President Bush this week travels to Budapest to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, which was crushed by Soviet troops even as it gave hope to democratic reformers.

“Nineteen-fifty-six was a year of unspeakable tragedy for the Hungarian people,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said earlier this year. “But 50 years later, from the vantage point of history, we see that 1956 was also the beginning of something greater, something far more promising.”