AP® European History · Unit 9 · Topic 9.4
Crises: Hungary, Cuba, and Prague
Three Cold War flashpoints, Hungary 1956, Cuba 1962, and Czechoslovakia 1968, each pushed a superpower to the edge of its control and taught Washington and Moscow where that control actually stopped.
In 1956, Hungarian students and workers protested Soviet domination, toppled Stalinist leader Matyas Rakosi's successors, and installed Imre Nagy, who promised multi-party elections and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. Radio Free Europe had spent years encouraging eastern Europeans to resist, but when Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest in November and crushed the rising, Washington sent no troops. The West wanted the propaganda value of a bloc in revolt, not a nuclear war over Hungary.
The Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 ran the same test in reverse. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev placed nuclear missiles in Cuba after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion left Fidel Castro wary of the United States. President John F. Kennedy chose a naval quarantine over an airstrike, letters and backchannel talks followed, and the thirteen days ended with Khrushchev removing the missiles in exchange for a public US pledge not to invade Cuba and a quiet removal of American missiles from Turkey. Both sides stepped back from the edge rather than fight directly.
By 1968, Czechoslovak leader Alexander Dubcek's Prague Spring loosened censorship and allowed market reforms, aiming for what he called socialism with a human face. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev saw a precedent that could unravel the whole bloc, so Warsaw Pact tanks invaded in August and crushed the reforms. Brezhnev then announced the Brezhnev Doctrine, declaring Moscow's right to intervene anywhere communism seemed threatened. Together these three crises mark the edges of both empires: Moscow would not tolerate internal reform, and Washington would not risk nuclear war to roll communism back.
Key terms
- Brezhnev Doctrine
- Soviet policy declaring Moscow's right to invade any communist state whose reforms threatened the bloc's unity.
- Prague Spring
- The 1968 period of loosened censorship and reform in Czechoslovakia under Alexander Dubcek, ended by Warsaw Pact invasion.
- quarantine
- The naval blockade Kennedy used around Cuba in 1962 to stop Soviet missile shipments without declaring war.
- Warsaw Pact
- The Soviet-led military alliance of eastern European communist states, formed in 1955 to counter NATO.
- satellite state
- A nominally independent country, like Hungary or Czechoslovakia, actually controlled by Soviet power.
Watch it explained
- How it worksWalk me through the Hungarian rising of 1956 from student march to Soviet tanks in Budapest.
- How it worksShow me the Cuban missile crisis as a thirteen-day sequence of moves and countermoves.
- How it worksHow did the Prague Spring's reforms trigger the Brezhnev Doctrine and an invasion?
- Going furtherWhat did each crisis teach both superpowers about the limits of their own blocs?
Check yourself
End of topic.