As Khrushchev explained to his startled colleagues, he now saw that letting Hungary go would be perceived as weakness by the West, and could mean losing all of Eastern Europe. Just yesterday, he noted, there had been demonstrations in support of the Hungarian counterrevolutionaries in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania, a sign the erosion was likely to spread there, and what had been granted to the Hungarians would be demanded by the others. If the Soviet Union ceded ground now, the ceding would never stop. Instead, the Hungarian Revolution had to be crushed—decisively and with severity.
