The insurgency in Hungary that began in October of 1956 was in large part provoked by Nikita Khrushchev's anti-Stalin speech at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in the spring of the same year. The speech was followed by emotional turmoil and even public activism within the Soviet Union. This already undermined Krushchev's position vis-à-vis the unreconstructed Stalinists in the Politbureau who resented his betrayal of Stalin's cause.

The uprising in Budapest was to Khrushchev a clear sign that the whole Communist system was falling apart. The combination of despair (Khrushchev was a genuine believer in the Communist ideals) and visceral fear that he may be toppled and quite likely murdered by his rivals pushed Khrushchev to act. This may have been an agonizing decision, but he acted -- frantically and fiercely.

Should the U.S. or other western adversaries have interfered, Khrushchev would likely have gone very far, maybe to the point of using the most deadly weapon he had -- the atomic bomb. With the Cuban Missile Crisis still ahead, the power of nuclear deterrence had not yet set in. The nuclear possibility must have been seriously considered by the Eisenhower administration. If they decided against interfering on that ground, their judgment was not unjustified. (I hope this pragmatic decision was also emotionally a very hard one as the West watched the Hungarian insurgency smashed in a brutal bloodbath.)

Even if Khrushchev did not resort to nuclear weapons, a conventional war in the middle of Europe would have surely followed. Meanwhile, postwar European nations were certainly not ready for another war - it was only 11 years since they left the horrors of WW2 behind. It should also be remembered that as the liberator from Nazism, the Soviet Union had a lot of sympathizers in the countries of Europe.

In retrospect, the United States appears to be right not to have interfered. In the course of the 2nd half of the 20th century, the Soviet's energy and their bloody aggression gradually attenuated: In 1968, Leonid Brezhnev was hesitant and apparently reluctant to invade Czechoslovakia. He did invade in the end, but the suppression of Prague Spring, horrible as it may have been, was still not as bloody as the suppression of the Budapest uprising. In 1980, the Soviet leadership decided against bringing troops to Poland. In the late 80's the Soviet Empire began to melt down, and in 1991 it was no more.

That the Communist system collapsed by itself -- not as a result of a foreign invasion, but just because it had exhausted its viability -- was a blessing to the nations that had suffered under the forced imposition of the Communist rule, to the USSR itself and to the world at large. This also gives me hope that one day, my country, Russia, will get back on the democratic track.

If the U.S. administration in 1956 had had the urge to act idealistically and defend freedom against tyranny in Budapest, it apparently rejected the idealistic drive in favor of rational judgment and pragmatic decision-making. One may only wish that the current U.S. administration had considered this experience when it invaded Iraq in 2003.