Hungary
After the death of Stalin in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev became the leader of the Soviet Union. In 1956, the Hungarian army joined numerous protesters in an attempt to overthrow the Soviet-controlled government. They were motivated to get rid of Communism. They stormed through Budapest and waved Hungarian flags with the Communist hammer-and-sickle emblem cut out. Then, Imre Nagy, a liberal Hungarian Communist, arrived. He promised the people of Hungary free elections and also demanded that Soviet troops to leave. As a result of his demands, the Soviet army entered Budapest with tanks and infantry. Many people tried fighting the Soviets but they were outnumbered and could not compete with the Soviets.
Czechoslovakia
As a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Khrushchev lost his power in the Soviet Union. His replacement was Leonid Brezhnev, who adopted his own repressive domestic policies. He enforced laws to limit people's freedom of speech, human right, and freedom of religion and anyone who said anything bad about him or the Soviet Union was to be punished. In Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubček loosened controls on censorship to offer his country socialism with "a human face". Prague Spring was known as the reform period when Czechoslovakia prospered with new ideas. This time period lasted a short amount of time, and on August 20, the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia. They did this because Brezhnev invaded the Czech by claiming "the Soviet Union had the right to prevent its satellites from rejecting Communism." This Soviet policy is known as the Brezhnev Doctrine.