Hungary's Sincere Communist

...He could name no one...

...at least when he wrote this book, there was in his mind an enormous, all-encompassing theoretical structure with an answer to everything...

...The New Course was popular and Nagy was popular...

...Not once did he ask why all these terrible injustices, inefficiencies, lies and "deviations" from true Marxism keep permeating, and in fact dominating...

...Less than four months after completing this work, Nagy was swept back into the Premiership by the revolution—only to fall into unprecedented obscurity (nobody outside the Communist orbit even knows whether he is still alive...

...Nevertheless, Rakosi was at that time Prime Minister of Hungary, and he was dressed down by Malenkov like a wayward schoolboy because of a matter which was surely nobody's concern except his own and that of the Hungarian people...

...During that time, he had introduced a set of policies which became known as the "New Course...

...It greatly restricted the power of the AVH, the political police...

...Nagy had essentially completed this work in September 1955, but did not present it to Party members until just before the Central Committee plenum which ousted Rakosi in July 1956...

...whether to force farmers into collectives or give them a little freedom of choice for the time being...

...Not once did he ask himself howr it came to pass that men like Rakosi...

...And this book never comes to grips with the question of why success and mass popularity in a Communist land lead only to insults, accusations, expulsion from the Party, and even oblivion...

...The foursome had vindicated their removal of Nagy by calling the New Course "right-wing deviationism...

...Nagy, in a vast array of carefully reasoned and extensively documented arguments, not only rejects the charges of "right-wing deviation" as untrue but accuses his accusers of "left-wing deviation...

...He had objections to every name mentioned all but he alone were suspect...

...in his view, did great harm to the nation and to the cause of Communism...

...In any case, there must be many others among the Communist intelligentsia who still have not given up the illusion of a "better" Communism...

...whether to permit the intelligentsia to express their ideas or force them to support the Party line...

...This appalled us very much,' said Comrade Malenkov...

...But, then again, he might not...

...for whom he had such contempt, could grasp and retain power in Communist systems...

...This is true, however, only on paper...

...Despite vast knowledge of Communist affairs, scintillating skill in the dialectic, and impressive powers of logic in erecting an enormous theoretical edifice, Nagy was essentially a naive man...

...whether to seek one's own "road to socialism" on the basis of the Belgrade declaration or place one's country under Moscow's tutelage...

...things somehow never work out in practice because of some demoniacal forces and sinister villains...

...For example: "At a conference held in 1953, Comrade Malenkov pointed out that they had discussed personal questions with Rakosi 'We asked, whom do you recommend as your deputy...

...whether to invigorate Party life by frank and open discussion or to protect Party leaders and policies by secrecy...

...Communist reality wherever it is established...

...Yet he found nothing strange about the dicta of Stalin, Malenkov, Molo-tov, Khrushchev and Kaganovich in conversations with the Hungarian leaders (related here for the first time) touching on the most clearly internal affairs of the Hungarian nation...

...In an epilogue, George Paloczi-Horvath, Hungarian poet and playwright, gives us a priceless quotation...

...Such policies, in Nagy's opinion, corresponded to true Marxism-Leninism, in contrast to the repression, dishonesty, secretiveness, heedless industrialization, ruthless collectivization and subservience to Moscow practiced by the "foursome"— Matyas Rakosi, Erno Gero, Mihaly Farkas, Jozsef Revai—before and after the New Course...

...In an introduction...

...Hugh Seton-Watson, the eminent British scholar, leads the reader with his customary care and competence through the labyrinth of events that led to the New Course, tracing, at the same time, a competent political portrait of the author...

...In April 1955, Nagy was merely unseated by his opponents...

...He wanted no interference...

...The fact that Nagy was given to political fantasy in his theories does not mean that his New Course was not a great "success...

...The course of his arguments here reveals, perhaps more clearly than any document that has come out of the Communist world, how Communist dogma and practice is beset by insoluble contradictions in every sphere of life...

...It makes a terribly-ponderous, fascinating volume...

...It may well be that last fall's terrible events cannot be fitted into even so tightly woven an ideology as that of Nagy, and that, if he read the book today, he would recognize the quixotism of his earlier struggle...

...To come face to face with such a completely integrated, logically consistent and by no means easily refutable and yet totally unrealistic structure of political thought and conviction is indeed "breathtaking," as President Eisenhower called his conversations with Marshal Zhukov at a recent press conference...

...The New Course, a liberalization program, was aimed at raising the living standard of the Hungarian peasants and workers by decelerating heavy industrialization and collectivization of the land, thereby increasing the production of consumer goods and agricultural produce...

...Yet Nagy has no objection...

...Time and again he stressed the need for national independence, for Hungarians to solve their problems in their own special way, based on the peculiarities of the Hungarian situation...

...In reality, Nagy's exegesis of what he considers true Marxism merely shows us that there are still Communists in the world of Communism—true believers, dedicated idealists—side by side with the cynical and ruthless operators of state power...

...Again, though de-Stalinization was in full swing by the time Nagy made this work public, he did not hesitate to quote Stalin, as authoritatively as he does Marx and Lenin, in support of his doctrinal argument against Rakosi...

...Nagy would not agree...

...Nagy regarded Rakosi as his archenemy and wanted to marshal every conceivable argument against him...

...Yet, despite his successes and his popularity, he lost out in 1955 to the loathed "foursome...

...Rut in October 1956 he and the entire Hungarian nation, striving for many of the very reforms which Nagy expounds here, were crushed by Khrushchev, whom Nagy in this paper quotes as an authority on "real" Communism...

...whether to prepare for peace or for war...

...Nagy's position was full of contradictions of which he was unaware...

...There was an enormous relaxation of tension among the population—much less terror, a mass exodus from the hated farm collectives, new beginnings in almost every field...

...and, finally, whether to be a fundamentalist or a pragmatist in building Communism—these are basic problems to which there are no clear doctrinal answers...

...Nagy has no word of criticism for this behavior...

...The other Soviet leaders, quoted with approval by Nagy, express final judgments and recommendations on Hungary's agriculture, industrialization, Party organization and other questions in a way in which a somewhat exasperated corporation president might settle the problems of a delinquent subsidiary somewhere in the marginal areas of the enterprise...

...in which Rakosi declared that in a "socialist" state tanks could never be used against workers...

...Revieived by Konrad Kellen Chief, Broadcast Review Staff, Radio Free Europe This "dissertation," as Imre Nagy called it, affords Western observers new insights into the workings and problems of Communism...

...Imre Nagv now knows how false this boast u as...

...To him, as to the gambler at the roulette wheel, the system was always right...

...Finally, it aimed at a more voluntary fusion between Party leaders and Party members, Party members and non-Party members, Party and state, in the concerted effort of "building socialism...

...Nagy's brief is presented, despite considerable repetitiveness, in unabridged form...

...It is an open question whether Nagy has by now, like Milovan Djilas, crossed the threshold into a more real understanding of the nature of Communism...

...Whether to push heavy industrialization or the production of consumer goods...

...In the ideological and intellectual sphere, it aimed at what the author considers greater freedom of thought and a new "Communist morality" under which Party members could openly express their opinions and accept criticism without rancor or revenge...

...Written by a Communist for Communists, the 24 chapters of this work were Nagy's answer to the accusations leveled against him by other leading Hungarian Communists who had forced him to relinquish the Premiership he had held from July 4, 1953 until April 18, 1955...