Külügyi Szemle - A Magyar Külügyi Intézet folyóirata - 2011 (10. évfolyam)
2011 / 4. szám - DIPLOMÁCIA- ÉS KÜLPOLITIKA-TÖRTÉNET - Békés Csaba: Magyar külpolitika a bipoláris világban, 1945-1991
Békés Csaba maintained for a few years, the Hungarian Communist Party played an increasingly dominant role in this short transitory period and in 1947-1948 a full takeover occurred. During the peace settlement following the war, Hungary had no chances that the injustices of the Trianon Treaty of 1920, leaving large, ethnically compact Hungarian areas with neighbouring states, would be made good. Both Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were victorious states, while former Axis-member Romania was supported from the outset by the Soviet leadership for strategic reasons against Hungarian territorial claims. In the period between 1953 and 1956, in line with the new Soviet policy, Hungary gradually opened towards the Western states and in the Summer of 1955 even establishing diplomatic relations with West-Germany was seriously considered. Hungarian-Austrian relations also improved to such an extent that the "Iron Curtain", i.e. the mine field on the Hungarian-Austrian border was totally dismantled by September 1956. Analysing the international context of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, the author argues that the first Soviet intervention on 24 October in Budapest was not the only available option for Moscow, while the second one on 4 November was a logical and unavoidable consequence of the first wrong decision. Following Mikoyan's advice to first try to restore order by using local forces only could have had a positive impact, while the introduction of Soviet tanks into the capital turned the initially limited scale riots into a national freedom fight against foreign oppressors. It can be argued, that the "Mikoyan doctrine" was later employed successfully in Poland in 1981 by the introduction of Martial Law. It is also pointed out in the article that the resolution of the CPSU Presidium on 30 October 1956 that Soviet troops should be withdrawn from Hungary, was not meant to "give up" Hungary, as recently claimed by some students of the topic. On the contrary: it was the maximum political concession that Soviet leaders were willing to make on condition the government of Imre Nagy was able to consolidate the situation without jeopardising the communist regime and the integrity of the Soviet bloc. During the more than three decades of the Kádár era Hungary's respective foreign political manoeuvrability was not determined solely by manifest dependency on the Soviet Union, as assumed earlier, but by a more complex system of tripartite determinism. While affiliation to the Soviet empire ostensibly implied enforced restrictions, the dependence on Western advanced technology and subsequent loans produced an equally strong bond. At the same time, from the early sixties on, Hungarian foreign policy invariably had to perform a balancing act to pursue specific objectives in terms of an all-East-Central-European lobby-contest. While this tripartite determinism regarding Hungarian foreign policy always existed in some form and magnitude the importance of the three factors became relatively equal as of the mid-sixties. 126 Külügyi Szemle
