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Soviet Hegemony in Eastern Europe: The Dynamics of Political Autonomy and Military Intervention

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Christopher D. Jones
Christopher D. Jones
Affiliation:
Marquette University
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Abstract

Most Western observers have concluded that in the conflicts between the U.S.S.R. and the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe, the Soviets resorted to military intervention only when certain ideological or strategic issues were at stake. This study suggests that in the conflicts between the leaders of the CPSU and the leaders of the Communist Parties of Yugoslavia, Poland, Albania, Rumania, and Czechoslovakia there was only one real issue at stake: control over the local East European party. The adversaries in these struggles have been Muscovite factions dependent on Soviet support and ultimately loyal to Moscow, and domestic factions seeking to base their rule on genuine popular support. What determined whether the Soviets intervened militarily was not the ideological or strategic issue publicly raised by the Soviets, but whether the domestic faction had demonstrated to Moscow the capacity and will to mobilize its country for armed resistance against the Soviets.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , January 1977 , pp. 216 - 241
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1977

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References

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52 After the Hungarian rebellion broke out on October 23, 1956, Khrushchev authorized what had previously been anathema: an autonomous Communist government under Imre Nagy, the leader of the reformist faction of the party. Earlier in the year, the Soviets had refused to let Nagy back into power. Now Khrushchev hoped that the rebels would accept the Nagy government and spare the Soviet leader the necessity of suppressing the Hungarian rebellion with Soviet soldiers. By October 30, 1956, when the Soviets issued a formal declaration of their willingness to accept an autonomous Communist regime under Nagy, Nagy had concluded that his compatriots would not support any Communist government, even an autonomous one. He saw two choices before him: to align himself with the Soviets against the rebels, or to join the rebels. He chose the second course and formed a multiparty coalition government dominated by non-Communists. Before Nagy could prepare for armed defense of his new government or find diplomatic support from the West, the Soviet army crushed the rebels and installed a new group of Muscovites in control of the shattered fragments of the Communist party. Khrushchev did not ask his soldiers to fight against a unified Communist party supported by an armed nation; he asked them to fight a bitter but very brief campaign against uncoordinated and isolated groups of anti-Communists. The Soviet army did not attack the Hungarian Communists, it rescued them.