How to Help Hungary

Monday, Dec. 24, 1956

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A time of both opportunity and danger, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles called it last week. The opportunity presented by Poland and Hungary, Dulles told the NATO council in Paris, was to encourage what he called the prospective "disintegration" of the Soviet system. The danger was that, harassed by such rebellions, the Russians might launch into rash and desperate foreign adventures. And the difficulty, in such a situation, was how best to help Hungary.

West Germany's Heinrich von Bren-tano put the difficulty in bold terms. The West obviously did and must support the peoples of Eastern Europe in their attempts to throw off their Russian masters. But just how far could this go, if the West felt helpless to come to their aid with armed force? If East Germany revolted, Von Brentano said, he was afraid that the West German public would want to go to the aid of their compatriots—and thus perhaps bring on retaliation from the Russian army poised on West Germany's borders. Von Brentano's grim recommendation: the peoples of Eastern Europe must be discouraged from "taking dramatic action which might have disastrous consequences for themselves." In other words, sadly but realistically, Von Brentano considered that the Hungarians were too brave for their own good. NATO's new Secretary-General Paul-Henri Spaak glumly called the Hungarian revolt "the collective suicide of a whole people."

The U.S. attitude towards satellite na tions was stated by John Foster Dulles in Dallas just ten days before the election, and largely overlooked in the election excitement. The captive peoples, he said, "must know that they can draw upon our abundance to tide themselves over the period of economic adjustment" after breaking free of Moscow. What if these governments, like Gomulka's in Poland, are Communist? The U.S. does not "condi tion economic ties between us upon the adoption by these countries of any particular form of society." He also had a message meant to be digested in Moscow: "The U.S. has no ulterior purpose in desiring the independence of the satellite countries . . . We do not look upon these nations as potential military allies. We see them as friends, and as part of a new and friendly and no longer divided Europe."

Last week the NATO powers accepted this logic. "The peoples of Eastern Europe should have the right to choose their own governments freely, unaffected by external pressure," said the final communique. In effect, this was an acceptance of the fact that, in the West's best judgment, Gomulkaism is the best the satellite peoples could hope for now—since it is perhaps the most the Russians presently dare accept.

The immediate problem was Hungary, where, since neither the Russians nor the Hungarians can subdue the other, a dangerous and wasting anarchy prevails. Searching for a way to help the Hungarians, the U.S. and the West were trying to assure the Russians that the U.S. will not move its military frontiers that much closer to Moscow if the Russians agree to move their troops out.