"The Hungarian Revolution in the 'Reflections' by Hannah Arendt", in IWM on 30 March 2005

Endre Szécsényi A.W. Mellon Fellow The Hungarian Revolution in the “Reflections” by Hannah Arendt For the Seminar “Europe or the Globe? Eastern European Trajectories in Times of Integration and Globalization” IWM, Wednesday, 30 March, 2005, at 2:30 pm In my talk I would like to show some aspects of Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Let me begin with some philology. The most extended, 40-page-long text containing Arendt’s insights into this topic can be found in the second and enlarged edition of her famous book, The Origins of Totalitarianism. This second edition was released seven years after the first one, that is, in 1958. Quite interestingly, however, later editions of this book do not contain chapter 14, the one entitled “Epilogue: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution.” And this second edition is a rare bird. Fortunately, a slightly different version of this “Epilogue” was published a little bit earlier as a separate essay in The Journal of Politics with the title “Totalitarian Imperialism: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution” in February 1958 (Arendt 1958a), about which Karl Jaspers, Arendt’s former professor and her life-long friend, wrote the following lines in a letter to Arendt: “What you said about the ‘events’ in Hungary and how you said it was excellent. It was particularly meaningful to me because I had just written a foreword a few weeks ago for the German edition of Lasky’s document collection [on the Hungarian Revolution]. I like what you said about it better than what I wrote. But our basic views are similar [November 23, 1957].” (Kohler-Saner 1992: 333) And The Journal of Politics is easily accessible on the internet. Of course, I read this text earlier, because the Hungarian translation of the Totalitarianism book evidently contains chapter 14. In 1963 Arendt published her On Revolution, but though she mentions the Hungarian Revolution here and there in this newer book, without longer analysis. At the same time, it seems obvious to put the earlier essay in the context of her 1963 conception of revolution, in order to understand the Hungarian Revolution’s significance for her. Certainly, her concept of revolution – as we shall see – is inseparable from her other political notions, like the political as such, freedom, authority, council- system, power, or violence. In the first passages of her essay, Arendt states that this twelve-day-long revolution was an event of historical significance, regardless of its failure; and that “its greatness is secure in the tragedy it enacted.” (Arendt 1958a: 5) She surely thinks of the numerous victims of street fights, but we can add to them the victims of the brutal political retaliation administered by the new communist leadership headed by János Kádár. According to her memory, the last political action of the revolution was “the silent procession of black-clad women in the streets of Russian-occupied Budapest, mourning their dead in public”. (Ibid.) This demonstration of December 4 was also violently broken up by the forces of the State Security Authority and the Soviet army. (This is the last entry of the Brief historical survey.) Arendt moves on to observing that the main characteristic of this revolution was its unpredictability. No one thought of or believed in an event of this kind, it was absolutely sudden and unprecedented in consideration of the well-known procedures or automatisms of the totalitarian system. It was an interruption in the series of customary and automatic occurrences to which everybody had got accustomed inside and outside of the regime. And Arendt would surely agree with Ágnes Heller and Ferenc Fehér on that “The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 eliminated for ever th[e] idea of the indestructibility of the Soviet regimes from within. This was the first consequence of the Hungarian revolution which can truly and without exaggeration be called world historical.” (Heller-Fehér 1990: 37) Moreover, Arendt says that perhaps the Hungarian Revolution was the first historical example of Rosa Luxenburg’s conception of “’spontaneous revolution’ – this sudden uprising of an oppressed people for the sake of freedom and hardly anything else, without the demoralizing chaos of military defeat preceding it, without coup d’état techniques, without a closely knit apparatus of organizers and conspirators, without the undermining propaganda of a revolutionary party.” (Arendt 1958a: 8) The unorganized nature of the events, that is, their spontaneity is one of her central political notions closely connected to those of political action, freedom, and revolution in general. And this spontaneity was one of her first impressions on the Hungarian Revolution. Arendt wrote 2 to Jaspers in a letter of December 26, 1956: “In any case, Hungary is the best thing that has happened for a long time. It seems to me it still isn’t over, and regardless of how it ends, it is a clear victory for freedom. And once again, as in all the spontaneous revolutions of the last hundred years, [there is] the spontaneous appearance of a new governmental form in nuce, the council system, which the Russians have so violated that hardly anyone can tell anymore what it really is.” (Kohler-Saner 1992: 306) We shall keep in mind that ‘soviet’ means council, but the governmental machinery of the Soviet Union and the satellite states was only a caricature of the network of spontaneous revolutionary councils. So, spontaneity, political freedom, and council-system seem to be the seminal topics the Hungarian Revolution brought up in Arendt’s mind. In her On Revolution, Arendt makes a distinction between two types of revolution. These can be exemplified by the most vehement 18th-century revolutionary events, that is, the French and the American Revolution. She conspicuously prefers the latter to the former. Certainly, there were rebellions, armed uprisings, coups d’état earlier in the history of mankind, but these were not revolutions. (cf. Arendt 1974: 205)1 For Arendt, the significance of revolutions consists in the fact that these strictly modern historical events had the opportunity to regain the true meaning of the political. The true meaning of “the political” can be grasped in the political experience of the ancient Greek polis and of the early phases of the ancient Roman Republic. Due to many historical factors, amongst which the emergence of Christianity was crucial, this original meaning of the political sank into oblivion. But what was this meaning? Albrecht Wellmer gives us a good and brief description employing many of Arendt’s characteristic political terms: “For Arendt, ‘politics’ is the joint action of free and equal citizens, acting together in a space of public appearances and public liberty. Only in such a space does the persuasive power contained in the speech and judgment of citizens trump the ‘scientific certainty’ (and technical competence) of experts; only in such a space does the specifically human capacity to act, to begin something new, achieve its fullest reality; 1 “There are, it is true, a whole series of phenomena of which one can say at once that in the light of our experience (which after all is not very old, but dates only form the French and American Revolutions; before that there were rebellions and coups d’état but no revolutions) they belong to the prerequisites of revolution – such as the threatened breakdown of the machinery of government, its being undermined, the loss of confidence in the government on the part of the people, the failure of public services, and various others.” (Arendt 1972: 205) 3 only in such a space does the basic fact of human plurality, which is constitutive of human life itself, become fully manifest and a force for the creation (and preservation) of a common world. Finally, only in such a space can political power be generated, since this arises from the ‘worldly in-between space’ that initiatory action opens up between political actors.” (Villa 2000: 226) So, in opposition to modern, instrumental politics, professional party politics, or the policies of the experts, Arendt insists on the basically republican essence of the political. She considers modern revolutions as new chances to re-establish the organizations, principles, and attitudes necessary to her republicanism. To be sure, it is a special kind of republicanism, but it is not merely a nostalgia. So she would disagree with Norberto Bobbio who says “that the republic of republicans […] is a form of ideal state, a ‘moral paragon’, […] It is an ideal state that exists nowhere, or exists only in the writings of [classical] authors […], who are so heterogeneous that it is difficult to find their common denominator. […] They were discussing the state as it should be and not as it is. These were either dreams of an ideal future or nostalgias for an ideal past.” (Bobbio-Viroli 2003: 11) Arendt, on the contrary, does think that her republicanism can be a feasible and operational political enterprise, and that some promising initiatives of this republic have appeared in the modern revolutions. And it is also telling, I think, that John Pocock who wrote an influential monograph on the Atlantic Republican Tradition claims that his book “has told part of the story of the revival in the early modern West of the ancient idea of homo politicus (the zoon politikon of Aristotle), who affirms his being and his virtue by the medium of political action, whose closest kinsman is homo rhetor and whose antithesis is the homo credens of Christian faith.” And this description of his own enterprise admittedly uses “the language of Hannah Arendt.” (Pocock 1975: 550) In her most ‘Heideggerian’ work, to which Pocock referred, that is, in The Human Condition (in German: Vita activa oder vom tätigen Leben) published also in 1958, we can find a sharp opposition between the political and the social. Though this distinction is quite controversial (cf. e.g. Canovan 1992: 116-122), yet it is important for us now. For Arendt, there is a break in the tradition of the political which can be exemplified by the early translation of Aristotle’s definition of man as zoon politikon, political animal. When Seneca translated it as animal socialis, the notion of the genuinely political, polis- 4 building man, who can act and speak freely only in the public sphere, was transformed into that of the genuinely social man whose alliance was modeled by the family or the household, that is, by the private sphere. Therefore the original Greek meaning of the word “political” was lost. (cf. Arendt 1958b: 23ff) This can remind us of Heidegger’s favorite criticism of the translation of the Greek physis into the Latin natura. “According to Greek thought, the human capacity for political organization is not only different from but stands in direct opposition to that natural association whose center is the home (oikia) and the family.” The man in the polis belonged to “two orders of existence”: private and communal (or public). And only the latter could be the appropriate sphere of higher and real humanity, that is, the sphere of freedom. The emergence of society, however, “from the shadowy interior of the household into the light of the public sphere” is a modern phenomenon. (Arendt 1958b: 24, 38) Shortly, and very roughly speaking, according to Arendt, “the social” – which has at least three different meanings in her writings (cf. Benhabib 1996: 23)2 – is a strange mixture of the private and the public, and its emergence led to capitalist commodity exchange economy, and, eventually, to instrumental politics which is characterized by professional parties, social welfare as the major political goal, and violence as “legitimate” political means. While in the ancient world, the government maintained the public sphere, in the modern “social” world, it primarily safeguards the interests of private owners. Thus, in the modern “social political”, liberty and property coincide. (cf. Arendt 1958b: 68ff) And now back to our typology. In the case of the much more famous and influential French Revolution, the first phase, the liberation from the oppression of the ancient régime was successful; but the second phase, the establishment of freedom, that is, the creating political institutions which could continuously guarantee the public space in which freedom can occur, was a failure. The French revolutionists were obliged to strive for solving the ardent social questions brought up by the poverty of people. The issue of poverty, however, cannot be solved by political means, therefore it was necessary to use violence and terror to manage these problems, and, at the same time, it caused the 2 “There are free dominant meanings of the term social in Arendt’s work. At one level, the social refers to the growth of a capitalist commodity exchange economy. At the second level, it refers to aspects of mass society. In the third and least investigated sense, the social refers to sociability, to the quality of life in civil society and civic associations.” (Benhabib 1996: 23) 5 failure of the revolution. While the Founding Fathers of the less influential American Revolution had “the urgent desire to assure stability to their new creation and to stabilize every factor of political life into a ‘lasting institution’.” (Arendt 1982: 232) This is the Ciceronian republican spirit which requires a well-constituted political body to be eternal. The Founding Fathers succeeded in establishing “a completely new body politic without violence and with the help of a constitution.” For Arendt, this was the only successful attempt to repair the Roman foundations of the political realm, that is, to restore the dignity and greatness of the political in our culture. (cf. Arendt 1993: 140) The intellectual structure that Arendt employs here in describing revolution is quite similar to the one she uses in characterizing political freedom. In her excellent study “What Is Freedom?,” she writes that “The raison de être of politics is freedom, and its field of experience is action” The liberation from the needs of life was always a necessary but not sufficient condition of (political) freedom. Because “in addition to mere liberation” from the necessities, the genuine freedom needed “the company of other men who were in the same state, and it needed public space to meet them – a politically organized world, in other words, into which each of the free men could insert himself by word and deed.” (Arendt 1993: 146, 148) But this ideal of establishing and maintaining space for freedom was not completely realized even in the American Revolution. The spirit of republicanism was somehow lost. Arendt refers to Thomas Jefferson’s proposals who tried to preserve the revolutionary spirit, the spirit of the active participation of citizens in public affairs. Jefferson, for example, recommended “the subdivision of the counties into wards” (Arendt 1982: 257), because the latter could have operated as small republics within which political action, public liberty can be a tangible reality. The citizens of such an “elementary republic” would be “voluntary members” who “care for more than their private happiness and are concerned about the state of the world.” The political élite would consist of self-chosen citizens, and the rest of the people would be excluded from the political. “The exclusion […] would not depend upon an outside body; if those who belong are self-chosen, those who do not belong are self-excluded.” And she ironically remarks that this self-exclusion is the most important form of the modern negative liberties, that is, the freedom from politics which was unknown in the ancient world. (Arendt 1982: 284) 6  In her Totalitarianism book she writes: “Freedom as an inner capacity of man is identical with the capacity to begin, just as freedom as a political reality is identical with a space of movement between men. […] As terror is needed lest with the birth of each new human being a new beginning arise and raise its voice in the world, so the self- coercive force of logicality is mobilized lest anybody ever start thinking – which as the freest and purest of all human activities is the very opposite of the compulsory process of deduction,” that is, of the always self-coercive logic which is the characteristic feature of the minds of totalitarian ideologists and politicians. (Arendt 1975: 473) Thinking as the freest human activity leads us back to Arendt’s essay on the Hungarian Revolution. After drafting and briefly analyzing the political changes within the Soviet bloc in the early 1950s, she points out that “The Hungarian people, young and old, knew that they were ‘living amdist lies’ and asked, unanimously and in all manifestos […] for freedom of thought.” (Arendt 1958a: 26) After the invasion of the Soviet army, the bloody oppression “was directed against the Revolutionary Councils,” and right then “freedom of thought was adamantly and without the slightest concession stamped out.” (Arendt 1958a: 33) So Arendt considers the freedom of thought as a crucial and highly acitve factor in breaking of the revolution. According to her, the unintentional consequences of Khruchev’s “secret speech” in the Twenties Congress of the Soviet Communist Party meant “open words” for the peoples of the Soviet bloc. And “mere words” succeeded in “breaking the deadly spell of impotent apathy which totalitarian terror and ideology cast over the minds of men.” (Arendt 1958a: 22-23) Actually this can be regarded as the positive counterpart of the psychological phenomenon Arendt described in the case of Adolf Eichmann. He, as an ordinary “product” of a totalitarian system, was characterized by “thoughtlessness” and “lack of imagination.” (cf. Arendt 1994: 62, 287-288) This emphasis on the thinking and the mentality of people charactarizes her whole treatment of the events. Neither the deeds of politicians, nor the conspiracy and fights within the communist party mattered. The words did – which were capable to launch thinking, and to enliven “the yearning for freedom and truth” in people. This was the point, for her, everything else was merely historical contingence of secondary importance. Therefore she writes that “Once such an event as the spontaneous uprising in Hungary has happened, every policy, theory and forecast of future potentialities needs re- 7 examination.” (Arendt 1958a: 8) Though she adds to this that after Stalin’s death, “The cry for freedom was born in the atmosphere of […] inner-party discussions, but only in the recently occupied territories” (Arendt 1958a: 24), that is, mostly in Poland and Hungary, and not in Russia. Though “the uprising was clearly started by communists,” they “did not retain the initiative.” (Arendt 1958a: 27) Arendt briefly narrates the story of the beginning of the revolution: “An unarmed and essentially harmless student demonstration grew from a few thousand suddenly and spontaneously into a huge crowd… […] What had started as a student demonstration had become an armed uprising in less than twenty hours. From this moment onward, no programs, points or manifestos played a role; what carried the revolution was the sheer momentum of acting-together of the whole people whose demands [i.e. the independence and the free elections] were so obvious that they hardly needed elaborate formulation… […] The question was no longer how much freedom to permit to action, speech and thought, but how to institutionalize a freedom which was already an accomplished fact.” (Arendt 1958a: 26) There are familiar elements for us in this narrative: the spontaneity of the people both in the beginning and in the advance, the political freedom as acting- together for clear and common political goals, finally, after the first stage of liberation, which took only a day, the second stage occurred immediately: the institutionalization of freedom for the stability of political sphere. “There was no civil war” she adds, neither ideological debates, nor fanaticism, everybody joined the revolution including the troops of regular army, “intellectuals and workers, communists and non-communists, found themselves together in the streets fighting for freedom.” (Arendt 1958a: 27) Moreover, she speaks even about an “atmosphere of fraternity” which is a little bit piquant if we think of her concept of “political friendship” that she formulates later in sharp opposition to sentimental brotherhood or fraternité. (cf. Arendt 1970) The image she paints here is a little bit idealized; there were, for example, certain units of regular army that kept fighting against the revolutionaries, and many people remained passive both in the capital and, especially, in the country, etc. Yet, I think, Arendt grasps the enthusiasm and extraordinary atmosphere of these days quite well. Besides the unpredictable and exceptional events, the emerging councils stand in the focus of her interest. 8  In her On Revolution, Arendt refers to 1956: “The councils, as distinguished from the parties, have always emerged during the revolution itself, they sprang from the people as spontaneous organs of action and of order. The last point is worth emphasizing; nothing indeed contradicts more sharply the old adage of the anarchistic and lawless ‘natural’ inclinations of a people left without the constraint of its government than the emergence of the councils that, whatever they appeared, and most pronouncedly during the Hungarian Revolution, were concerned with the reorganization of the political and economic life of the country and the establishment of a new order.” (Arendt 1982: 275) And indeed, the role of the councils gives the central topic in her reflections on the Hungarian events in her essay. Despite poverty and very low living standard, there “was no looting, no trespassing of property,” in short, there was no chaos right after the breaking of the revolution, as Arendt notices. “Instead of the mob rule which might have been expected, there appeared immediately, almost simultaneously with the uprising itself, the Revolutionary and Workers’ Councils, that is, the same organization which for more than a hundred years now has emerged whenever the people have been permitted for a few days, or a few weeks or months, to follow their own political devices without a government (or a party program) imposed from above.” (Arendt 1958a: 28) Councils succedeed in securing the order, and taking over the functions of the collapsing state administration. Arendt, however, regards the appearence of the councils as neither merely pragmatical, nor only temporary, instead she attributes deep political significance to them. “The rise of the councils, not the restoration of parties, was the clear sign of a true upsurge of democracy against dictatorship, of freedom against tyranny.” (Arendt 1958a: 32) This statement briefly summarizes the results of the whole analysis. At the same time, however, during these days, the Communist party re-formed herself, the old coalition parties became active again, and, as Arendt also admits, the re-introduction of the multiparty system was one of the most important political demands of the revolutionaries. Yet, Arendt continuously diminishes the significance of these phenomena, and, consequently, she overestimates the role of the emerging council-system. For example, she claims that the demand of a multiparty system was “the almost automatic reaction to 9 the particularities of the situation,” that is, to a merely contingent historical fact derived from “one-party dictatorship.” (Arendt 1958a: 29) Arendt faithfully professes that “One of the most striking aspects of the Hungarian Revolution is that this principle of the council system not only reemerged, but that in twelve short days a good deal of its range of potentialities could emerge with it. The council-men were hardly elected in direct vote when these new councils began freely to coordinate among themselves to choose from their own midst the representatives for the higher councils up to the Supreme National Council, the counterpart of normal government – and the initiative for this came from the just revived National Peasant Party…” (Arendt 1958a: 32) The last clause slightly contradicts her efforts to describe the councils as the only active and authentic organizations of the revolution. Arendt likes thinking in sharp distinctions, so she keeps on insisting upon the opposition between councils and political parties, while, it seems to me, on the basis of historical facts, we could rather speak about a kind of fruitful co-operation of all these political – either professional or spontaneous – organizations during the Hungarian Revolution. Arendt wants to demonstrate that the “councils are the only democratic alternative we know to the party system, and the principles on which they are based stand in sharp opposition to the principles of the party system in many respects. Thus, the men selected for the councils are chosen at the bottom… […] The choice, moreover, of the voter is not prompted by a program or a platform or an ideology, but exclusively by his estimation of a man, in whose personal integrity, courage and judgment he is supposed to have enough confidence to entrust him with his representation. The elected, therefore, is not bound by anything except trust in his personal qualities,” and his pride is derived from his having been elected by his peers, that is, by free and equal fellow-citizens. (Arendt 1958a: 30) In this quite familiar republican conception, trust, confidence, and personal esteem play the determinant role in the process of election, pride is the major inner motif for the new representatives, and the republican political virtues like integrity, courage, judgment (phronesis or prudence) are the leading values. According to Arendt’s information, only these eventually republican qualities mattered when councils emerged in Hungary. And these new organizations worked very well and effectively. 10  Arendt admits only one exception to the beneficial operation of councils. “The question whether economic, as distinguished from political, functions can be handled by councils, whether, in other words, it is possible to run factories under the management and ownership of the workers, we shall have to leave open. (As a matter of fact, it is quite doubtful whether the political principle of equality and self-rule can be applied to the economic sphere of life as well. […])” (Arendt 1958a: 29) And though she also states that a Workers’ Council can be understood as an alternative to the politically corrupted trade union in a factory, it seems that only Revolutionary Councils, being genuinely and authenticly political, could play a positive and beneficial role, while Workers’ Councils’ operation was, eventually, an enterprise without perspectives. This can remind us again of her distinction between the political and the social or economic. This point is quite interesting, because later, in her Revolution book, Arendt explicitly states that the Workers’ Councils were incapable of managing and administering the factories, and their “dismal failure” resulted in the bad reputation of the council-system in general. “The fatal mistake of the councils has always been that they themselves did not distinguish clearly between participation in public affairs and administration or management of things in the public interest.” (Arendt 1982: 277-278) Councils should be political organizations and not economic or social ones. The leader of a council is selected according to his or her political virtues, but these are completely different from “the qualities of the manager and administrator”; “the one is supposed to know how to deal with men in a field of human relations, whose principle is freedom, and the other must know how to manage things and people in a sphere of life whose principle is necessity.” (Arendt 1982: 278) So, five years later, Arendt became more cautious and skeptical, she says that only the Revolutionary Councils can work properly as the organizations of the real political. At the same time, I think, the border between the political and the economic can never be clear; so it was not a “fatal mistake of the councils” not to distinguish the two territories, eventually it is an impossible mission. Consequently, we could always predict a continuous and devastating fight between the political and administrative or economic institutions of a revolutionary council-state. Moreover, I can make some further objections to Arendt’s insights. Arendt, as far as I know, never raises the question why the councils, the authentic manifestations of the 11 real political experience, vanish so rapidly from the political scene. She only registers this fact, and she mentions external causes like, for example, the violence of a revolutionary party against the councils. But how is it possible for such a party so easily to oppress and to destroy these authentic political organizations? In her Revolution book, Arendt cites Thomas Jefferson on councils: “Begin them [i.e. councils] only for a single purpose; they will soon show for what others they are the best instruments.” (Arendt 1982: 283) So the councils are capable of inventing themselves and their functions – and here Arendt mentions two of these: the breaking of the pseudo-politics of mass societies, and the production of a new, politically responsible, élite, whose self-chosen members can be characterized by “[t]he joys of public happiness and responsibilities for public business,” moreover by “a taste for public freedom.” (Ibid.) In the Hungarian Revolution, the councils’ most beneficial function was to safeguard the public order. But, I think, nothing can guarantee that the resolutions, decisions, or actions of such councils will be always beneficial for the broader society, or will be communicative at all, which would be necessary for co-operation with other councils. I am afraid that Arendt overburdens the concept of the spontaneous initiatives of men in councils.3 Her interpretation relies on her philosophical anthropology elaborated in her The Human Condition, but, besides the anthropological presuppositions, I think that an exceptional and extraordinary situation is also needed for the emergence and effective operation of councils. Both direct oppression and some clear common goals to eliminate 3 Connect to this issue, we can also ask why the spontaneity seems to her to be evidently positive? One the one hand, it is a philosophical heritage from Karl Jaspers’ existentialism; but, on the other, the essentially positive estimation of this notion presupposes the universal philosophical anthropology, including natality, worldliness, plurality, and forms of human activity, Arendt elaborated in her The Human Condition. This anthropology “contains – with words of Seyla Benhabib – an ethics of radical intersubjectivity;” the “natality is the condition through which we immerse ourselves into the world, at first through the good will and solidarity of those who nurture us and subsequently through our own deeds and words.” (Villa 2000: 81) In this anthropology our natality is the source of our spontneous activity, that is, freedom. The human spontaneity is far from being morally indifferent. And this inherent morality would guarantee that the free deeds and words of citizens could not be dangerous or inhuman. At the same time, Benhabib is right when she says that there is a gap in Arendt’s thinking between the natality, the inherent inter-subjectivity of human condition and the attitudes of mutual respect which is necessary to maintaining the political space. And if we apply this criticism to the present case, we can say that there is a gap between the spontaneity and the republican political experience. Perhaps she overestimates the role of councils in the Hungarian Revolution, because she tries to justify her anthropology, at the same time, this anthropology is taken for granted in her interpretation. 12 this are indispensable elements for the emergence of councils. In peaceful and ordinary circumstances, however, the political goals become more and more complex, therefore less common, and it would be quite difficult to achieve consensus within and between the councils in every political issue, not to mention the conflicts between the councils of different level within a council-state, or clashes with the parallel economic and administrative government. All in all, the ideal of a council-state which, according to Arendt, was approached in the Hungarian Revolution, does not seem to be a lasting and reliable political system; and it seems more than an accident that they were always banished from political life in the process of the consolidation of the revolutionary upheaval. Perhaps the temporary nature of the councils in all modern revolutions could have persuaded Arendt that the meaning of the political has radically and irreversibly changed, and the programs and plans of the parties or of experts cannot be, at least not easily, replaced by the spontaneously expressed political devices of men. Presumably, we ought to look for the public space for our political participation in political formations other than the spontaneously emerging councils. Finally, in her essay, Arendt says: “If the dramatic events of the Hungarian Revolution demonstrate anything, it is at best the dangers which may grow out of the lawlessness and formlessness inherent in the very dynamics of [the totalitarian] regime… […] If these danger signs promise anything at all, it is much rather a sudden and dramatic collapse of the whole regime than a gradual normalization.” (Arendt 1958a: 43) And we have to acknowledge that Arendt was absolutely right in her prediction. These regimes at least in Central-East Europe collapsed within a few weeks or a few days – slightly more than 30 years later, in 1989 and 1990. References Arendt, Hannah. [1951, 2nd ed. 1958] 1975. The Origins of Totalitarianism. San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt Brace & Company. ––––. 1958a. Totalitarian Imperialism: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution. The Journal of Politics 20 1:5–43. ––––. 1958b. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ––––. [1961] 1993. Between Past and Future. Eight Exercises in Political Thought. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. 13 ––––. [1963] 1992. Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil. Revised and Enlarged Edition. New York, London, etc.: Penguin Books. ––––. [1963] 1982. On Revolution. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press Publishers. ––––. [1955-1968] 1970. Men in Dark Times. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. ––––. [1969] 1970. On Violence. San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt Brace & Company. ––––. [1969-1972] 1972. Crises of the Republic. San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ––––. 1977. The Life of the Mind. Volume One: Thinking. New York, London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ––––. 1982. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy. Ed. Ronald Beiner. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ––––. 1993. Was ist Politik? Aus dem Nachlaß. Hrsg. von Ursula Ludz. München, Zürich: Piper. Benhabib, Seyla. 1996. The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt. Thousands Oaks, Cal., London, New Delhi: Sage Publications. Bobbio, Norberto & Viroli, Maurizio. 2003. The Idea of the Republic. Cambridge, Oxford, Malden: Polity Press. Canovan, Margaret. 1992. Hannah Arendt. A Reinterpretation of her Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heller, Ágnes & Fehér, Ferenc. 1990. From Yalta to Glasnot. The Dismantling of Stalin’s Empire. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Kohler, Lotte & Saner, Hans, eds. 1992. Hannah Arendt – Karl Jaspers: Correspondence, 1926-1969. Trl. Robert and Rita Kimber. New York, San Diego, London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Pocock, John G. A. 1975. The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1975. Villa, Dana R. 1999. Politics, Philosophy, Terror. Essays on the Thought of Hannah Arendt. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ––––. ed. 2000. The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 14