Dealing with Dictators: The United States, Hungary, and East Central Europe, 1943-1989 by László Borhi (review)

There is a wide gap between the scholarly literature on East-Central Europe during the Cold War, which was dominated by émigré writers, and the broader scholarship of Cold War history, which was produced largely by Western writers who focused mainly on the great powers. In the first category, Hungarian émigré scholars were amply represented. A partial list would include István Deák, Charles Gati, Peter Kenez, Béla Király, Arthur Koestler, János Kornai, Bennett Kovrig, John Lukacs, János Rádványi, George Schöpflin, Iván Szelényi, Rudolf Tokes, and Iván Völgyes. Writing from within Hungary, writers and scholars such as Miklós Haraszti, János Kis, and George (György) Konrád likewise contributed to our understanding of Hungary and the region during the Cold War. This scholarship spawned two generations of experts on Eastern Europe who were both analysts and advocates, trained to see the peoples and countries of this region as international actors in their own rights.

Yet the dominant literature of the Cold War was written from a largely Western and particularly U.S. perspective, in which the countries of East-Central Europe were objects but rarely subjects of history. In similar fashion, with a few notable exceptions, students and scholars of Western Europe rarely knew or much cared about Eastern Europe. Even now, 25 years after the end of the Cold War, with most of the countries of this region having joined both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU), the study of East-Central Europe tends to be lodged in centers for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies (with the Hungarians often adrift in a Slavic sea).

This is what makes László Borhi's volume such an important contribution to closing this gap in our understanding of Cold War history. Not only does Hungary take center stage, but it takes its place alongside the United States in a richly documented parallel history.

Borhi nicely captures the tension between the aspirations of a small country, focused on navigating amid large and powerful neighbors, and those of a dominant power, which must balance a larger array of often conflicting objectives. This asymmetry of power, interests, and perspectives gives Borhi's book its narrative thrust.

The Czech writer Milan Kundera, in his celebrated essay "The Tragedy of Central Europe," published in The New York Review of Books in April 1984, wrote that "the small nation is one whose very existence may be put in question at any moment." Indeed, he began the essay with the closing words of a message from the director of the Hungarian News Agency at the time of the 1956 Soviet invasion: "We are going to die for Hungary and for Europe."

This perspective naturally lends itself to a national narrative of betrayal and victimhood. It is a predisposition—call it the Trianon syndrome (named after the 1920 treaty that ceded large parts of formerly Hungarian territory to neighboring countries, notably Romania)—to which Hungarians are particularly susceptible, and it mars this otherwise fine book. The opening paragraph makes it clear that this is Borhi's focus: "This is a book on the impact of one country on the other.… It is the history of how the framers of American policy sought to exploit this small but strategically well-located state" (p. 1). "Exploit" is a strong word, but it appears in the third sentence of the book, so the reader must assume this is precisely the rendering the author intends.

The evidence can certainly be read that way, and Borhi amasses a wealth of fascinating material. But the evidence can also be read to demonstrate the contrary: that despite occasional lapses, and despite the precedence sometimes (and appropriately) given to managing U.S.-Soviet relations, the United States remained remarkably and uniquely steadfast in its support for the freedom...