In 1905 the revolutionary struggles in Russia led to an upsurge of the labour movement in every European country. In 1917 the Russian revolution led to directly revolutionary struggles in Finland, Hungary and Germany; and the Russian revolution was then itself saved by the refusal of British and French workers to tolerate a war of intervention against the Soviet Republic.
Today there is not one single major development in a European country - let alone developments of world historic importance, such as the Spanish and Portuguese revolutions or the attempt to enact the 'historic compromise in Italy which would not shake every other country on this continent.
When the Red Army overran Hungarv in 1945, Stalin at first tolerated a 'national democratic coalition' of bourgeois and workers parties in which capitalism was left fundamentally untouched. But the Cold War came and Stalin decided to transform Eastern Europe into Socialism at a stroke. By ukase all industry was nationalised, all parties except the bureaucratised CPs were banned, and opposionists execuca ana monsonca, in tne early 1950s Hungarians experienced a 17 per cent drop in laving standards terror over the people.
For Stalin. unlike Lenin and Trotsky. the "dictatorship of the proletariat" was to be executed not through the democratic organs of workers power (the soviets), but exclusively the Communist rany.Unortunaleiy Lomax does not bring out this point clearly enough.
On 23 October the revolution began. Students at Budapest University demon race or ine windrawa or Kussan troops. democratisation of Hungarian political life, and a new government under Imre Nagy (a moderate Stalinist with credibility from the 1945-48 period).