"Apor is most helpful and pertinent regarding the cult’s idiosyncratic elements. He is keen to redress the tendency to assume that 'the constructed personae of mini-Stalins in the Soviet bloc were merely clones of Stalin’s mythical image'. The spread of leader cults across communist Europe was not just the production of facsimiles. Rather, Apor’s analysis of the specifically Hungarian elements of Rákosi’s cult, in connection with the overall communist project of recasting national history, is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of what made this regime distinctive.
What Apor has concretely given us in The Invisible Shining is an invaluable investigation and analysis, assiduously compiled, of how Rákosi’s leader cult was constructed and imposed in Hungary. This was a grandiose utopian project served by most mundane and fallible means. Apor’s study will be a sturdy platform for anyone subsequently taking up the study of this brief but fateful cult and regime."
Reviewed book:
