The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 is often seen as the early beginning of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. In historical analysis, the event is frequently romanticized, and the behavior of the Western foreign powers is sometimes criticized unreflectively. The criticism often targets the UN, which is accused of failing not only by the Hungarians. However, the actual possibilities of those being criticized remain unclear, and traditional politically motivated theses are not further questioned. Georg Kastner takes a different approach in "Hungary 1956 before the UN" compared to previous studies on the topic of Hungary 1956. The development and its background are reconstructed in the first part through an analysis of reports from the East German embassy in Budapest, the CIA, and the UN; it outlines who had what information and when. In the second part, the focus is on...