On October 24, 1956 the Soviet Union started the military maneuvers for the invasion of Hungary. It was the beginning of a crucial step in the history of communism, which also had repercussions in Italy. Prominent personalities such as the future Socialist Minister of the Budget, Antonio Giolitti, emerged from the PCI, and above all they fueled the autonomist drive of Pietro Nenni's PSI.
The climate was one of de-Stalinization. In February of that same year, the new head of the CPSU, Nikita Khrushchev, had denounced the crimes of the dictator who had died three years earlier at the XNUMXth Party Congress.
In the summer, unrest and protest swept through Hungary, above all by intellectuals and students, who were also joined by the workers in the autumn, giving life to a real insurrection. The rioters asked to entrust the government to Imre Nagy, who in the previous months had pitted against Màtyàs Ràkosi, Party secretary and former lieutenant of Stalin.
The Central Committee of the Party made Nagy prime minister, but also called on the Red Army to restore order. And so, exactly 64 years ago, the USSR invaded Hungary causing clashes that caused hundreds of deaths.
By the end of the month, Nagy seemed to have regained control of the situation, resulting in the withdrawal of Soviet troops. But then his own government proclaimed Budapest's exit from the Warsaw Pact: an unacceptable move for Moscow, which feared a contagion effect capable of shattering its sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.
On November 4, the Red Army moved again against the insurgents and this time the victims numbered in the thousands. Nagy and his ministers were arrested and sentenced to death. In their place, a new government loyal to the Kremlin was established, which confirmed Soviet domination over the satellite countries and the immutability of the European order that emerged from the Second World War.
From a cultural point of view, Soviet intervention in Hungary dashed the hopes raised by de-Stalinization and it caused quite a few crises of conscience among communists all over the world, already affected by the trauma of the Khrushchev report.
In Italy, precisely these events caused the autonomist turn of Nenni's Psi by the PCI of Togliatti. From that moment on, the socialists declared their willingness to collaborate with the government on a reform policy, laying the foundations for the transition from the era of centrism to that of the centre-left.
