HUNGARY: TWENTY YEARS LATER
Javers, Ron
HUNGARY: TWENTY YEARS LATER RON JAVERS Probably the 'freest' of the Communist states adjacent to Russia When the city of Budapest was mentioned not long ago at a fashionable Philadelphia Main...
...Kadar, who was himself imprisoned in a 1951 purge, has gained acceptance and even grudging popularity among Hungarian non-Communists because he didn't continue a bloodbath after the uprising...
...Study of the Russian language is mandatory from the fifth grade on, yet most Hungarian students speak better German or English...
...The typical work week is six days with every other Saturday free...
...As in most Communist countries, television sets are relatively inexpensive-every second family has one and the medium is used heavily by the party to make its points...
...Families with three or more children are given preference under the government's plan to encourage reproduction to combat Hungary's traditional labor shortage...
...colleges, in fact, have no department of East European studies...
...A two-pound loaf of bread is less than a dime...
...Janos Kadar phrased it this way: "It should be known that in the field of politics we are-even if we insist on the most polite terminology-opponents...
...Since the 'Sixties, the leadership has pursued a peace policy with the church, one of the largest landowners in pre-Communist Hungary and one of the government's bitterest cold war foes...
...For example, the hotel's air circulation will come from the network of tunnels and passageways that have run beneath this spot for centuries...
...His reference is to a widely reported "private" remark of State Department Counselor Helmut Sonnenfeldt last December that U.S...
...Yet there remain latent cold warriors sprinkled among the apostles of detente on both sides...
...They are joined by an East German couple...
...Part of the ancient monastery will house a restaurant...
...Actually, fewer than 800,000 of Hungary's 10.5 million people are members of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, the Communist party which is Hungary's only legal political party...
...Politics is not a subject of immediate discussion among most people because to a large extent they know there's nothing they can do to influence politics...
...Planners now are trying to reconcile necessary price increases-like last year's SO percent hike in sugar prices and this summer's 33 to 40 percent boost in meat prices -with the public's natural resistance to paying more at the market...
...While in ideology the two systems face each other with unreconcilable antagonism...
...Everywhere I visited- factories, cooperative farms, private homes-the first question was the same: "What about crime in America...
...In a large way, much of the residual Hungarian Catholic-vs.-Communist cold war fervor died with him...
...It is the new, $50-million, 325-room Budapest Hilton Hotel, something of a symbol of East meeting West with both sides looking to come out better in the bargain...
...Students wishing to pursue courses in the area quickly learn to look under "Russian Studies" in their catalogues...
...The universities were opened to all and the whole country began to breathe more easily...
...In other Communist countries, particularly East Germany, the borders to the West remain effectively closed for tourists...
...Prices/ of many basic commodities-meat, sugar, dairy products, children's clothing-were held down artificially while production costs continued to increase...
...But there are discussions...
...That those little wooden desks were no protection at all against a nuclear attack was never a consideration...
...one of the Hungarians shouts, downing his glass...
...Before that we had always spent several weeks each spring in Paris where my son was in school...
...Such was the sentiment I heard repeated again and again everywhere in Hungary...
...We'walk on eggs...
...Defeated by the Russian troops, Nagy and a group of supporters took sanctuary in the Yugoslav embassy...
...Soon they are back on the dance floor...
...I suggest to one of the Polish students...
...When complete, the Budapest Hilton will be owned totally by the government through its agent, the Danubius Hotel and Spa Co...
...That's what many believe, or choose to believe...
...I hadn't thought much of the words before...
...Prositl" one of the East Germans contributes...
...Today, most Western observers and Hungarians themselves agree that Hungary is probably the "freest" of the Communist states sharing a border with the Soviet Union...
...Hungary's desire for "most-favored nation" status in her trade relations with the U.S.-a development which would reduce present prohibitory tariffs-remains hostage in Congress to the Soviets' status, tied up in the debate over free emigration for dissidents...
...What do they say in Russian...
...This doctrine provided great changes in the lives of millions of Hungary's non-Communists, opening the way for at least limited participation in national life...
...In 1976, the tanks are gone, but Soviet troops remain in Hungary, closeted in their camps to be sure, and maintaining as low a profile as troops anywhere can, but present...
...who has been supervising the project since construction began in 1973, is only half kidding...
...Ne csuggedj...
...Last July Fourth, on the 200th anniversary of the nation at the forefront of the capitalist system, Clayton Mudd, the U.S...
...The Balaton" is a ritual for Hungarians and it's fast becoming the same thing for thousands of non-Hungarian tourists, mainly from neighboring Communist states, but from Western Europe as well...
...The music is dated and slightly off key, yet for the dozens of young Hungarians, Poles, Czechs and Germans undulating on the tiny dance floor the feeling is definitely "all rood...
...But at least we aren't yet filed under 'Russia' at Harvard," the student adds wryly...
...By November 1962, in a brilliant political stroke, Kadar had reversed the old Stalinist line, creating a new slogan: "Whoever is not against us is with us...
...A 1964 agreement with the Vatican provided for religious freedom, a freedom theoretically already granted by Hungary's constitution...
...3, 1956...
...With degrees in economics and engineering and fluency in four languages...
...Teke has been around...
...Budapest has a way of doing that...
...Teke is one of a growing number of semi-independent executives whose talents have flowered since the introduction in 1968 of Hungary's New Economic Mechanism...
...Oh, what a delightful city...
...embassy where he had resided since being freed from prison during the 1956 uprising...
...With all that cool air, well save on air conditioning...
...Several students told me the reason for such poor mastery of Russian is precisely because it is a required course, considered to be a hangover from the Stalinist Fifties when the "russification" of Hungarian culture was still thought possible...
...It's difficult to be really certain...
...It is not insignificant that almost 20 years after its original publication, Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Soviet Bloc remains the standard American college text on East European affairs...
...Soon the laughing group begins proposing toasts...
...There are long waiting lists for subsidized flats...
...Never Russians...
...Though few in number, they continue to play an important part in the nation's cultural and economic life...
...The Hungarian government first decided to build a hotel on the site and began negotiations with the Hilton company in the early Seventies...
...Yet little else in Hungary is the same as it was in 1956...
...His voice is drowned in a chorus of agreement...
...While teachers painted horrid pictures of the atomic radiation, world-enveloping mushroom clouds and nuclear firestorms...
...Film and theater tickets can be had for under a dollar...
...The suite will rent for about $220 a day...
...Do Communists really want to enslave the world?' That kind of thing...
...Biro has a doctorate in international law and a business instinct that would gladden the heart of Henry Ford...
...1, 1956 dropped the biggest Molotov cocktail in the face of the Soviets, withdrawing Hungary from the Warsaw Pact and proclaiming neutrality...
...Earlier five-year plans sought to create employment...
...I hope you children here one day will look back on this celebration, proud of the fact that we showed the Flag here today in the People's Republic of Hungary...
...In 1960, only a half million citizens of other countries crossed Hungary's slowly opening borders...
...That still comes up among Hungarian close friends discussing past events," the journalist told me...
...Biro...
...The present glut of administrators and managers forced a government hiring-freeze on white-collar positions...
...I wish Kldar a long life," one middle-aged professional man told me...
...But it seems to come up less and less frequently as the years go by...
...Americans put Bibles in every hotel room," Biro says amiably...
...Several Hungarian Jews I spoke with refused to allow their names to be used...
...On a recent visit to a Midwest university, one Hungarian journalist interviewed 30 American families and found their hospitality uniformly gracious and their knowledge of Hungary uniformly appalling...
...From '56 to '58 the play was completely in Russian hands...
...There are no Russians here," he says firmly...
...Valiant cold warriors, led by Eisenhower's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, were battling the International Communist Conspiracy...
...All drink, though I'm pressed by one dogged student of English for an explanation of exactly what that phrase means...
...Many factories have been directed to transfer nonproductive administrators into the ranks of physical workers, a shuffling fraught with political tension...
...At one table three Poles and three Hungarians are competing to see who can buy more of the excellent local $2.40-a-bottle white wine...
...Kadar's present popularity-and he is probably more popular among non-Communists than among his own party members-is a phenomenon Hungarians themselves are still trying to understand...
...We don't want them stepping in here, telling the Hungarian communists how to treat their Jewish intellectuals...
...I was nine years old...
...That's why more and more Poles, Czechs and East Germans are flocking to The Balaton...
...The noisy group falls silent...
...We'll provide everything but the priest...
...Architecturally incorporated within the hotel's modern concrete and tinted-glass walls are the remains of a medieval Dominican monastery and a subterranean cavern once reputedly the secret entrance of spies and statesmen to the nearby Royal Palace...
...Just 10 years ago, such talk would have been heresy in Communist Hungary...
...Most of the literary people I know are definitely non-party types...
...How about Russian...
...In 1976, American children no longer cower beneath their school desks in fear of the Red Menace...
...But there's an historical streak of anti-Semitism which runs through Hungary...
...Everything here," he says with a sweeping gesture of both arms, "will be for sale...
...Twenty years later many Hungarians seem to have forgiven or at least forgotten Kadar's apparent treachery...
...Balaton is a notorious meeting spot for East and West Germans, families and friends who live on different sides of the border and who otherwise would have no opportunity to meet in such relaxed surroundings...
...The five-piece combo in the little Balaton resort club is struggling its way through "Tutti Frutti...
...Most of the recent construction is ugly...
...Only Kadar's repeated public assurance of full amnesty persuaded Nagy and his group to leave the protection of the embassy on Nov...
...Each summer weekend crowds jam the newly completed M-7 highway for the two-hour drive from Budapest to any one of the dozens of tiny resort towns strung out around the lake...
...In !j February 1975, Mindszenty, bitter and living in Rome, was "retired" by Pope Paul who described him as "indomitable, tormented and controversial...
...On the way to visit the Budapest plant of the United Incandescent Lamp and Electrical Co., one of the world's largest bulb makers, I tell my guide that I am certain this will be one of the bright spots in the Hungarian economy...
...The chain will provide the Hilton name, operational advice and training, its worldwide booking service and a resident expert in return for a sliding percentage based on incoming revenue...
...And people are quite frank among themselves...
...Hungarians grow weary of Western tourists' questions about religion...
...We have no foreign policy," he says with a straight face...
...Yet they still do not know very much about their mutually coexisting adversaries...
...Today Jews are less than 10 percent of Hungary's population...
...Health care is free...
...In Hungary, the difficulties are mainly in expense (a would-be vacationer must buy his dollars or francs or marks from the government at high rates) and red tape...
...Terrible bitterness lingered after the events of 1956...
...I asked one prominent party journalist, a former politician, how Kadar could have assured Nagy amnesty and then permitted his execution...
...The Hungarian economy suffers a shortage of semi-and unskilled laborers and a surplus of white-collar workers, a problem just the reverse of that of most industrialized nations...
...In 1971 Mindszenty was permitted to leave the U.S...
...For communists and non-communists alike life is bard but not without a growing number of compensations...
...American reporting on Communist states, until very recently, has concerned itself almost entirely with classical "Kremlinology," concentrating on power struggles and personalities rather than on the dynamics of the individual societies, issues and emerging trends...
...Economic development has not been spectacular or without problems, but it has been steady...
...The hotel's Hungarian general manager, Karoly Biro, is a dapper, Swiss-trained 50-year-old who says his first allegiance is to the Hungarian state with the Hilton brass running a close second...
...Today, more and more managers, especially the most successful ones, are speaking cautiously in terms of profits, competition and market conditions...
...They were immediately abducted by Soviet authorities and taken to Rumania...
...Patrick's Cathedral Hilton" would be for many Americans...
...I ask the manager which presidents-Communist or capitalist-will stay here when it's complete...
...The city is gorgeous, not spoiled like Paris and London...
...The 1968 reform was designed to let market forces play a larger role in the planned economy, allowing managers a greater degree of freedom in charting the courses of their companies...
...Russian tourists in Hungary often stock up on items they can't get at home...
...charg6 d'affaires in Budapest made the following remarks at a picnic for families of embassy employees and American tourists: "I'd like to remind the children here, and even those not so young, that we are celebrating July Fourth in a country not only opposed but antagonistic to all of those principles we hold dear...
...All liberalization in Hungary-democratic, social and economic-must be viewed in that context...
...The 86-year-old cardinal died in May 1975...
...Certainly there were executions and jail terms-no one knows for sure how many-but by January 1959 the Kadar government announced the end of trials for participation in the uprising...
...Equally common were questions about Teddy Kennedy, (Would people forget about Chappaquiddick by the time of the 1980 presidential elections), Jimmy Carter, and the Viking landing on Mars...
...Wages are low by American standards, but social benefits are high...
...More accurately, the liberalization reflects a return to realism, and the growing sophistication of Hungary's Marxist planners...
...Creative" is a word one hears these days among the party faithful throughout Hungary...
...It was Nagy who on Nov...
...There's not much love here for Russia or Russians," an American writer living in Budapest says...
...for England...
...It's not exactly Southern California, but we Hungarians enjoy it anyway...
...Elvis Presley and a vaguely subversive new music, Rock V roll, were sweeping America...
...Soon it is my turn...
...policy would respond to "the clearly visible aspirations in Eastern Europe for a more autonomous existence within the context of a strong Soviet geopolitical influence" and "a more natural and organic" Soviet-East European relationship...
...Next somebody offers "Cheers...
...In 1956, the year Soviet tanks rolled into Budapest and over the popular uprising in Hungary, Dwight D. Eisenhower was President...
...Somewhere, the ghosts of so many happy warriors must have been smiling...
...These days we have few problems," one writer told me...
...Traditionally poor in natural resources, Hungary relies heavily-to the tune of more than 40 percent of its national income-on foreign trade...
...HUNGARY: TWENTY YEARS LATER RON JAVERS Probably the 'freest' of the Communist states adjacent to Russia When the city of Budapest was mentioned not long ago at a fashionable Philadelphia Main Line cocktail party, a middle-aged lady in a proper tweed suit, wife of a very proper capitalist banker, began to gush...
...Young singles and childless couples often live with relatives...
...Because after him there's a question mark...
...As we stroll through the 80-percent completed complex of bars, shops and suites, he grows more and more expansive...
...Most U.S...
...Kadar, meanwhile, had fled the city to form an all-Communist government in concert with the Soviets...
...A ride on Budapest's clean, fast and practically crime-free subway costs a nickel...
...In no European country-East or West-are the people so badly informed...
...Press accounts from the "satellites" have tended to follow a pattern developed in the cold war when access was more limited and correspondents pretended to report what was really going on by scrutinizing the seating order of party officials at public functions and interviewing occasional defectors...
...But Laszlo Teke appreciates the pun immediately...
...The agreement runs for 20 years with a renewal option upon the consent of both parties...
...Well, here's mud in your eye," I offer...
...We have a whole church right inside the hotel...
...I hope there won't be a change for the worse, but I'm not expecting anything radically better either...
...And life, it's agreed by communists and non-communists inside and outside Hungary, is far better than at any time since the war...
...Yet Hungarians, both officials and private citizens, displayed a wealth of knowledge of American affairs...
...No one speaks the other's language well, the lingua franca being broken German...
...For the government the old buildings are tourist attractions, but for Hungary's still religious millions they remain houses of God where mass is celebrated and communion distributed the same way they have been in Hungary since the tenth century...
...Eastern European builders seem to have a preference for prefabricated concrete boxlike structures that manage to look old and grey before the mortar dries...
...If there's a market for it, well even provide weddings in Matthias' Church and then bring the whole party across the street for a reception in our 12th-century Dominican cloistered garden...
...Laszlo Lekai Primate of Hungary...
...Although two-thirds of that trade is with the countries of Comecon, the Communist Common Market, Kadar is quite interested in enlarging trade with the West...
...In the 10 years from 1960 to 1970, Kadar's government managed to double the total value of all trade, materially improving the national standard of living and its own image within the country...
...Being something of a foot soldier in the long march of Hungarian socialist transformation, he doesn't get the joke...
...For many of Budapest's two million citizens, the modern hotel is a blot on the historic and religious landscape, just as a "White House Nikon" or a "St...
...Thq agreement stipulated that he leave Hungary...
...But there's a certain added athletic quality about it, a slightly primitive insistence...
...Laszlo Teke doesn't sound terribly different from most American executives when he says, "Frankly, my duty is to make as much profit for my company as I can...
...Traditional Western analysts, often wishfully it seems, view such economic liberation as a return to capitalism...
...The appointment was viewed in the West as the capstone of a religious detente unimaginable in the Fifties or early Sixties while Jozef Cardinal Mindszenty maintained his bitter and lonely exile in the American Mission in Budapest, a symbol of the deep enmity between church and state in Hungary...
...Despite cooperation in a growing number of areas, the Communist and capitalist systems remain unalterably opposed in fundamental philosophy...
...The other large problem economic planners face is prices...
...Aside from the aesthetic complaints, there were tremendous technical difficulties to overcome...
...The Hungarians thus far have avoided trouble by coupling their price boosts with a large "public information" effort and with monthly cash family allotments designed to soften the effects of the increases...
...The atmosphere here is a lot more free and open than I expected I'd find...
...Three days later, Russian troops attacked Budapest...
...Eighty percent of his firm's sales are in exports and Teke spends half of each year abroad on business...
...Hilton, primarily an operating company, has no capital investment in the project...
...You know, it was once thought quite impossible to build and operate a modern hotel in this medieval area...
...But the year he was graduated he insisted on showing us Budapest-he had been there on holiday with school chums-and we've been going back ever since...
...In 1976 Hungarian communists are quick to mention the government subsidies which keep many of the churches open...
...Soon, having exhausted all the nationalities present but not all of the wine, a Hungarian girl rises shouting "A votre Santtl" in mangled French...
...More guzzling...
...We discovered it three years ago...
...Perhaps a half million Jews were kilted in Hungary or in concentration camps during the war...
...Things are getting so crowded that the government recently banned motor boats from the lake in order to cut pollution...
...Of 30 families," he says, "seven or eight were completely unaware that Hungary is a Communist country...
...If they pay for the service, we'll change the flag daily...
...Television was in its infancy...
...We try to keep what you Americans call a low profile...
...Kadar's political success stems in large part from his economic success...
...Initially, Kadar was perceived as a quisling, responsible for the sellout of the revolution and for the execution of Imre Nagy, his fellow Communist who somewhat reluctantly came to preside over the uprising...
...The Russians" planned to unleash upon America, we children huddled beneath our wooden desks tensely awaiting the all-clear signal that would send us back to Arithmetic or out to recess while The Russians and Atheistic Communists retreated once more, vague threats on our developing political consciousnesses...
...The means of production remain firmly in the hands of the state, where the party intends to keep them...
...In the Seventies, while the eyes of both the Americans and the Soviets have been riveted on the emerging Communist parties in Western Europe, the countries of Eastern Europe have been quietly pursuing their own brands of Marxism...
...Na zdrawiel" Again the glasses are drained...
...In 1969, relations with the Vatican warmed further and the Pope appointed 10 new bishops to Hungarian posts...
...At 42, the graying, sardonic executive is one of Hungary's top businessmen, employing some 32,000 people...
...At 64, he has been reported ailing and the question of his successor is one many Hungarians would rather avoid...
...Kadar did what he had to...
...In the academic world things have not been much better...
...A Hungarian exchange student tells the story of his amazement upon discovering "Hungary" filed under "Austria" in stacks of Harvard's Widener Library, an anachronistic salute to the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire...
...Trade is economic life for Hungary...
...Going far beyond the cautious decentralization of the Soviets, it provided profit sharing, merit raises and other direct incentives to workers...
...And the people are so nice and friendly...
...Dulles and Eisenhower are gone, along with Stalin and Krushchev...
...The hotel's location provides the controversy...
...A conservative tendency on the part of many American East European scholars, many of whom are Emigre's, has not gone unremarked...
...Housing remains a serious problem in Hungary despite a government effort which built one million new flats over the past IS years...
...I found the university professors equally uninformed...
...Eight years of education is now compulsory and the government says that 91 percent of all Hungarians finish the elementary grades, though illiteracy remains a problem among Hungary's 330,000 Gypsies...
...We are Hungarians, Germans and Poles, not Russians...
...I remember the air raid drills which were a regular part of the elementary school curriculum in 1956...
...Well spoken, Comrade Hilton...
...The cavern, dubbed "Faust's Cellar" by Hilton promoters, will be a bar and lounge when the hotel opens early next year...
...Probably the most creative-and controversial-fruit of Marxian theory in all Hungary sits atop historic Castle Hill in the center of Budapest...
...Then the young Pole on my right, his face florid with excitement and wine and his eyes bright, addresses me quite seriously...
...Americans tend to see Hungary-when they see her at all-as either an enslaved nation of Molotov-cocktail-bearing Freedom Fighters or a romantic little backwater of colorful Gypsies all playing the same monotonous fiddle tune...
...It sits on the Buda side of the Danube just above the historic Fishermen's Bastion, hard by the sweeping, gothic Matthias' Church where Hungary's greatest king was crowned five centuries ago...
...You American journalists brag about freedom of information...
...Non-Communists were appointed to jobs formerly reserved for party members...
...Mentioned most often privately among those close to the government are Be"la Biscku, now secretary of the party central committee, and Gyorgy Lazar, president of the ministerial council...
...The government fears that public opinion if not tempered could become a source of popular unrest as it did m neighboring Poland this summer when Edward Gierek's government was forced to rescind massive food-price increases after workers rioted...
...The young government worker is referring to Lake Balaton, the largest lake in central Europe and Hungary's favorite playground...
...Hungarians today are not so much questioning Kadar's seamy rise to the top as hoping that he stays there...
...Just as we never dreamed in our most ambitious and childlike dreams that in fewer than 20 years cold war would be replaced by detente as Richard Nixon journeyed to Moscow to sip vodka and proffer hopes for peace with the recently dismantled Red Menace...
...They speak of "creative" work, "creative" economics, and of the need to follow the teachings of Marx "creatively...
...But actually, as a Hungarian student will point out to me later, "it's a worker's song...
...Prices of many consumer goods, which are in good supply generally, are often below Western levels...
...Janos Kadar, the party first secretary, who came to power on the backs of Russian tanks in 1956, has been moving the country slowly along the narrow path between the people's hearty nationalism and increasing pressure for "the good life," and the reality of Soviet expectations for "correct" Communist behavior in neighboring Warsaw Pact countries...
...each 1 percent increase in the national income requires a 1.8 percent increase in foreign trade...
...That seems to be where the American State Department has us...
...There is good music and bad music today in the land of Bartdk, Liszt and Koctely...
...In the West such music would be labeled nostalgic or campy, but these sweating, gyrating kids seem unaware of that Their dancing is as frenzied as any you'd find at a Euro* pean disco...
...Last December Paul VI named the Rev...
...The Soviets are notorious anti-Semites...
...We'll go you one better...
...We are standing in the nearly completed Presidential Suite with its sweeping view of the Danube and Pest on the other side...
...Food, child care, housing, public transportation, recreation and cultural activities are highly subsidized by the government...
...The band is playing "16 Tons," the song Tennessee Ernie Ford made so popular during the cold war Fifties...
...The others all asked the standard questions: 'Are the churches open...
...Next a Polish student rises...
...Why, one would hardly imagine they were Communists at all...
...There was no way they would have permitted Nagy to survive...
...This year Hungarian officials say the number will top six million...
...This view of the Ignorant American was reflected by other Hungarians I spoke with...
...On June 17, 1958, the Hungarian government announced the execution of Nagy and three of his top supporters, along with heavy prison terms for a half dozen others...
...After a firestorm of criticism, Sonnenfeldt withdrew the word "organic," the hackles of Americans of East European origin being too sensitive in this election year...
...Another heart subverted...
...American press reports from Eastern Europe have been scarce, concentrated mainly on the flare-ups such as Czechoslovakia experienced in 1968...
...He has learned his lessons the hard way...
...Is it really so dangerous in the cities...
...This night the music is bad-ancient 'Fifties imports from the U.S...
...The government doesn't keep official figures on the subject, but some 60 percent of the population is Roman Catholic...
...The average Hungarian today," the journalist added, "is a hardheaded political realist, very pragmatic...
...Because of tight currency exchange regulations designed to keep Western hard currencies flowing into Communist nations and very little flowing out, it's difficult for East Europeans to vacation in the West...
Vol. 103 • November 1976 • No. 23
