In late October 1956, students and workers massed in the Hungarian capital of Budapest to protest Soviet rule and demand the end of Moscow’s political domination. Largely leaderless at first, the protests were galvanised by increasingly aggressive police action to become a full-blown revolt against a government widely viewed as a Soviet puppet.

By the end of the month, with a new rebel government in place, it seemed that Moscow might be willing to negotiate the withdrawal of Soviet troops—after all, then-First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev had denounced Joseph Stalin several months earlier.