Barnabás Vajda: Czechoslovakia’s Viewpoint on the Hungarian Issue in the UN’s Dispute in 1956–1957

Based on the doc­u­ments of the Unit­ed Nation­s, it is worth attempt­ing to pro­duce a rough sketch of the impact of the Hun­gar­i­an events of October-November 1956 on the inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tic­s, form a rather untyp­i­cal view of Czecho­slo­va­ki­a. The ma­in forum of the inter­na­tion­al rela­tion­s, where the sup­pres­sion of the Hun­gar­i­an Rev­o­lu­tion gained con­sid­er­able sig­nif­i­cance, was the UN. The Sec­ond emer­gency ses­sion of the Gen­er­al As­sembly (No­vem­ber 4, 1956), ini­ti­at­ed by the Unit­ed States, and the 11th ses­sion of the Gen­er­al As­sembly (November-December 1956), pro­duced alto­geth­er ten res­o­lu­tions ask­ing the Sovi­et Union to with­draw their troops and the Ká­dár gov­ern­ment to receive the UN sec­re­tary-­gen­er­al and UN observer­s. This study makes a sur­vey of these doc­u­ments, name­ly of res­o­lu­tions Nr. 1004, 1005, 1006, 1007 (all of the ES-II), also of res­o­lu­tions Nr. 1127, 1128, 1129, 1130, 1131, 1132 (all of the XIth Ses­sion). By quot­ing these UN doc­u­ments, pres­ent study shows that the Gen­er­al As­sembly pro­vid­ed an ideal play­ground for a par­tic­u­lar ‘po­lit­i­cal see-­saw game’, given that ‘its res­o­lu­tions were far from be­ing coer­cive mea­sures, espe­cial­ly not when they con­demned a super­pow­er or its allies. Since this was a well-­known fact in Moscow, the Amer­i­cans were hop­ing that the Sovi­et­s, who had never shown the least con­cern about inter­na­tion­al pub­lic opin­ion, would not be seri­ous­ly dis­tressed’. As far as Czecho­slo­va­kia’s role is con­cerned in the above men­tioned ‘po­lit­i­cal game’ over the Hun­gar­i­an ques­tion on inter­na­tion­al lev­el, vot­ings by the Czecho­slo­va­kian dela­tion in the Gen­er­al As­sembly show that the coun­try was par­tic­u­lar­ly loyal and faith­ful to the Sovi­et Union. Its delagets were using an extreme­ly Stal­in­is­tic phrase­ol­o­gy while uncrit­i­cal­ly sup­port­ing the deeds of the Sovi­et Union, which, from his­tori­val view, are total­ly unex­plain­able.