Jonah: I think you’re right that “uprising” is better than “revolution.” David Pryce-Jones’s piece in the Oct. 23 National Review is a brilliant look back at the event.
One good thing to come out of the uprising was Hungarian restaurants in Western cities. Hungarian cuisine is simply wonderful, but all too little known. The refugees from 1956 brought it out with them, and for three or four decades you could eat great Hungarian food in London and New York (and no doubt other cities I’m less well acquainted with).
Alas, the Hungarians proved to be exceptionally assimilable as immigrants and Hungarian restaurants are now dying out. We were down to two in New York last time I checked, and that was a couple of years ago. You can scoff all you like at “goulash communism,” but if you scoff at goulash itself, you never had a real goulash, prepared by a real Hungarian chef.