In Mao Zedong's words, 1956 was a year of big events, both at home and abroad. The secret speech delivered by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Twentieth Congress had, according to Mao, opened the lid on the repressiveness of the postwar Soviet-style regimes, thereby making a mess by inspiring a wave of de-Stalinization that culminated in the massive demonstrations in Poland and Hungary. The Hungarian events, in particular, were more complicated than either a populist anti-socialist protest or a form of anti-Soviet agitation, and the Chinese...

In Mao Zedong's words, 1956 was a year of big events, both at home and abroad. The secret speech delivered by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Twentieth Congress had, according to Mao, opened the lid on the repressiveness of the postwar Soviet-style regimes, thereby making a mess by inspiring a wave of de-Stalinization that culminated in the massive demonstrations in Poland and Hungary. The Hungarian events, in particular, were more complicated than either a populist anti-socialist protest or a form of anti-Soviet agitation, and the Chinese...