Judith Szapor has written a fascinating work of early twentieth-century Hungarian history through the lens of women's activism and campaigns for suffrage. The title, Hungarian Women's Activism in the Wake of the First World War: From Rights to Revanche, should not deceive one into thinking the book is narrow in scope. She does focus only on a handful of women in the years 1917–1920 who were involved in liberal feminist, socialist, and conservative nationalist women's activism. Yet given her discussion of the antecedents and consequences of the political events of those years, her analysis spans the tumultuous dozen years from 1911 to 1923. And one must not forget the monumental nature of this period for Hungary, which included world war, the breakup of the Habsburg Empire, a drastic reduction in territory, followed by three revolutions in quick succession: first democratic, then communist, finally a conservative counter-revolution. Szapor's study thus deals with the most critical developments in post-1918 Hungarian history in which these elite, Budapest-based women were involved. In the book's conclusion, she even brings the account up to the present, linking the “conservative, illiberal, nationalistic notions of gender and women” prevalent in today's Hungary to their triumph in the interwar period (149). She argues that despite the efforts of the post-World War II communist regime to change the role of women in society, the traditional and nationalist ideas of gender survived in the family, only to blossom again once that regime collapsed.

Based on previously unused archival documents, press sources, memoirs, and novels, the book charts the leaders and the fates of Catholic, liberal feminist, socialist, and conservative women's organizations. The primary spotlight falls on three groups, the Hungarian Women's Debating Club, the Association of Feminists of Hungary (FE), and the National Alliance of Hungarian Women (MANSZ). The author charts the achievement of female suffrage under Mihály Károlyi's liberal government (1918–19) and the expansion of women's rights during the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic (1919). She devotes the most attention to their reversal under the conservative regime of Miklós Horthy (1920–44). Szapor places women activists—particularly Rosika Schwimmer, Katinka Andrassy Károlyi, Anna Lesznai, Emma Ritoók, and Cecile Tormay—in the center of the sea change in attitudes about gender, citizenship, and nationalism that occurred during these few years. Above all, she argues for the prominence of the important contribution of right-wing women to the Horthy regime's “radical nationalist, illiberal, anti-Semitic ideology” (88).

In their popular writings, these elite women on the right made the violence of the counter-revolution palatable. They justified antisemitism and trumpeted the need for the revision of Hungary's new borders, a project that targeted both internal and external enemies of the Hungarian nation. Women would have a crucial role in this national mission, though not, according to the conservative activists, as voters or politicians. Ironically, these accomplished and publicly-visible women promoted the importance of women's maternal role and the defense of the traditional family as a bulwark against the evils of modernization—including women's emancipation. Szapor writes that the leaders of MANSZ “supplied some of the ideas and slogans, even some of the guts of the counter-revolution” (112).

Despite ample documentation of their involvement in the right's triumph over the liberals and socialists, I remain unsure about how much to credit these conservative women activists, as does Szapor, with “supplying the rhetoric” to the counter-revolutionary movement (89, 110, 152). A full assessment would require an investigation of the reach and popularity of their writings, as well as a comparison with the content and impact of Hungarian men publishing on this topic. Szapor does not undertake such an examination, though, and such questions led me to wish for a longer volume. Likewise, her interpretation of the continuity between the interwar and current eras, without examining the post-1945 era, did the same.

The book is not exhaustive, as Szapor freely acknowledges. Rather, it covers the topic in an almost telegraphic style, with concise and insightful analyses. Even though the book contains only 157 pages of text, Szapor also manages to weave in Hungarian historiography, as well as that of European women, particularly of the suffrage movement and the wartime and post-war periods. With an excellent command of the historiography, she is able to highlight both the importance of her findings to the general story of early twentieth century Hungary and the large gaps, particularly regarding women and gender, that require further study. The book offers a solid foundation for further research.