To Anonymous:
You ask me to elaborate a bit on what US did to help 1989 happen. Where have you been?
Didn't USSR try to get on its side, since 1945, western Europe, Greece, Iran, S.Korea,Indochina, Indonesiaas, much as possible of S. America, Africa, , etc? Most of this efforts came to nothing and has impoverished the people of the Soviet Empire. Wasn't it mainly the US who put up the money and the blood to block USSR at a time when they seamed unstoppable to many leaders in the West. Who is going to do it next time - France at the head of EU?

I read about this in a novel by James A. Michener that described refugees from Hungary traveling to the border stations in a coat with several layers of clothes on to make it look like they were coming back from a visit to the countries that border Hungary. Which they did not do!

Communism with its no education for young people resulted in every teacher in Hungary being slaughtered. As a result, young Communists were raving about "placing people in houses with benefits" not having enough smarts to determine how "benefits" get inside the houses.

The result, with Communists being "placed" in houses to "reproduce" and the husband placed in jobs while Big Brother paid all their bills and the Communist Bank of Budapest took the entire salary, made them look like cancer cows to the rest of the people.

Another aspect of Communism that they brought to Hungary is that women's only work is "reproducing" and the gross discrimination and manhandling of women that is one of the side efects of Communism came into power

So the remaining sentient and intelligent Hungarians tried to have a revolution against them. The Russians brought in some of their tanks and dissenters were silenced in the Hungarian mental hospitals. Hungary is one of the big places they say "mentally ill" to anyone who says anything about the forbidden...

Maybe the United States could have fought them by arresting Communist Party members, but the Soviet tanks rolling thru downtown Budapest were formidable! They didn't know they weren't going to get paid for jobs under Communism. The Soviet Army salary of $28 a month (which it still is) made the privates good husbands to welfare recipients who made 1/17 of a penny per week. That figure is still the same also.

Also, a Hungarian coal miner makes 3 cents a week. This is still the same figure as the 50s also. The low inflation might be a good reason to invest in Hungary, but Communism destroyed the reasoning ability in the young and visitors are still attacked and called "bourgeois."

Ciao!

Oh yes - considering I was in France & Germany during this time I think I know a little about how the stage was set.

Just a little over 10 years after World War II and we still had around a quarter million folks in Europe (mostly in Germany) Egypt too the Suez Canal from Britan, Israel attacked Egypt, France and England joined Israel against Egypt. I think Russia said something like this "I give you x amount of time to get off that beach or we will enter on the side of Egypt" The French and British turned around and look to Ike and Ike just turned the over way. Now we get this situtation in Hungary - I think the Brits and French told Ike - If you go in there 'good luck' as we still remember how you did not help us in Egypt. We did flex and opened up (at least on the Air Force side) about 11 dispersal bases but it did not get to the point that we would go to war. I have no way of knowing why I just suspect that we had a little tiff with the French and British and we really needed their help. Needless to say I was not really a fan of Ike during those my younger years. I arrived in the area having just turned 20 and stayed there for the next 50 months. As I said earlier at the time I personally was ready to go but I also feel that at that moment in time we would have gotten involved in a war with Nukes and really if that would have happened 'what would the winner win?'

Jim Goff

We ended up with I think about 50,000 new Americans and as far as I am concerned I was happy to share my country with them.

My Dad, who was twenty in 1956, told me that at his college many students signed a petition offering to go to Hungary as volunteers to fight against the Russians. He says that they were told by the US government that this would forfeit their American citizenship, and so the movement died. I've always been fascinated by this story, but he doesn't recall any more about it. Does anyone know any information about this episode? Who started the petition, how widespread it was and what happened to it? Did any volunteers actually go? Thanks.

for those of you who don't know Karinthy or haven't read him in a long time, he is a funnier Calvin Trillin or Mark Twain (to a Hungarian)

http://www.karinthy.hu/pages/kf/en/

as I was being inducted into the US Army in 1965 to go fight in Vietnam, I remembered those young guys in our Budapest neighborhood who were sent against their will to Korea and how little different this was. When a country asks you to give up your life, it should be for something more than a line in the sand.
Before I received my Good Conduct Medal, I was grateful the the US didn't intervene in Budapest, which I believe would have ended up starring in Slaughter House II.

But I wish, Eisenhower would have been straight with us. It would have saved thousands of young lives, who would have been able to continue their resistance in some form.

Let's face it, we are all cowards but we don't have to be lying cowards nor do we need to sacrifice others to prove that we are tough like we Bush/Cheney are doing now.

I do not want to be cynical and I fully appreciate all the good that the American people have done. I have lived in this country for most of the past 50 years and I am grateful.
On the other hand it is not rewriting history to point out some mistakes by some people in the Government and I cringe when people who dare to criticize them are called unpatriotic.

I appreciate the perspective of Mr. Grimesey. How fashionable these days to be cynical and blame the US for the world's current ills, and, as well, minimize its past and present accomplishments. Rewriting history benefits nobody. You can argue motives, but you cannot argue that the US made a huge effort to confront totalitarianism with ideas, money, and blood. I spent 9 years of my life as a soldier in the Cold War believing that I was defending our allies. I will always believe in the honor of that.

To Mr. PKunnap and others!

I tnink the Soviet Empire mainly collapsed due to internal problems. The US obviously kept the Soviet military in check, but the collapse was political, not military.

Regarding outside contributions: the Hungarians, by letting the East Germans go to the West, have contributed more than all of President Reagan's speeches in tearing down the Berlin Wall.
I never heard President Reagan mention Estonia or Hungary, he paid most of his attention to Nicaragua.

Bravo to Mr. Vamos and Mr. Simon! As a fellow Hungarian, I couldn't agree more.

To Viorel, could you elaborate on what the US did "at great cost in gold and blood, tired out USSR, from 45 to 89"?? Hungary in particular did not see any of these efforts. We were the buffer zone and the recepient of nearly 40 years of oppression from the USSR... Can you explain how the US in particular "helped East-Europe become free"??

At least to us in Estonia, US help was critical and Russian military action in 1989 to suppress the various rebellions a very real possibility.

Soviet empire fell due to a number of reasons, but I really doubt I would be free to write these lines without the efforts and example of America (and in particular the efforts of Reagan).

In most respects I agree with the comments of Mr. Vamos.
I would like to add some observations, based on my own personal experience and conversations with others.
In 1956 as a 21 year old university student in Budapest I was one of the organizers of some of the demonstrations. Later I briefly served in the newly organized National Guard.
During the hectic days of October, the US, although not officially, but through Radio Free Europe has encouraged the uprising; this provided to many a false belief of possible intervention. I even recall that some ex Hungarian (Horthy) Army officers came to the University from the American Zone of Germany and promised help. No help came.
I left Hungary in November1956 and came to the US.
For 30 years, in the most, I tried to forget the bitter past.
In 1986 I attended a symposium at the Hoover Institute, where some of the best experts at the time in the US, described what happened in 1956.
From their presentations and following discussions and conversations I learned that the US State Department in October 1956 through covert channels has assured the Soviets that the US would not intervene. This probably helped the Soviets in making their decision, and they crushed the Revolution in early November.
Obviously there were other factors too, foremost the Nagy Government's declaration of withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, but giving them the "green light" made their decision easier.
There were four reasons suggested for the alleged US action (or non action):
1. Hungary was not important.
2. The US implicitly accepted the post-war division of Europe.
3. The lack of expertise in the State Department regarding Hungarian affairs.
4. The Suez Canal crisis.

This is what I know. If I am mistaken, comments are invited. There is a story by Karinthy, that those who lived through history, do not know what happened.

I was surprised to hear President Bush referring to Hungarian "patience" after 1956. I think that "resignation" would have been a better word to describe their mood.

While it is acceptable and even sexy these days to criticize the United States, some people simply go overboard. To insinuate that the U.S. did nothing to liberate Eastern Europe is absurd to the point of ignorance. I would never denegrate the efforts of the brave people of Hungary, Poland, Czekoslavakia, East Germans etc. who actually fought and died at the hands of one of the great despotic regimes in history. Only the U.S., however had the military and ecomomic muscle to truly check Soviet expansion. Remember that Berlin would not have lasted through the 40's without the U.S./U.K. airlift. Western Europe was threatened constantly throughout the Cold War but was kept free by the Marshal Plan, the presence of U.S. ground troops and the U.S. nuclear umbrella. South Korea would have been gone in 1950 and even in southeast Asia, 50,000 Americans died in what turned out to be little more than a show of resolve. Most importantly, though, it was America itself, shining as an example of freedom, that provoked people to crawl over walls, or under wire, and swim rivers to escape tyranny. President Reagan's "Tear down this wall" and President Kennedy's "I am a Berliner" were just two of dozens of examples of America's influence and morale boosting. I, too am displeased with some of the recent actions of my government, but please don't start rewriting history. It is still the greatest place in the world to live and call my home.

Vamos's point -- that intervention need not mean military intervention, even though that is how the word used alone is usually understood these days -- is spot on. And, for the U.S. -- or any other country -- to encourage a people's uprising, and then do nothing when it happens, is shameful. One apt comparison would be the expectation of support and help this country raised among the Iraqi Shiites. How different might things be now if the U.S. had in fact supported their uprising, as they had very good reason to suppose we would?

Re: America did nothing ...
True, America did not liberate East-Europe militarily. However, USA, at great cost in gold and blood, tired out USSR, from 45 to 89. That helped East-Europe become free, didn't it? Even if just a little bit, don't be French, say 'merci'.

I cannot aggree more with Mr. Vamos. It was the righ time someoone clrearly said that.

The USA has benefitted from a hugely overblown representation of its role in the fall of European communism. The Americans remained entirely passive observers to the uprisings in east Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. In each case the CIA was aware that uprisings were imminent and would result in a vicious response by the Russians. (I will supply an even better example, Poland, in a moment).
The unstated truth is that the maintenance of the Soviet "buffer zone" between east & west entirely suited American interests. The USA did not want a direct interface between Europe (an American surrogate) and the Soviet Union, believing that this would remove a huge swathe of territory in which military operations might be conducted without leading to a conflict that engulfed the whole of Europe. The "buffer zone" was an important part of the containment process. American interests could not possibly be served by upsetting the two state solution in Germany, or the departure of key components such as Hungary and Czechoslavkia (as it was) from the Soviet bloc. The Russians knew perfectly well that they could take punitive actions with no fear of a response from Nato (America).
Bush's remarks in Budapest were entirely cynical. He did not of course, write them himself, lacking as he does a grasp of historical matters. The important thing is that the system which created American attitudes to central and eastern Europe remains in place. "We helped you win your freedom". Tosh. American did nothing of the kind.
I mentioned Poland just now. Washington became progressively more alarmed by the rise of Solidarity. The fixation of American strategic policy at this moment was to achieve a missiles compromise with Moscow. Solidarity exploded with such dynamic effect, sweeping into its folds vast swathes of Polish society (including a million card carrying members of the communist party, and masses of soldiers) that a revolt which might destroy the Russian hold over Poland - and thus upset the missile negotiations, or sink them completely - appeared extremely threatening.
What followed is one of the strangest and most unknown stories in post war European history. A throughly Russianised Polish officer, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, was allowed (by the Russians and the Americans)
to stage what was in effect a military coup
with the aid of a small group of officers.
A mole serving at Jaruzelski's ADC, Col Ryzard Kuklinski (using the code name "Jack Strong") betrayed the entire martial law plot to the CIA with the full connivance of the US embassy in Warsaw, right down to day and hour. The CIA (and Washington) sat on it. The candles that later appeared in the White House windows, the protestations of outrage, were all sublimely cynical acts of theatre.
The Russians were party to Jaruzelski's plot too, but the idea that he acted to forestall a Russian invasion was a fiction, as my study of the Politburo records in Moscow and Warsaw has shown. Mikhail Suslov the Kremlin's policy guro, ruled out any Russian intervention in Poland, and won the full support of Brezhnev and the Politburo.
Jaruzelski was to claim the laurels of a national hero for "saving Poland" from the Russians when the Russians and the Americans knew that no such thing would happen. The real intention was to castrate Solidarity before the movement got out of hand and upset the whole east-west balance and the SALT talks.
(The book A Secret Life on Kuklinski's career is a CIA manicured whitewash. He was declared a traitor by the Poles. Of all people, Lech Walesa refused as president to pardon him of those charges).
Having betrayed the Poles once, the Americans had appetite for more. By 1989 and the Round Table, Solidarity, Church and Communists faced each other to finally create an independent Poland. American hackles rose again. Gorbachev had come to power in Moscow. Here was a man with whom the Americans could quietly "negotiate communism away". The dash for freedom in Poland was again an excercise in premature ejaculation. The Americans feared a Russian intervention (denied as absurd by their own embassy in Moscow) Working through the US Ambassador in Warsaw, who had carefully cultivated both the Solidarity and Communist leadership,the plan was cooked up that would allow semi free elections but maintain a communist government until "Solidarity had learnt to rule." Two lists were created, A and B, for the Sejm, the communists to have special reserved rights in the B list, while none other than Jaruzelski would be elevated to the presidency. In this way Poland would appear to retain a veneer of democracy while it remained at the end of a rope pulled by Moscow. The Russians by now cared not a whit. They were beyond interfering anywhere.
But the Americans scared elements of Solidarity into believing in the fiction of a "russian invasion" yet again: just enough Solidarity MP's abstained to allow Jaruzelski to be elected - by one vote.
But Walesa had smelt the rat. He denounced the infamous B list and the Jaruzelski scam, and in so doing, wrote his eventual deatn warrant from Solidarity. The Poles trounced the B list, and gained the majority in the Sejm, and swept the Senate almost 100%.
America calls herself the guarantor of Polish freedom. She was never anything of the kind. One must always learn in dealings with the United States that American interests come first and foremost, as the primary motives of foreign policy. The myth of America's role in the struggle for freedom in eastern Europe is long over due fot cutting down to size. The east German, Czech and Hungarian tragedies demanded a heavy price in blood to maintain real politik. The bloodless (largely) Polish one was an exercise in massive delusion. The full story has yet to be told, but will be, eventually.