I am participating in the Chicago International Model United Nations conference and, despite several pleading e-mails to the Hungarian Embassy and different university professors, have come up with zilch answers. I am representing Hungary during the General Assembly of 1956 (same time as the uprising) and I need help with what their foreign policy was and as much other information as y'all might have. Thank you a million!

According to wikipedia's article "Foreign relations of Hungary", it says that between WW2 and 1989, Hungary's foreign policy was tied to that of the USSR but in November of 1956, Imre Nagy's revolutionary government tried a policy of neutrality. Clearly that didn't last long.
I can't be more specific.

Thanks Kam. Boy, this is tuff. Trying to find info on how the Hungarians felt about apharteid is quite difficult, but that should help somewhat. Oh well.

Thanks Kam. Boy, this is tuff. Trying to find info on how the Hungarians felt about apharteid is quite difficult, but that should help somewhat. Oh well.

It's going to be a very obscure website or something. Better to call up the embassy directly or ask someone who lived during then. Actually, the embassy probably won't answer because they may not like questions about the communist era.

Already tried the embassy. Sent an e-mail a week ago, never got a response. It was very polite and formal. I even called them 'sir'!

Yeah embassies and the officials are good to ask for info about a topic/nation... if you have the time to wait. They're official people so they're swamped with paperwork or e-mails already so it takes a while for them to even get to read your requests.
And yeah like blackheart said, the people at the embassy may be a bit evasive at best about answering questions about the communist times. That's a hot-button issue still for people in the countries that fell behind the Iron Curtain. Hence the complete ouster of Poland's largely ex-communist government recently by the right-wing parties.

Still waiting on the embassy. Conference is in 2 or 3 weeks, so I am not in too much of a rush, but the sooner the better.

Well if all else fails, make it up. Hungary was a state straddling between communism. Just follow what the USSR says and try not to piss either the USSR or USA off :p

Thanks Kam. Boy, this is tuff. Trying to find info on how the Hungarians felt about apharteid is quite difficult, but that should help somewhat. Oh well.
But since the Communist International in Moscow decided what was the foreign policy stand of the socialistic worker states, all you have to do is bone up on the position of the USSR.
They were in charge and sattelites like Hugary only got to do what they were told.

As for apartheid, specifically, it was was obviously the logical outcome of world capitalism, unlike socialistic internationalism, and hence Hungary would be totally Against.;)

Well if all else fails, make it up. Hungary was a state straddling between communism. Just follow what the USSR says and try not to piss either the USSR or USA off :p
Eh...
Not pissing of the USSR is ticket, as far as it's possible.
Staying socialistic, being firmly Against the US on all points, while maintaining that a shorter Hungarian leash is in the Soviet interest as well.
That's what I would try. (Prolly won't work regardless.)

The US is very far away and won't be around when the chips are down
(And in the end the British and the French getting bogged down in the Suez debacle meant that the USSR could pretty much do what it wanted in Hungary while everybody's attention was focused elsewhere.)

OK, I found some useful info in a book I have, but any more infor you guys have is still more than appreciated. Apparently the Hungarians and Brits had some sort of economic treaty going on during the New Course (1945-1948 IIRC) under Imre Nagy before Stalin intervened. The only problem with Hungarian foreign policy is that the conference takes place on the seventh, I believe, day of the of the nationalist uprising in Hungary which favored a neutral position somewhat leaning to the Soviets but with soem favoritism towards the Brits. I am still fishing for info about their opinion on:
1. De-colonization and the role of former colonial powers in the new countries and the role of the UN in the process of de-colonization
2. Post-war Germany and Japan. All I know is the Imre Nagy supported Hungary, Austria, and Germany forming a sort of line of neutrality inbetween the Communists and the Docratists. Any more info, particularly on position towards Japan, would eb greatly appreciated.

Talking about a Nagy foreign policy is going to be difficult, because he effectively didn't have one.

A breakdown:

January 1956-23. October, 1956: Hungary's foreign policy was fully controlled by the arch-Stalinist wing of the communist party, and as such highly subservient to Soviet foreign policy goals. For the first half of the year the party (and therefore country) were led by Mátyás Rákosi, a bizarre Stalinist who had severely mismanaged the country's economy and was about as unpopular as a leader can be when he was removed in June. However, Moscow replaced Rákosi with another arch-Stalinist, Ernô Gerô, who changed nothing, hence Hungry's slide into revolt in late October.

Making reference to an article I wrote about this crisis (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=58673), the Polish October crisis began on 19. October and came to a very surprising conclusion on 21-22. October, which presaged the Hungarian Revolution which formally began on 23. October. On that night, a panicking communist party in Budapest installed the popular Nagy - against Nagy's will - as prime minister, and when fighting began in earnest throughout the capital the next day, most of the communist government members fled. As I mention in my article, Nagy never controlled the events of the Hungarian Revolution; he spent thewhole crisis desperately reacting to events and trying to slow things down - unsuccessfully, obviously. Nagy's "government" (though it had little recognition or power throughout the country, and was considered by the revolutionaries to be too cautious and out of touch) lasted only 12 days until the second Soviet invasion of 01.-04. November crushed the revolution. Nagy and the surviving members of his government were arrested on 04. November, taken secretly to Romania, where they were tried and executed for treason (again, secretly) in 1958. In Nagy's 12 days at the head of a government with only part of its bureaucracy intact (as many had fled), with no international recognition and which spent almost all of its time simply trying to figure ut what was happening in the country, Nagy never really had time to formulate a foreign policy. There was a very brief respite - from 29. October until 01. November - when the Soviets backed off, but this obviously wasn't enough time to formulate anything. Nagy never had time to appoint or dismiss Hungarian ambassadors abroad (though some sympathized with him), or to in any way re-orient Hungarian policies. The country was in revolt, and he was too concerned with stopping the fighting, restoring public order and getting basic services and needs (food, water) back "online".

Nagy's only foreign policy decisions during his entire 12 day government was his panicked plea for help from the West and the UN on 01. November when the Soviets broke the 29. October agreement and re-invaded. Nagy announced Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Treaty Organization (an attempt to nullify any legal or contractual grounds for a Soviet invasion) and to declare Hungary a neutral country, like Finland or recently-freed Austria (1955). He put no thought into these decisions and made them on the spot exclusively to address his country's immediate situation, being re-invaded and re-conquered by the Soviets.

Given this, that Nagy only ruled for 12 days and that his entire time was spent reacting to events beyond his control, I don't think you can realistically speak about a "Nagy foreign policy". If you wanted to speculate what a Nagy government policy might be had he been allowed to survive, then I would point towards a few facts:

A. Nagy was a communist. He had joined the party of his own will, and truly believed in communism. He had become disillusioned with Stalinism, and was actually granted a chance to rule the country briefly from 1953-55 after Stalin died when the Stalinists were nudged from power, but they staged a comeback and tossed him out. There is no indication in the 1956 Hungarian crisis until the Soviets attacked the 2nd time that Nagy had any intention of ending communism in Hungary, or making any radical changes in Hungarian foreign policy. Remember that just days before in Poland, Gomulka had succeeded in winning Soviet acceptance for his non-Stalinist government - meaning that Poland was still going to be a loyal Soviet puppet state, but with a little more autonomy for its internal affairs. Polish foreign policy remained throughout Gomulka's rule (1956-70) completely subordinate to Soviet foreign policy. Had Nagy and his government been allowed to survive - and Khrushchov gives some indication that he did consider that option - there is every indication that Nagy would have kept Hungary a loyal WTO member and chained to Soviet foreign policy objectives.

B. Nagy was considered an agricultural expert, and had come to reject the farming communes forced on Hungary by Stalin - though in 1945 he supported them. In this sense Nagy is seen as practical, willing to toss something away if it didn't work. Nagy knew the country was starving in 1950-53, and wanted to alleviate the hardships. Whether his Gorbachov-esque mixture of communism and capitalism would have worked, we'll never know. (My thought: No, it would have tanked.)

C. Nagy thought the police terror of the Stalinist years over-zealous, and he did relax the police controls a bit during his 1953-55 rule, but he did not get rid of it completely. He just thought the Stalinists had gone too far; he was not opposed to the use of police as a political and political terror weapon. Perhaps by November 1956 he may have changed his mind, but we'll never know.

SO, from Nagy's arrest, two members of his own government (János Kádár and Ferenc Münnich) defected and showed up in Budapest with the Soviets to form a new post-revolutionary government. Kádár ruled Hungary the rest of 1956, and indeed until his ouster in 1988 by reformists. Under Kádár, from 04. November until c. 1961, Hungary reverted to being an exceedingly loyal and subservient Soviet puppet state. Later, Kádár would implement a fairly revolutionary domestic policy in Hungary, but for 1956 and the years immediately following, he had no choice but to be as ingratiatingly loyal to Moscow as he possibly could be.

This all adds up to 344 days in 1956 of Stalinist (or, in Kádár's case for the period you're looking at, pseudo-Stalinist) rule, against 12 days of Nagy's rule. I'm sorry to say that, unless you're operating more on speculation than actual history, as a UN ambassador from Hungary in 1956, almost 97% of that year you would have answered to the Soviet puppet regime, and for that small 3.4% that Nagy was head of the government, he was not for the most part in control of events and as an ambassador you probably didn't receive any instructions at all from Budapest until the very end, and at that point it would have been to try to rally some (way too late) assistance.

As usual, you can have a very good picture from what Vrylakas wrote.
As a Hungarian, let me second some of his points:

If you represent Hungary in 1956, you were appointed during the communist era, and as Vrylakas noted, there were no changes by Nagy. Hence you were either a communist and sympathise with Moscow, or if you were a Nagy follower, you must have been very confused as the uprising developed.

Nagy was a seasoned politician. Although he declared the neutrality of Hungary in November 1, he still tried to negotiate with the Soviets as well. He understood that in a very complicated international atmosphere, the neutrality recognition was too much to ask (but he had to please the Hungarians!). Nagy wanted to have a possibility at all time for negotiations with the Soviets to avoid military confrontation (even when the Soviet troops crossed the border, he still tried to bargain with Andropov, the Soviet ambassador - the same Andropov who became the Soviet Premier later).
It was Imre Szabo who at that time led the Hungarian commission in the UN. Nagy ordered him on November 3 to ask the UN to recognize Hungary's neutrality and to call for negotiations between Hungary and the SU. However, Szabo did not mention the neutrality in the UN (most likely he consulted with the Soviet representative). In November 4, the Soviets invaded Hungary.

The treatment of the Hungarian issue in the UN was strongly linked to the Suez-crisis, and because the major powers did not have a unified stand on that, the Hungarian issue was neglected between November 1 and 4, and after the Soviet intervention the Western powers did not have any tools to intervene. I think it was a relief for them, because made their situation easier, and the Hungarian issue did not "bother" the diplomacy around the Suez crisis any more.

And: Embassies are generally good sources of information, but not in such historical issues that still carry political baggages. Do not expect any info about this from the Hungarian Embassy. The best you can get is the official propaganda about such issues, which is quite one-sided.
Good luck!

Thanks people. Conference is this weekend, so the information you have given me has come pretty much right on time. Thanks again to all of y'all.

Thankyou every body. Just got back from the conference. Went great! Your help was exactly what I needed! Got 1st place in my commitee! So anyway, thanks y'all.

Thankyou every body. Just got back from the conference. Went great! Your help was exactly what I needed! Got 1st place in my commitee! So anyway, thanks y'all.

Congratulations! :goodjob: