The The Making of Dissidents: Hungary’s Democratic Opposition and Its Western Friends, 1973-1998(Russian and East European Studies)

Before Hungary’s transition from communism to democracy, local dissidents and like-minded intellectuals, activists, and academics from the West influenced each other and inspired the fight for human rights and civil liberties in Eastern Europe. Hungarian dissidents provided Westerners with a new purpose and legitimized their public interventions in a bipolar world order. The Making of Dissidents demonstrates how Hungary’s Western friends shaped public perceptions and institutionalized their advocacy long before the peaceful revolutions of 1989. But liberalism failed to take root in Hungary, and Victoria Harms explores how many former dissidents retreated and Westerners shifted their attention elsewhere during the 1990s, paving the way for nationalism and democratic backsliding.

About the Author :
Victoria Harms is a senior lecturer in the Department of History at Johns Hopkins University. Trained in cultural and intellectual history, her research and teaching focuses on post-1945 European history and the Cold War, including sports history and US–European relations.

Review :
In her important book, Victoria Harms gives us the most detailed history yet of the dissident movement in Central Europe from the 1960s through the 1990s. Harms draws on a tremendous number of sources, including oral histories, archival material, newspapers, journals, samizdat, tamizdat, and other essential primary source materials spanning seven different countries. Revelatory . . . The Making of Dissidents is not only a major contribution to the transnational history of East Central European dissent, but also to the study of Cold War liberalism on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Victoria Harms deftly combines a history of ideas with insights into their contexts to show not only how dissident ideas emerged in the East but also how they were received, amplified, and appropriated in the West. Her book provides an unprecedented, in-depth analysis of a crucial East-West network during the late Cold War, the mutual influences between them, and their legacies. The Making of Dissidents is a grandiose account of how an unexpected alliance of Eastern and Western nonconformists emerged by the 1980s. The book also demonstrates how critical thought in North America and Eastern Europe was shaped by the dissidents of Eastern Europe, which is an unusual look into the topic. The Making of Dissidents is not only an impeccable scholarly monograph but also a repository of rare and fascinating primary sources that will be widely read, cited, and consulted for many years to come. The Making of Dissidents is a story of friendship across borders. Harms gives a riveting account of intellectual milieus in Hungary, Germany, the United States, France, Austria, Poland, and Yugoslavia. It is not only transnational history at its best but also an inspiring blueprint for moral engagement.