The Cold War in the 1950s » Khrushchev, Peaceful Co-existence and Unrest in Hungary

Khrushchev and peaceful co-existence

Stalin died on 5 March 1953. After a struggle among the Soviet leaders, Nikita Khrushchev came out on top. He became First Secretary of the Communist Party in September 1953 and by 1955 he was clearly the most powerful man in the Soviet Union.

Khrushchev offered the West a new approach, which he called peaceful co-existence. He still believed that Communism would win in the end. But he argued that it should win by peaceful competition, by showing that it gave people a better life, and not by war. He had two main reasons. A war fought with nuclear weapons would destroy both sides. And the arms race was very expensive, when he wanted to spend more on raising living standards at home.

There were real signs of a 'thaw' in the Cold War:

• Austria, May 1955: the Austrian State Treaty ended the four-power occupation of Austria. Soviet troops went home and Austria became a neutral country.
• Geneva, July 1955: Khrushchev met President Eisenhower and the leaders of Britain and France at the Geneva Summit. It was the first meeting of the leaders of the great powers since Potsdam ten years earlier.

The thaw had limits. At Geneva the mood was friendly, but nothing was agreed about Germany, and the Soviet side turned down Eisenhower's 'Open Skies' plan for each side to photograph the other's military bases from the air. The arms race carried on. And peaceful co-existence was about relations with the West. It did not mean that Khrushchev would let go of the satellite states, as Hungary was about to find out.

Key terms:

• Peaceful co-existence: Khrushchev's idea that Communist and Capitalist countries could live side by side and compete without going to war.
• De-Stalinisation: the undoing of Stalin's harshest methods, and of his reputation, after his death.
• Secret speech: Khrushchev's speech of 25 February 1956 attacking Stalin's crimes.
• ÁVH: the Hungarian secret police.
• Neutrality: belonging to neither side's military alliance.

De-Stalinisation and the 'secret speech'

On 25 February 1956 Khrushchev spoke to a closed session of the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in Moscow. For about four hours he attacked Stalin, the man Communists had been taught to treat almost as a god. He said that Stalin had built up a 'cult of personality', had ordered the arrest, torture and execution of thousands of loyal Communists, and had made serious mistakes as a war leader.

The speech was not published in the Soviet Union, but it was read out at party meetings, and copies soon reached Eastern Europe and the West. By June 1956 it was being printed in American newspapers.

The speech was part of a wider policy of de-Stalinisation. Large numbers of political prisoners were released from the labour camps, the power of the secret police was cut back, and censorship was eased a little. Khrushchev had also made peace with Tito's Yugoslavia in 1955, accepting that there could be different roads to Communism, and in April 1956 he closed down Cominform.

In Eastern Europe the effect was dramatic. If Stalin had been wrong, people asked, why should they go on obeying the little Stalins who ruled them? In Poland, riots in June 1956 were followed in October by the return to power of Władysław Gomułka, a Communist who had been locked up by Poland's Stalinist rulers in 1951. Khrushchev accepted Gomułka and his reforms because Poland promised to stay in the Warsaw Pact. Hungarians were watching closely.

Soviet rule in Hungary under Rákosi

Mátyás Rákosi had led Hungary's Communists since 1945 and called himself 'Stalin's best pupil'. His rule gave Hungarians four reasons for bitterness.

After Stalin's death, Moscow made Rákosi hand the job of prime minister to Imre Nagy, a Communist who wanted reform. Nagy released some prisoners and eased the pressure on farmers, which made him popular. In 1955 Rákosi had him removed. But after the secret speech Rákosi himself was finished. In July 1956 Moscow forced him to resign. His replacement, Ernő Gerő, was another hardliner, so nothing was solved.

Nagy and his demands

• 23 October 1956: students marched through Budapest with a list of sixteen demands, including the withdrawal of Soviet troops, free elections and the return of Nagy. A huge crowd joined them and pulled down Stalin's statue. When the ÁVH fired on demonstrators, the protest became an armed rising.
• 24 October: Soviet tanks entered Budapest, and Nagy was made prime minister in the hope of calming the country. Days of street fighting followed.
• 28 October: a ceasefire was agreed, and Nagy announced that Soviet troops would leave Budapest. They pulled out over the next few days.
• 30 October: Nagy announced the end of one-party rule. Cardinal Mindszenty was freed.
• 1 November: hearing that fresh Soviet troops were crossing the border, Nagy declared that Hungary was leaving the Warsaw Pact and would be neutral. He asked the United Nations to protect it.

Pushed on by the crowds, Nagy was now asking for:

• free elections with more than one party
• the removal of all Soviet troops from Hungary
• an end to the ÁVH, with freedom of speech and of the press
• Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, and neutrality.

These demands went far beyond anything Gomułka had asked for in Poland. Free elections could end Communist rule altogether, and leaving the Warsaw Pact would tear a hole in the Soviet buffer zone. How Khrushchev replied is covered in the lesson The Soviet Invasion of Hungary, 1956.

Exam-style question

Extract A (a practice extract written for this lesson, in the style of a modern history textbook)

Under Rákosi, Hungary became a prison run for Moscow's benefit. The dreaded ÁVH dragged people from their homes at night, and thousands vanished into jails and labour camps. Food and factory goods were shipped east while Hungarian families went hungry. Children were made to learn Russian and the Church was silenced. A proud nation was bullied by a man who boasted of being Stalin's best pupil. By 1956 Hungarians felt nothing for their rulers but hatred.

What impression does the author give about Soviet rule in Hungary under Rákosi? You must use Extract A to explain your answer. [6 marks]