Soviet Occupation of Romania, Hungary, and Austria 1944-1949

Soviet Occupation of Romania, Hungary, and Austria 1944/45–1948/49, Csaba Békés, László Borhi, Peter Ruggenthaler, Ottmar Trasca (Eds.) Central European University Press, Budapest – New York, 2015

This recently published book compares the various aspects – political, military, economic – of Soviet occupation in three key countries of the region: Austria, Hungary and Romania. Using documents found in Austrian, Hungarian, Romanian and Russian archives the authors argue that the nature of Soviet foreign policy has been largely misunderstood. Existing literature has mostly focused on Soviet foreign policy from a political perspective; when and why Stalin made the decision to introduce Bolshevik political systems in the Soviet sphere of influence. This book will show that the Soviet conquest of East-Central Europe had an imperial dimension as well and allowed the Soviet Union to use the territory it occupied as military and economic space. The final dimension of the book details the tragically human experiences of Soviet occupation: atrocities, rape, plundering and deportations.

By bringing key documents together in one single volume, this book offers penetrating new insights into Soviet policies in Romania, Hungary and Austria that also contributed to the origins of the Cold War.

The book will be presented by Krisztina KÓS, Director of CEU Press and three of the editors: Csaba BÉKÉS, László BORHI and Peter RUGGENTHALER.

Krisztina KÓS joined Central European University Press in 2002 after having graduated from ELTE University, Budapest. A literary scholar by training, she was editor at the Press for nine years and became the director in 2011. She is also a freelance editor and translator. 

Csaba BÉKÉS, Ph.D., Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, is founding director of the Cold War History Research Center (www.coldwar.hu) and Research Chair at the Institute of Political Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, both in Budapest. He is also Professor of History at Corvinus University of Budapest and a recurring visiting professor at Columbia University. He is a former research fellow of the Cold War International History Project at the Wilson Center and the Project on the Cold War as Global Conflict at New York University. His main field of research is Cold War history, the history of East–West relations, Hungarian foreign policy after World War II, the history of the Soviet Bloc and the role of the East Central European states in the Cold War. He is the author or editor of 20 books, he is also a contributor of the three volume The Cambridge History of the Cold War (2010). He is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Cold War Studies and Cold War History. His book: Hungary, the Soviet Bloc and World Politics, 1944–1991 is forthcoming.

László BORHI, Ph.D., Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, is the author of several books including Hungary in the Cold War – Between the Soviet Union and the United States, 1945–1956. His book, Dealing with Dictators – The United States, Hungary and East Central Europe, 1942–1990 is forthcoming. Currently he is working on a book on the history of tyrannical rule in East Central Europe. He is the recipient of the Ránki György Prize of the Hungarian Historical Association in 1995, The Bezerédj Prize of the Hungarian Ministry of Culture and the Gold Cross of Merit of the Hungarian Republic, both in 2006. He is a former research fellow of the Cold War International History Project at the Wilson Center and the Norwegian Nobel Institute.Currently László Borhi is Peter A. Kadas Chair Associate Professor at the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University and Scientific Counsellor of the Institute of History of the Center for Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. 

Peter RUGGENTHALER, Ph.D. studied history and Slavic studies. Since 1998 he has been a researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on War Consequences, Graz, Austria. He is a member of the Russian–Austrian Historians Commission (since 2008).
Research interests: Soviet foreign policy in the Cold War, neutrality in the Cold War. Author or editor of more than 20 books and 90 articles. His publications include The Concept of Neutrality in Stalin´s Foreign Policy, 1945–53. Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series (2015),  Der Kreml und die deutsche Wiedervereinigung 1990, Metropol Verlag 2014;  Der Kreml und die Wende 1989, Studienverlag (2014); The Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series (Co-editor, 2010), Prager Frühling. Das internationale Krisenjahr 1968, Böhlau (2008), Das Stalins großer Bluff. Die Geschichte der Stalin-Note in Dokumenten der sowjetischen Führung, Oldenbourg (2007), Zwangsarbeit in der Land- und Forstwirtschaft auf dem Gebiet der Republik Österreich 1939–1945, Oldenbourg (2004).

A small reception provided by CEU Press will follow the presentation.