How similar were the causes and consequences of the Hungarian uprising and the Prague Spring? [50]
The Hungarian Uprising of 56 and Prague Spring of 68 share and differ on a number of causes and consequences in terms of political, economic, social and physical themes. Having entered a period of reform post Stalin, the circumstances encouraged countries to explore new roads to socialism. This essay will discuss how similar they were in these areas, by considering the reaction of the Soviet Union, the political situation in Eastern Europe at this time and the severity of the short and long term impacts.
There were a series of political causes to both the Hungarian Uprising and the Prague Spring. To start with, the process of destalinization seemed to encourage a policy of ‘different roads to socialism.’ After the fall of Beria, the pace of De-Stalinization picked up - those politicians who had been imprisoned under Stalin, such as Gomulka and Kadar, were released and espionage in Eastern Europe was dissolved. The expectation in the satellite state was that this meant more freedoms and independence from Moscow. Khrushchev clearly expressed his own views on Stalin the leader in his Secret Speech of 1956; this too would have encouraged a call for reform in the satellite states, since it implied that with a change in leadership, the role of the Soviet Union in the Satellite States would change. Destalinization was a common cause of both the Hungarian uprising and the Prague Spring, both of which were sparked by a call for change in freedoms. In Hungary this manifested itself in Nagy’s ‘New Coarse’ while in Prague Dubcek abolished censorship among other reforms. Hence, it could be interpreted that the calls for reform, which lead to, the Hungarian Uprising and the Prague Spring both rooted from Destalinization. However, Prague spring was over 10 years after the Hungarian Rising, so the immediate impact of Destalinization seem a limited cause of the reform compared...