Eric Hobsbawm writes:
Roger Gough's important biography of Kádár shows considerable understanding of a difficult, and in the end haunted, historical figure who was, not uncharacteristically, an admirer of The Good Soldier Svejk. How could Kádár, head of the most tolerant and least tyrannical regime in Eastern Europe from the 1960s to the 1980s, be the man who, before falling victim to the Stalinist terror himself, brutally interrogated Rajk, or the man who in 1958 insisted on the execution of Nagy when it was no longer required or even expected by the USSR? But, as Gough's biography makes clear, he was.
LRB 16 November 2006

Tauris | hardback |ISBN: 9781845110581