Terse, staccato, like a dispatch from the front, B la Lipt k's A Testament of Revolution peels away more than four decades of intervening history to give readers a vivid, firsthand look at the brief, doomed struggle of Hungarian freedom fighters against Russian oppressors. Written in 1956 in an Austrian refugee camp, where the author had fled to escape reprisals for his role in the short-lived rebellion, Lipt k's memoir compellingly sketches the conflict between university students, factory workers, and Hungarian nationalists on one side and the hated Hungarian secret police and Russian army troops on the other. With an engineer's eye for detail, Lipt k draws the reader hour-by-hour into events, relating verbatim dialogue still fresh in his mind. Strikes in nearby Poland sparked the formation of an independent union of university students in Hungary that October. Matters escalated as factory workers joined Hungarian students to express solidarity with Poland. What began as a bid for gr