“qAccording to the American legation in Budapest, the likelihood of Soviet intervention in Hungarian affairs has recently decreased. Moscow apparently has accepted a further gradual decline at least in its overt control over Hungary.”

That is how the Central Intelligence Agency sized up Hungary’s political situation in its weekly summary dated October 18,1956 — only five days before demonstrations against Soviet occupation sparked mobilization by the Red Army and the crushing of the Hungarian revolution two weeks later.

Today many analysts and historians in Hungary and abroad maintain that a better prepared Washington could have helped prevent the debacle. They could have persuaded Budapest to pursue something less than full independence and to avoid an all-or-nothing confrontation with Moscow.

Monday morning quarterbacking a half-century later may not change anyone’s mind concerning that brief but fierce conflict. But if the exercise furthers understanding of the event’s historical importance, it is worth pursuing, especially now that it is possible to gain insight into the sort of intelligence America was gathering for making its decisions, by digging into the 1956 digital archive (archivum.ws). The site — established by the Open Society Archives at Central European University, Budapest, an international archival repository and research center founded by George Soros in 1995 — promises to make crucial documents of the history of the revolution publicly available for the first time on November 4, the 50th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Hungary.

Indeed, we can already glean some information from declassified CIA daily and weekly reports, which are now searchable on the Web site. The document quoted above also identifies some internal liberalization trends in some Soviet satellite countries and their improved relations with Tito’s Yugoslavia — which until then was an outcast in the socialist camp (we schoolchildren had been driven out on May Day parades, sporting red kerchiefs and pushing decorated scooters or bikes to chant slogans like “Down with Tito!”).

Even more promising as described in the same CIA weekly review seemed steps these countries were taking to improve relations with America. Czechoslovakia and Romania were in negotiations with America on expanded trade and technical cooperation, while Hungary and Poland had expressed interest in such talks. What’s more, travel restrictions for foreign nationals were relaxed in many of the satellites. The Boston Symphony played the American and Czech national anthems in Prague, Marian Anderson was scheduled to perform in Budapest, and American flood-relief aid was sent to Hungary.

What the CIA reports failed to detect in Hungary was the intensity of anti-Soviet sentiment across nearly all segments of society. Russian military personnel garrisoned around Hungary often encountered open hostility whenever they tried to mingle with locals and were under orders to stay in their barracks as much as possible to avoid incidents.

The CIA reports also did not accurately gauge the extent of popular resentment over the pace of forced industrialization, farm collectivization, and the shipments of Hungarian commodities to the Soviet Union for little or no compensation while the Hungarian standard of living stagnated or declined from year to year.

The CIA’s sole Hungarian-speaking operative in Budapest could have filed a more balanced report by mixing in a few contemporary jokes that better reflected the mood of the population:

Hungarian border guard: Where are you going?
Traveler: To my brother in Switzerland. He went blind and I have to help him.
Border guard: Why doesn’t he come home?
Traveler: I said he was blind, not insane.

Q: After an accident, how can you tell whether a dog or a party secretary was run over?
A: There are skid marks if it was a dog.

Q: What’s a five-plus-two joke?
A: An anti-commie joke — five years for telling it, two for laughing at it.

Or the agent could have asked more prescient school kids who, like me at age 13 that year, refused to do any more homework in the universally mandated Russian language class. We “just knew” that despite the threats from the teacher, we’d never, ever be forced to take his finals.

By the autumn of 1956, Stalin had been dead for three and a half years, Khrushchev had denounced Stalinism to the 20th Communist Party Congress in February, and the Hungarian Stalinist puppet Mátyás Rákosi was in exile in the Soviet Union and under regular attack by the Hungarian party press. There was an expectation across the nation that something profound had to happen. The spontaneously formed mass demonstrations and self-organized insurgency groups were not to be appeased. They were prepared to stay the course until the Soviets left or to be pummeled into the ground. Tragically, it was the latter, with thousands of casualties and hundreds of thousands of refugees, including my parents, sister, and myself.

The given wisdom whenever the issue is raised inside or outside Hungary today is that America and its NATO partners had abandoned Hungary to its fate in its hour of need, preoccupied with a pointless conflict over the Suez Canal and with the Eisenhower re-election campaign. Although the Republican campaign and Radio Free Europe broadcasts referred to intentions “to liberate captive nations” and “to roll back Communism,” from the perspective of the satellite nations of Eastern Europe, this was all rhetoric and no action because no concrete steps were ever taken.

It is true that in the wartime atmosphere of those days, wellarmed Marine Corps detachments would have been a welcome sight to most Hungarians. Many would have been happy just with a U.N. Security Council resolution attempting to pressure the Kremlin into freeing Hungary.

Now, half a century later we know the second proposition was laughably naïve, while the first one most likely would have resulted in a protracted conflict, with a ceasefire settlement leaving part of the country free and part under totalitarian rule, as is still the case on the Korean peninsula, or until 17 years ago was the case of the two Germanys. For lesser countries have learned the hard way that in the bipolar world that dominated much of the 20th century, the only thing worse than getting KO’d by a brute like the Soviet Union was to be involved in a split decision shared by the superpowers.

What about the option of settling for less than full independence without a fight? In truth, that was not much of an option — not as long as there was a Soviet Union, which garrisoned its troops in client states and dictated or meddled in nearly every aspect of economic, cultural, educational, and even personal life, while leeching you white at the same time.

The only option was the one America in fact pursued all along — even if it did so inconsistently at times: A democratic, free, and strong America encouraged democracy and freedom wherever in the world it found receptive partners. In the end, this competition proved too much for its totalitarian rival, the Soviet empire, which 33 years after the rape of Hungary, passed into oblivion without a shot being fired.

Also available on the Web site will be interviews with Hungarian refugees conducted in 1957 and 1958 within the framework of the Columbia University Research Project Hungary that the Open Society Archives copied and digitized. More than 600 interviews were made by specially trained, native Hungarian field-workers in European refugee camps and in America, according to the archive organization. Most of the interviews lasted for two or three days, and the final English transcripts of them averaged 70 pages.

On November 4,the day of the official launch of the Web site, the Open Society Archives is holding a 5:30 a.m. press conference at its Goldberger House Headquarters in central Budapest at which it will present an original sound recording of the early morning attack by Soviet troops on the capital city 50 years earlier.

Mr. Keresztes is an American-Hungarian editor and writer based in Budapest and may be reached at keresztes2@freemail.hu.

Events Surrounding 1956 Soviet Invasion of Hungary

• August 31, 1947 Communists led by Mátyás Rákosi rig parliamentary elections.

• February 8, 1949 Cardinall Mindszenty, Hungary’s primate, sentenced to life in prison after show trial.

• October 15, 1949 Former Interior Minister Laszlo Rajk executed after show trial.

• March 5, 1953 Joseph Stalin dies.

• June 16, 1953 Rákosi replaced as premier by Imre Nagy.

• April 14, 1955 Nagy ousted as premier and from Communist Party.

• February 14-25, 1956 Khrushchev denounces Stalin at 20th Communist Party Congress.

• June 18, 1956 Rajk’s rehabilitation demanded by writers at Petofi Circle.

• July 18, 1956 Rákosi replaced by another Stalinist, Erno Gero, as party first secretary.

• October 6, 1956 Rajk reburial turns into mass political rally.

• October 23, 1956 Hungarian university students defy ban on demonstrations in support of striking workers in Poland. At state radio headquarters, they demand airing a proclamation calling for departure of Soviet occupation forces, multi-party elections, and withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. Instead, in a broadcast, Gero condemns demonstrators. A Nagy address at parliament building fails to calm a crowd of students, factory workers, some army and police units, and civilians, who demand Nagy’s return. At the radio station, secret police fire on the crowd. At a city park, Stalin’s bronze statue is pulled down.

• October 24, 1956 Armed resistance groups form and engage the secret police in a number of cities and engage Soviet tank units that arrive in the capital in the early hours. Revolutionary workers’ councils form. Nagy nominated as prime minister.

• October 25, 1956 Demonstrators fraternizing with Russian troops at parliament building are fired upon from rooftops, presumably by the secret police, leaving scores dead or injured. Janos Kadar replaces Gero as party leader.

• October 26-27, 1956 Heavy fighting in many cities, massacres of demonstrators.

• October 28, 1956 Cease-fire proclaimed.

• October 30, 1956 Mob lynches secret policemen in Budapest. Nagy declares end of one-party system. Cardinal Mindszenty is freed.

• October 31, 1956 Pravda publishes Kremlin statement vowing to respect Hungarian sovereignty. Soviet forces withdraw from Budapest.

• November 1, 1956 Nagy announces withdrawal from Warsaw Pact. Kadar on radio praises “glorious uprising.” Soviet troops secure airfields.

• November 2, 1956 Soviet military reinforcements cross into Hungary.

• November 3, 1956 Hungarian military leaders meeting with Soviet counterparts to discuss details of Soviet withdrawal are arrested by Soviet secret police.

• November 4, 1956 Four Red Army divisions begin campaign to overturn revolution. Kádár forms government. Imre Nagy and cabinet take refuge at Yugoslav Embassy.

• November 14, 1956 Nagy and cabinet abducted to Romania.

• November 16, 1956 Arrest of 30,000 insurgents begins, 22,000 are jailed, some 330 are executed, and 182,000 Hungarians flee the country.

• June 16, 1958 Nagy and cabinet are executed after secret trial.