This week is the 50th anniversary of the reform movement in communist Hungary in 1956. On 23 October, 1956, students and workers in Budapest issued their "16 points," a program of reform. Imre Nagy was made the new reformist prime minister and it appeared as if the protest had worked. On 31 October, Nagy announced that Hungary was leaving the Warsaw Pact. Within days, the Soviet Army had re-entered Hungary and put down the movement. 20,000 people were killed in the fighting and 200,000 people fled the country over the next several months.

According to Roger Cohen (writing in the New York Times and Herald Tribune in several versions of the article), the current relevance of this anniversary for the west is the connection to the war against Iraq in 1991. After that war, the American leadership called on the Iraqi Shiites and Kurds to rise up against the regime of Saddam Hussein. When they did, no support was given and Saddam crushed the revolt. In 1956, Radio Free Europe encouraged the Hungarians to throw off their chains, pledging western support in the form of "practical manifestations of western sympathy." No support was forthcoming and thousands were killed in the ensuing battles against the invading Soviet Army. Hundreds more were executed in the purges that followed. Two hundred thousand people fled Hungary. Cohen doesn't really come down on one side or the other about how apt the comparison is. Hungary went to 20 more years of communism followed by eventual peaceful transformation, Iraq is in chaos today, 15 after the debacle of 1991. He asks only "how best to craft liberty?" Seeing how yesterday's nation-builders oppose the U.S. effort in Iraq and those who had nothing but contempt for idealist foreign policy and nation-building only five years ago have become its greatest proponents, it is clear there are no easy answers.

The Hungarians celebrated their 50th anniversary with wreath layings and speeches which appeared to be interchangeable with similar ceremonies going on constantly in various places to memorialize events. But the anniversary has been accompanied by violent protests against the current socialist-led government, widely reported in the world media. Late October promises to become historically ambiguous enough to develop into a contested calendar date in Hungary, an opportunity for political actors of various shades to use the memory of revolution to mobilize sentiment for current political projects.