The First Domino: International Decision Making during the Hungarian Crisis of 1956 by Johanna C. s> Granville (review)

Abstract

150 SEER, 83, I, 2005 Rhodes's finest asset is having an eye to a good quotation, be it Trotskii's surprisinglyaccuratepredictionin 1933 of thewar of brutalconquest thatwas to come, or a Himmler memorandum from December I941 ordering a comradely evening to rebuild the spirit of brutalized perpetrators, or the survivorof a mass Riga shooting, FridaMichelson, playing dead under a pile of shoes and hearing the apres-shooting chat of Latvian auxiliaries:"'Let's have a smoke"; "A fine performance"; "It was very efficiently organized"; "They have experience"' and, of course, '"I hope we get our cut of the booty".' If this is not a book to offermajornew insights,it is repletewith good observationsand telling aperSus. Department ofHistoy MARK ROSEMAN IndianaUniversity Granville,Johanna C. TheFirstDomino: International Decision Makingduring the HungarianCrisisof I956. Eastern European Studies, 26. Texas A&M UniversityPress,College Station,TX, 2004. xx + 323 pp. Abbreviations. Notes. Bibliography.Index. ?35.50? WHEN it comes to Hungarian history, the English reader is seldom spoilt for choice. The thirteen days of the 1956 revolution representperhaps the only period in the troubled past of the Magyars to have inspired an enduring historical interest in the Anglo-Saxon world. In many British academic libraries, musty yellowed volumes on the I956 crisis take up much of the meagre shelfspace devoted to Hungarian history.This is a poor reflectionon the country's historical prominence, yet the significance of 1956 is beyond dispute. After all, Hungarian scholarsrecently went so far as to describe the 'Magyar October' as the 'greatest challenge to the Soviet empire', one that shatteredthe myth of Moscow's total control in EasternEurope and signalled the 'failureof Soviet-stylesocialism'.The Hungarianrevolutionis also saidto have led to the ultimate, if flawed, attempt to create a more human 'feasible socialism'duringthe late Kadairyears. Such grandioseclaims aside, the 1956 revolutionwas undeniably a momentous event, in which Budapest,for once, occupied centre stage in world affairs.Yet the English historicalliteratureon this unique chapter in Hungarian history has so far made little use of key documents declassified since the early I990s. Despite the opening of the Hungarian, Soviet and otherEastEuropeanarchives,only a few editedbooks, a study on the political legacy of I956, and a document collection have been added to the voluminous English historiographydating from the Cold War. Although some of the more significantfindingshave alreadybeen published in academic journals, Johanna Granville's monograph is the first book in Englishcomprehensivelyto coverboth the domesticand foreignpolicy aspects of the 1956 revolutionusingthe newly availablearchivalmaterial. Inevitably, this work relies heavily on contemporary Hungarian and Russian secondary sources. Even so, the American author quotes extensively from a variety of primary sources, especially Russian ones. The notes of the secret emergency sessions of the Soviet Presidiumbetween 23 October and REVIEWS I51 4 November, taken by Vladimir Malin, are cited particularly frequently. Although this important set of documents contains no verbatim minutes, and the notes of the crucial proceedings on 31 October are so compressed as to be virtually inscrutable, the records effectively dispel any preconceptions about unanimous Soviet deliberations. In her original treatment of the Hungarian crisis as a case study of 'regime confusion', Granville argues convincingly that 'Homosoveticus[sic] waffled just like his Western counterpart' (p. 69). Using the Malin notes, she illustrates the flaws in Soviet information-gathering and decision-making. She also debunks the tired thesis that the Hungarians harboured unrealistic ambitions, which made a Soviet intervention inevitable. Indeed, the documents leave no doubt that Imre Nagy decided to remove Hungary from the Warsaw Pact only after the Soviet leaders opted to launch a second invasion. These new archival sources, however, provide less satisfactory answers to the question of what caused the sudden U-turn in the Soviet leadership's stance towards Hungary on 3 I October, only twenty-four hours after it had contemplated troop withdrawal and a relaxation of Moscow's control over the client states. It is also unclear how far anti-Russian outbursts and the rapid political transformation in Hungary contributed to Soviet militancy. We now have a better appreciation of the confusion and mistrust that permeated the Kremlin; the fundamental misperceptions of the Soviet leadership; and the misinformation that emanated from Andropov and his staff at the Soviet embassy. There...