The West’s hollow words

Putin and Khrushchev; Ukraine and Hungary; 2022 and 1956 – I can’t help but see parallels.

I arrived in New Zealand with my parents a few years before the Hungarian uprising. We followed events there closely and with concern. Students with hopes for a democratic, liberal society tried to overthrow the oppressive Stalinist regimes of Rakosi and Ger?. Khrushchev, “the butcher of Ukraine”, Stalin’s tubby little henchman, sent in his troops to quash the uprising. The world sang the praises of the brave Hungarian patriots, but did nothing to come to their aid.

My parents, both of whom survived concentration camps (my father more dead than alive), saw the fascist machinations behind the revolutionaries, seeking to restore the previous fascist clerical order. They came to New Zealand to get away from the country of their roots, a country where they felt betrayed.

Khrushchev, like Putin now, saw the integrity of historic greater Russia at stake. They have both attacked countries with democratic aspirations at a time when they discerned a weakness in the American-dominated West – Khrushchev aft er the Suez crisis and Putin aft er the Afghanistan debacle. In both cases,