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Title: A Testament of Revolution by Bela G. Liptak ISBN: 1-58544-120-1 Publisher: Texas A&M University Press Pub. Date: May, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Street fighting men (and women) in 1956
Comment: Liptak's memoir compares favorably with Sandor Kopacsi's "In the Name of the Working Class." SK explains his role as the Budapest deputy chief of police who switched sides and aided the rebels; BL offers the view from a student leader's encounters on the pavement below the offices where SK and his counterparts worked to advance the aims of 1956. While SK insists that the revolt was for a purer, worker-dominated type of communism (perhaps akin to an anarcho-syndicalist model) free of Soviet imperialism, this argument dims in BL's account. He gives the points that the students and workers distributed and proclaimed, but the whole question of how the Hungarians' new state would contrast with both the capitalist and the communist systems appears rather muddled in his narrative. Maybe such nuanced planning could not be taken in the heat of the moment, as the Hungarians struggled in a few days to drive out the Soviets.
Where it excels is in simply telling it like it was: the hunger, the generosity, the giddy sleeplessness, the state of his corduroy jacket, the grease-slicked rifle he hoists. You become so caught up in his vivid descriptions that you wonder why so little about this revolution has reached the West in easily accessible form. His footnotes add valuable details about the fate of his fellow revolutionaries and the mental framework of a "typical" young man hearing the demands of the leaders for the first time at the university conveys itself here unforgettably.
As well, the emotion of encountering liberating and opposing troops in the street, the fear of entering the AVH (secret police) headquarters and the shock of what he and his fighters find there, and the sheer amateur heroics coming up against the jolt of a Soviet muzzle at one's neck makes for an honest re-creation of what Liptak and his young fighters encountered as the counter-attacks flattened the idealistic students waiting for NATO to arrive. Liptak, to his credit, narrates all of the conflicting emotions that result once these guerrillas faced the Soviet troops--some in the latter's ranks thought that they faced the Nazis or Israelis on the Suez Canal!
Liptak clearly tells how the Suez crisis overshadowed the Hungarian revolt--and how the Hungarians believed that the West engineered it to distract the world from the revolt. Also, Liptak reminds us of Eisenhower's upcoming election, and why Ike might have wanted to avoid the issue of sending aid to Budapest as he faced re-election.
A couple of points that would have benefitted from more in-depth analysis: first, the role of the CIA in infiltrating the National Student Association and the Hungarian students assisted in their education after they fled to the US is not mentioned. As one who participated in this process, Liptak, given his smarts, either keeps silent out of loyalty or ignores the pressures faced by these students to spy for the CIA as perhaps tangential to his own story. Still, given the importance of this whole event of the 1956 rebellion in Cold War terms, Liptak's silence on this topic surprises me.
Second, the lack of comparative bibliographical references appears to weaken the wider impact of his testimony. Why does BL not mention SK's own memoirs, published about a decde earlier in North America? I'd be interested in what BL thinks about the previous work, and other first-person accounts and third-person studies of 1956 and its aftermath. He does not fit his own detailed account into any broader tradition of such narratives.
Overall, Liptak's account, in its verve and freshness, remains worthwhile reading and I recommend it as one non-fiction book that kept me up late in the night to finish it! Inevitably, all of our own individual accounts rely upon our own limits of evaluation and Liptak does present the tale at its heart as one from "Ocsi," his younger self. But the older self might have stepped into the conclusion and presented how he had changed and evolved in his historical understanding of the events which his younger self helped shape. Maybe a sequel is in order?
Rating: 5
Summary: Retrospective and engaging personal history
Comment: Very engaging, thoughtful and critically reflective personal story about being a major participant in the Hungarian revolution. The book is well written and moves along quickly. What I gained most from the book is an understanding of the emotions, values and personalities of the "revolutionaries." The insights provided could only be done by someone who was there and had to make the choices. And, to understand the context of those choices, the author gives us his perspective on Hungarian history.
Rating: 5
Summary: A much-needed perspective of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
Comment: I read Liptak's book with particular interest because, based on the first-hand experiences of the eyewitness and the participant, it gives an excellent and authentic insight into the Revolution and events leading up to it. I have had a personal interest because, within my means and circumstances, I was one of the Revolution's chroniclers, if not its participant. As an announcer, then reporter, at the Voice of America, I had often broadcast the speeches and statements of Eisenhower and Dulles, promising that "If you liberate yourselves, we will be with you." With my youthful naiveté and enthusiasm I, too, believed them. I believe it is safe to say that in November 1956, my generation lost its political innocence.
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Title: The Hungarians : A Thousand Years of Victory in Defeat by Paul Lendvai ISBN: 0691114064 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Bridge at Andau by James A. Michener ISBN: 0449210502 Publisher: Fawcett Books Pub. Date: 12 September, 1985 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: A Concise History of Hungary by Miklós Molnár, Anna Magyar ISBN: 0521667364 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 30 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents by Csaba Bekes, Malcolm Byrne, Janos M. Rainer ISBN: 9639241660 Publisher: Central European University Press Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Hungarian Rhapsodies: Essays on Ethnicity, Identity, and Culture by Richard Teleky ISBN: 0295976063 Publisher: University of Washington Press Pub. Date: July, 1997 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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