Hungarian Aftermath PEOPLE AND RULERS READY TO “CO-EXIST”

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28983, 26 August 1959, Page 12

Hungarian Aftermath PEOPLE AND RULERS READY TO “CO-EXIST”

IBy

GORDON SHEPHERD

i in th# ‘•Daily Telrgraph"!

[Reprinted

bp Arrangement]

“Haven’t we cleared everything up beautifully?” beamed my Communist companion as we “rove down the renovated Ulloi Utca. scene of one of the fiercest tank battles in the Budapest uprising. For answer, I stopped my car and showed him the dent in a hub cap. It had been put there by a Russian bullet during my last visit to this street, and I had left it there as a memento of my own version of the “events of 1956.” If, I asked him, the Communists really believed their version, why were they so anxious to remove all evidence of the “historic triumph over the Imperialist counter-revolutionaries?” His response was a nervous smile. It is, of course, easy to make such debating points in revisiting Budapest today. The trouble is that one cannot dismiss all this high-pressure renovation as being simply the guilt complex of a Soviet-installed Government The return to normality is supported and partly inspired by the nine millions of the nation as well as by the quarter million of the regime. After their agony of three years ago, the Hungarian people want to get back to ordinary Iron Curtain life.

Thus, to repeat in 1959 that the Kadar. regime does not represent the Hungarian people may be as true as it ever was; but it is certainly much less relevant. For both are now after the same thing —to climb back over the barricades of 1956 to some form of internal co-existence.

The people call this “facing facts,” knowing it means the abandonment of all previous hopes of freedom in the Western sense. The regime calls it "winning back the confidence of the masses,” knowing full well that it means, at the best, an increased resignation. But the result, seen from both sides, is an ever-broadening area of day-to-day tolerance. Popular Concessions

From the nation’s point of view, this internal co-existence is accompanied by three consolations. The first is a growing relaxation of police pressure in the sense that control is replacing open terror. The security apparatus, though still ready to pounce, concentrates on watching from the corner rather than breathing down one’s neck.

It has also made several concessions to justice in the name of “Socialist legality.” One was described to me by a declared antiCommunist who was taken into “protective custody” during the anniversary period of the Revolution. His actual arrest was on the old pattern—nocturnal, brusque, and unexplained. But 48 hours after he had been driven off, his wife received a postcard from the local police station telling her where he was being held, what the visiting hours were, and what she should bring in the way of home comforts.

To protest that this represents merely the minimum in human decency is to miss the whole point. The minimum was not there before.

A second dividend of Hungary’s present “stability” is that the freedom of worship achieved during the immediate pre-revolution period has been fully regained. The churches are well filled, and though both working-class men and young children figure quite prominently in the congregations, I could find no evidence of police molestation.

In the porches, portraits of Pope John XXIII were on sale within yards of newspaper kiosks containing nothing but Communist journals. At five of the 21 churches I visited in Hungary, workmen were busy regilding baroque angels, or restoring wall paintings. The regime claims that, over the last three years, it has spent more than £lj million on such church restoration work.

No Change of Heart This superficial liberalism indicates, of course, neither a change of heart nor a loss of energy. It is merely a tactical decision to fight God everywhere except at the altar. Karoly Olt, a notorious Stalinist, was appointed last June as the new head of the regime’s Office for Church Affairs, and an atheistic campaign of truly Stalinesque virulence has just been launched again in the schools and villages. Furthermore, the Catholic hierarchy is being penetrated by rapier thrusts far more deadly than Rakosi’s bludgeoning of old. Those bishops who are still left m nominal control of their dioceses are subject to increasing interference by a new type of Government “liaison officer ” are ,P ot , the Party blockheads of old, who scarcely knew a missal from a missile, but picked intellectual careerists trained in ecclesiastical lore for their sabotage work.

The third consoling factor came as a surprise: the survival of many of those links with the West which 1956 e firSt f ° rged “ the fires of

R( H" d x r w St JL in ’ as under the FrfP nt T Hort hy or the Emperor Franz Joseph, Hungary wore the blinkers of Mitteleuropa, with an imagination bounded at its broadn\ by 4 Rhlne and the Volga. Rev °lution not only made the world conscious (and conscience-stricken) about Hungary; it also made Hungary cons™us the u WOr,d ’ A n emotional break-through followed the eruption of 1956 which the regime d ot have Stopped even had

An important symbol of this is he book trade. I understand that the Government has decided to accept nearly 50 per cent. Western titles in its general literature import quota over the next five .years. Moreover, the intention is that any Western work not blatantly anti-Soviet will be eligible cnok InC u USIO P’ The ex Pansion of such cultural contacts is, of course, a prime task of the Western missions in Budapest today. Writers’ Problems Such gathering contacts face Hungary’s “silent writers” with growing problems of adjustment Once the nation makes its pragmatic truce, these writers must sooner or later, get into print or burst

No final armistice can be reached until Tibor Dery and Gyula Hay, who have become the personification of Hungary's intellectual martyrdom, are released from prison. But here, too, the lines for a working agreement are beginning to be flagged out. This is shown by the inclusion of such patriotic names as Lazio Nemeth, Gyoergy Ronai. and Aaron Tamasz in the regime’s preparatory committee set up to discuss refounding the Hungarian

Writers’ Club. These men are believed to have come in voluntarily, hoping they might achieve more inside than outside. But by far the biggest dividend which the regime has so far got out of its co-existence campaign is an increased, even if calculating, tolerance from the peasants. More than 4500 co-operatives with some 520,000 members were created, at least on paper, this spring and summer. With the State farms added, more than 50 per cent, of Hungary’s land is now collectivised. Even the regime admits to “occasional excesses;” but it seems clear that neither force nor the threat of force make up the whole background to this process. For two years the peasants have been the only section of the nation left unmolested. They have made record profits, and their best hope now of preventing these riches being taxed out of existence is to fall in behind the regime. Furthermore, after the disillusionments of 1956, many older peasants are prepared to settle for that modest security which a co-operative land rent for their holding, plus an official pension, seems to promise. By shrewdly allowing individual holdings to remain in the peasant's name in the “land book” even after they have been “leased” to the local co-operative, the regime makes this decision far easier to bear.

The general validity of this picture seemed confirmed by a 500-mile tour I made of Hungary's western and south-western coun-

ties, where the co-operative drive has so far been concentrated. More revealing than the lack of tension in the villages was the lack of neglect. When I visited these same areas in the “Monster Period” of Rakosi’s rule, the passive resistance of the peasants was documented everywhere by rusting machinery and unpainted fences. A New Vitality

Two impressions stood out from this tour. The first was fresh evidence of Hungary’s newly acquired global consciousness. The breath of five continents is now being carried into the remotest village of the puszta by the letters home of 150,000 revolution emigres who are scattered across the globe from Lima to Liverpool. And because the ordinary Hungarian feels himself a sort of marker buoy in international currents, he tends to bob up and down with the tide.

More eloquent than any statistics was this tale I was told in Gyoer. During the recent Tibetan revolution. the co-operative drive was perceptibly checked in several villages while the peasants followed the Dalai Lama’s flight into India as though it were the Carpathians and not the Himalayas he was crossing.

The second feeling which the Hungarian countryside gives is of a strange new vitality; and this, in a sense, is true of the whole people. I think its explanation may be that, for the first time in more than 100 years, the nation has regained its self-respect. The long years of humiliating sailtrimming between the German wolf and the Russian bear were ended by the historic act of 1956. Having found themselves again, the Magyars are more determined now than ever to survive (and the birthrate is, in fact, reported to be rapidly growing).

After their last such “moment of truth” in 1848, it took the Hungarians 19 years to extract the dividends and squeeze the famous compromise of 1867 out of Vienna. They do not despair of repeating the process with Moscow.