HALF-WAY HOUSE IN HUNGARY

...A farmer in the town of Mako, who had opposed collectivization all his life, told me he joined in 1960 because he recognized it was inevitable...

...He avoids force to a degree unknown in the rest of the Communist world with the exception of Yugoslavia...

...As they reconstruct the period, the old Communist party of Rakosi was in ruins...

...They tell us," he says, "that capitalism operates anarchistically and is given to depressions...

...Though everyone I interviewed asked that his name not be published, the atmosphere both in Budapest and in the villages is definitely relaxed, and from month to month Kadar's personal popularity continues to grow...

...that temporary factions must be permitted on various issues, inside the Party, and that the Party must divorce itself from all discussion of cultural matters, permitting them to follow their own course...

...Seventy per cent of Hungary's raw materials come from the Soviet...

...American sources in Hungary say it was these police, with the Soviets backing them, who perpetrated the arrests and executions...

...Another view, that of a former member of Nagy's government, was that the Chinese were responsible for the 1957 arrests, as well as the execution of Nagy...

...Older farmers found themselves incapable of operating their acreage...

...Now that he has, he is implementing liberalism...

...Trade with the West, or liberalizing winds from Moscow itself may free him further, but until these developments occur he must walk warily...

...Each talk deepens his doubts...

...This is also true for farmers in the villages...

...In spite of all this, the worker is still exploited...

...But there are 30,000 private shopkeepers and artisans whose incomes have gone up consistently...

...Among those that were still in operation were taps on government officials, including Kadar himself...

...Not only automobiles, but television sets, refrigerators, and washing machines are becoming commonplace...

...One writer, forty years in the Party, has been arguing that what Westerners call "liberalization" is only a meager step forward...

...The only criteria now is our grades, and since I'm a good student I made it easily...

...The average Hungarian wage is only seventy dollars a month, at the official rate, though higher in purchasing power...

...Since there are two or three bread-winners in most families, an automobile is no longer out of reach...

...He was only in high school in 1956, but, like most other students, totally committed to the revolution...

...It was a period of chaos in which Kadar needed time to consolidate his power...

...Even if the plan does not achieve its other goals, the consumer percentage is not changed...

...Whether they like it or not, they inevitably must respond to the grievances they hear...

...In his view the Party must go "back" to the principles of "proletarian democracy...

...Today, the standard of living is thirty-five per cent higher than before the revolution and is rising regularly by three to five per cent a year...

...They used to say that China's system was socialism...

...Exactly where Hungary is going will not depend on its own efforts alone, but on the course of the cold war, the Sino-Soviet quarrel, and other developments...

...The 1956 revolution is only a dim memory, and, as a prominent Hungarian poet put it: "We have developed an amnesia to it...

...An official Hungarian newspaper stated recently that free travel abroad is a fundamental right—and evidently it has been respected...

...But Kadar changed that...

...The thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of political prisoners of that era have been freed, the last ones in the general amnesty of March, 1963, and so far as is known the wrath of the state falls today only on unreconstructed Stalinists...

...Kadar speaks no language other than Hungarian, and must converse with Soviet leaders through an interpreter...

...He was even more dismayed a few months later when the AVO (Hungary's secret police) arrested leaders of the Petofi Circle who had been the ideological leavening for the revolution, as well as thousands of members of workers' councils who had fought in the streets...

...The streetcars are running, factories are humming, and the wide boulevards are full of cars and people...

...During Rakosi's days, the regime imposed compulsory loans on the people to drain off surplus funds that were inflationary...

...In many rural towns, half of the homes are new...

...After 1956, the Soviets poured $225 million into Hungary, and other Communist countries provided additional credits, to repair the damage caused by the uprising and to start Hungary's industry moving again...

...This in itself endears him to the nationalistic Hungarians...

...The Kadar government has adopted a unique economic approach— unique, that is, in the Communist world...

...Even the most hard-nosed Communist concedes that if it were not for the "counterrevolution," the significant improvements of the last five years would have taken a much longer period to develop...

...Behind closed doors quite a few of the older Communists are urging the regime to go further...

...The first thing we must do, if we want to make progress, is to define just what socialism really is...

...Hundreds of thousands were convinced, after 1956, that Communism was here to stay and they had to make the best of it...

...Kadar," they say, "was always a revisionist, but he didn't have control in 1956-57...

...By contrast, in East Germany no passports are issued except to government officials, and in liberal Poland...

...I wouldn't want to live under any other system...

...We can't have the the democracy we want," a leading writer observed, "but these are important steps in the right direction...

...The streets are surprisingly full of automobiles, manufactured elsewhere...

...Yet it is clear that the direction is toward further relaxation...

...Then, to a surprising extent, the damaged sections of Budapest were rebuilt...

...and Hungary's economy depends heavily on the Soviet Union...

...Some earn as much as $800 to $2,000 a month...

...Even though television sets are expensive—$250 and up—600,-000 families have purchased them in the last few years...

...To sweeten the collectivist concept still more, the individual farmers were given small plots of their own, one to three acres, not grudgingly as a concession but as an integral part of the "socialist economy...

...The student could offer no reasons for Kadar's change, but American experts in Budapest argue that there really was no change...

...Take my case," said the physics student...

...We no longer talk about it...

...This young man's attitude reflects an almost universal feeling among Hungarians...

...Being a Party member is no longer a prerequisite for a good job...

...The average Hungarian is definitely better off than ever in the past...

...Most Hungarians are little interested in the post-mortems, but only in the results...

...the most recent one is "The Futile Crusade: Anti-Communism as American Credo...

...Parliament itself is merely a shell, where differences of opinion are voiced only occasionally...

...would permit it to reduce its own military expenditures and release funds for consumption...

...Other factors motivated the peasant to accept the collectives...

...Now we're told it isn't...

...Whatever the facts of Kadar's role in 1956, the Hungarian prime minister is viewed as a consistent "revisionist" playing a waiting game until he was able to establish control...

...Under Rakosi, I could never have gone to college because my father was considered a petit bourgeois...

...Though these plots account for only three per cent of the acreage today, they supply between twenty and thirty per cent of all agricultural commodities...

...The official line is that the 1956 revolution was a "cown^rrevolution," but in an unpredicted—and unpredictable—manner it has made Hungary far and away the most liberal of the Soviet-bloc countries...

...But the Kadar regime has added so many innovations to the system it can no longer be compared to the hated Soviet collective farm...

...Though thousands died in these same boulevards only nine years ago, as Soviet tanks and troops moved in on a harried people, there are no visible signs of the fighting, no bullet marks, no torn pavements, no damaged buildings...

...A year ago, Sandor Nagy, a writer who was once given a Stalin prize for a short work—which most literary critics consider banal—was arrested with a few others for distributing pro-Chinese leaflets...

...These committees meet in closed session to draft new bills...

...Under its economic plan, each year it sets aside a certain percentage for increased consumption...

...There are some knowledgeable people in Budapest who say that Kadar would accept much of this program if it were not for two things: There are still many Stalinists and bureaucratic officials in the secondary ranks of the Party...

...Kadar achieves the same goal, but through a voluntary lottery (which, incidentally, provides more money for the state than did Rakosi's scheme...

...Hungary is not a democracy—either bourgeois or proletarian—but there are no signs of prison pallor on faces in the streets of Budapest...

...Janos Kadar, Secretary of the Socialist Workers (Communist) Party and the nation's Prime Minister, says that "all those who are not against us are with us...

...Kadar is more self-effacing than any other leader of a Communist country...

...He was sentenced to three years imprisonment...

...He does this by rote because it is his duty, but in the last six months troubling questions have entered his mind...

...was gutted during the fighting, is again a thriving enterprise, displaying the widest variety of foodstuffs to be found anywhere in the Communist world...

...Instead of working in brigades—as in the Soviet system—a farmer and his family are assigned a specific acreage on which they do everything but the machine work, and for which they are paid substantial premiums—up to twenty per cent of the produce, depending upon their results...

...In 1963, for instance, when bad weather adversely affected the grain crop and Hungary had to increase its wheat imports, the regime took measures to enlarge exports, postpone payments on foreign debts, and secure new loans so that the scheduled three per cent increase in funds for consumer goods could be achieved...

...His articles have appeared in major publications in this country and abroad...

...The transitory character of the last eight years, and particularly the last four, is perhaps most evident in the thinking of the physics student mentioned earlier...

...in X. Gyula Hay has not produced a play since coming out of prison, but his old plays have been reissued...

...The money provided Kadar an opportunity to offer selected wage increases and coax workers back into production...

...There is no democracy, but there is the beginning of dissent and a system by which popular pressure is tolerated and safety-valves provided by the regime...

...Along the Ring, the Night and Day food store, which SIDNEY LENS recently returned from a globe-circling trip gathering material for a series of articles in The Progressive...

...It is difficult to see, therefore, how anyone can afford a car...

...Years go by before factory workers get a general wage increase...

...the statue of Joseph Bern stands stately and serene, revealing no hint of the tragic events of a decade ago...

...But in 1958-59, a visible and marked change began to occur...

...Once a draft is completed, it is sent around the country for grass-roots criticism, and then redrafted...

...How they move away from the dark age of Stalinism will be their main preoccupation for a long time to come...

...In Rakosi's time, I would be working in a factory...

...He asked a number of the leaders of the revolution to join him but most refused...

...No one talks of it— except to inquiring foreigners, and then it bursts forth in torrents...

...The physics student, for example, is greatly encouraged by the fact that anyone can get a passport...

...He is now the head of a Communist youth organization branch, and it is his task to help younger students resolve their doubts about Communism...

...There is no question that when the big push to rejuvenate the collectives began in 1959-61, some pressure was used by the government...

...Since the people have lost their fear of going to jail, they tend to speak up with increasing insistence...

...The fourteen-year-old high school student was distraught when Kadar deserted Imre Nagy, head of the revolutionary government, and formed a satellite regime for the Soviets...

...A few blocks further, in the Ulloi Street area where Colonel Pal Maleter commanded his troops, all signs of destruction and death have disappeared...

...His unions are a fraud, geared more to increasing production than improving wages...

...There is no picture of him in any government office or on any building...

...Thousands of so-called kulaks (men with more than twenty-five acres) who had been excluded from previous collectives, were not only permitted to join freely, but became their leaders...

...passport requests are frequently refused...

...The silent strike of writers, who refused to publish books for a number of years, is over...

...It was better," he said, "to enter the collective and help shape it in the most favorable manner, than to have the state impose it on me...

...Kadar does not stray too far from Moscow's line...

...This is a problem not only for the physics student, but for Kadar and all the other revisionist Communists as well...

...Even Tibor Dery, former head of the writers' association whose speech before 6,000 people was a spark for the 1956 revolution, recently published a novel about a mythical country where some people ride on other people's backs—Mr...

...But by all accounts it was exceedingly mild and in many places there was none at all...

...Old Stalinists came back in large numbers, and the re-established secret police operated isemi-autonomously for about a year...

...Newspaper editors and book publishers impose certain restrictions upon themselves—guided no doubt by the Party—but there is no official censorship, as there is even in liberalized Poland...

...In the collective farm at Paty, which is probably a typical collective, one hundred of the 326 members are on pension...

...Instead, adjustments are made in investments, credits are secured from abroad, and some of the unused plant capacity is put into operation...

...Often the final form is quite different from the original...

...In the past they said Rakosi's system was socialism, now they say it wasn't...

...The 80,000 Soviet troops in the country (there were 250,000 in 1956) are less a threat to Hungarian independence than economic reliance on the U.S.S.R...

...In Moscow Khrushchev, harassed by the Molotov-Kaganovich forces, was still fighting to stay in power...

...The "let-all-flowers-bloom" period had ended, and China was seeking to reinforce hard-liners throughout the Communist world...

...There are also a few skilled workers and well-to-do farmers in the collectives who are able to purchase automobiles on the installment plan...

...He knows, too, that living standards are much higher in the West...

...A mile or two away on Gyorgy Dosa Street the base of the old Stalin statue still stands, but the bust of the hated dictator has never been replaced...

...Since 1962, the number of cars has increased 500 per cent...

...Another symptom of change is the enlarged role of durable goods in private consumption...

...Nagy, presumably, was the victim of Chinese pressure...

...But as far as peasant income is concerned, the collective system has been a great success...

...But there are no reports of revisionists—advocates of liberal change—being arrested...

...Almost all the Hungarian peasants have been eased back into collective farms, which they deserted by the hundreds of thousands in 1956...

...I used to hate Kadar," was the comment of a physics student of twenty-two, "but now I'm beginning to like him...

...The radio station off Puskin Street, where the first shot of the revolt rang out, is functioning normally, the memory of gunfire hidden in its walls...

...Two years ago, 566,000 of Hungary's ten million citizens availed themselves of this right...

...Kadar's government is one of "national reconciliation," a kind of halfway house on the journey away from Stalinism and Sovietization...

...Evidently he had been in touch with the Albanian Embassy and was attempting to build a small movement...

...But what is socialism...

...But since there is more overtime and there are more people employed in each family, as the postwar crop of babies reaches working age, living standards are nevertheless definitely on the rise, even for factory workers...

...In terms of production the system still leaves much to be desired...

...Kadar was organizing a new party with a new name...

...now I have a good career ahead of me...

...He is the author of a number of books on national and world affairs...

...The results did not meet expectations, and Hungary was forced to modify its economic plan...

...An important development is a new procedure for introducing legislation...

...Only the cynics, who forgive neither Khrushchev nor Kadar for smashing the revolution, call Hungary "the happiest cell in the Communist jail...

...The execution of Imre Nagy and others, a year later, alienated the young man even further...

...Across the river, on the Pest side of Hungary's capital, the Parliament building where the young people tried in vain to present their sixteen demands to government officials, is undergoing exterior renovation...

...In three years or so," a leading economist, Imre Vajda, told me, "we will have passed the hump and will move into an entirely new period...

...The state rescued them by promptly bringing the older peasants into the federal pension program...

...many who refused to rejoin Party ranks in 1956 hold top posts in Kadar's government...

...Another means by which the pulse of the people is felt is the now-required monthly meeting of Parliament members in the home provinces, to face their constituents...

...Of these, 120,000 traveled in Western countries, 10,000 of them in the United States...

...There was the inevitable exodus from village to city of sons and daughters, seeking the many new factory jobs...

...People speak freely on any subject without fear of being arrested...

...The special committees of Parliament, however, are another matter...

...Admission was based on class origin...

...The image of capitalism which he gets from Communist textbooks does not mesh with his increasing store of knowledge about the West—gained from the many tourists he meets in Budapest, as well as from friends who have been out of the country...

...Which of these theories is correct remains for historians to decide...

...Of the 3,500 collectives in 1963, one-fifth operated either at or near a loss, and had to be subsidized by the state...

...As evidence for this thesis, they point to the fact that when the AVO was asked to move out of its elaborate offices to make room for party officials, the police forgot to disconnect some of their wiretaps...

...Specifically, he proposes that the trade unions must be totally free to fight the state, instead of being rubber stamps...

...An individual who stirs a storm by criticizing the regime is now called in to his precinct office and given a lecture, but no more...

...Klementi Voroshilov, the aging Soviet leader, was overheard in Brussels explaining the murder of Nagy this way: "It is sometimes necessary to sacrifice a little friend in order to preserve the friendship of a big one...

...Unless your father was a worker you stood little chance...

...The AVO gave up its power grudgingly, and, before relinquishing it, arrested everyone it could as a warning that 1956 must not be repeated...

...Last year, according to Gyorgy Zador, a foreign office official, Hungary expected that further agreements between the United States and the U.S.S.R...

...A Protestant minister, who works closely with the regime, told me, "We needed this tragedy to bring us to our senses...

...But I know that the big corporations in the capitalist countries have their plans too...

...Teachers, railroad, and government workers fare better...

...When the state asked them to form collectives voluntarily, they often took the initiative, and devised schemes by which they would benefit most...

...In the countryside, where a new incentive system is creating wide gaps in income, there are now four or five cars in each village...

...This is a sharp reversal of the policy of his predecessor, Matyas Rakosi, in the terror-filled days of 1948-56, who proclaimed just the opposite—those who did not profess total loyalty were enemies, to be jailed or executed...

...I know also that in Western Europe there is quite a bit of national planning and practically no unemployment...

...Between 50,000 to 60,000 dwelling units have been built annually, either by the state or privately, and even more older homes are being renovated, especially in the villages, with government loans...

...In that time of chaos, the trams had stopped running, business was at a standstill, and a year's production was lost...

...There is no question that village living standards are going up even more rapidly than in the city...

...No one, inside the Party or out, begins a speech with: "As Comrade Kadar has said . . . ." Propaganda posters and propaganda speeches are few, even in the factories...

...Finally, the state encouraged the acquisitiveness of the peasant by paying rent for the land brought in to the collectives by the peasants, and paying incentives on individual, rather than group, efforts...

...The killing of Nagy, it is said, was a concession by Khrushchev, both to the Chinese and the "hard" elements inside Russia, a proof that he was not yielding to revisionism...

...I like socialism," he concludes...

...Political prisoners sentenced to six years were released after two or three, amnesties were granted, food became more plentiful, living standards rose dramatically, and new principles were announced that gave everyone the feeling that a new day was dawning...

...There are also lawyers, who can practice privately, doctors, with private practices on the side, and engineers doing equally well...