The Hungarian revolution of 1956 was one of the most important episodes of the cold war.
It began on Oct. 23, when a demonstration of Budapest students in sympathy with Polish reforms erupted into anti-government riots, and ended on Nov. 4, when Soviet troops entered the city in force and crushed the uprising. The death toll was enormous: 2,500 deaths and 10,000 wounded during the fighting, as well as an estimated 330 executions.
In Failed Illusions , Charles Gati describes those dramatic 12 days, and how the inhabitants of the Hungarian capital-- students, workers, intellectuals and others -- stood up and died for their independence. Gati directly experienced the 1956 revolution as a young journalist, and member of the intellectual Petofi Circle dedicated to Hungarian reform.
In two recent interviews,with Robert Siegel of NPR here and David Glenn of the Chronicle of Higher Education here , Gati argues that, even as late as Ocotber 30th, military action was not invevitable, and there was a diplomatic solution out of the bloody siege.
On the contrary, the book shows how Americans in the Kingdom set up a kind of Jim Crow system or version of American Apartheid in the oil provinces in the 1930s. It traces the rise of a Saudi workers' movement (discussed in this book for the first time) that confronted the Americans in the 1950s. Vitalis makes a compelling case that the rascist system set up in Saudi Arabia was common everywhere American oil firms (and copper mining firms, and so on) set up operations, starting in the American West. In fact it was part of a broader strategy of American empire building, motivated (somewhat ironically) by the myth of U.S. exceptionalism. The book tragically shows how the same kinds of injustices that were hallmarks of American oil companies at home and abroad, continue in the world’s newest oil frontiers, in such far-flung places as Baku, Azerbaijan and in Nigeria.
