Empire by Coercion: The Soviet Union and Hungary in the 1950s

This article examines how the Soviet Union introduced its own political system in Hungary. Moscow's main purpose was not so much to export Communism as to ensure that Hungary would satisfy the Soviet Union's imperial needs unconditionally. Hungary's Communist leaders were in fact loyal to the Soviet leadership, accepted the basic tenets of Stalinist ideology, and identified their country's interests with those of the Soviet Union. However, in the field of the economy in particular, the Hungarian leadership were unable and sometimes even unwilling to meet the Soviet conditions for a number of reasons. The article shows that Soviet control over Hungary was indeed far from being complete.