LEE CONGDON, BELA K. KIRALY, KAROLY NAGY, editors. 1956: The Hungarian Revolution and War for Independence. Translated by Paul Body, Andrew Gane, and Brian McLean. (Atlantic Studies on Society in Change, number 128; East European Monographs, number 700; War and Society in East Central Europe, number 40.) Boulder, Colo.: Social Science Monographs. 2006. Pp. xiii, 956. $60.00., LASZLO EORSI. The

Abstract

When the Hungarian state marked the fiftieth anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution in October 2006, it projected an image of a nation united by a desire for freedom that rose up against a brutal dictatorship, replacing a communist system with its own democratic values. Although this revolution was suppressed by the military forces of the Soviet Union, intent on ensuring that Hungary remained within its grip, the revolution achieved a kind of victory in defeat, sowing the seeds of Hungary's democratic transition in the 1990s. On the fiftieth anniversary Hungary was rocked by a political crisis, as its government was challenged on the streets by radical right-wing protestors, in events that led to the most serious political violence in the country since the revolution itself. While the protestors were by no means heirs of the revolution, operating with much more restricted public support in a radically different political context, their demonstrations drew upon a version of the memory of the revolution. As a consequence, far from underlining the official intention of projecting the memory of the revolution as a unifying force, underpinning the success of contemporary democracy, the anniversary revealed the traces of deep-seated political divisions that had come to the surface since 1989, but that had festered since 1956.