Once ‘land of 3M beggars,’ but no-one now allowed to starve in Hungary

Press, 10 January 1986, Page 13

Once ‘land of 3M beggars,’ but no-one now allowed to starve in Hungary

ROBIN ROBILLIARD completed her tour of Eastern Europe in Hungary, and in the third and final article of this series meets Eva.

“Ugh!” said Eva, as we entered the crumbling hallway of her apartment in Budapest. “It smells like the proletariat.” There had been no maintenance, this lively 67-year-old told me, since the State took the building from its private owner in 1948, when the communists took over. “Let’s pray the lift is working.” It was. Up we went; four flights, then into the most channing room I was to see in socialist Europe. •a A bow window at one end overlooked flowering chestnut trees to the Danube. Centuries-old furniture, cluttered with books, sat beneath interesting paintings. - “Nothing matches. I’ve had little money. I’ve . just collected things if their quality appealed to me.” A bouquet of flowers sat wilting on a table, beside a base, not in it. A note said: “I’ve missed you.” It was from Andre, aged 71,' with whom Eva has lived for the last 28 years. ■ . ’ When she is away, as she was this last week, visiting her’son in Paris, Andre, a famous film director, moves back to his wife. I had met Eva, small and upright, with scarcely a thread of grey in her auburn, stylishly cut hair, on the train that brought me to Hungary. We »had become friends. >“How could we help it, when we both have the name of birds.” Eva’s name in Hebrew, she told me, means “little bird.” Eva helped me .find a hotel, then invited me home for breakfast. "“The hotel’will consider it its duty to report where you are heading,” she had said, as we left the hotel in a taxi. The risk of police questioning was Eva’s.'not mine, and yet she had wanted me to come to hear about life an New Zealand. Eva is both mentally and physically active. “I walk and walk on those hills,” she said* pointing. “It used to be a green belt, but since the economic changes that allow people to have two or three jobs, the’ forest is being replaced with expensive villas.” We ate on a tiny balcony. There was just room for a • table and two chairs. Pots of geraniums stood at our feet. “Is this-‘ what it means to be Euro-’ pean?” I asked, meaning Eva’s, whole lifestyle. “I am very much European, certainly, but you will discover I’m not typically Hungarian. More Central European Jew.” The typical Hungarian, according to Eva, has a flat like a box filled with gadgets, “lacking taste.” Eva survived a war in which 600,000 Hungarian Jews were exterminated by being hidden in a convent. In 1944, when the Jews thought they were safe, her mother was one of the Jews whose blood * made the Danube run red as the * Germans committed final atrocities as they retreated from the Russians. Unable to enter university in the late 19305, when there was a quota for Jewish entry under the Rightwing, repressive regime of Governor Horthy, Eva educated herself from books. “In my day people regd to have good conversation. Nw the young are omy concerned

with making money," getting on.” Eva had married twice before she met Andre. Her first husband, rich, of high’ social standing," the father of her son, lost his business overnight when private enterprises were nationalised. Eva taught herseit stenography and worked for five years in a Ministry. When an English friend sent a knitting machine she worked from home, making fashion garments. “Diplomats would buy from me.” The second husband was an intellectual. “The most intelligent man I’ve ever met. What I am he dug out of me. He was a scientist, but because he wasn’t a Communist Party member his career was restricted. Only after his death was he accepted to the Academy of Science.” Eva said this man was too nervy, too refined to survive the first years of the 19505, “when people lived in terror of being reported by neighbours, for something they said, when factions within the Party hung eafch other in the

street.” It was at this time, too, that the economy went wrong. “Working class people became the leaders of economics and industry, knowing nothing about them/ It was a big mistake investing in heavy industry, making steel, when we don’t have the raw materials.” But what Hungary lacks in resources it makes up for in talent. Western diplomats were to say that Hungary’s best assets are its brains, although many of the best have left the country. "Our maths and physics schools are famous,” says Eva. “Teaching skills are highly developed. Many foreigners, including Americans, come here to study medicine. In film making, Hungarians are considered outstanding.” Eva arranged, through Andre, for me to spend two days watching films. These revealed, with incredible observation, current social problems, such as the lack of housing, which Dr Zruzsa Ferge, a professor or sociology, confirmed. “Out of a population of three

million people in Budapest, 200,000 families are living in utterly inadequate conditions.” “Even in normal conditions, two or three generations have to live together in three or four-room flats. This makes people neurotic.” Another film featured a woman doctor’s efforts? through bribery, political machinations, and having to sleep with an’influential bureaucrat, to get an old people’s hospital built. , “Was this realistic?” I asked a real woman doctor.

“Yes. .Nothing is straightforward. If you waited to get things done in the normal way, you would not achieve anything in your life. You have to get out there and motivate.” z To watch these films I had one young woman translating, while four more hovered listlessly. It had needed two men to change the reels.

Underemployment,, with four people doing the job of one, or working beneath their capability because of political leanings, is another problem in a system that allows no unemployment. “They contribute,” said the sociologist, “with thg housing situation and the exhaustion of working mothers to increasing divorce, alcoholism, and glue sniffing — and the depression that leads to suicide.”

Another problem, also frankly admitted, is the plight of the pensioners, 25 per cent of the population. Pensions are low. Eva has one given to women at 55, but it is only 2400 forints a month ($112) because she worked for only five years for the State.

Andre is her security, her means of keeping the flat. As part of the artistic elite, a Party member, he earns a high salary. He can afford to keep his wife and pay Eva’s rent.

Eva, however, will clean other people’s floors rather than lose her flat. “And if I were really alone the Town Office would keep an eye on me, send a nurse if I was ill. Noone is allowed to starve in Hungary, as happened recently to pensioners in France.”

Eva concedes other achievements of the system. “Hungary, between the wars, was known as the land of three million beggars. There were a few rich landlords. The rest were landless, ragged, and hungry. There was little industry. “Now, most people attempt to dress fashionably, even if their tops don’t match their skirts. We have elegant down-town shops. This is undeniably the result of socialism, time and education. Education between the wars was exclusively for the well-to-do.” Eva describes herself as a socialist. “For workers and Jews, after the war, it was a choice of the Russians over the fascists. Hence Hungary’s Left-wing support. “But what we want is to bring plurality into the Government, to have a choice of political parties. But these last elections, when for the first time'it was to have at least two candidates for

every post, was not a genuine choice. Every candidate had to pledge to follow the policy of the Patriotic Peoples Front” (the ruling communist party). Hungary has only a few hundred dissidents. “Most of them are young, critical of the one-party State, full of ideals. They want the freedoms of the West, but they don’t have a large following,” says Eva,/‘because that wish is pointless.”' She spoke with resignation. “Our system was decided for us,” she explains, “at the Yalta conference of 1945, by the British and Americans. They drew the boundaries, according to Stalin’s wishes, between East and West Europe. It’s a fact of life. Finished. There is nothing we can do about it.” It was only when Eva, and many other Hungarians, spoke of the 1956 Revolution, when intellectuals and students, followed by the Workers Councils, sought to overthrow the Government and introduce democracy, that bitterness was expressed over the urgings of Radio Free Europe to “fight on for one or two more days, and then you will be free.”

“The impression was gained,” she says, ’“perhaps naively, that United Nations troops would come to our help. That didn’t happen. Two thousand Hungarians died pointlessly at the barricades. What hope did they have against the Russian tanks?”

The failure of the 1956 uprising led to a reluctant agreement between party and people that, while democratisation was impossible, police terror would cease, economic affairs would be handled rationally, and the standard of living would rise. “The man under whom this happened,” says Eva, “is Janos Kadar, the Party Secretary. Considered a Judas in 1956 because he asked the Russians to quell the rebellion, he’s now almost a popular hero.” (Western diplomats confirmed this.) There are limitations to Eva’s life, but the 8.8. C., Voice of American and Radio Free Europe are received unjammed. The press is not as free as in Poland, but Hungarian State radio and television are Openly critical on consumer concerns.

Eva does not lack books. Hungary publishes 100 million volumes a year, “although it’s a matter of gossip and speculation over who will get published.” Western newspapers sell in hotels and certain bookshops. Hungarians can subscribe to “Time” and “Newsweek”

“If I have one deep grief,” Eva says, “it is that I am parted from my son.” Hungarians have more opportunity to travel to the West than others in the Eastern bloc. “But it involves three weeks or more of daily visits to offices, being obsequious to small-minded bureaucrats who have the power to refuse me a passport. It’s so degrading. “What' I envy you most,” says this elderly Hungarian, “is your freedom to cross borders like a 1? bird.”