Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. [Vol. 5.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 25)

Studies - Tamás Magyarics: From the Rollback of Communism to Building Bridges: The U.S. and the Soviet Block Countries from the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 to the Prague Spring in 1968

"policentristic" one emerged: there were three distinct Communist blocs, namely the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern-Europe.

2

0 Kennan urged that the issue of the East-West trade was a political question in the first place, but he objected to the Congressional approach which demanded political concessions for everyday commercial deals from the socialist countries. Furthermore, the trade restrictions backfired to a certain extent: while the U.S. had an annual turnover of 200 million dollars with Eastern-Europe due to its self-imposed restrictions, Western-Europe enjoyed a 5 billion dollar-turnover with the same region annually.

2

1 From the political point of view, this rigid economic antagonism only strengthened the national self-sufficiency of the East-European countries and thus the U.S. had fewer and fewer means to influnce the societies there. b. The mainlines of the policies of the Kennedy Administration toward Eastern-Europe As we have already seen it, John F. Kennedy supported the Polish loan in 1957; in his speeches and in his The Strategy of Peace (1960) he proposed that the improved trade relations with the satellites in Eastern-Europe would loosen the ties between them and the Soviet Union. However, the Kennedy Administration was paralyzed by the failure in the Bay of Pigs incident, and the Vienna Summit and the erection of the Berlin Wall even further limited its activity in the region. It was mostly symbolic gestures that indicated an intended, though rather slow departure from the earlier confrontational policies and rhetoric: in 1962 the Assistant Secretary of State, William R. Tyler explained that the East-European countries were more like 99 "junior partners" than satellites" ; Secretary of State Dean Rusk suggested that "power is being diffused from the center" in the region, though "/T/he results of this massive and glacial movement cannot be expected soon"

2

3; or Assistant Secretary of State George C. McGhee declared proposed that the socialist countries should be given the 2,

1 ibid. 173. 2' Cited by Wandyez, Piotr. The U.S. and Poland. Cambridge. Mass., 1980. 375. From Dean Rusk's speech delivered at the University of Knoxville on May 17, 1962. Rusk, Dean. The Winds of Freedom. Boston, 1963. 57. The Hungarian chargé, János Radványi's report on May 31, 1962. New Hungarian Central Archives. KÜM XIX-J-1-j, USA TÜK. Box 11, 5/b 005426/1962. 76