A Successful Hungarian Revolution And / Prague Spring?

What are the implications of non-Soviet direct interference in both of these events and I will throw in no murders at the workers' demonstrations in the GDR in the 50s also! Can we have Dubcez's 'Communism With A Human Face?
 
What are the implications of non-Soviet direct interference in both of these events and I will throw in no murders at the workers' demonstrations in the GDR in the 50s also! Can we have Dubcez's 'Communism With A Human Face?

The Soviets pretty much have to intervene, otherwise they'll lose the Eastern Bloc to at best Finnish or Austrian-style neutrality. I don't know what you'd have to do to cause the Soviets to stay out, it'd take mass paralysis in Moscow and the army.

The real danger (for Moscow) is that the USSR would itself catch the reformist disease if it was allowed to spread and sink in among the East Bloc nations, and thus suffer social disorder, revolt, or revolution of its own. They might be willing to be somewhat softer than Stalin, but that isn't a risk the Soviet leadership was prepared to accept.

Now, if you presume that the Soviets simply delay too long in crushing Hungary or the Prague Spring, they'll probably be forced to do all the heavy lifting themselves, and likely face organized military resistance. I say that they'd have to do it alone because the hesitation would probably prompt similar disorder elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc, and cause defection of the Hungarian or Czechoslovak military to the revolutionary/reformist government. That means that either they need to have the other Warsaw Pact armies at home to enforce security, or that they're too unreliable to use for such suppression.

Either way, it comes down to Soviet invasion and (re-)occupation once Moscow gets over whatever prevented a quick response. That said, it'd mean fierce, bloody urban battles for the Soviet army that would very, very badly weaken the USSR's image abroad and its diplomatic position as a supporter of various nationalists or liberation.

It also ensures a very serious sapping of Soviet combat power over the long term. They won't trust the communist governments in the Warsaw Pact, and will probably devote quite non-trivial forces to remain within them in order to quickly react to future uprisings and remind their "allies" where their loyalties should lie. Soviet planning also won't be reliant on non-Soviet Pact forces in the event of a hot war, even as second/third-line forces or occupation units.

Soviet hesitation in response to reformists or revolution in the Eastern Bloc forces them into losing decisions, no matter what. But you can be sure that whatever they decide to do, it will be to preserve the Soviet system and the power of the Communist Party government. And they won't be squeamish about it.
 

yourworstnightmare

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During the Prague spring the Polish and Hungarian leaders pretty much begged the Soviets to intervene, fearing it would spread to them.
 
A possibility I've always wondered about is whether Tito might intervene against the Soviets.

Assuming Tito did that, at the very least the Yugoslav army is going home with its tail between its legs, being firmly spanked. I don't know if the Soviets are going to want to try to invade Yugoslavia proper due to the effort involved and the possibility of pissing off the West, but the USSR is much more powerful and Tito is already on the bad-list for not being properly submissive to the One True Communist State.

(According to "We Know Now" by Gaddis, "socialism in one country" meant the USSR wanted to control all the international Communist movements. Hence the Sino-Soviet split, the issues with Yugoslavia, etc. A lot of Communist movements weren't going to put up with that unless they had the Red Army somewhere sensitive or really, really needed the help.)

Now, if Tito provides a sufficient distraction so that the Hungarian rebels can get properly organized a la Tyg, perhaps some kind of deal can be worked out. IIRC the Hungarian rebels were syndicalists or some other form of leftists (the Soviet crap about "black reactionaries" and "the landlord" notwithstanding), so they might be ideologically tolerable.

I think some recently-released information states the Soviets would have backed down if the West tried to defend Hungary, so they weren't *that* obsessive about that particular country.
 
Tito wasn't nearly stupid enough to get involved in something like that. If anything, he might want the Soviets to succeed, since Yugoslavia's position depends on a stable USSR/NATO balance of power. He might help the Soviets-quietly.

Tito strikes me as a lot like Franco-knowing where his limitations are.
 
A possibility I've always wondered about is whether Tito might intervene against the Soviets.

Tito would be pushing it to even say a kind word about the revolutionaries, if he intervened his days would be numbered, as would those of his regime.

OT: The Prague Spring is more likely off-hand than the Hungarian Revolution to be successful, the Soviets were NEVER going to accept anyone withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact and they didn't like the reform communism preached by Nagy or Dubeck respectively. However if we want to butterfly around slightly more hardline views of such movements in the Kremlin we could work with a more liberal Brezhnev willing to let Dubeck change Czechoslovakia, the KGB would be watching him like a hawk but it could work, again, you'd have to butterfly a good deal of Soviet policies on the Eastern bloc though.
 
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On top of Soviet hesitancy, change the timing of the Suez Crisis. If the west isn't so worried about Soviet intervention in Egypt they'll be more willing to assist the Hungarians. I wouldn't expect that help to amount to much in most cases, but almost by definition it would be greater than in OTL.
 
On top of Soviet hesitancy, change the timing of the Suez Crisis. If the west isn't so worried about Soviet intervention in Egypt they'll be more willing to assist the Hungarians. I wouldn't expect that help to amount to much in most cases, but almost by definition it would be greater than in OTL.

The Suez Crisis gave the Soviets the cover they needed to stomp the Hungarians--troop movements could be disguised as "responses to Suez," the Soviet soldiers were told they were being shipped to Egypt, etc.

No Suez Crisis and things will get trickier for the Soviets.
 
The Suez Crisis gave the Soviets the cover they needed to stomp the Hungarians--troop movements could be disguised as "responses to Suez," the Soviet soldiers were told they were being shipped to Egypt, etc.

No Suez Crisis and things will get trickier for the Soviets.

This is probably the best way to go about the OP, but I think the end result is likely to be the same even so.

That said, let's presuppose no Suez Crisis. The West isn't going to go to war over Hungary, but what will it do instead? Giving the USSR the diplomatic equivalent of a broken nose and black eye is a given, but that alone probably wouldn't stop Moscow from ordering its invasion.
 
That said, let's presuppose no Suez Crisis. The West isn't going to go to war over Hungary, but what will it do instead? Giving the USSR the diplomatic equivalent of a broken nose and black eye is a given, but that alone probably wouldn't stop Moscow from ordering its invasion.

Covert arms shipments, perhaps?

I'm sure there's a lot of captured German gear that just happened to be leftover from the war that the Hungarian insurgents just happened to get.

(Wink, wink.)

The West might try to bluff the Soviets or suggest some kind of arrangement where Hungary is allowed out of the Pact but isn't allowed a military, so it isn't threatening to the Soviets, and is neutral like Austria.

(Assuming the Warsaw Pact was really about establishing a buffer rather than ideological expansionism or Russian-imperialism-in-different clothing, they shouldn't have a problem with that.)
 
Covert arms shipments, perhaps?

I'm sure there's a lot of captured German gear that just happened to be leftover from the war that the Hungarian insurgents just happened to get.

(Wink, wink.)

That seems a likely course of action. Though those arms shipments that the West just happened to be totally unaware of, and shall of course look into, would have to go through Austria or Yugoslavia

While the West might want to pull something like that, Tito might be unwilling to play along. Though perhaps he could be appropriately compensated in a few deals or arrangements that of course have no relationship to the situation in Hungary. Not sure about Austria at the time.

The West might try to bluff the Soviets or suggest some kind of arrangement where Hungary is allowed out of the Pact but isn't allowed a military, so it isn't threatening to the Soviets, and is neutral like Austria.

(Assuming the Warsaw Pact was really about establishing a buffer rather than ideological expansionism or Russian-imperialism-in-different clothing, they shouldn't have a problem with that.)

I think it's too late for that sort of deal, for a number of reasons. As a matter purely of realpolitik, it signals (without even a figleaf) that the USSR does not have willing allies in Europe, raising difficult questions regarding the rest of the Warsaw Pact. Further, it opens the question of why the USSR should have a buffer zone at all; if the Hungarian withdrawal is a matter of respecting national sovereignty, why should Soviet indigestion over the matter affect other choices, like the reunification of Germany? Or a "neutralized" Hungary or Czechoslovakia deciding to join NATO?

Aside from that, the ideological implications are deeply problematic for the USSR's position. While it could gain credibility with national liberation movements, it suggests that Communism is not an irreversible choice. It suggests that the USSR does not advance the "best" path of 'scientific socialism'. And worst of all, it suggests that the Soviets are not committed to defending the idea of 'the revolution', meaning that if a nation's government becomes held or controlled by communist parties or movements supported by the USSR, the Soviets would not safeguard them against counter-revolution; perhaps not even against the West.

The USSR could only justify its actions and policies abroad and at home through ideological reasoning. It was founded precisely to uphold its marxist-leninist ideology at home and abroad, it was a nation-state with a purpose. Undermining that by suggesting that communism might not be so permanent or the revolution so irrevocable presents the problems Gorbachev faced as the Eastern Bloc fell apart in the late '80s. If not for the ideology of Soviet communism, why should the disparate peoples of that union stay together under the communist system?

I just don't see the USSR's leadership of the mid '50s lacking the confidence or the determination to avoid those nagging questions and problems entirely by blaming the situation in Hungary on foreign (Western) agents-provocateurs and dead-end fascists. The USSR has no problem accepting the idea that the people of a country can be "misled" by propaganda or misinformation.

In sum, I think even in this case that the Soviets will invade, as they will (correctly, in my view) believe that the diplomatic and PR damage of the invasion and occupation will be less than letting Hungary go. I'm sure there's a reasonable counter-argument to that, I just don't see it myself.
 
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