Generally speaking, three genres may be distinguished in historiography on the communist takeovers in Eastern Europe after World War II, four if the communist view of a voluntary movement of workers in favor of Soviet-type communism is included. A traditional geostrategic view would have assumed a Soviet master plan to absorb half of Europe into its sphere of influence and would have underlined the similarities in the strategies of takeover and their outcomes from Warsaw to Bucharest. Conversely, national histories tend to marginalize the similarities to the contemporary fate of neighboring nations and treat the communist takeover as a national catastrophe. The memoirs of those who played an active and often tragic role in the takeover constitute a third genre.
Peter Kenez’s history of the communist takeover in Hungary belongs to all three genres or “schools” in this particular field of research. Although he fails to mention this relevant piece of information, Kenez has been an eyewitness and a victim of the events unfolding after the collapse of the Horthy regime and the withdrawal of the German army. Even his biography on the book’s cover fails to mention that he arrived at Princeton in January 1957, as a poor twenty-year-old refugee from Hungary. Kenez’s personal background may not have been irrelevant for his choice of topic, but his approach and argumentation are thoroughly academic. Some statements are reminiscent of the moral impetus of older historiography or include categorical statements that would at least require additional research or references, for example, the claim that hunger in the winter of 1945–1946 was worse in Hungary than in any other East European country with the possible exception of Romania (P. 121). Kenez largely relies on literature in Hungarian, even for contrastive comparisons such as the extent of postwar retribution in France (P. 141 fn 2).
Kenez claims to have used the relevant archives at the Political History Institute and the National Archives in Budapest and RTsKhIDNI in Moscow, but his narrative is based largely on the former. The reader has to accept rather sweeping statements on the Soviets’ intentions and perceptions at face value. Overall, the author tentatively addresses two relevant dimensions: the inner workings and dilemmas of the Soviet side, presented in a rather neorealist manner unlike the Hungarian side, and the comparison to the takeover processes in the other East European countries and the corresponding recent literature, summarized in some brief excursions (e.g., see P. 217).
Conversely, his assessments of the motives and interaction of various communist and noncommunist leaders are subtle and insightful. Some expectations and strategies that seem naive or misguided from a post-1989 (or even from a 1950s) perspective may have been quite realistic or at least in line with the facts available to them in 1945–1946. Unlike traditional views of the takeover, Kenez argues that post-Horthy Hungary was in urgent need of a political and economic overhaul. Thus, the Hungarian communists did have some real attraction as a radical alternative for a part of the population, even though the presence of the Red Army was crucial in redefining constellations of political power in Budapest.
A typical cold-war study of communist takeovers in East Central Europe would have assumed that installing a communist puppet regime had been Stalin’s plan from the get-go, with a blueprint readily applicable in each and every country of the region. Kenez indeed argues that all key decisions were made in Moscow and that the Hungarians’ room for maneuver was very limited, but not nonexistent. In contrast to the cold-war approach, however, he underlines that Moscow’s strategy evolved only during the process and was not based on a premeditated master plan. He also refuses to assume a strict (moral) division between Hungarian democrats and communists, between patriotic Hungarians and opportunistic collaborators. Consequently, communist strategies and the interaction with the opposition varied from country to country. It is nevertheless a drawback that Kenez has not sought a more detailed and systematic debate with the recent general literature on post–World War II takeovers.^[1] These views set Hungary from the Nazis to the Soviets apart from the existing studies on this crucial period (although Kenez claims that the history of the takeover has yet to be written).^[2]
Kenez acknowledges the uncertainties and meandering in Moscow’s policies and the intricacies of relations between communists and noncommunist political leaders in Debrecen and Budapest. His main focus, however, is on the international context (e.g., the Allied Control Commission) and power play in national politics. Other recent studies of the interregnum between fascist and communist rule in various countries of the future Eastern Bloc rather tend to explore local realities of the political turnover outside the capital. Kenez indeed probes the “hundreds of reports sent by village agitators” (P. 185) available in the archives. In contrast to authors of cold-war literature, Kenez acknowledges that the urgent need for a social revolution constituted a key factor in the immediate postwar years and the communists’ relative success in garnering a mass base for their policies and promises. His optimism concerning an alternative, democratic path for Hungary’s future, if a communist takeover could have been averted, moreover, is not unqualified.
All in all Peter Kenez’s study is a well-argued must-read for any student of the fascist–communist interregnum and a fascinating balancing act between old-school studies of communist takeovers and a new paradigm of archive-based studies focused on the eclectic process of takeover rather than its straightforward outcome. As any good academic study, it is not the final truth on the fateful years 1944–1948 in Hungarian history, but rather facilitates the opening of new avenues for further research, for example, in the relevant Soviet archives, below the level of world politics or concerning the interplay of old and new authorities on the village or town level.