Surviving tyranny: Borhi explores life and death under Nazi and communist rule
László Borhi’s Survival under Dictatorships - Life and Death under Nazi and Communist Regimes (Central European University Press, 2024) offers a powerful exploration of individual resilience amid the darkest chapters of East-Central European history. Focusing on three successive episodes—the Holocaust in Hungary, the Arrow Cross regime’s terror in Budapest, and Stalinist repression—Borhi examines how ordinary people navigated life under totalitarian rule.
Borhi is the Peter A. Kadas Chair and associate professor in the Department of Central Eurasian Studies at the Indiana University Hamilton Lugar School.
Through personal stories and historical analysis, Borhi reveals how individuals responded to the arbitrary and brutal exercise of state power. He draws connections between Nazi and Stalinist systems, showing how both sought to eliminate perceived enemies in pursuit of ideological purity. He argues that survival strategies developed under one regime often carried over into the next, highlighting the continuity of trauma and resistance.
This work is not only a study of historical atrocities but also a reflection on the human capacity for endurance and adaptation. It offers universal insights into the mechanisms of oppression and the moral complexities faced by those living under dictatorship.
Mark Kramer, director of Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies reviewed the work. “This book is a splendid work of scholarship interspersed with moving reflections about the fate of certain individuals in Hungary during the years when the country as under the domination of first Nazi Germany and then Stalin’s Soviet Union,” he said. “Borhi has produced an excellent, sobering account of the grim choices facing individuals who had to live under tyrannical regimes. The book is not strictly a history of Nazism and Stalinism, but it reveals a great deal about the way people lived and died under these two abominable systems.”
Students interested in history, international relations, human rights, and political ideologies will find Borhi’s scholarship both intellectually rigorous and deeply moving. His work exemplifies the Hamilton Lugar School’s commitment to global understanding through critical inquiry. Find the full work through Central European University Press’s Opening the Future Initiative.