Russian troops have been called in to crush the Hungarian revolution of 23rd and 24th October, 1956, just as Russian troops were called in to crush the Hungarian revolution of 1849. The wheel has come full circle; Mr. Khrushchev is here. Soviet communism inherits from the Tsars the unenvied role of the empire against whose dead hands groups of students rise and carry the flag down the street, demonstrators die on bridges and city squares, and shots ring out in factories and Government offices, while tottering Ministers Ñ now as in the nineteenth century Ñ cry out for Òpeace, discipline, and order.Ó The end of it all is force Ñ Russian force to prop up Governments whose own resources have melted away. So it has been in Hungary. The two countries that led the revolt against years of Stalinist strangulation are in some ways alike. Hungarians and Poles are both among nations that over long stretches of history have dominated their part of Europe. Though they have at times been downtrodden, their national pride is strong; and now their revolt is bound up with resentment at domination by Russia. This resentment, centuries old in Poland, is in Hungary fed by the behaviour of those Soviet Russians whom the country welcomed as liberators eleven years ago. Then in both countries a population largely made up of peasants and devoted to the Church has held out passively against efforts to force it into the Soviet mould. What matters more just now is, however, the glaring difference between the two countries. Poland shows us a revolt which the Communists have just managed to control by themselves heading it. Hungary has been in the throes of an outright revolt against communism which the party has subdued only with Russian help.
The explanation is simple. The Hungarian party killed off its ÒTitoistsÓ: the Polish party did not. The Hungarians could exhume Laszlo Rajk and give him an honourable grave: the Poles were able to bring out a living Gomulka at the last moment. Yesterday Mr. Gomulka managed to control an enormous crowd in Warsaw by telling them that Soviet troops in Poland were going back to quarters and that Soviet military advisers could be removed; but in Budapest Mr. Imre Nagy was sending out Russian troops against Hungarians whom he could address only over the radio. Even then Mr. GomulkaÕs ability to guide the onrush of Polish feeling without being overwhelmed by it seems a matter of touch-and-go. But Mr. NagyÕs attempt was doomed before he had started. Not only had the Hungarian party left it too late, trying to blame the fallen Rakosi but at the same time to keep in being an ÒorthodoxÓ leadership. When at length they called in Mr. Nagy the Communists were falling back on a man who, though popular for the mild ÒJune policyÓ which he launched in 1953 and for his subsequent downfall, had spent no time in gaol and offered no symbol of redemption from the years of Stalinism. So too Mr. Nagy, it seems, has found the Hungarian Army and police a broken reed, whereas Mr. Gomulka has until now managed to keep the loyalty of the Polish troops. But at bottom what has happened in both countries is the same: a rising by people starved of two things that everyone must have a little of in the end if he is not to die Ñ bread and liberty. To the sullenness of people who for years were ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-housed, over-worked in the cause of headlong industrialisation and RussiaÕs needs, was added that Òhatred of little documentsÓ Ñ and of all other visitations by Ògood people from the moon who deny us our tasteÓ Ñ which a Polish poem prophetically sang last year. To judge from yesterdayÕs reports the Budapest rising was the work of ÒliberalÓ Communists, factory workers with Social Democratic traditions, Roman Catholics, the young and ordinary. 
People had had too much, and, as usual, they rose when things looked like 
getting faintly better.
What next? A land like Hungary, its frontiers sealed, its communications cut off, its population under martial law with Soviet troops in their midst and over their eastern borders, cannot hope to do other than fail in such a revolution. Yet as we write, shots are still being fired; and in Poland thunderclouds seem to be gathering again. The fortunes of Eastern Europe hang by a thread. The choice is not, alas, between total liberation and total repression; it is between a partial, guarded, tricky improvement Ñ a political tight-rope walk Ñ and a Russian blood bath. The best hope for these countries that have suffered too much is to keep their feelings just enough in leash to go on prodding the Communists towards freedom without prodding them so far that they fall back on brutal repression. There was in Mr. GomulkaÕs and Mr. CyrankiewiczÕs words yesterday a sense almost of desperation. They, as Communists, want to go on with Socialist planning and Soviet alliance, but as Poles also they must know that there is materially no alternative. PolandÕs neighbours have long been her tragedy; but they are still her neighbours and immovable, and now they are HungaryÕs, too. Is resistance then useless? It is not. After East Berlin, Beria went, after Pozan, justice came back; after Budapest, though the Government Ñunlike Mr. Gomulka Ñ is blaming Òcounter-revolutionÓ rather than itself, something else must change. As a way of winning back a decent life it is terribly painful. We dare not recommend it; we should, on the contrary, counsel patience to those whom we cannot help; but we must salute people who are fighting their way back into Europe Ñ a Europe that knows neither East nor West.