Although the 1956 Hungarian uprising failed to liberate the country 
from Soviet domination, it became a symbol of freedom for people 
throughout Eastern Europe and beyond. Labeling the events a 
counter-revolution, communist authorities exacted revenge in two 
years of terror and intimidation. Then, for the next thirty years, they
pursued a policy of forced forgetting, attempting to obliterate public 
memory of the events. As communism unraveled in the late 1980s, 
the 1956 revolution was resurrected as inspiration for a new political 
order.

    In Imagining Postcommunism, Beverly James demonstrates how 
1956 became a foundational myth according to which the bloody 
events of that fall led to the ceremonial reburial of the martyred prime 
minister Imre Nagy in 1989, free elections in 1990, and the withdrawal 
of the last Soviet soldiers on June 19, 1991. She shows how museums, 
monuments, and holiday rituals have aided the construction of a new 
Hungary through the reclamation and expression of competing 
memories of the critical events of 1956.

    James invites readers to consider the marked difference between 
the communist regime's master narrative of 1956, with its smug, false 
unity, and the multiple, polemical stories woven by competing political
forces in postcommunist Hungary.

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BEVERLY A. JAMES, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa,
is a professor of communication at the University of New Hampshire. 
She has studied and taught in Hungary.


Eugenia and Hugh M. Stewart '26 Series on Eastern Europe