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Hungary: Russia's Pyrrhic Victory*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
Extract
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 is documented in two books published in the spring and summer of last year. The first is a comprehensive collection of speeches, documents, radio reports, and newspaper articles arranged chronologically to trace the uprising from its first stirrings in the Petofi Circle and the Literary Gazette to its prolonged and anguished death under the Kadar repression. Its method is impressionistic, designed to convey the hope, determination, uncertainty, and desperation of the participants in two weeks of national revolution, and to “observe a revolution and a war with a thousand eyes” (p. 7). It succeeds in transmitting the mood of the revolution by careful editing of the selections, many of them eloquent and impassioned; and it develops a much more complete picture of the revolt than most North Americans could imagine from newspaper and radio reports during the uprising. It leaves many questions unanswered, and some unasked; the editor, Melvin J. Lasky, presents die collection with its ambiguities unresolved. He does not attempt to draw his own conclusions from the incomplete evidence that he has collected. The book does, as the editor hopes, tell the story of the tragedy with directness and sympathy. It implies more than it says.
- Type
- Review Articles
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , February 1958 , pp. 110 - 118
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1958
Footnotes
*
The Hungarian Revolution. A White Book. Edited by Melvin J. Lasky. London: Martin Secker and Warburg Limited, for the Congress for Cultural Freedom. 1957. Pp. 318. $5.00.
Report of the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary. United Nations, General Assembly, Official Records, Eleventh Session, Supplement no. 18 (A/3592). New York: United Nations. 1957. Pp. viii, 148. $2.00. (Hereafter referred to as United Nations Report.)
References
1 Mikes, George, in his book The Hungarian Revolution (London, 1957)Google Scholar, argues convincingly that the Russian Politbureau was split over its Hungarian policy, first favouring a peaceful withdrawal, and only on October 30, after Eden's ultimatum, deciding to crush the revolt by force.
2 Lasky, , ed., The Hungarian Revolution, 215 Google Scholar, quoting Davidson, Basil in The Times of India, Bombay, 11 24, 1956.Google Scholar
3 Which received 57 per cent of the popular vote in the last free elections in 1945.
4 Quoted in United Nations Report, par. 140, p. 19.
5 Lasky, , ed., The Hungarian Revolution, 159 Google Scholar, quoting Woroszylski, Viktor in Nowa Kultura (Warsaw), 12 2, 1956.Google Scholar Professor Lukacs might be less optimistic about the future of the party after the new repression.
6 Lasky, , ed., The Hungarian Revolution, 23.Google Scholar
7 Ibid., 34.
8 United Nations Report, par. 254, p. 38.
9 Ibid., par. 297, p. 47.
10 Ibid., par. 360, p.59.
11 The terms of the Uniting for Peace resolution of 1950 provide for a peace observation commission which may be sent to any part of the world, with the approval of the local government, to investigate and report on international tension that threatens world peace and security. Adlai Stevenson asked President Eisenhower in a letter on November 4 to support a peace observation commission, and the General Assembly did ask the Kadar government to admit U.N. observers. But when the Nagy government would have admitted U.N. observers with haste, the General Assembly did not respond.
12 Lasky, , ed., The Hungarian Revolution, 272 Google Scholar, quoting Zycie Gospodarce Warsaw, Nov. 26, 1956.