The Hungarian Revolution: North Korea Takes Its Cue
It is a strange quirk of history that the effects of the Hungarian revolt continue to be felt today not in Budapest but in North Korea. In a new paper, published by the Smithsonian's Cold War International History Project, historian James Person reveals how the events in Budapest in 1956 helped make North Korea the reclusive Stalinist state that it is today.
While scouring the Russian state archives, Person accidentally unearthed a stack of more than 600 documents detailing a reformist movement within the North Korean Communist Party, which was quickly gathering momentum in early 1956. The reformers, hoping to capitalize on Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Joseph Stalin earlier that year, urged North Korean leader Kim Il Sung to end his cult of personality and expand democracy within the party. The Soviet Union applied pressure on Kim, sending some of the same troubleshooting diplomats who had been to Budapest. Historians have long considered this to be an aborted coup, but Person's documents show that it was more of a domestic reform movement.
Kim was a recalcitrant "little Stalin," however, and he resisted the reform effort, growing ever more resentful of the outside intervention. Instead, North Korea's "Dear Leader" capitalized on the Soviet Union's diverted attention during the Hungarian revolt and the Suez Crisis that same year. Kim quickly purged his government of reformers, strengthened his totalitarian control, and developed a strong aversion to foreign interlopers.
"Russian and Chinese meddling in Korean affairs seems to have changed the way that the regime viewed the outside world," Person says. "The lesson for today is that outside countries, like China and Russia, might not have the leverage that we assume they have, which is a legacy of the events of 1956."
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