The major crises of state socialism, among them the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and Prague Spring of 1968, received a lot of scholarly attention already. The innovative contribution of this volume is its comparative and transnational focus on mutual Czechoslovak-Hungarian perceptions and interactions. An analysis of those interplays offers interesting insights into crisis, stability and relations among and within the Eastern Bloc countries. Based on Czechoslovak and Hungarian party documents, secret police materials, newspapers, as well as memoirs and published recollections of party functionaries and emigres, the study explores the reasons for an upheaval in one place not causing a chain reaction in the neighboring countries. In response to white spots in the historiography of bilateral influences among the Soviet satellite states, Lachmann seeks to find out how the citizens and politicians in Czechoslovakia and Hungary perceived and interpreted the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and Prague Spring in 1968, respectively. How did these perceptions affect the course of events at home? Pursuing a methodical, symmetrical and synchronous analysis of political and social situations in both countries, Lachmann concludes that systemic crises under state socialism emerged from two interrelated developments: the level of unity within the ruling party and a population’s perception of their own situation vis-à-vis that of their neighbors.

As social dissatisfaction prompted political infighting, reform-minded party factions developed, as was the case in 1956 in Hungary under Imre Nagy. Lachmann’s analysis shows that “the coherence of party leaderships depended on their own experiences and current observations of the neighbors” (p. 473). Hence, in wake of the Hungarian events, Czechoslovak communists closed ranks through preventative political cleansings, crackdown on dissent and coordinated propaganda. A similar search for unity took place in 1968 within the Hungarian Communist Party. Linking these observations to the contemporary international context, Lachmann posits that the level of intra-party cohesion determined to what degree the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact states intervened in a satellite country’s domestic affairs. Hoping to avoid a crisis themselves, the neighbors advocated for a decisive action against the reformers elsewhere. Hence, Lachmann explicitly challenges the totalitarian arguments about full control from Moscow and demonstrates the mechanisms and limits of Soviet hegemony by scrutinizing internal Bloc dynamics. The volume, however, does not give enough consideration to the other consolidating factors, such as the impact of the 1953 Uprising in East Germany, strikes in Plzeň in the same year and the change of power after Klement Gottwald’s death.

A population’s stance toward the upheavals abroad depended on its calculation of risks and benefits. The people of Czechoslovakia in 1956 and of Hungary in 1968 were not eager to lose their relative economic and social security, particularly after witnessing the brutality of armed intervention. Lachmann foregrounds this conclusion by a meticulous examination of the press, public opinion polls and the archives of Radio Free Europe in Budapest to describe the information available to the citizens of both countries. While Czechoslovak citizens in 1956 did have access to some independent news sources, mostly from abroad, the majority had limited knowledge about the Hungarian protests. Censorship of the official press not only suppressed the facts but also touted the achievements and high standard of living in Czechoslovakia. For both events, the propaganda’s picture of the neighbors as counterrevolutionary nationalists resonated especially with Slovaks and Hungarians, who harbored historical baggage of mutual animosity. At the same time, the Hungarian minority in Slovakia constituted an important cross-border information bridge. On that basis, the neighbors could draw comparisons with each other. Hence, the relative economic stability in 1956 Czechoslovakia was a major reason to remain passive. Similarly, Hungarian citizens, sympathizing with Czechs and Slovaks, did not join in the protests of the invasion of Czechoslovakia because they were satisfied with their “goulash communism” and reverted to their memories of 1956.

Assessing the political impact of the Hungarian Revolution, Lachmann argues that the stabilizing policies enacted by Prague in the late fifties in reaction to the Hungarian crisis were a catalyst for the Czechoslovak reform movement of the sixties. Because the Czechoslovak Communist Party under the neo-Stalinist leadership consolidated their hold on power and avoided reforms after 1956, enough pressure mounted over time to burst out in 1968 with Alexander Dubček’s “socialism with a human face.” Meanwhile, some Hungarian politicians expressed hopes for more reforms at home but the stronger conservative wings of the Party asserted their dominance. They wanted “to dispel any doubts about their Bloc loyalty and distanced their own social compromises from the Czechoslovak reforms” (p. 468). Hungarian society, satisfied with its part of the compromise, reacted to Prague Spring with resignation and complacency that lasted until the next reform movement arose in the late 1980s. Such explanation of long-term stability of state socialism based on an analysis of cross-border entanglements is refreshing. It points to the value of transnational projects that break away from the hegemonic narratives and shows that individual communist states did shape their internal affairs in relation to other Bloc regimes and not only to the Soviet Union.

The volume is organized into two chronological parts providing a comparative, synchronic analysis of the political situation in both countries, followed by a discussion of perceptions, interpretations and consequences of events in the neighboring state. While this set up is very logical and the attention to detail is praiseworthy, it does lead to many unnecessary repetitions. The choice of these two crises is justified by their structural similarities and outcomes—communist-initiated reforms, mass participation, military intervention—even if other upheavals in Eastern Europe also provide room for a similar study due to their reverberance in the region. Some of the interventions, for example the abandonment of state-society polarization or Cold War martyrologic narratives, may not sound surprising to many scholars, especially in the Anglo-American sphere.1 Nonetheless, Die Ungarische Revolution und der Prager Frühling is a history of entanglements (histoire croisée) par excellence that heeds the call for scholars of Central Europe to shift attention from national to transnational histories of interchange.2 Moreover, its methodological approaches are worth emulating because this volume raises many follow up questions about mutual influences among other Soviet Bloc states as well as social and political life within in Eastern Europe.

Notes:
1 For example: Paulina Bren, The Greengrocer and His TV. The Culture of Communism after the 1968 Prague Spring, Ithaca 2010; Andrew Port, Conflict and Stability in the German Democratic Republic, Cambridge 2007; Barbara J. Falk, Resistance and Dissent in Central and Eastern Europe. An Emerging Historiography, in: East European Politics and Societies 25, 2 (2011), pp. 318–360.
2 For example: Patryk Babiracki, Interfacing the Soviet Bloc. Recent Literature and Paradigms, in: Ab Imperio 4 (2011), pp. 376–407; Konrad H. Jarausch, From National to Transnational German Studies. Some Historical Reflections, 1977–2017, in: German Studies Review 39, 3 (2016), pp. 493–503; and the Special Commemorative Issue of Central European History. Central European History at Fifty (1968–2018) 51, 1 (2018).