There is renewed interest in anarchism, and the work by the political scientists András Bozóki and Miklós Sükösd, Anarchism in Hungary, fills a gap in our knowledge. The book's mixture of social theory, history, and prophecy rests on published sources and secondary literature. The first quarter of the text is taken up with a theoretical discussion of anarchism. Most helpful are the graphs and tables that give a multidimensional comparison of anarchism with other major political ideologies. These could prove to be lasting contributions to political theory.

The historical section starts fitfully with a description of the ideologically volatile mixing of radical socialist and anarchist ideologues in the 1870s. Their initial support for terrorism culminated in the assassination of the Austrian Empress Elizabeth by an Italian anarchist in 1898. A chance is missed here to further our understanding of the workings of the socialist smelters of Austria-Hungary that simultaneously forged would-be terrorists, pacifists, and prophets. Indeed, the impericide and its effects on anarchism are scarcely treated, although terrorism was subsequently rejected by the majority of anarchists, who were nonetheless hounded out of Austria and later run to the ground in Hungary.

Out of this persecution came the most successful homegrown Hungarian anarchist movement: István Várkonyi's short-lived but massively popular pacifist agrarians, who came to be known as the Independent Social Democrats. Although the party was brutally crushed in 1898, its Tolstoyan spirit, instilled by the anarchist prophet Jenő Henrik Schmitt and given the liturgy of a “Socialist Lord's Prayer” (72), lived on in messianic sects amongst the peasantry and continued to haunt successive Hungarian governments until World War II. There was never another successful anarchist movement in Hungary after the agrarian anarchists were crushed, in part because of intellectuals' unwillingness or inability to touch the emotions of the populace. Those who tried include Count Ervin Batthyány, whose views so shocked his family that they shut him up in an insane asylum for two years (1902–1903). The count was incorrigible and subsequently spent his time trying to enlighten peasants and struggling with official harassment. It was a lonely fight. The National Anarchist Congress held in Budapest in 1909 attracted just 26 delegates, of whom all but five were from the city. The sole foreign delegate, a Serb named Sava Popović, was deported. In 1910, Batthyány gave up and immigrated to England.

Batthyány was followed by a mixed bag of anarchists, and it is with them that the book's narrative, like anarchism, breaks down. There is little description of anarchist positions during World War I, nothing on collapse and revolution in 1918, only a brief mention of the Béla Kun period, and nothing on Trianon. Scarcely six pages treat anarchist influences in 1919–1946, followed by a leap to the end of the Communist period. Surely Communist authorities struggled with anarchists at the start of their rule? With all these faults, there are occasional flashes of clarity, such as the vivid section on police abuse of anarchist journalists in 1991 (200).

In other ways, the text is rough. It seems to have gone without copy editing. The prose is turgid and requires expert knowledge of Hungarian history and culture. Symptomatically, the word viharsarok (literally “storm-corner” [71]) is not translated. The English reader will miss associations here (as elsewhere): the agrarian socialist Géza Féja, who took inspiration from Várkonyi, was sentenced to prison in 1937 for publishing a book called Viharsarok about peasant messianism in an area that had seen numerous uprisings over the centuries. But the reader would never know.

Only a few dozen pages seem to have been added to the original Hungarian version, published in 1994. The discussion of Oszkár Jászi and István Bibό reads like an afterthought. The book ends with musings about anarchism's failures and outdated predictions about its future. It is a shame that the authors did not take better advantage of the chance to revise the text when it was translated. We can only hope they will return to this work that started, also like anarchism, with such promise, for huge gaps in the historical narrative need filling. This then is a starting point, not an ending one. Flawed though this book is, there is still no better depiction in English of its wraithlike subject.