French Foreign policy and the 1956 Hungarian revolution

Abstract

1956 - Budapest: the time and the place are associated in the minds of many Frenchmen. The name of the Hungarian capital became one of the most painful symbols of the last days of the 4th Republic: after Budapest, many Frenchmen were forced to face their own illusions about the socialist countries. Public opinion and the French press became interested in the tragedy with the intensity commensurate to the significance of the Fall of 1956. The topic of the activity of the French government and its motivations in the national and especially the international context has remained obscure for several decades. The opening of the archives in the West as well as in the former Soviet bloc permits us to reconstruct a subtle picture of the Hungarian Revolution’s repercussions in France.