Revolution in Hungary: The 1956 Budapest Uprising

Erich Lessing's landmark photographs of the Hungarian Revolution, published to mark the 50th anniversary of the uprising.

On October 23, 1956, what began as a mass rally in Budapest quickly evolved into the Hungarian Revolution. Within days, millions of Hungarians were supporting the revolt. It lasted until November 4th when it was crushed by Hungarian Security Police and Soviet tanks and artillery. Between 25,000 and 50,000 Hungarian rebels and 7,000 Soviets were killed, thousands were injured, and nearly a quarter of a million people left the country as refugees.

Erich Lessing was the first photographer to arrive in Hungary, and he documented the short-lived uprising and its aftermath in a series of world-famous photographs, reproduced here in stunning duotone. They bring to life once more the hope and euphoria of the first days of the revolt, so soon to be followed by the pain and punishment of its brutal suppression. 230 duotone illustrations.

Marking the fiftieth anniversary of the October 1956 Hungarian revolt against Soviet domination after World War II, this imposing volume contains powerful black-and-white photographs taken during the years preceding as well as the outbreak and crushing of the uprising by a German member of the international photojournalist cooperative Magnum. Introduced by Lessing's recollections and Hungarian French historian Francois Fejto's precis of the momentous events, the pictures appear in three chapters, "Communist Hungary," "The Revolution," and "The Failure." Hungarian novelist George Konrad's intense impressions of the time, during which he carried a rifle as a revolutionary young intellectual, follow the first chapter, and French political scientist Nicolas Bauquet's assessment of the revolt's impact on Western Europe's Communist parties, the USSR, and subsequent European history follows the third. Views of the cemetery in which the uprising's martyrs are now buried conclude the book elegiacally, and brief last words by Lessing and the director of Hungary's Institute 56 indicate who may forget what happened and why the rest of us should always remember. An extraordinary document. Ray Olson
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