Charles Gati was known as a tough but skilled political science professor for 31 years at Union College. Gati’s new book, about the 1956 Hungarian Revolt, is now in its second printing.
About 300 people lined up outside a bookstore in Budapest late one afternoon last September. They were waiting see Charles Gati, a political science professor who taught at Union College from 1963 to 1994, and author of Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest, and the 1956 Hungarian Revolt. The nonfiction book, published in English, Hungarian, Slovak, Polish and Russian, deals with a short-lived revolt against Soviet dictatorship in Hungary. It was issued in September in the United States by the Stanford University Press. The book has enjoyed what Gati called unexpected success in Eastern Europe and the United States and was reviewed by nearly 100 publications around the world, including favorable reviews in The New York Times Book Review in October and Foreign Affairs magazine.
“One book store wanted me to sign books and it was a rather large bookstore in Budapest. I got there at quarter of five and there were 300 people waiting to get my book inscribed. We left at about 9 o’clock. I spoke to everyone,” Gati said during a recent phone interview from his home in Washington, D.C.
Gati said readers in Hungary liked the book because it avoided “grand illusions” and “false claims” about the revolt. On Oct. 23, 1956 a group of young Hungarians ignited an uprising aimed at toppling the Soviet communist system. In the book, Gati paints the revolutionaries as brave but somewhat unrealistic in their expectations and the United States as hypocritical, offering hope but no help.
The revolt was quelled by the Soviets after troops moved in and arrested thousands and executed hundreds of others. Gati’s book is based on declassified documents from Hungarian, Russian, and American archives, including the CIA’s operative files declassified at Gati’s request under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
The book also draws on transcripts from Radio Free Europe broadcasts as well as Gati’s experiences as a 22-year-old reporter for a prominent Budapest weekly newspaper. The book offers insights into efforts to democratize foreign nations, according to the publisher. Gati fled Hungary in 1956 and went on to earn a doctoral degree from Indiana University and start his teaching career at Union College in 1963. After leaving the College in 1994, Gati first worked as a senior advisor on European affairs at the U.S. State Department. Currently, he teaches at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
At a book party staged in October in New York City, Gati was greeted by former students William Munno ’70 and Abbott L. Stillman ’69. Stillman counts Gati as one of the top influences in his life and was eager to read Failed Illusions.
“I read it within a week. It’s wonderful. I knew of his efforts against that government in Hungary. But it was an area that he didn’t seem to welcome questions about,” Stillman said of his time with Gati at Union in the mid 1960s.
Stillman was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and was an Eliphalet Nott Scholar as an undergraduate at Union College. He went on to be an American Civil Liberties Union Fellow at Columbia Law School and a Mellon Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a master’s degree in city planning.
“I’ll tell you point blank, I was an indifferent student in high school and a lazy bum when I showed up at Union,” Stillman said. “I did pretty well and I think Charles had a lot to do with that.”
Gati returned Stillman’s first freshman-year essay with a note that said, “Come see me.” That exchange was continued six more times until Gati awarded Stillman an ‘A’ and a note saying he expected such top-notch work on future essays.
Stillman is now the managing partner of the The Stillman Group, a real estate and venture capital firm that has developed such projects as Three Lincoln Center in New York City. With Stillman’s help, the College awards the Stillman Prize for Excellence in Teaching each year. The prize was created by David I. Stillman ’72, Abbott Stillman ’69 and Alan Stillman in honor of Abraham Stillman, father and grandfather, and is awarded annually to a faculty member to encourage outstanding teaching.
Leaving home
In 1956 former Union professor Charles Gati was forced to leave his home in Hungary after Soviet troops crushed a revolt. In his new book, Gati recalls the day he left. Below is an excerpt.
Two weeks after Moscow crushed the revolution, I left Hungary, going first to Austria and then in a few weeks to the United States. I became one of some 182,000 refugees from Soviet-dominated Hungary. My parents, though I was their only child, did not discourage me from leaving. They stayed up all night before I left, watching me as I wrote a few notes of farewell to relatives and friends and put a few belongings together for my escape from uncertainty to uncertainty.
Emerging from the kitchen, my mother came around to stuff her freshly baked sweets—the best in the world—into my small backpack. “Look up Uncle Sanyi in New York,” she said. At dawn, when it was time to say goodbye, my father tried to hold back his tears but he could not. “Write often,” he said, his voice quavering with emotion. We embraced. We kissed. As I left, they stood on the small balcony of our Barcsay Street apartment and waved. I walked backwards as long as I could see them, hoping they could also see me for another few seconds. (As I recall this scene some fifty years later, holding back my tears as my father once tried to do, I still see them waving on the balcony, and I always will.)
Before union, a helping hand
As the Hungarian Revolt was being brutally crushed by Soviet tanks in 1956, large numbers of Hungarian refugees were making their way to various countries of the West, many of them to the United States. Among them were sizable numbers of university students equipped with a strong desire to continue their studies, but almost totally lacking in the resources necessary to accomplish this aim.
At Indiana University in Bloomington, a young law student and teaching fellow named Joe Board was among the number that responded to their plight. Filled with admiration for a people who had dared to assert their aspirations for freedom against imposed tyranny, Board developed a plan to provide room, board and tuition scholarships for some 20 Hungarian students. Essentially this involved free tuition fees provided by the Indiana University, as well as room, board and spending money provided by a group of fraternities and sororities.
The plan came into operation within a few short weeks. Board took it first to University President Herman B. Wells, and to Joe Franklin, the treasurer. Their immediate and enthusiastic response was quickly complemented by the support of 11 sororities and 11 fraternities. By the time that the next semester opened, there were 22 Hungarian students enrolled in the program.
When asked why he had been moved to provide a helping hand, Board replied, “Why not?” What he did not know at the time was that one of these students, Charles Gati, was to become a highly valued friend and colleague ten years later at Union College; and that Charles would go on to become one of the pre-eminent American scholars in the field of foreign affairs, still active and producing works of insight and scholarship like this widely acclaimed study of the events that brought him to the United States in the first place.