spark that ignited full-scale rebellion throughout the Soviet’s satellite empire in Eastern Europe.
The Eisenhower administration, which had called for “rolling back” the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe, however, did nothing substantive to aid the rebels or the new government, and on November 4, 1956, Soviet forces massively intervened and forcibly crushed the rebellion. Nagy and other officials who supported the rebellion were summarily tried and executed by the Soviet-installed regime of Janos Kadar.
Burnham supported liberation, not containment
The American political philosopher and former CIA consultant James Burnham had been the most vocal proponent of replacing the Truman administration’s policy of containment with a policy of “Liberation”--meaning that the United States should formulate and implement measures designed to unravel the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe. Burnham proposed this policy in three post-World War II books -- "The Struggle for the World" (1947), "The Coming Defeat of Communism" (1949), and "Containment or Liberation?" (1952) -- and numerous articles in National Review. A few months before the Hungarian uprising, Burnham wrote that there was “a rustle among the intellectuals, especially the younger intellectuals and students” in Poland and Hungary.
“Students,” Burnham wrote, “began calling for more academic freedom” and the “right to organize non-Party student groups.” Intellectuals advocated for the “freedom . . . to put forward views that oppose the official [Party] line.” Burnham noted that there was criticism of central planning of the economy and calls for allowing “supply and demand” to determine prices for goods.
Burnham sensed that the seeds of political reform within the Soviet empire were being planted with a goal “to acquire more independence from the Soviet Union.” Burnham suggested that Moscow was debating whether to “smash this potential threat head-on” or to make concessions to stave-off rebellion.
Then, a few days before the students took to the streets in Hungary, Burnham wrote that “changes -- momentous changes -- are going on within the Soviet Empire.” “Polish society,” he wrote, “is in seething ferment, and . . . its totalitarian political structure shows wider cracks than have ever before appeared in a communist-ruled nation.” The West, Burnham wrote, needs “to help keep the ferment going.”
The United States, he wrote, should inform the communist satellite regimes that it would supply “immediate, massive help in all relevant forms” if they “move[d] seriously from Moscow’s political control and communism’s social structure.”
Burnham thought the spark that could ignite the satellite rebellion would occur in Poland in 1956 (instead that happened 25 years later). In 1956, it was Hungary that led the way to undermining Soviet power in Eastern Europe. And when the Hungarian uprising was crushed by Soviet forces Burnham formulated what he called the “Two-Zone Doctrine” that he believed resulted from U.S. adherence to the policy of containment.
Burnham's 'two-zone' doctrine
Soviet and American conduct, Burnham wrote, acted according to the doctrine of the two zones: the Zone of Peace and the Zone of War. “The ‘zone of peace,’” Burnham explained, “corresponds to the acreage already brought under communist rule, and is off-limits to disturbers [who will] be crushed by all necessary means.” “The ‘zone of war,’” Burnham continued, “is the acreage still free from communist rule,” and within that zone disturbers are “progressive” and welcome. The Soviets, therefore, can advance their world revolution in the zone of war, but it is impermissible for the United States to intervene in the zone of peace under communist control.
Containment dictated that once a country or region came under Soviet/communist control it had to stay that way. That was the lesson of Hungary. That was the lesson of Korea and Vietnam. That was the lesson of the Czech uprising of 1968. That was the message of the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine. That is why, Burnham wrote, containment could only result in a Soviet victory in the Cold War.
The United States and the West achieved victory in the Cold War when in the 1980s the Reagan administration moved beyond containment and implemented policies to undermine Soviet rule in Eastern Europe. Reagan’s policies forced a new generation of leaders led by Mikhail Gorbachev to abandon the Two Zone Doctrine, and when the citizens of the nations of Eastern Europe rebelled in the late 1980s, Soviet forces did nothing. Whether or not different, more offensive U.S. policies in 1956--as advocated by Burnham--could have undermined Soviet rule then is one of the “what ifs” of history.