Chapter 193
Chapter 193
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Translator: crow
Chapter Title: 193. Hungarian Revolution (1)
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Chen Gongbo's intervention made the Indochina War take on even more complex dimensions.
The soldiers sent from Nanjing were carefully selected elite volunteers.
Armed with American weapons, their combat effectiveness was bound to be formidable.
Their motivation was rock-solid too.
"Pay's all in dollars?"
"That's right, so fight hard. Slack off, and you're back to China."
Bolstered by these incoming volunteers, the South Vietnamese army pushed the North Vietnamese back decisively.
The front line had now advanced beyond the pre-war 17th parallel.
The situation grew urgent for the Soviets as well, so they decided to deploy volunteers too.
But there were limits to how many they could ship across the sea.
Once again, the Soviets turned to the Chinese warlords.
"We'll stuff your pockets with crisp cash, so send us some troops?"
"Doesn't the general like a little extra lining his pockets?"
The Chinese warlords were already struggling economically due to the central government's currency reforms infiltrating their territories.
So they wavered at the money the Soviets offered.
"How much per head?"
And so, Nanjing's army poured into South Vietnam while soldiers from Republic of China warlords flooded North Vietnam, turning it into a brutal fratricidal war.
The bleeding was heavy for both the US and the Soviets.
The US could at least lean on its economic might, but not the Soviets.
With all payments in dollars, they had to pour every last bit of hard currency scraped from exports into North Vietnam.
"It's suffocating, really."
The Soviet Communist Party suffered immensely from this draining war.
The massive fiscal hemorrhage stalled their reform policies.
Khrushchev pinned the blame first on Communist Party General Secretary Malenkov.
"Comrades, think about it. That George was buddies with Beria. Does it make sense for a guy like that to sit as General Secretary representing the Soviet Union?"
"You're right."
At the Politburo meeting in January 1955, Khrushchev used the stalled reforms as an excuse to oust Malenkov.
He installed the figurehead Bulganin in his place.
This made Khrushchev the undisputed top dog.
But dodging blame temporarily couldn't resolve the dire situation.
No matter how he shifted it, the responsibility would circle back to him.
'I need to change the mood before that happens.'
Khrushchev figured compromise with the West was impossible after the Turkey issue.
If he couldn't shift the external atmosphere, creating a domestic pivot was his best bet.
After much deliberation, Khrushchev came up with one such event.
'If I could topple a living god like Mao Zedong of the CCP, what's hard about striking at a dead Stalin?'
Like Peng Dehuai had done, Khrushchev resolved to attack Stalin.
"Comrade Bulganin, we need to advance the Party Congress."
Khrushchev planned to drag the god of the frozen wastes down to human level at the first Party Congress after Stalin's death.
"If that's what you want, Comrade, so be it."
The fateful day arrived sooner than expected.
The 20th Party Congress convened in March 1955, far ahead of schedule.
Party members found the early timing puzzling.
After the senior members gave their reports in order of rank, Khrushchev took the podium.
Everyone assumed it would be the usual boilerplate speech.
But what came from Khrushchev's mouth was anything but predictable.
A shocking declaration swept through Red Square.
"Stalin may be in his coffin, but we still live in his legacy. Fear and repression, purges and disappearances, silence and crime. We've hesitated to speak out of fear of the system he left behind. But is that right?"
The delegates were stunned as Khrushchev denounced Stalin.
Even dead, Stalin was the absolute savior who had rescued the federation from the Great Patriotic War.
No one had imagined anyone daring to attack that great name.
In the face of this unprecedented situation, everyone doubted their ears.
Yet Khrushchev read on calmly from his speech.
"We knew about the countless extralegal acts he committed—crimes—but stayed silent. Crimes that would only happen in Hitler's or Mussolini's states occurred right beside us, and we turned a blind eye. Comrades, I admit it: when Stalin was alive, I closed my eyes and ears too. But that absolute one is dead now. Stalin's era is over. Isn't it time for change?"
Khrushchev's criticisms rang true.
During the Great Purge, who among them hadn't lost a friend or family member?
They'd simply never had the chance to voice that buried discomfort.
Khrushchev began reciting the records of Stalin's countless crimes.
The audience listened in heavy silence to the litany of Stalin's sins.
Not even a breath could be heard as the horrific accounts piled up.
Then, a few ventured cautious questions.
"What happened to the disappeared?"
The question was a direct challenge to the Stalinist regime.
"Only Stalin knew their fates."
The vanished were gone forever, swallowed into the void.
Had there been fair trials in those processes?
Yet even so, no outright condemnation of Stalin emerged.
Even in death, buried in his coffin, Stalin remained Stalin.
Khrushchev was the only one daring to denounce him.
A weighty silence descended.
Then Stalin's close friend Voroshilov shot to his feet and bellowed.
"What the hell are you spouting! If word of this gets out, it's the Party and the federation that suffer. Are you saying this without a thought for the nation's dignity!"
Kaganovich immediately chimed in.
"If we must reform the federation's system, let's do it quietly. No need to drag in Comrade Stalin and make a fuss."
Many delegates nodded along with Kaganovich's logic.
The senior Party members had been victims of Stalin's tyranny, but also accomplices who had abetted the system.
They recoiled at digging into issues that might implicate themselves.
Khrushchev had anticipated this reaction.
"That's exactly why I'm attacking Stalin—because of responses like yours. What the hell is this 'Stalin' name anyway? What did he ever do for us?"
"Comrade Stalin was the victorious leader who won the Patriotic War."
Voroshilov retorted.
Khrushchev shot back loudly.
"The federation didn't win because of Stalin—it won despite him."
Khrushchev's speech demoting Stalin sent shockwaves rippling out.
Riding that momentum, he declared "reform."
"We cannot run the nation on repressive Stalinism any longer. We must move toward a freer, more comfortable state—a true workers' and proletarian nation. The era where the state terrorizes and represses society ends today."
Khrushchev hoped to refresh the national mood through this de-Stalinization wind and cool the discontent building from the Vietnam War.
But his calculations had a slight error.
The declaration scrapping Stalinism shook all the Eastern European communist states.
"The communist motherland, the Soviet Union, is ditching Stalinism. Let's live a bit freer too!"
"Free elections! A free civil society!"
Hungary was the first to rise up.
Hungary's dictator Mátyás Rákosi was at a loss facing the crowd's uprising.
In the old days, he could just send in the army and crush it.
But with the "homeland" declaring reforms to abandon Stalinism, he couldn't openly defy that policy.
Revisionists in his own Party were already raising voices for the Khrushchev line.
As Rákosi dithered, the Soviets made the call.
"The people seem to have a lot of pent-up grievances, so ease up on the dictatorship and economic controls."
Khrushchev appointed the reformist Imre Nagy as prime minister and sent him to Hungary.
'Imre Nagy's a loyal friend to Moscow; he'll move as we direct.'
Khrushchev decided to empower the reformers this time.
The problem was that Imre Nagy wasn't one to settle for being a Soviet puppet.
Upon taking power, Imre Nagy pushed aggressive reforms.
"Our model is Korea. To follow it, we must first renovate the Party and the state."
Even Khrushchev, who had wanted some Hungarian reform, was appalled when Imre Nagy incorporated Korean-style democracy.
"That guy's out of control. If we let him be, no one knows what Eastern Europe will look like. Intervene now."
Moscow swiftly moved to replace Imre Nagy, but Rákosi was wildly unpopular.
Having tasted Korean-style democracy, the citizens refused to accept communist rule any longer.
Finally, massive protests demanding Korean-style democracy erupted.
"Hungary has the right to economic development and prosperity too. Reds, stop meddling in our affairs!"
The protesters promptly reinstated Imre Nagy as prime minister and formed a new government.
"First Secretary, Comrade—if we let this slide, all of Eastern Europe will collapse."
The communists' weakness was their instability: one fall could topple them all like dominoes.
'This is no time to hesitate.'
Korean-style democracy.
It was poison Eastern Europe couldn't afford.
One only had to recall the havoc it had wrought in Germany.
'Korean-style democracy can't take root in our backyard.'
Hadn't the Koreans themselves purged their own backyard communists?
Khrushchev made his decision.
In the original timeline, he might have agonized over how to handle Imre Nagy, but here he sealed Hungary's fate easily.
"Crush Budapest. Do it now."