Grosz an admirer of Thatcher

Press, 24 May 1988, Page 8

Grosz an admirer of Thatcher

NZPA-AP Budapest Karoly Grosz, named yesterday as the new leader of Hungary’s Communist Party, is a lifelong communist with a strong streak of pragmatism and a political touch said to rival the media skills of Mikhail Gorbachev.

Since becoming premier last June, Mr Grosz has built up a reputation as a competent politician, willing to tackle unpleasant economic issues and softening the blow of austerity measures with promises of more political reform. Mr Grosz has moved around the country, chatting with workers and apparently enjoying interviews with journalists from the State-run media. He capped these efforts last month with a visit to Britain, where he proved an unabashed admirer of the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.

Like Mr Gorbachev, who is two years his junior, Mr Grosz comes from an impeccably communist background and got his start in politics in the turbulent times around Josef Stalin’s death in 1953. Official biographies say Mr Grosz was born into a worker’s family in 1930 in the north-eastern city of Miskolc.

A Communist by 1945, Mr Grosz like his mother, worked in a print shop. By 1949, he was in Budapest with the national party youth organisation. Seizing a chance for promotion and education, Mr Grosz entered the country’s Military Academy in the early 19505,

training as an officer for the Hungarian Army, whose upper ranks had fallen victim to sweeping Stalinist purges. Within a year, Mr Grosz was a deputy lieutenant. He then served as full lieutenant stationed near the Yugoslav border and also charged with the political education of his battalion.

In November, 1954, Mr Grosz was discharged from the Army and sent to Borsod county party committee in northern Hungary to observe party organisations, factories, and coalmines in his native Miskolc. Official accounts suggest Mr Grosz spent the turbulent year of 1956 in Miskolc, removed from the turmoil in Budapest, where Mr Kadar emerged as undisputed leader after Soviet troops quashed an anti-Stalinist revolt and arrested liberal leader, Imre Nagy. By 1961, Mr Grosz had moved up to the central apparatus of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party after a spell at the party academy and was named party head at State-run radio and television. Between 1968 and 1973, Mr Grosz was deputy head of the party’s central committee propaganda department, and from 1974 to 1979 was in full charge of the official propaganda machine. He returned to Borsod as regional party head in 1979, and in December, 1984, advanced to head the influential Budapest party.