The Russians in Hungary, 1849
The circumstances in which the Emperor Nicholas decided to send troops into Hungary in 1849, writes Ian Young, were remarkably similar to those which brought Soviet tanks swarming over the Carpathians in November 1956.
The first occasion on which Russian troops intervened in Hungary was in April 1849; and, however much the map of Europe may have changed during the last hundred years, the circumstances in which the Emperor Nicholas of Russia then decided to send troops into Hungary were remarkably similar to those which brought Soviet tanks swarming over the Carpathians last November.
In the 1840s there was no independent state of Poland. The central and eastern provinces of Poland, the greater part of the country, in fact, were incorporated as a separate kingdom within the Russian Empire. The western lands, including the city of Poznan, belonged to Prussia, while the southernmost province of Poland, Galicia, which stretches for some two hundred miles along the foothills of the Carpathians and includes the cities of Cracov and Lvov, formed a part of the Austrian Empire.
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