New Documents on the 1956 Hungarian
Revolution
Shed Light on a Major Cold War Crisis
"There is no publication, in any language,
that would even approach the thoroughness, reliability,
and novelty of this monumental work …. [I]t
will change forever our views of what happened
in Hungary between 1953- 1963." - István
Deák, Columbia University
The National Security Archive announces
the publication of a new volume
of top-level documentation from the former
Warsaw Pact and the West that provides important new
information and insights into one of the darkest moments
of the Cold War.
Taken from the former Soviet Union, Hungary and
the United States, as well as from other East European
and Western archives, these materials - many of
which were previously unavailable to an English-speaking
audience - provide a comprehensive picture of the
decision-making on all sides of the Hungarian events
of October-November 1956. Highlights include:
-
The character and fate of Imre Nagy. Hungarian
and Soviet documents provide a more complex portrait
of reform Communist Prime Minister Imre Nagy, whom
the U.S. saw as a Soviet disciple but who went further
than any other leader in the socialist camp other
than Tito in asserting independence from the USSR.
Other records give previously unknown details on
the discussions between various leaders over whether
to try and execute Nagy.
- The two faces of János Kádár.
Hungary's long-time Communist leader has always
been something of an enigma. Notes of Kremlin and
Warsaw Pact meetings as well as internal Hungarian
records add important insights into his attempts
both to assert freedom of action vis-à-vis
Moscow and to crack down brutally on internal dissent,
especially against Nagy and his circle.
- Kremlin vacillations. Taken together, the
materials in this volume offer an extraordinary
picture of the thinking of Soviet leaders, their
indecisiveness in the face of the Hungarian crisis
and the reasons underlying their eventual decision
to crush the revolution.
The 1956 Hungarian
Revolution: A History in Documents is
edited by Csaba Békés, Malcolm Byrne
and János Rainer. It is the third in the "National
Security Archive Cold War Reader" series published
by Central European University Press. The previous
titles were Prague
Spring '68, edited by Jaromír Navrátil
et al (1998), and Uprising
in East Germany 1953, edited by Christian
Ostermann (2001). Future volumes will cover the Solidarity
crisis in Poland in the early 1980s and the collapse
of Communism in Eastern Europe in 1989.
The volume was produced as part of the Openness
in Russia and Eastern Europe Project, an international
collaborative research project coordinated by the
National Security Archive. The Project's purposes
are to uncover important historical materials that
were previously inaccessible to a broad audience,
and to encourage the concept of greater access to
government information as a necessary element of any
democratic society. Generous funding for the Openness
Project has come from the Open Society Institute,
the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
and the German Marshal Fund of the United States.
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