Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1985 (13. évfolyam, 43-46. szám)

1985 / 43-44. szám

Király, Bela K. ed., THE CRUCIAL DECADE: EAST CENTRAL EUROPEAN SOCIETY AND NATIONAL DEFENSE, 1859- 1870. Brooklyn College Press, distributed by Columbia U. Press, 562 West 113th Street, New York, NY 10025,1984. xv + 633 pages. $40.00. (Brooklyn Coll. Studies on Society in Change, no. 33; War and Society in East Central Europe, no. 14; and East European Monographes, no. 151.)

This comprehensive volume of some 54 essays was written by as many scholars from a variety of disciplinary orientations, mostly historians, representing papers given at a series of conferences and sponsored by the Program on the Society in Change at Brooklyn College. Few substantive studies of the national defense systems of the region have appeared in Western languages. Nor has there been any study of the mutual effects of the concepts and practices of national defense in East Central Europe at a time of nation-building. The volume is subdivided into two major parts. Book one comprises studies grouped by topical emphases. Prefaced by some area-wide generalizations, they deal with the Polish January 1863 insurrection; with wars and revolutionary movements in the Balkans, 1850-70; with the role of the army in Romanian unification; with Hungarians who underforeign flags fought against the Habsburgs; the compromise of 1867 putting an end to Habsburg neoabsolution and the reestablishment of the Hungarian Honvédség. Book two contains three essays of bibliographical character, and three appendicies: John Bull in the Kingdom of Poland: the estate of Janow in the period of peasant emancipation, 1861-4; arrest of a young Scottish adventurer at Czestochowa, 1864; and an appeal of Generals György Klapka and Mór Perczel to the Hungarian legionnaires. A list of contributors is added.

The editor is prof, emeritus of history, Brooklyn Coll., CUNY.

Király, Béla K., Barbara Lotze, and Nándor F. Dreisziger eds., THE FIRST WAR BETWEEN SOCIALIST STATES: THE HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION OF 1956 AND ITS IMPACT.

Brooklyn College Press, distributed by Columbia U. Press, 562 West 13th Street, New York, NY 10025, 1984. x + 608 pages, biblio., biographical index. $40.00 cloth. (Brooklyn College Studies on Society in Change, no. 30; and War and Society in East Central Europe, vol. 11. A joint publication with the American Hungarian Educators’ Association, and the American Association fortheStudy of Hungarian History. East European Monographs, no. 152.)

This volume solicited the best known experts on East Central Europe and social dynamics. It contains 46 essays written by 42 authors. The editor-in-cheif of the series, Béla K. Király, opens the volume with an introductory essay on “The Hungarian Revolution and Soviet Readiness to Wage War against Socialist States.” This piece provides the frame of reference for the remaining essays of the volume reinforced by introductory essays to each chapter. The second chapter was edited by G. Gömöri under the title of “The Hungarian Revolution in Poetry,” with such contributors as G. Illyés, A. Wazyk, L. Nagy, G. Faludy, and G. Petri. The editor of chapter 3 was L. Congdon: “Rethinking Marxism: The Hungarian Revolution and Western Intellectuals,” with contributions by A. Camus, M. Djilas, M. Polanyi, J-P. Sartre, R. Aron, H. Arendt, C. Castoriadis, and C. Lefort; chapter 4, “The Revolution and Hungarian Writers” was edited by Ivan Sanders with essays by T. Méray, T. Aczel, T. Szendrey; “The Hungarian Revolution and the Superpowers” is the title of chapter 5, edited by J. Radványi with contribution by J.

NO. 43-44, SPRING-SUMMER 1985 HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER

Valenta, B. Kovrig, B. McCauley, and G. Pálóczi-Horváth;

chapter 6, “The Global Effects of the Revolution” was edited by C. Gáti. Contributors were N. Krivosein, P. Kende, A. Korbonski, P. Gosztonyi, S. Fischer-Galati, A. Ludanyi, Nándor Dreisziger, B. Lotze, and Hans Brisch; chapter 7 focuses on “The Long-Term Effects of the Revolution in Hungary” and was edited by P. Jonas with contributions from R. Blumstock, P. Marer, B. Rácz, M. Sozan, I. Völgyes. Chapter 8 reprints a short letter to the editor from A.A. Amalrik; chapter 9 presents the readers with the the concluding essays by G. Schoepflin; and chapter 10 provides an 42-page long bibliography on the 1956 revolution by E. Molnár-Basa.

Király is prof, emeritus of history, and director of the Program on Society in Change, Brooklyn Coll.; Lotze is prof, of physics Allegneny Coll.; and Dreisziger is prof, of history, Royal Military Coll, of Canada.

Magocsi, Paul Robert. OUR PEOPLE; Carpatho-Rusyns and Their Descendants in North America. Multicultural History Society of Ontario, 43 Qeen’s Park Crescent East, Toronto, ONT M5S 2C3, 1984. 160 pages, maps, illus, biblio. $20.00 cloth.

This is an elegant, album-size publication brought about in response to the growing interest in ethnicity. Oscar Handlin (Harvard U.) in a preface says that “that people who are the subjects of this volume were hardly recognized by Americans in the period of their arrival.” To a considerable extent, “the Carpatho-Rusyns discovered their identity after they have settled in the U S.” This volume presents an overview in popular style of their origin, migration, settlement, patterns and economies, their social organizations, politics, and ethnic maintenance efforts. The appendix contains “A Root Seeker’s Guide to the Homeland,” compiled with the assistance of George Shanta, a list of villages situated in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, and Romania whose inhabitants have responded in the 1910 Hungarian census that their “mother tongue” was Rusyn, and a bibliographic guide. In sum, this is a comprehensive narrative on the Carpatho-Rusyn ethnic group in North America with numerous references to Hungary and Hungarians.

The author is prof, of history and political science at the U. of Toronto, his book, The Shaping of a National Indentity: Subcarpathian Rus’, 1848-1948, was reviewed in HSN no. 27, p. 5.

Péteri, György. EFFECTS OF WORLD WAR I: WAR COMMUNISM IN HUNGARY, 1919. Brooklyn College Press, distributed by Columbia University Press, 562 West 113th Street, New York, NY 10025, 1984. x + 225 pages, tables, biographical index. $25.00 cloth. First published in Hungarian as A Magyar Tanácsköztársaság iparirányitási rendszere. Budapest: Közgazdasagi es Jogi könyvkiadó', Budapest, 1979. (Brooklyn College Studies on Society in Change, no. 35; War and Society in East Central Europe, no. 16; and East European Monographs, no. 167.)

The author draws a broad picture of the industrial history of the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic. He emphasizes the fact that he “made no attempt to draw any succint conclusion by compiling a balance sheet of the merits and demerits” of the Republic. So far, he found that, the only useful reference works on the subject were written by emigre'communists and social democrats. A fairly complete volume by Gyula Hevesi, Hungarian War Communism, originally “A magyar hadikom(Continued on Page 6)

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