Budapest Revisited:
SCHORR, DANIEL
Almost five years have passed since the October 1956 revolution in HUNGARY and the uprising in POLAND. SATELLITE Here we present two articles describing the present mood of the people in these...
...Czechoslovakia has already proclaimed her entry through the pearly gates, and Hungary still has some catching up to do...
...and no one quite knows: Where do we go from here...
...Antiaircraft missiles were shown in a Hungarian military parade in April, reportedly the first to be turned over to a satellite army...
...For most of those years the authorities were mainly concerned with stamping out the remnants of rebellion and consolidating their own power, while luring the consumer with more goods and avoiding drastic actions that might provoke new trouble...
...Khrushchev has announced that within three or four years "the basic foundation of Socialism" will have been laid and "all the people's democracies will more or less enter Socialism...
...In Budapest, however, almost alone among Communist capitals, there was no "spontaneous demonstration" outside the Legation...
...And the screws have been tightened anew on the Roman Catholic Church, the last organized barrier to Communism...
...street demonstrations are somewhat frowned upon here since 1956...
...Especially— and here the voice usually rises a little—they would like to see Americans stop raising "the so-called Hungarian question" and challenging Hungarian credentials in the United Nations and at international conferences...
...On the contrary," one official told me, "the Party gave strict orders that administrative measures were to be avoided, that no one could wear any uniform when calling on a farmer to sign up...
...Hungarians do believe that an invasion of Cuba was launched, and failed because it was not mounted with sufficient strength...
...Castro's nose-thumbing at the United States and his official embrace of Communism have been highly publicized here, though not his proclaimed scorn for elections, which still receive lip-service...
...But a random sampling of Hungarians indicates that many remain unconvinced...
...If the population is not singing any Communist huzzas, it is at least passively accepting what looks like the inevitable...
...Almost five years after the rebellion was put down with Soviet tanks, the Government has apparently regained enough selfconfidence to rejoin the other satellites in the march towards Communism...
...There is no doubt that there have been more arrests, but estimates vary all the way from 50 to 1,200...
...But at least some of the writers who helped to spark the revolt are now free...
...Nor is it a great subject of discussion in cafes...
...It is more than wounded pride that makes the Hungarian government push incessantly for "normalization": The regime seeks respectability in the eyes of the Hungarian people...
...WHEN I MET Endre Sik, the white-haired Foreign Minister who was once Hungarian cultural attache in Washington, almost the first words from his lips were about his Government's desire for "normalization of relations with the United States...
...Among the farmers, there apparently was little active resistance to collectivization, though the real test will come with this summer's harvest...
...The Government is still putting considerable emphasis on maintaining a supply of consumer goods...
...But this dispensation could not last forever...
...In Budapest's May Day parade, which led off with a spaceship model, there were more pictures of Major Gagarin than of Hungarian Party chief Janos Kadar or Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev...
...They have become too immunized to propaganda to accept the constantly repeated claims of Soviet superiority...
...In February the Government announced the arrest of eight priests and two laymen, charged with "leading an illegal organization engaged in anti-State activity...
...One even sees foreign liquors and foreign perfumes in shop windows...
...There was no sign of ground-to-ground, tank-destroying rockets — understandable when one recalls how the Hungarian Army fought against Soviet tanks in 1956...
...Clearly, Space Hero Gagarin and Earth Hero Castro have a definite role to play in Hungary's Communist propaganda...
...And you?' He replied, 'To the beach!'" The official did not quite convince me that he envied the free but unemployed writer...
...There are many who simply do not believe that Gagarin did it...
...And, in one case where undue pressure was used, three Party members were expelled...
...Typical was a doctor who said, "They have always lied, so why should we believe them now...
...Daniel Schorr is head of the Columbia Broadcasting System's news bureau for Germany and Eastern Europe...
...In defining "normalization," Hungarian officials say they would like to see a full-fledged American minister returned, instead of a chargé d'affaires...
...Despite American setbacks in space and off the Florida coast, Hungarians, incredibly, still believe that America is stronger than Russia...
...Officials refer to "discussions" and "disputes" in factories, but deny the current rumors that some workers were arrested for trying to organize strikes...
...Under a new five-year plan, production quotas for industrial workers have been increased...
...Daniel Schorr, writing from Budapest, finds the Hungarian SURVEY people "unconvinced" by Moscow's claims of superiority...
...Meanwhile, the Legation maintains contact with the Hungarian government without quite acknowledging its legitimacy...
...They would like to see trade and cultural exchanges...
...The drive against the Church is designed to obtain more "active cooperation in the building of Socialism...
...Officially, the State Department insists it will only "normalize" relations when the Kadar regime agrees to accept a United Nations investigating mission, though what such a mission would now find is not clear...
...curiously, most Hungarians seem less impressed with Communist exploits than do Americans...
...The people of Budapest appear reasonably well dressed and reasonably well fed...
...It dismayed those who were reminded of their own 1956 experience with Western indecisiveness and half-measures...
...Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana is being published in Hungarian and serialized in advance in a leading newspaper...
...Greene's fictionalized account of a British intelligence failure in Cuba is presented here not as a spoof, but as prophetic evidence that "the secret service system employed by the Western countries always ends in failure...
...A Government spokesman went so far as to claim to me that all those arrested as a result of the 1956 rebellion (presumably those still alive) have now been released—a claim that foreign diplomats, from personal knowledge, find hard to believe...
...The apartment house for American diplomats on the Danube's Szetechenyi Embankment still displays the "Cuba Si, Yankees No" sign which was smeared in white paint during the abortive invasion of Cuba...
...What they doubt, as they have since 1956, is America's will...
...Soviet troops are less conspicuously evident in Budapest than they were last year, but the regime's self-confidence has not yet reached the point of having them withdrawn, despite periodic rumors that this is planned...
...In Hungary, as throughout the Communist world, the symbol of power is an unspecified "They...
...The Hungarian government has started repaying the huge post-1956 Soviet loans, and sacrifices are demanded of the Hungarian worker in terms of more work...
...On cue from press and radio, about a hundred letters and telegrams protesting the invasion, signed mainly by factory workers,, were sent to the American Legation...
...The Kadar regime now seems to regard the uprising of 1956 as finally liquidated...
...The farm collectivization that was tried twice and failed has now been carried out on more than 90 per cent of Hungary's arable land...
...And, perhaps with some logic, he asked why America continues to maintain a special Coventry for Hungary, where the "counterrevolution" was supressed, while maintaining normal relations with the Soviet Union, which did the suppressing...
...AVO is the abbreviation of Hungary's internal security forces, and the word is used unjestingly in referring to Castro's militia...
...But there is no sign here of any imminent change in American policy...
...SATELLITE Here we present two articles describing the present mood of the people in these Soviet satellites...
...It has been going on for nearly five years now...
...The word "normalization" springs up, almost obsessively, whenever a Hungarian official talks to an American...
...The dimensions of the new drive against the Catholic Church are hard to ascertain...
...We do not expect you to treat us better than the other Socialist states," one official told me, "but you could at least treat us as well...
...Officials deny that any blackmail, threats or arrests were used to enforce collectivization...
...Budapest taxi drivers, unlike Moscow cabbies, do not seize upon an American passenger to ask what he thinks of Gagarin's feat...
...The Government admits that there was more resistance by factory workers to the recent increase in production quotas, intended to overcome a lag in productivity...
...But the time when a nervous regime devoted itself almost entirely to economic placation and political repression is over...
...Under the current five-year plan, two-thirds of the programmed increase in production is supposed to come from harder work...
...What is true, though, is that Moscow has apparently regained enough confidence in the Hungarian Army to entrust it with modern rockets...
...A Hungarian official, seeking to impress me with the liberal treatment accorded the dissident writers, said, "I met one of them in the street...
...There is no doubt that the U.S.'s continuing official snub rankles the Kadar regime, and the response is a variety of special harassments for the American Legation, such as travel restrictions and AVO "tails" on American cars...
...The regime is anxious to prove to a skeptical people that Communism is the wave of the future...
...One Hungarian said, "It was crazy to send 800 men against 60,000 AVO...
...In these three areas, the Kadar regime must have been aware that it would arouse considerable popular resentment, but felt strong enough, after more than four years of repression, to take the risk...
...K. A. Jelenski sees in Poland today a "new, pragmatic patriotism," based on 'raison d'etat.' BUDAPEST REVISITED By Daniel Schorr Budapest YURI Gagarin and Fidel Castro are currently at the top of Hungary's Communist hit parade, their exploits being pushed for all—or a little more than—they are worth...
...And officials say that while they are banned from writing on political subjects, many earn a living of sorts as translators...
...With all the reports of pressure against agriculture, industry and the Church, it is significant that the grapevine is no longer reporting, as it did as recently as last year, continued arrests stemming from the 1956 uprising...
...It works hard at the curious game of being cool without being openly hostile...
...I said, 'To the office...
...When I observed that the result was astonishing if it was voluntary, the official replied: "We were somewhat astonished ourselves...
...He asked where I was going...
...Occasional social invitations are extended to Hungarian officials, who occasionally accept them...
Vol. 44 • June 1961 • No. 24
