Hungary - this is the beginning of the end of communism! wrote Milovan Djilas, a former comrade-in-arms of Josip Tito, immediately after Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarian Revolution. A statement that proves to be prophetic from the perspective of more than three decades. In late autumn 1956, the world stood on the brink of nuclear war. While the Soviet Union rolled tanks into Budapest, France and Great Britain engaged in gunboat diplomacy at the Suez Canal in the style of old colonial powers.