Hungary's Cold War

Csaba Békés

Description

In this magisterial and pathbreaking work, Csaba Bekes shares decades of his research to provide a sweeping examination of Hungary's international relations with both the Soviet Bloc and the West from the end of World War II to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Unlike many studies of the global Cold War that focus on East-West relationships—often from the vantage point of the West—Bekes grounds his work in the East, drawing on little-used, non-English sources. As such, he offers a new and sweeping Cold War narrative using Hungary as a case study, demonstrating that the East-Central European states have played a much more important role in shaping both the Soviet bloc's overall policy and the East-West relationship than previously assumed. Similarly, he shows how the relationship between Moscow and its allies, as well as among the bloc countries, was much more complex than it appeared to most observers in the East and the West alike.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Hungría
• Mijaíl Gorbachov
• Conferencia sobre la Seguridad y la Cooperación en Europa
• Nikita Jrushchov
• Leonid Brézhnev
• Iósif Stalin
• German question
• Sovietization
• Cominform
• Détente
• Hungarian Revolution of 1956
• Cold War
• Berlin Crisis
• Eastern Bloc
• International relations
• Leonid Brezhnev
• Nikita Khrushchev
• Warsaw Pact
• Vietnam War
• Soviet Union
• Prague Spring
• Neutral
• Mikhail Gorbachev
• Marshall Plan
• Joseph Stalin
• Hungary
• Cuban Missile Crisis
• Brezhnev Doctrine
• Eastern
• Émancipation
• History
• Guerre froide
• CSCE
• János Kádár
• Léonid Brejnev
• Mikhaïl Gorbatchev
• Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques
• Hongrie
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: The University of North Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 03 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781469667492
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Hungary’s Cold War
The New Cold War History
Odd Arne Westad, editor
This series focuses on new interpretations of the Cold War era made possible by the opening of Soviet, East European, Chinese, and other archives. Books in the series based on multilingual and multiarchival research incorporate interdisciplinary insights and new conceptual frameworks that place historical scholarship in a broad, international context.
A complete list of books published in The New Cold War History is available at www .uncpress .org .
Hungary’s Cold War
International Relations from the End of World War II to the Fall of the Soviet Union
CSABA BÉKÉS
The University of North Carolina Press
Chapel Hill
© 2022 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Set in Minion Pro by Westchester Publishing Services
Manufactured in the United States of America
The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: B é k é s, Csaba, author.
Title: Hungary’s Cold War : international relations from the end of World War II to the fall of the Soviet Union / Csaba B é k é s.
Other titles: New Cold War history.
Description: Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2022] | Series: The new Cold War history | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021046315 | ISBN 9781469667478 (cloth) | ISBN 9781469667485 (paperback) | ISBN 9781469667492 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH : Cold War. | Hungary—Foreign relations—Communist countries. | Communist countries—Foreign relations—Hungary. | Hungary—Foreign relations—Europe, Western. | Europe, Western—Foreign relations—Hungary. | Hungary—Foreign relations—United States. | United States—Foreign relations—Hungary.
Classification: LCC DB 956.4 . B 44 2022 | DDC 909.82/5—dc23/eng/20211012
LC record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2021046315
Portions of this book were previously published in a different form and are used here with permission. Chapter 3 appeared as “East Central Europe, 1953–1956,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War , ed. Melvyn Leffler and Odd Arne Westad, vol. 1, Origins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 334–52. Chapter 4 appeared as “The 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the Declaration of Neutrality,” Cold War History 6, no. 4 (November 2006): 477–500. Chapter 6 appeared as “Cold War, D é tente and the Soviet Bloc: The Evolution of Intra-bloc Foreign Policy Coordination, 1953–1975,” in Imposing, Maintaining, and Tearing Open the Iron Curtain: The Cold War and East-Central Europe, 1945–1989 , ed. Mark Kramer and Vit Smetana (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2014), 247–78. Chapter 8 appeared as (partly) “The Warsaw Pact and the Helsinki Process, 1965–1970,” in The Making of Détente: Eastern and Western Europe in the Cold War, 1965–75 , ed. Wilfried Loth and Georges-Henri Soutou (London: Routledge, 2008), 201–20; and “Hungary, the Soviet Bloc, the German Question and the CSCE Process, 1965–1975,” Journal of Cold War Studies 18, no. 3 (Summer 2016): 95–138. Chapter 9 appeared (partly) as “D é tente and the Soviet Bloc, 1975–1991,” in The “Long 1970s”: Human Rights, East–West Détente, and Transnational Relations , ed. Rasmus Mariager, Helle Porsdam, and Poul Villaume (London: Routledge, 2016), 165–83; and “The Long D é tente and the Soviet Bloc, 1953–1983,” in The Long Détente: Changing Concepts of Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1950s–1980s , ed. Oliver Bange and Poul Villaume (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2017), 31–49. Chapter 10 and 11 appeared as “Back to Europe: The International Context of the Political Transition in Hungary, 1988–1990,” in The Roundtable Talks of 1989: The Genesis of Hungarian Democracy , ed. Andr á s Boz ó ki (Budapest: CEU Press, 2002), 237–72.
For my wife Melinda and our son Gáspár
Contents List of Abbreviations Introduction Chapter 1   The Emerging Cold War Chapter 2   Hungary’s Road to the Soviet Bloc Chapter 3   East Central Europe and the First Phase of Long D é tente, 1953–1956 Chapter 4   Crisis Year, 1956 Poland, Hungary, Suez Chapter 5   The International Impact of the Polish and Hungarian Revolts Chapter 6   Hungary and the Soviet Bloc in the Khrushchevian Experimental Era, 1956–1964 Chapter 7   The Main Features of K á d á rist Foreign Policy Chapter 8   The German Question and the CSCE Process Foreign Policy Coordination and Lobby Fights in the Soviet Bloc, 1964–1975 Chapter 9   Standby D é tente Hungary as the Promoter of East–West Relations Chapter 10   The Soviet Union and East Central Europe, 1985–1990 Chapter 11   The International Context of the Political Transition in Hungary Epilogue The End of the Soviet Bloc Notes Bibliography Index
Abbreviations
Á VH
Á llamv é delmi Hat ó s á g (State Protection Authority)
CC
Central Committee
CCP
Chinese Communist Party
CDU/CSU
Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) / Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU)
CENTO
Central Treaty Organization
CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
COCOM
Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls
Comecon
Council of Mutual Economic Assistance
Cominform
Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers’ Parties
Comintern
Communist International
CPCz
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia
CPs
Communist parties
CPSU
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
cs.
csoport (group)
CSCE
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe
CWIHP
Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington D.C.
DDF
Documents Diplomatiques Fran ç ais
DEM
Deutsche Mark (German mark)
EDC
European Defense Community
EEC
European Economic Community
f.
fond (collection)
FO
Foreign Office
FRG
Federal Republic of Germany
FRUS
Foreign Relations of the United States
GDR
German Democratic Republic
HCP
Hungarian Communist Party
HUF
Hungarian Forint
HWP
Hungarian Workers’ Party
IMF
International Monetary Fund
INF
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty
KGB
Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security)
K Ü M
K ü l ü gyminiszt é rium (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hungary)
MAORT
Magyar–Amerikai Olajipari RT. (Hungarian–American Oil Company)
MNF
multilateral nuclear force
MNL–OL
Magyar Nemzeti Lev é lt á r—Orsz á gos Lev é lt á ra (National Archives of Hungary)
Montanunion
European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC)
MSZMP
Magyar Szocialista Munk á sp á rt (Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party)
NATO
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NPP
National Peasant Party
NSC
National Security Council
ő . e.
ő rz é si egys é g (archival unit)
PC
Political Committee
PCC
Political Consultative Committee
PHP
Parallel History Project on Cooperative Security
PIL
Politikat ö rt é neti Int é zet Lev é lt á ra (Archives of the Institute for Political History, Budapest)
PRO
Public Records Office, London
RG
Record Group
SDI
Strategic Defense Initiative
SDP
Social Democratic Party
SEATO
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization
SED
Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party of Germany)
SHP
Smallholders’ Party
SIOP
Single Integrated Operational Plan
T Ü K
Titkos ü gykezel é s (secret document handling)
UN
United Nations Organization
US
United States of America
USSR
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
WP
Warsaw Pact
Hungary’s Cold War
Introduction
This volume is largely the product of the archival revolution that began in 1989 with the collapse of the Communist regimes in East Central Europe. This historic transformation basically coincided with my becoming a full-time researcher in 1991, when I joined the newly founded 1956 Institute in Budapest, dedicated to the research of the history of the Hungarian revolt. Ever since, the focus of my interest has been the role that Hungary and other non-Soviet countries of the Soviet bloc played in shaping East–West relations from the beginning to the end of the Cold War. For me it became gradually obvious, as I had a chance to examine the once top-secret documents of the highest decision-making level on each side of the Cold War divide during the first half of the 1990s, that this role was much more serious than it had been generally assumed at the time.
My career was immensely affected by my becoming one of the first research fellows of the Wilson Center’s Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) in Washington, D.C., in the fall of 1992. It was truly a life-changing experience that made me part of the then emerging international group of younger-generation researchers of new Cold War history. At CWIHP and the National Security Archive—another key institution of Cold War research in Washington—I established lifelong cooperation from and friendships with excellent scholars like Tom Blanton, Malcolm Byrne, Jim Hershberg, Christian Ostermann, Svetlana Savranskaya, and Vladislav Zubok. The intensive international cooperation unfolding in the mid-late 1990s, including participation at numerous conferences, was a great impetus for my work, driving me to establish the Cold War History Research Center, Budapest, in December 1998, as the first nongovernmental organization in the former Soviet bloc dedicated to Cold War research.
Another wave of great experiences came from 2001 to 2002, when I spent a whole academic year at New York University’s International Center for Advanced Studies as one of the five center fellows of the Project on the Cold War as a Global Conflict. Here the project head, the late Marilyn B. Young, was a wonderful mentor even long after the end of the program, while the extensive and intensive conversations with my co-fellows, especially Odd Arne Westad and Mario del Pero, gave me great professional inspiration. This was followed by my teaching Cold War history at NYU as a Fulbright visiting professor in 2006–7, while from the fall of 2007 I have been a recurring visiting professor teach