Kádár's shadow: Roger Gough: A Good Comrade: János Kádár, Communism and Hungary, London, I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, 320 pp.

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Abstract (may include machine translation)

The fiftieth anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution helped to cast new light on János Kádár, whose rise to power on the debris of the crushed uprising was to cement him as the country’s leader for the next thirty years. Much has been written about his life, his deeds and misdeeds and his last, almost incoherent speech to the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party in April, 1989. These writings traverse total repudiation, impartial scholarly analysis and uncritical apologia. Unsurprisingly, the greatest hit among them was a twovolume panegyric written by György Moldova, a popular and populist writer, known for his critical ultra-left, though pro-regime, bias since the late 1960s. Memories of Kádár also cropped up recently in another respect. Discussion of last autumn’s political and financial crisis seethed with the politics of reform. All of a sudden the main camps found themselves tussling with the “heritage” of Kádárism. They offer totally different versions of the nature of this poisoned heritage.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)59-68
Number of pages10
JournalThe New Hungarian Quarterly
Volume48
Issue number187
StatePublished - 2007
Externally publishedYes

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