INSIDE EUROPE
THIS WE SWEAR, THIS WE SWEAR, THAT WE WILL NO LONGER BE SLAVES
62 ND ANNIVERSARY OF THE UPRISE OF
HUNGARIAN PEOPLE AGAINST LIMITATION
OF THEIR SOVEREIGNTY
BY RALF ROTH*
R
ussian tanks, protesters trying to bloc streets, several
weeks of fights between the troops of a super
power and spontaneous resistance of people against
supression, economic decline and the acceptance of a divided
Europe between an East and a West while demanding the
freedom to leave the Eastern bloc, i. e. the Warsaw Pact.
This uprise was part of the Cold War that was always on the
edge becoming a hot nuclear devasting super hot war. In this
respect the uprise stood in close relationship with two other
crisis of the global order after World War Two. This was the
defeat of the French colonial power in Điện Biên Phủ and
the Suez Crisis. Both crises showed the weakness of two
empires still dominat at the beginning of the 20th century.
The outcome of both clashes demonstrated the shift of power
to the United States and to the Soviet Union. But at the same
time their conspicious limitation of military and political
strength came to light.
They could not reach out and integrate the Republic of
India in one of these two worlds. Moreover, fi rst signs of
erosion forced both powers to unpopular measurements.
The United States substituted France as Western power in
Indochina followed by 20 years of a dirty war. And the Soviet
Union were confronted with serious resistance against its
dominance in the Eastern bloc which was then intensifi ed in
the 1960s with the division of the camp of socialist countries,
i. e. the break of Soviet Union and VR China in the debate
about the general orientation of world revolution in 1963.
Nothing else showed more clearly the problems Russia had
to continue the hegemonie of one sixth of the world.
We have to see the uprise of Hungary in 1956 in the
context of this broader panorama. It was a homemade
crisis, the reason came more or less from the interior of
the Eastern bloc. At the end it had its origion in irritations
about consolidation of power after Stalin´s death in 1953.
20 • Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Diplomatist • Vol 6 • Issue 10 • Oct-Nov 2018, Noida