If there had been all-news television channels in 1956, viewers around the world would have been glued to their sets between October 23 and November 4. This book tells the story of the Hungarian Revolution in 120 original documents, ranging from the minutes of the first meeting of Khrushchev with Hungarian bosses after Stalin's death in 1953 to Yeltsin's declaration made in 1992. Other documents include letters from Yuri Andropov, Soviet Ambassador in Budapest during and after the revolt. The great majority of the material appears in English for the first time, and almost all come from archives that were inaccessible until the 1990s.

Csaba Békés is Founding Director of the Cold War History Research Center, Budapest, Hungary. He is Professor of History, Corvinus University of Budapest, Institute of International Studies. Malcolm Byrne is Director of Research at the National Security Archive where he coordinates a program involving Russian and East European scholars in documentary research, conference preparation and publications relating to the Cold War. János M. Rainer is Historian, Director of the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution (1999-2011), professor at Eszterházy Károly College, Eger. Árpád Göncz was a Hungarian writer, translator, and liberal politician, who served as President of Hungary from 1990 to 2000. Charles Gati is Senior Research Professor of European and Eurasian Studies at Johns Hopkins University. His previous positions have included teaching Central and Eastern European as well as Russian politics and foreign policy at Union College and Columbia University.