Overview

A complex array of individual responses to the abuse of power by the state is represented in this book in three horrific episodes in the history of East-Central Europe. The three events followed each other within a span of about ten years: the deportation and murder of Hungarian Jews in Nazi death and labor camps; the Arrow Cross terrorist rule in Budapest; and finally the Stalinist terror in Hungary and East-Central Europe. Through the prism of survival, László Borhi explores the relationship between the individual and power, attempting to understand the mechanism of oppression and terror produced by arbitrary, unbridled power through the experience of normal people. Despite the obvious peculiarities of time and place, the Hungarian cases convey universal lessons about the Holocaust, Nazism, and Stalinism. In the author's conception, the National Socialist and Stalinist experiences are linked on several levels. Both regimes defended their visions of the future against social groups whom they saw as implacable enemies of those visions, and who therefore had to be destroyed for sake of social perfection. Furthermore, the social practices of National Socialism were passed on. And although Stalinism was imposed by a foreign power, some of the survival skills for coping with it were rehearsed under the previous hellish experience.

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9789633867167

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Reviews

"""This book is a splendid work of scholarship interspersed with moving reflections about the fates of certain individuals in Hungary during the years when the country was under the domination of first Nazi Germany and then Stalin's Soviet Union. Among the people we encounter are relatives of the author, L�szl� Borhi, an eminent historian of East-Central European history (especially the history of Hungary) in the 20th century. Building in part on his earlier books, Borhi has produced an excellent, sobering account of the grim choices facing individuals who had to live under tyrannical regimes. The book is not strictly a history of Nazism and Stalinism, but it reveals a great deal about the ways people lived and died under these two abominable systems."" --Mark Kramer ""This superbly researched book meticulously documents three distinct periods in Hungary and the larger region of Central Europe in times of great precarity. With access to extraordinarily important personal testimonies, Borhi wants the reader to understand the behavior of individuals under extreme circumstances. By doing this, he also raises the wider notion of dictatorship by consent. Survival under Dictatorships is an incredibly important addition to our understanding of this period."" --Robert C. Austin ""Many books have been trying to explain modern dictatorships by focusing on techniques of control, repression, collaboration or, on the contrary, on resistance against dictatorship. The new book by L�szl� Borhi uses a broader perspective: ordinary life of ordinary people during dictatorial regimes. The author explores his topic on the example of the rule of the Arrow Cross party (Hungarian version of the Nazism) at the end of the World War II and of the Hungarian Stalinist r�gime before 1956. In an appealing and convincing way, he combines a thorough knowledge of the wide spectrum of relevant sources with the memory of his own family. This impressive volume is much more than a contribution to the history of Hungary in the 1940s and 1950s; it is an indispensable contribution to understanding the undemocratic regimes of the 20th century and life in them in general."" --Oldřich Tůma ""An important contribution to revealing the subjective side of the terror continuously practiced first by an authoritarian state, and distinctively by domestic fascists, and subsequently by the communist state in Hungary."" --G�bor Gy�ni"

Author Information

László Borhi is the Peter A. Kadas Chair and associate professor in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at the IU Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

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