One Day That Shook the Communist World: The 1956 Hungarian Uprising and Its Legacy
By Paul Lendvai and Ann Major
4/5
()
About this ebook
On October 23, 1956, a popular uprising against Soviet rule swept through Hungary like a force of nature, only to be mercilessly crushed by Soviet tanks twelve days later. Only now, fifty years after those harrowing events, can the full story be told. This book is a powerful eyewitness account and a gripping history of the uprising in Hungary that heralded the future liberation of Eastern Europe.
Paul Lendvai was a young journalist covering politics in Hungary when the uprising broke out. He knew the government officials and revolutionaries involved. He was on the front lines of the student protests and the bloody street fights and he saw the revolutionary government smashed by the Red Army. In this riveting, deeply personal, and often irreverent book, Lendvai weaves his own experiences with in-depth reportage to unravel the complex chain of events leading up to and including the uprising, its brutal suppression, and its far-reaching political repercussions in Hungary and neighboring Eastern Bloc countries. He draws upon exclusive interviews with Russian and former KGB officials, survivors of the Soviet backlash, and relatives of those executed. He reveals new evidence from closed tribunals and documents kept secret in Soviet and Hungarian archives. Lendvai's breathtaking narrative shows how the uprising, while tragic, delivered a stunning blow to Communism that helped to ultimately bring about its demise.
One Day That Shook the Communist World is the best account of these unprecedented events.
Paul Lendvai
Paul Lendvai, a Hungarian-born Austrian journalist and author, was the Vienna correspondent for the Financial Times for over twenty years. His most recent books, both published by Hurst, are The Hungarians (second edition); and Orbán: Europe’s New Strongman, which won the Prix du Livre Européen.
Related to One Day That Shook the Communist World
Related ebooks
Masterpieces of History: The Peaceful End of the Cold War in Europe, 1989 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAt Cold War's End: U.S. Intelligence on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe 1989-1991 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNotes of a Plenipotentiary: Russian Diplomacy and War in the Balkans, 1914–1917 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the Ægean Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hungary in World War II: Caught in the Cauldron Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJourney to a Revolution: A Personal Memoir and History of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cold War Cultures: Perspectives on Eastern and Western European Societies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnlikely Allies: Nazi German and Ukrainian Nationalist Collaboration in the General Government During World War II Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrom Peoples into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stalin's Plans for Capturing Germany Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHungarian Uprising: Budapest's Cataclysmic Twelve Days, 1956 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Czechs and the Lands of the Bohemian Crown Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Summer of '45: Stories and Voices from VE Day to VJ Day Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThere Is No Freedom Without Bread!: 1989 and the Civil War That Brought Down Communism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Germans against Germans: The Fate of the Jews, 1938–1945 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhat Went Wrong?: Russia’s Lost Opportunity and the Path to Ukraine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSeeking Freedom and Justice for Hungary: John Madl-Miké (1905–1981), the Kolping Movement, and the Years in Exile Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Destruction of Reason Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5In Search of Lost Meaning: The New Eastern Europe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Debates on the German Revolution of 1918-19 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGermany 1916-23: A Revolution in Context Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAwaiting The Dawn: My Life in a Nazi Concentration Camp Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Great Lie: Classic and Recent Appraisals of Ideology and Totalitarianism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Painting the Town Red: Politics and the Arts During the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation - Updated Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Geopolitics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Village in the Third Reich: How Ordinary Lives Were Transformed by the Rise of Fascism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Geopolitical Curse of the Caucasus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Modern History For You
Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Devil's Notebook Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Little Red Book Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The God Delusion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Outlaw Platoon: Heroes, Renegades, Infidels, and the Brotherhood of War in Afghanistan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5World War 1: A History From Beginning to End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Mother, a Serial Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Red Hotel: Moscow 1941, the Metropol Hotel, and the Untold Story of Stalin's Propaganda War Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/518 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All But My Life: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Night to Remember: The Sinking of the Titanic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for One Day That Shook the Communist World
3 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Paul Lendvai is a personal witness of the Hungarian revolution of 1956 who offers both the Hungarian insider's and the Financial Times Foreign Correspondent's outsider's perspective. His smooth narrative offers an excellent account of the events and the actors, only marred by his constant name-dropping of supposedly eminent Hungarians. A dramatis personae would also have been helpful, although a thorough index partly remedies this. The unplanned character of the revolution doomed its outcome. Only the control of the Hungarian army might have stopped the Soviets. Once the Soviets decided on a violent resolution, the insurgents did not stand a chance. Lendvai's account of Kadar's quick ruthless retribution which was followed by a general liberalization (an approach recommended by Machiavelli) explains the paradox that in a 2002 survey, the traitor Janos Kadar ranked 4th just behind his victim Imre Nagy in the ranking of favorite historical figures. In the first two places one finds two heroes of the 1848 revolution that was also crushed by the Russians. The Hungarians are truly unlucky in war and politics. Just like their Austrian brethren their true skills lie in food and music.