"The Hungarian Cultural Centre in London is proud to be associated with this, the third volume on the history of Hungary which the Centre has supported and co-published. Like its predecessors on Lajos Kossuth and on British-Hungarian relations, the present work demonstrates the sustained interest in Great Britain in the field of Hungarian history. The collection draws together British, Hungarian and North American historians and thus illuminates the continued scholarly exchange between both countries and continents. ... The Hungarian Cultural Centre in London was opened in Covent Garden in 1999. From the very start its mission has been to familiarize the British people and the rest of the world with all the treasures that were spread to Europe by the Hungarians, as well as to highlight the values that Hungary owes to foreign cultures, in this way emphasizing Hungary's role as a bridge for inter-cultural communication. The present work comports entirely with this aim, as well as having its focus on one of the most important events in post-war Hungarian and European history - the Revolution of 1956." -- preface, p. ix.

Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe explains how ordinary people become involved in resistance and rebellion against powerful regimes. The book shows how a sequence of casual forces - social norms, focal points, rational calculation - operate to drive individuals into roles of passive resistance and, at a second stage, into participation in community-based rebellion organization. By linking the operation of these mechanisms to observable social structures, the work generates predictions about which types of community and society are most likely to form and sustain resistance and rebellion. The empirical material centres around Lithuanian anti-Soviet resistance in both the 1940s and the 1987–91 period. Using the Lithuanian experience as a baseline, comparisons with several other Eastern European countries demonstrate the breadth and depth of the theory. The book contributes to both the general literature on political violence and protest, as well as the theoretical literature on collective action.

The history of Eastern Europe during the Cold War is one punctuated by protest and rebellion. Revolution and Resistance in Eastern Europe covers these flashpoints from the Stalin-Tito split of 1948 to the dramatic collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Covering East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Poland and Romania, the authors provide comprehensive critical analysis of the varying forms of dissent in the East European socialist states. They take a comparative approach and show how the different movements affected one another. Incorporating archival material only accessible since 1989, they discuss issues such as the diverse manifestations of non-conformity among different strata of the population, the complex relationship between Moscow and the national Communist Parties, the loosening of Soviet control after 1985, and everyday resistance to state authority. This book offers a firm grounding in the tumultuous decades of communist rule, which is essential to understanding the contemporary politics of Eastern Europe.

Despite fragmentation, heterogeneity and the continuous pressure of the Ottoman Empire, early modern “divided Hungary” witnessed a surprising cultural flourishing in the sixteenth century, and maintained its common cultural identity in the seventeenth century. This could hardly have been possible without intense exchange with the rest of Europe. This three-volume series about early modern Hungary divided by Ottoman presence approaches themes of exchange of information and knowledge from two perspectives, namely, exchange through traditional channels provided by religious/educational institutions and the system of European study tours (Volume 1 – Study Tours and Intellectual-Religious Relationships), and the less regular channels and improvised networks of political diplomacy (Volume 2 – Diplomacy, Information Flow and Cultural Exchange). A by-product of this exchange of information was the changing image of early modern Hungary and Transylvania, which is presented in the third and in some aspects concluding volume of essays (Volume 3 – The Making and Uses of the Image of Hungary and Transylvania). Unlike earlier approaches to the same questions, these volumes draw an alternative map of early modern Hungary. On this map, the centre-periphery conceptions of European early modern culture are replaced by new narratives written from the perspective of historical actors, and the dominance of Western-Hungarian relationships is kept in balance due to the significance of Hungary’s direct neighbours, most importantly the Ottoman Empire.

The first comparative and pan-European study of the Big Three's involvement in Resistance movements across wartime Europe. From Yugoslavia to Poland and from Greece to France and Italy, the book vividly depicts and sharply analyses how this proxy war shaped the history of the post-war settlement.

In October 1956, a spontaneous uprising took Hungarian Communist authorities by surprise, prompting Soviet authorities to invade the country. After a few days of violent fighting, the revolt was crushed. In the wake of the event, some 200,000 refugees left Hungary, 35,000 of whom made their way to Canada. This would be the first time Canada would accept so many refugees of a single origin, setting a precedent for later refugee initiatives. More than fifty years later, this collection focuses on the impact of the revolution in Hungary, in Canada, and around the world.

A riveting new look at a key event of the Cold War, Failed Illusions fundamentally modifies our picture of what happened during the 1956 Hungarian revolution. Now, fifty years later, Charles Gati challenges the simplicity of this David and Goliath story in his new history of the revolt.