The Hungarian Connection: the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and its Impact on Mao Zedong’s Domestic Policies in the late 1950s

Despite being a highly relevant event in the history of the Cold War, the 1956 Hungarian revolution remains underanalyzed from the perspective of the People’s Republic of China. The domestic policy changes in the PRC that were influenced by the Hungarian uprising are equally undertreated in scholarly literature. For these reasons this paper examines the PRC’s changing perception of the nature of the 1956 Hungarian revolution and answers the question whether the Chinese leadership influenced Nikita Khrushchev and the Kremlin elite in favour of an armed intervention in Budapest. The second half of the article assesses the impact of the Hungarian crisis on Mao’s domestic policies in the late 1950s, particularly to the Hundred Flowers campaign and the AntiRightist campaign.