Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt (Cold War International History Project) [Hardcover]

Charles Gati (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0804756066 | ISBN-13: 978-0804756068 | Publication Date: August 22, 2006 | Edition: 1

Winner of the 2007 Marshall Shulman Prize

The 1956 Hungarian revolution, and its suppression by the U.S.S.R., was a key event in the cold war, demonstrating deep dissatisfaction with both the communist system and old-fashioned Soviet imperialism. But now, fifty years later, the simplicity of this David and Goliath story should be revisited, according to Charles Gati's new history of the revolt.

Denying neither Hungarian heroism nor Soviet brutality, Failed Illusions nevertheless modifies our picture of what happened. Imre Nagy, a reform communist who headed the revolutionary government and turned into a genuine patriot, could not rise to the occasion by steering a realistic course between his people's demands and Soviet geopolitical and ideological interests. The United States was all talk, no action, while Radio Free Europe simultaneously backed the insurgents' unrealizable demands and opposed Nagy. In the end, the Soviet Union followed its imperial impulse instead of seeking a political solution to the crisis in the spirit of de-Stalinization.

Failed Illusions is based on extensive archival research, including the CIA's operational files, and hundreds of interviews with participants in Budapest, Moscow, and Washington. Personal observations by the author, a young reporter in Budapest in 1956, bring the tragic story vividly to life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Gati's book towers high above the rest as by far the best book published on 1956... his work aims to examine what happened and to point to what could have happened given the other complex factors that were in play in 1956. The fruit of Gati's effort is an engaging, fascinating, and well-written narrative coupled wit masterful historical and political analysis."—Slavic Review
"This important work deepens our knowledge of events through scores of new documentary findings, filling in fascinating details about events, decisions, and key players' personal philosophies and points of view. It's the only book of its kind."—Malcolm Byrne, Deputy Director and Director of Research, National Security Archive"Gati draws on a wealth of archival evidence and personal interviews to produce a remarkably readable and provocative essay, rich in astute observations and illuminating anecdotes, and leavened by fragments of his personal and intellectual history."—International History Review

"Gati draws on reams of new research and documentary evidence from Hungary, while ferreting out scores of fascinating documents from the U.S. archives. Specialists on this subject will benefit immensely from this work, but the book is written in such an engaging manner that it will also appeal to a more general audience."—Mark Kramer, Director of Cold War Studies, Harvard University

"Failed Illusions casts incisively a new perspective on three key dimensions of the historic drama that was the Hungarian Revolution: the unsavory background and the heroic epiphany of Imre Nagy, the revolution's tragic leader; the confused, disruptive, and ultimately devious Soviet efforts to manipulate the Hungarian communists; and the impotent futility of US posturing which masqueraded as 'the policy of liberation.' Riveting as a story, significant as a history."—Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. National Security Advisor, author of The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict
"Gati's book is eminently worth reading. Whether or not one agrees with his views and conclusions, it is a most valuable contribution to the scholarly literature on the subject."—Russian Review

"The main message on U.S. foreign policy in Gati's book resonates with me. We're forever spouting bullshit in foreign policy for domestic political reasons at great costs to people abroad, who take the bullshit seriously."—Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations and former foreign-affairs columnist, New York Times

"Born and raised in Hungary, Gati...was a young journalist in Budapest at the time. Using hundreds of documents in the archives in Budapest, Moscow, and Washington, he has written a thorough and scholarly analysis of the revolution."—Library Journal

From the Author

"Two weeks after Moscow crushed the revolution, I left Hungary, going first to Austria and then in a few weeks to the United States. I became one of some 182,000 refugees from Soviet-dominated Hungary. My parents, though I was their only child, did not discourage me from leaving. They stayed up all night before I left, watching me as I wrote a few notes of farewell to relatives and friends and put a few belongings together for my escape from uncertainty to uncertainty. Emerging from the kitchen, my mother came around to stuff her freshly baked sweets--the best in the world--into my small backpack. "Look up Uncle Sanyi in New York," she said. At dawn, when it was time to say goodbye, my father tried to hold back his tears but he could not. "Write often," he said, his voice quavering with emotion. We embraced. We kissed. As I left, they stood on the small balcony of our Barcsay Street apartment and waved. I walked backwards as long as I could see them, hoping they could also see me for another few seconds. (As I recall this scene some fifty years later, holding back my tears as my father once tried to do, I still see them waving on the balcony, and I always will.)
I did not fully appreciate until much later--when I had my own children in America--how unselfish my parents were to let go of me."

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: Stanford University Press; 1 edition (August 22, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804756066
• ISBN-13: 978-0804756068
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #288,327 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #64 in Books > History > Europe > Hungary
  • #65 in Books > History > Europe > Austria

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A remarkable and exceptional book, October 1, 2006

By 

R. Stuart (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt (Cold War International History Project) (Hardcover)

When I read Charles Gati's prize winning "Hungary and the Soviet Bloc," I then thought that he had written the last and best word on our understanding of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 during the Cold War. Then, unexpectedly, several years later the Berlin Wall came down, Hungary and the USSR's East European satellites regained independence, and heretofore closed Cold War archives began to open. From archives in Budapest and Moscow as well as from dozens of interviews with participants of '56 both East and West, Professor Gati has written a classic of Cold War history and analysis which arguably will become the definitive account of the multi-sided, tragic events of 1956 in Hungary. No stone has been left unturned -- the author has read the minutes of the Politburo meetings in the Soviet Union and Hungary, as well as the interrogation and trial transcripts from the last days before his execution of Imre Nagy, former Prime Minister of Hungary. This fluently written, masterfully organized, and exeptionally well integrated small volume deserves to sit on the Cold War history shelf along with Allison's "Essence of Decision," the study of another major event of the era, the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In his overarching Introduction, Gati includes a brief but fascinating autobiographical recounting of his own experiences in Budapest as a young reporter during the tumultuous years after his high school graduation in 1953 to his flight with tens of thousands of Hungarians across the Austrian border after Soviet troops crushed the revolution in late 1956.

The author's thesis is the existence of the possibility of an alternative "limitationist" approach to demands, expectations, methods, and outcomes by all parties to the challenges of Hungary '56. Instead, however, as is vividly recounted in the book, the Hungarian leadership, the Budapest insurgents, Moscow, and Washington displayed variably, vacillating responses, revolutionary romanticism, imperial intransigence, and absolutist anti-communism, all of which produced disaster and great bloodshed for Budapest and its population 50 years ago this early November. As the author makes clear, it need not necessarily have ended in a zero-sum tragedy, but with some restraint on all sides might well have become a non-zero-sum outcome.

All parties to the failed revolution come in for well deserved criticism -- Nagy for his ineffectiveness as a leader (his portrait from the 1930s to his death in 1958 is the most complete and nuanced account of a foreign leader I have ever read), the young Hungarian insurgents for their unbridled demands and intemperate actions, Washington for the hypocrisy of its East European policies of "liberation" and "rollback," and most of all the Soviet Union for the extraordinary brutality and violence it rained down upon the people of Budapest.

In his splendid Epilogue, Charles Gati's well told story of the "failed illusions" of a half century ago, as well as his own life as a former Hungarian citizen, came full circle when he witnessed Nagy's cermonial reburial in Budapest's Heroes Square late spring 1989, with the demise of the Communist system in Hungary and East Europe in sight just months away. This is a remarkable and exceptional book.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A HumanJourney, September 28, 2006

By 

Frank Gado (White River Junction, VT, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt (Cold War International History Project) (Hardcover)

Take the experts' word that this study is a reliable, extensive, and insightful account of the 1956 Hungarian Revolt. What strikes me is the personal element. We go from the recollections of a young, unsophisticated journalist of 22, caught in the tide of momentous events he does not understand, to the retrospection of a highly sophisticated scholar revisiting those events and doing his very best to look behind history's curtain to resolve their meaning. It is a gripping, honest, and personal account, rendered with the binocularity of five decades of study. A century from now, this will still be the book to read, not just for the facts but also for the feel of one of the 20th century's signal struggles.

18 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nothing new in Gati's "new history" of the Hungarian Revolution, November 11, 2006

By 

Istvan B. Gereben (Duluth, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt (Cold War International History Project) (Hardcover)

Gati's treatment of the Hungarian Revolution and its actors gives the impression that he wrote a book with preconceived conclusions supported by selected documentation and by omission of those not fitting in his concept. Exploitation of the 50th anniversary of the seminal historic event is evident in the timing of publication. He treats Imre Nagy, the Freedom Fighters and America unfairly. He unrealistically expects the revolutionaries to be practitioners of real politic. His assumption of Soviet willingness to compromise, to meaningfully revise its relationship with its satellites seemed so hopefully evidential only in the flashlight of the revolution. It is surprising that Gati is still dazzled.

There is very little new in Gati's "new history" of the Hungarian Revolution that is significant. Robert Murphy in his autobiography: Diplomat among warriors explained the American inaction regarding the Hungarian Revolution in a few pages more concisely, with more insight than Gati does in his book. There is no surprise that Gati neglects to mention him and his views.

Murphy concludes his assessment of why the Hungarian Revolution was defeated, or in better words, why it was left to be defeated, with this remarkably humble statement:

"For sheer perfidy and relentless suppression of a courageous people longing for their liberty, Hungary will always remain a classic symbol. Perhaps history will demonstrate that the free world could have intervened to give the Hungarians the liberty they sought, but none of us in the State Department had the skill or the imagination to devise a way."

This evaluation remains the most authoritative, most honest, factually correct and durable judgment of American - or for that matter the free World's - inability to
act at a time when action was warranted.