Wrath of the Half-Blood Prince. Going to read Lord of the Werewolves after I finish Decades of Darkness.
Sam R., nothing about the USSR backing down? I believe you, just wonder what information waylaid myself.
Yeah, I know that feeling, when something you're certain of turns out to be wrong.
Try Békés here: http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/icas/Bekes.pdf
p10ff
In particular 13
For example, Mikoyan on the 23rd, "Mikoyan, who was most familiar with the Hungarian situation, clearly outlined the alternative solution: “Without Imre Nagy they can’t get control of the movement, and it’s also cheaper for us. (...) What are we losing? The Hungarians themselves will restore order on their own. We should try political measures, and only then send troops.”" (13)
Békés' opinion "It is therefore not too farfetched to say that in handling the crises of East-Central Europe between 1953 and 1981, 23 October 1956 was the only occasion when the Soviet leadership made a totally wrong decision — considering their own imperial interests — which resulted in a situation directly opposed to their original intention. At the same time, it means that the invasion of 4 November, 1956 was a logical and unavoidable consequence of a principally wrong political decision. " (14)
Békés is a liberal democratic academic, and he seriously underplays the socialist content of the democratic forces (and, to my memory—fallible as it is—repeatedly underestimated the role of the workers councils).
For Békés, the best outcome imaginable is, "In my opinion, the lost historical chance of 1956 - if there was any - can be defined as follows: had the Imre Nagy government been able to miraculously stop the democratic process, which spread with an extraordinary rapidity, the Soviet leadership would have been willing to withdraw their troops from the country, making a compromise more significant than in the resolution of the Polish crisis, where this possibility was not even mentioned seriously. It means that Moscow was ready to grant the privilege of relative internal and external independence at the same time to one particular satellite country, that is Hungary. Khrushchev and his colleagues were leaning towards such a complex concession in the critical situation, which the Soviet authorities would never again accept in the following decades. The relatively independent internal and foreign policy in any allied country was considered too dangerous from the point of view of imperial interests." (18)
I personally disagree. Had Nagy taken up an analysis of Leninism after his 1955 dismissal, as encouraged by heterodox reformist thinkers at the time, and generated a capacity to act as a real revolutionary; and, had Maleter not given himself over into the hands of the Soviet Union on 3/4 November; then, an extended intervention where the Hungarian Army follows through on the neutralisation of Hungary by opposing Soviet Intervention could have brought the PC/CC of the Soviet Union to a position where they would have set a halt line and commenced negotiations with Nagy.
This does mean some horrifically brutal urban street fighting, it also means that Zhukov gets a massive "I told you so" about the loss rates in the PC.
For any of this to result in success means that the Anti-Party bloc needs to be forcibly retired in late November.
Then, of course, it all gets more bizarre.
* * *
The best solution for the Hungarian working class is that when Rakosi is forcibly retired over his kill list, that Nagy is appointed directly. This cuts off the Hungarian working classes' belief in its own capacity to force social change before it starts. DISZ is never dissolved. The Petofi society transforms into a claque for Nagy after a few meetings where "respectable" HWPP reformists tell off the workers' education movement communists. Kind of a combination of Gomulka's Poland with features of Kadar's historical de-Stalinisation of the HSWP between 1956–1963.
Of course, this isn't a socialist revolution for workers democracy through councils; but, then again, it isn't a failed socialist revolution for workers democracy through councils crushed by Soviet artillery bombardments, mass arrests, strike breaking, six months of guerilla war in the countryside, mass refugee flights and the workers of Red Csepel setting their own streets on fire to try to hold off Soviet soldiers.
The only way to get to the triumph of the Hungarian Revolution is through either a soft 23 October, as Békés mentions; or, a very very hard fought 3/4 November. Even with a soft 23 October, the workers councils, MEFESZ, Petofi societies, and the Writers Union have already formed a position behind workers councils. (First industrial worker's council was formed on 22 October). Even if Nagy seems to have a lid on multi-party democracy and remaining in the Warsaw pact because of a lack of a Soviet Intervention on 23 October; the PC is not going to be happy about the workers councils, and, my opinion of the historical Nagy is that he doesn't have the balls to surround Soviet divisions with Hungarian Divisions similar to what Gomulka did in Poland.
yours,
Sam R.