“Caught with Jam on Our Fingers”: Radio Free Europe and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956

Johanna Granville, “Caught with Jam on Our Fingers”: Radio Free Europe and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Diplomatic History, Volume 29, Issue 5, November 2005, Pages 811–839, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7709.2005.00519.x

Extract

“Over and over again thousands of characters—mostly military characters— have got to have explained to them that psychological warfare is not an occult science practiced on a couch, but just one of many clubs in the bag of the Foreign Minister or the military commander,” C. D. Jackson (Eisenhower’s psychological warfare guru) once bemoaned to his colleague William Jackson. “We sure have been ruined by that word ‘psychological.’” 1

Having “many clubs in the bag” might have been advantageous for Washington in fighting the Cold War had they always worked synergistically to achieve an identical goal. Unfortunately, while psychological warfare strategists in the 1950s strove simply to undermine the Soviet empire, predicting it would implode, cautious State and Defense Department officials sought primarily to prevent a World War III. This tension among strategists produced negative, sometimes tragic results. One key tool of psychological warfare, Radio Free Europe (RFE)—founded in 1950 as one of the four divisions of the National Committee for Free Europe (NCFE) launched a year earlier—is often heralded today as a success, a prime catalyst of the anticommunist revolutions in 1989. However, it is worth recalling the trial-and-error learning process it endured in the 1950s. Although NCFE/RFE’s overall track record in Eastern Europe spanning the entire Cold War period has undoubtedly been positive, its “informational activities” and broadcasts in the 1950s probably precipitated—not the Hungarian Revolution itself—but the Soviet crackdown on Hungary on November 3–4, 1956, as well as the increased number of casualties. This article will expose incendiary RFE broadcasts hitherto uncited and juxtapose chronologically for the first time documents released from Russian, Hungarian, and U.S. archives in recent years to show more clearly how U.S. psychological warfare and RFE broadcasts may have influenced Soviet decision making during the crisis. While wholly indisputable evidence remains to be found, the sequence of events does suggest that early balloon and leaflet operations during reformist Imre Nagy’s first term as Hungarian prime minister (1953–55)— namely “Operation Focus”—both antagonized Nagy and spawned a stern neutralism (later, hostility) toward him among U.S. diplomats and RFE broadcasters during the crisis. This, in turn, may have caused Soviet leaders to doubt Nagy’s managerial skills, fear the power vacuum in Hungary, and conclude that a second military invasion was necessary. Specifically, one may conclude that RFE’s broadcasting was a key causal factor in the Soviet crackdown for at least three distinct, but interrelated, reasons: 1) the broadcasts contributed to Moscow’s lack of faith in Nagy’s ability to control the situation; 2) they aroused Soviet fears of Hungary’s withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact long before Nagy himself announced it; and 3) the broadcasts contributed to the disbandment of the Hungarian security police (ÁVH), thus convincing Soviet (and Hungarian) Communist leaders that Soviet troops were needed to fill the security vacuum in Hungary. 2