. And even if the Soviet population was really, truly in favor of the '56 and '68 invasions, surely that didn't make it right to send the tanks in?
--Dave.
^^^^^^^^^ CB: I think in total historical context , an argument can be made that it was legitimate for the Soviets to keep Hungary and possibly Czechoslovakia on ice for a while longer. The Nazis with the help of the allied fascists in those countries had only 14 years before 1956 run the biggest war and mass slaughter in human history on the SU. Large sections of the populations of Central and Eastern Europe had been the social base for this fascism. There were still plenty of fascists and those who acquiesed to fascism in those countires in 1956. Notions of them as a mass of democracy loving whatevers are not accurate. My point is that they were still on a kind of parole for the crimes of WWII. The Soviets did not have to consider the situation in terms of abstract , eternal democratic rights , etc. Rather they had a right to consider the situation concretely , what the people were really like based on what they had just done.
Secondly, you have to think of the U.S. and the Western European countries more in the way the Soviets did. The SU had more legitimate fears of a U.S. attack backed by nuclear weapons than vica versa ( the version pounded into our heads). Backed by the U.S. with its heavy weapons and giant occupying army, rightwing elements might retake Hungary , in the guise of "freedom loving democrats". A beneficent conception/notion of the U.S. , as is our tendency here ( aw shucks , innocents abroad, etc), is not at all the real U.S. America is a world historic, vicious, militaristic conqueror. Just look at America's real record since WWII ( and before for that matter). Anyway, Hungary and even Czechoslovakia could reopen the corridor to the SU that the Germans had used.
In summary, the Soviets had legitmate national security concerns - there was a more realistic possibility that the Americans and others were coming than that the Russians were coming to the U.S. - and a heavy responsibility to their population to "never again" and certainly not within 25 years, allow an invasion like the Nazis had carried out. Afterall, the Americans and others actually had invaded the SU in 1919. And then came the Germans. That was very real. The Americans had nothing comparably real to fear.
There is no way that we Americans can fully understand the Soviet experience in WWII, and the overriding necessity to prevent a repetition of it.
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