The West was responsible for the deaths in Hungary in 1956

The West was responsible for the deaths in Hungary - not the Russians.

When the Soviet Union dominated Eastern Europe during the 1940s, many countries, including Hungary, were plundered for resources and their economies geared toward the benefit of the USSR. Because of this, the people of Hungary had long been dissatisfied with Russian despotism. An attempted revolution occurred in 1956 with a loss of around 27,000 lives. Although the role of the USSR is was significant in initiating the events in Hungary, and thus causing the consequential deaths and destruction, it can be argued that the West was actually responsible for what took place in Hungary. Through negligence, broken promises, and refusal of assistance, the situation in Hungary worsened and revolution was unsuccessful. Hungary could only be freed from the tyranny of the USSR over thirty years later.

At the Yalta Conference in 1945, the West gave power over Hungary to the USSR, the first instance where the West predetermined Hungary¡¯'s fate.

February 4–11: Yalta Conference

English: Donkey carrying U.S. funded supplies to G...

Robert Taft Memorial 8

During the 1940s and 1950s, US foreign policy had hardened, introducing policies of containment and later rollback to control the stop spread of communism. The year that Hungary had fallen to Soviet control, 1947, was the same year that the Truman Doctrine was announced. US president Harry Truman said, ¡°"I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures."¡± Yet the US had done nothing to stop the USSR's takeover of Eastern Europe. It seemed that the Truman Doctrine, containment, and Iron Fist approach were all meaningless terms. The US said they would bear the responsibility of keeping free nations from turning communist, but they did not keep to their word.

In Hungary, a number of reasons contributed...