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The evidence now indicates that the Kremlin leaders decided to give way before the criticism in the hope of channeling it. If a certain amount of nationalism had to be allowed, let it be granted in measured amounts, so long as Moscow kept fundamental control with its Red army. In this game Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito would be useful. He had made himself something of a hero by breaking loose from Moscow, had even won large-scale aid from the West, but he was still a Communist, and his Yugoslavia was still as monolithically Communist as any Marxist-Leninist could ask. He was the man to consult. He could give prestige to "nationalizing" the satellites, and provide a semblance of genuineness. He could help spot the right kind of leaders for the operation. If all went well, letting off a little anti-Russian steam might even encourage the satellite peoples to accept with cheers a Communism recostumed in nationalistic garb.
In the opinion of, among others, the French Foreign Office, this is the meaning of Khrushchev's sudden pilgrimage to Belgrade in September and Tito's journey to Yalta a few days later. It is now known that at Yalta Tito and the Russians discussed at length the "rehabilitation" of satellite leaders persecuted by Stalin for Titoism. In Poland there was Gomulka, not long out of a jail term for putting his country before his Communism, but courageous, tough and dedicated. In Hungary, the hangman had long since disposed of Rajk, but there was Erno Gero, who might bring off the act. If the crowds got too insistent, they could always bring back tractable Imre Nagy as front man, and for the tougher business of running the party, Janes Kadar (see box).
The Risk. These were the prepared positions to which the Kremlin could move if and when necessary. Events in Hungary had suggested a slight retreat; out went Stalinist Rakosi and in came Gero, also a Stalinist but less notoriously so. In Poland, the Poznan defense lawyers were allowed unheard-of freedom. Khrushchev boasted recently in Moscow (to Italy's junketing No. 2 Red, Luigi Longo) that his rein-loosening program was popularizing and perpetuating Soviet Communism in the satellites. In theory, it may have been a sound risk.
Things went askew in Poland first. Gomulka came to power, and though insistently a Communist, played so skillfully on the Polish national unrest that he was able to outwit and to outface Khrushchev himself (see below). Gomulka's success was just the spark the Hungarians needed.
Scurrying to the new "prepared positions," the Communists sacked Party Leader Gero and brought in Nagy as Premier, but not in time.
The explosion in Hungary, and the mass hatred it exposed, were enough to scare Communists everywhere: not only the Muscovites but Poland's Gomulka, and Tito, whose nation borders on Hungary and has a minority of half a million Hungarians. Tito's distaste for the revolution in Hungary surprised those who fail to recognize that the disagreement among Communists is over which "road to socialism" to take, not whether to travel there. The Titos and the Gomulkas believe, in fact, that their Communism is purer and surer than the Kremlin's. To them Khrushchev & Co. are crude bunglers. But open rebellion is something to link them all in mutual alarm.