The Long Road to Revolution: The Hungarian Gulag, 1945-1956

The Long Road to Revolution: The Hungarian Gulag, 1945-1956

István Fehérváry
Role: Author
Written by the celebrated founder of the Student Activities Center at St. John’s College.

In 1948 Fehérváry was recruited into the Hungarian resistance movement. A year later, he was arrested sentenced to 20 years of hard labor by a Soviet court. The sentence was suspended, and he was turned over to a Hungarian court, where he was sentenced to 15 years of forced labor. This memoir publicizes the forgotten atrocities of the Stalinist regime and also documents the mock trials and executions of political prisoners during the 1948-1956 period. Fehérváry’s book tells such a “poignant, personal and moving story about his imprisonment, his fellow inmates and the Resistance.” His books became known via samizdat (written by hand and circulated clandestinely) in Hungary in the 1980s.