This book charts the history of the last fifty years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1867 to 1918. it reveals that the Habsburg Monarchy, though not in a healthy state before 1914, was not in fact doomed to collapse. The author examines foreign and domestic policies and reveals the weaknesses inherent in the Empire.He also shows how the Austro-Hungarian Empire attempted to satisfy the claims of eleven distinct national groups.

The Austro-Hungarian navy warrants recognition because it functioned far better than most organs of the multinational Habsburg state. Ultimately, in the pre-World War I age of navalism, the fleet provided a unique common cause for a wide variety of nationalities and political parties. Dramatic funding increases fueled the expansion of the fleet, and lucrative naval contracts, judiciously distributed, reinforced and further broadened the navy's base of support. Though often criticized by its German ally, the Austro-Hungarian navy succeeded in defending the Adriatic throughout World War I, in the process requiring the constant attention of a significant share of enemy sea power; as late as the spring of 1918, an American admiral characterized the Adriatic as "an Austrian lake." The navy collapsed only when Austria-Hungary as a whole disintegrated, in the last days of the war. This detailed study charts the uneven growth of the Austro-Hungarian navy from its high point following Archduke Ferdinand Max's administration and the War of 1866 to its ultimate dissolution after World War I. In following this development, Sondhaus not only relates the operational aspects of the Habsburg navy but also traces the growth of popular navalism in Austria-Hungary, the role of naval expansion in stimulating industrial development, and the peculiar difficulties of navy commanders in dealing with the Habsburg nationality problem and the cumbersome politics of Austro-Hungarian dualism. Drawing on a vast variety of archival sources and government documents and protocols, Sondhaus analyzes economic factors carefully and shows how these tended to complicate, perhaps even to override, political divisions. He ably demonstrates how such varied factors as the wavering policy of Italy, French naval theory, the need for consensus within the Dual Monarchy, and the general European escalation in naval armaments influenced the fortunes of the fleet.

In the last seventy years of its long and distinguished existence, the Habsburg monarchy was plagued by the forces of rising nationalism. Still, it preserved domestic peace and provided the conditions for social, economic, and cultural progress in a vast area inhabited by eleven major nationalities and almost as many confessional groups. This study investigates the social origin, education, training, code of honor, lifestyle, and political role of the Habsburg officers. Simultaneously conservative and liberal, the officer corps, originally composed mainly of noblemen, willingly coopted thousands of commoners--among them an extraordinary number of Jews. Even during World War I, the army and its officers endured, surviving the dissolution of the state in October 1918, if only by a few days. The end of the multinational Habsburg army also marked the end of confessional and ethnic tolerance in Central and East Central Europe.

Long wars foster democratic freedom in strong states

A Fascinating Analysis Based on Newly Declassified Documents from the Former USSR and Communist Bloc On October 23-24 and November 3-4, 1956, the Soviet Union invaded Hungary to reassert strict communist rule. The First Domino: International Decision Making during the Hungarian Crisis of 1956 is the first analytical monograph in English drawing on new archival collections from East bloc countries to reinterpret decision making during this Cold War crisis. Johanna Granville selects four key patterns of misperception as laid out by Columbia University political scientist Robert Jervis and shows how these patterns prevailed in the military crackdown and in other countries' reactions to it. Granville perceptively examines the statements and actions of Soviet Presidium members, the Hungarian leadership, U.S. policy makers, and even Yugoslav and Polish leaders. According to Granville, Soviet first secretary Nikita Khrushchev zigzagged ineptly between policy options with apparently little or no analysis of costs and risks, permitting Moscow's Eastern European satellites at times to subtly manipulate the Kremlin's decision making. Granville's discussions of Polish policy, Yugoslav actions, and the arduous process of normalization after the uprising show that the Soviets were preoccupied with stemming what many of them construed as a Western-encouraged attempt to undermine Eastern Europe's communist regimes. Granville concludes that the United States bears some responsibility for the events of 1956, as ill-advised U.S. covert actions may have convinced the Soviet leaders that the United States was attempting to weaken Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe, although the Eisenhower administration actually intended only to sow confusion and dissatisfaction. This masterful study leads to the conclusion that the Hungarian Crisis in 1956 was most likely sustained by self-perpetuating misperceptions and suspicions among key countries. In short, Granville's multi-archival research tends to confirm the post-revisionists' theory about the cold 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 center, and spiraling misconceptions.

In Hungary, as in all of "new Europe," liberalization is troubled. Using Hungary as an in-depth case study, Korkut demonstrates that, in squandering popular goodwill, credibility, and favorable circumstances after 1989, liberal politicians have found themselves vulnerable to conservative populist politics and the global economic crisis.

Explores the history, daily life, politics, and culture of Hungary, as well as the many challenges facing the country since the decline of communism.