Twenty-Five Years after 1956: The Heritage of the Hungarian Revolution

Abstract

For many commentators in both East and West, 1981-the year of the crushing of Solidarity and the inauguration of military rule in Poland was regarded not so much as the twenty-fifth anniversary of the ruthless and bloody repression of the Hungarian revolution of 1956, as the twenty fifth anniversary of the birth of the Kidir regime, reputedly the most liberal political system in Eastern Europe, or 'the happiest barracks in the camp' as it is often called. At the same time, condemnation of the Polish coup was far more restrained than had been that of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.