How Hungary Lost Its Freedom
PEYER, CHARLES
How Hungary Lost Its Freedom By Charles Peyer Ten years ago this month, the people of Hungary overwhelmingly repudiated Communism in that country's last really free election. Within the next two...
...When we were rebuffed, we decided to resign from the party and run as independents...
...Before World War II, I had been General Secretary of the Hungarian Trade Union Council...
...Worst of all, a provision was introduced whereby persons who worked at some distance from their homes could vote wherever they happened to be on election day by presenting a so-called "blue ticket"-an open invitation to Communist-organized mass fraud...
...Thus, the "Government ticket" received 61.5 per cent of the vote, and the final seal was placed on the destruction of Hungarian democracy...
...Less well known, however, but just as much a part of Hungary's national tragedy, was the destruction of the free trade unions and the Social Democratic party...
...Everything we had foreseen came true on election day...
...On June 13, 1948, the Social Democratic party was formally merged with the Communist party...
...others bearing German names were barred as "Nazis," even though many were Jews who had just returned from concentration camps...
...The last three, however, had run on a joint ticket with the Communists...
...If the Hungarian people were summoned to the polls tomorrow in a free election, they would make their voice heard in unmistakable terms...
...Thousands of trucks roamed the country, filled with Communist activists each of whom held 20 to 30 "blue tickets" which he used to vote in every town or village along the way...
...The most important step was the crushing, from within and without, of the Smallholders party-a process which culminated in the spring of 1947 with the ouster of Premier Ferenc Nagy...
...It had run on a joint ticket with the CP in the Budapest city elections of October 1945, and presented independent candidates in the general elections only under pressure...
...The rigging of the election began with the compiling of election rolls...
...The division of Parliamentary seats was 245, 69 and 70 respectively, out of a total of 421...
...but both soon found themselves in concentration camps...
...Shortly after the elections, George Marosan, one of the pro-Communist leaders, simply announced that all right-wing members of the party central committee had been expelled...
...George Marosan was made a Cabinet minister and Arpad Szakasits, a leader in the putsch, became President of Hungary...
...Finally, the party leadership consented to Communist-sponsored changes in the election law, paving the way for the fraudulent elections of August 31, 1947...
...Within the next two years, however, by a combination of coercion, fraud and betrayal, Hungary was transformed into a Soviet satellite...
...Istvan Riesz, the Minister of Justice, was beaten to death in jail...
...In spite of this, and of the violence used against opposition candidates before the election, the Communists were able to boost their total to only 1,111,674 votes, while the Smallholders received 769,678, the Social Democrats 743,349, and the Peasants party 414,437...
...In the elections of November 4, 1945, the Smallholders party won 2,687,701 voles of a total of 4,721,655 cast, the Social Democrats 819,824, and the Communists only 797,736...
...The complete liquidation of the Social Democratic party was now only a question of time...
...As the leading party, the Smallholders headed the new government...
...The Communists, backed by the presence of the Soviet Army, now set about their task of subverting Hungarian democracy...
...When I returned in 1945 from the Nazi concentration camp at Mauthausen, I found the post already filled by a Moscow-appointed Communist...
...After factory elections resulted in overwhelming defeats for the Communists, the Trade Union Council was forced to accept a system of parity whereby the top posts were shared equally by Communists and Social Democrats...
...The latter made no attempt to appeal the legality of this action and meekly withdrew...
...Having been chairman of the Budapest Social Democratic faction for 25 years before the Nazi occupation, I headed the opposition group which now protested to the party leadership against acceptance of the new law...
...The Social Democratic party, its inner councils infiltrated by secret Communists, had offered little resistance to the Communist onslaught from the start...
...while Palfi-Oster-reicher, head of the political section of the Defense Department, ended on the gallows together with Communist Interior Minister Laszlo Rajk...
...The quislings who helped destroy the Social Democratic party suffered the fate of most of those who play the Communist game...
...It was not the Social Democratic masses, but their leaders, who betrayed their party and country to the Communists...
...Numerous voters known for their anti-Communist views were simply left off the rolls...
...Before long, the entire trade-union movement had fallen into Communist hands...
Vol. 38 • November 1955 • No. 47
