In her most recent book, Hungarian Women's Activism in the Wake of the First World War, Judith Szapor chronicles women's movements in Hungary from 1913 to 1922, with much of her analysis examining 1917 to 1920. While this encompasses a relatively short time frame, this latter period spans three political regimes in Hungary: the liberal Hungarian People's Republic, the Bolshevik Hungarian Soviet Republic, and the reactionary, right-wing government of Miklós Horthy, a Hungarian admiral in a newly landlocked country serving as regent of a Hungarian kingdom with no king. A similar series of political upheavals (with several notable distinctions) would play out in a more protracted way following the Second World War.

The book's six chapters trace three models of women's activism (liberal, radical socialist, and conservative nationalist) in Hungary that mirrored the three political regimes described previously. In the immediate prewar period, these models coexisted in relative peace, and there was even a brief moment during World War I when women united around the issue of women's suffrage (granted in a limited way in November 1918 after a failed measure in June of the same year), even—with the help of Katinka Károlyi (née Andrássy)—mobilizing aristocratic women around these more political topics.

As World War I came to a close—and particularly as the Entente powers showed little interest in maintaining the territorial integrity of prewar Hungary in peace negotiations—these groups fractured and became more antagonistic. Formed in January 1919, the right-wing National Alliance of Hungarian Women (MANSZ) became a driving force in the counterrevolution, advocating for “traditional” social, class, and gender roles and pushing other women's organizations to the margins, often with antisemitic or anti-Western rhetoric. MANSZ took advantage of the mobilization of aristocratic women during the war, which brought many of these women to their more conservative cause. The group's leaders saw themselves as the vanguard of the counterrevolution, whose job was to spur on the traditional elites who had been emasculated during the war (98).

Szapor describes the organizing principle of her book as “concentric circles” (13), wherein the book begins and ends with broad historical analysis and slowly narrows in between—from movements to organizations, from organizations to individuals. While the book lists a number of women's organizations and individuals, Szapor centers her analysis on MANSZ and the Association of Feminists of Hungary (FE) and includes fairly detailed bibliographies of their leaders, including such figures as Rosa Schwimmer, Vilma Glücklich, Emma Ritoók, and Cecile Tormay.

With the goal of highlighting the role of Hungarian women—particularly right-wing women—in the history of World War I and its immediate aftermath, Szapor's book is extremely well researched and highlights a number of recent movements in the relatively nascent field of gender history in Eastern Europe. In her 2008 article in the American Historical Review, Maria Bucur describes the field of gender history in Eastern Europe rather dismally as “as an archipelago of individual efforts, often disconnected and emergent, erupting periodically like so many volcanic islands, connected with the institutional seats of power of academia by rafts rather than ocean liners or solid bridges” (“An Archipelago of Stories: Gender History in Eastern Europe,” American Historical Review 113 [December 2008]: 1375).

While there has been some movement in the intervening decade (in addition to several edited volumes on gender in the region, Aspasia, a gender history journal that focuses on women of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, releases its thirteenth volume in 2019), cause for concern remains. In August 2018, the Hungarian government announced that it would stop funding gender studies courses in Hungarian universities, citing lack of employer interest. In this context, Szapor's work of making women visible in Hungarian history is extremely critical. In particular, Szapor's examination of right-wing women and their role in the Hungarian counterrevolution highlights the importance of examining women's activism beyond suffrage and indeed beyond causes traditionally associated with women's movements.

There are several places in which Szapor could have expanded her analysis in ways that may have brought gender more to the fore. In particular, one wonders what would have emerged had Szapor completed the project as originally conceived—as “the first comprehensive study of right-wing woman activists” (8). While Szapor impressively chronicles a number of women involved in women's movements of all types, there were several moments where she could have delved more deeply into specific events and images that seemed to exemplify one of her goals of highlighting “the quintessentially gendered nature of the counter-revolutionary ideology” (11). For example, her description of Admiral Horthy's triumphant return to Budapest, where he was greeted by—among other clearly gendered elements—sixty-three veiled women representing the lost Hungarian territories and a procession of young girls aged twelve to fourteen, is only a few pages long, while the rest of the chapter is devoted to describing MANSZ activities.

Secondly, the book's “concentric circles” sometimes make it difficult to place the actions of individuals within larger historical movements. The chapter on Emma Ritoók, for example, highlights Ritoók's many interpersonal connections with leading cultural figures of the day: her unrequited love for members of a Hungarian philosophy society and György Lukács's commentary on her looks, her fallings out with MANSZ leaders, and her desire to become the intellectual leader of MANSZ. While this highlights the way in which Ritoók's political views (including her virulent antisemitism) were influenced by personal relationships, the chapter feels separate from the broader narrative arc of women's activism.

Finally, several instances of mistranslation or editing errors expose the challenges of publishing Hungarian history for an English-speaking audience. For example, a key element of Horthy's famous speech in Budapest—in which he describes the city being dressed up in “red rags” (vörös rongyok)—is mistranslated in multiple places as “red rugs” (87). Furthermore, it is sometimes difficult to keep track of an extensive list of similarly named individuals, periodicals, and political groups, particularly as multiple names are used interchangeably. Katinka Károlyi, for example, is referred to as Katinka Andrássy (a nod to her famous maiden name), Countess Károlyi, Mrs. Károlyi, and simply Katinka. The FE journal A Nő is sometimes referred to in its English form (The Woman), which makes it difficult to distinguish between this periodical and the journals of other women's movements (often with “women” or “woman” in the title).

Nonetheless, Szapor makes an important contribution to the growing literature on women in Eastern Europe, highlighting the importance of such a field in a region where studies of gender are often associated with foreign, externally imposed movements.