Provocation? The Outbreak of the Revolution of 1956
Provocation? The Outbreak of the Revolution of 1956

Summary/Abstract: My recently published book, The 1956 Revolution and Freedom Fight which reports on the 20,000 victims of the post-revolution reprisals, has received extensive and positive reviews in many forums of the press. In my book, I examine the events that took place on 23 October 1956 at the headquarters of Hungarian Radio and express my doubts about the prevailing historiography on this subject.1 I have continued my research, consulting mostly non-Hungarian source material, on the events of that day. As a result – having compared multiple credible sources – I believe it can be reliably concluded that the outbreak of the revolution was jointly provoked by Hungarian and Soviet authorities. Unfortunately, the story of 23 October remains to a large extent unrecorded – especially with regard to discovering interconnections among the disparate events. Moreover, in the prevailing literature, very little reference is made to foreign sources.

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