Экскурс в историю

[tijd]

4 ноября 1956 года советские войска вторглись в Венгрию и за несколько дней потопили в крови венгерское восстание. За успешную операцию маршал Жуков получил четвертую звезду Героя Советского Союза, а председатель КГБ Серов был награждён орденом Кутузова I степени. Отличился и советский посол в Венгрии Юрий Андропов, который после этого пошел на повышение и стал заведующим Отдела ЦК КПСС по связям с компартиями соцстран.



Редакционная статья New York Times писала "We accuse the Soviet Government of murder. We accuse it of the foulest treachery and the basest deceit known to man. We accuse it of having committed so monstrous crime against the Hungarian people yesterday that its infamy can never be forgiven or forgotten."

В те же дни Дуайт Эйзенхауэр был переизбран на пост президента США, а окрыленный Никита Хрущев, выступая перед западными послами, озвучил свою знаменитую угрозу «Нравится вам или нет, но история на нашей стороне. Мы вас похороним.»



Менее, чем через год был запущен Спутник, что вызвало определенную панику в США и других странах "свободного мира". Вскоре Эйзенхауэр выступил с обращением к нации по вопросу национальной безопасности. Он говорил о необходимости вложений в науку и образование, а также прямо ответил на угрозу Хрущева.

Now, once again, we hear an expansionist regime declaring, "We will bury you." In a bit of American vernacular, "Oh, yeah?" Seriously, it would be a grave error not to take this kind of threat literally. This theme has been a Communist doctrine for a hundred years. But you may recall that there was once a dictator named Hitler who also said he would bury us. He wrote a long, dull book telling precisely how he was going to do it. Not enough people took him at his word. We shall not make that mistake again.
International communism has demonstrated repeatedly that its leaders are quite willing to launch aggression by violence upon other countries. They are even more ready to expand by propaganda and subversion, economic penetration and exploitation. Mostly they use a combination of all three methods. The free world must therefore be alert to all. <...>
My friends, it has always been my faith that the eventual triumph of decency and freedom and right in this world is inevitable. But, as a wise American once observed, it takes a lot of hard work and sacrifice by a lot of people to bring about the inevitable.
https://americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwighteisenhowernationalsecurityfuture.htm

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Через месяц предстоял еще более серьезный тест. В декабре 1957 в Париже состоялась первая встреча на высшем уровне 15 стран НАТО. Сидя за символичным круглым столом, но исполняя роль "лидера свободного мира", Эйзенхауэр выступил с программной речью.

This meeting is unique in NATO history. For the first time it is attended by Heads of Governments.
We meet, not under a chilling fear that each nation among us, acting separately and alone, might fail to match the aggressive power that could be brought against any.
That was once true.
We meet, not in any dreadful knowledge that our cities are again, by conflict, scarred and painfully marked, our economies strained, our peoples worn from a war against totalitarianism.
Again, that was once true.
Most certainly, we do not meet in a mood of nationalistic self-assertion, pursuing selfish interests, at the expense of our sister nations.
That has never been true of NATO.
We are here to rededicate ourselves to the task of dispelling the shadows that are being cast upon the free world. We are here to take store of our great assets - in men, in minds, and in materials.
We are here to find ways and means to apply our undoubted strengths to the building of an ample and safer home for mankind here on earth.
This is a time for greatness.
We pray for greatness in courage of will to explore every path of common enterprise that may advance the cause of justice and freedom.
We pray for greatness in sympathy and comradeship that we may labor together to end the mutual differences that hamper our forward march within a mutual destiny.
We pray for greatness in the spirit of self-sacrifice, so that we may forsake lesser objectives and interests to devote ourselves wholly to the well-being of all of us.
We pray for greatness of wisdom and faith that will create in all of us the resolve that whatever measures we take will be measures for peace.
By peace, I do not mean the barren concept of a world where open war for a time is put off because the competitive war machines, which humans build, tend mutually to neutralize the terrors they create.
Nor by peace do I mean an uneasy absence of strife bought at the price of cowardly surrender of principle. We cannot have peace and ignore righteous aspirations and noble heritages.
The peace we do seek is an expanding state of justice and understanding. It is a peace within which men and women can freely exercise their inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
In it mankind can produce freely, trade freely, travel freely, think freely, pray freely.
The peace we seek is a creative and dynamic state of flourishing institutions, of prosperous economies, of deeper spiritual insight for all nations and all men. <...>
We can take satisfaction from the past but no complacency in the present. The Soviet state daily increases its military and economic power, and its rulers make clear their purpose to use that power to dominate the world.
To this end the Soviet system imposes upon the great mass of its workers a harsh discipline.
Their lot is of forced labor and production, which is as abhorrent as it is menacing, for it provides the despotic state with vast resources produced out of serfdom.
Thus there is emphasized the production of new weapons, including atomic warheads and rocketry.
The Communists likewise have enlarged their industrial capacity. They challenge us to a world contest in the economic field, seeking by economic penetrations to gain the mastery of still more human and material resources.
These are some of the problems that confront us. The presence here of Heads of Governments proves that we recognize the magnitude of the challenge. <...>
Let us glance at our resources. The 15 NATO countries comprise nearly 500 million people.
These people have a per capita productivity about three times that of the Soviet Union. Our scientists and technicians were the inventors of what now revolutionizes the arts both of war and of peace. We possess what is, today, the most powerful military establishment in the world.
These are some of our material assets. Even more important are the political and moral assets that are national heritages. <...>
Within our societies we manifest, so that all can see, the good fruits of freedom. Those fruits do not consist of materialistic monuments, which despots have always been able to exhibit. They consist of providing the simple things all men want - the opportunity to think and worship as their conscience and reason dictate; to live in their homes without fear; to draw together in the intimacies of family life; to work in congenial tasks of their own choice; and to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
These are the most precious manifestations of freedom. And we have the power to defend and spread that freedom.
Freedom has not failed us! Surely, we shall not fail freedom!
We shall be successful. But the task will not be easy or short. Accomplishment will prove to be a journey, not a destination.
We who inherit and share the humane and religious culture of Europe must examine our collective conscience to determine if we are doing our best to meet the grave threat to our free institutions.
I believe that we must rid ourselves of certain false habits of thought of which we have all been misconceptions.
Among our misconceptions has been the belief that our free system was inherently more productive in all fields than the totalitarian system.
Another has been that time was always on our side, irrespective of what we do with that time.
Another has been that our nations, merely because they arc sovereign, can each lead a separate, selfish national life, without coordination of planning and of effort.
Another is the assumption that the triumph of freedom over despotism is inevitable. As a countryman of mine once observed, "It takes a lot of hard work and sacrifice by a lot of people to bring about the inevitable." <...>
The forces arrayed against us are formidable but not irresistible.
The captive peoples of Eastern Europe have made it evident that patriotism survives and that
they continue to live in the hope of recovering their proud and honorable traditions of national independence.
The Kremlin has publicly recognized the "contradictions" between the desires of the workers for better standards of living and the utilization by the state of colossal sums for military and capital developments. The Soviet current 5-year plan has had to be abandoned. There is in process a decentralization of industry which will inevitably bring with it a decentralization of power and of opinion.
With the passage of time, despotic government historically has suffered internal decay before it is apparent on the surface. Beneath a hard governmental exterior, love of freedom among all peoples still persists. It is a force that has never been indefinitely suppressed.
The industrial plans of the Soviet rulers require an ever-increasing number of finely trained minds. Such minds cannot be indefinitely subjected to thought control and to conformity by the Communist or any other party.
Freer access to knowledge and fuller understanding are the internal forces that will more and more require recognition. Their effect will be the more noticeable if the existing order cannot feed on what appear to be external successes and thus distract mass attention from the obvious failures of despotic rule.
There lies before the free nations a clear possibility of peaceful triumph. There is a noble strategy of victory - not victory over any peoples but victory for all peoples.
This is no reason for complacency ; it is a reason why we should confidently and hopefully do what is required to carry out that strategy.
I have known the comradeship of men in arms from many nations joined in the defense of freedom. The sense of sharing moments of crisis and decision is a moving and a lasting one. Too often those moments come only in time of war. It would indeed be a tragedy if we could not, in waging peace, share the joy of common decision, common effort, and common sacrifice. There is no task so difficult, yet so imperative and so honorable. <...>
Together we of the free world will wage and win this struggle on the frontiers of human progress.

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Самым популярным певцом в Америке в 1956-1957 был Элвис Пресли. Выступая по (новому еще тогда) телевизору, 22-летний Элвис обратился с призывом к телезрителям о помощи венгерским беженцам. В результате удалось собрать миллионы долларов (около $55 миллионов в сегодняшних деньгах).

Советское вторжение в Венгрию породило самую большую волну беженцев со времен второй мировой. Около 200 тысяч жителей Венгрии бежали в Австрию. Другие страны "свободного мира" согласились помочь. В США администрация Эйзенхауэра приняла в общей сложности около 40 тысяч, в обход иммиграционных квот. По опросам большинство американцев были против, но в 1958 Конгресс принял закон (Hungarian Refugee Act) о предоставлении им вида на жительства (гринкарты).

In early November 1956, Soviet forces brutally suppressed anti-Soviet uprisings and protests in Hungary, by some accounts killing as many as 30,000 people and creating a huge outflow of Hungarians attempting to leave the country as refugees. On Nov. 20, Gallup reminded Americans that 5,000 refugees from Hungary were being admitted to the U.S. and asked them, "If you had room, would you be willing to have one, or more, of the refugees from Hungary stay in your home for a few months, or until such a time as this person could be on his or her own?" Americans were fairly eleemosynary in response to this question -- 50% said yes compared with 35% who said no.
By the next fall (September 1957) Gallup was asking Americans about Hungarian refugees already in this country and found a more mixed response. The question stated that the Hungarian refugees who came to this country had no permanent residence and could be deported at any time, and asked if the law should be changed so that they could stay permanently. The response showed that 44% said no, 41% yes.
And, in 1958, Gallup asked a more specific question about the "160,000 refugees who left Hungary to escape the communists," and used the "it has been suggested" construction in reference to 65,000 of these people coming to the U.S. A majority of Americans (55%) said that they disapproved of this plan, while 33% approved.
https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/186716/historical-review-americans-views-refugees-coming.aspx

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