Between 1956 and 1963, the United Nations grappled with the "Hungarian question"; namely, what it should do about the events and aftermath of the country's 1956 Revolution. Cold War tensions, anxieties over the concurrent Suez crisis, and ignorance and indifference about Hungary influenced how UN member states responded to this "internal affair" and its potentially dangerous effects on international relations.

Diplomacy and Disregard draws upon previously inaccessible documents, including UN archival materials, Hungarian government and secret service papers, and personal collections held by UN officials across the globe, to reveal the UN's contradictory rhetorical and practical responses to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, with larger lessons about the limits on the UN's power to address global conflicts. From insightful overviews to detailed case studies of individual diplomats and specific controversies, author András Nagy traces the UN's reactions to Hungarian and Soviet authorities' blocking of resolutions and denunciation of the UN as an enemy power, its need to use the International Committee of the Red Cross as a channel for its humanitarian aid, and its inability to legitimize revolutionary leaders and protect them from purges and retribution.

Providing an unprecedented look at the global reach and consequences of the Hungary's 1956 Revolution, Diplomacy and Disregard unpacks how the UN's action and inaction during this political crisis demonstrated the limits on its ability to maneuver the Cold War's fraught political landscape and live up to the ideals of its charter.