The Hungarian Revolution

London: Andre Deutsch, 1957. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Good/Good. Rolf Gillhausen (photographer). 192 pages. DJ has wear and tears. Illustrations. Introduction, Part I: Against What? [Between Two Wars; War and Liberation; People's Democracy; Dramatis Personae; Their Darkest Hour; The Seeds of Revolt]; Part II--Revolution; [Demonstrations; The First Shots; Uprising of a Nation; The Victorious Revolution; The AVO, Prisoners Released; Crossing the Rubicon; Some Promises; The Second Attack]; Part III--For What--[The Stalingrad of Communism; The Hunger Strike of a Nation; and Where do we go from here''? and Postscript] and an index, as well as 16 pages of photographs found between pages 96-97. George Mikes (Hungarian pronunciation: [15 February 1912 - 30 August 1987) was a Hungarian-born British journalist and writer, best known for his commentaries on various countries. In 1938 Mikes became the London correspondent for two Hungarian newspapers, Reggel and 8 Órai Ujság ("8 o'clock News") and he worked for the former until 1940. The experience of the German Jewish refugees coming to his home in Hungary for help after 1933 had left an abiding impression upon him. So in 1938, when Mikes had originally been sent to London to cover the Munich Crisis and expected to stay for only a couple of weeks, just one year before the outbreak of World War II he decided not to return to Hungary, and instead remained in England. He worked for the BBC's Hungarian Service from 1939 onwards, interrupted only by his internment as an enemy alien in 1940. In 1956 he went back to Hungary to cover the Hungarian Revolution for BBC TV. He was president of the London branch of PEN. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (also known as the Hungarian Uprising, 23 October - 10 November 1956), was a countrywide revolution against the Stalinist government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949-1989) and the Hungarian domestic policies imposed by the USSR. Initially anarchic, the Hungarian Uprising was the first major nationalist challenge to Soviet Union's control of Hungary since the Soviet Army ended the Nazi occupation of Hungary at the end of the Second World War in Europe, in May 1945. The Hungarian Revolution began on 23 October 1956 in Budapest when university students appealed to the civil populace to join them at the Hungarian Parliament Building to protest the USSR's geopolitical domination of Hungary with the Stalinist government of Mátyás Rákosi. A delegation of students entered the building of Hungarian Radio to broadcast their sixteen demands for political and economic reforms to the civil society of Hungary, but were detained by security guards. When the student protesters outside the radio building demanded the release of their delegation of students, policemen from the ÁVH (Államvédelmi Hatóság) state protection authority shot and killed several protesters. Consequently, Hungarians organized into revolutionary militias to battle the ÁVH; local Hungarian Communist leaders and ÁVH policemen were captured and summarily killed or lynched; and anti-communist political prisoners were released and armed. To realize their political, economic, and social demands, the local soviets (councils of workers) assumed control of municipal government from the Hungarian Working People's Party (Magyar Dolgozók Pártja). The new government of Imre Nagy disbanded the ÁVH, declared the Hungarian withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, and pledged to reestablish free elections. By the end of October the intense fighting had subsided, but some workers continued battling the Stalinist régime and the appearance of opportunist bourgeois political parties. Although initially willing to negotiate the withdrawal of the Soviet Army from Hungary, the USSR repressed the Hungarian Revolution on 4 November 1956, and fought the Hungarian revolutionaries until 10 November; repression of the Hungarian Uprising killed 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet Army soldiers, and compelled 200,000 Hungarians to seek political refuge abroad.