First Domino : International Decision Making During the Hungarian Crisis of 1956

Granville, Johanna C.; Garthoff, Raymond L. (FRW); Garthoff, Raymond L.

ISBN 10: 1585442984 / ISBN 13: 9781585442980

Published by Texas A&M University Press, 2003

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 1718625-n

Bibliographic Details

• Title: First Domino : International Decision Making During the Hungarian Crisis of 1956
• Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
• Publication Date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1585442984
• ISBN 13: 9781585442980
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

In the spring and summer of 1956 the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to reassert control of the country. This text is a full analysis, drawing on archival collections from the Eastern bloc countries to reinterpret decision making during this Cold War crisis. Johanna Granville selects four key patterns of misperception as laid out by political scientist Robert Jervis and shows how these patterns prevailed in the military crackdown and in other countries' reactions to it. Granville examines the statements and actions of Soviet Presidium members, the Hungarian leadership, US policy makers and Yugoslav and Polish leaders. She concludes that the United States bears some responsiblity for the events of 1956, as ill-advised US covert actions may have convinced Soviet leaders that America was attempting to weaken Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe. Granville's multi-archival research tends to confirm the post-revisionists' theory about the old war: it was everyone's fault and no one's fault. It resulted from the emerging bipolar structure of the international system, the power vacuum in Europe's centre, and spiralling misconceptions.

About the Author

JOHANNA GRANVILLE was recently the Panitza Visiting Professor of communist studies at the American University of Bulgaria and formerly a Campbell Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. A visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in 2000, she has also taught on Fulbright grants at the University of Debrecen in Hungary, and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, as well as at the U.S. Air War College, Harvard, Georgetown, Tufts, Carnegie Mellon, Clemson, and the University of Massachusetts at Boston. A recipient of Fulbright, IREX, Kennan Institute, and ACTR grants, she has spent many years conducting archival research in Russian and Ukrainian cities, Budapest, Warsaw, Bucharest, Vienna, and Berlin. She is the author of The First Domino: International Decision Making during the Hungarian Crisis of 1956 (Texas A & M University Press, 2004) and over forty refereed articles and working papers. She earned her MALD and Ph.D. in International Relations from Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and her BA in Russian Language and Literature from Amherst College. Her dissertation compared the Soviet military interventions in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan.