A year later, Gorbachev had personally assured both the Hungarian Prime Minister and the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party that the Soviet Union was no longer in favor of using force to impose its will on Hungary. Something else had happened: a promise from the Hungarian government to allow the exhumation, identification and reburial of Nagy’s remains, which had been long hidden in order to keep his grave from becoming a shrine. The government’s official position on the events of 1956 changed as well. It was no longer referred to as a “counter-revolution” but instead
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