The Life and Times of Janos Kadar
PALOCZI-HORVATH, GEORGE
The Life and Times of JANOS KADAR By George Paloczi-Horvath The last time I saw Janos Kadar, he was hurrying along a corridor in the Parliament building in Budapest. It was mid-November 1956, and...
...Rajk had not even been given the opportunity to exchange a last word with his wife...
...On his release by the government of Imre Nagy in 1954, he did not rejoin the Communist party but became active in the Petofi Circle and wrote for Irodalmi Ujsag, organ of the rebel writers...
...Throughout 1956, however, ihe anliStalinist movement in Hungary gathered force...
...How difficult it is to describe him for this world...
...True, no one has been arrested vet, but Rakosi has already announced that "hostile elements, which have crept into the Party, must be driven out and put under lock and key...
...1949: The Party has been in power for a year...
...and a number of them had every reason to fear they would be implicated by similar revelations...
...Mutual loyalty among Party members is a thing of the past...
...Kadar told her that he was the one who, on Rakosi's orders, had made treacherous promises in order to induce Laszlo Rajk to make a false confession...
...Janos Kadar and three other Party officials sat on the prisoners' bench...
...After these revelations—to which Rakosi listened, red with anger—any group of normal people would have decided at once to expel Rakosi and Kadar from the Party and have them arrested...
...He still believes the Communist party is the party of truth...
...But Rakosi feels that you will understand our position...
...A deep schism has appeared between the private and the public ego...
...Among the first, who went free in the summer of 1954, were Kadar and his group...
...His sole argument was that world Communism urgently needed the confessions since this was the only way to "expose" Tito...
...He is successful and meets his first Moscow-trained Hungarian Party leader, Erno Gero, the "human automaton...
...1 am coming to you on behalf of Comrade Rakosi...
...One has the task of defending these actions and waxing enthusiastic about them...
...When I returned to my cellmate, the noted Hungarian writer Pal Ignotus, I learned that he had also been picked as a witness and had also refused to invent lies against Kadar...
...Factories and Party cells organize protest meetings to demand that "Rajk and the other gangster spies'" be swiftly and mercilessly punished...
...One quotation will suffice: "The treason of the Imre Nagy Government opened the way for the counter-revolution, whose aim was to overthrow the Hungarian People's Democracy and turn the country over to the fascists, capitalists and big landowners...
...Kadar did not seem at all out of place in the Budapest of those days...
...The tape-recorder incident occurred in May 1956...
...After his release three years later, he told the Party Central Committee how he had been mistreated...
...After a pause, she added: "But can you forgive yourself...
...It would be difficult to squeeze more lies about the Hungarian people into a single sentence...
...The 14th point was as follows: "The Hungarian Revolutionary Workers' and Peasants' Government has, in the interest of our people, our working class and our homeland, requested the high command of the Soviet troops to help our people to crush the dark forces of reaction and counter-revolution and to restore the socialist people's regime and peace and order in our country...
...They all learn Russian so that they can talk to their Sox iet colleagues...
...He was active in the Revolution, fled after the Soviet intervention, and is now in London...
...Don't reply now...
...They regarded Kadar as an acceptable successor to Rakosi—an opinion in which Kadar did his best to confirm them...
...Naturally we all know that you are innocent...
...The purges have begun...
...Rajk finally promised to think Kadar's proposal over...
...One day in 1951, when I was already an emaciated prisoner in the security police's Vacs prison, I was taken to the Budapest AVO headquarters on the Fo Utca...
...Later, Kadar repeated many times that his government had requested Soviet intervention...
...He is regarded as a sociable, courageous and industrious man...
...Comrade Rakosi asked me to tell you that you will be rendering the Communist movement an historic service if you follow our instructions...
...The public ego, however, approves all this when it is done for the welfare and happiness of future generations...
...The newspapers and leaflets that appeared during the revolution—copies of which are kept hidden even today by most Hungarians—are ample documentary proof...
...One of Kadar's co-defendants had been a hard-boiled, conscienceless Party functionary...
...repeats constantly in speeches that Rajk is a wretched spy...
...The first moral schism results when public opinion is replaced by the organized public lie...
...He is seized but soon released...
...Gerii and Rakosi initiate those Hungarian Party chiefs who were not trained in Moscow into the mysteries of Stalinist leadership...
...Kadar was telling Rajk: "My dear Laci...
...Soon he has his own built-in mental censor which sharply rebukes him in those rare cases when his own thinking strays from the straight and narrow path of the current Party line...
...There is another thing...
...But now, as I write these lines in London, I see him from the vantage point of the normal world of men...
...Later, Kadar receives further training from Matyas Rakosi...
...He learns "Marxist thinking" before he has had an opportunity to learn how to think in general...
...Kadar stood by passively as Rakosi removed Nagy from the Government and then had him expelled from the Parly...
...Kadar's face, however, became more and more contorted...
...Kadar told him that, to stir the people up against Tito, Rajk had to be branded a lifelong miscreant...
...The Central Committee members told their closest friends, the latter passed it along to others...
...Kadar s relaxation after the ascetic life of earlier days remains within modest bounds...
...in the early fall, I followed along with thousands of others...
...Years later, we learned that we had been wrong...
...Dozens, then hundreds of Old Guard Communists, heroes of the Spanish Civil War, prominent Marxists, time-tested comrades from the illegal days are seized...
...He announced that in the future the Party would base itself only on the truth...
...But it is clear from the proclamation that the new government was formed several hours after the intervention...
...It begins quite normally...
...scrawled on walls—a city which had just been turned into the graveyard of a revolution...
...That is also untrue, but it sounds a little more plausible...
...asked Rajk...
...On October 31 and November 1, Kadar took part in the work of the revolutionary government...
...If you must have a conspiracy, you can charge that I instigated a plot against Rakosi...
...The great majority of the population stood behind Nagy, as did many of the lower Party and Government functionaries...
...She is hung up naked by her feet and beaten with rubber truncheons...
...It must have been a shock for him, but by no means a surprise...
...I was to be the first witness...
...His execution would be announced publicly, and he, his wife and his son would then be sent to the Crimea to recuperate...
...He has a woman friend of middle-class parentage...
...shouted one of Kadar's tormentors on the first day...
...After Gero's fall during the October revolution in Hungary, Kadar became General Secretary of the now non-existent Communist party...
...Word had also gotten around that several of the other defendants cried out when they reached the gallows: "You have tricked us...
...At 4 a.m...
...The vast majority of Party members turned against the regime during the revolution...
...In 1943, she is arrested by the Hungarian Gestapo and tortured for weeks...
...Gero becomes Kadar's second great mentor...
...When there is unrest in 1947 among the industrial workers of Miskolc, he confronts the aroused multitude alone and succeeds in appeasing it...
...In general, he found that top Party functionaries were most brutally treated right from the start, debased and humiliated so that they would forget what important figures they had been...
...They give him the key that opens the gate to the future: Marxist theory will make the working class invincible...
...But the Central Committee of the Communist party is not made up of normal people...
...Imre Nagy fought this system...
...He had been conferring behind closed doors with his police chief, and when we finally caught a glimpse of him he was about to receive a Soviet "technical mission...
...With amazement and horror, the Committee members heard a conversation which had taken place seven years before at 60 Andrassy Street, former headquarters of the AVO, between Laszlo Rajk and Janos Kadar...
...When one has moved up further in the hierarchy, one has less time for such moral soul-searching...
...The old feeling of exhilaration returns only when he visits Laszlo and Julia Rajk...
...His deathly pale face, furrowed brow, unsteady eyes and twitching eyelids revealed a totally exhausted man, driving himself forward only by superhuman effort...
...The big confession trials, whereby the leadership periodically rids itself of troublesome comrades and at the same time propagates a new political line, maintain the atmosphere of terror so necessary to the Stalinist system...
...But then fate intervened in the person of Justice Minister Eric Mohiar, who asked that the tape be plaved once more...
...At the next session of the Central Committee, he noted "the unwise behavior of Comrade Kadar, who has aligned himself with the people who are today demanding punishment of all those responsible for the Rajk trial...
...His private truth is now different from the public "truth," that is, from the given day's propaganda line...
...All of us in the adjoining cells thought for a long time that this represented the entire part played by little Laszlo Rajk's godfather in the Rajk tragedy...
...The group's enthusiasm and conviction prove contagious...
...he merely tried to create the impression that he was against the terror system...
...He is filled with blind trust in the two or three real Communists whom he comes to know...
...Julia Rajk refuses to talk and thus saves the lives of her husband and Janos Kadar...
...His successor at the Interior Ministry is Janos Kadar...
...One explains one's doubts by saying that one is still under the influence of bourgeois sentimentality, not yet ideologically strong enough...
...They have 110 bank accounts: they can draw any sum they desire from the national bank...
...asked Kadar when he had finished...
...Kadar is now one of the popular leaders of the Party, a member of the Central Committee and the Politburo...
...Rakosi now introduces the Soviet system...
...That was decided by Stalin, General Byelkin and Rakosi...
...On the evening of November 1, he quietly left the Parliament building, in which all the Government agencies operated during the Revolution, and took refuge with the Soviet high command...
...Even after weeks of sleeplessness, hunger and mistreatment, Rajk did not permit himself to be convinced at once...
...Can you forgive me...
...Kadar knew all that, but he did not believe that he himself could fall victim after having spent so long sacrificing others...
...We'll beat that Politburo membership right out of you...
...We cannot remain idle," Kadar added in his report, "when everyone is threatened by these methods of the security police...
...By the time of World War II, Janos Kadar is a member of the ten-man Communist "directorate" in Budapest...
...A man like Kadar, First Secretary of I In- fiudapest I'arly organization, has contact with life now only in the form of reports from subordinates, who report in the prescribed cliches of the Party bureaucracy...
...Kadar was urging Rajk, his best friend, to confess to the AVO and Byelkin's men everything they asked...
...Rajk was silent a moment and then said: "I forgive you...
...At 8:30, it broadcast the lat-ter's 15-point proclamation...
...We had little love for the former Interior Minister, under whose regime we had been tortured for more than a year, but neither were we prepared to help the AVO and the mass murderer Rakosi...
...But that does not trouble him, for he has only one interest: power...
...But he did not have the courage to admit his deeds publicly...
...They are described as members of the "Rajk espionage ring...
...Day after day, the newspapers publish wires calling for the immediate liquidation of "the imperialist monster Rajk...
...A few weeks later, Rajk is arrested...
...In 1948, the CP achieves absolute power, and Kadar becomes Deputy General Secretary...
...He joins the small illegal Communist group which professes to be fighting against social injustice and for a world of peace and prosperity...
...Rajk was already in prison...
...He schools him in the practice of Communism after power has been won...
...By now, the faithful Party member still has a "censor" in his head, but his thinking is no longer monolithic...
...Kadar gave his word of honor that the terms of the agreement would be carried out immediately after the trial...
...with the Russians already besieging Budapest, the Party entrusts him with a new mission: to break through and establish contact with the Russians...
...My husband would have been murdered in any case...
...Janos Kadar is still relatively normal...
...It became clear to the Party leaders that they would have to sacrifice Rakosi and some of his closer collaborators to save their own skins...
...He underwent a process I would call "controlled schizophrenia," a conscious mixture of self-deception and cynicism, fanaticism and opportunism...
...No one would believe, he said, that a man like him, who had belonged to the Party since early youth, had been a police spy and had worked for a half-dozen secret services, including the Gestapo...
...General Byel-kin of the Soviet MVD is in Budapest...
...Only truly great comrades are suited for the role which we want to assign to you...
...He was Party Secretary of one of the most important districts, and it was commonly assumed that he would soon move up to a more important post...
...His radio talk ended with the words: "Long live free, independent and democratic Hungary...
...The) take part in conferences and state banquets, direct Party and state business...
...It was mid-November 1956, and I was a member of a delegation sent by the Hungarian Writers' Union to protest against the daily arrests...
...the new Interior Mini-tor...
...Earlier that day, a seven-man preparatory committee for the formation of a new Communist party had met under Kadar's chairmanship...
...Rajk and confessed things to her which no one knew...
...All the anti-Stalinists in the Party gathered around Nagy, but few of them were in influential positions...
...Kadar was subjected to prolonged torture because, knowing from personal experience that the promises made to show-trial defendants are not kept, he refused to sign the confessions demanded of him...
...imperialist and Tito agent who started out as a spy for the Hungarian political police and later worked for the Gestapo, the French Deuxieme Burcau and the American OSS...
...So is his wife...
...More than four hours later, at 8:15, the Moscow Radio's Balkan Service announced the formation of the new Kadar Government...
...A blind idealist, Rajk has preserved his old enthusiasm...
...But his efforts were sabotaged by the gigantic Party apparatus, which Rakosi continued to control...
...In 1951, Janos Kadar himself was arrested...
...He fitted well into the depressing, out-of-joint surroundings, the burnt-out tanks and Communist slogans George Paloczi-Horvath is a noted Hungarian historian and Marxist theoretician who was arrested in 1949 and later sentenced to 15 years at forced labor...
...This time, something apparently went wrong: The assembled officials suddenly heard the beginning of Ihe conversation, which had been kept from them the first time...
...Between the summer of 1954 and the summer of 1956, a constantly intensifying movement developed inside and outside the Party against Rakosi in particular and the Stalinist terror in general...
...I saw four faces, all familiar...
...The leader of the illegal party, Laszlo Rajk, is his friend and model...
...Rajk is deposed as Interior Minister and transferred to the unimportant post of Foreign Minister...
...How does one go about producing not the portrait of a man but a description of the process through which conscience and character are transformed into moral disintegration, a decent human being made into a "great Communist leader...
...Kadar's stand could have been decisive in this struggle...
...He looked utterly played out...
...Why else would he have sought out Mrs...
...Kadar had no time to receive us...
...Kadar seems to have still had some sort of conscience at that time...
...On October 30, Imre Nagy announced the victory of the revolution...
...Before a witness testifies, he is ordered by the judge to look at the accused and tell the court whether or not he knows them...
...Indeed, he stressed repeatedly that Rajk was obviously innocent...
...Her son had been placed in a Party nursery under a false name and his birth certificate destroyed...
...But this is only the first of a long series of schisms...
...Her captors do not know she is Rajk's wife...
...He succeeded in releasing some 90,000 political prisoners from concentration camps and prisons...
...In numerous speeches, Kadar was obliged to admit publicly the crimes of the old leadership...
...He asked me to explain the situation to you...
...Besides the accused, only AVO functionaries were present...
...The Politburo members receive luxury autos villas and unlimited checkbooks...
...I was "interrogated" for weeks about Kadar and his friends...
...At this time, Mrs...
...At the end of 1944...
...And yet, in a land once more ruled by the murderers and informers of the secret police, there is hardly a man who would change places with Janos Kadar...
...The Party would always be grateful to him...
...The Partv does not permit him to marry her...
...To the general amazement, Kadar did not retire from politics...
...Rajk...
...At the beginning of January 1957, Kadar made his long-awaited statement of political principles...
...Rajk gives birth to a son, and Kadar stands godfather at the Soviet-style christening ceremony...
...Then he turned to an aide and asked him to turn on a tape-recorder which had been set up in the room...
...In the spring, Mrs...
...Janos Kadar listened with downcast face...
...Today he is in power...
...But he did nothing—beyond his report to the Party Central Committee mentioned above...
...His features had a cowardly and, at the same time, a wild expression...
...The Party did not ask Rajk to sacrifice his life, only to commit a kind of moral suicide...
...Later, we learned that after his release from prison he had visited Rajk's widow, who had also just been released...
...They ride about in their huge cars, shielded by thick curtains from the curious stares of pedestrians...
...It had been common knowledge in Budapest that a leading officer of the AVO was later forced to commit suicide because he had made a few incautious remarks about the agreement...
...they live together like a devoted middle-class couple, surrounded by the standard luxuries of a Politburo member...
...There were demands on all sides that Rakosi be called to account for the show trials and the mass murders...
...her son has been taken from her on orders from above...
...soon "everyone" knew the facts...
...Kadar reasoned with him, flattered him, promised him the sun, moon and stars but Rajk held firm...
...This is the realm where ideology is either taken seriously or completely ignored, depending entirely on the need of the moment...
...In 1953, during the anti-Stalinist "thaw," Imre Nagy became Premier of Hungary...
...Vladimir Farkas beat Kadar until he lost consciousness, then urinated in his face when he came to...
...What do you gain by proving that I have always been a scoundrel...
...Rajk is King siek in the cellar of an AVO (Hungarian secret police) prison...
...On the very day of his execution, he still believed that the Party would abide by the agreement...
...Kadar knows, of course, that the Hungarian people does not need such proof...
...Now, after months of torture, his face seemed curiously humane...
...Kadar—Rakosi's confidant, who had himself been responsible for the planning and direction of several "show trials"—knew that Party history consisted of an endless series of such trials, great and small...
...If you had refused, then the baldheaded murderer [Rakosi] would have found other willing tools...
...on November 4, the Soviet troops launched their attack on Budapest...
...Rakosi heard of the plan...
...this gives Kadar a certain moral underpinning...
...One is loyal to one's friends and does not resort to deception, theft, slander and murder...
...In private life, one behaves decently or at least tries to do so...
...In 1955, Rakosi intensified his campaign against Imre Nagy...
...For my part, I can state that I fully approve what has been said by . my friends and esteemed compatriots Imre Nagy, Zoltan Tildy and Ferenc Erdei...
...A young man is driven by moral indignation to political activity...
...They want to know only two names: those of the Communist leader and his deputy...
...The 50 listeners thought only of the consequences which such a course might have for them...
...A man from the working class who became an "intellectual" and a hero in Spain, Rajk is among the bravest of the brave...
...Kadar, a member of the Nagy Government, followed with this declaration: "I hereby state unequivocally that all the members of the Party Presidium fully support the decisions taken by the Premier...
...Kadar never came out openly against Rakosi...
...In so doing, Kadar made no attempt whatever to depict Rajk as a criminal...
...During this time, the workers play a small role in the life of Comrade Kadar...
...After a period of time, he would be assigned an important Party post in a remote part of the USSR under another name...
...With Kadar Minister of the Interior...
...They rise early and retire late...
...It was a shattering experience for Mrs...
...Since the other six committee members were later arrested or shot, this suggests that Kadar did not receive instructions from Moscow on a betrayal until after the meeting...
...We are now in the era of Hitler and the Spanish Civil War...
...If you want to go on living as a decent person, you must tell all Hungary and the whole world what the secret of the Rajk trial was and the role that you played in it...
...They possess calm self-assurance, vast knowledge and the power of fanaticism...
...As the tape was played, the Central Committee members and several higher Party functionaries—some 50 persons altogether—recalled the fate of Rajk and his family...
...On July 18, Soviet Politburo member Anastas Mikoyan had Rakosi removed and Erno Gero named his successor...
...His face, once handsome but now made ugly by years of lying and self-debasement, might have inspired pity —had it not been so plain what gripped and motivated him...
...In 1944, Kadar tries to slip across the Yugoslav border in order to contact Tito...
...His torturer was Vladimir Farkas, a lieutenant-colonel in the security police and son of Mihaly Farkas, Defense Minister and Deputy Secretary of the Party...
...The report of what had happened soon made the rounds...
...During the October 1956 uprising, I heard three Committee members tell the story to one of our revolutionary committees...
...Personally, the two remain good friends...
...Early in December 1951, we were again taken to AVO headquarters, where on the 11th Kadar was tried...
...Another defendant, Sandor Haraszti, a proud old revolutionary, had become positively handsome...
...The Csepel steel workers in Budapest had burned their Party books before the giant statue of Stalin which they had wrecked...
...He could only assume that his political career was at an end...
Vol. 40 • April 1957 • No. 14
