As the Cold War matured and as the Soviets tried to maintain their position in Eastern Europe, the USSR had to commit all its efforts to the maintenance of its systematic powers.
The Soviet Union was committed to weakening and ultimately destroying the ‘capitalist world’, which they look upon as their opponent to this struggle for power. This assessment has been confirmed by the events, which have taken place in Hungary and the Middle East. The 1950’s were marked in the sphere of nuclear weapons and strategy, where the development of Soviet capabilities and the availability of new generations of tactical weapons created a series of pressures and incentives for American policy makers. These factors made themselves felt in Western Europe, through the American insistence that new types of weapons must be stationed there, although the new implications of a war fought with nuclear or (chemical) weapons on Western European soil were a source of much agonising by allied governments. Hence intervention by the West in the internal concerns of the USSR was not possible due to the fact the both possessed nuclear weapons.
The death of Stalin, as well as revolts and riots in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, kept the Soviets pre-occupied with one trouble spot after another. It is true that the doctrine of strategic encroachment – the acquisition of bases and allies on a global scale with the purpose of countering the policy of encirclement – had already been developed in Soviet military thinking.
The USSR took control of Albania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. These satellites were known as Soviet ‘satellites’, because although not part of the USSR, their politics and policies were strongly influenced by the Soviet Union. After the war ended, the USSR demanded to keep the satellite countries as a ‘buffer zone’ from Germany, which destroyed many of the Soviet Unions cities during World War II. Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union during and at the end of World War II, believed that having Eastern Europe between the USSR and Germany would keep the USSR safe and intact.
The role of a ‘buffer zone’ in Soviet political and military thinking is straightforward. Politically the zone in Eastern Europe protects the Soviet Union from direct territorial contact with non-communist countries, and helps to fulfil the ideological requirements of the Soviet Communist Party in its relationship with neighbouring states. Control of Eastern Europe also enables the Russians to utilise the military manpower and skills of the East European countries. The Warsaw Pact was the machinery set up to achieve this goal. From its inception the Warsaw Pact was expected to play a role in maintaining Soviet influences in Eastern Europe. It was meant to legitimate that influence and to provide another institutional mechanism through which it could be exercised. Roman Kolkowicz described the pact as “an entangling alliance by which the Soviet leaders seek to enmesh their frequently unwilling allies in the web of Soviet national interests’.
Contrary to the Warsaw Pact, the United States embraced a policy of virtually permanent involvement in European affairs, symbolised politically by the Truman Doctrine, economically by the European Recovery Programme (the Marshall Plan), and militarily by NATO, and the assignment of American divisions to Europe in peacetime. The strategy adopted by the United States and its NATO allies was containment, to ensure that Soviet powers would not extend beyond the limits it had reached.
The situation in Hungary and Poland was pressing because in 1953, Joseph Stalin died. Since there were no elections or line of succession in the communist USSR, there was an intense power struggle. Finally emerging was Nikita Khrushchev; he allowed the satellite countries to have more freedoms and power. The power, however, only increased Hungary’s desire for complete freedom. Due to Stalin’s death, there was a wave of protests and strikes originating in Eastern Germany and going through to Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. Hungary took its protests to the next level within the next couple of years. Khrushchev did not want to accept any changes in Poland and Gomulka’s return to authority. However he changed his mind because of Gomulka’s persuasions, who assured him that the authority would be still in communist’s hands, provided that there would be a reform of political administration.
Gomulka put the emphasis on necessity of being on good terms with the USSR but at the same time he stressed the necessity to base them on new principles. The most important aspect was the independence of Poland and creation of new relations with the USSR. The purpose of Gomulka and his team was to continue to build the socialist system in Poland. PZPR was to be based on so-called principles of democratic centralism, which could widen the sphere of people’s laws. However this system had to be different from the one Western country had. On October 20th 1956 during the meeting of KC PZPR, in his program speech Gomulka said that the highlight authority in Poland would be ‘proletariat dictatorship’.
Thus it is prevalent that Khrushchev was justified in fearing that if Gomulka took control in Warsaw and removed the most orthodox (and pro-Soviet) members of the Polish leadership, Poland might then seek a more independent (i.e. Titoist) course in foreign policy. In a hastily arranged meeting with Gomulka and other Polish leaders, the CPSU delegates expressed anxiety about upcoming personnel changes in the PZPR and urged the Poles to strengthen their political, economic and military ties with the Soviet Union. A Western historian, Richard Hiscocks, suggests that another factor restraining Khrushchev from taking military action was the fear that armed conflict would spread to other East European Communist states. In his history of Soviet foreign policy, Adam Ulam concluded that on October 19 Khrushchev faced the prospect of another Russo-Polish war. According to Ulam, the problem raised by such a war was not that Poland could successfully resist, but that 25 million Poles could make the war last long enough to create uncertain repercussions in the West, in China and “even within the USSR”. If the events of October 18-23, 1956 do not prove that a rebel Communist leader can deter Soviet intervention by mobilising his nation for armed resistance, the Polish October at least suggests that the Soviets are more likely to accept protestations of ideological orthodoxy if the party leader under criticism has threatened to lead his nation in military resistance to a Soviet occupation.
Also following Stalin’s death, a man named Imre Nagy was appointed as the Hungarian premier. Nagy was a more moderate leader than the former premiers of Hungary and move towards reform. The people liked Nagy’s rule, but the slightest reform irritated Khrushchev and Nagy was thrown out of office. The Warsaw pact dragged Hungary even further into the USSR with the other eastern European countries when they all joined the pact for mutual defence.
The Soviet military intervention in Hungary 1956 was not aimed at overthrowing the leaders of an Eastern European Communist party. The Soviets did not send their troops in Hungary, into battle against a united Communist party defended by the nation’s regular armed forces and civilian volunteers. It is possible that the Soviets hoped that the Hungarian rebels would accept the Nagy government as their own and spare the Soviets the necessity of suppressing the Hungarian revolution with Soviet soldiers.
Nagy abolished the one party system so the new government was a coalition government called the National Peasant Party. He also demanded that the USSR take back their troops and he withdrew from the Warsaw Pact, making Hungary a neutral nation. He believed that by annoying Hungary’s resignation from the Warsaw Pact on the floor of the UN, he could solicit protection from the West, as well as deter Soviet military aggression. This move by Nagy greatly aggravated the USSR.
The issue of military intervention divided the Soviet President, because members did not want a confrontation with the West. If the Baltic States and Eastern European countries were lost, there was a fear that NATO would move in and upset the balance of power in Europe. The Soviet leadership completely reversed itself and decided to put a final, violent end to the rebellion. From declassified documents, it is now clear that several factors influenced their decision, including: the belief that the rebellion directly threatened Communist rule in Hungary (unlike the challenge posed by Wladyslaw Gomulka and the Polish Communists just days before, which had targeted Kremlin rule but not the Communist system); that the West would see a lack of response by Moscow as a sign of weakness, especially after the British, French and Israeli strike against Suez that had begun on October 29; that the spread of anti-Communist feelings in Hungary threatened the rule of neighbouring satellite leaders; and that members of the Soviet party would not understand a failure to respond with force in Hungary.
In Eastern Europe, the results of the review suggested once again that the United States should engage in a policy of ‘status quo plus’. While acknowledging that significant changes were taking place in Poland and Hungary, the review recognised that US policy towards Eastern Europe faced serious constraints. The United States should do nothing, which would give the Soviet Union a pre-text to re-establish its grip in Eastern Europe. Nor should they adopt policies, which would encourage nationalistic movements to rise in Eastern Europe. It was acknowledged that reform rather than revolution is the key to the continued loosening of the Soviet bloc. Accordingly, the review led the US to adopt a renewed policy of differentiation within Eastern Europe, encouraging political and economic reform in those countries where it was already occurring. U.S. officials observed the tidal wave of events with shock and no small degree of ambivalence as to how to respond. The main line of President Eisenhower's policy was to promote the independence of the so-called captive nations, but only over the longer-term. There is little doubt that he was deeply upset by the crushing of the revolt, and he was not deaf to public pressure or the emotional lobbying of activists within his own administration. But he had also determined that there was little the United States could do short of risking global war to help the rebels. And he was not prepared to go that far, nor even, for that matter, to jeopardize the atmosphere of improving relations with Moscow that had characterized the previous period
The US did not act out against the USSR when they took Eastern Europe because of the policy of Containment. The US planned on ‘containing’ Communism where it already was by not allowing it to spread, however they would not act on the existing communist nations. Kennan's cry for containing the Soviet's developed from the in which four months prior to the writing of the X article, Truman had underlined US general containment objectives when he described Soviet influence in Western Europe as expansionistic. The Truman administration implemented Kennan’s containment strategy very conscientiously for example his strategy was to promote the fracturing of the world communists movement. Because the administration had no intention of resisting communism worldwide, it began to adopt the term ‘totalitarian’ rather than ‘communist’. Another part of Kennan’s strategy had been to engineer changes in the Soviet perception of international relations, in order to persuade Russian leaders that they would be better served by learning to live with a diverse world than to remould it in their image, for example Hungary and Poland. Neither war nor appeasement was effective by itself. However Kennan regarded that the US’s administration moves between 1948-1950- the formation of NATO, the establishment of West German state, the decision to keep US troops in Japan after occupation ended, and the decision to build a hydrogen bomb – as guaranteed to increase Soviet suspiciousness and insecurity and consequently to reduce the opportunities for successful negotiations. The strident anti-communism of the Truman Doctrine touched a responsive chord and it transformed the doctrine of containment into a national crusade.
The justification of the US intervention in Korea and Vietnam is important in relation to the question. Lafeber in accord with McCormick argues that Truman relied on memories of Nazi appeasement, Japanese appeasement in Manchuria and now Appeasement of Stalin's expansionary aims would set off another world war and thus intervention was not necessary but self evident.
"US interests everywhere seemed to be at stake. For if Stalin and Kim won in Korea, Truman believed, the Soviets would hit more pivotal interests, especially Japan and Western Europe. The president reached these conclusions largely through his use of history."(American Age, 513)
Therefore the Truman Doctrine was applied in Korea and Vietnam but it was impossible for the USA to intervene and assist Hungary and Poland like they did with Korea and Vietnam, as they were the internal concerns of the USSR. Khrushchev already understood that the Soviet involvement in Hungary had damaged East and West relations especially when the World Press was now in the middle of the crisis. Once the USSR acquired nuclear weapons – four months after Hiroshima in the case of the atom bomb (1949), nine months after the USA in the case of the hydrogen bomb (1953) – both superpowers plainly abandoned war as an instrument of policy against one another, since it was the equivalent of a suicide pact. The United States scaled down its military significantly after World War II, and the Korean War just ended in 1953. The US was not ready to mobilise as quickly as needed for such a short conflict. Even if mobilization was fast, the time and distance to get there was not feasible or in the best interests of the US. The US was not interested in picking a fight with the USSR. The Cold War to the US was based on containment of communism, not actual head to head military battles between the super powers. Inadequate mobilisation from Western powers and the US lack of desire for confrontation with the USSR military, not to mention the possible threat of an eminent World War III because the two countries both possessed nuclear weapons, helped to ensure the Western powers stayed out of the crisis in Hungary and Poland.
Bibliography
1. Alan Blackwood, The Hungarian Uprising (Vero Beach: Rourke Enterprises, Inc., 1986), 29.
2. Nikita S Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, trans. Strobe Talbot (Boston: Little Brown and Company, Inc., 1970), 347.
3. Blackwood, Alan. The Hungarian Uprising. Vero Beach: Wayland Publishers, 1986.
4. Gaddis, John Lewis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War
5. Gaddis, John Lewis, Strategies of Containment, Oxford, 1982
6. Leffler, Melvyn P., The Spectre of Communism: The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1917-1953 (Hill and Wang, 1994)
7. Leffler, Melvyn P. and Davis S. Painter, eds., Origins of the Cold War: An International History (Routledge, 1994)
8. Jensen, 1991: K.M Jensen ed., Origins of the Cold War: The Novikov, Kennan and Roberts ’Long Telegrams’ of 1946, United States Institute of Peace (Washington 1991)
9. A.W. DePorte, Europe between the Superpowers, New Haven, Conn. And London, Yale University Press, 1986 (2nd edition).
A.W. DePorte, Europe between the Superpowers, New Haven, Conn. And London, Yale University Press, 1986 (2nd edition).
Adam B.Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence (New York: Praeger, 1968)