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state. But the residents of Warsaw were arming themselves, preparing to repel Rokossovsky’s troops. On the morning of October 19, Khrushchev, Bulganin, and a visibly agitated Molotov flew to Warsaw. “From the airport we went to the [Polish] Central Committtee,” Khrushchev recalled. “The discussion was stormy. . . . I saw Gomulka coming toward me. He said, very nervously, ‘Comrade Khrushchev, your tank division is moving toward Warsaw. I ask that you order it to stop. I’m afraid that something irreparable could happen.’ ”

Khrushchev halted the tanks and accepted Gomuka’s leadership. “A clash would have been good for no one but our enemies,” he reasoned. Faced with the imminent prospect of armed intervention, Gomuka, in turn, promised to keep Poland in the Soviet orbit. They had gone to the brink, but catastrophe had been narrowly avoided. Two weeks later, under almost identical circumstances, no one would be so lucky.

• • •

South of Poland, in Hungary, a crisis had been building since October 23, when students in Budapest began demonstrating in solidarity with Gomuka’s defiance. Quickly the protests spread, as factory and office workers joined the revolt. The crowds marched on the main radio tower to broadcast their grievances, what they called their Sixteen Points: more freedom and food, less police interference, fewer travel restrictions, and the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

Radio Free Europe, the U.S.-sponsored network that beamed Western news into the Eastern bloc, picked up the rallying cry, its broadcasts becoming increasingly insurrectionary. Secretary of State Dulles, who had long vowed to “roll back” communism, encouraged the Hungarian demonstrators and pledged American support. “To all those suffering under communist slavery,” he said, “let us say you can count on us.”

Emboldened, the protesters surrounded parliament and gathered outside the secret police headquarters, chanting for the Red Star atop the building to be removed. Their requests were met by a hail of gunfire, and in the ensuing hand-to-hand fighting eighty were killed. But the building was taken, as was a nearby armory. The uprising was now an armed revolt, gaining momentum. Radio Free Europe stoked the flames, instructing Hungarians on how to make weapons out of gasoline, bottles, and rags. Hungarians felt certain that the United States was behind them. Within days, 80 percent of the Hungarian army had switched sides. The Hungarian people could taste the liberty that Dulles had promised.

In Moscow, at an October 28 emergency session of the Presidium, Khrushchev counseled caution. Molotov and the hard-liners wanted swift action, but the first secretary advocated compromise. “The Soviet government is prepared to enter into the appropriate negotiations with the government of the Hungarian People’s Republic, and other members of the Warsaw Treaty, on the question of the presence of Soviet troops on the territory of Hungary,” Pravda announced on October 31.

In Washington, a jubilant Allen Dulles hailed the concession as “a miracle,” the most meaningful sign yet that communism could be in retreat. “This utterance is one of the most significant to come out of the Soviet Union since World War II,” he told Eisenhower.

“Yes,” the president agreed skeptically. “If it is honest.”

Khrushchev, the reformer, had unwittingly opened the floodgates, and now the Kremlin was being swamped in a tide of upheaval. And if Hungary fell, Moscow’s other dominions would quickly follow. No one would be able to stop the outpour.

Just as swiftly, however, the tide turned. In Budapest that same day, the violence spiraled into an orgy of revenge. Dozens of suspected secret police officers and informers were hung from lampposts by rampaging mobs, while Imre Nagy, the Hungarian prime minister, defiantly summoned the Soviet ambassador, Yuri Andropov—the future KGB boss and head of state. Like Gomuka, Nagy had been imprisoned by Stalin and rehabilitated after the secret speech. Under Khrushchev’s liberalizations he had replaced the Stalinist puppet Mátyás Rákosi only a few months