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SOME QUESTIONS ON HUNGARIAN-SOVIET RELATIONS 31
three weeks ago?" Other specific issues, such as the kolkhoz movement, had not
been touched on, but this visit in Moscow proved to be the first step in the Soviet
retreat from fostering serious reform in Hungary. 154 This backtracking would eventually
lead to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
Following the old dictator's death rapid changes were introduced in Soviet
foreign policy. Malenkov announced a "peace initiative" at Stalin's funeral and
proclaimed that all outstanding issues between the USSR and the United States
could be solved by peaceful means. On March 18 the triumvirate of Molotov,
Malenkov and Beria outlined a peace proposal for Korea. Moscow restored relations
with Israel, Yugoslavia and Greece and dropped territorial claims against
Turkey. 155 Beria would have ventured even further had the temporary coalition of
Molotov and Khrushchev not blocked him. Beria also prepared an initiative toward
Yugoslavia for a "fundamental reappraisal and improvement of the relations
between the [two] countries". 156 In order to forestall West Germany's co-option
into the Western defense system, he proposed the unification of Germany on a
non-socialist basis. 157 Powerful as he may have been, Beria would soon be brought
down by Khrushchev, whose abilities he had underestimated. Georgi Malenkov, a
technocrat, seized the post of Prime Minister and lingered on a little longer. Unlike
Beria, however, Malenkov survived his fall and was allowed to live quietly in
retirement. On August 8, 1953 in a nationally broadcast address Malenkov distanced
himself from the dogma of the inevitability of war with the capitalist world
and declared that "there is no objective grounds for a collision between the United
States and the Soviet Union". 158 Later, he would assert that a reduction of tensions
was the only alternative to the Cold War, that is, to "the policy of preparing for a
new world war". Such a war, he declared, would destroy "world civilization". 159
This declaration was far from the ideas espoused by Khrushchev, who was still
thinking in terms of the destruction of the capitalist bourgeoisie. He forced
Malenkov to repudiate publicly his heresy, and on January 31, 1955 at a plenary
meeting of the Central Committee Malenkov was dismissed from his post of Prime
Minister. 160 This coincided with the dismissal of Imre Nagy in Hungary and the
strengthening of the Stalinist line within the HWP. The two events were perhaps
not coincidental. 161 Nagy, who received his mandate for change from Moscow,
gradually lost the Kremlin's support as Beria was executed and Malenkov's influence
began to ebb. The fate of the Hungarian "new course" was not decided in the
Soviet capital alone. Nagy had never agreed to the slavish adoption of the Soviet
model in Hungary and always thought in terms of a Hungarian model of socialism.
He interpreted the mandate for change that he had received in Moscow in his
own way. Nagy thought that Hungary had "skipped" the transition period to socialism.
From this it followed that Nagy initially did not wish to change the model,
but only to slow down the "development". I62 Nagy never wielded as much power
as Malenkov had as the head of the Soviet nuclear weapons program. In fact,