Volume 54, Number 3 · March 1, 2007
Did the Revolution Have to Fail?
By Istvan Deak
Revolution in Hungary: The 1956 Budapest Uprising
by Erich Lessing, with texts by George Konrad, François Fejtö, Erich Lessing, and Nicolas Bauquet
Thames and Hudson, 249 pp., $50.00
Twelve Days: The Story of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
by Victor Sebestyen
Pantheon, 340 pp., $26.00
Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt
by Charles Gati
Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Stanford University Press, 264 pp., $24.95
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956: Myths and Realities
by László Eörsi, translated from the Hungarian by Mario D. Fenyo
Social Science Monographs/Center for Hungarian Studies and Publications, 207 pp., $40.00(distributed by ColumbiaUniversity Press)
A Good Comrade: János Kádár, Communism and Hungary
by Roger Gough
I.B. Tauris, 323 pp., $45.00
During the thirteen days between October 23 and November 4, 1956, crowds of unarmed Hungarian demonstrators and a few thousand lightly armed revolutionaries forced a tyrannical one-party government to resign. They also caused the retreat from Budapest of the Soviet occupation forces, the dissolution of the hitherto all-powerful Communist Party, and the virtual disappearance of the political police on which one-party rule had been based. The Revolution freed all the political prisoners in the country and allowed for the appearance of a free press as well as of free radio stations.
Review, 5233 words
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