Endre Szécsényi A.W. Mellon Fellow The Hungarian Revolution in the “Reflections” by Hannah Arendt For the Seminar “Europe or the Globe? Eastern European Trajectories in Times of Integration and Globalization” IWM, Wednesday, 30 March, 2005, at 2:30 pm In my talk I would like to show some aspects of Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Let me begin with some philology. The most extended, 40-page-long text containing Arendt’s insights into this topic can be found in the second and enlarged edition of her famous book, The Origins of Totalitarianism. This second edition was released seven years after the first one, that is, in 1958. Quite interestingly, however, later editions of this book do not contain chapter 14, the one entitled “Epilogue: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution.” And this second edition is a rare bird. Fortunately, a slightly different version of this “Epilogue” was published a little bit earlier as a separate essay in The Journal of Politics with the title “Totalitarian Imperialism: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution” in February 1958 (Arendt 1958a), about which Karl Jaspers, Arendt’s former professor and her life-long friend, wrote the following lines in a letter to Arendt: “What you said about the ‘events’ in Hungary and how you said it was excellent. It was particularly meaningful to me because I had just written a foreword a few weeks ago for the German edition of Lasky’s document collection [on the Hungarian Revolution]. I like what you said about it better than what I wrote. But our basic views are similar [November 23, 1957].” (Kohler-Saner 1992: 333) And The Journal of Politics is easily accessible on the internet. Of course, I read this text earlier, because the Hungarian translation of the Totalitarianism book evidently contains chapter 14. In 1963 Arendt published her On Revolution, but though she mentions the Hungarian Revolution here and there in this newer book, without longer analysis. At the same time, it seems obvious to put the earlier essay in the context of her 1963 conception of revolution, in order to understand the Hungarian Revolution’s significance for her. Certainly, her concept of revolution – as we shall see – is inseparable