1956 and what it still means for European memory

In October 1956, Hungarians rose against Soviet occupation in what remains one of the most remarkable popular uprisings of the twentieth century. For twelve days, a revolution that had begun with students and factory workers controlled Budapest. Then the tanks came.

The suppression of the Hungarian revolution is well documented. What is less often examined is what the West did — and, more importantly, what it did not do — in those twelve days.

Radio Free Europe, funded by the CIA and broadcasting in Hungarian, had spent years encouraging Eastern Europeans to resist Soviet domination. When the moment of actual resistance came, the United States government decided, correctly from a strategic standpoint, that direct intervention risked nuclear war. The broadcasts that had implied support did not translate into action.

Two hundred thousand Hungarians fled in the months that followed. They were received, for the most part, with genuine generosity by Western European countries. Austria processed over one hundred and seventy thousand refugees in a matter of weeks — an organisational achievement that has received far less attention than it deserves.

What interests me most about 1956 is not the heroism of the revolutionaries — which was real and deserves commemoration — but the lesson it taught about the limits of Western solidarity. The lesson was learned, in different ways, by Eastern Europeans and Western Europeans, and the two lessons were not the same.

The West learned that words are cheaper than actions. Eastern Europe learned something darker: that it might, in the end, be on its own.