Failed Illusions

Charles Gati is a political scientist who fled his native Hungary during the 1956 revolt, and is now Senior Adjunct Professor of European Studies at Johns Hopkins University. His previous positions have included teaching Central and Eastern European as well as Russian politics and foreign policy at Union College and Columbia University. He served as a Senior Adviser on the Department of State's Policy Planning Staff in the early 1990's. His publications include The Bloc That Failed: Soviet-East Relations in Transition (1990), and Hungary and the Soviet Bloc (1986).

"Gati's book towers high above the rest as by far the best book published on 1956... his work aims to examine what happened and to point to what could have happened given the other complex factors that were in play in 1956. The fruit of Gati's effort is an engaging, fascinating, and well-written narrative coupled wit masterful historical and political analysis."—Slavic Review "Gati draws on reams of new research and documentary evidence from Hungary, while ferreting out scores of fascinating documents from the U.S. archives. Specialists on this subject will benefit immensely from this work, but the book is written in such an engaging manner that it will also appeal to a more general audience."—Mark Kramer, Director of Cold War Studies, Harvard University "Failed Illusions casts incisively a new perspective on three key dimensions of the historic drama that was the Hungarian Revolution: the unsavory background and the heroic epiphany of Imre Nagy, the revolution's tragic leader; the confused, disruptive, and ultimately devious Soviet efforts to manipulate the Hungarian communists; and the impotent futility of US posturing which masqueraded as 'the policy of liberation.' Riveting as a story, significant as a history."—Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. National Security Advisor, author of The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict "The main message on U.S. foreign policy in Gati's book resonates with me. We're forever spouting bullshit in foreign policy for domestic political reasons at great costs to people abroad, who take the bullshit seriously."—Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations and former foreign-affairs columnist, New York Times "Born and raised in Hungary, Gati...was a young journalist in Budapest at the time. Using hundreds of documents in the archives in Budapest, Moscow, and Washington, he has written a thorough and scholarly analysis of the revolution."—Library Journal "Reading Failed Illusions is like reading a John le Carre novel with documentation. Charles Gati provides a suspenseful inside look into the types of issues and characters le Carre has portrayed in his novels yet Gati's story is all too real and tragic." —Stephen F. Szabo, Johns Hopkins University "...Failed Illusions is a brilliant exercise in the counterfactual, a catalog of the "what ifs" that should be considered when thinking about the creation and perpetuation of the Soviet bloc."—The Moscow Times "Failed Illusions sheds new light on American policy, especially the controversial role of Radio Free Europe as it encouraged the rebels....[and] Mr. Gati's excellent footnotes, several quite personal and poignant, give added depth to the story."—The Economist "Charles Gati's Failed Illusions is a searching, scholarly account of the political calculations of the Kremlin, the White House, and the Hungarian Communist leadership."—New York Times Book Review "The product of more than 15 years of extraordinary research and interviewing, much of it in Hungarian, his book highlights just how much we have to learn about key Cold War events and, more important, how we should go about learning it."—Foreign Affairs "Charles Gati's Failed Illusions is an outstanding work."—London Review of Books "The '56-anniversary book that's gotten the most press is Charles Gati's Failed Illusions, which, in meticulous scholarly detail, fortifies the new, more depressing argument for why America didn't ride to the rescue with either military might or aggressive diplomacy."—BOOKFORUM "Gati has undertaken an important, brilliant reappraisal of the 1956 Hungarian uprising and its subsequent violent suppression. Scholars of the Cold War, Hungarian history, and anyone interested in the popular revolution will be spellbound by this book."—CHOICE "Charles Gatis Failed Illusions gives a comprehensive account of the Revolution in succinct and elegant prose along with his own analysis and some speculation."—New York Review of Books "The main message on U.S. foreign policy in Gati's book resonates with me. We're forever spouting bullshit in foreign policy for domestic political reasons at great costs to people abroad, who take the bullshit seriously."—Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations and former foreign-affairs columnist, New York Times

• Contents OneIntroduction to the Argument TwoThe Inadvertent Revolutionary ThreeWashington and Budapest before the Explosion FourMoscow and Budapest before the Explosion FiveThe Revolt That Failed SixThe Revolt That Did Not Have to Fail SevenEpilogue: Memories Repressed and Recovered Selected Bibliography Index