The Making of Dissidents: Hungary’s Democratic Opposition and Its Western Friends, 1973-1998

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.

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.