Two Solutions to a Problem
The Soviet Union and 1956 in Poland and Hungary
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Fifty years after the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Moscow’s decisions to grant the people’s democracies in Hungary and Poland two very different degrees of leeway for their social development in the critical year 1956, the Soviet leadership’s options for action deserve to be reconsidered. Made within a few days, the decisions to meet the challenges to the system in Poland and Hungary with political pressure and military force respectively were open right up to the end. They revealed the deep sense of unease produced by de-Stalinisation.
(Osteuropa 5/2006, pp. 87–98)