Embers on the Danube
FABIAN, BELA
Restless Satellites In last week's issue, we printed a letter from a Moscow student and a report of a Moscow writers' meeting to indicate the ideological stirrings which have begun in the Soviet...
...We are lost," said one, "I give up...
...The sharp decrease—how much more than 4 per cent we can only guess—took place in machine industry and construction, doubtless reflecting losses in such revolutionary workers' strongholds as Csepel, Ujpest and Dunapentele...
...The paper specified, however, that there was little change in the chemical, garment and textile industries, while there were actually more workers in food industry than a year earlier...
...Both the Hungarian and East German reports stress the importance of Gomulka's Poland for the entire Soviet orbit—not least of all for Russia itself...
...Of an estimated 2,000 persons who have been executed since the terror began, the overwhelming majority have been workers...
...The regime has arrested and/or deported all the leaders and members of the revolutionary Workers Councils who did not manage to escape the country...
...Here we present two reports, one on Hungary itself, the other on East Germany, which show that the Soviet occupation forces in the satellite states are also receiving a rather revolutionary political education...
...Though it has been slowly rising, widespread shortages are freely admitted and inflation threatens...
...Meanwhile, larger Soviet forces, stationed in Poland, are exposed to that country's infectious, relatively liberal atmosphere...
...If and when such an attempt is made on the Vistula, the revolutionary embers still glowing on the Danube will also burst into flame...
...Among the prominent writers in prison are the talented Communists Tibor Dery, Gyula Hay and Zoltan Zelk, as well as such promising young writers as Gyula Obersovsky, Sandor Novobatzk, Istvan Eorsi and Balazs Varga...
...The Kadar regime's press, as well as letters coming out of Hungary, give a picture of terror worse than that under Matyas Rakosi between 1949 and 1952...
...Rainer Hildebrandt, a Social Democratic veteran of the anti-Hitler resistance, is the author of The Explosion, a documentary history of the June 1953 East German uprising, and a close observer of Soviet affairs...
...Stern measures have also been taken against the writers...
...Bela Fabian, a former member of the Hungarian Parliament and inmate of Nazi and Soviet concentration camps, is press chairman of the Assembly of Captive European Nations and a member of the Hungarian National Council...
...Some 56 per cent of the collectives were dissolved during the revolution...
...Meanwhile, in the countryside, the regime's attempts to persuade peasants to return to collective farms have not met great success...
...Many look to Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe for developments that will begin a new general uprising against Communism...
...Thev will have to prove their conduct during the revolution...
...The concentration camps at Recsk and Kistarca are jammed with arrested revolutionaries, and a special camp was opened at Obuda, a suburb of Budapest, for youths under 14...
...Because the Kremlin fears the ideological contamination of so many crack divisions, many Hungarians believe that Moscow must, relatively soon, attempt to oust the present Gomulka regime in Warsaw...
...The leaders of the Journalists' Association and other intellectual groups have been arrested...
...The famous Petofi Club was dissolved, replaced by the "Tancsics Club," also— paradoxically—named after a writer-rebel of the 1848 Revolution...
...Throughout the country, Kadar's "emergency police" stage surprise raids, demanding identification papers, terrorizing people whose relatives escaped abroad...
...trials in their cases do not yet seem expedient for the regime...
...With that he sinks to the bottom and drowns...
...Restless Satellites In last week's issue, we printed a letter from a Moscow student and a report of a Moscow writers' meeting to indicate the ideological stirrings which have begun in the Soviet Union as result of the Polish and Hungarian revolts last fall...
...students seeking religious education are harassed...
...Moscow's realists probably have few illusions that such terror will win them friends in Hungary...
...Hungary 6 Months Later Embers on the Danube By Bela Fabian In Hungary today, where the revolution has gone underground, the following anecdote is most popular: Two frogs fall into a jug of cream...
...The Writers' Union, which with its newspaper Irodalmi Ujsag led the opposition to the old Rakosi-Gero regime, has been dissolved...
...The regime has also abolished the independent student organizations formed in the revolution, setting up a new Communist Youth League (KISZ) under central Party control...
...Russian-language study is again compulsory in universities...
...Of an estimated 35,000 Hungarians deported to the Soviet Union since November, the majority are workers, most of the rest students...
...The embers of that revolution are still glowing under the ashes despite unprecedented terror unleashed by the Kadar regime...
...The purpose of the terror is that of a deterrent, a warning to other peoples under Kremlin control...
...There are 8 Soviet divisions in Hungary, 22 in East Germany, 12 in Poland and perhaps another half-dozen near the Soviet-Polish frontier—more than a half million soldiers in all...
...As a result, production has not yet recovered pre-revolutionary levels...
...The study of Marxism-Leninism has been restored to its former place in the curriculum...
...The official statistical bureau revealed on January 17 that industrial production in December was only 30 per cent of the September level...
...While Petofi Club meetings drew overflow crowds, the Tancsics Club is boycotted and meets in half-empty halls...
...A month ago, the regime issued a decree ordering all citizens to report to police stations by September 30 and present identification cards and military documents...
...Chief targets of the terror are the three groups which played the major roles in the revolution: workers, students and writers...
...According to the official labor paper Nepakarat (April 25), the number of workers and employees in industry was 4 per cent lower in March 1957 than in March 1956...
...The other frog keeps churning vigorously until—he finds himself atop a jug of butter...
...Almost all recall that the Soviet Army was a two-edged sword in the hands of the Kremlin last October and November...
...Six months after Soviet tanks installed the counter-revolutionary Janos Kadar regime, few Hungarians are resigning themselves to the permanence of that rule...
...The regime claims that 13 per cent of the peasants who quit the collectives have returned—a small percentage, indeed, in view of the regime's persistent pressure...
...Ferenc Munnich, Kadar's Minister of the Interior, has gathered together the remnants of the hated AVH into a new "emergency police" which has been arresting, executing and deporting revolutionaries en masse...
...large sections of the regular occupation force had to be disarmed and replaced by Mongolian troops and MVD units before the revolution could be quelled...
...Yet the repression has a boomerang effect, too, as it demoralizes the Soviet troops who come in contact with the Hungarian population...
...Obersovsky and Eorsi have been placed on trial, but the more prominent writers may simply be allowed to languish in jail...
Vol. 40 • May 1957 • No. 21
