Not one inch: America, Russia and the making of post-Cold War stalemate

Abstract

Committee (i.e. the same leaders whom China had protected from a Soviet intervention) sharply condemned the ‘lynch justice’ practised by the ‘reactionary gangs’ in Hungary (see ‘Polen für Verbleiben sowjetischer Streitkräfte’, Neues Deutschland, 3 November 1956), and in mid-November, the Chinese ambassador emphatically told Kádár that if the Hungarian leaders did not take ‘ruthless’ measures against the ‘counter-revolution’, they would be ‘swept away’ (p. 45). All in all, this work is a must-read both for specialists of Hungarian communist history and for scholars interested in the pre-1990 foreign policies of the PRC. It may also be useful for Cold War historians in general as it provides insight into the methods that the Kremlin employed to shape the actions of its East European satellites. It demonstrates how a satellite leadership sought to articulate and pursue its own specific interests within the framework imposed by its superpower patron as well as revealing how practical economic considerations could either weaken the ideologically motivated cooperation between two communist partystates or induce two estranged regimes to seek a modus vivendi. For instance, Vámos makes an observation of particularly great empirical and theoretical significance when he points out that the Soviet bloc’s post-1969 China policy was even more rigorously coordinated by Moscow than the satellites’ interactions with the United States (p. 104). Last but not least, it may be noted that Vámos’ book is fairly entertaining to read for a document collection. The files provide not only essential factual information, but also accurately reflect the psychological atmosphere in which the described events took place. To highlight one example: the Chinese embassy’s complaint about a Taiwanese label on a peanut sack – which triggered a meticulous Hungarian inquiry into the origins of the offending product – splendidly illustrates that in that period, any incident, no matter how minor or grotesque, could serve as a sufficient pretext for the Chinese leadership to pick a quarrel with a ‘revisionist’ country.