Hungary

THREE years after the revolt of 1956, satellite Hungary has dropped back into a narrow orbit around Moscow, with slight and steadily diminishing eccentricity. As a good Communist, Premier Imre Nagy wanted only to broaden the orbit somewhat, like Gomulka in Poland or perhaps even Tito. Nagy’s downfall came when he called for withdrawal of Soviet troops and the Soviet troops removed his government by force. It was eighteen months, though, before the Communists felt sufficiently sure of themselves to hang him.

The man Moscow chose to replace Nagy was Janos Kadar, who has presided over a gradual but inexorable return to the system revolving about the U.S.S.R. He became first secretary of the reorganized Hungarian Socialist Workers (Communist) Party while Nagy was still in office. Superficially at least, he had more right to be called a Titoist than Nagy. He suffered torture and jail for this heresy before Stalin’s death, while Nagy suffered nothing worse than temporary expulsion from the Party — until after the revolt. This may be why Kadar was picked: to attract the followers of Nagy.

At the start there was a slight hope that he might take an independent line. That hope is now gone. Kadar has denounced Tito, and last spring he proclaimed himself more orthodox than Gomulka by concurring in a new farm-collectivization drive, which Gomulka showed no sign of doing.

The Soviet troops who brought Kadar to power are no longer to be seen on the streets of Budapest. There are perhaps 40 to 50 thousand in the country, but the casual foreign visitor may never notice a Soviet uniform. Six months after the revolt was crushed, the last Soviet armored car disappeared from chestnut-lined Andrassy Avenue, just across from the Soviet Embassy.

The successive rebaptisms of this street, one of the city’s handsomest, epitomize the history of Hungary since the last war. It was called originally after Count Gyula Andrassy, a liberal statesman of the nineteenth century. Most of the population still know it by his name. In the late 1940s it was turned, inevitably, into Stalin Avenue. After October 23, 1956, when the young people of the capital toppled the huge statue of Stalin nearby, it became the Avenue of Hungarian Youth. Hungarian youth proved vulnerable to Soviet tanks but refractory to the regime they installed. Eighteen months after the end of the revolt it was officially renamed the Avenue of the People’s Republic.

No trace of freedom

No trace now remains of the freedom that flourished in the summer and fall of 1956. The newspapers and political parties that proliferated during the week when the revolt seemed to have won disappeared as soon as it was crushed. The workers’ councils set up at the same time kept some influence for a few months but have since been dissolved.

In Parliament, which before the rebellion actually voted down a minor government bill, no word of opposition is heard. During the “election” held last November, voters were not allowed even to strike individual names from the single official ticket. Only a small circle was provided at the bottom of the ballot where a cross could be marked to signify that the voter rejected the list as a whole. The result was a 99.6 per cent victory, the significance of which was duly noted by the Communist press throughout the world.

There is no freedom of opposition now, and no active opposition at all. This does not mean that Communism is any more popular than it was in 1956. As a matter of fact, Western observers in Budapest think the Communists would get no more than 5 per cent of the vote in a free election. Indirect opposition exists but has little serious effect. Important writers, even some who were Party members before 1956, will not publish anything on contemporary problems despite official prodding. Peasants resist collectivization. The Soviets remain aloof; it is the knowledge of their presence and the memory of 1956 that constitute the authority of the Hungarian regime.

Shortly after the revolt the Hungarian secret police organization, known as the AVH, was officially dissolved. If it has a successor, the name is not generally known. Other branches of the Interior Ministry remain extremely powerful and arbitrary, with the legal right, for example, to assign any citizen to forced residence far from his home. Methods are apparently somewhat more humane than they used to be, but police power reaches deep into every office and factory. Almost anyone is a potential informer, since it is easy to bring pressure through job or family and there is no one to call the police to account.

Once the actual fighting stopped in 1956, the repression seems to have been less bloody than might have been expected. The regime staged only one show trial. It was meant to demonstrate that the intellectual leaders of the revolt, represented by a second-rate playwright and a third-rate journalist, were directly involved in the messy killing of what may have been an AVH man. In this it failed, since the authorities apparently did not lake the trouble to ascertain that the playwright and the journalist had nothing to do with the killing. The propaganda situation worsened, from the regime’s viewpoint, when prominent Westerners often sympathetic to Communist causes, including Picasso, joined in protests against the death sentences. Doors were soon closed on all political trials.

The authorities now say that all cases arising out of the “counterrevolution,” as the orthodox must call the revolt, have been closed. It may be true; there is no way of checking. This does not mean that political repression is over. Until the end of last year, calendars were posted in the lobby of the Supreme Court building listing each week several cases of “sedition,” “illegal organization,” and “offenses against the People’s Democratic system.” Recently these cases have disappeared from the calendars, but some are known to have been heard.

Asylum for the Cardinal

Relations between Hungary and the United States have improved, infinitesimally, since the low point they reached after the revolt, even though both countries have put new restrictions on the travel of each other’s diplomats. U.S. passports are still normally invalid for travel in Hungary, but any American consul can remove this restriction if the traveler gives a plausible reason. A complete break may have been prevented by the fact that Cardinal Mindszenty had taken refuge in the building of the U.S. Legation in Budapest. If relations had been cut, the Hungarians might have gone in and arrested him before a protecting power could take over. His presence also weakened the American position, because we have traditionally refused to recognize the right of foreigners to take asylum in our diplomatic missions.

The Cardinal lives in a somewhat bare but comfortable three-room apartment designed as a pied-à-terre for the American minister, whose residence is several miles away. He says Mass every day, using a State Department desk for an altar. Every Sunday members of Western diplomatic missions in Budapest, occasional visitors, and even reporters are allowed to attend. At times there are ten or twenty in the congregation; sometimes only two or three. Reporters may not speak to the Cardinal— he is theoretically incommunicado — and in public the legation tries to forget about him.

He is, of course, its chief concern. His being in the legation has earned it an unusually heavy guard of plain-clothes police, whose presence, in turn, discourages Hungarians from entering. Three groups, facing in different directions, are mounted in small European cars within a few yards of the door.

The regime and the Church

By taking asylum, the Cardinal freed the regime from the odium of rearresting him to serve out his life in prison. But it is now impossible for him to exercise much influence over the Church. With him out of the way, the Kadar regime has been able to get the cooperation of most of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, though two bishops are in forced residence. The ranking prelate, Archbishop Jozsef Groesz of Kalocsa, has received a government decoration - certainly a novelty in a Communist country. He has also accepted leadership of a peace council, which many Catholics in the Communist countries have resisted. Three priests who are members of Parliament have been excommunicated by Rome for refusing to give up their seats. The Hungarian government maintains — and the priests by their silence seem to agree — that they have not been duly notified, so they continue in both their religious and political functions.

The leadership that took over the Lutheran and Calvinist churches during the revolt has been replaced by more malleable bishops. This process took a year and a half to complete. Important religious personalities have not been jailed again as they were before 1956, except for the Cardinal’s secretary, Monsignor Egon Turesanyi.

Under agreements made in 1948, when the Communists were newly in power, the regime continues to subsidize religious bodies. Children may even have religious training at state expense when their parents are courageous enough to register them for it.

Enough to eat

The amenities of life have improved considerably since the revolt. Visitors to Hungary are astonished to find that the pastry is more appetizing than, say, in West Germany, and what is more important to the average European, bread is considerably cheaper. There is no reason for anyone to starve. Kadar has said that the daily intake of the average Hungarian is 3240 calories, more than the average in Britain or the United States.

Comforts and even luxuries of many kinds are available, but a shopper accustomed to Western standards will find the choice extremely limited and the prices high at the prevailing wages. A shopgirl will earn perhaps $38 a month, an expert mechanic $87, and an experienced journalist as much as $131. But the shopgirl will have to work all month for two yards of good woolen cloth, the mechanic three days for a pound of coffee, and the journalist about a year for a small Czech car. Installment sales are almost unknown.

There is a surprising amount of ready cash and no lack of ways to spend it. Television sets and motorcycles sell briskly. Movies, operas, theaters, and restaurants with dance orchestras are well patronized.

The authorities seem unconcerned about the popularity of Western jazz. Some Western plays and a few American movies are shown. Western fashions are imitated, beauty contests held, and even French perfumes imported. The Party seems to look on all this as a harmless sop to liberalism. It does not so regard the free sale of Western books or newspapers.

A good deal of the ready cash comes from the peasants, a favored group since the revolt. Nagy abolished the system of compulsory crop deliveries under quotas determined largely by absentee authorities. Prices paid for farm products have increased. There has been considerable freedom to trade in land.

At the time of the revolt the peasants got the idea that nothing disagreeable would happen if they broke up the collectives many had been forced to join. Over half - some 2600 — were dissolved before the end of 1956, and for two years the peasants were under no pressure to rejoin. Only last spring, after Kadar’s trip to Moscow for the 21st Soviet Party Congress, did the drums start beating again for collectivization. According to the official figures the lost ground has now been more than regained. Meanwhile, the country had one extremely good crop and one fair one, so that many peasants had more money than they knew what to do with.

Though the villages are brighter as a consequence, Budapest is still pervaded by the gritty drabness characteristic of the people’s democracies. After World War II, only 26 per cent of die city’s residential buildings were intact. There is a theory that the regime prefers to keep it that way as a reminder of World War II and the dangers of West German rearmament.