Hungary's negotiated revolution [antikvár]

Preface and acknowledgmentsThis boolc is the result of many years of thinking, reflection, and intellectual soul-searching about my native land, w^hich I, then a third-year law student, left in November 1956. After an extremely rewarding twenty-year detour of studying, teaching, and writing about Soviet and East European politics and comparative communist studies, in 1981 I decided that I was ready to sort out what has become of Himgary since the heady days of the 1956 revolution. Several short trips, five extended visits, hundreds of conversations, and about two dozen publications later 1 can now report on what I foimd out.Major road markers of my rediscovery of Hungary were the summers of 1982 and 1983 spent at the Urüversity of Debrecen with groups of exceptionally talented American graduate students and the creme de la creme of the Himgarian reform intelligentsia, who shared their wisdom and personal beliefs with my students and me. My late friend Professor György Ránki was resporisible for the arrangements and for much of what we learned about Himgarian history. Both Ránki and füs distinguished colleagues - Professors Domokos Kosáry, Iván T. Berend, Zsuzsa L. Nagy, Tibor Hajdú, Géza Jeszenszky, Márton Tardos, Tamás Bácskai, Csaba Csáki, Elemér Hankiss, Kálmán Kulcsár, Zsuzsa Ferge, Pál Tamás, and Zoltán Kárpáti - showed us that there was another, intellectually vibrant and increasingly restless, Hungary beneath the bland façade of the late Kádár era.In the next five years I had the good fortune to meet with many scholars and politicians from both sides of the political fence. Conversations with leaders of the democratic opposition - especially János Kis, Miklós Haraszti, and György Konrád; meetings with the reform socialists András Hegedűs and Pál Demény; long discussions with Professors Mihály Bihari, György Csepeli, István Schlett, Csaba Gombár, László Kéri, Mária Csanádi, László Bruszt, and the late Zsolt Papp; and serendipitous encounters with members of the Fidesz