A Testament of Revolution (Eastern European Series, 13)

Terse, staccato, like a dispatch from the front, Béla Lipták's A Testament of Revolution gives readers a vivid, firsthand look at the brief, doomed struggle of Hungarian freedom fighters against Russian oppressors.

Written in 1956 in an Austrian refugee camp, where the author had fled to escape reprisals for his role in the rebellion, Lipták's memoir compellingly sketches the conflict between university students, factory workers, and Hungarian nationalists on the one side and the hated Hungarian secret police and Russian army troops on the other.

In a memoir that is both history and a saga of his coming of age, Lipták relates his transformation from carefree university student to impromptu revolutionary leader. His story unfolds with unsparing honesty as he makes the reader privy to his conflicts, faults, and failures of judgment and courage, laying bare his struggles with the enemy and with himself.

*Starred Review*
Liptak, a Hungarian emigre after the 1956Hungarian revolution who has spent almost the last five decades in hisadopted U.S., has given us nothing less than a littlemasterpiece chronicling the hour-by-hour events of that doomed andforeshortened student-led rebellion against Soviet tyranny. There issuch urgency in his reporting simply because the book is basically atranslation of the author's own journal from that time, when he wasone of the leaders of the student revolt. The book consists of thatjournal sandwiched between a contemporary prologue andpostscript. What he reports on was perhaps one of the noblest ofuprisings, where baskets of monetary donations left on street cornersfor the suffering rebels would go untouched by an honest citizenry, asdid department stores, opened to all via broken plate-glass windows,yet went unlooted. Ultimately, this is a sad tale of a short-livedrebellion that fell victim to an oppressive enemy and to the inactionof perceived friends (the U.S. foremost among them, whose expectedsupport failed to come through despite Eisenhower's lip service toliberation movements). Riveting photographs round out this gem of abook. Allen Weakland
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Lipt k here recalls one of the Cold War era's darkest episodes: Hungary's heroic 1956 revolution. At the time, the author was an apolitical, 20-year-old student in Budapest, and his transformation into a freedom fighter presents a fine account of student politics confronting Soviet oppression. The book's strength lies in its portrayal of the mindset of the revolution's actors. Lipt k himself inadvertently became a respected student leader who was nevertheless incapable of firing his weapon at a critical moment. The casual student camaraderie starkly contrasts with the drama of sudden death and the sheer brutality of the Hungarian Secret Police (cVH). The author recalls the "lying American president" whose encouragement was understood to mean a promise of intervention. The author's flight to Austria and later to the United States concludes the story. Especially interesting are the footnotes, informing readers, for example, that the resulting emigration, death, and deportation cost Hungary nearly three percent of its population. Despite its strengths, this book, as the preface warns, "is not a history book." Instead, it offers a fragmentary perspective that does not probe deeply into the revolution's larger significance for Hungary, communism, or Eastern Europe. Recommended for larger academic and public libraries. Zachary T. Irwin, Pennsylvania State Univ., Erie
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