The Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and the Prague Spring of 1968 were key events that shaped the outcome of the Cold War. Both countries were under the Soviet control during the post-war period. After the death of Stalin, when Khrushchev became the leader and the secret speech of destalinization have seen the daily light both countries introduced their own paths to socialism, first Hungary and 12 years later the Czechoslovakia. Both of the events had similar and different causes and consequences, which will be analysed in this essay.
Hungary as well as Czechoslovakia wanted to reform their system. Both countries wanted the reforms to find ‘National roads to socialism’, or as they called it in Czechoslovakia, ‘the socialisms with a human face’. Both countries before the reforms were led by hard line Stalinists, which were one of the clear causes that led to the destalinization and the reforms. In Hungary the leader before the introduction of the reforms was Matyas Rakosi, or as the Hungarian sometimes called him, ‘the Bald Butcher’. He was incredibly unpopular within Hungary; he has murdered many people, hard to estimate the number, and imprisoned over 200,000. He was closely linked with the Hungarian secret Police the AVH, which were even more unpopular and hated than Rakosi himself. As well as in Hungary, Czechoslovakia had their hard line communist dictator. His name was Antonin Novotny, and as well as Rakosi he was very royal to Stalin and Moscow. He wasn’t as hard-line as Rakosi but he was still very unpopular within Czechoslovakia, one of the actions that he has taken that expanded his unpopularity was that he didn’t set free the prisoners that were prisoned by the Czechoslovakian secret police. In all the countries around 1960’s all the political prisoners were being freed, for example Gomulka in Poland and Kadar in Hungary. The reforms in Hungary were introduced