The role of Czechoslovakia in the Revolution of 1956 and in the consolidation of the Kádár regime

Abstract

Czechoslovakia's attitude to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 is a little-known story. Papers published in the past three decades have presented only the reaction of the Czecho- slovakian and Slovakian political leaders. This study promises more than that. It is the first attempt to present, in a complex way, not only the documents of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) and Commu- nist Party of Slovakia (KSS), but also the documents of the Czechoslovak People's Army, the Interior Ministry and the economic documents, in order to show how Czechoslovakia reacted to the Hungarian Revolution and how it helped the Hungarian government headed by János Kádár, which was formed after the suppression of the Revolution, in the process of consolidation. This study provides a synthesis of thousands of pages documents from the archives of Prague and Bratislava relating to the events of the Hungarian Revolution.