Hungary and the Soviet Bloc

...Needless to say, Gati offers no forgiveness for Hungary's pre-1956 Stalinist leadership, which is as it should be, though what is frequently forgotten is that both Nagy and Kadar were, for a time, members of that leadership...

...The revolution's obviously excessive demands," notes Gati, "its lack of realism, was a function of what the Hungarian people had been denied...

...The book focuses on Hungary, the once rebellious and now shrewdly compliant ally...

...even without Yalta, Stalin took it for granted that after the war the victors would establish their respective spheres of influence in Europe...

...Gati is able to show that Imre Nagy, who headed the short-lived revolutionary government in 1956 and who was subsequently hanged for it, was more of a "true believer," and also trusted the Russians more, than Janos Kadar whose path to power was cleared by Russian tanks...

...Significantly enough, they were two non-Jews in the otherwise heavily Jewish Hungarian Communist elite...

...long ignored or glossed over, the subject is treated realistically by Gati...

...Yet, as Charles Gati points out in his astute survey of postwar bloc relations, Eastern Europe, as far as American foreign policy priorities are concerned, is more or less a forgotten region...

...After the war the Russians were all for democraticallyelected coalition governments in Central Europe...

...His main thesis is that Soviet policies in Eastern Europe have traditionally been far more cautious and tentative, and Soviet positions in the area far more vulnerable, than is commonly assumed...

...it is one place where attachment to things American remains unambiguous, sentimental...

...In tracing the political history of postwar Hungary, Gati demonstrates again and again that the momentous turning points of that history, including the Communist takeover in 1948 and the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, were not quite as inevitable as most people believe...

...We learn for the first time that Nagy was in constant touch with Soviet leaders during the revolution and actually got their approval for some of his unprecedented reforms, including the reintroduction of the multiparty system...

...There is no question that the Soviet Union intended to dominate Eastern Europe...

...But to non-specialists the greatest value of the book is its nuanced analysis of Soviet behavior...

...They only reacted to the excessive demands that had been made on them, to the lack of realism in the policies of the Kremlin and the Rakosi-Gero regimes since about 1947-48...

...all he is suggesting is that the Communist takeover in East Central Europe was not a foregone conclusion...

...There are still those who feel that if only Imre Nagy hadn't gone that far, the revolution could have been saved...

...By exposing the cautious and conservative aspects of Soviet foreign policy, as well its pertinacious, opportunistic features, Charles Gati is clearly implying a need for a more balanced, realistic view of our major adversary...

...In Hungary, for example, Muscovite returnees were instructing local Communists to prepare for ten to fifteen years of parliamentary rule, and as late as 1946, Gati reports, war-hero Kliment Voroshilov told Soviet members of the Allied Control Commission to be ready to depart on short notice in case Soviet forces decided to pull out of Hungary...

...Because Soviet domination of the area is believed by many to be total, and the bloc itself is often perceived as an undifferentiated group of client states, the eastern half of Europe has in a sense been written off...

...In fact, one of the virtues of the study is that it places Hungary's problems squarely in an international context, something East European scholars don't 510: Commonweal always do...

...he was supposed to have said to a still hopeful Alexander Dub\^cek a few days before Soviet tanks rolled into Prague in the summer of 1968...

...He is perhaps more profoundly aware than any other East European leader of what Gati sees as the central paradox of these rulers, which is the ruler's knowledge that while he may depend on Moscow for his survival, his ability to govern is determined by the degree to which he can distance himself from the Kremlin...

...The question remaining is whether they did it because they were loyal Muscovites or because as Jews they felt insecure, alienated from the Hungarian people, and saw the Kremlin rulers as their only protectors — protectors who were quick to repudiate them once they were no longer considered useful...

...But other factors— the weakness of indigenous democratic institutions, infighting among non11 September 1987: 509 Communist coalition partners—also played a role...

...Gati's reasons for advocating greater flexibility are often startling...

...But the events of 1956 had a logic of their own...

...Others before Gati have already exposed the "myth of liberation," and noted that that whole policy was devised by Republicans "to roll back the Democrats in the United States, not the Red Army in Eastern Europe...

...Gati is not trying to reassess basic Soviet motives...

...Kadar has been performing his balancing act for thirty years, and the ultimate secret of his success may be that, unlike his one-time comrade, Imre Nagy, he has no illusion about his sponsors...

...Obviously, the presence of occupation forces, as well as the cunningly divisive "salami tactics" of party strong man Matyas Rakosi facilitated the Communist takeover in 1948...

...Ivan Sanders It's often said that the last stronghold of pro-Americanism in the world today is Eastern Europe...

...Only when he learned that instead of pulling out of the country Russian forces were pouring back in, did Nagy break with Moscow, declaring Hungary's neutrality and intention to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact...

...there was no timetable, no immutable master plan...

...Imre Nagy is seen by most Hungarians as the great martyr of the 1956 Revolution, and Kadar, despite his checkered past, remains one of the few genuinely popular Communist leaders in the world...

...Do you really know the kind of people you're dealing with...

...Only in Hungary were discredited fascists excluded from the first freely-elected-postwar government...

...As we know, the Soviets didn't pull out and the country's democratic interlude came to an end a year later...

...The portrait of J\'aanos K\'ad\'ar, on the other hand, is that of a shrewd politician who has learned to respond to his people's needs without antagonizing the Kremlin...

...In stressing the need for creative differentiation in our relations with Eastern Europe, the author, a professor of political science at Union College in Schenectady, is really pushing for alternatives to stock responses which for forty years have consisted of heated words and token gestures in times of crisis, and benign indifference in between...

...Local Communists were told,to keep a low profile and cooperate with their coalition partners...

...but there is no doubt that Hungary's top Stalinists tried to outdo other satellite leaders in slavishly emulating their master's ways...

...It could be easily argued, of course, that Russia's accommodative posture at that point was strategic, part of a grand design — a spirit of cooperation was needed in some of the liberated countries to soften the impact of the quick Sovietization of others...

...Moreover, Gati maintains that it was political developments in the rest of Europe, notably the exclusion of the Communist Party from coalition governments in Italy and France, that may have finally tipped the balance and made the Soviets abandon their "gradualist" approach in a country like Hungary...

...Gati points out in a different context that the Russians are reluctant to move against Communist regimes whose top leadership defies Soviet supremacy in an unequivocal but controlled manner — witness the cases of Yugoslavia and Rumania...

...The reexamination of two Hungarian Communist leaders' evolving relationship with Moscow also yields new insights...

...Yet, there is nothing narrow or parochial in his approach to contemporary East European history...

...One could argue about who actually was the very best student of Stalin in the Soviet bloc — that is, the most ruthless and cynical local overlord...

...in the one area that does call for bold new initiatives, American policy is famously unadventurous — and has been from the earliest days of the Cold War, the saber-rattling, maximalist rhetoric of the fifties notwithstanding...

...The "Jewish question" adds another twist to the already complicated story of postwar Hungary...

...The chapters on Nagy, Kadar, and the revolution are easily the most penetrating in Gati's book, which could be explained by the simple fact that the author himself was born in Hungary and left it as a budding journalist in 1956...