History: An Echo from the Past

By OTTO FRIEDRICH. Research by Val Castronovo

War breaks out in the Middle East as the Western powers attack an ambitious Arab dictator. The Soviet Union, threatened by revolution within its empire, takes advantage of the Middle East crisis to crush the rebellion. No, that was not just last week's news in the Persian Gulf and the Baltics; it was what happened during one tragic week late in 1956.

Then, as now, all of Eastern Europe was in a state of nationalist turmoil. Only three years after the death of Joseph Stalin, Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev was trying to reform the brutal dictatorship that Stalin created, but each attempt at change triggered new disturbances. Khrushchev stunned the Communist Party Congress that February by his secret speech acknowledging for the first time Stalin's myriad crimes. That speech strengthened anti-Soviet dissidents throughout Eastern Europe.

When some 200,000 Budapest students and workers marched to the parliament building on Kossuth Square on Oct. 23, they had no thought of overthrowing the Communist regime. They wanted mainly to petition the leadership for various reforms, including the return to power of a moderate Communist leader, Imre Nagy. Party Secretary Erno Gero scornfully rejected their pleas and called them "enemies of the people." The demonstrators then paraded to the main broadcasting station to put their case on the air. Security police opened fire, but Hungarian army reinforcements balked.

Many soldiers joined the students or handed over their weapons. Two Soviet mechanized divisions stationed outside Budapest rumbled into the city and were met by sniper fire and Molotov cocktails. The unimaginable was happening: for the first time in history, a Soviet satellite state was succeeding in open, armed revolt.

The Soviets agreed to turn over the premiership to Nagy, a walrus- mustachioed intellectual; the hated Gero was replaced by Janos Kadar. Nagy tried to slow the revolution, but the street crowds kept applying pressure. He agreed to take noncommunists into his government. Going further, he formally asked the Soviets to leave, announced Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact and asked the U.N. to guarantee his country's neutrality. On Oct. 29, it was announced that the Soviets had begun withdrawing from Budapest.

That same day, Israel invaded Egypt.

At the center of this rival crisis stood Egypt's charismatic President Gamal Abdel Nasser, who had seized power in 1952 and had vowed to unite the Arab world under his leadership. The Soviets encouraged him with arms and money. U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles retaliated by canceling his promise to help finance the Aswan High Dam, which Nasser hoped would harness the Nile. Nasser struck back in July 1956 by seizing the Suez Canal, still legally owned by the Franco-British Suez Canal Co.

While Dulles engaged in protracted legal and diplomatic maneuvers to restrain Nasser, the British, French and Israelis -- who all regarded Nasser as a "new Hitler" -- formed a secret alliance to attack him. After the Israelis marched across the Sinai Desert, the supposedly neutral British and French said they had to protect the canal and sent in paratroops on Nov. 5.

That was just one day after the withdrawing Soviet tanks turned around and rolled back into Budapest. Soviet commanders claimed they were doing so at the request of Kadar, who was actually hiding in a Soviet command post outside the city. Nagy took refuge in the Yugoslav embassy but was later lured out, seized and hanged. After about a month of sporadic fighting, the Hungarian revolt was liquidated.

So was the attack on the Suez Canal. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Dulles, feeling betrayed by their allies, insisted that the invaders withdraw. So did the Soviets, who threatened to intervene on Egypt's side. The invaders gave in. Within two months, Nasser had his canal back, for which he ultimately paid $81 million.

Did the Suez attack encourage or enable the Soviets to crush Hungary? In his memoirs, Khrushchev talks of defending Hungary from "counterrevolution," but he more candidly told an ally that he had to act, or the West "will say we are either stupid or soft." But would he actually have done it if the West had not been divided and distracted by the Suez events? Or to put it another way, what did Mikhail Gorbachev last week consider to be the lessons of 1956, and how do they apply to the Baltic states' demands for independence?