The misuse and abuse of history
The Times' Week in Review has a piece by Roger Cohen comparing the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 to the Iraq War. It was, after all, 50 years ago this month that Hungarians rose up against Soviet domination and wound up getting crushed by an invasion.
Cohen's article is interesting, if for no other reason than it being the first story on Hungary I've seen by a U.S. news organization in several months that didn't recount the triumph of Stephen Colbert over Jon Stewart, Chuck Norris and a litany of other Hungarian national heroes in the running to have the new M0 bridge in Budapest named for them. And the sidebar's list of recommended reading is legit, with major works by respected scholars.
But Cohen's seeming premise is deeply flawed. He more or less accepts the idea of some connection or similarity to events in Hungary in 1956 and those in Iraq circa 2003, using this as a point of departure for ruminations on what the best course of action for the U.S. should've been then and ought to be now.
Yet to even suggest such parallels fails to appreciate the essential nature of these two, distinct, unrelated phenomena. Hungary in 1956 was a genuine revolt of much of society (with eventual support even from Communist leaders like Imre Nagy, who threw in his lot with his people). Certainly it was encouraged by the broadcasts of Hungarian emigres on Radio Free Europe, who more or less told their compatriots that Western and American support would be forthcoming. But the upheaval was indigenous, and it would've been a full-blown revolution (or at least a very ugly civil war) if not for Soviet intervention. Cohen seems to grasp that.
But when Cohen comes back to the subject of Iraq, he loses touch with the essence of the situation there. The current quagmire of civil war in Iraq is not the product of domestic desires to overthrow oppressive government and reorder society along liberal democratic lines, but rather it's a reaction to the Iraq War and the political vacuum it created by provoking "regime change" in the absence of a suitable social base. Iraq might well end up with liberal parliamentary democracy some day, but I don't know that any of us will live to see it. And, really, it's not surprising, since the Iraqi people didn't exactly create this situation of their own volition.
Comparisons between Budapest and Baghdad can be instructive, but only to highlight the essential contrasts between them. Revolutions are tricky things. They're difficult to produce even when widespread desire for political and social reordering exists, even when the natives are restless. But without a restive population, without a homegrown revolutionary movement, they're impossible.
The lessons to be learned from Budapest and the Cold War are that upheavals are highly improbable events and that they can't be imported. At least not if there groundwork has already been laid. So whereas communism had popular domestic appeal in many of the countries of Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, it was completely illegitimate in Hungary and regarded as a foreign imposition by most Hungarians. Look where that led in '56 and '89. Now consider Iraq.
Cohen's article is interesting, if for no other reason than it being the first story on Hungary I've seen by a U.S. news organization in several months that didn't recount the triumph of Stephen Colbert over Jon Stewart, Chuck Norris and a litany of other Hungarian national heroes in the running to have the new M0 bridge in Budapest named for them. And the sidebar's list of recommended reading is legit, with major works by respected scholars.
But Cohen's seeming premise is deeply flawed. He more or less accepts the idea of some connection or similarity to events in Hungary in 1956 and those in Iraq circa 2003, using this as a point of departure for ruminations on what the best course of action for the U.S. should've been then and ought to be now.
Yet to even suggest such parallels fails to appreciate the essential nature of these two, distinct, unrelated phenomena. Hungary in 1956 was a genuine revolt of much of society (with eventual support even from Communist leaders like Imre Nagy, who threw in his lot with his people). Certainly it was encouraged by the broadcasts of Hungarian emigres on Radio Free Europe, who more or less told their compatriots that Western and American support would be forthcoming. But the upheaval was indigenous, and it would've been a full-blown revolution (or at least a very ugly civil war) if not for Soviet intervention. Cohen seems to grasp that.
But when Cohen comes back to the subject of Iraq, he loses touch with the essence of the situation there. The current quagmire of civil war in Iraq is not the product of domestic desires to overthrow oppressive government and reorder society along liberal democratic lines, but rather it's a reaction to the Iraq War and the political vacuum it created by provoking "regime change" in the absence of a suitable social base. Iraq might well end up with liberal parliamentary democracy some day, but I don't know that any of us will live to see it. And, really, it's not surprising, since the Iraqi people didn't exactly create this situation of their own volition.
Comparisons between Budapest and Baghdad can be instructive, but only to highlight the essential contrasts between them. Revolutions are tricky things. They're difficult to produce even when widespread desire for political and social reordering exists, even when the natives are restless. But without a restive population, without a homegrown revolutionary movement, they're impossible.
The lessons to be learned from Budapest and the Cold War are that upheavals are highly improbable events and that they can't be imported. At least not if there groundwork has already been laid. So whereas communism had popular domestic appeal in many of the countries of Eastern Europe at the end of the Second World War, it was completely illegitimate in Hungary and regarded as a foreign imposition by most Hungarians. Look where that led in '56 and '89. Now consider Iraq.
posted by Alexander Dubcek | 15:26
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