Red Moon Rising Sputnik and the Rivalries That Ignited the Space Age - Matthew Brzezinski [43]
When news of the declaration and lynch mobs reached Moscow, Khrushchev reversed course. “We have no choice,” he said at another emergency Presidium session that evening. “We should take the initiative in restoring order.”
“Agreed,” growled Molotov, Bulganin, and Kaganovich. “We showed patience but things have gone too far. We must act to ensure that victory goes to our side.”
“If we depart from Hungary,” Khrushchev went on, “it will give a great boost to the imperialists. They will perceive it as weakness on our part and go on the offensive.”
“We should use the argument that we will not let socialism in Hungary be strangled,” volunteered Pyotr Pospelov, the party’s PR chief and the editor of Pravda. “That we are responding to an appeal for assistance.”
Khrushchev agreed. Closing the session, he instructed Marshal Georgy Zhukov, his deputy defense chief, “to work out a plan and report it.”
There was no longer room for negotiation. This time an example had to be made; the fate of the Soviet empire depended on it.
“Bombs, by God!” Eisenhower was awakened in the early hours of November 1. But it was not a Soviet invasion. Instead the news was that France and Britain (along with Israel) had attacked Egypt, in a punitive strike against President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal. “What does Anthony think he’s doing?” Eisenhower demanded, as he picked up the phone to call the British prime minister, Anthony Eden. The whole world was going up in flames, on the eve of the U.S. presidential election. How could the United States now condemn the Soviets, a furious Allen Dulles lamented, “when our own allies are guilty of exactly similar acts of aggression?”
Now there was no longer any room for talk of coming to Hungary’s aid. Moscow would have free rein to teach the Hungarian “hooligans” a lesson no one in Eastern Europe would soon forget. Shortly before 9:00 AM on November 4, the BBC interrupted its regularly scheduled broadcast with the following announcement: “The Soviet Air Force has bombed the Hungarian capital, Budapest, and Russian troops have poured into the city in a massive dawn offensive.”
The death toll, this time, was thirty thousand. Russian tanks rolled out of their Hungarian bases and dragged bloodied corpses through Budapest’s central squares to serve as brutal warnings to future counterrevolutionaries. Nagy was executed. Thousands were placed under arrest, while two hundred thousand Hungarians fled to the West. By November 14, order had been restored, but there was little doubt in the minds of the Kremlin hard-liners who was truly responsible for the string of rebellions. “Khrushchev’s days are numbered,” Allen Dulles predicted.
4
TOMORROWLAND
Much as the Anglo-French incursion into the Sinai Peninsula enraged Eisenhower, the simultaneous conflicts in Egypt and Hungary proved a boon at the ballot box. Ike had already enjoyed a significant lead over his Democratic challenger, Adlai Stevenson, when the twin crises erupted on the eve of the presidential poll, but he was ideally positioned to benefit from the international turmoil.
As the incumbent, Ike was able to rise above the political fray and act the statesman, holding emergency meetings of the National Security Council and conferring with world leaders. He called for United Nations resolutions and addressed the nation on television. In those final days of the 1956 campaign, Eisenhower was not running for office; he was brokering peace in the Middle East and trying to contain the carnage in Eastern Europe. Stevenson had little choice but to back the president or risk appearing as if he was putting his own electoral ambitions ahead of the national good.
When the votes were tallied on November 6, Eisenhower had won in one of the largest