Béla Lipták's <em>A Testament of Revolution</em> peels away more than four
decades of intervening history to give readers a vivid firsthand look at
the brief, doomed struggle of Hungarian freedom fighters against Russian
oppressors.

Written in 1956 in an Austrian refugee camp, where the author had
fled to escape reprisals for his role in the short-lived rebellion,
Lipták's memoir compellingly sketches the conflict between university
students, factory workers, and Hungarian nationalists on one side and the
hated Hungarian secret police and Russian army troops on the other.

With an engineer's eye for detail, Lipták draws the reader
hour-by-hour into events, relating verbatim dialogue still fresh in his
mind. Strikes in nearby Poland sparked the formation of an independent
union of university students in Hungary that October. Matters escalated as
factory workers joined Hungarian students to express solidarity with
Poland.

What began as a bid for greater freedom of speech and more
participation in the national government quickly developed into
insurrection and armed repression. Hungarian civil authorities and Russian
troops moved together to suppress the students. Readers will bear witness
as armed, untrained citizens proclaim any student wearing a nationalist
tricolor armband a commander they will follow in rebellion-and they will
recoil in horror as many of these revolutionaries fall in undeclared street
battles.

In a memoir that is both history and a saga of his coming of age,
Lipták relates his transformation from carefree university student to
impromptu revolutionary leader. His story unfolds with unsparing honesty as
he makes the reader privy to his conflicts, faults, and failures of
judgment and courage, laying bare his struggles with the enemy and with
himself.

<em>Testament of Revolution</em> is the story of Every Man caught
up in events beyond his control, as waves of individual integrity and
patriotism founder on the rocky shoals of oppression and international
political exigencies.

Béla Lipták immigrated to the United States after the events detailed in
this book. He holds master's degrees from Stevens Institute of Technology
and the City College of New York. He now makes his home in Stamford,
Connecticut.

Texas A&M University Press