Imre Nagy: A Biography 9780755620500, 9781845119591

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ILLUSTRATIONS 1.

The Nagy family, c. 1914: Terézia, mother Rozália, father József, Imre, Mária. (Hungarian National Museum)

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2.

Party membership card, Russian Communist (Bolshevik) Party, December 1920. (1956 Institute archive)

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First page of Forradalom (Revolution), journal of the Hungarian Communists of Irkutsk, 12 June 1920. Feuilleton by Nagy entitled ‘Sötétség’ (Darkness). (1956 Institute archive)

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Imre Nagy around 1928. (Hungarian National Museum)

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First issue of Parasztok Lapja (Peasants’ Journal), the legal journal of the KMP. Imre Nagy’s article, written under the pseudonym Imre Somogyi, is on a European peasants’ congress. (1956 Institute archive)

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Notes from the personnel files of Imre Nagy in the CPSU archives: Autobiographie, 6 April 1933. (1956 Institute archive)

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Diploma of the model worker ‘Imre Nad’ of the International Agrarian Institute, 5 November 1933. (Hungarian National Museum)

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‘The regional distribution of fodder cultivation in the USA, 1929 and 1934’. Statistical table in Nagy’s handwriting, c. 1937. (Hungarian National Museum)

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The Nagy family in Moscow, c. 1940. (Hungarian National Museum)

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From the personnel file of Nagy in the CPSU archives: questionnaire filled in on 20 November 1943. (1956 Institute archive)

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Imre Nagy hands out title deeds to the new landowners, spring 1945. (Hungarian National Museum)

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Party membership card, MKP, No. 7, with the signature of Mátyás Rákosi, 30 August 1945. (Hungarian National Museum)

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The Speaker of the House, 1947. (Hungarian National Museum)

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13.

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14.

Nagy and wife Mária, 1948. (Hungarian National Museum)

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Dancing after a peasant meeting in Kapuvár, 18 April 1948. (Hungarian News Agency (MTI))

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The professor of the University of Economics, 1948. (Hungarian National Museum)

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The front page of The New York Times, 5 July 1953. (1956 Institute archive)

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Reading the exposé of the prime minister, 4 July 1953: Ernő Gerő, minister of the interior; István Dobi, head of state; behind Nagy, to the right, Rákosi. (Hungarian News Agency (MTI))

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In the garden of the Orsó utca house, summer 1956. (Erich Lessing, Vienna)

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With his wife at the funeral of the rehabilitated László Rajk, 6 October 1956. (1956 Institute archive)

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Demonstrators on the stairs of the parliament building, with a picture of Nagy, on the evening of 23 October 1956. (Hungarian News Agency (MTI))

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Official letter requesting the intervention of Soviet troops, dated 24 October 1956. On the left upper corner in Nagy’s handwriting is: Aláírásra átadták 1956. október 27-én, d[él] u[tán] Nagy (Presented for signing on 27 October 1956, pm Nagy). (1956 Institute archive)

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Notes of Imre Nagy from 27 October 1956. (1956 Institute archive)

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Notes of Imre Nagy, same date. (1956 Institute archive)

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In front of the parliament building, talking to an old man, 31 October 1956. (Franz Goëss, Vienna)

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With Zoltán Tildy and Colonel Pál Maléter in his office in the parliament building, around 1 November 1956. (Hungarian National Museum)

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First page of the fragmentary autobiography written in Snagov, Romania: Viharos emberöltő: Élettörténetem vázlata (A Stormy Lifetime: Sketch of My Biography). (1956 Institute archive)

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On the last day of the trial, 15 June 1958. (1956 Institute archive)

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Catafalque of Nagy and fellow martyrs, Heroes’ Square, Budapest, 16 June 1989. (Lugossy Lugo László, Budapest)

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ABBREVIATIONS ÁVH

Államvédelmi Hatóság (State Defence Authority). Hungarian state security police 1948–56 (its precursor was the ÁVO, State Security Department, 1945–48).

CC

Central Committee (Központi Vezetőség, Központi Bizottság, Tsentralnii Komitet). Leading organ of Communist parties between congresses.

Cheka

VChK, Vserossiiskaia chrezvychainaia kommissiia (Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-revolution and Sabotage). First political police force of the Bolsheviks, precursor of GPU etc.

Comintern Third (Communist) International, 1918–43. CPSU

Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks).

DISZ

Dolgozó Ifjúság Szövetsége (Association of Working Youth). Unified Hungarian Communist youth organization under MDP control following the Soviet Komsomol type, 1950–56.

FKGP

Független Kisgazda, Földmunkás és Polgári Párt (Independent Smallholders’, Rural Labourers’ and Burghers’ Party). Founded in 1920, in opposition in the interwar years, strongest party after 1945, virtually liquidated by the Communists in 1948–49, briefly resurrected in 1956. Refounded in 1989.

GPU

Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlennie (State Political Administration). Soviet secret police (formerly Cheka), 1922–34.

HSWP

see MSZMP (1956–89).

HWP

see MDP.

KGB

Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopaznosti (Committee for State Security). Successor of NKVD.

KMP

Kommunisták Magyarországi Pártja (Party of Communists in Hungary) 1919–45. After August 1919 in the underground and exile.

KÜB

Külföldi Bizottság (Committee Abroad). Leading organ in exile of the prohibited KMP organizing the underground work in Hungary.

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MADISZ

Magyar Demokratikus Ifjúsági Szövetség (Hungarian Democratic Youth Association). Founded in 1945 under Communist tutelage as a youth movement on coalition basis. Came to be the front organization of the MKP/MDP. Dissolved and finally replaced by DISZ.

MDF

Magyar Demokrata Fórum (Hungarian Democratic Forum). Leading democratic party in 1989–90, winner of the first free elections in post-Communist Hungary.

MDP

Magyar Dolgozók Pártja (Hungarian Workers’ Party, HWP), 1948–56. Unified state party after the absorption of the SZDP into the MKP.

MEFESZ

Magyar Egyetemisták és Főiskolások Egységes Szervezete (or Magyar Egyetemista és Főiskolai Egyesületek Szövetsége) (Association of Students of Universities and Colleges). Democratic organization of students, 1945–48, which came gradually under Communist control and was then dissolved. In October 1956 was a first protest against the unified Communist youth movement (DISZ). Later active in exile.

MKP

Magyar Kommunista Párt (Hungarian Communist Party), 1945– 48. Transformed into MDP after the destruction of the SZDP.

(M)SZDP

(Magyar) Szociáldemokrata Párt ((Hungarian) Social Democratic Party). Founded in 1890, legal parliamentary opposition 1920– 44, destroyed and ‘unified’ with the MKP in 1948, briefly reorganized in 1956, refounded in 1989.

MSZMP

Magyarországi Szocialista Munkáspárt (Socialist Workers’ Party in Hungary). Legal front organization of the prohibited and exiled KMP in 1925–28.

MSZMP

Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt (Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, HSWP), 1956–89. Founded during the revolution as nonStalinist Communist party, became the state party of the Kádár regime until the collapse of communism.

NÉKOSZ

Népi Kollégiumok Országos Szövetsége (National Association of Peoples’ Colleges). The colleges were founded in 1945 (with precursors from the 1940s) for assisting children of peasants (and workers) to obtain higher education. Dissolved in 1949 as ‘populist’.

NKVD

Narodnii Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs). Soviet political police (successor of Cheka and GPU).

abbreviations NPP

Nemzeti Parasztpárt (National Peasant Party). Founded in 1945 as populist-leftist party, de facto destroyed after the Communist takeover in 1948, briefly reorganized as the ‘Petőfi Party’ in 1956.

PB

Politikai Bizottság (Politburo), also called the Presidium of the CC. The day-to-day decision-making leadership of Communist parties.

SZDP

see (M)SZDP

TIB

Történelmi Igazságtétel Bizottsága (Committee for Historical Justice). Founded in 1988, advocated the rehabilitation of victims of Stalinist and post-1956 repression, and was the major force behind the reburial of Nagy and fellow martyrs on 16 June 1989.

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SERIES FOREWORD Communism has, traditionally, appeared to be something of a faceless creed. Its emphasis on the collective over the individual, on discipline and unity, and on the overwhelming importance of ‘the party’, has meant that only the most renowned (and mainly Soviet) Communist leaders have attracted interest from English-speaking political historians and biographers. In particular, the party rank and file have tended to be dismissed as mere cogs within the organizations of which they were part, either denigrated as ‘slaves of Moscow’, or lost in the sweeping accounts of Communist party policy and strategy that have dominated the historiography to date. More recently, however, historians have begun to delve beneath the uniform appearance of democratic centralism, endeavouring to understand the motivations and objectives of those who gave their lives to revolutionary struggle. The current series, therefore, has been established to bolster and give expression to such interest. By producing biographical accounts of Communist leaders and members, it is hoped that a movement that helped define the twentieth century will begin to be understood in a more nuanced way, and that the millions who – at various times and in various ways – subscribed to such a Utopian but ultimately flawed vision will be given both the personal and historical depth that their Communist lives deserve. Matthew Worley Series Editor – Communist Lives

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FOREWORD It was during the last weeks of the Soviet siege of Budapest in January 1945 that I first heard the name of Imre Nagy from a Hungarian military deserter who was in a cellar, together with my family and hundreds of others, hiding from both the war that raged above our heads and from the marauding fascist Arrow Cross thugs. When my father speculated about the future government of Hungary under Soviet occupation, the soldier calmly assured us that the new leader of the country would be the Communist Mátyás Rákosi. He also mentioned the names of some other important Communists, among them that of Imre Nagy. None of the names meant anything to me, and only my father could recall that Rákosi was a Comintern agent whom a Hungarian court had sentenced to a long jail term several years earlier. But not even my father had heard of the other Communists. Yet when the Soviet occupation authorities created the first Hungarian anti-fascist government in the east Hungarian city of Debrecen on 22 December 1944 it did indeed include the name of Imre Nagy as minister of agriculture. Not that the Communists overwhelmed the roster! The prime minister had been a general under Regent Miklós Horthy; just a few months earlier he had commanded an army against the Soviets. The other ministers had been recruited from among career army officers, non-political professionals and representatives of the often minuscule anti-fascist, non-Communist underground political parties. The only two Communists in the cabinet occupied less than crucial posts. Yet the politically astute could already sense that the modest representation of the Communists would be temporary; after all, they alone enjoyed the full support of the Soviets and this at a time when even the food on the table of the government ministers came from Red Army kitchens. Moreover, unbeknown to most of us, this Provisional National Government included more crypto-Communists than official members of the party. For instance, the Ministry of the Interior, with authority over the police, was given to a member of the Peasant Party who, as it later turned out, was secretly a Communist. I suppose that the deserting soldier, who must have been a clandestine Communist, was aware of this and thus also knew that sooner or later the party would seize power. Among the Communist leaders, a particular aura of power and invincibility surrounded the so-called Muscovites, such Communists who had been living in xv

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Moscow before or, at least, during the war, and who had returned to Hungary in the baggage train of the Red Army. The others, much more numerous, were the so-called homegrown Communists who had been in hiding or were now slowly drifting back from various prisons and concentration camps. As it later turned out, none of the homegrown Communists was immune to persecution and arrest; only the Muscovites seemed above it all. But again, what most of us did not know at that time was that only a minority of the Muscovites had survived Stalin’s purges; by 1945 most of them had been shot or were languishing in the Soviet Gulag. But Imre Nagy and his Communist colleague, who had been made minister of trade and transports, were two of the handful of Muscovites who had survived the purges in the Soviet Union. At first, the existence of a government and of a provisional national assembly meant little to us, as all power emanated from the Red Army and, at best, from the municipal authorities that the Soviets had appointed and under whose guidance life began to return to half-way normality. Still, the government, which included even a count from an old illustrious family, seemed to herald a brighter future under a democratic coalition government whose members ranged all the way from Communists to Catholic conservatives and bourgeois liberals. For those who noticed him at all, Imre Nagy looked and acted more like an old-fashioned schoolteacher from the countryside than like a red revolutionary. Not that many other leading Communists resembled the popular image of a proletarian fighter: some of the most outstanding were, and looked like, middle-class urban intellectuals of Jewish origin. Rákosi himself tried vainly to appear a ‘typical’ Hungarian of peasant origin. True, Nagy seemed somewhat different from many of his fellow party leaders but in 1947 he more or less disappeared from the official political scene, and so we knew little or nothing of him. In 1948 I left the country, which was gradually falling to the Communists, and it was while working at Radio Free Europe in Munich in 1953 that my colleagues and I learned, with some bafflement, that in June of that year the Soviet leadership had caused Imre Nagy to become the prime minister of Hungary. We then found out that he was genuinely of peasant origin, that he had worked as a craftsman, had served in World War I, fell into Russian captivity and joined the Communist cause while in the Soviet Union. Prime Minister Imre Nagy immediately proceeded to correct some of the worst crimes and mad innovations of the tyrant Mátyás Rákosi. These reforms we at Radio Free Europe, and the Hungarian émigrés in general, were rather reluctant to recognize. After all, even then we knew very little of Nagy or for that matter of the other Communist leaders, all of whom treated their origins, their private life, even whether they were married or not, as closely guarded state secrets. Nagy seemed only a little better than the others; he often spoke the simple and forceful language of the Hungarian countryside but just as

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often, and especially in his writings, he resorted to the stilted and turgid jargon of the party hack that he in many ways was. Basically, therefore, it was from the first, Hungarian-language edition of János M. Rainer’s superb biography of Imre Nagy that I have begun to gain a full picture of the man. Until then rumours and gossip had to fill the many gaps. Imre Nagy’s fall from power in the spring of 1955, and his subsequent quiet oppositionist activity within the party, was only moderately well known to us in the West; I have learned the rest of that story and Nagy’s likely motivation and goals from János Rainer’s book. I was already in the United States, studying at Columbia University, when the anti-Soviet revolution broke out in Hungary on 23 October 1956. Two days later, Imre Nagy constituted a new government which at first termed the revolution a fascist counter-revolution but, changing its mind a few days later, proclaimed itself in agreement with many of the goals pursued by the demonstrating masses. Nagy seemed even to embrace the cause of the armed street fighters who had forced the withdrawal from Budapest of the Soviet armed units by blowing up their tanks, and who occasionally strung up a Communist policeman on the next lamppost. On 31 October, a week after the outbreak of the revolution, Nagy again re-constituted his government in which the Communists were now a minority; he also announced his intention to withdraw Hungary from the Soviet-led Warsaw military pact. Clearly, Imre Nagy travelled a mind-bogglingly twisted political road from being an NKVD confidant in the Soviet Union and an eminent survivor of the purges to being one of the Muscovites in Hungary, then to his rise to power in 1953 and his condemnation of the abuses committed by the party leaders, all the way to his officially dissolving Hungary’s ties with the Soviet Union and ending Communist rule. There was even a grand finale consisting of the bloody suppression of Hungarian independence by the Soviet Army on 4 November, Nagy’s imprisonment in Romania, followed by his secret trial and his nearsecret hanging in Budapest on 16 June 1958. Those who get the opportunity to see the available fragments of the official film made of his trial and that of his ‘accomplices’ should do so. They would see Imre Nagy acting more than ever like the high-school teacher or university professor that should have been his career. Emaciated and pale, he lectured his despicable judges as if addressing his students on the proper analysis and interpretation of important historical texts. Especially he tried to explain the mysteries of Marxist-Leninist ideology as it pertained to his case and that of Hungary. He never gave an inch. He made clear that he knew he would be executed; still he wished to prove to the judges that he was more familiar with party doctrine than they were, and that he was more of a true socialist and a friend of the workers than they. All of this was the absolute truth, of course. Imre Nagy had a complex personality and his was a most complex career

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and yet, frankly, in war-, revolution- and disaster-ridden Eastern Europe every political career was necessarily complex as was the life of every single person who had had the misfortune to be born in that region between roughly the 1880s and the 1940s. Or perhaps it was good fortune, at least for those who did not perish in the course of affairs, for the survivors were able to witness the changing of their world from one dominated by agriculture and rural life into one marked by modern industry and the city. They also experienced the rise and total defeat of both Nazism and Communism. Or if nothing else, they could at least console themselves with the thought that they were among the survivors. Strangely, Imre Nagy, who ended up on the gallows, had been, at least until 1956, one of the great survivors. He must also have considered his good fortune that, although he was from a traditionalist lower-middle-class background, he had been able to live a full life in a political movement that saw itself as the vanguard of humanity, nay as the future of the world. Luckily for Nagy, he did not live to see the fall and near disappearance from the world of Marxist socialism. The present biography of Imre Nagy is based on an enormous amount of research, in large part obtained from newly opened Soviet, Hungarian and US archives. It will fascinate the fans of whodunits as well as the specialists of Soviet, Central European and contemporary history. János Rainer is the director of a lively and successful research institute in Budapest dedicated to the study of the 1956 revolution. Actually it would be best to call his scholarly unit the Institute of Contemporary History. As befits the political situation in Hungary in 2006, there exists also a rival institute, more conservative and nationalist than Rainer’s liberal progressive centre. Clearly, life will never be boring in that little country. István Deák Columbia University

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION This book deals with Imre Nagy, prime minister of Hungary during the revolution of 1956, who was executed in 1958 by the regime that was established after his downfall. Although I had already concerned myself extensively with the history of the revolution and of the post-war period during my university years, the decisive impulse towards a treatment of Nagy’s life history came first in 1989. In that spring I was able to follow from close proximity the exhumation and then on 16 June the ritual reburial of the remains of Nagy and his associates. At that time I had learned a good deal from friends and colleagues about the political struggles that led up to these events. I believed that I knew enough about Nagy, who had finally become a central figure in the process of democratic transformation of the country, to be able to agree without hesitation to supply a short biography of him, requested by the editor of a Spanish-language journal, Hungría, in May 1989.1 But as I worked on the text I became increasingly uneasy. It seemed to me that Nagy’s history proceeded from vagueness to uncertainty and that his life did not become clear even though there were years (from 1953 to November 1956) that were not entirely in shadow. Yet the figure Nagy became central to those political developments – the most important of my life – that led to the establishment of parliamentary democracy in Hungary. I decided that I should attempt a fullscale biography. It was in many ways a favourable juncture. It was now possible, in Hungary and throughout the world, to examine the history of the post-war world, the revolution of 1956, and Imre Nagy himself. Topics that could formerly be treated only in the West or in clandestine samizdat publications now found a wide public. The year 1989 was also the year of the ‘archival revolution’. In the countries of East-Central Europe that had experienced a change in system, the state and party archives, formerly closed or accessible only to a few privileged students, were now opened, one after the other. In 1991, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it appeared for a short time that this would happen even in Moscow, where much of the evidence for Nagy’s life was kept. A considerable amount that had been published outside Hungary on the 1956 revolution, its prehistory and its consequences was now available in Budapest as well. This included some important publications of the 1950s and 1960s on Imre Nagy, xix

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among others Tibor Méray’s Thirteen Days That Shook the Kremlin, Miklós Molnár’s and László Nagy’s Imre Nagy, reformateur ou revolutionnaire, and Peter Kende’s documentation The Truth about the Nagy Affair. More recently has appeared the Nagy biography based on research of the 1980s, by Peter Unwin, Voice in the Wilderness.2 In summer 1990 the records of the Imre Nagy trial were transferred from the strictly guarded archive of the Ministry of the Interior to the Hungarian National Archive. I was among the first to be allowed to inspect the witness testimonies, the procedural minutes and the documents of the investigation concerning the trial of ‘Nagy and co-defendants’ in 1957–58. These documents were not only illuminating about Nagy’s last months in their full drama; the so-called operative files also contained everything that remained of written material seized during the search of Nagy’s house – thousands of pages of manuscripts and articles including handwritten material dating from his Moscow years in the 1930s. All of this could only strengthen me in my intention to begin a Nagy biography. I was convinced that, given the altered situation and the availability of primary sources, his life history could be depicted successfully. After several years of research, the first volume of the biography appeared in June 1996 on the centenary of Nagy’s birth, covering his life up to the point in June 1953 when he first became prime minister. The second volume followed in October 1999, dealing with Nagy’s last five years and concentrating on the revolution of 1956 and the 1958 trial.3 I had thought initially that the book should focus on the mature politician, mainly on the period 1953–58, with the earlier history confined to a few chapters. That Nagy’s first 57 years received an independent volume was due not only to the logic of the genre. During my research it became ever clearer that there was scarcely any serious historical treatment available on the small group of Hungarian Communist leaders that returned to Hungary from Soviet exile at the end of World War II, Nagy among them, or, apart from abundant hagiographic compilations, of the Hungarian Communist Party. In order to make Nagy’s story understandable, much of this needed to be portrayed and many connections needed detailed explanation. Clearly, the two-volume biography of nearly a thousand pages was not likely to become a bestseller. When, a few years later a Hungarian publisher proposed a short biography of Nagy, I was pleased to oblige and prepared a much shortened version. This abbreviated edition appeared in summer 20024 and served as the basis for a Polish edition in 20045 and also for the German6 and – based on the latter – the present English edition. Besides here and there updating the story by new information available since the two-volume biography’s publication, only minor changes were made from the original Hungarian text to assist the reader unfamiliar with contemporary Hungarian history. These were necessary in almost every chapter but especially in the concluding one dealing with

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Nagy’s unusual ‘afterlife’. In addition, the present edition is supplied with a glossary of persons and a select bibliography in the hope that they will provide some important background to the subject. Finally, it is hoped that the collection of photographs and other illustrations may give a sharper perception of the man and his times. In the course of the research it quickly became apparent that a comprehensive treatment of the sources would be impossible. This was in part because some of the ‘walls’ had not fallen – for example in the Russian archives some things were again closed off – but also because of the sheer volume of the archival material. The documents of the premier’s office bearing on Imre Nagy, for example, proved to be so voluminous that a thorough inspection would have required years. Another problem, most unfortunate of all, was that a very important type of document, private writings, is virtually non-existent in Nagy’s case. Like other Communist leaders of his generation, Nagy left behind very few personal documents. He kept no diary, his own autobiographical notes are written in the party jargon of the moment, and whatever there was of private correspondence has disappeared. When Nagy expressed himself, whether in speech or writing, he did so according to the role he was playing – party functionary or minister, ‘renegade’ or defendant. A very special kind of information on his childhood and youth is found in the autobiographical notes he began to write in early 1957 in Romanian exile. Unfortunately, these notes are fragmentary. At the time of his arrest, he had only reached 1918 in his account.7 The handwritten notes that he prepared for various purposes over the years are brief and conventional but also illuminating in their choice of emphasis or omission. The archival materials of the Hungarian and international Communist movement, if preserved, are now in different depositories in Russia or, in original or copy, in Budapest. For the political activities of Imre Nagy in Hungary from 1945 to 1956 the records are also scattered and are, as mentioned above, more than one can easily survey in a one-man operation. The most important records are those that were assembled for and during the preparation of the trial in 1957–58. With the at least partial opening of the archives, primary sources on the Hungarian revolution came to be published one after the other. They included the records of the meetings of the Presidium of the CPSU during the critical days, records that afford a unique insight into the decision-making process of the Soviet leadership; also an edition of the most important documents pertaining to decision-making on the American side.8 Still, the historian who wishes to remain as close to the sources as possible is faced with the fact that the records of the varied bureaucratic machineries with which Nagy had dealt during his political career are defined by the parameters of the administration or the party that dictates the discourse and circumscribes their contents. Those texts, on the other hand, that were written or spoken after

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his execution are influenced not only by his tragic end but also by the fact that for more than three decades the charges against him were never revised. The life history, presented here chronologically in the traditional manner, is necessarily a political biography because of its sources – and is unavoidably uneven. I concentrated mainly on events after 1945, focusing especially on Nagy’s sphere of influence after 1953 and during the uprising, giving much less space to all the rest of what Nagy experienced and did before that time. As with any life history, one might recount Nagy’s biography as the outcome of major decisions, each one valid for the period to follow. It seems to me, however, that in Nagy’s case it is better to speak of processes of decisionmaking. Although he found answers to the problems of each period of his life, there remained always the possibility of deciding on quite different solutions in each case. When a fundamental decision had to be made, his determination seemed never to be entrenched for all times: it was thus in 1918 when as a prisoner of war in Russia he joined the Communist movement, in the autumn of 1944 when he assumed a leading role in the Hungarian Communist Party as he returned home from Moscow, also in June 1953 when he became for the first time head of the government, and certainly in October 1956 upon the outbreak of revolution. We know of no personal statements as to why he made the decisions he did in 1918 and 1944. But as regards his decisions in June 1953 and October 1956, he stated in his notes, written in enforced Romanian exile, before he knew what fate awaited him, as follows: I was forced to place myself at the helm of the country during the greatest crisis and most difficult times for socialism – twice in fact. The first time was in June 1953 when I had to assume the post of prime minister at the suggestion of the CPSU Presidium and in accordance with the resolution of the Hungarian Central Committee in order to rescue the country from the catastrophe into which the Rákosi clique with its reckless policies had plunged the country. The second time was on 24 October 1956 when I again had to take on the post of premier as the Party, the state security, and the army collapsed and the people took up arms. (My emphases)9

Nagy’s formulations sound as if he wanted to suggest that he had made his decision, in 1953 as in 1956, under the pressure of external circumstances and that he had only reluctantly assumed a leadership role. In the years after 1918 his writings intimate that joining the Communist movement was the result of happenstance, his own inclinations and customary posture having played no role in the decision. Nagy, who belonged to the small group that survived the war and exile in Moscow, played no special role in the 1940s until, in 1944, he suddenly became an important member of the party leadership and returned to Hungary as a designated minister. His abrupt rise may be explained by the shortage of a cadre, and his assumption of a leading role was again mainly the outcome of external pressure.

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The important decision-making processes that governed Nagy’s life were more often than not the results of accidental circumstance or of sudden choices made under the pressure of external conditions. He himself was then responsible for maintaining his stance once a decision was made, in holding fast to the social or intellectual position resulting from the decision, and in accepting the consequences. External circumstances and pressures surely played a role in these processes, but they did not account for everything, for Nagy always had room for his own judgement. The first and most protracted phase of decision-making, involving the search for an answer to the question, how to remain a Communist, lasted almost a decade and a half, 1921 to 1935. The young man who had returned to Hungary from imprisonment in Siberia, already somewhat of a Bolshevik experienced in party work, encountered a country not yet fully recovered from defeat in war and the failed revolutions of 1918 and 1919, a place where the Communist Party was forbidden and social democracy had just taken its first steps toward a new start. He sought his place first in the legal labour movement in his hometown. After several years, he cautiously established contact with the underground party, fell into perpetual conflict with the narrow world of doctrinaire ‘party strategists’, and became known to the authorities. He left Hungary at the end of the 1920s after a brief incarceration, functioned with modest success as a worker for the illegal party and escaped from the internal party struggles to the Soviet Union in 1930, where he could devote himself as a Communist professional to theoretical work on agriculture. However, until he acquired Soviet citizenship in 1936, the path, albeit an increasingly narrow one, to a non-Communist career was not completely closed. From the mid-1930s until 1944, Nagy had the good luck not to be in a situation requiring a decision. In the Soviet Union he remained a Communist and it was not owing to any decision of his that he survived the Great Terror or that he, as almost the only living agrarian specialist, could return home after 1944 as a minister of the provisional Hungarian government. Under his direction, the most radical land reform in Hungarian history was accomplished. After that he held an even more important post as minister of the interior. But he possessed neither the organizational talent nor the toughness to retain for very long this key position in the Communist hierarchy. When he was relieved of the post, he had again reached the point when a new phase of decision-making would set in. The question was: should one belong to the Communist elite or renounce that role? By 1947 Nagy had involved himself in theoretical arguments with the party leadership over economic and agricultural issues. He was content neither with the excessive tempo nor the radical nature of the seizure of power, a stance that amounted to a direct criticism of the Soviet model. He no longer belonged to the uppermost circle of leadership and was regularly subjected to criticism; clearly he was excluded from the political leadership and was to be

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further demoted by being made an ambassador or a university president. But because he was part of the Moscow nucleus he was still a force to be reckoned with. His return in 1950 to the central party apparatus and then to the government was largely attributable to his own personal decision. His decision made it possible for him to be regarded, after Stalin’s death, by both Moscow and Budapest, as a candidate for the introduction of ‘corrections’ in policy. He believed that 1953 afforded the opportunity to translate his political convictions into practice. Because of his convictions he had twice (in 1929–30 and 1947–49) a choice to make and both times he chose to retreat, performing self-criticism and remaining a Communist and a party functionary. It appeared in summer 1953, when he became Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Hungarian Peoples’ Republic, that his earlier compromises had been sensible, for he was now assigned by the Moscow leadership to develop and implement a political line largely in keeping with his own convictions. In that year he attempted to make the ‘policy of correctives’ a genuine reform policy, in which attempt he faced continuous and substantial resistance. When his victorious opponents again tried to force Nagy to engage in selfcriticism, he was confronted with the question: how to remain an anti-Stalinist reformer? This time he faced a challenge at the top of the power hierarchy, and an oppositional stance no longer meant simply a synthesis of his former positions (Communist, functionary and reformer) and not merely a consistent refusal of self-criticism. Everything now turned on securing his personal and political autonomy within the Bolshevik movement. That required a constant and sometimes radical confrontation as a way of life, something that Nagy had always avoided. Now he opted for that path, though not always consistently. His source of strength was chiefly his deep conviction that an anti-Stalinist reform policy was the only correct one. This personal decision was what made Nagy a compass and source of hope for many members of the Communist intelligentsia and even for many non-Communists. The hopes that were placed in Nagy were like a plebiscite: he had been called on the evening of 23 October to speak to the demonstrators in Budapest, and when it seemed at the outbreak of revolution that he would again be taken in by the Communist leaders, it was the clamour for him that saved him from giving way. For Nagy the revolution was a tragic situation, a development that ran counter to his personality. The Communist functionary with the outlook of a reformer now addressed himself to consolidating a strongly anti-Communist (though in no way anti-socialist) revolution. The formerly cautious and reflective man full of scruples had now to make daily, even hourly, decisions, each one of which could prove fateful. Because his reform programme, developed after 1953, and the revolutionary demands were in many respects in harmony with each other, Nagy was able to withstand the pressure of his own party and of the leading powers of the Communist world. What he tried to answer during

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those days was, how to reconcile a Communist reform programme with the radical wishes of the society expressed in a massive uprising ? After the defeat of the revolution and during his detention and imprisonment, Nagy had one last decision to make, probably the most personal one of all: how to keep the faith ? His fate now rested exclusively in the hands of others, but during his internment, his interrogation and trial he could still decide in what manner he would handle his last journey. In his political notes, written in Romania in the winter of 1956–57, he made this journey intellectually and, at the same time, prepared his political testament. Judging by these texts, he did keep the faith. And he also practised a style of argument that allowed him to defend his earlier decisions. He remained a Communist and did not abandon his socialist outlook. Furthermore, his thinking remained within the categories of an anti-Stalinist reformer; he defended the revolution retrospectively and especially its goal of national independence. Had he recognized the contradictions of his own career, he would probably have been unable to preserve his integral personality through the last year and a half of his life. The contradictions remained unresolved but his death could be remembered as a worthy one. At the time, this would not have occurred to anyone, though it was still his hope that his message would reach his intended audience. More then 30 years later, precisely that did happen. Imre Nagy became an extremely ‘live’ participant in the Hungarian democratic transition in its most dynamic phase. At this time, the contradictions in Nagy’s life and character were scarcely noticed. The project of socialism, including the Nagy variant – socialism of national type, socialism with a human face – seemed to have vanished from the political agenda. But the ‘history of the death of Imre Nagy’ with its dramatic conclusion still retained a powerful effect. During the years that I devoted to this subject, I received so much help from many sides that I cannot mention everyone individually. But I must thank a few persons by name, for without their support, direct or indirect, I would not have been able to write this book. Among the earlier biographers and former associates of Imre Nagy, I am bound in friendship with Péter Kende, Tibor Méray and the late Miklós Molnár; their works were a continuing presence during my research, and individually they were always available for friendly counsel and encouragement. I spent the years that this task required in the Institute for the History of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 where friends and colleagues always offered encouraging support. Special thanks are due to those who read the manuscript and contributed critical comments, including György Litván, former head of the Institute, and the late András B. Hegedűs. I am grateful for the indispensable help I received from the late Erzsébet Nagy, Imre Nagy’s daughter, in the early stages of my work. She placed at my disposal the autobiographical notes that her father began during his detention in 1957. She also permitted me to inspect the personal files of Imre Nagy in Moscow and

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related to me her own recollections of her father. Thanks also to the heads and colleagues of the Hungarian and Russian archives for their valuable support of my work. For their generous financial assistance of my research, I am indebted to the Open Society Foundation Research Support Scheme, to the Swiss Fonds National de Recherche Scientifique and to the Soros Foundation. The generous support of the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Hungary made the preparation of this English version possible, for which I owe great gratitude. I must thank Emeritus Professors Lyman H. Legters (University of Washington, Seattle) and János M. Bak (Central European University, Budapest) for their efforts in preparing the English text, and Emeritus Professor István Deák for having accepted my invitation to write the Foreword to this edition. I would also like to thank everyone at I.B.Tauris for their help in getting the present edition to press. Finally, special thanks are due to all the members of my family for their great patience during the years devoted to this project; without their support this work could not have been completed. RMJ Budapest, 2009

1

BEGINNINGS Imre Nagy was born in 1896 in the town of Kaposvár in the southwestern Hungarian county of Somogy. His paternal grandparents were servants on an estate south of Lake Balaton; his maternal grandfather was a farmer who owned some six hectares of land in the same vicinity and was also a wheelwright. His parents left the village when young to earn their living in the city. Both found employment at the county administration in Kaposvár, the father as carriage driver for the lieutenant-general of the county, the mother as serving girl for his wife. They became acquainted there in 1895 and married in January 1896. They rented a small two-room apartment in the main street, not far from the county headquarters. Imre Nagy was born prematurely on 6 June 1896. The father, József Nagy, was then 27 years old and Protestant; the mother, Rozália, born Szabó, was 19 and Catholic. Their son was baptized in the father’s ‘evangelical’ (Lutheran) confession. Three sisters were born in the subsequent years: Mária, Terézia and Erzsébet. The fourth child died in infancy, as did Terézia at a comparatively young age. Mária, the oldest sister, lived in Budapest, where she died in 1939. In the Communist movement, Nagy was known as a man of ‘peasant origin’. In the broadest sense, that was true, but not at all in the sociological one. In his lifetime, his parents were never engaged primarily in agriculture, and he himself had never lived for a long time in village surroundings. He came from the milieu of the Hungarian small town of the turn of the century, the inhabitants of which enjoyed close relations with the village and the peasantry. In the 1860s his hometown was still small, with 6,000–7,000 inhabitants and was of a predominantly agrarian character. The upswing began first in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Kaposvár became a railroad junction and a seat of the county bureaucracy; in three decades its population grew fourfold. Its outward appearance bore the stamp of the eclectic style of the time. As mentioned above (see p xxi) from the autobiographical notes, written in 1957, we know more about the Nagy family history, and Imre’s childhood and youth, than about his later life. His description of the small-town atmosphere of half a century before is drenched in nostalgia; although early on he experienced unjust social conditions, he remained attached to the comfortable petty bourgeois world of his childhood and the sociable style of the province for the rest of his life. As a child and then in his youth, he spent much time with his parents and the relatives of his mother, and thus directly accumulated impressions of 1

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1. The Nagy family, c. 1914. From left to right: Terézia, mother Rozália, father József, Imre, Mária. (Hungarian National Museum)

the work and lifestyle of poor, landless peasants. The decisive experience for him was not primarily the misery and poverty of village life, but rather the difficulty of climbing out of it: the successes and the many failures that resulted from peasant origins and the misery the peasants sought to overcome. A certain ambivalence is apparent, when he writes about his grandmother in the autobiography: ‘[She] was a tall woman with pale visage and grey hair who dressed in peasant style and went barefoot. I was fond of her but as a young student I was ashamed when I was seen with her in town.’ 1 His parents’ attempt to rise above peasant life was an open-ended family project. It was still unclear at the time of their son’s birth whether the effort would succeed or whether they would make it only to the lowest level of urban petty bourgeoisie. He was six years old when his father entered state service as a postal employee with the prospect of a pension. The modest but secure position was evidently not enough to satisfy his spirit of enterprise, for he began in 1907 to build a house. The credit that he needed was to be repaid from renting out three apartments in the house. But in 1911 he lost his job and had to sell the house. From then on he remained an unskilled worker until his death in 1928. The other route to upward mobility, the one preferred by his mother, was through education: Imre Nagy was sent, after finishing elementary school, to

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the gymnasium (the humanist high school) in Kaposvár where he completed four classes between 1907 and 1912. His own characterization of his work at the gymnasium was ‘mediocre’. His half-year report card in the fifth year showed an ‘unsatisfactory’ in mathematics, which cancelled his tuition waiver. At 16 he thus had to leave school ‘because of insufficient accomplishment and lack of funds, at the request of the parents’.2 This was also the time when his father lost his postal job, so the adolescent had now to give serious thought to an occupation. As Nagy later wrote: My decision to leave the gymnasium was already made as I finished the fourth class. The impulse came from several classmates … who opted for industrial jobs. … My mother was strongly opposed to it and wept on my account. I began training as a locksmith with the intention, after a year of practice, to enter the advanced technical school in Budapest.3

He started right away in Kaposvár as an apprentice in a small metalworking firm, and then moved to northern Hungary to work in the factory for agricultural machinery in Losonc/Lučenec. A year later he returned to Kaposvár and in 1914 received his journeyman’s certificate as a metal fitter. After a short time in the workshop of his mentor, he left in summer 1914 and, unable to follow up his plan to go to Budapest, enrolled in the commercial high school in Kaposvár. As he later recalled, his parents urged that course on him, but it was not contrary to his own desires either. Thus, after giving up on his mother’s wish that he graduate from the gymnasium and qualify for a career as a civil servant, he now chose, as a compromise, a practice-oriented commercial training, one that offered a road to clerical positions and at least a lower middle-class standing. Thus, the 18-year-old journeyman terminated his employment as a locksmith and began work in summer 1914 as office help in a lawyer’s office. On 28 June 1914, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in Sarajevo by Bosnian terrorists. Nagy recalled: ‘There was a great people’s festival in the streets of Kaposvár when the news reached us.’ 4 His employer was among the first to be mobilized. Yet the onset of war against Serbia a month later was without consequence for the younger age groups. The young clerk remained in the lawyer’s office, earned money and was entrusted with useful chores. The academic year at the commercial school began for him in September, the last year that Nagy spent in a classroom – and probably the most placid and peaceful year of his entire life. The description of those times 40 years later reads like recollections of ‘good old days’. They convey the optimism about the future of a young man who no longer had any doubts about his own abilities and felt equal to challenges yet to come. His comments on this brief period in his life contain no reference to family poverty or to disagreements about future plans. There were now no difficulties with learning: ‘I did well in school, was an outstanding student. The

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director, … an older former Benedictine, a straightforward and cheerful man and good teacher, made friends with me and considered me his best pupil. And I was a great admirer of him.’ 5 Nagy apparently felt that he had found the right path, and was now even in agreement with a mother ‘who wanted me to become an educated man and a white-collar worker’. It was obviously not hard for him to say goodbye to his metalworking career. Imre Nagy, who devoted his entire adult life to the labour movement, often had occasion later to reflect on his origins and his class status. It is noteworthy, in his autobiographical notes, how much more intensively he remembers his experience as a student than as a young worker. He describes vividly the events and persons (teachers, relatives, family friends) from his school years, but his depiction of his apprenticeship and journeyman year is flat and without emotion, even though it is permeated with the obligatory pathos surrounding the concept ‘workers’. Even the account of his initial encounter with the labour movement that was so decisive for his whole life comes across as perfunctory: The workers’ association was … housed at that time in rooms at the Hotel Bárány on the main street opposite from our workshop. … We obtained books and newspapers there; attended lectures and festivities. A new spirit and new ideas ripened in us: notably the concept of socialism. We belonged to the labour movement and associated ourselves with the working class.6

All that seems paltry alongside what we learn of his enthusiasm for sport, notably football and wrestling, which would play no special role for him as an adult. One can imagine that Nagy meant to write in greater detail about his encounter with the labour movement and in general his involvement in politics, perhaps in a later section of the incomplete autobiography. From the finished portion, we learn simply that he acquired little political experience in this period and had yet to adopt a definite stance. And the young man was now genuinely in love for the first time: ‘I went to Sétatér Alley where three attractive girls lived as neighbours. … They were good friends, formerly schoolmates who had graduated from high school. I was with them all the time and felt very comfortable in their company. They were pleasant and cheerful.’ One of the girls struck a special chord with him: ‘Out of sympathy and then affection came real deep love – a sincere love that accompanied me through the time at the front and then during the POW times, a love that consoled me in many difficult times and encouraged me to prevail.’ 7 The war, however, soon brought an end to all this. In December 1914 Nagy was called up for military service and found fit for induction. The school year ended in May 1915 and he was commanded to report for duty – without a certificate of graduation. He was assigned to the 17th Royal Hungarian Honvéd Infantry Regiment stationed in Székesfehérvár, not far from his hometown.

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I put on the traditional braid-decorated red Honvéd uniform and was called a ‘dashing’ soldier. … The training was not difficult for me and I learned everything quickly. Barracks life was also not a problem. Cleaning rooms, floors, and toilets was not new to me, for I had often had to clean the workshop. Learning military ‘science’ was also not difficult either. I adjusted easily and with joy to the life of a soldier.8

His good physical condition, acquired through work and sport, was of course a factor. The prevailing mood, war hysteria, and national enthusiasm at the onset of the war had an impact on all the young men and Nagy was no exception. The whole city was gripped by wild excitement, resembling an agitated sea. We youths were in fine spirits, urged each other on, and sought to inspire everyone for the war. … We swam with the current on the highest crest of enthusiasm, as if our entire past and our education only took on meaning through this event.9

In August 1915, after three months of basic training in Székesfehérvár, Nagy’s unit was sent to the Italian Front. They took up their stations in the mountains near Monfalcone on the Gulf of Trieste. Nagy recalled: The land surface was rocky, covered by a thin layer of reddish clay as if drenched in blood. There was hardly any protection. Digging foxholes in the rock was impossible, so we piled stones on each other. We had to work with pick and chisel in order to fashion any sort of cover. The enemy shells that fell among the rocks broke up the stone so that the splinters became a kind of hailstorm. Then the grenade launchers and cannon shot. More soldiers were wounded by the shower of stones than by enemy fire. … The intoxication of enthusiasm for war slowly ebbed from our heads. One could no longer preserve illusions: this was war in its true nature. After one of the battles that became so ‘famous’, we stood there in the valley as if petrified. The names of fallen comrades were read out – the losses were horrendous.10

In the third Isonzo battle, Nagy was wounded in the leg and, after convalescence in the field hospital, was moved first to Ljubljana, then to Ogulin in Croatia (where his mother visited him) and finally back home. He was then trained in Budapest and in Pécs as a machine-gunner. Marching orders came early in the summer of 1916 and he had to leave with the 19th Machine Gun Battalion, now as a corporal, to the front in Galicia. His unit took up positions in the vicinity of Czartoriek, south of Luck. The Austro-Hungarian army was soon overwhelmed by the Russian offensive commanded by General Brusilov, and Nagy now lived through one of the most dreadful battles of the Eastern Front. The panic-stricken, totally disorganized retreat, the nightmare of all armies, made a deep impression on him:

6

imre nagy The rapid retreat turned into flight. The roads were inundated with retreating units coming from all directions. Infantry, artillery, sappers, medics – all mixed up together. A huge turbulence of leaderless troops with no idea where they were headed. … Commands and the threat of punishment availed nothing, and the soldiers threw away not only their weapons but even their provisions. Only a few held on to their coats and blankets. These six days were veritable hell. We were fed perhaps two or three times. We ate cabbage and other vegetables without noticing the sand and dirt; we ate out of dirty mess kits; there was no water to drink so we drank the stagnant water from puddles.11

After a temporary break in the fighting, a new Russian advance began at the end of July 1916. Cossack bands led the attack, followed by wave after wave of Russian infantry. The Hungarian machine-gun emplacements, much feared by the Russians, were under constant artillery fire. At this point, gunner Imre Nagy was wounded: I was struck in the leg by shrapnel. Following orders, I removed the insignia from my cap and uniform jacket and smeared dirt on the less faded spots where they had been, for it was understood that the Cossacks would shoot any captured machine-gunner.12

The frontline moved on as the Russians advanced, driving the prisoners along with them. The wounded Nagy remained lying on the field where various groups, Russians and Hungarians mixed up together, wandered about looking for their units. No one paid attention to the dead and wounded. Nagy’s notes do not tell us how long this lasted, whether minutes or hours. I lay bleeding on the ground. I told Hungarian medics to tend my wounds, but they just ran on past me – one of them was actually an acquaintance from Kaposvár (a porter at the hospital there). He was the one who brought the news home that I was either dead or a prisoner. … I crawled past corpses, charred and putrefying corpses, until I found a dry spot where I could hide. I was found there by Russian medics who bound up my wounds, laid me on a stretcher, and took me to an ambulance in the woods.13

Thus it came about that Imre Nagy, 20 years old, machine-gunner, unmarried, student of the commercial high school, member of the Hungarian Iron and Metal Workers’ Union, became a Russian prisoner on 29 July 1916 on one of the countless battlefields on the Galician front. The maturing youth was snatched for good from his accustomed small world, but he was also granted a postponement of those questions that demand answers on the eve of adulthood: who he was and what direction his life was to take. Indeed, in the nearly five years spent in Russia before he could go home to Hungary, those questions and their possible answers had in large measure become obsolete.

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By the autumn of 1916, after the Brusilov offensive, more than 300,000 men of the Austro-Hungarian army were Russian prisoners.14 The wounded Nagy landed in a field hospital, first in Kursk and then in Voronezh. This was his first encounter with the land and people with whom his later life would be so closely associated – under good and not so good circumstances. What could the 20-year-old know of Russia? For a patriotically raised young Hungarian, the tsarist empire was the brutal repressor of the 1848 independence struggle. Concerning the Russian Revolution of 1905, we knew only the tales told us by parents. We grew up in the spirit of the 1848 revolution in Hungary. I could not remember anything of the Russio-Japanese War. When we children had any position at all, our sympathies were with the Japanese. When we played war – no one wanted to be the Russian.15

Repugnance and fear were probably his predominant emotions. In describing his capture he mentioned several times that he had been afraid of the Russian soldiers, especially the Cossacks, and that he expected the worst at their hands. But that changed noticeably in the hospital: The field hospital [in Voronezh] was housed in a gymnasium for girls. … Along with the good care that we received, there was also more variety; life became more pleasant and we began to adapt to the status of war prisoner. I began to learn Russian, helped in this by the nurses. There was a chapel where the girls attended mass and, since we were not barred from going there, it became a routine habit to go to church. Acquaintances, friendships, affectionate relationships began to develop. … The girls gathered under our windows in the evening and, so far as our modest vocabularies permitted, we carried on conversations.16

The leg wound healed rapidly and Nagy was sent to a camp in Darnitsa, near Kiev, then to Ryazan’, and finally in late autumn (in summer clothing) on a transport to Siberia. The Russian army command treated the prisoners differently: separation of officers and enlisted grades, as required by the Geneva Convention. But in addition, political considerations were applied to the distribution of the prisoners by nationality: by the second year of the war, Hungarians, Austrians, Germans and Turks were sent to the remotest parts of the empire, Hungarians mainly to Turkestan and Siberia. Prisoners of Slavic origin (Czechs, Slovaks, Poles and Bosnians) were more commonly kept in camps in the European parts of Russia. (From these battle-ready Slavic camp inmates the ‘Legions’ were later recruited, including the politically and militarily important Czechoslovak Legion.17) The prisoner transport that took Nagy to his Siberian destination was act­ually a shabby little train holding 13 passengers and two guards. It wandered about for some time on the snowed-in Trans-Siberian line until it reached Camp Berezovka on Lake Baikal, not far from Ulan Ude. This barracks city, built

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during the Russo-Japanese War, was one of the largest ‘soldier cities’, designed for 30,000–40,000 residents with ‘modern’ infrastructure, paved streets and good sanitary facilities.18 As a ‘student’, Nagy was assigned to one of the ‘intelligentsia barracks’ separate from the ordinary soldiers, holding some 300 men with higher education, reserve officers, and men who had graduated from any sort of higher school. Life as a prisoner of war, like his time in the army, contributed to Nagy’s self-discipline and also, perhaps, to his aloof nature. Such qualities were necessary for survival but also signified that the insecure youth was maturing into adulthood. His basic education was continued in the camp, as far as that was possible, and although it remained fragmentary, it made him thirst for more. Nagy’s socialization at Berezovka, typically for that time and place, tended towards a leftist orientation. As his autobiographical notes indicate, he attended a ‘learning circle’, in fact a Marxist discussion group, until 1917. Like so many of his generation and of later comrades, Nagy became acquainted with Bolshevism as a prisoner of war. An organizational committee of social democratic prisoners was founded in December 1917. In February 1918 some Cossacks with Bolshevik sympathies arrived at Berezovka and tried to persuade the prisoners and guards to ‘fight their own revolution’, i.e. rebel against their officers, but were met with refusal. However, propaganda gradually scored some successes, as when some ten per cent of the camp’s inhabitants joined the armed units of the Siberian Bolshevik Centre (Tsentrosibir). Nagy was among them. From March 1918 he fought in various units until a company of the anti-Bolshevik Czechoslovak Legion encircled his troop, and so in early September he became a prisoner once again. In the meantime, he had joined the Communist (Social Democratic) Party of the Foreign Workers of Siberia, a separate organization because the Russian party did not yet accept foreign prisoners of war as members. Escaping from the Czechs, Nagy spent the next year and a half in the Lake Baikal area, then under ‘White’ control, holding temporary jobs and maintaining contact with fellow Hungarians who shared his situation. In 1920 this group of Hungarian workers and peasants (Nagy may or may not have been among them) took part in the Irkutsk Bolshevik uprising. White counteroffensives were repelled until units of the Bolshevik Fifth Army reached the town on 7 February 1920. At that point, the Civil War ended for Imre Nagy.19 By this time the only way to get home was to work through the new revolutionary regime in Russia. However, the decision to side with the Bolsheviks had not been the only choice available. Nagy always emphasized that his had been a conscious decision, though these were of course the statements of a Communist Party militant who used familiar clichés to describe his ‘encounter with the movement’. It seems likely that the young man found a convincing and uplifting message in the revolution, one that spoke to his family background, the

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2. Party membership card, Russian Communist (Bolshevik) Party, December 1920. (1956 Institute archive)

events of his young life, his marginal social position and the horrific experience of war. The prospect of peace and the promise of social equality and justice could only appeal to the young exile, who must also have been influenced by educated and intelligent friends. In the chaos that surrounded him, Nagy was looking for security and a better life, and the signs of a new world that he could decipher with his limited Russian – posters, flyers, headlines – sent a clear message. Important too was his involvement with the Red Guards, an army where commanders were always ‘comrades’. His first experiences and impressions of the new revolutionary order reflected social and political conditions in and around Irkutsk. Although he had received a pass for travel homeward, he stayed on for another year. On 12 February 1920 he became a candidate member and on 10 May a full member of the Bolshevik Party of Russia. In addition, he became what his parents had always wanted for him: he served as a clerk in the office of the ‘Liquidation Committee’ that dealt with prisoners of war and, after summer 1920, in the office of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (Cheka) which had taken over those functions. He also made speeches as a party activist and wrote for Forradalom (Revolution)

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and Roham (Attack), local organs of the Hungarian Communists.20 Tens of thousands of Hungarians fought on the Red side in the Civil War, but most returned home when the war ended. By early 1921 there were only some 3,000–4,000 Hungarian Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union. As one of that contingent, Nagy soon found his way into a small circle, the group that Béla Kun, founder of the Party of Communists in Hungary (KMP) and leader of the ill-fated Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919,21 planned to send home ‘to build up an underground centre in Hungary while strengthening as well as unifying the existing smaller cells’. A report of May 1921 stated: ‘Altogether 278 comrades were sent home, charged with minor tasks, by the Political Department. They located in the smaller Hungarian towns and are now trying to establish contact with Vienna, Berlin, or Moscow.’ 22 Nagy was among them. Kun maintained that the groups of activists at home would ‘disrupt the trade unions, begin to organize and lead strikes, and prepare and initiate the armed uprising’. After a month of training by the Cheka in conspiratorial work, they received their marching orders. It is easy to imagine how well they were prepared for underground work in a country where the Communist Party had been prohibited since 1919 and its captured leaders charged with high treason.23 Nagy joined a transport for returning prisoners in April 1921 and, after a long journey and two weeks in a ‘debriefing camp’, reached his hometown at the end of May. Some of his companions were placed under police surveillance; others simply avoided contact with each other and, still more, with the almost illusory ‘underground party’.

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3. First page of Forradalom (Revolution), journal of the Hungarian Communists of Irkutsk, 12 June 1920. Feuilleton by Nagy entitled ‘Sötétség’ (Darkness). (1956 Institute archive)

2

TO REMAIN A COMMUNIST Torn from the milieu in which he had grown up, Nagy returned to a world that was altogether different from the one he had left as a youth. Nothing in the country and in the provincial town of Kaposvár recalled the sleepy and peaceful time of his childhood. The Treaty of Trianon (1920)1 that followed a lost war, two failed revolutions, a bloody counter-revolution and foreign occupation were the latest traumas from which the country was trying to recover. No matter how much of all that a returnee from war, imprisonment and Russian Revolution might have perceived, the ideas he brought back from Moscow must have seemed entirely unrealistic in the Hungary of the early 1920s. Society there had but one goal: returning to normality. The teachings of Béla Kun and the training by the Cheka offered no guidance for either political activity or the practical concerns of daily life. Being a Communist in Hungary in 1921 must have come across as a senseless readiness for sacrifice. Soon after his return, Nagy joined the Hungarian Social Democratic Party (MSZDP). In later notes, he explained this step as having been on the orders of the party. It is true that the Vienna group of exile-Communists around Jenő Landler suggested that their adherents do so2 – in contrast to Béla Kun’s Moscow faction – but it is unlikely that Nagy knew about this when he came back to Kaposvár. The Communist Party had virtually ceased to exist in Hungary, and Nagy had no contacts abroad. He acted rather according to his sympathies and in concert with his surroundings: he, too, wanted to find some stability for himself. Clearly intent on retaining his convictions and avoiding a split personality, he was looking for a field of activity that would allow him to integrate into the Hungary of the 1920s without losing his identity. After a few casual jobs, Nagy obtained in early 1922 a position with the Kaposvár office of the First Hungarian Insurance Company.3 In his later Soviet questionnaires, he described this job as ‘economist’, which may have meant many things. As he did not have a complete education in economics, it must have rather been a beginner’s post in office work, insurance sales and damage assessment. At any rate, he had a chance to work on issues of agrarian insurance, the protection of farms from natural losses or poor harvests, and thus get acquainted with the property relations in the countryside, the problems of production and distribution and so on. Through the records of the company and the relevant publications, he gained a first-hand insight into the agrarian economy of the county. And he achieved, even if a bit later than planned, what 12

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his parents had always dreamt of: he was now a proper white-collar worker. He wore dark suits, stiff collars and a bowler hat. Still without moustache but with glasses, he must have appeared a young man in settled circumstances. The 26-year-old man of middle stature, certainly not overfed in the preceding years, also came to be slightly corpulent.4 The specific material that Nagy would employ in his later writings on agrarian policy was easily gathered in the office of the insurance company. As a conscientious employee, who displayed a more than usual interest in the data of the local economy, he certainly made no negative impression on his employers. That he devoted much of his free time to the gradually awakening workers’ movement of the town may well have had a more problematic effect. That was also less than pleasing to his parents, who had already been disappointed when their young son decided to become a manual worker. There was hardly any activity of the workers’ movement in the town that Nagy did not become involved in during the 1920s. For a time he belonged to the executive committee of the workers’ athletic association and was first a member of the metalworkers’ union and then of the union of agrarian labourers. For a while he served as secretary of the HQ of the workers’ association, was an activist in the local branch of the MSZDP and eventually in 1924 became its secretary. That party, compromised by its having joined the Communists in the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic, had by 1921 reached an understanding with the state and, through the Bethlen–Peyer Pact5 was on its way to restoring its legal position and getting into parliament. Social democracy grew stronger in Kaposvár, too, but was polarized from the outset. One part of the leadership and activist group had settled on defence and step-by-step enlargement of what had been achieved, concentrating chiefly on union work and cooperation with the workers’ cultural association. The Égető family, which had moved from Hódmezővásárhely to Kaposvár before the war, played an important role in these circles. The Égetős, like many others who had participated in the Soviet Republic, now argued that in light of existing conditions any revolutionary impulses must be abandoned.6 At the opposite pole stood a group of younger activists which met at the barbershop of a certain István Sinkovics, who, like the slightly younger Nagy, had been a prisoner of war in Russia and had fought in the Civil War on the Bolshevik side. This group was primed for battle and advocated a more radical social democratic posture. Initially Nagy had good relations with both groups: on the one hand, he was friends with Sinkovics and had become a spokesman for the impatient ones with revolutionary experience; on the other hand, he had fallen in love with one of the mainstays of the amateur theatre group of the workers’ association, Mária Égető, six years younger than he, whose father belonged to the executive committee of the Kaposvár MSZDP. At first there was no decisive

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split between the two groups – they just engaged in vigorous discussion. Nagy himself remained a respectable Social Democrat until April 1924, when he joined forces with the opposition wing of the leadership at the Twenty-Second Congress of the MSZDP in Budapest. As a delegate, Nagy attacked the party leadership sharply in his speech: The party leadership has committed a grave mistake – and if it was done consciously, it was a crime – in imposing the principle of parliamentarianism on the Social Democratic Party. … Although we are aware that the struggle within parliament remains sterile and that it is necessary for us to go into battle with a militant party organization, we must also recognize that we have painfully inadequate weapons for the political struggle outside of parliament.7

His role at the party congress of the Social Democrats had consequences. By the time he and Mária Égető stood before the altar on 28 November 1925, Nagy had been expelled not only from the Kaposvár Party committee but also from the Social Democratic Party altogether. Relations with his father-in-law had worsened, he was subject to police surveillance and his mail was being searched.8 Now he came to be of interest not only to local officials: the leadership of the Communist Party in exile had for some time shown interest in the leftist opposition within the MSZDP. After a two-year vacancy, in 1924 the Comintern appointed a three-person executive – Béla Kun, Jenő Landler and Gyula Alpári – to head the ‘Hungarian Section’, that is, the KMP.9 They saw as their most urgent task the preparation of a congress that would be effectively a new establishment of the party, which since the defeat of the Soviet Republic had had no regular structure and was wholly cut off from its roots in Hungary. The leaders also considered the notion of forming a legal workers’ party as a KMP front organization that could function actively in Hungary. The Fifth Congress of the Comintern (1924) furnished the political line: ‘Social Democracy is a branch of Fascism’. Cooperation with the leftist opposition within the MSZDP appeared to the KMP leaders to be urgently needed. They toyed with the notion of killing two birds with one stone: gaining control of a legal militant organization while also weakening the Social Democratic ‘traitors’. It also seemed possible to move beyond the disaster of 1921, when a number of functionaries of the clandestine party were arrested, and mobilize the scattered and isolated internationalists in the whole country. The KMP leaders in Vienna established contact through Károly Őry with the opposition Social Democrats István Vági and Aladár Weisshaus, and in April 1925 the ‘legal’ Socialist Workers’ Party of Hungary (MSZMP) was founded in Budapest. It soon numbered some 3,000 members, of whom perhaps 120–150 in the whole country belonged to the underground KMP.10 Hungarian police soon uncovered the connecting route with Vienna. Vági

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4. Imre Nagy around 1928. (Hungarian National Museum)

and Weisshaus were arrested in June 1925, as were the Communist connecting links in the MSZMP leadership, Károly Őry and Ignác Gőgös, in September, along with Mátyás Rákosi, who had been sent by Moscow to secretly take over the KMP organization in Budapest. Decades later Nagy recalled that it was Gőgös who had sought him out – at that time still a Social Democrat – in Kaposvár as a connecting link.11 The MSZMP organization was wounded by the arrests but not immobilized. Its leaders even urged at this time the development of party units in the provinces. The local organization of the MSZMP in Kaposvár was founded already in January 1926, under semi-legal circumstances, by Imre Nagy and István Sinkovics. During the Horthy regime in Hungary, it was not necessary, in establishing a new party, to register with a court or to send in any sort of statutes. A party could announce an open meeting to the local police and, if it was approved, proceed with its work. The police did not approve the first attempt by Nagy and his colleagues in April 1926, but this did not deter the organizers from further activity. Although everyone was subject to police surveillance and party ranks were riddled with informers, they were successful in legalizing the MSZMP in Kaposvár in November 1926. An attempt was even made to put forth their own candidate for the impending parliamentary election in December. Three hundred persons appeared for the founding meeting and 700 registered voters signed the petition for the candidate, the economist

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Árpád Molnár, who belonged to the provincial executive board of the MSZMP. And the party organization circulated a two-page pamphlet. All of this was the result of the organizational effort led by Imre Nagy.12 The leaders of the illegal KMP valued the work of its only successful activist in the western countryside as a breakthrough for its front organization. That was hardly surprising because outside Budapest the Communists exercised some influence only among the miners and the migrant construction workers from the Viharsarok (the ‘stormy corner’ of agrarian socialist radicalism in the southeast of the country). As more cadres from Vienna arrived, Nagy became acquainted with Sándor Poll, József Révai and Zoltán Szántó. Szántó suggested that Nagy should devote himself entirely to the building of the illegal party. In the 1970s Szántó recalled that he had proposed to Nagy that he should, as representative of the Central Committee, take over the organizational work of the KMP in five western Hungarian towns: Pécs, Győr, Sopron, Szombathely and Kaposvár. Nagy was surprised and expressed his thanks for the flattering offer but said that he did not want to give up his principal interest, namely the agricultural issue.13 Árpád Molnár, the MSZMP man, not only failed to make it into parliament; he did not even appear on the list of candidates, for he required the signatures of ten per cent of the 9,000 registered voters in Kaposvár. The local authorities interpreted Nagy’s success in their own way: notification was given to the leftist party, advocate of the republican form of the state, of land reform and the like, that it was functioning as an association because it collected membership dues, something not permitted in a political party. The Kaposvár MSZMP was therefore prohibited early in February 1927, at the same time that Nagy received a termination notice from the insurance company. At the end of the month, the police arrested and brought charges against the leaders of the MSZMP in Budapest, Zoltán Szántó and co-defendants, and right at the beginning of the trial one of those charged mentioned the name of ‘the best organizer outside the capital’. And, as might be expected, it was established that the MSZMP was subject to Communist influence. Nagy was arrested on 27 February and removed to Budapest; his wife was in the sixth month of her pregnancy.14 Nagy was very fortunate in that the police in Budapest assessed the charges rather differently than did the provincial police. Whereas the whole MSZMP leadership was arrested and several individuals – including the secretary of the illegal KMP, Zoltán Szántó – were sent to prison, Nagy was set free after two months of detention and the case against him was dismissed for lack of evidence. The state attorney in Pécs ruled similarly in the case of the party organization in Kaposvár. But the authorities had achieved their goal. The party organization dissolved, members were stigmatized, many of them were fired and had to survive without

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employment. Most of them distanced themselves from the labour movement for several decades. Nagy might have gone that way too. He was unemployed and without the means to feed his wife and infant daughter, before whose birth his wife had terminated her employment. Nagy was subject to police surveillance, was not allowed to leave the city and could not attend public gatherings. He thus had reason enough to end his political activity and try to fashion a new existence. That he did not choose that course underscores the strong bonds he had developed in Russia. He found himself at a crossroads for the first time: the question was not ‘to be or not to be a Communist’ but, rather, how to remain a Communist. His life experience fortified him in his convictions about worthy social and political goals; in addition he had meanwhile discovered a professional interest and wanted to devote himself in future to agrarian and peasant policy. He probably also entertained the notion that he had already ventured much too far into radical politics to be able to retreat successfully into ‘civil life’. Further, it was clear to him that, under the given conditions and without higher education or any serious professional experience, he could not satisfy his own intellectual requirements in any field other than on the far left. Nagy was now in direct contact with leaders of the Communist movement and could from now on count on the attention of the comrades. Yet in this important phase of his political development, he operated on the boundary between legality and illegality. He had struggled for ‘subversive’ goals but in a patiently conquered public arena. At this stage he had at most a hint that the aims for which the MSZMP fought – the democratic land reform and other measures to improve the lot of the peasantry, the united front that had been offered the Social Democrats at election time and the republican form of government – were of merely tactical significance to the hard core of Communist political émigrés. As of 1927, the KMP leaders in exile became more and more convinced that the front organization was a breeding ground for opportunistic attitudes and that it could only divert the best members from illegal activity; that would have included Imre Nagy as well. In the summer of that year, Béla Szántó, brother of Zoltan Szántó, established contact between the new illegal KMP secretariat in Budapest and Nagy. The latter was mentioned at this time in the conspiratorial correspondence between Vienna and Budapest, not yet under a pseudonym, which suggests that his legal status was approved in Vienna.15 That he also wished to retain it is supported by the fact that Nagy was seeking employment and did indeed find a job as agent of the Phoenix Insurance Company, thus enabling him to fend for his small family. But when the Kaposvár police again arrested him in December 1927 (and let him go after three days),16 Nagy went underground. The KMP leadership called him to Vienna, and in March 1928 he made his clandestine move to Austria. The Executive of the KMP Abroad (Külföldi Bizottság, KÜB) proposed that

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he become the party’s specialist for agrarian policy and head of the Agrarian Section. He now accepted the offer that he had refused earlier. Obviously in the belief that the Vienna Party leaders valued his experience and knowledge, he spent the last months at home and the first months in exile analysing the status of the Hungarian village, the condition of the peasantry and the role of the labour movement in the countryside.17 In Vienna, at the headquarters of a numerically small but dedicated group of professional revolutionaries, Nagy found himself in surroundings that were quite strange to him. The KMP leadership devoted much time and energy to the maintenance of contact with the illegal party (at most 300 persons) in Hungary. There was also an endless debate about a draft programme for this largely impotent group. Nagy, accustomed to practical party work, was now forced to put his views on all the pending questions in writing and to engage in wearisome polemics with his colleagues, to whom he was known only by the pseudonym he had used in the movement. For his interlocutors it was not the situation in Hungary that mattered but rather the theories of MarxismLeninism and the global orientation of Moscow as the headquarters of the international Communist movement, with which Nagy had at best a superficial familiarity. Right after his arrival in Vienna, Nagy joined in the KMP efforts to prepare countrywide organizational work in Hungary, and by September 1928 he was already on his way back to Budapest – this time with false papers. He spent eight months there, first under the direction of Ernő Müller (his erstwhile party secretary in Irkutsk), then under József Révai and finally under Georg Lukács, all of them Vienna cadres who visited Hungary for longer or shorter periods. Nagy, too, was on the move constantly, returning briefly to Vienna, then back to Hungary in September 1929 and departing from there for Moscow in December, where he was to participate as a delegate at the Second KMP Congress. As head of the newly established Agrarian Section of the KMP, Nagy registered some success. Above all, he operated successfully for a whole year underground, something that few were able to accomplish. The Hungarian police employed a large number of informers, some penetrating even the Central Committee of the KMP. That, plus the fact that the party rules against conspiracy were regularly violated, led to the steady arrest and imprisonment of the party’s leaders and members. The resulting mistrust, the search for spies in party ranks and the mutual and often misplaced suspicion constituted an irremediable sickness that dogged the movement. Nagy was evidently able to remain clear of all this. To be sure, he did not succeed in building a militant organization in the countryside, but his contacts were numerous. In 1929 he even managed to publish a legal organ, Parasztok Lapja (Peasants’ Journal), of which three numbers appeared. It was at this time the only comparatively

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5. First issue of Parasztok Lapja (Peasants’ Journal), the legal journal of the KMP. Imre Nagy’s article, written under the pseudonym Imre Somogyi, is on a European peasants’ congress. (1956 Institute archive)

successful publication of the party, directed at readers in the countryside with an interest in left-radical ideas.18 But most of Nagy’s time was spent in political debates over party strategy and tactics and in the preparation of drafts for discussion and associated correspondence. The participants in these discussions all agreed that a revolutionary situation was developing in Hungary and that the transformation of political and social relations was close at hand. Disagreements concerned only the ‘direction’ that the Communist Party was to take with the outbreak of revolution. Should the goal be, as in 1919, the dictatorship of the proletariat or something else? And how to envisage the path from the capitalist bourgeois political and social system to Communism? Unhappily the ‘classics’ did not answer that question decisively, and the orthodox-leaning movement had no definite theory. Lukács fashioned a draft thesis for the KMP Congress, which became known as the Blum Theses (so called after his pseudonym in the party), in which he defined the transition period in Hungary not as the dictatorship of the proletariat but as a milder political and economic system that he called a ‘democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry’.19 Such a discussion was at that time still possible. There was not yet a binding Soviet model, for the decision on the character of the Soviet economy and society of the period of transition to ‘socialism’

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was still in the offing. The power struggle within the Leninist old guard and the merciless fight between the followers of Stalin and the group centred on Bukharin was just reaching its climax. The ‘Great Breakthrough’ came in 1929: Stalin announced the first Five Year Plan at the Sixteenth Party Conference of the CPSU in April and the transformation of industrial production got under way.20 Also at issue was the ‘agrarian question’, i.e. the elimination of the last vestiges of the New Economic Policy (NEP), the remaining peasant agricultural production and the elements of market economy. Against the Bukharin group, which was advocating only the repression of the kulaks (the rural bourgeoisie), Stalin won out with his policy of the transformation of agriculture, and the violent collectivization and merciless liquidation of the kulaks began. Bukharin, at this time editor of Pravda and head of the Comintern, was relieved of his positions in 1929 on the grounds of ‘rightist deviation’ and his group had to retreat on all fronts at the end of 1929 and beginning of 1930.21 Imre Nagy’s views on the agrarian question, developed in 1928–29, differed little from those of Bukharin or Lukács, but his position rested less on exegesis of the theoretical sources and more on the direct experience that he had acquired as a political organizer. Like Lukács, he had conceived the Hungarian ‘transition to socialism’ as a process with two phases. It was his opinion that, in the first democratic phase, the whole peasantry would join with the proletariat in the struggle against feudal vestiges, and only in the second phase of the fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat would the alliance be confined to the landless peasants. From this he drew the conclusion that democratic not revolutionary demands should take precedence in the political work of the KMP in the countryside. In the article he wrote in November 1928 under the title ‘Our Work in the Village’ he stated: We must make village life in its entire variety our concern. From the question of landholding through the terribly complex issues of taxation, public administration, credit system, and the cooperatives on to matters of economic, political, and social organizational forms in the village – all of this is our field of struggle.22

And he insisted stubbornly that participation in legal political activity (press, local electoral alliances, left-democratic peasant parties, etc) was of great importance, whereas illegal political work in the Hungarian villages remained, under existing conditions, remote from reality. As he was ever more vigorously criticized as ‘right-deviant’ on this account, Nagy went on the offensive, criticizing the party’s organizational structure, its dictatorial style of leadership and its often inconsistent and contradictory decisions. His dislike of the truly uncomfortable and insecure mode of existence in the underground did not escape the notice of the Vienna leadership. József Révai reported to the Central Committee Abroad at the end of 1928:

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[Nagy] thinks he must return to a legal status because agrarian work is supposedly impossible otherwise. In addition, there are personal considerations. As an old resident of Vienna, I am inclined to a Freudian interpretation, namely that the personal motives come first and on that basis a great theory of legality is developed. He asks how much longer he must remain here, for he needs to meet up with his wife. … What should he tell his wife, who wants to remain together with him? 23

Révai, the ascetic professional revolutionary, could only react to his comrade, who was in any case no brilliant theoretician, with scepticism. To him it must have seemed altogether too conventional that someone would express concern for his family (wife and year-old daughter) when important political matters needed attention. A year and a half later, just before the Second Congress of the KMP in Moscow, another colleague put it somewhat more directly in connection with the debate about the composition of the Central Committee: ‘Should we perhaps appoint Simonyi [Nagy’s pseudonym at the time] to the Central Committee? It can be established, and he admits it himself, that he is entangled with Social Democratic vestiges and that he embodies the rightist danger to the party.’ 24 No participant in these discussions even hinted at the obvious fact that the topics under debate had nothing to do with Hungarian reality. In the ‘theoretical’ quarrels, victory belonged to the ultra-leftists, who had been associated since the Soviet Republic of 1919 with Béla Kun, and the opposing faction originally led by Jenő Landler, who had died in 1928, and now represented by Lukács, Révai and others, had to retreat. But even Béla Kun had not really won, for the party leadership was taken over in 1929 by a group of ultra-radical young workers led by the 24-year-old upholsterer Sándor Szerényi. They stood close to the Kun platform to be sure, but they wanted an end to the debate, which they saw as a harmful ‘factionalism’, demanded that the party engage in open struggle and vehemently advocated the organization of political strikes and mass demonstrations in Hungary. These were all misconceived attitudes bearing no relation to political reality, for the cadres who returned to Hungary at this time under conspiratorial circumstances were regularly caught by the police – on average after only two months in the country.25 That was the situation when Imre Nagy arrived in February 1930 in the small town of Aprelevka near Moscow for the congress of the KMP, along with two dozen additional delegates. The continuing arrests in Hungary unleashed hysteria also in Moscow. The sessions in Aprelevka took place under strict secrecy, and by now the Soviet secret police (GPU) had become involved in the endless search for informers. Nagy had already received a reprimand during the preparations because he wanted to settle a quarrel among the agricultural worker delegates without debate. He was also attacked by the party leaders in the congress sessions. The speakers charged him with favouring the ‘partial

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demands’ in Hungary and with failure to speak out against the Hungarian government’s demand for territorial revision of the peace treaty. In addition it was noted that in Vienna, when he had been criticized in terms of a Comintern decision, he had replied that he ‘didn’t want to stand to attention on the word of the Comintern’. Nagy was upset but offered self-criticism in the general debate and lapsed into silence. For that he was again reprimanded and urged to participate in the debate about the agrarian theses in a special session of the Central Committee. Those theses, on which Nagy had worked so hard for nearly two years, were presented to the congress by József Révai.26 After the ritual of another self-criticism, Nagy appealed to the Central Committee to allow him to remain in the Soviet Union, since, in light of his ‘opportunistic deviation’, he saw no point in undertaking future work with the agrarian section of the KMP, and because a return to legal status would be too difficult. His appeal was granted, though in the Central Committee debate it was stated that his position amounted to a ‘flight from work’.27 Nagy experienced the conflict within the movement, with which he had so much identified himself that he was prepared to take risks on its behalf, as a profound crisis. He sought to move out of the line of fire and to distance himself from the party that had called in question his professional competence. He wanted to escape the factional fights and the milieu of mistrust that accompanied the constant search for traitors. To stay in the USSR was surely not a mere emergency decision: the Soviet Union of 1930, where the ‘second revolution’ had just begun, impressed Nagy and many other European Communists and sympathizers as ‘the promised land’. During 1928–29 Nagy had written a study entitled ‘Developmental Tendencies in Hungarian Agriculture’,28 based on a wealth of statistical data and profound knowledge of local conditions. The leaders of the Peasant International (Krestintern)29 showed interest in it and thus a solution to his problem was in sight. When he was recommended as a researcher to the Moscow International Agrarian Institute by Ákos Hevesi,30 one of the secretaries of the Krestintern and also by Béla Kun, it was an assignment that enabled him to answer in the affirmative the question of his remaining a Communist. He could turn his back on party politics and establish himself within the party structure as a professional, as he had ten years earlier in Hungary. The Agrarian Institute offered him the possibility of protecting his identity as a Communist, of bringing his wife and child – whom he had scarcely seen for two years – to join him and finally of resolving the tension between political decision and intellectual inclinations.

3

FIFTEEN YEARS IN MOSCOW Even today, we do not know exactly how many Hungarians lived as immigrants in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and 1940s. Certainly they numbered in the thousands, perhaps more then 10,000. A good many of them were former prisoners of war who for one reason or another did not return home after the war. Many more were skilled workers who had seized upon the employment possibilities during the first Five Year Plan to visit the ‘workers’ fatherland’. Communist political émigrés were a decided minority.1 At the end of the 1920s the Soviet Communist Party contained roughly 1,500 members from Hungary. Of these only a couple of hundred were engaged in political work – as actual party activists and as professionals employed in one or other of the Soviet or Comintern institutions. It is also unclear how many survived the great purge and the war: after 1944 only 200–250 persons holding a party book returned to Hungary. Among them was Imre Nagy, who had reached the Soviet Union clandestinely at the beginning of 1930 but who had spent the 15 years of his stay not as a party cadre but as a Soviet ‘party intellectual’. In 1930, soon after the Second Congress of the KMP in Aprelevka, the idea surfaced of assigning Nagy to lead the organization of Hungarian Communists in French exile.2 And in the winter of 1931–32, and again a year later, there was discussion of sending him back to head the party’s Agrarian Section in the Hungarian underground.3 But nothing came of these ideas. In 1930–32 Nagy participated in developing the KMP’s agrarian programme and was thus in regular contact with Béla Kun. Kun, who was pursuing the ideological struggle within his own party with undiminished vigour and who was still an important figure in the Comintern, regarded Nagy as his supporter since they were both forced out of the party leadership at the KMP congress by the ultra-radical group of Szerényi. But Kun was able to regain his position by 1931 and dealt with his opponents quite simply: he had them arrested by the Soviet state security.4 In the course of this successful purge, Kun arranged for Nagy to head the Hungarian section of the International Lenin School, the Comintern’s training establishment,5 plainly expecting that Nagy would be helpful to him in neutralizing his opponents. Although Kun was successful on this front in May 1932, Nagy does not seem to have been particularly active in this matter.6 It appears that from this time onwards Nagy’s interest in the internal affairs of the Hungarian Party was dwindling. 23

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6. Notes from the personnel files of Imre Nagy in the CPSU archives: Autobiographie, 6 April 1933. (1956 Institute archive)

In contrast, his involvement with the realities of Hungary kept growing in the sense that he worked on problems of Hungarian agriculture and the rural population for nearly six years (from 24 April 1930 to 1 February 1936) in his capacity as member of the Comintern’s International Agrarian Institute (IAI). That institute was one of the Comintern’s think tanks, focusing on international peasant policy and comparative agricultural research. The Institute’s staff pursued agrarian subjects not for mere academic interest but with the aim of helping Communist parties everywhere in the formulation of peasant policies. That required investigations in two areas: the situation of agriculture in individual countries on the basis of statistical data, and the position of the rural population, their social stratification, living standard, specific social and political problems, and the various political movements and interest groups of the peasantry. The agrarian theses and action programmes of individual Communist parties were evaluated here; brochures and pamphlets aimed at peasants and dealing with agriculture were written and approved here also. Imre Nagy was a respected but also modest member of the Institute. He authored well-grounded articles that were published in Sarló és Kalapács (Sickle and Hammer), an organ of the Hungarian Party, and in Institute publications. In 1933 his brochure ‘The Situation of the Hungarian Peasantry’ appeared in Russian, and a year later in Hungarian.7 A colleague and one of Nagy’s few

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Russian friends from this period recalled in the 1970s: From the International Agrarian Institute, I remember a man by the name of Imre Nagy, very well. … We sat opposite each other in one room. Nagy made a strong impression on me because of his strong stature and also – I would say – because of his open visage and cheerful demeanour, and because he – like any normal Hungarian – loved women. He spoke Russian quite well. … When I learned, years later, that Imre Nagy had become prime minister of the Hungarian Republic, I was very surprised (as were others, which suggests to me that my impression was objective), for we had regarded him as a politician of modest talent, who did, however, understand the peasant soul and could talk with the peasants – but nothing more.8

The Institute was reorganized several times, the names and directors of the Western and Central European division changed, but Nagy remained there and succeeded in climbing through the ranks slowly but steadily. The research assistant became a regular researcher (first class) in 1935; his monthly salary rose from 150 to 325 roubles.9 In the first months after his arrival in Moscow, Nagy stayed with friends. In August 1930, when his wife and daughter came from Vienna to join him, they had special permission to live for a time at the Institute. However, by the end of 1930 Nagy succeeded, probably with the help of the International Red Aid, in finding an apartment in central Moscow in the building that had been the Malii Paris Hotel, where lesser Comintern functionaries lived. The ‘apartment’ was a room of 12 square metres with a bath and toilet on the corridor. They moved to somewhat better quarters in 1934 in a building on what would become Frunze Square. Here they shared a two-room flat with a Russian family, which is to say that their circumstances were somewhat below average for Moscow. However, Nagy was given a telephone right away. In these years when the Soviet working woman was portrayed heroically, Mrs Nagy never held a job; also the Nagys never had another child, despite the Soviet campaign for a higher birth rate that got under way in 1934. That had more to do with Mrs Nagy’s illness than with any purposeful decision. She became sick soon after arriving in Moscow and her health did not improve with the passing years. It may well be that exile itself was the cause of her illness. After her years as a member of the Social Democratic youth organization in Hungary, she had nothing further to do with politics and did not join the party in Moscow. It appears that her husband’s salary, along with the fees paid for his publications, sufficed to maintain the family. Their circle of friends in Moscow consisted mainly of fellow Hungarians; among their closest friends were István Vági, once head of the semi-legal MSZMP, Andor Sugár, an acquaintance of Nagy’s from the time in Irkutsk, and Ferenc Münnich. Sugár had a ‘world receiver’ and they regularly listened to the radio, often late in the evening when reception of Budapest Radio was better. They all enjoyed gypsy music, the high

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7. Diploma of the model worker ‘Imre Nad’ of the International Agrarian Institute, 5 November 1933. (Hungarian National Museum)

point of their evening gatherings. The Nagy and Münnich families visited each other frequently. Münnich did the cooking himself, sometimes even baking a cake. Because the Münnichs were childless, they paid much attention to Erzsébet, the Nagys’ small daughter. The friendship must have been very close, for Münnich, when he went to join the International Brigade in Spain, asked the Nagys to care for his sick wife.10 All indications are that Nagy now wanted to integrate himself into Soviet society, if not permanently then at least for the indefinite future. By the middle of the 1930s he had finished with his statistical studies, which gave the former ‘deviationist’ a certain protection, in the sense that they spared him the need to take a public political stance and the complications that would ensue. He now had plans for a larger study of the agrarian policies of social democracy. In the context of the anti-fascist united front policy that was announced in May 1935, it now seemed possible cautiously to suggest that he had not abandoned his position but had remained true to his notion of a democratic transition to socialism. He began this project in 1935 with great enthusiasm, hoping to

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8. ‘The regional distribution of fodder cultivation in the USA, 1929 and 1934’. Statistical table in Nagy’s handwriting, c. 1937. (Hungarian National Museum)

achieve therewith the title of a candidate of science. But at the start of the next year everything changed suddenly: not only did his plans seem illusory but his very existence in Moscow appeared to be threatened. The years in which Nagy sought to establish himself in Moscow turned out in retrospect to be the formative period of the political system known as ‘classical Stalinism’. Hysteria about espionage and xenophobia were intrinsic elements of this system, despite the ceaseless invocation of ‘international solidarity’, according to which one might rather have expected support for foreign Communists. One can assume that the obligatory investigation of Nagy at the hands of the state security apparatus had been under way since his arrival in Moscow. The Soviet political police in their search for traitors – on the strength of information coming from the Hungarian Party leadership – had identified and ‘eliminated’ a number of persons known to Nagy. The first wave of the purge, connected with the power struggle between Béla Kun and the young Szerényi, was laid to rest initially with Kun’s victory. Nagy encountered difficulties at the beginning of 1936, by which time the terror had engulfed many circles, and although the immigrants were not yet fully involved, the investigations of party members and of all the Comintern staff were pursued vigorously. The ‘Nagy case’ began as a matter of party discipline and, fortunately for him, remained on this level. In the autumn of 1935, Mrs Nagy applied at the Hungarian embassy

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in Moscow to renew her expired Hungarian passport and then travelled to Hungary to visit her sick father and to obtain medical treatment for herself. She returned to Moscow within a few weeks, but this trip – at the time not unusual – was not reported by her husband to either the Hungarian Party or the Comintern leadership. It may be that Nagy viewed it simply as a private matter, but it is not impossible that he wanted to avoid calling attention to the Nagy family since he may have been thinking of sending his family home and then leaving the Soviet Union himself. Besides, he had declined to accept the Soviet citizenship offered him in 1936.11 These ‘facts’ were disclosed to the party leaders by Béla Kun, whose letter can be confidently regarded as a denunciation, especially as investigations in the Hungarian Party were in full swing at this time.12 As a result of the regular, almost yearly ‘examination of party documents’, Nagy was expelled from the party on 8 January 1936.13 On 1 February he lost his position at the Agrarian Institute. It was being reorganized and its personnel reduced, and it was natural that those found to be ‘tainted’ should be the first to go.14 Later that month, a special revision commission of the party, formed to investigate the Hungarian immigrants, described Nagy as a ‘degenerate subject’ and recommended that he be expelled from Moscow.15 In retrospect, all this sounds extremely threatening, and in 1936 was certainly not trivial, but it was still possible for a party disciplinary procedure to take an unexpectedly positive turn. That is what happened in the Nagy case. He had appealed against the finding and applied for Soviet citizenship, which he received along with a contractual post in the Central Statistical Office of the USSR in summer 1936.16 There he was assigned to making comparative analyses of agrarian data and statistics. And, despite his expulsion from the KMP, he received from the Agrarian Institute a favourable reference describing him as a ‘disciplined, conscientious, and reliable worker’ who ‘follows the party line and exhibits no deviation’.17 Paradoxically, it may be that this favourable turn in his situation was connected with his previous conflicts. Béla Kun and other members of the Revision Commission soon disappeared into the abyss of the Gulag. Nagy had been involved in constant controversy with that group of the Hungarian Communist movement that now fell victim to the repression. Far from being Kun’s follower, as Kun imagined, he was just the opposite. One can conceive that Nagy’s earlier ‘deviation’ was reinterpreted suddenly upon Kun’s expulsion. After the Seventh Comintern Congress in 1935, which declared the ‘united front’ position against the growing danger of fascism, Nagy’s position on the agrarian question, which he had advanced in the 1920s, was now implicitly approved. In the Soviet system, Nagy was seen not as a leading figure in the Hungarian Party but as a quasi-Soviet intellectual; at the same time, he was not one of the ‘old intellectuals’ and had had nothing to do with factional struggles

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within the Soviet Party. The examination of his appeal against party expulsion lasted three years. He had another bit of luck: Béla Kun’s position as Comintern representative of the Hungarian Party (effectively the party leader) was taken over by individuals who knew Nagy well from his time as MSZMP leader in Kaposvár – Sándor Poll and Zoltán Szántó. The latter, who advanced to first position in the KMP upon Poll’s death, stood behind Nagy often during 1937– 38 and reported favourably on him to the personnel section of the Comintern.18 Nevertheless, Nagy was arrested on 4 March 1938, but released again after four days. We know that such brief detentions were, if not frequent, at least not unknown in the 1930s in the Soviet Union. The party ideologue László Rudas and even Georg Lukács had similar experiences, ending with the intervention of ranking party functionaries.19 In Nagy’s case, we have no evidence of similar interventions. But the Moscow district office of the NKVD was interested in Nagy and recorded that they had, in former years, received information on dozens of persons from an agent named ‘Volodia’, that is, Imre Nagy, mainly concerning Hungarian Communists in Moscow. With few exceptions, all of these were arrested and executed in 1938.20 The widely discussed ‘Volodia Dossier’ is an incomplete personnel file about Nagy’s connections to the Soviet state security. It was certainly taken out of the KGB archives in 1989, plainly intended to discredit the principal martyr and model figure of 1956 at the moment of the collapse of Communism and Hungary’s turn to democracy.21 Nevertheless, documents in the dossier seem to be genuine. Nagy was recruited probably in 1933 (on the testimony of other documents in 1930) as a secret informer. The personnel section of the Comintern and the NKVD stood in close relation to each other, owing to their identical concerns. Nagy was officially required to supply personal information, for example, when he arrived in the Soviet Union, and the security services were involved in identifying and eliminating spies and enemy agents in the Hungarian underground movement. When he became active in 1933–34 in the party cell at the Agrarian Institute he naturally had to send reports on persons and political opinions through the NKVD as well as other agencies. Such reports and assessments flowed into the collections of the closely connected Comintern, party, state and repressive apparatus. It is beyond doubt that the Communist émigrés were without exception in close contact with the security forces, on the one hand because it was impossible, when cooperation was demanded, to do otherwise, but also and mainly because they – Nagy included – felt it their duty to supply the requested information. In a handwritten note, Nagy recorded that from 1933 (until 1941 or even until his return to Hungary) he was a secret informer for state security. The later confidence of the Soviet leadership in Nagy may very well have been a result of the positive reports on him by the NKVD and its successors. At the time of the disciplinary procedure against Nagy, the NKVD showed renewed interest in him. His arrest and

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release were surely a part of this. He was required to supply a detailed report in 1939–40, in which he was to identify his acquaintances and relatives abroad, and also to provide a list of all Moscow acquaintances.22 This list was then presented in 1989 as his ‘victims’. It was a simple falsification but, from the lists and Nagy’s resumés from the personnel file, he provided information on about 20 persons in the 1930. They were all fellow Hungarian political emmigrants in Moscow except a few colleagues from the Agrarian Institute. Hardly anything is known about the contents of his reports, however. By the rules of the secret police, agent reports were filed in special dossiers separate from the personnel ones. If it exists, Nagy’s ‘working file’ has not appeared so far. His information was evaluated as ‘useful’ by his contact officers but that is little more than an obligatory formula of bureaucratic language. Nevertheless, people reported by Nagy were arrested and most of them did not survive the Gulag. Much use was made of such information in unlawful proceedings, but it would be naive to suppose that a single denunciation was sufficient to cause anyone’s arrest. On the other hand it is clear from the ‘Volodia’ file that Nagy was also under surveillance in the late 1930s. His file was closed in 1941 and archived three years later. In March 1938 Nagy’s contract with the Statistical Office expired and he became a freelance collaborator of the Publishing House for Foreign Literature (Inoizdat). He had earned income from his translations and articles, which appeared mainly in the new journal of the Hungarian Communist Party Új Hang (New Voice) where he also belonged to the ‘editorial active’. On 3 February 1939 Nagy was again admitted to the party after a three-year interlude. Because of his wife’s unannounced trip to Hungary, he had received a ‘disciplinary reprimand’, but in those times it was a measure that one could live with.23 A year later, in February 1940, Nagy was called – at Zoltán Szántó’s initiative – to the Hungarian editorial board at the All-Union Radio Council, meaning that he had finally found a place in the Soviet Party hierarchy.24 Nagy himself described, in 1946, the goals that he had pursued at this time: I wanted to accomplish with my writings that the problems in an important arena of democracy – the agrarian question – might be clarified and the forces gathered before we reached the great transition in which we all believed uncompromisingly. The distance between Moscow and Budapest and the obstacles erected by the reactionary Hungarian government meant that my writings could not play a major role at home in the intellectual struggle or in the discussion among the democratic forces. They served rather to clarify our own standpoint.25

While Nagy remained true to his accustomed style of analysis, based on detailed data and embedded in historical development, he began to lay the theoretical groundwork for a Hungarian Communist agrarian policy. In the capitalist transformation of production in Hungarian agriculture, he saw the two parallel

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9. The Nagy family in Moscow, c. 1940. (Hungarian National Museum)

tendencies delineated in Marxist scholarship: the Prussian way, i.e. a development based on latifundia of feudal origin, and the American way, i.e. the commodity-producing peasant household providing more favourable preconditions for capitalist development. He also believed that the ‘class conflicts’ in the rural population reflected this duality as well. On the one hand, the landed peasants and the landless were joined in opposition to the large landholders; on the other, there was antagonism between the agrarian proletariat and all landholders, whether of great landed property or ‘farmers’ of the American type. It is interesting in this connection that Nagy, in his differentiated analysis of the landed peasantry, never used the term ‘kulak’, which was the usual Russian usage at this time. He regarded the ‘class antagonism’ between large landholders and their opponents as decisive ‘at this stage of development’, and drew from this the conclusion that a united peasant campaign to defeat the latifundia and the emergence of a broad class of landholding peasants was a possibility in the Hungarian village. Nagy was convinced that a socialist transformation of agriculture and the creation of socialist enterprises were not yet appropriate to this first phase of change in Hungary. In his response to the claims of Erik Molnár on the agrarian question in early 1938,26 Nagy wrote:

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imre nagy Right now there flourishes in Hungary a ‘sociographic’ literature that, by opening up a huge fund of material, has demonstrated with great clarity (which is the aim of such research) that the fundamental task in Hungary is the democratization of agrarian relations and that the democratic transformation is far from complete. Otherwise, the working class would leapfrog over a significant phase of current development and isolate itself from the democratic masses that are fighting to resolve today’s problem, that is, the democratic transformation of agrarian relations. … The problem and challenge of the present in Hungary are not capitalism vs. socialism, but rather large vs. small enterprise. In Hungary, it is crucial to give such direction to the processes of change that development shifts from the ‘Prussian’ to the ‘American’ path.27

Whether this democratic solution was to be called reform or revolution, Nagy exhibited great uncertainty. In one article, he described the ‘Prussian’ way, i.e. the plan for agrarian change in which the dominance of large landholding was preserved (such as the Hungarian government’s proposal in the land reform debate of 1939), as ‘agrarian reform’, and the land distribution of the ‘American’ way as ‘agrarian revolution’. Another time he called the first variant ‘bourgeois-feudal’ and the other ‘proletarian-peasant’. And in still another place, he defined the democratic solution, i.e. land distribution, as a system of land reform in which large landholding is totally destroyed. There were several reasons for the conceptual imprecision. The most important was the contradiction between a revolutionary party ideology and vision of the future, on the one hand, and what the party line held to be a ‘reformist’ goal on the other. But uncertainty prevailed also with respect to the ‘transformation period’, the estimation of its duration before the advent of a ‘real’ proletarian socialist revolution. In the 1930s, as he had argued a decade earlier, Nagy held that Hungary would undergo a longer transition period. Yet he had also criticized József Révai who, in his Marxism and Populism,28 had sought to enlarge the field of cooperation between Communists and other democratic forces beyond the common struggle for land reform. Nagy adopted a doctrinaire position, warning against alliance with the populists: He [Révai] attempts to base the necessity and singular possibility of reform on the assertion that the agrarian question is subordinate to the question of independence. And since diverse sectors can only be united around reform, and since the defence of independence demands national unity, therefore reform is the answer. But the perspective of revolutionary solutions must remain open. He has fallen under the influence of petty bourgeois democrats and has adopted their viewpoint, which is also the viewpoint of the well-to-do peasants. Reform is not our position. If not revolution, what then do we want?29

Ernő Gerő was thus not entirely wrong when he characterized Nagy in August

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10. From the personnel file of Nagy in the CPSU archives: questionnaire filled in on 20 November 1943. (1956 Institute archive)

1939: ‘Among the Hungarian comrades, he is one of the most knowledgeable in agrarian matters, but his writings lack clarity. One may conclude that, while he has read Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, he has not fully understood numerous issues.’ 30 One must of course keep in mind that, in the Moscow of 1939, it was no small matter ‘to understand [the] issues’, considering the purges and merciless treatment of diverse ‘deviants’, not to mention the year’s great surprise, the Hitler–Stalin pact. Imre Nagy was in the editorial office of Hungarian-language radio when he was surprised by the news that Germany had invaded the Soviet Union. He presented himself to the army and, on 7 July, began his military service. As one who spoke Hungarian and was familiar with circumstances in the country that had entered the war against the Soviet Union (on 27 June 1941), and who was also reliable and employed in a politically important institution, Nagy was assigned for training to one of the special units of the NKVD intended for the perpetration of sabotage in the enemy countryside. It remains unclear just what the unit’s task was to be, and it may not have been any clearer then. Some think that the men were supposed to train a Hungarian Legion, others that they were to be deployed as political officers of such an ‘anti-fascist army’. According to a notice from 1942, there was a plan for 12 persons – including three Hungarians, Nagy, Münnich, and Zoltán Bíró (Mátyás Rákosi’s brother) – to serve as ‘parachute troops for party and partisan activity’ right away in Hungary for purposes of sabotage, which they would undertake with

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the support of the supposed Communist resistance in that country.31 Had this plan been implemented, it is certain that the three would have perished. For whatever reason, the plan was not carried out. Concerning the further military functions of Nagy, we know a little from his 1943 notes. He wrote that he had been transferred in autumn 1941 from the NKVD to the Fifth Division of the Red Army’s high command, which could mean that his unit had also been trained for intelligence purposes. Nagy and his companions would have had ample opportunity for such activity among the ever-increasing number of Hungarian prisoners of war. However, Nagy did not remain long at this post. Because a new change in leadership took place at the head of the Hungarian Party in Moscow, his position also changed. In 1939 the party leadership had passed from Zoltán Szántó, Nagy’s patron, to Ernő Gerő, who was in turn replaced in 1942 by Mátyás Rákosi, who had been exchanged two years before, after 14 years of Hungarian imprisonment, for the Hungarian Honvéd flags that the tsarist army had captured in 1849. Gerő remained the number-two man for the next decade and a half, the party’s ‘grey eminence’. Szántó was removed permanently from the leadership – the same Szántó who as party chief had described Nagy in a report of 1939 as unfit for ‘independent leadership functions’. Yet just before the outbreak of war Nagy became his deputy at the Hungarian radio editorial board. Now Szántó was gone and Nagy was without any leadership function. He was discharged in February 1942 and returned to the radio as editor, the station being moved now to Tbilisi. In May 1943 the Comintern was disbanded and its tasks shifted to ‘scientific institutes’ known by numbers. Nagy belonged to scientific institute number 205, where foreign-language broadcasts were produced and coordinated. József Révai headed the Hungarian-language Radio Kossuth, and Nagy was deputy editor in a four-man staff.32 The new Hungarian Party secretary, Mátyás Rákosi, who had encountered on his return to Moscow in 1940 a numerically shrunken and disorganized group of Hungarian Communist exiles, set about preparing himself for a postwar return home. After the victorious battles of Stalingrad and Kursk and the manifest change in fortunes on all fronts, it was expected that the Communist Party of Hungary would soon take on an important political role. Suddenly the destructive debates of the past 20 years acquired a retrospective purpose. Only the personnel were missing. The shortage of cadre in the Moscow group probably explains why Rákosi now tried to bring Nagy to the fore. In March 1944 he proposed Nagy as editor of Radio Kossuth to replace Révai, whom he wanted to place in the party leadership. Rákosi’s proposal was not immediately approved, but Nagy assumed the suggested post on 16 September 1944.33 All of that occurred at a time when Soviet troops were already fighting in Hungary. Earlier that year – on 19 March 1944 – German forces had occupied the country, established a Quisling-like government and arrested all anti-Nazi poli-

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ticians. In the subsequent months the Jewish population outside of Budapest was rounded up and deported to the death camps and the country was systematically plundered by the SS. In view of the Allied victories and the defection of Romania from the Axis, Regent Admiral Horthy saw the military defeat and resulting collapse coming and tried to arrange a truce. Sent by Horthy, in September/October, Hungarian government delegates arrived in Moscow with peace offerings. However, the Regent’s poorly prepared and unorganized attempt to change sides on 15 October failed. The ultra-rightist Arrow Cross Party staged a putsch; the Hungarian fascists then seized power from Horthy, instituted a reign of open terror and continued the war on Hitler’s side.34 Meanwhile the Hungarian Communists gathered to discuss a future political programme, now under more favourable conditions than ever before.35 A number of participants in these discussions then returned to Hungary but never obtained a higher party post. Nagy’s name does not appear in the minutes of these gatherings, yet he was the one who at this time prepared a draft of the party’s land reform programme, about which nothing but praise is found in the contributions to the discussion or in the draft by Révai and Gerő of a general party policy.36 Still, it seems strange that Nagy, at best a man of the second rank in the Moscow exile, should have taken over one of the key ministries after the war. Nevertheless, that is what happened. On 9 October 1944 Rákosi proposed that Nagy join Ernő Gerő and travel to the liberated region of Hungary in order to immediately begin the organization of the Communist Party. Gerő, Révai, Nagy and Mihály Farkas flew from Moscow on 27 October 1944 and shortly thereafter arrived in Szeged in southern Hungary. On 19 November Gerő and Nagy were already on their way back to Moscow to report on their experiences in the liberated areas. Both were brought into the negotiations on the formation of a future Hungarian government that the Soviet leaders were conducting with the delegation that Horthy had sent to Moscow some days before 15 October. In a document of the Soviet Foreign Ministry dated 29 November 1944, Nagy’s name appears on the list of persons intended for a ‘Liberation Committee’ that would establish a provisional Hungarian government.37 From 1 to 5 December there were discussions in which Stalin, Dimitrov and Molotov met with Rákosi, Gerő and Nagy concerning the staffing of a future coalition government (led by former army general Béla Miklós who went over to the Soviet side in October) and the determination of basic policies. It is hardly likely that Imre Nagy had ever been in the Kremlin before. He certainly saw Stalin from afar during the 1 May or 7 November parades. Family tradition holds that Stalin, in greeting the Hungarian delegation on 5 December, approached Nagy saying, ‘I congratulate you, Comrade Nagy, for I have just had news that the Red Army has liberated your hometown of Kaposvár.’ 38 (In Gerő’s notes, in which he recorded Stalin’s remarks during

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these discussions, there is of course no mention of such a personal greeting to Nagy.) Stalin did say that the ‘exchangees’ – those Hungarian Communists jailed during the Horthy regime and ransomed by the Soviet government – should not figure in the provisional government, ‘for they would be regarded as dependent on Moscow. Later, at home, that would be different – let the people elect them.’ Stalin encouraged the party leaders to act independently and offered the advice: ‘One need not be sparing of words, but one should not intimidate. Once you are strong enough, you can go further.’ 39 Nagy boarded a train in Moscow on 12 December 1944 and headed for Debrecen in the liberated part of eastern Hungary with the draft of a radical agrarian reform programme in his luggage, and already ‘designated’ as agriculture minister in the provisional Hungarian national government. In order to become the actual minister, he lacked only an appointment by the future Provisional National Assembly, but that was a mere formality. The government to which Nagy would belong was already constituted in Moscow, and under the circumstances that could hardly be otherwise. Hungary, ally of Nazi Germany, failed to withdraw from the Axis even at the last moment when the war was virtually lost. The country now belonged in the Soviet sphere of interest, in keeping with the Allied agreement. Nagy’s rise to ministerial status is attributable less to his special competence than to the special political circumstances. In 1944 Mátyás Rákosi was sorely lacking in available personnel. In all of Moscow there were perhaps 300–400 Hungarian cadres who, because of the wartime lack of skilled labour, would not be readily released by their Soviet employers. About Communist cadres at home, those in Moscow knew little – not even who was alive and who was not. About the Communists in the Hungarian underground, Rákosi probably knew more than anyone else, having become acquainted with some of them during his imprisonment from 1925 to 1940. The party assigned strategic importance to the agricultural sector, for its planned land reform was expected to bring decisive political success. There is no doubt that they had no one as knowledgeable in agricultural matters as Imre Nagy – at least in regard to a Communist agrarian policy. Only a few could boast of experience in organizational matters, and that Nagy was also deficient in that regard became evident only later. Paradoxically it was in his favour that he was not all that ‘important’. The more prominent Hungarian Communists initially preferred to occupy high party positions, those that seemed to afford greater influence in the multiparty system projected by the Soviet Union, and they left government posts to people of the second rank. Molotov had made it very clear in the discussions that the Soviet leaders did not want émigrés of Jewish origin to occupy government posts, another point in Nagy’s favour. The views of Soviet Party, political police and former Comintern leaders weighed heavily of course. There could be no objection to Nagy, who had survived the purge with only minor blem-

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ishes (as was true also for other Hungarians) and had served loyally the Soviet Party, the state and security forces. His status in the party had scarcely changed since 1930 when he arrived in Moscow. But his party, once a small sect under Comintern control, was now returning home as the sole accepted Hungarian ally of the victorious Soviet forces, and was now tasked with seizing power as a ‘mass army’, re-named the Hungarian Communist Party (MKP). However, Nagy may have seen the accomplishment of his aims – changing the lives of thousands of Hungarian peasants for the better – in reachable distance: for a short while at least, he must have been a happy man.

4

FORCED MARCH TOWARDS SOCIALISM When Nagy had to leave Hungary in 1930, he left as the loser of an ideological debate; when he returned in 1944, he was not necessarily the winner of the argument but he could at least maintain that the times had proved him right. In 1945, as minister of agriculture, he could bend his efforts towards the realization of his great dream, the land reform that was now the programme of his party. Hard experience had made him a mature, determined and disciplined man with settled convictions. The Soviet Union was his ideal. Yet his belief in a life-enhancing and human socialism was intact, in spite of his practical experiences. He believed that socialism as a social system was not just a theoretical possibility but was capable of practical implementation, and that people – leaders and followers alike – could, like a group of eager students, be persuaded of this. It was this optimism that contributed to the formation, over some 15 years, of an ever more decisive personality, open now to new people and experiences, and revealing the joyful side of his character. The seedbed of his unbroken confidence was Hungary’s intermediate position in the relations of power prevailing after 1945. In the brief period between victory in the war and the outbreak of the Cold War, Stalin regarded the buffer zone of neighbouring states, including Hungary, as a security belt between the Soviet Union and the West. In possession of political and military control and supplied with the necessary instruments (the first via the Allied Control Commission chaired by the Soviet Marshal Voroshilov and the Communist Party, the second through the occupation force), his goal, presumably from the outset, was the Sovietization of the region. Yet for several years an experiment with a kind of transitional system seems to have been foreseen.1 Within the political framework of ‘people’s democracy’, radical changes could be implemented, such as the land reform or the nationalization of limited sectors of the Hungarian economy. These measures fitted well with international trends (the state having assumed a larger role everywhere since the Depression) and could be justified by the scarcities of the post-war years. This was also the time when the strength of Communist parties increased everywhere and their leaders attained key positions also in the West. In Hungary the agricultural sector had strategic significance; still more important was the portfolio of the interior, and between 1944 and 1946 Nagy 38

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11. Imre Nagy hands out title deeds to the new landowners, spring 1945. (Hungarian National Museum)

was minister in both departments. This took place in a framework that was essentially still formally democratic, allowing room to a certain extent for competition and the expression of various political views and positions. There were still elections controlled by a relatively free public. And Stalin was in no hurry to disclose more far-reaching plans. Contemporaries were uncertain whether the new order was a lasting one, a sort of third way synthesizing bourgeois and socialist democracy as imagined by the respected social philosopher and contemporary historian István Bibó and many others;2 or whether it was only a transitional phase leading to Soviet-style socialism with, perhaps, some special Central European features. Political discussion turned on this ‘transition’ and the question of its duration: would it last a couple of years or a generation or more? Nagy conceived ‘people’s democracy’ as an extended transitional form. For that reason he regarded its structures and institutions as important and worthy of protection. The limited multiparty system, the resulting parliamentary and accountable government, and the (within limits) autonomous structures of civil society were all included but also subject to fixed boundaries. There is no evidence that Nagy was in insurmountable conflict with Mátyás Rákosi and his followers so long as they (for tactical reasons and only for a short time) shared his outlook. The initial stage turned out to be especially difficult. As minister, Nagy was bound to carry out the policies of his party, and as a member of the government

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12. Party membership card, MKP, No. 7, with the signature of Mátyás Rákosi, 30 August 1945. (Hungarian National Museum)

he discovered how narrow were the confines within which functions could be exercised, for decisions belonged finally to the occupation power to which he also owed his position. The wartime defeat, the destruction and the fulfilment of reparation demands imposed insurmountable difficulties while he had to make decisions that would fundamentally alter the political system. In an extraordinary governmental session of 17 March 1945, Nagy presented the draft decree No. 600/1945 of the office of the prime minister, the goal of which was ‘to fulfil the centuries-old dream of the Hungarian rural toiling populace, to confirm them in their ancient rights, and to transfer the land into their ownership’. The crux of the draft was the elimination of the latifundia. But it did not conceal other aims of a clearly political character, calling the ‘breaking down of the ranks of the enemies’ of the new order a ‘vital task’. The Council of Ministers approved the draft unanimously and published it on the same day. Nagy had delivered the typewritten copy in person to the state printing office. The then editor, writer Zoltán Szabó, recalled in 1958 that Nagy presented the manuscript ‘with a festive air, saying, “I am bringing you something you will be happy to print” while shaking my hand with a smile on his face that his bushy moustache did not conceal’.3 Although the MKP henceforth referred to Nagy as ‘the Minister of Land Reform’, his personal role was modest. His draft, essentially unchanged though toned down a bit, was offered to the public as the legislative proposal of the National Peasant Party (NPP). Marshal Voroshilov was anxious to get on with

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land reform, for he hoped that it would hasten a massive laying down of arms on the part of Hungarian troops still fighting on the German side. Owing to this urgency, the first and most important legislation of the new order appeared as a government decree without being passed by the Provisional National Assembly. The redistribution of land began on 29 March 1945 at the estate of Count Pallavicini in Pusztaszer, a highly symbolic venue where, according to legend, the Magyar chieftains met to take possession of the land after the Hungarian conquest in ad 895. Nagy saw the reform as ‘a new conquest of the land’, an event seen by everyone – whether positively or negatively affected – as a historic transformation. The land reform was at bottom a measure with political goals and had little to do with economic reality.4 The principal aim, as Nagy himself emphasized, was the liquidation of the great estates, so closely identified with the old regime. But the redistribution of land had effects on other groups as well. Since the confiscation of land in the hands of corporations also weakened big business, it was also a step towards the long-term anti-capitalist goals of the Communist Party. And beyond that, the confiscations were also a form of punishment: the estates of those convicted of war crimes and of collaborators were included, particularly those belonging to German-Hungarians, a group accused of complicity with the Third Reich. The redistribution of land – 35 per cent of the county’s arable land to some 600,000 landless peasants and smallholders – was executed by commissars, mostly young Communists, with its coordination left in the hands of Nagy. But he had to deal with many other difficulties in order to supply the population. Land cultivation had to be set in motion; also the problems caused by the failure to fulfil the requisition quotas due to the Red Army – often beyond what was contained in the ceasefire agreement – had also to be resolved. Deliveries had to be organized to feed the cities. He had also a part to play in the disagreements within the government, in which he adhered strictly to the Communist Party line. For example, Nagy fully supported the police when non-Communist ministers protested against its excesses. In addition, new tasks arose within the party leadership. These were deliberated at a conference of the MKP in May 1945, when the 25 members of the Central Committee started to change into a ‘party parliament’. Actual command went over to the now elected Politburo (politikai bizottság). It consisted of five of the Muscovites: the later ‘Quadriga’ (Mátyás Rákosi, Ernő Gerő, Mihály Farkas and József Révai) plus Imre Nagy and six of the ‘home front’ Communists (László Rajk, János Kádár, István Kovács, Károly Kiss, István Kossa and Márton Horváth) – the main protagonists of the subsequent decades. Nagy was not included in the five-member secretariat of the Politburo in which two ‘Muscovites’ (Farkas and Révai) and two from the ‘home front’ (Rajk and Kádár) joined General Secretary Rákosi. Nagy’s reduced importance

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was of course connected with the increased strength of the non-Muscovites, especially of László Rajk. No longer was Nagy the only member of the MKP leadership representing for the domestic public the more acceptable, non-Jewish Communist. The demotion of Nagy into the second rank continued without a break for the next months and years. There were always points of friction, initially at least in relatively unimportant matters, between the successful and apparently exemplary Communist minister and his party. The party was expecting from its cadres – from the top leadership through the apparatus down to the local activists – that they attend to political tasks of every sort with revolutionary élan. This style was quite foreign to Nagy the erstwhile office worker, who was more at home in the accountable even if sometimes leisurely working habits of parliamentary committees and government departments. He had difficulty in adjusting to the working tempo dictated by his ascetic Communist comrades and to the continuous meetings. He often absented himself from the discussions and even passed up public appearances, such as the great mass meeting of 20 August 1945 (re-named ‘the Feast of the New Bread’ from the traditional ‘feast day of St Stephen the king’) in Kecskemét, although his presence had been announced.5 Part of his problem was undoubtedly that he was accustomed physically to the quite different demands that he had known in Moscow and could not easily adapt to the new and hectic rhythm surrounding him. Problems with his heart, from which he would never again be free, surfaced for the first time. In late August 1945 the party secretariat ordered him ‘to undergo examination and treatment without delay’.6 The Communist leaders, enjoying the first successes of reconstruction, were full of extravagant optimism. Nagy was not. Whereas Mátyás Rákosi urged that elections for the National Assembly proceed as quickly as possible, Nagy suggested delay.7 The minister of agriculture increasingly irritated party leader Rákosi, who wrote on 3 September 1945 to George Dimitrov, the former general secretary of the Comintern in Moscow: We have an unpleasant situation with Comrade Imre Nagy, who complains of overwork and is not easily available for party work. He has fallen under the influence of the old bureaucrats in his ministry, and three days ago, we learned that he had sent a note to the Allied Control Commission requesting a considerable quantity of produce and seed from the Red Army. This note could result in disapproval and outrage, and rightly so, since we have so far failed to mount serious efforts to obtain necessities from our own harvest. He will receive a stern reprimand from us.8

At the first free elections in November 1945, the Communist Party sustained a noteworthy setback. It gained only 17 per cent of the vote, whereas the Smallholders’ Party (FKGP), supported by a strange mixture of non-social-

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ist forces (democrats, ‘third-road’ populists and supporters of the old regime), gained 57 per cent. Although the Smallholders had an absolute majority, the government was again a coalition, with Imre Nagy as minister of the interior. His party had intended that László Rajk, the ‘man with the iron hand’, hold this portfolio, but he was rejected by the stronger coalition partners. The Soviet authorities informed the executive of the Smallholders’ Party that only a Communist could be considered for the Ministry of the Interior in a people’s democracy. Imre Nagy was the Communist compromise candidate who was also acceptable to the Smallholders and thus became minister in the government of Zoltán Tildy and later, when Tildy became president of the republic, that of Ferenc Nagy. It proved difficult for him to take on a role and functions that were alien to his nature. In his four months as interior minister, he achieved nothing spectacular, which, in light of the activities of his successors (Rajk and Kádár) who had no scruples about defending the actions of the state security and the police, was in truth not such a bad record. The political police, established in early 1945, operated independently of the ministerial bureaucracy and according to instructions from the party leadership and/or orders from Soviet authorities. The political scientist István Bibó, who served during these months as head of the legislative department of the Ministry of the Interior, wrote about his minister: ‘He was an amiable man, but orders were not his strong suit. I received no specific directives from him.’ 9 Police actions against ‘reactionaries’ (a very flexible term introduced by the Communists that could be interpreted freely to cover any of their opponents) went forward without hindrance, and minister Nagy, target of outraged criticism in parliament, could not or would not offer an account (although he was legally obliged to do so by parliamentary rules). The law on the forced expulsion of the German minority was developed under Nagy’s ministership. Within party ranks, he had dealt with the matter already in April 1945, at a time when the Hungarian government had not yet been directed to take measures against the German-Hungarians by Allied command. A government decree was issued in summer 1945 concerning the official treatment and political investigation of citizens of German origin. It was no secret that the government wanted to expel Volksbund leaders and SS members from the country; they were already in police custody or interned. According to a legislative draft of December 1945, only those Germans who had been found by earlier inquiry to have participated in anti-fascist resistance were exempted. The MKP also recommended that those German-Hungarians who had supported ‘the democratic parties’ before the war’s end (a group of at most 40,000) should not be expelled. Although there were voices, even in Nagy’s ministry, that raised opposition to the policy of collective guilt (e.g. István Bibó), there were hardly any politicians, writers or publicists who did

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imre nagy 13. The Speaker of the House, 1947. (Hungarian National Museum)

not welcome the expulsion measures as they had been planned. Nagy, too, endorsed the collective-guilt thesis, though he undertook no disciplinary measures against a dissenting Bibó. In any event, this expulsion order remained the only significant ‘accomplishment’ of Nagy’s time in office as minister of the interior. His party, however, was not satisfied with him, and in the first weeks of 1946 he was criticized with growing intensity for not cleansing the administration and the police of ‘old reactionaries’.10 The MKP concluded from the elections to the National Assembly in November 1945 that its principal goal should be to ‘correct’ these unfavourable results, using any and all political and extra-parliamentary means to that end. Accordingly, a ‘Left Bloc’ was created in March 1946, ensuring that the Communists, Social Democrats and representatives of the National Peasant Party would operate in tandem, thus in effect splitting the coalition government in which the Smallholders held nine of the 18 ministerial posts. The time had come for Nagy to withdraw and, citing ‘very poor health’, he resigned as interior minister on 18 March. He had undergone a hernia operation, but that was hardly a determining factor in his decision. Rather, Rákosi and his group

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14. Nagy and wife Mária, 1948. (Hungarian National Museum)

had decided that Nagy was unsuited to the task of fashioning an institution that would be ‘the party’s fist’.11 It appears that Nagy meant to handle the tasks assigned to him in state and party leadership as a professional. However, the party needed people of a different kind, and as it became apparent that Nagy was no ‘generalist’, there was little to be done with him. For a time it seemed that he had found his niche: he had became a member of the MKP secretariat responsible for the agrarian question, directed the work of ‘Village and Agriculture’ in the party apparatus, and became again the principal specialist of the party for agriculture. He approached this function with great enthusiasm, developing plans and proposals and devoting himself to such issues as communal policies and cooperatives that were increasingly regarded as temporary by most. A notion surfaced that he might be assigned to the diplomatic service and sent to Bucharest as ambassador. But then, after the elections of August 1947, he was elected president (speaker) of the National Assembly. He left no significant legacy from this mostly ceremonial role. This was the time in which parliamentarianism and the multiparty system were being destroyed in Hungary. That process actually began earlier, in the first half of 1947, with the step-by-step liquidation of the Smallholders’ Party, and continued after the parliamentary election

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imre nagy 15. Dancing after a peasant meeting in Kapuvár, 18 April 1948. (Hungarian News Agency (MTI))

of August 1947 was marred by direct and indirect cheating. Then came the cancellation of the mandates of the Hungarian Independence Party, the last major force opposing Communist takeover, and the revocation of mandates of the other democratic parties’ parliamentarians. Not only were the absolute numbers of delegates reduced by nearly 50 by the end of the 1949 session, but of the remaining 364 representatives 120 were ‘new faces’ replacing the parliamentarians who had been excluded or arrested.12 Nagy had little to do with all that personally but in his prominent position as Speaker of the House, he represented to the external world this policy of forced transition away from parliamentary government. His greatest value for the party lay in his pleasant, professorial bearing, which was made as if to order for generating trust in both the peasant population and in intellectual circles. That Nagy did not match the usual image of a party leader was noticeable to others besides his Communist comrades, who criticized him at this stage not so much for political reasons but because of his tendency towards passivity and privacy. What impressed outsiders as interesting and sympathetic was exactly what people in inner-party circles found disturbing and which accounted for his steadily losing ground to younger, ambitious leaders in the field of agriculture (such as Ferenc Donáth or András Hegedüs).

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Ferenc Nagy, Smallholders prime minister, wrote in his memoir as he was forced into exile in 1948: ‘Nagy was minister of the interior in those days. Among the Communist ministers, he was the most closely Hungarian; for a long time he had lived in a little country town. Possessed of an ingratiating manner, he is a politician of small calibre, who blindly follows the instructions of the party chieftains.’ 13 In 1949 the Peasant Party politician Imre Kovács described him similarly: ‘Imre Nagy was not dangerous; he felt immediately at home on his return, genuinely liking simple people and never concealing his peasant origins.’ 14 And István Bibó, in the autobiographical interview he gave decades later, emphasized Nagy’s singularity: ‘All of the Communists who returned from Moscow, from Stalin’s shadow, had somehow an inhuman quality about them – with the exception of Imre Nagy.’ 15 In Rákosi’s report to Moscow, cited above, he claimed that Nagy had fallen under the influence of ‘reactionaries’ in the public administration. What that implied was that Nagy did not observe one of the most important characteristics of a Communist leader: the ‘class struggle’-conditioned political mistrust of everyone. Yet that was not entirely valid as a characterization of Nagy. A civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture, observed his minister with the eyes of a professional from the middle class: He was completely out of place here, and not only because he had lived for a long time in Moscow and knew our country only from books – that he wrote himself. He was also no specialist, for the fact that he always spoke with pride of his rural background – ‘I am the child of a blacksmith from Somogy’ – did not equip him to organize agrarian exports. … Beyond this … was his incredible mistrust, something that he brought with him from Moscow. The Ministry of Agriculture was not at all rightist, but rather a second-rank ministry dominated by the poorer landed gentry. The staff came either from a better middle-class milieu or were second sons of lesser landholding families. Towards them, he was necessarily mistrustful.16

Necessarily, but not uniformly and not forever and ever. His state secretary, Ferenc S. Szabó, member of the Peasant Party, said of him: ‘He was not at all a proud person, one who executes everything immediately and personally. He included us in nearly everything and sought our opinions.’ 17 Zoltán Szabó, editor of the official gazette of the provisional government, had spent much time with Nagy in Debrecen in 1944–45: At the ministers’ table in the Hotel Bika, I became acquainted with Imre Nagy as a man of restrained gestures and moderate speech who neither enjoyed quarrels nor pushed himself forward. He had something reassuring about him, explained partly by his lack of arrogance and ambition, partly by his good transdanubian [Western Hungarian] version of common sense. Without question, he was the only one of the Muscovites who had

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imre nagy the ­ability to make the Hungarian peasant or worker feel that he was one of them and that his ideas served the well-being of the country.18

So long as these exceptional qualities offered advantage to the party, it made use of him. He appeared regularly at demonstrations, on radio and in the press. He began in these years his teaching activity at the Agricultural University and the Economics College and presented lectures at various seminars. He seemed to enjoy teaching, was pleased to meet people, especially young ones, prepared his lectures with care and often presented texts that he had written especially for the occasion. He was beloved by his listeners, particularly by those of peasant origin who as ‘people’s college’ (NÉKOSZ) scholars now inundated the universities. By 1947–48 the signs were multiplying that, instead of a gradual democratic transition period, a rapid and brutal construction of a Stalinist system was on the agenda. The more the Cold War intensified, the smaller was the Soviet margin of toleration, and all deviations from the Soviet model in the social order of the ‘front states’ were seen as risky. It appeared that the Stalinist leadership wanted first only to eliminate political pluralism (as indicated by the liquidation of the Smallholders’ Party and the ‘helpful’ Soviet activity in that regard, e.g. in the arrest of Béla Kovács and his detention in the Gulag for a decade) and, beyond that, to institutionalize the existing control mechanisms. Mátyás Rákosi and the other Communist leaders sought to use their opportunities quickly and thoroughly, but in the process they frequently ignored the ‘law’ of Stalinist policy that caution must be wedded to gains on the ground. It is easy to suppose that Rákosi, in the beginning (1948–50), received no instructions from Stalin on internal political matters. They would not have been necessary, for the ‘homo cominternicus’ was guided in his activity by profoundly internalized ideological and cultural norms and values. Members of the Hungarian Party leadership knew no form of social organization other than the Soviet model, and they behaved in any other system as strangers or enemies.19 But the head of the empire did not trust them and that was one of the reasons why, in 1949–50 in Hungary, the Soviet Union built up such an exceptionally broad and multifaceted surveillance system of its own. Besides the ‘normal’ diplomatic representation and military occupation machinery, and also the tightening relations at the party level, the state structure, economy and above all the Hungarian army and security apparatus were penetrated by legal ‘advisors’ and secret agents. These people were also stamped with the code of conduct and ideological values of the Bolshevik movement and its cultural features, fortified by a highly developed sense for military discipline and the superiority complex of the Soviet citizen. Nagy found himself at a crossroads. Although he knew that the stimulus for a more rapid establishment of the dictatorship came straight from Moscow, he attempted to stem the tide. In the debate on the principles of Communist Party

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economic policy late in 1947, he was the only speaker who voiced a differing opinion. He maintained that what he called a ‘state capitalist’ transformation of the economy did not belong on the agenda. And, according to a report of the Soviet ambassador, he spoke out against the union of the two workers’ parties, the Communist and the Social Democratic.20 In the course of 1948 the transformation reached Nagy’s own speciality, centring on the prospects for collectivization of agriculture. In the party leadership, to which Nagy still belonged, he grew ever more isolated. Others, who theoretically shared his view of the ‘transition’, József Révai for example, had ‘reconsidered’ their stance. If he could accomplish nothing else, Nagy wanted to rescue at least the democratic agrarian policy and, above all, the landholding middle peasants, in his view the stratum most important for future development and the most valuable in Hungary’s villages. He was also opposed to the actions against the wealthier peasants, those that the Communist movement classed as the hated kulaks, arguing for ‘restrictions’ rather than ‘liquidation’. And he opposed the forced collectivization of agriculture. The debate on agrarian policy began in September 1948, around the time when Władysłav Gomułka, who had also argued for a more extended ‘transition period’ and for national particularities, was relieved of his party offices in Poland.21 The Politburo demanded that Nagy defend his deviant position to the party leadership.22 Neither for the first nor the last time in his life, Nagy had arrived at a dangerous juncture. Dissenting views were not tolerated at this time, neither in Budapest nor anywhere else in the Soviet orbit. First Secretary Rákosi was about to send Communists from high positions to prison or even death because of supposedly deviant opinions. László Rajk, minister of the interior from 1946 to 1948, who had actually been his willing accomplice, was charged with fantastic crimes, from imperialist agency to support of the excommunicated Yugoslav leader, Tito, and executed on 15 October 1949. Nagy may have been protected from a similar fate by his naivety as a theoretician and by the faithful adherence to the party line that found expression in his politics. He lacked the ascetic will to power that would have prompted him to be build a camp of his own followers in the leadership. After more than half a year, early in 1949, he gathered his thoughts into a substantial study filled with citations from Lenin and Stalin, as if the argument were not about a fundamental political issue but a debate at some Marxist-Leninist academy. His enemies could now be certain that he would withdraw quietly without offending against party ritual. That is indeed what happened on 2 September 1949 after interminable debates. Nagy accepted the defeat in disciplined fashion: he performed self-criticism and repudiated his theses before the Central Committee. He was expelled from the Politburo – in the same session at which János Kádár, the new minister of the interior, announced preparations for the trial of his predecessor, László

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Rajk.23 Nagy remained a member of the Central Committee. The speaker for the agenda item ‘Nagy deviation’ was Ferenc Donáth, at the time a vigorous opponent who many years later would become an ally of Nagy. Although there are no surviving documents to support the assumption, all indications suggest that state security had dealt with the Nagy case.24 In summer 1949, Mihály Farkas told a Soviet functionary that the inner circle of party leaders had addressed the ideological issue after the Rajk trial and, in this connection, sought to eliminate Nagy, the ‘exposed Bukharinist’, from the Politburo.25 It is also possible that Rákosi and his comrades contemplated Nagy’s arrest. Since Nagy belonged to the leadership group sent home from the Soviet Union, his liquidation would have required Moscow’s agreement. But there was no expression of opinion from that quarter regarding the Hungarian agrarian debate, the documentation of which Rákosi had supplied to the Soviet leaders. Béla Szász, one of the special ‘witnesses’ in the Rajk case and later defendant in another secret trial, had heard of intentions with respect to Nagy, and his estimation of the situation is convincing: Those who had returned from Moscow – although several of them ended up in prison after the secondary secret trials – were unsuitable. By passing sentence publicly on a Hungarian Muscovite, the Kremlin would admit the failure of its indoctrination and acknowledge that heresy was possible in the Soviet Union. At the same time, it would have been difficult to connect with Western espionage organizations people who had spent decades isolated in Russia. If it did so, the Kremlin, by suggesting that the West had penetrated so deeply into its political positions, would be creating an impression of weakness.26

After a decade and a half in Moscow, Nagy knew the Soviet model from the inside; still, after 1945 he was seeking an alternative model that would fit with the aims of the international Communist movement. He wanted to fashion a variant of the Soviet model based on criticism that long remained unspoken. He was not alone: many others – such as Georg Lukács and Eugene Varga, Władysłav Gomułka and Georgi Dimitrov, and also József Révai – sought an answer to the question of what other model, different from the Soviet example, might be followed and in what time period ‘socialism’ could be achieved in countries belonging to the Soviet sphere of influence. For a time there had also been controversy in the Soviet Union concerning the ‘character of the transition period’. Those searching for a different path wanted to find a theoretical basis for the difference between the Soviet system and the so-called people’s democracies of Central and East Europe under Soviet rule. They based their notions on the assumption that the Soviet recipe for ‘transformation’ was itself twofold: after the revolutionary Bolshevik economic model (War Communism), the New Economic Policy (NEP) of the 1920s seemed to have been a histori-

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cally necessary stage on the way to socialism. People’s democracy (or as Nagy put it, ‘democratic property relations’) bore greater resemblance to the latter than to the ‘socialism-model’ as it was adopted in the Soviet Union after 1930. Although socialism remained the final goal, it was openly spoken of as belonging to the distant future. A further point of departure was the international situation, so different from that of 1917. That was characterized partly by the existence and importance of the Soviet Union and even more by changes in the capitalist system, its ‘democratization’. The evidence for this included the participation of Communist parties in certain post-war governments, the legislative establishment of what came to be the welfare state, and in general the increasing involvement of the state in the economy along with elements of economic planning.27 In addition, reference was made to the ‘double’ difference between the East-Central European region and the Soviet Union. It was argued, first, that the economic and social relations in the countries of the region were closer to those of the West and more advanced than those of the Russian transition period. Nagy cited as negative factors on the way to collective economy the highly developed awareness of property among the peasantry and the almost completely forgotten traditional forms of collective economic activity. At the same time, the opposite case was offered: the social and economic structure of the region contained many anachronistic (‘feudal’) remnants that operated in favour of a gradual progress. For Nagy that meant not a revolutionary transformation but for some years after the democratic land reform the protection of ‘democratic’ property relations. Whatever the basis for argument, the outcome was always the same for the ‘seekers’: people’s democracy was a special path of transition to socialism different from the Soviet precedent but equivalent to a revolution that, thanks to the Soviet liberation, could dispense with or at least minimize the element of violence. It equalled revolution but without the comprehensive character of a revolution. The ‘seekers’ recognized in society a tendency towards compromise instead of polarization (such as Nagy’s theory about the Hungarian village in which ‘middle peasant’ ways of farming grow ever stronger). The determination and leading role of the vanguard, the Communist Party, and political coalitions (i.e. the existing, Communistdominated pseudo-coalitions) were emphasized as stabilizing factors in the transition process. These seekers after an alternative model, including Nagy, appear after the fact as politically naive, like dreamers who tried to build a theory on the tactical considerations of a great power. To make matters worse, they had to argue so as not to be seen as innovators and thus stigmatized as heretics (‘revisionists’). They therefore accommodated themselves to the Soviet mode of thought, using that conceptual apparatus and Soviet instruments of conduct. They concealed their relationship to thinkers with no obligation to Marxism-Leninism and that

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makes it all the more difficult for us today to realize what they were talking about in the 1940s. Back then only the survivors, knowledgeable about party history, understood that it was nothing else than the continuation, under quite different circumstances, of the discussions at the end of the 1920s. For a brief moment the idea could be entertained that Soviet Communism might shift to a more democratic direction, and Nagy identified himself fully with this idea, yet from autumn 1949 and through the following years there was not the slightest chance that this might be realized.

5

UP THE LADDER While ‘seeking for a way’ politically, Nagy remained effectively invisible for a time. To be sure, he remained a member of the Central Committee of the newly unified party following the liquidation of the Social Democratic Party, having been elected with 65 others at the ‘unification’ congress of the Hungarian Workers’ Party (MDP) in June 1948. Most of them had little voice in political decisions, and although Nagy attended the increasingly rare meetings, he hardly ever spoke. He was now professor and head of the Department of Agrarian Politics at the Budapest Economics University, a position he had taken up a year before. From 1949 on, he also lectured at the Agricultural University. Since university chairs fell within the party’s remit, Nagy could not have occupied this post without the approval of higher party officials, but by this time the list included some 4,000 positions. Even as early as 1948, Nagy’s university appointment was clearly a political decision. He met none of the formal requirements for the position: he did not even have a high-school diploma, let alone a university or graduate degree. Interestingly, many of his students believed that he had graduated from a university, or had even taught there, earning a doctorate or other advanced degree during his Moscow years. By 1948 he boasted an impressive list of publications, though not all were of a scholarly nature, and as a former minister of agriculture, he brought a wealth of experience to the lecture hall. And he was known as an excellent speaker. Nagy’s appointment was also part of the university reorganization, a process that did not necessarily raise scholarly standards in higher education. The new university was seen, above all, as a Marxist training centre, preparing larger numbers than the party schools could manage for leading economic posts. Nagy lectured on the basis of extensive notes, which were typed up and presented to him for approval, or from complete long-hand texts such as he used for important speeches in party circles.1 It was his nature to be well prepared, but it was also a habit acquired in inner-party debates where he sought to avoid unclear or politically compromising formulations. His lecture topics on agrarian politics included some general economic history and the history of ideas concerning the agrarian question, especially those arising out of Soviet and Hungarian experience, as well as political issues. But he mainly emphasized what the so-called classics – Stalin, above all, but also Lenin, Engels and finally Marx – taught about the ‘agrarian-peasant’ problem. In one of his 1948 53

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16. The professor of the University of Economics, 1948. (Hungarian National Museum)

lectures, he distinguished four aspects: theoretical, practical political, historical and cooperative, remarking that the last merited special status because of its complicated and highly significant content. In general, Nagy’s lectures dwelt chiefly on theory, along with historical discussion and the practical issues of Soviet agriculture and Hungarian land reform. The result was a strict and logically constructed edifice that negated contradictory views and allowed for no exceptions. Professor Nagy was well aware of the changes overtaking the university in the period after his arrival there. As he told Antal Gyenes, who had been his assistant first (in 1948–49) at the Economics University and then after 1951 at the Agricultural University: ‘In the time you were there [i.e. 1948–49] one could still openly discuss matters; after 1949, when you had left, this was no longer the case.’ 2 So far as was possible, Nagy tried to counterbalance the

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uniformity. ‘He was a good lecturer; students liked his classes and could follow his reasoning easily. Students were disappointed when Nagy was not giving a class, for he spoke clearly and in a pleasant voice, always well-prepared,’ one of his former research students recollected.3 His students formed the first personal circle around Nagy, thereby offsetting to some degree the solitude of the politician recently returned from Moscow. With the exception of Lajos Fehér, later a semi-liberal agrarian politician of the Kádár era, Nagy had little personal contact with either the Communist Party leadership or with colleagues in the agrarian section of the party centre. His social life was largely confined to his immediate family, which after 1946 included his son-in-law Ferenc Jánosi, a Protestant minister who had become a Communist cultural politician and who remained Nagy’s closest friend and confidant for the rest of his life. Many of the friends and colleagues who became his intellectual collaborators emerged from among his students, assistants and doctoral candidates. Several others came from the NÉKOSZ people’s colleges, and for years remained close to their former professor.4 Much as Nagy enjoyed his university position, it remained a mere episode in his career, albeit one that might have led him to an altogether different personal fate. As an intellectual consistently losing out in inner-party struggles, he here encountered the alternative of becoming an ‘intellectual-apparatchik’. Be that as it may, he probably gained more from this period in terms of mental preparation and personal associations than its brief duration would suggest. Beginning in 1950, the party brought Nagy back into the leadership, though not at the highest level. After he had been removed from the Politburo, plans developed immediately for his employment. As early as November 1949, the Department of Personnel and that of Foreign Affairs presented to the secretariat a suggestion that Nagy be appointed ambassador to China,5 at a moment when Mao’s victory had made China the second ranking power in the Communist bloc. Such an appointment would have implied party as well as state endorsement. Though it was rejected, that proposal does indicate that his university ‘exile’ was regarded as temporary. In 1950 Ernő Gerő, Nagy’s chief adversary in the debates of 1947–49, proposed that Nagy be named rector of the Agricultural University and director of the Agricultural Academy in Zsámbék.6 This proposal also came to naught. But finally, on 1 June 1950, the Politburo accepted Rákosi’s recommendation that, in connection with the reorganization of the party’s central offices, Nagy be made head of the new Administrative Department charged with supervision of the party organizations in the armed forces.7 This office took on considerable importance later on during the Kádár regime, but in 1950 it had little to do. The army was in the hands of Mihály Farkas, and the security forces (ÁVH) were supervised directly by Rákosi. The most junior Soviet ‘advisor’ had more influence in the forces than anyone in the Administrative Department.

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Nagy himself, though head of the department, spent most of his time – as his papers reveal – editing his university lectures for publication. At the same time, everyone was conscious of the importance of this change in his status. Years later János Kádár remembered Rákosi’s question, ‘What would you think about bringing Imre Nagy back into the party centre?’ ‘He used the expression, “Imre Nagy is a splinter of the Moscow granite,” and I responded that it was a pity that he had been removed.’ 8 In December 1950 Nagy re-entered the government as head of the Ministry of Food Supply, soon to be renamed as that of Procurement. In February 1951 he was elected to the Central Committee, then to the Politburo, and finally to the secretariat, the real locus of power. The ministry, established in 1950, was in charge of state requisition of foodstuffs for consumption, export and reserves. This was accomplished in several ways: by land rent paid in kind, by mandatory delivery of produce, by centralized purchase of agrarian produce either through contract or set prices, and by the imposition of fees for thrashing, milling and the like. The predominant technique was the mandatory sale of produce at a price usually lower than the costs of production. Assessments were based on land rent, another form of central requisitioning. The first punitive measures against ‘kulaks’ were introduced in the summer of 1948. Owners of more than ten (later even less) hectares were so characterized, but others having extra income, e.g. from the sale of wine or rent of a threshing machine, were also included in the category of ‘class enemy’.9 The system of requisitions became increasingly complicated each year, and after the exceptionally poor harvest of 1952 the majority of peasant farms endured profound hardship. Ruthless agents did not hesitate to confiscate the supplies upon which a family’s survival depended, as well as next year’s seed reserve, going so far as to sweep up the last grains of wheat from a family’s loft. Always self-sufficient in grain and at times an exporter, Hungary now had to import wheat. Although he performed the duties that went with his official position, Nagy did not participate more actively in meetings and remained a rather faceless administrator while requisitions steadily increased. In his periodic ‘campaign speeches’, he warned against injustice and advocated ‘political agitation’ rather than ruthless confiscation. But the regional agents and emissaries to the countryside received other instructions, with emphasis on the fulfilment of the economic plan, enforcement of state discipline and relentless insistence on satisfying quotas. There was to be no tolerance for laxity, lack of vigilance or ‘enemy activity’. The system of requisitions united the peasantry in opposition to the regime. The specialists associated with Nagy were aware of the difficulties caused by constantly increasing demands from above. In June 1953 Nagy referred retrospectively to these problems when he said, ‘We saw the mistakes clearly and did not remain silent. We always opposed the faulty methods of the Planning

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Office, its unrealistic production figures, and the excessive emphasis on requisition quotas. We presented the problems and their likely consequences to the appropriate party authorities. … But we received nothing but reprimands, chiefly from Rákosi and Gerő.’ 10 Requisitions formed one of the most important features of Stalinist economic policy and had the most severe impact on Hungarian peasant society in the early 1950s. This policy was designed to extract from the agricultural sector the capital necessary for industrialization, employing naked force as needed. And requisitions were central to the programme of the Rákosi regime, the effect of which may best be described as internal warfare. It was that feature of economic policy that Nagy had opposed. This was the time, if there ever was one, when Nagy, in the detached role of professor, might have observed with clean hands how Hungarian agriculture was being destroyed after the promising land reform with which the era had began. It would have been a unique opportunity to separate himself from the decline, to which a more aggressive collectivization drive was also contributing. But it did not happen this way. Instead, he became the faceless executor of an agricultural policy that he, virtually alone, had opposed at its inception. One wonders why. The possible answer is multifaceted. The most important factor was that Nagy’s personality was still shaped by the role of the functionary, devoted unquestioningly to the party cause. Once the party had rejected his questions and doubts, he doubtless thought that he could serve the cause only by subordinating himself and hiding his convictions. In the increasingly depressing atmosphere in which high party and government officials were secretly arrested one after the other, Nagy may also have feared that opposition would bring harm to him and his family. He had certainly learned from the show trials, his Moscow experience, and his own fate that change would have to wait until Stalin disappeared. And to survive until then, he would have to remain safely in public view. So he stayed and even rose in the hierarchy: in 1952 he became deputy prime minister in the cabinet led by Mátyás Rákosi, supervising the three ministries that dealt with agriculture. It was but a few years after its complete establishment in Hungary that the Stalinist system headed into crisis. The cause was not political resistance but precisely the forced economic transformation, of which the destruction of agriculture was a part. When Stalin died on 5 March 1953 (Nagy himself proposed the resolution of the Hungarian parliament commemorating the dictator 11) his successors, particularly Malenkov and Beria, were well aware of approaching crisis, especially the danger that the peripheries of the empire could disintegrate. For the sake of stabilization they were prepared to offer some concessions, such as moderating the pace of the building of socialism. Beria may even have considered relinquishing the German Democratic Republic in order to reduce the costs of the Cold War.12

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In early June 1953 the Soviet leadership summoned a Hungarian delegation led by Rákosi and including three of the five deputy prime ministers (Gerő, Nagy and István Hidas), agriculture minister András Hegedüs and several other party and government luminaries. On 13 June the Hungarians were received by leading members of the Soviet Presidium: Malenkov, Beria, Molotov, Khrushchev, Bulganin and Mikoyan. Three topics were proposed for discussion: issues of economic growth, the problem of selecting cadres and the matter of arbitrary acts and legality. In his introductory remarks, Rákosi attempted to portray a situation in which most of the possible mistakes had already been corrected, but his interlocutors had expected something different. ‘Our impression is that the Hungarian colleagues underestimate the failures,’ as Malenkov put it, citing the state of the collective farms, the abuses of requisition and the numerous actions against the peasants. Other Soviet leaders mentioned the calamitous state of agriculture, the excesses of forced collectivization and the immensity of repressive action. Beria objected that Rákosi directed state security personally, interfered with investigations and even ordered physical torture. He demanded that Rákosi relinquish the premiership in favour of Nagy. Khrushchev charged Rákosi with responsibility for everything that had gone wrong. The latter tried to defend himself, citing instructions from Stalin and other Soviet authorities, but to no avail. Beria distanced himself and his colleagues from the late dictator on more than one occasion.13 All participants in the discussion saw a Nagy premiership as a decisive change at the top. As the later premier András Hegedüs described the situation in his memoirs: ‘At that stage we held the position of prime minister to be more important than that of first secretary, just as we saw Prime Minister Malenkov as head of the Soviet leadership. This was illustrated by a small exchange as we left the room. Imre Nagy stood aside to let Rákosi pass, but the latter pushed Nagy forward, saying “Go ahead, Imre, now you’re the boss!”’ 14 The Soviet leaders ordered the Hungarian delegation to prepare written plans for the correction of mistakes and for the necessary personnel changes. These documents were submitted during their stay in Moscow. At Nagy’s initiative, these included abolition of the ‘kulak-list’ and the acceptability of withdrawal from a collective farm. On 16 June the outlines of a party decree were discussed with the Soviet hosts, who insisted that the decree specify the personal responsibility of Rákosi, Gerő, Farkas and Révai. At Molotov’s suggestion, it was also stipulated that collective farms established by force could be dissolved. News of the strike and uprising in East Berlin overtook the Hungarians when they arrived back in Budapest.15 Rákosi was moved to conclude that, short of a complete change of course, they could find themselves in a similarly deep crisis. At a session of the Central Committee on 27 June, Rákosi acknow­

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17. The front page of The New York Times, 5 July 1953. (1956 Institute archive)

ledged his responsibility for mistakes, renouncing the personality cult, the dictatorial style, the concentration of power in the hands of a few, discrimination against cadres ‘of Magyar origin’ (a reference to the preponderance of Jews in the leadership)16 and party domination of state institutions. Nagy carried the critique beyond the somewhat superficial observations of both Rákosi and the Soviet leaders, seeking to expose the reasons for such profound distortions. He located the origins of the mistakes for which Rákosi was admitting responsibility ‘in the fact that under his leadership the party had deviated from the principles of Marxism-Leninism in its policies, practice, and activity. … We violated the principles of people’s democracy regarding relations between party and state and between the state and the masses.’ He spoke of a ‘shadow cabinet’ and a ‘police state’, and characterized economic policy simply as ‘adventurous’.17 Nagy’s analysis passed easily, though for many this acceptance was a mere formality, since the Central Committee majority was disinclined to think seriously about the ‘roots of the mistakes’.18 The Central Committee left the formulation of the outcome to the new Politburo. Regarding its publication, Rákosi received a message from Moscow that this should be delayed.19 This led to the decision not to publish the new political line from the Central Committee but rather to announce it in the Hungarian parliament as a government programme.

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The Central Committee’s critical document was in four parts: the mistakes themselves, the reasons for the mistakes, the economic correctives needed immediately and finally the concomitant organizational reforms.20 The party leadership was charged with ‘serious mistakes in its political programme and practical work’. These mistakes have had negative consequences for the living standard of the population in general and especially of the working class; they have weakened the relationship between party and working class … and have caused grave problems in the economy. … It was a sectarian policy that regarded industrialization as an end in itself without considering the interests of the working class. … This false economic policy revealed a certain boastfulness as well as an element of risk-taking, in so far as the forced development of heavy industry presupposed resources and raw materials that were in part just not available. … The party leadership neglected agricultural production and … pushed collectivization at a much too rapid tempo. … The overly rapid collectivization of agriculture discloses a serious error, the more so as Imre Nagy urged against this policy within the party leadership; but that leadership not only failed to accept his position but falsified it as ‘opportunistic’ and penalized him for it.

Personal responsibility for these failings, including excessive reliance on repressive measures, was laid squarely at the feet of Rákosi, Gerő, Farkas and Révai. The personnel changes that followed proposed Nagy as prime minister. Farkas and Révai were to be removed from the Politburo (though its essential character did not change); Rákosi remained first secretary of the party, and Gerő actually gained power as deputy premier and minister of the interior. What moved Moscow to choose Nagy? He was known for his expertise on Hungarian agriculture, and the agricultural situation was viewed by Moscow as the decisive feature of the crisis. Also they preferred someone who was a known quantity, someone whose past, character and political stance were reliable. Nagy had lived for 15 years in Moscow and he was the only Hungarian leader who had argued with Rákosi and Gerő, the advocates of ‘hyperindustrialization’, in favour of a different path towards the transformation of agriculture, a viewpoint now seen by Moscow as the key to ending the crisis. The new parliament, elected on 17 May 1953, opened on 3 July. The next day the new government was elected and Nagy delivered his programmatic speech. It was broadcast in full that evening and, as the news programmes made clear, was a major event, commanding the attention of all who were able to hear it – unlike earlier addresses by prime ministers.21 Nagy’s address dealt mainly with immediate tasks, what had been the third section of the Central Committee decree, though he expanded on that text and modified its political tone. ‘With the present parliament,’ he said, ‘our development is embarked on a new phase that must give better expression to the sovereignty of the people, the

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governing role of parliament, the principles of responsible government, and the exercise of constitutional rights.’ The economic portion of his speech was based on the party decree: We have to acknowledge to the country that the targets of the augmented five-year plan are in many respects beyond our capability. … The government will revise both the production and investment aspects of the economic plan and make appropriate proposals for necessary reductions. The direction of the people’s economy must be revised also. Nothing justifies the excessive industrialization and the attempt at autarchy, especially when we lack the requisite resources.

On the agrarian issue, Nagy went beyond the party document and offered a strategic shift: ‘As is well known, our agricultural production depends primarily on individual farms. … The government wishes to safeguard peasant production and property.’ He proclaimed that private enterprise must be allowed and craft licences granted. Nagy also addressed himself to such groups as the old intelligentsia and religious believers (who would have been denigrated in previous years if mentioned at all): ‘Greater tolerance has to be shown in matters of religion; it is not permissible to apply administrative punishment in this area.’ This passage was followed by a sentence that remained indelibly imprinted in the memory of those who heard it: ‘Much greater care must be applied to the elementary schools, more investment made, the number of schools, classrooms, and teachers increased, so that ever better conditions can be established for the basic education of little Magyars, the hope of the future.’ (The slightly romantic expression ‘little Magyars’ was so different from the usual party jargon that everyone took notice.) But the most important parts of the address, those that touched the broadest sectors of society, were still to come. ‘The government stands in all its activity on the basis of the legal order guaranteed by the constitution. The foundation of our people’s democracy, of our political and economic life, is socialist legality, the observance of the rights and duties of citizens and of the laws of the people’s republic.’ His use of ‘socialist’ to modify legality struck most listeners as a contradiction, but what followed was stated forthrightly and without qualification: In the activity of our organs of justice and police and of local councils, the principles of the state and government of a people’s democracy, legality, was not always observed. The large number of court and police cases, the widespread use of administrative sanctions, the massive abuses associated with requisitions, taxation, the kulak-list, and other harassments injured the people’s sense of justice and their trust in the legal order. Even measures that were correct, legitimate, and just were often applied in a way that

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18. Reading the exposé of the prime minister, 4 July 1953. In the first row, from left: Ernő Gerő, minister of the interior; István Dobi, head of state; behind Nagy, to the right, Rákosi. (Hungarian News Agency (MTI))

caused bitterness. The strengthening of legality is one of the government’s most urgent tasks.

All of this amounted to nothing less than the intention to end the war between state and society. The overwhelming majority of Hungarians responded to the speech with joy, relief and hope. It is not too much to say that this was the first speech by a Communist leader since 1945 that was approved by most of the people. Only the beneficiaries of the policies of preceding years, fearful of losing major or minor advantage, reacted with suspicion. Although Nagy did not promise a total reversal of course but rather proposed correctives to make the system manageable, his address did recognize that the ‘building of socialism’ could not, even under Stalinist tyranny, be accomplished in total confron-

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tation with society. It also implied that Communism need not be monolithic but could be conceived in terms of variations and allow for reform and reformers. Under the tense circumstances of the time, this meant a great deal. It also raised the hope that political discussion and activity might again make sense, even if in a strictly limited way. Nagy must have reckoned for some time on the changes that might come after Stalin’s death; he certainly moved quickly to promote them. The information that reached Moscow about Hungary – via Ambassador Kiselev – must have originated with none other than the deputy prime minister in charge of agriculture, Nagy himself. Yet he was hardly prepared for the magnitude of the ensuing changes. When the Central Committee designated him as prime minister, he may have felt that his long-held convictions and private opinions had finally become realistic possibilities. He may have thought that it was not useless to play the game by party rules. He may have believed in the possibility of a peaceful and gradual transition to socialism, along a path that offers people a painless learning process rather than a punitive forced march. Hungarian society in turn took notice of a Communist who spoke about the road to socialism in terms of people’s needs. Nagy did not even hint at such sensitive national issues as the withdrawal of Soviet troops, but he did speak of the ‘little Magyars’ as tokens of the future in a country where, a few years earlier, the national holiday of 15 March, commemorating the revolution of 1848, had been abolished. His underlying message registered unmistakably.

6

THE NEW COURSE Only a few days after Nagy’s government announcement, the new Hungarian leadership group – Nagy, Rákosi and Gerő – was again invited to Moscow, this time to be apprised of the removal of Soviet interior minister Beria and of the charges against him. As Rákosi recalled, at this meeting on 7 July 1953, Nikita Khrushchev stated directly that ‘Beria’s conduct in the discussions of the Hungarian question contributed significantly to his unmasking’.1 Rákosi tried at once to achieve a revision of the results of the June consultations, but the Soviet participants were unresponsive. A consequence of the Moscow visit was the decision by the Hungarian leaders to call a meeting of the Budapest Party activists for 11 July in order to inform the public of the change in political direction, known hitherto only from the speech by Prime Minister Nagy. This gathering took on special importance because now the party leadership made public the changes in policies and that is what the functionaries waited for. First Secretary Rákosi gave a vigorous and militant speech that was gratefully received and applauded by his followers, the party officials who had been seriously unsettled by events of the preceding days but had not received party instructions. Rákosi dealt with the mistakes that had been committed but attempted to blunt the criticism and minimize its importance. Concerning the 1951 increase in the targets of the Five Year Plan, he simply said that they needed to be raised but not quite so sharply. With respect to MDP leadership, he conceded that ‘In the face of developments of the last few days, we have come to the conclusion that it would have been more correct … to announce the assignments first in the party’s name.’ 2 In addition to Rákosi’s listeners, all the party and state officials, accomplices and beneficiaries of the regime, hearing the live transmission on the radio, must have heard the first secretary’s words with great satisfaction. They were reassured that the old goals and slogans – the priority of industrialization, the preference for collective economy and enhanced vigilance – retained their validity. By contrast, Nagy’s remarks must have struck the comrades as weak and rather unprepared. He reiterated that the resolution of the Central Committee was the guideline for the programme, mentioned the successes, but did not speak of ‘the attacks of the enemies’ and the problems emerging after the announcement of the new programme. He rather described the first steps already undertaken by the government to excuse farmers’ debts and delivery deficits while reducing 64

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delivery quotas, and went on to mention the measures that would be initiated in the next few days. His speech ended as it had begun, underscoring the importance of party unity and closed ranks.3 One thing became clear at this gathering: either the party changed its policies with noticeable frequency or something was amiss regarding the unanimity of the leaders. In retrospect Imre Nagy wrote: ‘Rákosi’s speech at the meeting of 11 July 1953 showed that resistance was to be expected both in the party apparatus and in the state and economic administration.’ 4 He was thus aware of the fact that the countervailing forces were gathering strength and the Budapest meeting was merely an overture. Nonetheless, practical measures were rather quickly initiated, the first of them within a few weeks: a limited amnesty, the raising of the allowable size of the family property of cooperative farmers to half a hectare and a modification of the 1953 investment plan. There were controversies inside the government, chiefly concerning the tempo. Some ministers held, in agreement with Rákosi, that the measures were proceeding too rapidly, resulting in uncertainty. The minister for food production reported that ‘deliveries’ had come to a halt.5 But Nagy did not relent. The greatest resistance came, however, from the Politburo where, under Rákosi’s direction, an attempt was made to delay the implementation of the government programme. While Nagy moved energetically at the government level, he remained insecure and cautious within the Politburo. The prime minister appealed to the Soviet leaders for assistance, and Ambassador Kiselev informed him that Moscow would provide complete support in the implementation of the New Course.6 Nagy was also greatly encouraged by his success at cabinet level in such important initiatives as the dismantling of internment camps and the establishment of the office of attorney general. Developments in Moscow were also important: on 8 August Soviet Prime Minister Malenkov presented his government programme to the Supreme Soviet and announced the ‘corrective measures’ that had been adopted since Stalin’s death. His speech did not, to be sure, suggest a change in direction, but the emphasis that Malenkov gave to subjects such as living standards, light industry and agriculture made clear that, after the fall of Beria, there would be no return to the old patterns.7 It was not just Malenkov’s speech that strengthened Nagy’s hand in Hungary, but also the fact that the Supreme Soviet had presented not a party resolution but a government programme – a procedure similar to his programme speech in parliament. Nagy took the initiative and proposed to raise the membership of the secretariat of the MDP Central Committee from three to four and to give this extra position to Mihály Farkas, the recently resigned defence minister. The Soviet authorities signalled agreement; it is even possible that the suggestion originated in Moscow. Farkas became a member of both the Politburo and the secretariat. Nagy had to have known of the conflicts between Farkas and Rákosi, for

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Rákosi’s intrigues had reached as far as Stalin.8 Before and after the change in government in June, Farkas had performed self-criticism – and in a style resembling Nagy’s critical position. The premier assumed that Farkas was on his side. The assumption proved to be false in the long run: to regard Farkas, one of the engineers of the show trials, as an ally did not exactly enhance Nagy’s reputation. When Rákosi failed to achieve a radical revision of the June resolutions in higher party circles, he changed his tactic. He urged that a fundamental analysis be undertaken, one that would disclose the mistakes committed and specify the necessary correctives, thus providing a basis for decisions on how to proceed. Nagy was agreeable to a balanced approach and imagined that it would strengthen the political aims of the New Course. Owing to the old centralized administrative structure and its rigorous implementation of directives, the economic measures of the New Course went into practice with relative rapidity. To delay these would have been dangerous, for the crisis was obvious and public dissatisfaction threatened to turn into open dissent. Since only a part of the changes promised immediate results, the long-term effects of the resolutions were difficult to anticipate. The first set of them aimed at improvements in consumer supply by shifting capital reserves and investment from heavy industry to agriculture, light industry, production of consumer goods, housing construction and maintenance. Aside from the immediate halt to some of the major projects (the Budapest underground, Sztálinváros steel works), the effects of these decisions would be felt only in a year or so.9 The second set of measures centred on wage increases and price reductions. The boosting of wages and salaries benefited almost a million employees, an average gain of just over 100 forints per capita, some 10–11 per cent of the average monthly income, adding up to almost a billion forint in the annual budget. The price reductions amounted to about another one billion forint. These caused an immediate rise in demand because of increased purchasing power. The supply of commodities, on the other hand, took its wearisome course through the centralized distribution network, and demand could be satisfied only to the degree that the meagre reserves allowed. Negative consequences could not be excluded: it was feared that the first set of measures could paralyse the economic machinery and that the second could endanger economic equilibrium. Further changes aimed to reduce burdens on the populace, the farmers in particular. One was relying here not only on directives but also, to some extent, on economic regulators. In the second half of the year, there were more than 50 government decisions affecting agriculture as well as dozens of orders of a lower level. The problems involving industry were to be dealt with by means of a ‘more balanced’ setting of targets, i.e. lowering the plan quotas. In the agricul-

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tural sector, the procedure was more varied. In the first place, the farmers were relieved in July/August of a staggering accumulation of debt (taxes and delayed payments), partially reduced or written off entirely. Then in autumn came the orders intended to advance the readiness for increased production. Individual farmers who had at some point ceded their land to the state could reclaim that land. Holdings up to about 12 hectares could be leased tax free. A new regulation was in preparation that would fix delivery quotas for a longer period (1954–56), in contrast with the practice of setting quotas annually, thereby allowing individual farmers to plan their economic activity better. Although this rule did not appear until December, after the close of the economic year 1953, it contributed significantly to the relief of acute burdens. Both economic and political measures were designed to reduce tensions. Some moves reduced economic repression; others, such as the possibility of withdrawing from collective farms, reduced political repression.10 The lessening of repression in Hungary began with a step that copied the so-called ‘Beria Amnesty’ in the USSR that followed Stalin’s death and affected ordinary criminals. That an amnesty for political prisoners in the Soviet Union might also be in preparation was suggested by the dismissal of the ‘Doctors’ Plot’ and by the release of the defendants in the planned ‘Zionist Trial’. (Actually the rehabilitation of those sentenced for political offences in the Soviet Union took place quite a bit later, following the power struggle and the removal of Beria.) 11 The Hungarian amnesty affected only those offenders with fewer than two years of their sentences to serve, as well as minors and the aged. Thus it was meaningless for most political prisoners, for they had usually received sentences well in excess of two years. At the same time, the easing of repression had a positive effect on the fate of many people who had been convicted of one or another criminal act or of ‘economic crimes’ but had in reality been victims of the political ‘punitive campaigns’. There were people convicted of ‘crimes’ such as delaying deliveries of goods (some fined, others imprisoned), ‘plan offences’, meaning failure to fulfil production quotas, or even ‘arbitrary departure from the workplace’. Most important, however, was the termination of deportation and internment, the political persecution of this special sort in the fight against ‘enemies of the people’. One might characterize this step as a limited political amnesty, something that was at that time unthinkable in any other Communist-ruled country. By autumn 1953 the Hungarian ‘Gulag’ was virtually eliminated: forced labour camps had been abolished, and that included the Hortobágy camp in the Puszta for those ‘class enemies’ who were expelled from the cities. In the report commissioned jointly by the Ministry of the Interior and the state prosecutor for implementation of all these measures, one reads of ‘approximately 748,000 persons affected’.12 On 27 October Nagy met with representatives of the Catholic Bishops’

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Conference. Agreement was reached quickly on some matters. The plan to reduce state subsidies to the Church was abandoned, the care of aged priests was confirmed, financial compensation was provided for the lands that had been seized and the residences that had been confiscated by the state were restored. The prime minister promised that members of the male and female orders closed down in 1950 would be allowed to ‘find their place in production’. The administration of extreme unction in hospitals was again permitted. The Church regained its administrative archives and won the promise that books for religious instruction could again be published. No agreement was reached on the size of the editions of religious texts, and the subject of the incarcerated Cardinal Mindszenty and Archbishop Grősz of Kalocsa or the possible reconsideration of their sentences was not even broached.13 As of autumn 1953 it became easier to obtain a business licence, and those small businesses that already had a licence could even obtain credit. In 1949 the number of small businesses was in the neighbourhood of 200,000. By the beginning of 1953 that number had fallen by two-thirds, but in the course of 1954 it rose again to over 100,000. The government imposed fixed quotas for every branch in order to ensure that small enterprises did not ‘gain excessive space’, but these were steadily increased. One of the most important features of the government programme was to legalize withdrawal from ‘agricultural production cooperatives’, i.e. the kolkhozes. In the government announcement, Nagy stated that this would be possible first at the end of the fiscal year 1953. He emphasized that forced membership was at an end, but he also urged that the ‘economically successful’ cooperatives be strengthened. Since the official regulations did not acknowledge categories such as ‘good’ and ‘bad’, that could only mean that the cooperatives would continue to enjoy support as a high priority. After the speech, there were immediate and spontaneous withdrawals. In many localities the cooperatives simply dissolved, the members taking the animals and equipment they had been forced to contribute and heading for home. The leadership found itself in a dilemma: if it wanted to save collectivized agriculture from total collapse, it would have to apply force or else support the cooperatives much more vigorously and make withdrawal more difficult. The latter happened. According to a ministerial ruling in early autumn, those choosing to leave could not reclaim the fields they had brought into the collective but should receive alternative parcels of land from the cooperative assembly. They had to take responsibility for the cooperative’s unpaid credits and other debts, according to the size of the property they brought into the collective, and an additional 50 per cent of the debt per capita. Thus those who succeeded in withdrawing were doubly penalized.14 By the end of 1953, only 688 out of more than 5,000 collective farms (12 per cent) had dissolved, but the number of cooperative members dropped from 376,000 to 250,000, and the lands belonging to the collectives fell by 25

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per cent. The numbers continued to decline in 1954, although not at the same tempo. Yet the cooperative sector did not collapse.15 At the meeting of the MDP Central Committee on 31 October 1953, a preliminary accounting took place. First Secretary Rákosi’s report signified victory for Imre Nagy: he now endorsed the June Resolution, condemned the ‘mistakes of the past’ and dealt in detail with the ‘incidents’ that suggested resistance to the New Course. The statistics for the economic plan for the fiscal year 1954 also implied that the advocates of the New Course had gained the upper hand. Out of a total investment figure of 13–14 billion forints, 24–26 per cent was to be directed towards agriculture; the share of consumer goods production out of all industrial investment was to rise 3 per cent and the share of consumption and provisioning in the national income was to increase from the 58 per cent of the previous year to 70 per cent.16 At the end of October the party and the government appealed to the Soviet leadership for a loan of 200 million roubles, with repayment to commence in 1957. This need resulted from Hungary’s substantial debt. In previous years the forced industrialization, some of the military budget and necessary importation of consumer goods (owing to poor harvests and the ‘restructuring’ of agriculture) had to be financed by credit. The requested loan was meant to cover the servicing of debts owing to Western sources and also to states within the bloc. The result was another ‘consultation’ in Moscow where the Hungarians received only half of the amount requested. Nagy’s remarks suggest that he was not dissatisfied politically with the outcome. The Soviet leaders not only supported the desired alteration in the Hungarian economy but encouraged it.17 Similar developments occurred in all the lands of the Soviet bloc. The changes in Hungary did not strike Western observers as particularly basic, politicians and press alike believing the New Course to be just a tactical manoeuvre by the Communist leadership to quieten popular dissatisfaction and simply another variation of the Soviet ‘restructuring model’.18 And there was some truth in that. Nagy, of all the Communist politicians the most committed to ‘corrections’, did not plan to go beyond the changes already achieved by autumn 1953. His parliamentary address in January 1954 dealt almost entirely with the government’s accomplishments; he said little about difficulties and virtually nothing about further reforms.19 Still, what was specific in the Hungarian policy of correction and what enhanced the process was the fact that the self-criticism of the leadership reached the public, at least in part. Furthermore the changes in three vital areas – agriculture, heavy industry and police repression – were so profound as to influence qualitatively the cohesion of the system. Contradictions became manifest and percolated down into social sub-systems. The transfer of village and agricultural resources to the development of heavy industry had been, for example, the central principle guiding the entire apparatus of public admin­

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istration, its structure and modes of operation. Previously the continuing rise in production and developmental goals determined in turn the whole structure of industry and the philosophy of economic direction. As these axioms were challenged in the highest circles, corresponding discussions started at lower levels and the argument widened. That would have been unimaginable at an earlier time. In the summer of 1953 it appeared that Hungary would be the exemplary case leading the way in Moscow’s notions for a post-Stalinist future. But with Beria’s fall the power struggle in Moscow took new turns, and there was renewed opposition to the New Course. From that Rákosi hoped for a ‘tailwind’. And the changed situation was not lost on Nagy either. He concluded that the policies of the New Course must be further strengthened through internal initiative, and that the economic transformational measures should be supplemented by cautious reviewing and restructuring of the political system. ‘Legality’ was to be the guiding rule, understood not only as the enforcement of existing law but also as the elimination of arbitrariness in legal practice. The aim was nothing less than a reform of the structure of power politics. The rehabilitation of victims of the show trials began in January 1954 and the first political prisoners were released. Gábor Péter, the dismissed head of Hungarian state security, was put on trial and, as Nagy told Soviet Ambassador Kiselev, ‘Péter maintained in the trial that Rákosi personally fashioned the cases against, among others, Rajk and Kádár. We must consider … how we can improve the situation so that, by the time of the party congress, the necessary cooperation in the Politburo can be assured.’ 20 Rákosi’s regime was unquestionably a lawless one, but to make this understandable to his supporters and beneficiaries, there was no better argument than to show that the trials against Communists were contrary to law and that someone had to take responsibility. Nagy’s conception of ‘legality’ was motivated initially by the struggle for the New Course. Joining forces at times with interior minister Gerő, he tried to force Rákosi out of his party position, and the ‘rehabilitation’ of the unjustly persecuted Communists seemed the best means to that end. That let the genie out of the bottle. Rehabilitation became the primary moral issue for intellectuals and for party activists. Gerő did not exclude the possibility of relieving Rákosi of his position, yet he recoiled from Nagy’s initiative. He too sought guidance from the Soviet leaders but reckoned it likely that Moscow would urge an investigation of all cases and the release of all those against whom no guilt could be demonstrated, whereupon the MDP leaders would have to accept that the issue was resolved. Gerő’s recipe called for smoothing over the question of responsibility, which would have benefited Rákosi – even though he allowed that the ‘best solution’ might be to appoint him as first secretary.21 Because of the disagreements at the highest level of the Hungarian Party,

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the Soviet leadership was forced into the position of arbiter. At the end of January, Nagy suggested renewed consultations in Moscow, on the grounds that the MDP was expected to call a party congress early in 1954. The Soviet leaders apparently saw no basis for urgency and recommended the Hungarians to forgo consultations and first settle the conflicts among themselves. It was now the party congress instead of real, practical problems that governed the debates of early 1954. Both Rákosi and Nagy were preparing major addresses. Rákosi had the task of characterizing the difference between the New Course and the policies of the previous period (i.e. a critical illumination of his own arbitrary rule), which he of course tried to do as smoothly as possible. Nagy, in turn, insisted on a truly critical stocktaking. His address focused on problems in state and local government, in which he presented the ideas about the further development of the New Course as they emerged during the summer of 1954. The ‘New’ was in fact the old concept of ‘peaceful transition to socialism’, a return to the ‘organic’ route that had been abandoned in 1948–49. Nagy particularly emphasized that the existence of non-Communist parties was part of a people’s democracy, that a coalition government was characteristic of it and that it had been wrong to force these coalition partners out of political life. He did not, however, suggest openly that these parties, never officially forbidden, should again become active. When he here suggested a restoration of a configuration with multiple parties, he did not mean a multiparty system but rather the possible cooperation with satellite parties of the former ‘Left Bloc’, now within the framework of the Popular Front as the mass organization, and preserving the leading position of the Communist Party. In the given situation that would have meant a lot, for there was no institutionalized pluralism in Hungary at all. Nagy granted that there were class and group interests making necessary some form of balancing of interests. Although he expressly emphasized that the Patriotic Popular Front must be based on democratic principles22 and that its political programme would consist of ‘fulfilling the tasks of people’s democracy’, he avoided any mention of ‘building socialism’. As the political discussion grew in intensity, difficulties in the economic sector increased. The state and party apparatus silently sabotaged the initiation of reforms. During the severe winter of 1953–54 both energy production and transport were beset by difficulties; there were delays in the delivery to factories and of consumer goods, and it was in vain to hope for a good harvest. As investments in the other states of the bloc – following corrections similar to the New Course – gradually slackened, the Hungarian plans for foreign trade were disrupted. The deliveries of raw materials from neighbouring states declined, and some customers for Hungarian industrial products refused to accept goods that had been ordered but insisted on the delivery of foodstuffs. In the second third of 1954, there was a clearly negative balance of foreign trade.

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Consideration was given to an appeal to the Soviet Union for a re-scheduling of payments for the credits. All these problems were now characterized as negative results of the New Course and exacerbated the discussions about economic issues. In February 1954, for example, Nagy suggested a delay in the opening of the steel plant of Sztálinváros. He was overruled in the Politburo and the prestigious project of the first Five Year Plan was inaugurated according to schedule. That was generally viewed as a symbolic defeat for the New Course. All the groups that saw their interests endangered by a transfer of investment measures felt themselves strengthened thereby. Social policy was another area given priority by the New Course. Already in early 1954, critical voices complained that the rural population was too well off. The lower party apparatus sent reports to this effect on to the higher levels. As discussions began concerning the major goals of the second Five Year Plan (1955–59), there was particular controversy about the sensitive topic of agricultural cooperatives. At Nagy’s initiative, experts, some of them his former students and university colleagues, presented in December 1953 an agricultural development plan for the ensuing three years that had been approved by the party.23 The assumption was that the situation of the end of 1953 would not change in the future. The Politburo addressed itself several times to long-term perspectives between January and April 1954. Finally a resolution was adopted anticipating that the share of the cooperatives in arable agricultural land would rise from 18 to 51 per cent by the end of the second Five Year Plan. The debate on agriculture ended with a compromise whereby there was no mention of a renewed collectivization campaign but only of ‘the establishment of new cooperatives’. The Soviet leaders regarded the fight among Hungarian comrades as a disturbance – precisely at a moment when the Eastern bloc needed to deal with more important issues. After Malenkov announced in 1953 that the Soviet Union had successfully tested the hydrogen bomb, the international situation developed favourably for the Soviet ‘Peace Offensive’ in the first half of 1954. For the first time in almost five years, the foreign ministers of the great powers met in Berlin to discuss the German question and the war in Indochina. The members of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee were disinclined to grapple with specific problems that the Hungarian comrades had with the New Course, with ‘socialist legality’ or with political restructuring, and saw all this as personal conflicts. The Presidium received the Hungarian delegation on 5 May 1954 for talks. According to Hungarian notes about the meeting, the Soviet leaders were again well informed but unready to deal with details. There was no interest in a discussion of such topics as the organizational structure of the Popular Front, the theoretical clarification of the role of small and middle-sized farmers in Hungarian agriculture or even a definition of the concept of the New Course. But there was great concern with the

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condition of the Hungarian economy and the struggle over direction within the Hungarian leadership. Mikoyan stated that the investment plans for heavy industry and the freezing of certain other investments in the second Five Year Plan were not correct. ‘Income and outlays must be brought into balance,’ he declared. Kaganovich commented that ‘You are undertaking expenditures that you cannot afford – building socialism on credit.’ On the inner-party power struggle, Khrushchev observed that ‘Comrade Rákosi wants to gloss over the situation before June and blame Beria’s provocation for the sharp criticism of mistakes. … Perhaps he thinks that because we shot Beria we should also shoot the criticism. That is not the way it works! And Comrade Nagy goes to the other extreme. He criticizes, and that is correct. But to see only the shortages and deficits, that is completely incorrect.’ Khrushchev offered a simple solution: ‘Comrade Nagy should speak about the positive results and Comrade Rákosi about the failures. If you act in that way, people will understand that there are not two directions.’ Khrushchev wanted to see the rehabilitations handled in the same way. He truly believed that those falsely convicted should be set free, but he also believed that it would be in the best interests of the Soviet Union if calm were to prevail in Hungary. He knew perfectly well that the arrests were ordered by Rákosi. His formula was that Rákosi must eliminate the mistakes at the highest level but that it must be done in such a way that ‘Comrade Rákosi’s reputation would not be damaged, for his reputation is identical with that of the party’. What Rákosi must really take seriously, in Khrushchev’s formulation, is that ‘when Comrade Rákosi, in correcting errors, does not take over the leadership, then the collective must do so; otherwise the reputation of the Politburo and the party, as well as that of Comrade Rákosi, will be harmed. If Rákosi does not retain the leadership then the affair will be resolved without him and that, for a politician, would amount to a catastrophe.’ 24 Rákosi was disappointed not only by these words but because he could not achieve his actual aim of forcing Nagy from his position, at least not yet. Neither could Nagy feel that he had won. Khrushchev had made it emphatically clear that he wanted to adhere to the resolution of June 1953 and not go any further. His idea was to mould together those who wanted to return to the condition before it and those who wished to proceed beyond. But he had not noticed that this was no longer possible.

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VICTORY AND DEFEAT The Third Party Congress of the MDP was convened on 24 May 1954 in Budapest. Nagy presented the opening address on the tasks and goals that, as he phrased it, ‘the party and its leadership pursue in unflinching determination’. The congress delegates, as was usual in such strictly pre-arranged conclaves, had no inclination to cast doubt on that ‘unflinching determination’ or to call attention to fissures in the leadership of the party that Nagy described as a ‘granite-like foundation’. First Secretary Rákosi’s report, ‘Ten Years of the People’s Republic’, focused mainly on successes. Concerning ‘committed errors’ in politics and the economy, he glossed over these by suggesting that they had already been corrected in keeping with the resolution of June 1953. He announced that, after the first Five Year Plan was completed in 1954, a second Five Year Plan would commence in 1956 after a one-year interruption. His treatment of the goals of that second plan was extremely vague, but he insisted that by the end of it in 1960 the target, ‘to have laid the foundation of socialism in our country’, would be reached.1 Nagy began his presentation on the two stages of people’s democracy – the bourgeois-democratic and the socialist phases – in the manner of a party academy lecture. He included citations from Lenin quite liberally, but in a roundabout fashion reached the formulation of his own viewpoint on two of the most important political issues. He described the dictatorship of the proletariat as a ‘broad class alliance’ that embraced ‘also such strata as the intelligentsia, petty bourgeoisie, and non-proletarians active in the construction of socialism’.2 This definition of alliance partners signified a polemic against Stalin’s formula of a ‘permanent intensification of class struggle’. He characterized the organizational framework of this alliance, namely the Popular Front, as a mass movement with democratic organizational principles, with units at the local and the national level, and even with a voluntary membership. Nagy criticized the bureaucratization of local councils and of the strictly centralized state administration. The party congress endorsed the presentations as ‘party policy’. Nagy also attempted to get the congress to alter the composition of the Central Committee. All that he succeeded in achieving was the election of Zoltán Szántó as member and Lajos Fehér as candidate member of the Central Committee, which left the power relations unchanged. The congress did not resolve any of the problems. 74

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The balance that existed before the Third Congress was altered during summer 1954 in favour of the opponents of the New Course in three basic political issues: economic policy, the Popular Front and reviewing the verdicts in political trials. Right after the congress, Gerő declared that the economic situation was exceptionally critical and that it was necessary to combat the threat of inflation through saving, through reduction of overhead costs in the plants and through raising work norms, thus through drastic reductions in pay.3 The Central Planning Office presented the modified plan for 1954 to the Politburo. Although the Office admitted that the economic difficulties arose in part because the original plan for 1954 provided for no structural changes in the economy, it then underlined that the causes of the crisis were ‘serious relaxation’, ‘liberalism’ and ‘the decline of state discipline noticeable in almost all sectors of the economy’. The Planning Office proposed as correctives the reduction of imports, the energetic pursuit of agricultural delivery and a decrease in certain social expenditures, and suggested the restriction of the free sale of agricultural products.4 Shortly thereafter, while Nagy was on vacation, the head of the Planning Office, Béla Szalai, delivered the draft plan for 1955 to the Politburo. It provided that investment, economic growth (at least five per cent) and a credit balance should have priority over the living standard of the population. The plan foresaw for the fiscal year 1955 a decrease in expenditure of at least 2 billion forints, to be reached in part by reducing social expenditure by 1½ billion forints. It was expressly stated that ‘the relation of the real income of peasants and that of workers must not shift to the disadvantage of the latter’. At this Politburo meeting, with Mihály Farkas and Nagy both absent, Szalai’s draft was approved and a resolution passed calling for emergency measures to assure the fulfilment of the plan. An ad hoc commission was established under Gerő as chairman to work out the details of these measures. Four members of the six-person commission were strong opponents of the New Course and only two were counted as supporters of Nagy.5 The commission presented its first proposals to the Politburo in August. Savings should be secured from the fields of education and social insurance. The gross income of workers and employees should be reduced by 3.6 per cent, their real income by eight per cent, in 1955. Regarding farmers, the suggestion was that ‘measures should be developed to assure that the income of peasants will be substantially reduced, mainly through decrease in prices on the free market. If necessary, proposals should be made for reducing their gross income (tax increases, higher fees, local taxes, etc).’ 6 The question was reopened in the Politburo meeting of 28 July 1954 as to whether those parties of the old Independence Front of 1945 ‘that still have roots in some places’ should be integrated into the Popular Front. The members of the Politburo rejected the idea and decided that only individual loyal politi-

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cians of the former coalition parties could participate in committees of the Popular Front.7 It became clear that no real political role was intended for the new mass movement. On 18 August the Politburo settled on the organizational structure of the Popular Front, its political role and the tasks appropriate to its function. The same formula applied to the churches as to the erstwhile parties: they were excluded as organizations from participation but individual ‘clerics loyal to the people’s democracy’ could – subject to the judgement of the State Office on Church Affairs, i.e. the state security – become members of local Popular Front committees. It was also decided to publish only a declaration, not a programme, in announcing the founding of the Patriotic Popular Front.8 When Nagy returned from vacation early in September, he opposed the adopted measures at the Politburo meeting of 8 September, emphasizing that they would not be consonant with the policies of the New Course. He criticized the draft of a founding document for the Popular Front and declared that the ad hoc Economic Commission’s proposed measures were premature. In sharp contrast to the summer proceedings, the majority of the Politburo immediately supported Nagy. He himself remained militant.9 In the next Politburo meeting, on 15 September, Nagy sought to clarify matters, identifying two contrasting conceptions of economic policy: one said, ‘We are the land of steel and iron’ and the other, ‘We are the land of the New Course’.10 Finally, on 1 October, at the several times postponed meeting of the Central Committee of the MDP, the dispute was resolved with the political victory of the supporters of the New Course. New themes now appeared in discussions of economic policy. Zoltán Vas introduced several proposals from a group of professional economists working on a reform programme. They suggested revisions in the centralized command system of planned economy and the need for a price and wage system based on the law on value.11 Nagy emphasized at this meeting that the uncertainty and vacillation must end and that the party must make clear that its platform was that of the June Resolution and the New Course. He declared that the earlier economic policy ‘had not reckoned with the working masses’, and that this must not continue. Therefore, there could be no thought of further reducing the standard of living. As he asked his comrades: ‘What kind of socialism is it that doesn’t even assure one’s daily bread?’ 12 After this meeting, Rákosi travelled to Moscow ‘for medical treatment’ and remained there until the end of November. Gerő was scarcely involved in daily political matters after the first part of September for the same reasons. And Nagy proceeded now with a more skilful strategy than in 1953. He had the Central Committee resolution published in the party organ, Szabad Nép, and began a regular press campaign. He had the preparatory work for the economic reform speeded up. A first draft of the materials was provided by the secretariat of the prime minister and offered for discussion. By the end of November a special working group had completed a 150-page document called ‘Theses on

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the Configuration of a Working Programme for Economic Policy’,13 setting forth the reforms planned under the New Course. Nagy also invited other professional economists to supply overall analyses and suggestions for structural change. He commenced a restructuring of the economic leadership, involving wide-ranging changes in personnel. Those economic policymakers close to Ernő Gerő were effectively removed from positions of influence. Although Gerő’s position remained unchanged for the time being, Nagy informed Soviet Ambassador Andropov early in October that ‘within the party Gerő was held personally responsible for the mistakes in economic policy’.14 Government posts were now filled with persons who were either long-term friends of Nagy or close working associates. He relied mainly on individuals he had come to know during his Moscow exile and he sought to expand the Politburo to include such persons, thereby counterbalancing the young cadres that Rákosi and Gerő had brought into the centre of power early in the 1950s. After the consultations in Moscow in May 1954, investigations were initiated into the sentencing of Communist political prisoners.15 In the course of the summer, many were freed and several were rehabilitated. But the key issue was the case of Rajk, regarding which the investigation soon established that all the charges, which had led to Rajk’s death sentence in October 1949, were simply lies. It was all but impossible to acknowledge this simple truth, even internally, because of international and, above all, Soviet concern with the case and because of Rákosi’s influence on the case and the sentence; to admit the truth would have shaken the whole system to its foundations. Rákosi tried to delay the whole procedure and the directors of state security, deeply involved in the case, tried to shift the blame to the head of the ÁVH, Gábor Péter, and increasingly to the then minister of defence, Mihály Farkas. Also, the opinion was widely held that, though Rajk and fellow defendants were neither ‘traitors’ nor ‘spies’, they had somehow incurred guilt and that should now be proved. Nagy attempted to push forward the review of the Rajk case but, since Soviet approval was lacking, he was not even able to set a deadline for a court retrial issuing from that review. At the beginning of November 1954, he began to lay the groundwork for a general amnesty. He demanded from the chief state prosecutor a report on the status of the review and on the most important findings, and he ordered an investigation of accountability, limited at first to the personnel of state security. Nagy wanted to expand the procedure and review the sentences of the Social Democrats still languishing in prison. As a result, on 19 November, one of the most prominent leaders of Hungarian social demo­ cracy, Anna Kéthly, was released and subjected merely to house arrest.16 In autumn the released Communist prisoners were seen on the streets of Budapest. An emaciated János Kádár, who had been imprisoned since April 1951, was even seen in film reports of the founding congress of the Popular

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Front. But the party maintained silence about all of this. Nagy’s determination is shown in that he made public the findings of the review, until then strictly secret. In an article of 20 October 1954 in Szabad Nép, he wrote that the party’s June resolutions were now ‘fulfilled by the rehabilitations and the release of our innocent comrades from prison, restoring them to the party, to life, and to the world of work. The serious mistakes of the past must be corrected also in this area, and we shall correct them. Those that are not guilty must be freed. … The party and its collective leadership have the strength, now and in future, to prevent a repetition of these past sins.’ He thus understood the rehabilitations as unfinished business and he spoke not just of mistakes but plainly of ‘sins’. His article ended with the declaration that the party leaders, ‘who had lost contact with the broad mass of members’ and had treated them as ‘infants’, would now inform the party members about all important political issues and allow them to participate in the formation of policy. At stake now, after the democratization of the leadership, was nothing less than the democratization of the whole party. Nagy had appealed to the party membership to support him and his course.17 The First Congress of the Patriotic People’s Front opened on 21 October 1954 in Budapest. Nagy assured the delegates, ‘The Central Committee of the Party of Hungarian Workers and the government have put an end to uncertainty. … The June policy has won and those who sought to derail it have suffered a shameful defeat.’ 18 Such a forceful entrance was undoubtedly favoured by the temporary balance of the power struggle in Moscow, but the success of the New Course for the time being was chiefly the result of Nagy’s determination, aided also by the divisions in the Hungarian leadership, the readiness of many for open discussion and self-reflection. As of autumn, a new political factor appeared in the form of ‘the public’, for the absolute control of public opinion, inside and outside the party, no longer functioned, and all this contributed to change. The once isolated Nagy gathered a contingent of supporters in the apparatus of government, and he himself displayed a skill in communicating that had never before been his strong suit. Rákosi and his followers, who since 1948 had not had to reckon with political competition, reacted with bewilderment and uneasiness, which in turn further strengthened the advocates of the New Course. Yet this period of success proved to be of very short duration: it lasted a scant two months. The downfall of the New Course in Hungary is customarily attributed to external forces such as the power struggle in the Kremlin and the noticeable cooling of the international political atmosphere in autumn 1954. In reality the main international and security concerns of the Soviet Union were barely affected by the New Course in Hungary. Nagy assigned all the defence tasks to István Bata, a favourite of the Soviet leaders. Regarding the reduction in strength of the Hungarian army, agreement had already been reached in June

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1953 in Moscow. And Nagy had undertaken no special foreign policy initiatives. In any case, international political factors were by no means unequivocal. True, by the time of the First Congress of the Patriotic Front in October 1954, it had been decided that the Federal Republic of Germany was to join NATO, but the preparations for the establishment of the Warsaw Pact had already been under way for half a year. While East–West antagonism was increasingly evident over the German question, there were events pointing towards the easing of tension: the West and the USSR undertook consultations at the foreign ministerial level and the Soviet Union was pushing forward towards reconciliation with Tito. The West German entry into the Western military alliance was an event that induced in the Soviet leaders, always sensitive to historical analogy, thoughts about the Austrian ‘Anschluss’ and influenced their conduct in the negotiations over Austria’s independence. Even though it was not yet definite in the autumn of 1954 when the state treaty with Austria, including the ‘permanent neutrality’ of that country, would take effect, it was already apparent that Hungary’s western border would also be the western boundary of the Soviet military alliance. Thus in 1954 Moscow was even more concerned than it had been in 1953 that in Hungary, soon to be a ‘frontline’ state, stable internal political conditions should prevail.19 Nagy tried above all to build on the de-Stalinization as it unfolded in Soviet politics, for it seemed congruent with his 1954 attempts at reform. Furthermore he was convinced that the system would be stabilized for the long term sooner on this footing than if Rákosi succeeded in retaining power, which might lead to new economic adventures or renewed massive police state measures. Rákosi blamed ‘destabilizing tendencies’ simply on ‘deviation’ from the original Soviet notion by the New Course in Hungary. His trip to Moscow in autumn 1954 was probably an attempt to persuade the Soviet leaders of this. Nagy, by way of contrast, ‘did not even consider’, as Tibor Hajdu wrote, ‘travelling to Moscow, as Rákosi did, without an invitation in order to “hang out” in the Kremlin, make his presence felt, and try to denounce Rákosi’.20 Hungarian society was aroused by the New Course, the first signs of which appeared already in summer 1953. The countryside responded directly and spontaneously to the easing of repression. By the second half of 1954, activity was concentrated in Budapest: now along with the repressed groups one heard more vehemently from privileged groups, notably the previously obedient Communist writers and journalists. The final of the football World Cup in Bern on 4 July 1954 saw the celebrated Hungarian national team defeated 3–2 by West Germany. The consequences were astonishing: thousands took to the streets of Budapest in the next few days, partly out of disappointment over the defeat of their ‘golden team’ and partly because they ‘knew’ that the game had been sold out by the players, their trainers or the highest political leaders. It was rumoured that the bosses ‘sold’ the game for 50 Mercedes cars; indeed, these

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cars appeared then for the first time in Hungary, with, of course, the party and state leaders sitting in them.21 Various other sporting events, for example the competition of university youth (Universiade) and the water polo match between Hungary and the Soviet Union, gave rise to numerous anti-Soviet demonstrations.22 Nor were the demonstrations confined to the sporting world: sometimes hundreds or even thousands demonstrated in autumn 1954 at several district administrations because of forced evictions.23 Clashes with police were not uncommon. Advocates of the New Course were heard from in early autumn, publishing their texts in Irodalmi Újság (Literary Gazette) and in Művelt Nép (Educated People), the organ of the Ministry of Popular Education. The Writers’ Union initiated a social report on conditions in the country. In November, 15 young writers signed a petition, ‘On the Concerns of Hungarian Youth’, and sent it to the party leadership. It criticized the monolithic youth organization, the Union of Working Youth (DISZ), mainly for the emptiness of its activity and its bureaucracy.24 From 22 to 25 October, the party organization of the central organ Szabad Nép held a meeting at which critical voices were heard. Tibor Méray summarized them emphatically: ‘We in this country need a cleansing storm, one that reaches from top to bottom and from bottom to top and systematically removes the dirt and filth and all the other evils.’ The party cell resolved that those responsible for resistance to the New Course should be publicly named and that party members should be brought into discussions of policy questions.25 Nagy and other supporters of the New Course remained passive in the face of social agitation and regarded it rather with concern. Rákosi, in Moscow for medical treatment, sought out one or other of the Soviet leaders in order to convey to them the news from home, with the result that the Soviet leadership registered growing anxiety about Hungary. They took particular note of Nagy’s address at the founding of the Patriotic Front and his article in Szabad Nép. As Rákosi wrote, ‘Finally the Soviet comrades were unanimous that what Imre Nagy and his followers were doing in Hungary was harmful to party and people and that one must oppose them accordingly.’ 26 Mátyás Rákosi returned to Budapest on 29 November and seized the opportunity to commence the fight against the New Course. He said at a meeting of the Politburo of the MDP that Hungary was causing uneasiness throughout the socialist camp. He made Nagy responsible for everything, but especially the rehabilitation measures. These could be ‘misused’ against the party, against him and against the Soviet Union. Something must be done right away, for ‘leaving such errors unpunished for weeks’ would suggest weakness in the party. Nagy reacted to the charges with unaccustomed vigour at first. He followed the ritual of granting that the Soviet critique must be taken to heart but, with respect to the political situation, he insisted that ‘things are more stable now than they

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have been for the past five years’.27 And at the subsequent Politburo meeting on 9 December, he maintained his stance. Since the Politburo members took Rákosi’s side after some hesitation, Nagy had no choice but to place his hopes in the next meeting of the larger body, the Central Committee, where back in October he had registered a victory. Rákosi’s tactic was to propose going again to Moscow for ‘consultations’ and after lengthy discussion his proposal was adopted.28 All nine members of the Presidium of the Soviet Central Committee joined the Hungarian delegation at the negotiating table in Moscow on 8 January 1955. The position of the Soviet representatives was clear: in exceptionally rude terms they directed their scolding, indeed outright insults, almost exclusively at Nagy. He was ‘no Communist’, he was ‘petty bourgeois’, his conduct was aggressive and his position was ‘Bukharinist’. Aside from a few platitudes concerning the Hungarian economy, only two substantive themes figured in the discussions. One was Nagy’s article of 20 October in Szabad Nép, which was taken to be the platform of a faction, one whose aim was to undermine party unity. The other was Nagy’s comment that he could no longer work with Rákosi. The Presidium found this unacceptable. As Khrushchev put it, ‘If you were simply to withdraw and be silent, that would still be a challenge to the party. Your silence would indicate, I am weak, I wanted to do the right thing, but was not allowed to.’ 29 Thus Khrushchev did not want Nagy to withdraw but preferred that he engage in self-criticism and then participate in ‘correction of the mistakes’. As in June 1953, the Hungarian delegation again formulated a draft resolution, actually a summary of the outcomes of the consultations in eight points. It contained, among other things, the assertions that industrialization is the foundation of economic life and that the number of agricultural cooperatives must be increased. It also included lengthy comments concerning civic discipline in the realms of production and education of youth, especially athletes, in the spirit of ‘proletarian internationalism’. The most important clause of the resolution read: ‘All attempts to minimize the party’s activity and successes before 1953 must be rebutted, and it must be emphasized that the party’s policies in the years before June 1953 were fundamentally correct.’ 30 In other words, the New Course was terminated. The document was signed by the members of the Hungarian delegation, including the exhausted and discouraged Nagy – therewith pronouncing a death sentence on his own political convictions. The resolution required him expressly to announce the abandonment of his own policies at the next meeting of the Central Committee. Still, Rákosi was disappointed, for he had expected that Nagy would be removed from his post during the Moscow meeting. Fate then intervened: Nagy had a heart attack on 1 February 1955. His doctors, obviously well briefed, over-dramatized his condition in order to keep him out of the way.

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He then found himself in a situation resembling house arrest, for he was kept away from politics. Rákosi took it upon himself to prepare for the Central Committee meeting and it became increasingly clear that he would offer a report in which the termination of the New Course would be unmistakably expressed. The Central Committee convened finally on 2 March 1955. Also present was Mikhail Suslov, who had never before attended an official meeting of the Hungarian Party. Rákosi presented essentially the Moscow draft resolution; in just one point did he show initiative, in naming Nagy as principally responsible for all problems. At the beginning of the three-day session, some members stepped out of line by expressing a contrary opinion, but by the end there was a unanimous resolution repudiating the rightist deviation threatening the party and socialism.31 Nagy’s written submission to the meeting made it clear that he was no longer willing to deny his basic political beliefs.32 The stress over his political defeat caused, on 9 March, a second, this time more serious, heart attack. At the next Central Committee meeting, on 14 April, a new resolution was passed without prior discussion in which it was asserted that Nagy’s ‘anti-Marxist, anti-Leninist and party-damaging viewpoints form a belief system’, the realization of which he pursued with party-damaging and party-antagonistic – even factional – methods, for which reasons he was expelled from the Central Committee and Politburo and relieved of all of his functions.33 When parliament convened on 18 April, Nagy was deposed as prime minister and András Hegedüs ‘elected’ to replace him. The next steps were to rescind his parliamentary mandate, expel him from the executive of the Patriotic Front and deny him his professorial and academic titles. But one thing was missing: Nagy had not engaged in abject self-criticism. Nagy and his allies had not thought originally of altering or amending the Stalinist model but only of moderating the speed of its implementation; a slower pace would ensure more stable results. They believed that the Hungarian development had skipped over a phase of the ‘transition to socialism’, or, more precisely, that the ‘people’s democratic transition period’ had been shortened for no reason and replaced by policies appropriate to a later, more advanced phase. But their theoretical construct produced a serious problem that surfaced at every turn in daily practice. Profound changes had occurred since 1947–48 in Hungarian politics, economy and society. For a promising point of departure, Nagy would have had to change the entire existing structure. In 1953, when the ‘correctives’ recommended by Moscow had been executed, the tensions in Hungary had diminished noticeably. A possible scenario would have been to call a halt at this point and allow events to take their course under a corrected system of guidance. But things came out differently, for by the middle of 1954 serious problems had appeared in the economy, the conflict over economic policy had become virulent and the political tensions latent in summer 1953 had surfaced by the end of 1954. Everything hinged on the

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structure of the system. The economist János Kornai characterized the Stalinist system thus: ‘In the coherence of the classical system lies its strength, but also its weakness. One might exaggerate slightly by saying it produces a fabric so closely woven that if one strand breaks, it all unravels sooner or later.’ 34 Every attempt at change ran up against its opposite, and thus the disturbances were not eliminated but rather the structure itself was broken. At the very place where correctives were needed, or at other points, new and possibly more severe disturbances appeared. Such coherence proves to be a fatal inflexibility. Nagy, along with the allies gathering around him, had to survive a difficult fight against those who had rejected the ‘correctives’ in 1954. He tried to transform the process of ‘correction’ into one of genuine reform – and therein lay his failure and final political defeat. The most important historical result of the whole struggle of 1953–55 was that the Hungarian Stalinists lost their self-assurance once and for all. Alternatives had appeared to the half-hearted initial self-criticism and corrections, and that bred insecurity in the leadership. The impulse towards reform became ever stronger – at first only among the leaders, then gradually also in the party apparatus, among functionaries, and, most importantly, in ever widening circles of party intellectuals.35 During this time, the topmost leaders of the MDP did not exactly cover themselves with glory: they opted now for one, now for another, direction, and supported the policies of those supposed to be the strongest and believed to have the support of Moscow. It became evident that most of the Communist leaders lacked any clear political conviction. Although they acted after Nagy’s defeat as if they were untouched by all this, they reacted uncertainly to the slightest hint of a crisis. During this time, Nagy gained many supporters, and not only from among Communists inclined to reform. The New Course and Nagy himself became a point of reference even for those unwilling to accept anything short of system change. Nagy’s aspirations, his ‘socialism with a human face’ (to use the words of his similarly failed ‘successor’ Dubček) were seen as the first step of a steep incline that had to be negotiated in order to achieve democracy. In place of the anxiety and repression paired with hope for miracles that characterized the Rákosi era, now there was at least an awareness that sensible political thinking – perhaps even action – was possible. The course change of spring 1955 could no more dispel this predominant attitude than it could avert the demise of the style of rule represented by Rákosi. In the long run, the most important result of the ‘correctives’ enacted by Nagy and his allies and of the ensuing repression of reform aspirations was that people would see these as the point of departure in times to come for far more radical demands for reform. At the moment of his fall, the person with whose name all that was connected could not of course glimpse such a result. In early 1955 Imre Nagy was exhausted by the two years of unrelenting political struggle; he suffered

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from a severe heart ailment and was, personally as well as politically, driven to ‘inner exile’. Many of the minor truths in which he had believed were now destroyed, but his belief in a socialism of his own sort was intact. It may even have been a time in which his political convictions were permanently solidified, so that he could finally regard the political defeat as a tragedy, as the failure of a transcendent mission; his vocation was that of the tragic hero and rescuer. So he described himself at his interrogation and trial in 1957 and so he wrote in his reflections in Snagov, that in June 1953 he became premier in order to ‘rescue the country from the catastrophe’ brought about by the policies of the ‘Rákosi clique’.36

8

IN OPPOSITION Imre Nagy was deeply disturbed. Shortly before his 59th birthday he found himself in the same situation he had experienced 20 years earlier in 1936 when he was suddenly expelled from the party, losing his work and his career. Now he kept his party book for the time being, but in the Central Committee meeting in April, as the ban was imposed on him, Rákosi did not neglect to mention that an ordinary party member would be expelled from the party for such an offence. Nagy may have recalled the events of 1936, 1938 and 1949 all too clearly. His letter of 4 May 1955, directed to the Politburo and Central Committee, suggests a man on the edge of a breakdown. The letter can be read as a kind of partial self-criticism. He wrote that he had examined his political views and his conduct and agreed with the March and April resolutions, describing the criticism directed against him as ‘correct and in conformity with the party’. He promised ‘to fight against any intention or aspiration that would use my deviant, anti-Marxist, anti-Leninist errors to weaken the ideological and organizational unity of the party, to weaken or disdain party discipline, or against our people’s republic and socialist construction’. He did not want to avoid a ‘profound self-criticism in conformity with the party’ but asked only that it be delayed to a later time because of his illness.1 Had Rákosi been satisfied with this letter (which, incidentally, he wanted to publish), Nagy would have been in a difficult position. The moral standing of the leader of the opposition would have become assailable – even before he had positioned himself as oppositional. But Rákosi was not content with a political victory; he wanted to destroy Nagy. He did not want just a short letter admitting guilt, but rather a public confession such that everyone would see that his opponent and temporary challenger had been destroyed. Nagy’s letter was rejected by the Politburo on 12 May 1955 on the grounds that the self-criticism ‘was insufficient’.2 Nagy’s health improved by spring and he was able to think more intensively about his own future. He asked functionaries from party headquarters, who visited him from time to time, whether it might be possible to obtain a university appointment as in 1949. The idea was not accepted. His numerous requests to examine the documents from 1953–55 were rejected out of hand by the MDP leaders. They were aware that the former prime minister wished, using self-criticism as a smokescreen, to fashion a balance sheet of his own efforts in government. He even dreamed of a kind of self-defence in place of 85

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self-criticism, one that would not be too different from an attack. This was the moment when the oppositional Imre Nagy was born.3 Nagy’s radicalization had several causes. In the first place, his removal from the arena of power gave him a sense of organizational distance. Since he was no longer part of the party’s ruling circle, his view of the leadership was increasingly that of an outsider. At the end of the summer of 1955, he violated Bolshevik ritual for the second time by refusing to perform any kind of self-criticism. This was a brave move that took him one step further from the functionary and one step closer to the intellectual. His isolation, both personal and political, ended as the adherents of the New Course recognized him again as their leader and restored contact. His situation was favoured by the noticeable reduction of international tension and by the increasingly visible de-Stalinization in the power struggle in Moscow. Khrushchev was pursuing reconciliation with Yugoslavia and it would have fitted poorly with his concept if a Communist politician were subjected to proceedings because of dissenting opinions. Nagy’s first visitor, while he was still quite ill, was Géza Losonczy, who had been sentenced to a lengthy prison term in a show trial in 1951 and was gradually recovering from a serious illness following his release. The next visitors were the journalists Sándor Haraszti and Miklós Vásárhelyi, followed by Miklós Gimes and György Fazekas. In the summer and later, more and more visitors came. Most of them had been ‘losers’ in 1955 as major figures in the innerparty opposition that formed as soon as the leadership returned to its earlier policies.4 The former premier’s visitors – whom he called ‘like-minded friends’, emphasizing both elements of the expression equally – were all party intellectuals who had been outspoken advocates of the New Course since autumn 1954 and who had not changed their minds after the defeat. They were now once again voicing their dissent in party meetings and in talks with party leaders. The news of growing resistance percolated through wide circles of the intelligentsia and, in the long run, indirectly influenced public opinion. Most people had reacted to Nagy’s defeat with uneasiness and disapproval. Now the appearance on the scene of critical Communist intellectuals, like the appearance of Nagy in 1953, aroused hopes. To be sure, the inner-party opposition that was forming did not intend to address the responsibility for the fate of Hungarian society in general but rather the abuse of the ‘Communist ideal’ and ‘violations of legality’, as well as the dismissal of Nagy. These were the initial grounds of their disappointment and bad conscience. The group was animated by moral outrage; it was characterized fittingly 20 years later by Miklós Molnár (himself a party oppositional at this time) as an ‘emotional elite’.5 As soon as Rákosi learned that Nagy’s health had improved, he wanted to secure a permanent closure of the ‘Imre Nagy Case’. The Politburo established a three-member commission on 11 August to examine the ‘case’ and by autumn, the necessary preparations had been made to secure Nagy’s expulsion from the

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party. The charge specified violation of party discipline, based on the fact that Nagy, unable because of heart trouble to deliver his speech to the meeting of the Central Committee scheduled for March, had sent it in written form to the members of the Central Committee. That fact also undergirded the charge of ‘factional activity’. His ‘conduct unworthy of a party member’ was regarded as demonstrated because he had in 1946 participated in the church wedding of his daughter to Ferenc Jánosi. At the same time, investigations were launched against him concerning his financial conduct as prime minister, in particular cash outlays from his personal account. Further, state security in Kaposvár was looking into his erstwhile relationships there. It was not difficult to conclude that material was being gathered for a potential show trial.6 At this juncture Nagy began to write. He summed up his arguments for his own cause and for the New Course. Originally he had planned to address the Politburo, but since it was busy with convicting him, it made little sense to offer up a comprehensive analysis. Instead he directed letters to the Central Committee in which he denied the charges and demanded that the press campaign against him be terminated. From June to September 1955, Nagy had written more than 100 closely packed pages of text with studies on various topics. These became known to a wider public only in 1957 after the manuscript was smuggled to the West and published in several languages.7 The first 19 texts, written in his initial productive period, followed a thematic plan. They were political arguments, reminiscent in their structure and language of the polemics that Nagy had written in 1949. He first enumerated the charges against him in the resolutions of March and April and repeated in the vigorous press campaign, then rebutted them one by one. Nagy developed his defence along three quite distinct lines of thought. Concerning the charges, he referred to his own public addresses and published reports of 1953–54, at certain points also to his earlier publications. His arguments followed the logic of the charge: when the complaint held that he had taken ‘the incorrect position’ in some case or other, he tried to demonstrate the opposite with lengthy citations to show that he had acted correctly. Regarding the attacks on his person, however, he resorted to the Marxist classics, citing Lenin at length and also Stalin (in a ratio of about four to one). In some instances, he cited resolutions of the Soviet Party before 1929, also texts that had been decisive for the Communist movement prior to the final termination of the policies of the NEP. (All of his Stalin citations dated from that period as well.) Thirdly, Nagy clearly saw it as important to show in what ways the charges against him contradicted the earlier but still valid resolutions of the MDP, above all the resolution of June 1953, the reports of the Third Party Congress having the status of resolutions, and the Central Committee resolution of October 1954. He also referred at length to the minutes of the ‘consultations’ with the leadership of the CPSU in June 1953

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and May 1954. These were apparently accessible to him at least in the form of notes. The structure and style of argument of these writings are defensive in nature; the content is little more than a collection of authoritative citations. The volume is dominated thematically by the writings that deal with economic issues or issues touching on the economy (about two-thirds). Eight chapters deal with political or theoretical matters. In September/October 1955, Nagy added five new articles to the collection, articles that do not merely react to the charges but attempt to meet the challenge at a theoretical level. He expressed himself on ‘certain questions concerning the practical application of Marxism-Leninism’, on the peaceful coexistence of the two world systems and on matters of Hungarian cultural and literary policy. A preface and afterword dealing with similar themes were added to the manuscript. Judging by these parts of the book, Nagy was no longer interested in persuading the inner circle of the party leadership. It appears that he wanted his work to provide an impulse to public discussion of the themes he had dealt with. No such debate ensued, but an ever-growing circle of ‘like-minded friends’ read the manuscript. Nagy abandoned the old slogan ‘Back to 1948/49’ and substituted a new one, ‘Back to June 1953, back to the New Course’. His basic conception involved a return to the unspoiled sources, to the successfully applied but never completely realized slogans, understanding the moral outrage over ‘mistakes and transgressions’ as a politically mobilizing force. In his writings of this period, he emphasized more strongly than ever the necessity for distancing Hungary from the Soviet model, precisely because one was all the more committed to the idea of socialism. He wrote: ‘Hungarian socialism’, an expression meant to denounce the rigid application of scientific socialism, is nothing else but the Hungarian variant of socialism; in other words, the application of Marxism-Leninism to specific Hungarian conditions, relying on what is fundamental and generally applicable in the building of socialism and utilizing the experience with other paths and forms of socialist construction, developing this experience further and freeing scientific socialism from outmoded theses in order to enrich it with new ones based on the conditions in our country.8

The political resistance that opposed the Rákosi restoration was, by its nature, allied with Nagy and built upon the reform aspirations within the party. No other group of society had a chance to express its interests. Anything beyond the programme of 1953 could not become an alternative – only a reason for surveillance by state security forces. Nagy was never, not for a moment, available to be won over to an organization that did not regard as binding the framework of the Communist Party and the discourse of Marxism-Leninism. Nevertheless the inner-party opposition, the number of Nagy’s ‘like-minded friends’, grew further in autumn 1955. They included Szilárd Újhelyi, head of

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the film industry, journalists Pál Lőcsei and Tibor Méray, both dismissed from the staff of the party organ Szabad Nép, and the writers Tibor Déry, Zoltán Zelk, Lajos Kónya, László Benjámin and Tamás Aczél. They belonged to the ‘inner circle’ along with the earlier members (Losonczy, Haraszti, Vásárhelyi, Jánosi, Gimes and Fazekas). Their relationship with Nagy was based on personal contact as well as common political convictions. And other groups began to form in often overlapping ‘circles of like-minded friends’ – including Communists released from prison and rehabilitated, faculty members from the Agricultural and Economic Universities, and graduates of the NÉKOSZ colleges.9 The first organized action of the party opposition took the form of a memorandum in October 1955 to the Central Committee, in which 59 well-known party members – writers, journalists and filmmakers – endorsed the New Course and opposed particular cultural-political measures such as censorship and confiscation of newspapers. The memorandum, an open challenge to the restoration, was more than unwelcome to the Hungarian Party leadership. Already the dismissal of Nagy and the heightened rhetoric of the prevailing political line had aroused a significant international echo. And even greater interest accompanied the instances cited in the memorandum: the prohibition of performances of works by such classical Hungarian artists as Béla Bartók and the celebrated nineteenth-century dramatist Imre Madách, the prohibition of publication by important contemporary writers such as the ‘populist’ László Németh and the confiscation of the weekly of the Writers’ Union, Irodalmi Ujság. The authors of the memorandum had established contact with János Kádár, who enjoyed great respect among the rehabilitated politicians and was at the time first secretary of the party committee of Pest County. Kádár had maintained a distance from Nagy in autumn 1954 and inclined rather to support the Rákosi line but was now among the first to read Nagy’s writings. Some wish to recall that the memorandum, though unsigned by him, owed something in its content and theme to Kádár. Others hold that it was Nagy who urged this action and that it was originally a protest against the party expulsion that he feared. The text had been formulated by Gimes, Vásárhelyi and Haraszti and signed by the nucleus of the group around Nagy, by his ‘like-minded friends’.10 Early in November, at a Central Committee meeting, Rákosi condemned the writers’ protest, and some participants in the meeting surmised that Nagy was behind the affair. A plan was made for a move against the party opposition and a list of measures was agreed upon. There followed a resolution concerning the ‘rightist tendencies in the literary world’, party meetings were called and party disciplinary proceedings were initiated. At Rákosi’s initiative, a further resolution was adopted calling for the ‘Central Control Commission [in charge of party discipline] to hold Nagy responsible and to expel him from the party’,

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because of his ‘factional activity’ and because he disagreed with party policy and stood for views incompatible with Marxism-Leninism. On 3 December 1955 the Central Control Commission carried out the party order.11 As Nagy wrote half a year later, ‘Those members of the Central Control Commission present informed me that the Politburo found it neither necessary nor practical to deal with my party situation in the Central Committee.’ Nagy offered to present the writings he had intended for the Central Committee to the Control Commission, but that body refused. ‘I was expelled from the party by a decision, conveyed to me orally, because of my mistakes without elaboration about these mistakes.’ 12 Nagy was profoundly affected by the expulsion proceedings and many people visited him immediately. Aczél and Fazekas reported that they found him upset, he was unwell, complaining of heart trouble and disturbed by crying fits. ‘Another man might have been content to leave this organization of evil-doers that the Hungarian Workers’ Party had become,’ Tibor Méray wrote in 1958. ‘But this was Imre Nagy and he had been a Communist for forty years.’ 13 He must have felt himself shunned, expelled from the circle to which he had had such a close and warm affiliation, equalled only by that to his family; he had, so to speak, been deprived of his life. But the political writer was manifestly emboldened by this fateful blow. What now developed were his most radical writings, conceived as – at least theoretically – programmatic texts. In one of these writings on questions of ethics in the public life of Hungary, he for the first time formulated a clear demand for the elimination of the Stalinist power elite whose legitimacy he denied because of its continuing injury to the ethical principles of the Communist movement. In one essay on peaceful coexistence and Hungarian foreign policy, he argued for national independence and freedom from the bloc, thus for Hungary’s active neutrality. In other words he questioned the leading role of the Soviet Union, what had previously been, for all within the bloc including himself, absolutely taboo.14 For a historical instant, his hope that Moscow would, in the post-Stalinist era, pursue an enlightened course did not seem completely illusory. While Nagy and his friends pondered whether the excommunication was merely a prelude to a spectacular settling of accounts with the opposition, the Twentieth Party Congress of the CPSU had begun on 14 February 1956 in Moscow. The speech of First Secretary Khrushchev, his theses on the avoidance of war and on peaceful coexistence and his critique of the theory of permanently intensifying class struggle, all pointed to a shift. Mikoyan’s speech at the congress made clear that the Soviet Party was prepared to abandon in part the ideological and stylistic legacy of Stalin. These hopeful signs turned soon to certainty as Khrushchev’s ‘secret speech’ of 27 February on Stalin’s mistakes and crimes was made public in the Western press and, in excerpts, in the party organizations throughout the Soviet camp.

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At the meeting of the MDP Central Committee on 12/13 March 1956, several old Communists – including Zoltán Szántó, János Kádár, József Köböl, Márton Horváth and József Révai – took up a more or less open position against Rákosi. They criticized his report, in which he maintained that what was now beginning in the Soviet Union had long been accomplished in Hungary. The ‘unruly’ members held that trust in the party had been damaged. Kádár opened up the question – especially delicate for him as minister during the Rajk trial and then victim himself – of the show trials, seeking to shift responsibility to Mihály Farkas, who was not present. That was very opportune for Rákosi, and an investigating commission was established with the assignment to clarify Farkas’s offences. Another common platform emerged as the ‘unruly’ ones joined enthusiastically in the attack on Imre Nagy.15 The Twentieth Party Congress of the CPSU provided immense political capital for the Hungarian Party’s internal opposition and the number of its followers grew rapidly in early 1956. But Nagy associated only with people from the inner circle of his like-minded friends. He was strictly opposed to any political activity in structured form. For example, when Miklós Gimes proposed forming a narrow coordinating committee, Nagy’s refusal brought the idea to an end. Nevertheless a series of informal ‘institutions’ of the opposition arose: in the Writers’ Union and in editorial offices of Béke és Szabadság (Peace and Freedom) and Magyar Nemzet (Hungarian Nation). New circles formed around Losonczy, Haraszti, Vásárhelyi and Gimes, and several professional associations came to be dominated by party oppositionists. The active party opposition soon numbered several hundred persons. They functioned much like a pressure group, though they commanded insignificant means of information and communication; but they could rely on an extended network of connections. These intellectuals and professionals knew their opponents well (they came from the same school after all), and were well aware of their weaknesses. In the course of early 1956 a whole series of significant actions occurred in the membership meeting of the Writers’ Union and in the events sponsored by the Petőfi Circle, a newly established discussion forum of the Communist Youth League (DISZ). At these and in numerous articles in newspapers and journals close to Nagy’s circle, the Hungarian political leadership was sharply criticized, based on the results of the Soviet Twentieth Congress, for its economic policy, its political process, its secrecy and for multiple problems in cultural life. A major portion of the intellectual party members participating in the political discourse (especially those under 40 years of age) fell under the influence of the party opposition, as did many arenas of public life. That part of society remote from the party or even hostile to it followed these events and activities with growing attention.16 Nagy personally took part in none of these actions. He held back, acted

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imre nagy 19. In the garden of the Orsó utca house, summer 1956. (Erich Lessing, Vienna)

cautiously; he was punctilious about party conformity and kept the persona of an expelled functionary. He could not, for example, conceive of attending any party-related event. The audience of the Petőfi Circle debates would have welcomed his presence at their meetings, even if only as listener, but he stayed away. After the Twentieth Congress he saw himself again as a potential politician. That was one of the reasons for observing party discipline, although it seriously narrowed his actual or possible room for manoeuvre. Everything he did was compatible with this understanding: his semi-ritualistic spring walks in the city centre, his trips on the No. 5 bus, his attendance at theatre, opera, and concert performances. But participation in political debate was another matter, even if these remained within the limits set by party conformity. Despite all this, he remained at the centre of every dispute and political discussion. Whether or not he was mentioned by name, discussion was always ‘about him’. And that was also the view of those at the centre of power: they were sure that Nagy was the ‘instigator’ behind all the intellectual unrest. Of course that did not mean that Nagy had done nothing the whole time except enjoy the conspicuous sympathy of the Budapesters, return their greet-

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ings, shake hands and respond to the repeated question, ‘Mr Prime Minister, when are you coming back?’ with evasive answers and a mysterious smile. While the political public was holding its breath because of the sensational actions of the party opposition, Nagy allowed his manuscripts to circulate. More than 100 people had had them in hand in early 1956. His journalist friends passed the writings to Yugoslavian diplomats and press colleagues, whereupon they reached President Tito.17 An official trip by the secretary of the Budapest Party Committee, Imre Mező, gave Nagy the opportunity to send a detailed account of party matters to Khrushchev.18 Above all, Nagy discussed matters with his friends. In this narrower circle all important and unimportant political events were discussed, all news and every rumour noted. The people who pursued politics in small groups or in a wider public were of course influenced by these discussions and pointed in a particular direction. The leaders of the Petőfi Circle, Secretary Gábor Tánczos and his deputies András B. Hegedűs and Balázs Nagy, wanted advice from Nagy and received it, albeit indirectly. Hegedűs recalled: ‘Miklós Vásárhelyi was the organizer and Géza Losonczy the one to whom we turned mainly concerning ideological questions. The latter was for us, alongside Nagy, the absolute moral authority. We in the Petőfi Circle regarded him as the link between us and Imre Nagy, and it was through him that exchanges with Nagy were possible.’ 19 Nagy was very interested in the debates in the Petőfi Circle, and his friends urged him to put in an appearance, but that never happened. It was not only in questions of organization or Nagy’s public appearance that opinions differed; in the inner circle the disagreements became more and more frequent and sometimes very pointed. A quarter of a century later, Vásárhelyi said: Before 23 October we were all much more radical than Imre Nagy. His political outlook was guided by the idea of a return to 1948 – and that … implied not only expansion but also limitation. A coalition system in which parties would play a significant role but mainly in the form of ‘transmission belts’. … I was once witness to a passionate argument on the issue between Imre Nagy and Miklós Gimes, in which Gimes, in his direct and irascible manner, asserted that the wishes of the Hungarian people must prevail. The country should be led by those whom the Hungarian people found qualified and chose and/or by those it elected. To which Nagy replied: ‘What outcome do you foresee? And what if, after all that has happened and in light of the frightful party leadership and all the mistakes that have been made, the Hungarian people were to choose [Cardinal] Mindszenty in a free election; would we then have to accept that?’ [Gimes responded] ‘So much the worse for the Hungarian people. Then it has to hold out; as it has held out through what has happened so far, and it would have to survive this too. Afterward the people would realize that he [Mindszenty] is not suitable for the resolution of the problems.’ This led to a vigorous quarrel,

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imre nagy for it was clear that this was a strategic, not a merely tactical, issue, that two worlds were encountering each other.20

Moscow’s information sources noted the strengthening of the Hungarian opposition, and that Rákosi had his back to the wall because of the public attacks and the inner-party intrigue. On 7 June 1956 Mikhail Suslov arrived in Budapest. He called on the oppositionists to be reasonable and to draw a line at Mihály Farkas regarding responsibility for the show trials. Beyond that, the question of personal responsibility should apply to no one else. Suslov stated that Révai and Kádár belonged in the Politburo, since Kádár remained true to the Soviet Union and ‘his election to the Politburo would quiet the dissatisfaction and bind Kádár himself morally’. The dismissal of Rákosi, he argued, would be ‘a gift to the enemies’.21 But the Politburo had not heard from Suslov what it should do about Nagy and the opposition. On the very day of Suslov’s arrival, more than 100 people turned up to congratulate Imre Nagy on his 60th birthday: persons from public life, writers, journalists, scholars, and among them two members of the Central Committee. A few weeks later, several thousand persons attended a debate of the Petőfi Circle on the press and information system.22 What was later called the ‘press debate’ lasted into the morning hours and brought quite unusual topics into the lively discussion. The writer Tibor Déry, for example, described the causes of social misery as systemic and concluded that changes were necessary to attack the evil at its root. Géza Losonczy took the occasion to apologize publicly for his role in the Stalinist cultural policies of the 1940s. And the demand came unmistakably from the ranks of the listeners that Nagy must return to his earlier position. In his report to Moscow, Ambassador Andropov tellingly characterized the press debate of 28 June as ‘at bottom a demonstration against the party leadership’.23 An extraordinary session of the MDP Central Committee was called for 30 June 1956, intended as ‘the first step [sic] in the struggle against the increasingly lively right opposition’. The chief danger was seen to come from the Petőfi Circle. The workers’ uprising in Poznań on 28 June had a considerable shock effect on the Hungarian leaders, with the result that most of the speakers at the Central Committee meeting adopted a militant, even aggressive tone. Prime Minister András Hegedüs, for example, spoke of the ‘Imre Nagy Organization’ and proposed criminal proceedings against it. The two most radical speakers at the press debate, Tibor Déry and Tibor Tardos, were both expelled from the party.24 Rumours also circulated about the imminent arrest of party oppositionists. One spoke of a list of 400 names, Nagy at the head of the list, followed by the most prominent representatives of the opposition. Rákosi prepared for a countermove of course, but his first uncertain steps along these lines were wildly exaggerated by the rumour mill. At the meeting of the MDP Central Committee on 2 July 1956, it was in fact resolved that

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not one but two lists should be compiled, the first consisting of those who ‘had participated in the reception celebrating Imre Nagy’s birthday’, the other containing the names of the ‘members of the armed services’ who had attended the press debate of the Petőfi Circle and applauded the speeches of the party’s opponents.25 Gerő told the Soviet ambassador on 6 July that the Defence Ministry had received instructions to develop plans for restoring order in the event of an enemy provocation.26 At the next Politburo meeting, on 12 July, Rákosi sketched what would be in his report to the Central Committee when it convened on 16 July. He had harsh words for the attack from the right. For example, he had concluded on the basis of Western radio reports of the press debate that ‘among the participants were some who belong to the enemy’.27 But he wasted no words on ‘administrative’ (read: police) measures while all of Budapest wanted to know that his opponents, fearing the threatened purges, had denounced him to Andropov and that caused Rákosi’s fall. The move against Rákosi was in fact a kind of palace revolt, with the chief actors, first secretary of the Budapest Party Committee István Kovács and Ernő Gerő, operating with the theme of responsibility for the Rajk trial. They informed the Soviet ambassador of the already well-known ‘news’ that, according to testimony of the convicted former ÁVH chief Gábor Péter, Rákosi was responsible for the Rajk case and also for other fraudulent trials. And Gerő also reported to the ambassador early in July that the unity of the Central Committee no longer held.28 Andropov’s messages of alarm had the result that the Soviet Presidium sent Anastas Mikoyan to Budapest on 12 July with the assignment ‘to alleviate Rákosi’s position in the Rajk case’.29 On the same day, the Politburo sent back Rákosi’s proposed report ‘for reworking’, which in the Communist system amounted to a vote of no confidence. Apart from the general instructions from Khrushchev, Mikoyan may well have been authorized, should local circumstances require it, to deviate from the resolution and act according to his own judgement (meaning, probably, in Khrushchev’s sense). Mikoyan’s first report made abundantly clear that he could only confirm that Andropov had not exaggerated. The situation was serious. Following Mikoyan’s suggestion, Rákosi’s removal from the Hungarian Politburo was decided on 13 July. The fallen leader himself proposed Kádár as his successor, while Mikoyan argued for András Hegedüs and the majority of the Politburo favoured Ernő Gerő as first secretary. Mikoyan made it clear that Moscow had always regarded the expulsion of Nagy from the party as a mistake and proposed that he be ‘brought back’.30 Five days passed and then, at a meeting of the Central Committee on 18 July, Rákosi made the request that for reasons of health he be relieved of the functions of first secretary. After a short and staged discussion, his ‘wish’ was granted and he soon left for the Soviet Union (never to return). Ernő Gerő was elected first secretary while Károly Kiss, Révai, György Marosán and János Kádár joined the

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Politburo, with Kádár advancing to the post of Central Committee secretary. Mihály Farkas was expelled from the party. The results could be read in the next day’s newspapers, an actual message, as it were, to party members and the whole country. There followed a lengthy discussion in the Central Committee in which everyone endorsed Gerő’s new slogan, ‘to turn over a new page’, while terminating political and ethical debate about the past.31 The MDP leaders were now convinced that they had arranged everything for the best. Actually the half-hearted decisions about personnel merely signified an absolute political perplexity, for nothing more had happened than that the alliance, which had been developing for months, between Rákosi’s supporters and the ‘unruly ones’ (i.e. Kádár, Révai and others who had emerged after the Twentieth Party Congress) was sealed – now of course without Rákosi. Following Mikoyan’s recommendation, the Central Committee now began the protracted negotiations about ‘returning Imre Nagy to the party’, not, however, without conditions. He was supposed to perform an ever more limited selfcriticism and distance himself from his like-minded friends. Nagy was pleased about the offer of reconciliation, but that produced new conflicts within the party opposition – and much valuable time was lost as a result. The substitution of Gerő for Rákosi left the problems unresolved, as was to be expected, and the crisis actually intensified. The tensions within the Politburo had also not been relieved. The members could not even reach an understanding about fundamental issues, and without a common platform there was no possibility of resolving problems. In addition, the number of groups opposed to the leadership grew steadily. The party opposition expected from the Gerő leadership that its programme be announced publicly and, above all, that it display a spirit of reconciliation towards Nagy. Nothing of the sort happened. At the end of August the MDP Central Committee passed an empty resolution about the intelligentsia, containing also some self-critical formulations that promised nothing concrete. As a result, the party opposition launched a massive press campaign against the party leadership. The most important demands were summarized by Géza Losonczy in an article published on 1 September in Művelt Nép. He insisted that the changes in personnel made in July at the top of the party hierarchy be extended downwards, that the party’s policies be re-examined, that all resolutions adopted before July in contradiction to the ‘spirit of the Twentieth Congress’ be rescinded, that democratic elections be scheduled in the professional organizations and that rehabilitation be extended without exception to all victims.32 In the weeks that followed, a democratic mass movement developed, formulating demands that far exceeded what the party opposition had put forward. In autumn 1956 the prevailing system was criticized in the press (which now conducted itself like a free press), in the meetings of the Writers’ Union, and in the universities, including those outside the capital – entirely without inhibition. Local MDP leaders throughout the

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country were confronted with the crimes committed. With Rákosi’s departure, the dam broke and the psychological hesitation to broach off-limit subjects was decisively overcome. On 6 October 1956 the remains of László Rajk – the most prominent Communist victim of the Rákosi regime – were ceremoniously re-interred. The funeral service became a demonstration of a hundred thousand, who arrived at the cemetery as if for the burial of Stalinism itself. A week later the party leadership decided to readmit Nagy to party membership without further discussion. This ‘rehabilitation’ of the former prime minister would, a few weeks earlier, have indicated a change in policy, but now events were defined by the dynamic of a mass movement. The renewal of the Communist Party was quickly losing its importance as a primary goal. On 16 October, the student body at the University in Szeged decided to establish a student organization independent of the party’s youth organization (DISZ). The Union of Hungarian University and College Students (MEFESZ) represented a rupture in the monolithic institutional structure that no party resolution could repair. On 22 October the news reached Budapest of the changes in personnel at the top of the Polish Party. Władysłav Gomułka had emerged victorious from the fight with the Stalinist leadership of the United Polish Workers’ Party (UPWP). Gomułka, survivor of the purges and advocate of a political position very like Nagy’s, had been elected first secretary of the UPWP. Khrushchev flew to Warsaw and the Soviet troops were placed on alert. A military intervention was only avoided when Gomułka and the entire Polish Party leadership proclaimed their loyalty to the Warsaw Pact.33 Meanwhile the Hungarian Party leaders had, with growing uneasiness, to watch how the opposition and the mass movement imposed their ideas on newspaper and radio editors and thereby formulated the direction of public opinion. Yet instead of attending to internal political reforms, the party found it more important to reconfirm Hungary’s position within the Eastern camp. Ernő Gerő went to Moscow in September, and met Marshal Tito in the Krim. They agreed to hold a Hungarian–Yugoslav summit meeting the following month. The entire Hungarian leadership (Gerő, Hegedüs, Kádár, Kovács and others) thus left for Belgrade in mid-October and returned home only on the 23rd. During their absence, the Hungarian press had begun publishing the student demands. The students insisted on a reversal of policy and an occasional voice was heard demanding a change in the system. Only the removal of Soviet troops did not (yet) figure among the demands. At this point Nagy should have broken his silence, for the point of departure for all other demands was his return to leadership. But he waited for an invitation from the Politburo. The developments in Poland allowed him to hope that an ‘enlightened Soviet Union’ would now accept ‘national Communism’ as a reality. Nagy’s closest friends, led by Zoltán Vas, began to develop a programme

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20. With his wife at the funeral of the rehabilitated László Rajk, 6 October 1956. (1956 Institute archive)

incorporating elements of the New Course of 1953, the reforms of autumn 1954 and some ideas from the intellectual debates of 1956. In this phase the Nagy circle was joined by Ferenc Donáth, a former opponent of Nagy who had been convicted in 1951 and rehabilitated in 1954. Vas called the group together for 23 October.34 The mass meeting of the students of Budapest Technical University on the evening of 22 October called for a political demonstration in solidarity with the Polish reforms for the next day and formulated a rather far-reaching set of demands, now including the removal of Soviet troops.35 The students’ 16 points and the plan for a demonstration by all universities in the capital foreshadowed portentous events. Nagy (who had spent the preceding two days at a vintners’ party in the countryside) met with his friends in the morning of 23 October to work out the personnel preconditions for a power reversal on the Polish model that seemed to be a foreseeable possibility. He had also drafted a programmatic speech that he had then no time to develop.36 The group fancied a coalition, but not with some other party or with independent politicians as in 1945–47. The outlined composition of the party leadership that was agreed upon made clear that Nagy as prime minister intended to form a coalition with the Kádár group, the ‘unruly ones’. A future Politburo would consist of Nagy, Haraszti, Donáth and Losonczy for the inner-party opposition, Kádár, Köböl, Zoltan Szántó, and Kiss for the Kádár group. According to a

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similar formula, the Central Committee was to contain a number of the ‘likeminded friends’, also including the writers Lajos Kónya and Gyula (Julius) Háy, László Kardos (former leader of NÉKOSZ), Júlia Rajk (widow of László Rajk) and Imre Mező from the Budapest Party Committee.37 At the last moment before the popular uprising, all political actors entertained illusions about themselves and others, and had no precise notion of their respective manoeuvring spaces. The Russian leaders believed that they would have fewer difficulties with Budapest than with Warsaw. And should events unfold differently, it would be possible to master the kind of minor unrest, foreseen in the military plans of the past summer, by means of a show of force. Nagy, persuaded of the readiness for reform of all those involved, believed that he would have time to develop his political programme. The Hungarian Party leaders were unsure which prospect was more frightening: a popular uprising or a victorious Nagy, who could produce an actualized variant of the 1953 government programme, including of course a list of criminals. The crowd that surged through the streets of Budapest on the afternoon of 23 October shouting ‘Imre Nagy to the leadership!’ harboured essentially the same notion: they thought that Nagy could pull from his pocket a recipe to meet all needs and every injustice. But the day was far from over.

9

REVOLUTION 1 Those gathered at Losonczy’s house on 23 October, Haraszti, Újhelyi, Vásárhelyi, Jánosi and Gimes as well as Nagy, listened to the one o’clock news which announced that the student demonstration in solidarity with the Poles had been prohibited, but then, a few minutes before half past two, it came through that it had been permitted after all. None of those present were especially pleased about the mass movement, but all were relieved because they found the prohibition entirely inappropriate. Most of them were of the opinion that it was now all important that the demonstration should not be disturbed by some ‘provocation’. They also thought that Nagy should participate in some form, that he should go to the Petőfi Memorial where a mass meeting of the students had already begun. Nagy remained consistent, saying that it would be ‘incorrect’. As the gathering broke up a short time later, he remarked upon leaving that the demonstration could have profound consequences.2 Nagy went home to Orsó Street in Buda with Jánosi, and while his son-inlaw headed for the city, Nagy ate his lunch and retired for an afternoon nap. One can only speculate about the reasons for this, at first glance, somewhat strange behaviour. Habit may have played as much of a role as his doctor’s instruction to take care of himself or the fatigue resulting from discussions lasting well into the night before. Possibly it was also the tense situation from which Nagy thought to ‘rescue’ himself in his afternoon nap. By late afternoon there were more and more news reports about the demonstration, with masses of people gathering in front of the parliament and broadcasting buildings, wanting to issue their demands via radio and wishing to hear Nagy speak. Nagy’s friends appeared one after the other and also the first ‘delegation of youth’ – evidently a group of university students – visited the villa in Orsó Street. Nagy would not hear of his appearing at the parliament building without an invitation from the party leadership. Deputy Prime Minister Ferenc Erdei urged him several times but in vain; only after Politburo member József Mekis ‘officially’ invited him to come and speak to the crowd did he make up his mind to do so.3 But first Nagy ‘prepared’ himself. He went without haste to his study to write out a short speech. He then recited what he had written to those present, all of whom found his text poor, empty and unsuited to the situation. But Nagy was unwilling to make changes. A car from the motor pool of the prime minister’s office took Nagy to Kossuth Square where his escort had difficulty leading him through the crowd into the parliament building. Meanwhile the news 100

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21. Demonstrators on the stairs of the parliament building, with a picture of Nagy, on the evening of 23 October 1956. (Hungarian News Agency (MTI))

spread around the square that he, whom the crowd had impatiently awaited, had arrived. Nagy was escorted by many, but only in a physical sense. With respect to his political orientation, he came all by himself. His path took him through the crowd, but he did not come ‘from the masses’. In his plans, as they took shape gradually at the time, a mass demonstration simply did not fit. What he had contemplated in the previous days and what he now wanted to convey was not addressed to the masses but rather to a couple of dozen Central Committee members. Shortly after his arrival, Nagy was led into a room on the main floor of the parliament building, from which he could speak to the crowd through an open window. It was now almost nine o’clock and, although loudspeakers had been installed in the square, the crowd was now so large that some could not hear him speak. As Nagy approached the open window, he saw himself confronted

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with a completely unfamiliar force. As he put it in spring 1957, ‘Only when I perceived the mood in the square did it become clear to me that what was called for was quite different from what I had prepared, for that would not satisfy the crowd.’ 4 According to his own and others’ recollections, he gave an improvised speech that departed only slightly from the ideas and style of his prepared text. That was symbolized in his choice of a form of address, namely ‘Comrades!’ to which the crowd reacted, if not altogether negatively, then at least with reservation. Nagy recalled that ‘a portion of those present – a smaller portion – objected, but most of the crowd cheered me’. Some of those present at the square remember much more definite reactions, concerted whistling and shouting of ‘We are not comrades!’ and ‘No more comrades!’ As Nagy tried to make amends with ‘Dear young friends’, someone shouted from the crowd, ‘All of Budapest is here!’ and ‘The nation is here!’ The mood of the crowd, having waited hopefully and impatiently for hours, shifted abruptly to confusion, disappointment and even hostility. Nagy congratulated the ‘democratic Hungarian youth’ whose protest had sought to remove the obstacles ‘blocking the way to the further development of socialist democracy’. He appealed to their seriousness and sense of responsibility, without which ‘our democratic accomplishments’ could be endangered. Nagy expressed his conviction that ‘the possibility of development’ lay in ‘innerparty negotiation and clarification’, which meant that it was ‘all-important to preserve common sense’. He promised that the Central Committee and the government would soon initiate the necessary measures.5 He plainly hoped that he and the party opposition would soon be in a position to bring about a development according to his ideas. Nagy was constantly interrupted by catcalls, grumbling and whistling, even though his speech was rhetorically not at all bad. Yet at that time and place it was unsatisfying and finally displayed only Nagy’s great perplexity: how troubled and uncertain he was in the face of the unpredictability of the masses, so unfamiliar to him, as it manifested itself in the square. The people at Kossuth Square wanted change, wanted convincing and reassuring statements that this would happen. Nagy understood that much. But he was unable to perceive that the demonstrators had not been waiting for a party functionary who would promise changes in the name of the long discredited Central Committee, the government or the parliament. Rather they awaited the arrival of someone of the character of Lajos Kossuth who would take an oath to do everything imaginable to realize their demands, in the style of the revolutionary poet Petőfi in 1848: ‘Never be slaves again!’ The people expected him to promise victory and to ask them for their support, or direct to them some other question to which they could answer with one voice, ‘We are with you!’ 6 Nagy said, ‘There are people who will place themselves at the head of the movement’, instead of saying, as his listeners hoped, I will take over and do what is needed. His only

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move that satisfied expectations was his invitation at the end of his speech to sing the national anthem. And that was sufficient to move the crowd, still somewhat disappointed, to disperse gradually from the square. Nagy had just returned to the office of Vice Premier Erdei when news reached him of the exchange of gunfire at the broadcasting building. His first thought was to go there immediately, but the Politburo members on the scene would not allow it. They conducted him on foot to the nearby party headquarters in Akadémia Street, accompanied by none of his ‘like-minded friends’ except his son-in-law. This completed the rupture between Nagy and the nucleus of the party opposition. Nagy and the nine Politburo members met that evening just before ten o’clock in Ernő Gerő’s office at party headquarters. As Nagy and others arrived, Gerő was on the telephone with party leaders in Moscow. As Nagy stated during his interrogation in 1957: After [Gerő’s] report it was agreed that Russian troops stationed in Hungary would assist in restoring order; in fact, during the conversation between Gerő and the Soviet leaders I became convinced that the issue had been discussed earlier and that help had been promised. After the telephone conversation [Gerő] announced that the Soviet troops had been ordered to begin their march on Budapest. Gerő’s announcement was received by those present without comment.7

Nagy thus became a passive witness, a silent observer of the results of a decision-making process that had lasted several hours. As the demonstration evolved, around five o’clock in the afternoon, into a mass movement, Soviet ambassador Yurii Andropov and Lieutenant-General Tikhonov, chief Soviet advisor at the Hungarian Defence Ministry, established contact with the command of the Soviet Army Corps stationed in Székesfehérvár in western Hungary. (There were no Soviet troops in or around Budapest.) They also reported to Moscow on the threatening situation, as did Gerő. The documentation does not suffice to state with certainty whether Gerő had already made a formal request for help to Andropov or even to Khrushchev. The Soviet units stationed in Hungary had been on alert since 18 October because of the events in Poland. The Soviet political leadership decided on 21 October against military action in Poland and reduced the alert. When the army’s urgent message from Hungary to Moscow arrived after 11 o’clock (Moscow time), the Soviet Presidium was still in session, having undoubtedly discussed the Hungarian situation in detail during that day. Khrushchev urged immediately that ‘the troops march on Budapest’ without wasting a single word on the Hungarian ‘comrades’ or any request from Gerő.8 When Imre Nagy arrived at Hungarian Party headquarters he was able to conclude from Gerő’s telephone conversation with Moscow that Khrushchev had informed Gerő of the Soviet Presidium’s decision.

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The question is, why did Nagy raise no objections? In his interrogation on 9 June 1958, he said, ‘I did not agree with the involvement of Soviet troops. But there was no sign that I would assume any kind of position. Gerő discussed the matter with no one. I distanced myself as if the question did not concern me.’ 9 Perhaps he was still so unsettled by the confrontation with the crowd at Kossuth Square that he simply ‘found no words’. Perhaps it was not clear to him what the appearance of Soviet tanks in the streets of Budapest would mean. Perhaps he was gripped by the panic that prevailed in party headquarters. It is possible that he withdrew without resistance because he – as so often in critical situations – was overcome by the feeling that he must ‘desert’. But it is also possible that he acted deliberately, knowing that resistance in that situation would not only arouse mistrust but would also set in motion the search for a scapegoat. His objections would have seemed to prove that he and his friends had encouraged the youth and would now sabotage the ‘brave’ steps being undertaken to defuse the situation. Or was Nagy after all simply ‘totally blocked’? Nagy was not present at the Central Committee meeting that then began about 11 o’clock. There could have been some 50 functionaries present.10 Gerő reported the results of his conversation with Khrushchev: the Soviet troops had been ordered to Budapest and the reorganization of the Politburo would be postponed until the next day. Khrushchev wanted that reorganization to wait until the Soviet delegation, sent to Budapest for purposes of crisis management, had arrived. They expected not only the Presidium members Anastas I. Mikoyan and Mikhail A Suslov but also General Mikhail S. Malinin, first deputy chief of staff of the Soviet army, and KGB chief Ivan A. Serov. In that night session, Gerő proposed that an emergency be declared, which was approved by the Central Committee. But since he neglected to mention that it was Moscow’s wish that the reorganization of the government and party leadership be postponed, Márton Horváth then immediately suggested, with the support of other participants, that basic personnel changes be undertaken without delay. Nagy, who had been waiting in the lobby of party headquarters, was called into the meeting so that he could observe the ensuing discussion. As if nothing had happened, a nominating committee was now designated with the task of developing proposals for the reorganization of state and party leadership. Nagy had again left the meeting and was not present when the Military Council (the so-called Staff), charged with leading the fight against the armed uprising, and other provisional bodies were established.11 The nominating committee gathered in Gerő’s office, taking ample time for deliberation. It was five o’clock in the morning before they had reached agreement on the composition of the Politburo and the role to be assigned to Nagy. He was to be restored to a place among party leaders and was to be prime minister again. Since the Soviet emissaries were delayed by fog, and the Central Committee was pushing for a quick decision, Nagy was again

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summoned to the meeting. Nagy proposed that Gerő be replaced immediately with János Kádár as first secretary. Kádár rejected the nomination, at which point Nagy said that he would accept the post of prime minister in accordance with the party decision even if Gerő were to remain first secretary and the former head of government, András Hegedüs, first deputy premier. When the Central Committee meeting ended just after eight o’clock in the morning, the personnel decisions were announced immediately on the radio. The Central Committee was to include, besides Imre Nagy, Ferenc Donáth, Géza Losonczy, Georg Lukács and Ferenc Münnich. Otherwise the composition did not change, and even the absent Mátyás Rákosi remained a member of the Central Committee. However, the most notorious Rákosi supporters were eliminated from the Politburo and replaced by what now included – besides five men retained from the previous body – five others who supported Nagy (or were thought to do so). The secretariat, to which Kádár and Gerő had belonged, was enlarged by two new members, Donáth and Gyula Kállai. Nagy was to be a Politburo member and prime minister of the continuing government. Even before the announcement of the changes in leadership posts, the ‘Council of Ministers of the Hungarian People’s Republic’ issued a communiqué at five o’clock in the morning characterizing the events in Budapest as an armed ‘fascist-reactionary attack’ and then, an hour later, as a ‘counter-­ revolutionary attack’. Around nine o’clock, after the personnel changes had been announced and after an emergency situation had been declared in the name of the new prime minister, an unsigned statement was broadcast that ‘on grounds of Warsaw Pact decisions the units of the Soviet Armed Forces stationed in Hungary’ had been asked for help by ‘government authorities’.12 The intervention of the Soviet armed forces gave the events in Hungary a new, irreversible direction. For Nagy that was a profound burden: he believed it was his duty to avert the confrontation between the intervening superpower and the country in which the revolution was becoming a freedom fight. The declaration of martial law, decided upon by the Central Committee, at the initiative of Hegedüs and Gerő, on the morning of 24 October, was indeed signed by Nagy. During his detention, he said, ‘It was my belief that martial law was aimed not at the demonstrators but at the outlaws, at murderers, looters and arsonists.’ 13 For the prime minister, who spent the next few days ‘pinned down’ in party headquarters, everything hinged on the answer to a few basic questions: Who had resorted to firearms at the radio building? Who had initiated the fight with the Soviet tanks as they approached Budapest in the early morning? Who were the insurgents actually? What did they want? What is happening ‘out there’ anyway? In the next few days Nagy regularly absented himself from important meetings in order to have time for delegations from outside; he tried to gain an idea about the grey zone between the crowd he had experienced at Kossuth Square and the ‘bandits’, and find out who they were.

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On the morning of 24 October in his first official announcement as prime minister, Nagy declared that martial law would not be invoked against those who surrendered their weapons by two o’clock. He stated that the government would concentrate its ‘whole strength’ on implementing the June Programme of 1953; he urged restraint and peace.14 But the opposite occurred. On the morning of the 24th a spontaneous general strike broke out in Budapest. Public transport was paralysed and newspapers did not appear. (The telephone connections, on the other hand, remained intact throughout the uprising!) The Soviet military units appeared in the city in the early hours of 24 October. Judging by the troop movements and their individual actions, they had not been ordered to interfere, at least at first. It seems that the successful tactic employed during the Berlin rising of 1953, ‘intimidation through threatening gestures’, was expected to be sufficient this time as well. The insurgents who opposed the troops were not numerous: the fight was carried on in the first hours by a couple of thousand armed individuals. They attacked tanks as they halted in the centre of the city, putting a few out of commission. They also succeeded in building a few larger resistance bases in both Buda and Pest. Most of the armed insurgents were young workers and students, including many teenagers. They attacked the tanks with quite primitive weapons (small arms, Molotov cocktails) and with remarkable bravery. What was decisive of course was that they could depend on the practical and, above all, the moral support of the population. So long as their situation was not hopeless, they did not give up the fight; attempts to smoke them out of their hiding places proved difficult and if groups were torn apart they soon reassembled. News reports from the capital mobilized people throughout the country and from 24 October onwards there were demonstrations and protest meetings everywhere, in the cities and also in smaller settlements. Since central state authority was paralysed and because local military and security units generally had little inclination to take up arms, parts of the local political leadership fled. Local committees were formed everywhere, some calling themselves revolutionary councils, some national committees, to address public matters in the local areas. In Budapest a workers’ council was already elected on 24 October in the electric plant Egyesült Izzó and, given the countrywide general strike and the armed fight that produced an extraordinary situation, took over direction of the plant. As the news spread rapidly, provisional workers’ councils formed in all the country’s factories during the next few days. In the larger districts the revolutionary committees were usually made up of delegates from the worker and student councils, which, according to local circumstances, were enlarged with representatives of the coalition parties of the time before 1948 or with particularly respected individuals who had exercised some public function in the past. These committees everywhere assumed the tasks of administrative and

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command institutions. Thus, within a few days, a new corps of leaders emerged, legitimized by the revolution. These activists were mostly young people with the capacity for promoting the welfare of their local societies under difficult conditions. Basically the country was split in two. On one side stood the revolutionary organs including the workers’ councils, the armed insurgents and the supportive population representing the demands of the people, above all the departure of Soviet troops. On the other side was the power centre in Budapest trying to exercise its functions with rather limited means at its disposal. The delegation of the Soviet Presidium arrived in the Budapest Party headquarters between one and two o’clock in the afternoon of the 24th. The Soviet visitors assessed the situation – as their first reports to Moscow indicate – much too optimistically; they did not even recognize the tension between Gerő and Nagy. Participating in the Hungarian Politburo meeting that evening, they discussed the tasks that would ensue after ‘normalization’. The government announcement on the morning of 25 October calling for resumption of work corresponded basically with the resolutions adopted in the Politburo meeting the evening before. When the Politburo convened again at nine o’clock on the morning of the 25th, they heard suddenly that gunfire had erupted quite close to party headquarters and a few misdirected shots even landed in the meeting room. Shortly thereafter came news of the bloodbath on Kossuth Square, where Soviet forces and units of the Hungarian security service, deployed to defend the government quarter, had opened fire on a peaceable crowd gathered at the parliament building. There were more than 100 deaths and many wounded. The news did not fail to move the participants in the meeting: Gerő was removed from his post and János Kádár was elected as first secretary of the MDP. Nagy wanted to discuss the ‘assessment’ of these events. ‘I had mentioned the involvement of Soviet troops and cited the great outrage of the masses because of that.’ 15 Ferenc Donáth appeared at the meeting around noon, he and Géza Losonczy having left their posts in protest against Gerő’s continuation in the post of first secretary. Donáth and József Köböl suggested expelling Gerő from the Politburo. Köböl also suggested that in his next statement Nagy should include the decision that Soviet troops would leave Hungary (upon restoration of order), to which the Soviet delegates objected. Nevertheless the prime minister went several steps further. In a speech carried on the radio at 3.30 pm, he promised a programme of reform, a new government that was more broadly based (i.e. on the People’s Front) and that ‘the Hungarian government would initiate negotiations on the relations between the Hungarian People’s Republic and the Soviet Union, including the question of withdrawal of Soviet military forces’.16 Although the deadline – several times extended already – for the surrender of weapons had long passed, Nagy repeated, without mentioning a deadline, that martial law would not be applied against those who lay down their weapons.

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Neither the removal of Gerő nor Nagy’s speech brought the desired change. The course of events was now determined by the armed insurgents in the streets of Budapest, by the political general strike, and by demonstrations in other cities. Nagy sought to inform himself about demands. On the afternoon of the 25th he received delegations of Budapest youth and of the workers’ council of Miskolc, the latter led by Rudolf Földvári, party secretary of County Borsod. There was a profound difference between Nagy’s notion of an ‘opening’ as expressed in his speech and the demands of the delegations. They demanded the immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops, secession from the Warsaw Pact, the disarming of the state security forces and, finally, free and genuinely democratic elections with multiple parties.17 In Budapest placards appeared on walls referring to the Russian puppet ‘Imrov Nagy’. Other stories circulated about Nagy being a ‘prisoner of the ÁVH’, and of his having given the radio speeches with a gun at his back, as many of the disappointed did not want their national idol wholly defamed. By 26 October Nagy’s confusion had somewhat abated and he came slowly to the vague notion that the problems could better be handled by political than by military means. On that day he lifted the curfew and stopped the preparations for an attack on the Corvin Passage, the most important resistance pocket of the Budapest insurgents. At the same time, he tried to obtain for his team in the formation of a new government those persons that he had wanted on the 23rd for the party leadership. Besides Donáth and Losonczy, his wish list included Gábor Tánczos, secretary of the Petőfi Circle, and Antal Gyenes, once his assistant at the university; also the police chief in Budapest, Sándor Kopácsi, who was handling negotiations with the insurgents, and several others who had taken his side in the party leadership such as Zoltán Vas; and in addition Béla Kovács, former secretary of the Smallholders’ Party who had recently been released from the Soviet Gulag. The Central Committee rejected nearly all of his candidates so that in the end, except for Gyenes, Kovács, Lukács and former president of the republic Zoltán Tildy (also of the Smallholders’ Party), there were no other new faces in the new government. The weakness of Nagy’s position in relation to the Stalinists in the party leadership became obvious. In the Politburo session on 26 October, Ferenc Donáth proposed that contact be established with participants in the ‘mass movement’, ‘so that the justified demands of the masses could be met. The party dare not oppose the mass movement that seeks to build socialism by democratic means; it must rather place itself at the head of that movement.’ 18 This suggestion was supported not only by Nagy, Losonczy, and Köböl, but also by Gerő and Hegedüs. In the ensuing Central Committee meeting, which proceeded rather chaotically (people spoke spontaneously, now of the composition of the new government, now of the new political line), Kádár turned Donáth’s proposal into a draft resolution: all demands could be discussed except that of Soviet withdrawal.

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109 22. Official letter requesting the intervention of Soviet troops, dated 24 October 1956. On the left upper corner in Nagy’s handwriting is: Aláírásra átadták 1956. október 27-én, d[él]u[tán] Nagy (Presented for signing on 27 October 1956, pm Nagy). (1956 Institute archive)

Incomprehensibly, Nagy remained quite passive in this matter. He even left the room several times. Nagy reported to Mikoyan and Suslov in such a way as if the entire party leadership had approved the points raised in the Politburo. Referring to Nagy, Mikoyan reported to Moscow: There are two possibilities: reject the demands, alter nothing in the composition of the government, and continue the fight in reliance on the Soviet army. … If we choose this way, we have lost. Therefore the Hungarian comrades propose the other way: bind certain respected democrats from the ranks of the former petty bourgeois parties and the intelligentsia, as well as from among the students and workers, all loyal to the People’s Democracy, to the new government.19

In the ensuing Central Committee meeting members of the Military Council led by Budapest first secretary István Kovács went on the offensive against the ‘capitulationist’ line. Nagy returned to the meeting for a while and involved himself in a vigorous argument with Sándor Nógrádi and Kovács as to who had the right and in whose name to issue legitimate or illegitimate measures. Nagy reacted sharply: ‘You place the military ahead of the political standpoint!’ 20

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And then, when he was most needed, he again left the meeting to negotiate with representatives of the Writers’ Union and a student committee. They wanted merely to state their demands, which were essentially the same as those enunciated in previous days. They were disappointed, for the prime minister ‘appeared completely helpless and we were extremely angered thereby’, as one of the delegation, university assistant István Pozsár, stated in his interrogation nine months later. Nagy said to them only that he would represent their position and then prepared to leave. An eyewitness reported that a student called after him, ‘You should represent it in your role as Hungary’s prime minister!’ 21 Meanwhile the Central Committee meeting was over. The result was a proclamation, unanimously approved, which in the light of revaluation of events proved to contain nothing new. An ‘extraordinary commission’ (Direktorium) was placed at the head of the party consisting of Kádár, Nagy, Hegedüs, Apró, Münnich and Szántó.22 Donáth and Losonczy recorded that, after their defeat in the Central Committee and being scolded as traitors by the Stalinists, they would resign. Nagy was at the end of his tether emotionally as he listened to this. In his memoirs, Donáth wrote: ‘Tears ran down his cheeks. He conveyed the impression of a man full of good intentions, wanting only to serve his people, his country, and the cause of socialism, finding himself in a difficult situation and completely powerless in the face of these events.’ 23 But by late afternoon, as the Soviet emissaries joined the Politburo members in a meeting, it seemed that Nagy had recovered. It was certainly advantageous for a political solution that the Direktorium be in place instead of the exhausted Central Committee and the indecisive Politburo. Mikoyan was able to report to Moscow about a calm Imre Nagy, as if the dispute earlier in the day had not even happened. Nagy said to him, ‘We have reached the decision to rely on a policy of pacification before using weapons to put down the uprising, thus serving the aim of winning over the intelligentsia and the masses; we will accommodate the popular movement and the national sentiment.’ 24 It seems that Nagy had finally recognized that only a decisive demeanour could rescue an otherwise hopeless situation. At American, British and French initiative (and despite Soviet and Hungarian protest),25 the Security Council of the United Nations was convened for 28 October to consider the Soviet intrusion in Hungary. At Soviet request, the Budapest Party headquarters quickly prepared a letter backdated to 24 October in which the Hungarian government asked for the assistance of Soviet troops. Gerő tried on 27 October to obtain Nagy’s signature for the letter, but Nagy refused on the grounds that he was not prime minister at that time. The letter was signed by his deputy, András Hegedüs.26 In the course of the morning, however, Nagy became ill with angina. And he became so deeply outraged by the manifest attempt to compromise him that from that point on he was a different person. A major contribution to the change certainly was the fact

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23. Notes of Imre Nagy from 27 October 1956. Translation: ‘1. General cease-fire. 2. Interior – Kopácsi. M[inistry of] D[efence] Münnich. 3. Police, People’s Army, Youth. 4. State security has provoked: has to be stated. 5. Joint police and military patrols. 6. Counter-revolutionaries – false definition. 7. Speech is understood differently against Imre Nagy. 8. Peace and order to be established with the students. Unity of action. 9. Decree about workers’ councils, amnesty. 10. Fast and extensive turn to the right. 11. Initiative to be taken for the withdrawal of Soviet troops.’ (1956 Institute archive)

that several prominent members of the party opposition – Tamás Aczél, Miklós Gimes, Pál Lőcsei and József Szilágyi among them – finally managed to gain access to Nagy. They had to make use of a ruse: they were admitted to party headquarters with a group of young workers as ‘delegates from Angyalföld district’. His friends confronted Nagy with what he had done and what he had not done since 23 October, and they enumerated for him all the measures that the people in the streets regarded as ‘Nagy decisions’, including the imposition of martial law and the call for Soviet military force. They urged him to leave party headquarters and go out in the streets in order to experience what was happening in the city. In this tense atmosphere the visitors were witnesses to a near nervous breakdown. Gimes reported that Nagy wept the whole time, yet in the end declared with unaccustomed decisiveness that he would initiate the necessary measures on that same day.27 The Direktorium convened on the evening of 27 October. The record of the meeting contains only this much: ‘Exchange of ideas on the central issues (C[omrade] Nagy will summarize on the basis of the discussion).’ 28 It is clear from indirect sources, however, that Nagy reported in this meeting on his discussion with the ‘delegates from Angyalföld’ and on his earlier information concerning popular demands. Nagy’s surviving handwritten notes make clear that he had evaluated the situation quite realistically: ‘We cannot govern. We cannot avoid the armed fight. Nothing remains to us but to rely on Soviet

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imre nagy 24. Notes of Imre Nagy, same date. Translation: ‘If we can secure order with the support of workers, we can relieve the Soviet troops. … Rákosi question. Gerő question. Soviet troops. Central Committee. Popular Front. New government. Question of Hungarian police force. Political steps and measures. Situation critical and deteriorating. Caused for political reasons. The key: new political steps and decisive military actions. Dragging on, stagnates, mobilizes the countryside – (underlined). Decisive political steps are needed. Earlier demands. Independence.’ (1956 Institute archive)

forces. We will lose the support of the people. We will have the country’s entire public against us.’ On another note he scribbled, ‘If we can secure order with the support of the workers, we can relieve the Soviet troops. … Rákosi question. Gerő question. Soviet troops. Central Committee; Popular Front. New government. … Decisive political steps are necessary. Earlier demands. Independence.’ 29 Nagy had decided obviously to adopt the line of the Donáth– Losonczy formula of 26 October: ‘Negotiations instead of military action.’ On essential points the Direktorium was united: no attack should be initiated, either by the Hungarian army and police or by Soviet troops; the party or government should be willing to recognize some of the demands as justified, and the events should not be assessed simply as counter-revolution. Late that evening Imre Nagy and János Kádár met with Mikoyan and Suslov at the Soviet embassy. After several hours of negotiation a green light was given to the implementation of the Direktorium’s decisions. Concerning this meeting, referred to by its participants only as the ‘turning point’, we have no documentation. It is very probable that Nagy reported on the Direktorium meeting and also on his own conclusions. All indications are that Kádár supported him on all counts. His anxiety about the collapse of the party leadership was doubtless a factor; also the fact that the trade unions supported the revolution. The ‘standpoint of the working class’ was always important for Kádár – concerning which he conceived of the working class as the lower levels of party and trade

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union functionaries who had been factory workers. The Soviet negotiators were in agreement with the shift in direction, but that hardly meant that the revolution had succeeded. This became clear when on the next day, 28 October, at dawn, Soviet and Hungarian units together attacked the strongest centre of resistance in the Corvin Passage. Nagy recognized immediately that this represented the last attempt by the Stalinists to prevent a peaceful development by initiating a bloodbath, and he ordered an end to the action. His prompt reaction was no longer meaningful, for the insurgents had already parried the attack. They had simply put the vanguard of the tank units out of commission. At the Politburo’s meeting later that morning, Kádár reported according to the agreement of the night before on the necessity for a new assessment of events. He tried to minimize the significance of the ‘turning point’ and to portray matters as if the party only wanted to correct the faulty standpoint of the unions regarding revolution. He added that the truce was necessary in order to commence negotiations with the insurgents on the surrender of weapons. Once again, Nagy remained passive as the two Stalinists, Hegedüs and Gerő, attempted, as they had two days earlier, to derail what they called ‘capitulationism’. Sándor Rónai actually had to provoke Nagy: if the turning point is understood as a government declaration, then the prime minister must explain his position. When Nagy finally spoke, he sounded firm and decisive. He criticized the Direktorium and expressed, as never before, his disagreement with the Soviet delegation. He reported on the negotiations of the evening before: ‘Comrade Mikoyan turned to me and said that one must remain firm. At the point where the interest of the party requires further movement, there I will not remain firm but go ahead.’ Nagy again emphasized, ‘If we assess the broadly based movement as counter-revolution, as we did at first, then we have no choice but to suppress it with tanks and artillery. That would be a tragedy. We now see that this is not our way.’ He declared that the most important elements of a government declaration would include: an immediate and absolute ceasefire, the withdrawal of Soviet forces from the combat zones, the establishment of a new police force in collaboration with the students (who were, with some reason, regarded by the party as the motor of the revolution and, with much less reason, identified with the armed insurgents) and, further, the reorganization of the state security apparatus and amnesty for the insurgents and all political prisoners.30 Because of Nagy’s resolute demeanour, there was little debate. The functions of the Central Committee and the Politburo were shifted to a six-member party presidium containing the same members as the Direktorium, with the exception of András Hegedüs, who was replaced by Károly Kiss after a short debate. Nagy did not participate in the last session of the MDP Central Committee held in the morning. Nagy clearly decided that it was now over with the old party leadership.

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For the next 48 hours he was occupied, in the name of the government, with informing society of his view of the political ‘turning point’ for the sake of pacifying the situation and restoring order, a goal that he considered essential for both internal and external policy. Shortly after one o’clock the announcement of a ceasefire, signed by Prime Minister Imre Nagy, was broadcast. Meanwhile, people in party headquarters were occupied for hours with the formulation of the government declaration requested by Nagy, several prominent party oppositionists taking part in the exercise. Thanks to the ‘many cooks’ and the repeated checking of the concept with the MDP Presidium and the Soviets, a mere three-and-a-half page statement emerged from the many hours of discussion. Nagy had high hopes that his public declaration would bring a breakthrough, and not without reason from many viewpoints. The term ‘counterrevolution’ was expressly negated in the text and the events described as a ‘huge popular movement’ and as a ‘great national and democratic movement gripping the entire nation and welding it into unity’. The mistakes and crimes of a previous time were named as grounds for the insurgency. The immediate measures promised involved the most important issues: the truce, the amnesty for armed insurgents and the agreement with the Soviet government concerning the withdrawal of troops from Budapest. The text also contained many promises: increases in wages and pensions, housing construction, support for agriculture, and the termination of the ‘profound violations of law’ that occurred in the establishment of agricultural cooperatives and arbitrary allocation of fields.31 The premier ‘welcomed’ the formation of workers’ councils in the factories and looked forward to ‘support’ for local revolutionary councils and committees and their ‘incorporation’ into the administrative apparatus. He gave assurance that comprehensive negotiations would begin with the Soviet Union on reciprocal relations, including the total removal of troops from Hungary. He also promised to form a national guard ‘from units of the armed forces and the armed groups of workers and youth’. A uniformed police force should be formed ‘after the restoration of order’, and the independent state security authorities – political police and security forces – should be dissolved. His speech also touched on the reintroduction of the republican flag and coat of arms (referred to as those ‘of Kossuth’) and of the national observance of 15 March. With these words, Nagy fulfilled many of the revolutionary demands and promised to fulfil others at a later date. On the other hand, he said nothing about the political system (one party or multiparty) and free elections, and he was silent concerning those responsible and their punishment. His thinking and the corresponding programmatic speech was, for the last time, confirmed by decision of the party leadership, a resolution containing nothing about changing the political structure.32 The first session of the government on the afternoon of 28 October began

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with the presentation of the programme speech. Afterward Nagy repaired to the studio of the parliament to read his speech on the radio. Upon his return to the cabinet meeting, Zoltán Tildy made a series of new proposals: repeal of the arbitrary allocations of arable land, re-examination of schoolbooks, reconsideration of the taxation of artisan workshops. Tildy was the only member of the government who called the recent events a ‘revolution’, albeit in a very peculiar context: ‘It serves the nation to put an end to a revolution if it can be done with peaceful means and not with the shedding of blood.’ Tildy was the one, in contrast to Nagy, who was fully aware of the political significance of the body’s first working day. The premier rejected every suggestion that extended beyond the government programme, both Tildy’s proposals and the abolition of mandatory food deliveries suggested with detailed justifications by the new minister in charge of them, Antal Gyenes.33 One can understand why Nagy was so cautious when one takes into account the implications for external affairs – about which not one word was spoken in the cabinet meeting. Even though Nagy could have known nothing of the discussion in the Presidium of the CPSU on 28 October, where at Khrushchev’s suggestion it was agreed that for the time being – expressly as a temporary measure – the changed situation be accepted, even the removal of Soviet troops from Budapest,34 he had every reason to be cautious. He wanted to avoid going beyond what he had discussed with the Mikoyan delegation. The Soviets had shown themselves to be accommodating by removing Gerő, Hegedüs, László Piros and István Bata from Budapest that evening. On that same day, 28 October, the UN Security Council took up the Hungarian question, which was soon tabled sine die. By now it had become clear that the question concerned not only Hungary or the Soviet bloc, but had become an issue in world politics. From this point on Nagy was not just a Hungarian Party chief and head of a government negotiating with his Soviet ‘comrades’, but rather the principal figure of a small state standing on the world political stage. Nagy spent the night of 28/29 October still in party headquarters. He met here on the morning of the 29th with a delegation of the Revolutionary Committee of Hungarian Intellectuals and then repaired to the parliament building. He called together his ‘like-minded friends’ so that they could serve him as an advisory group and support him in the secretariat of the office of the prime minister. As eyewitness Tibor Méray wrote, ‘he seemed rested and refreshed, although he was visibly impatient’.35 Everyone assured him that what he had said the evening before was correct – only insufficient. The intellectuals’ delegates and the ‘radical’ of the party opposition, Gimes, spoke of a multiparty system and of free elections. Nagy’s reaction was negative. Of those called to serve on Nagy’s team, Gimes and Vásárhelyi thereupon withdrew, but the others remained and organized, under József Szilágyi’s direction, the secretariat of the prime minister.

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From his closest circle came the first indications that the different ‘points’ of 23 October had already crystallized into a few core demands: withdrawal of Soviet troops, dissolution of the ÁVH, national independence and political democracy. They could no longer be separated from each other. Nagy still believed that the party had relented sufficiently and that he would be able, on the basis of the government declaration, to conduct a political fight, even if necessary an armed fight, against the ‘unreasonables’, who – as he saw it – unfortunately had infected some his ideologically unstable friends. The decisive question for him was, what armed forces were available to the government and/ or would there be armed forces ranged against it? Nagy applied himself more to the neutralization of the insurgents than to the organization of armed forces. The latter problem he left to his minister of the interior, Ferenc Münnich, and to defence minister Károly Janza, which, in light of later developments, proved to be a serious mistake. Nobody concerned himself with the units of a national guard that had formed at the universities. The military leadership was totally disoriented and attended more to internal quarrels than to restoring order. Münnich’s conduct was even more contradictory. In a discussion at the Ministry of the Interior on the evening of the 28th, he first praised the state security forces for standing firm ‘in the fight with hostile elements’, then announced the dissolution of the organ of state security, the hated ÁVH. Simultaneously he instructed the men to remain at their posts. And about all this he said nothing in his radio address on 29 October. Already on the afternoon of 28 October, direct negotiations began with the leaders of the insurgents in the proletarian eighth and ninth districts of Budapest, and on the next day they met Nagy in the parliament building. The head of government was not thinking of an exchange of views but only of negotiation on putting down their arms. The insurgent leaders on the other hand – among them László Iván Kovács and Ödön Pongrátz from the Corvin Passage and István Angyal from Tüzoltó Street and 15 others – wanted to present their demands. The premier explained patiently that not all demands could be met at once, that one must take account of the country’s difficult situation, and tried to persuade the insurgents, mostly about 20 years of age, that they should give up their weapons: ‘Boys, do you think that I’m not as good a Hungarian as you are?’ 36 In conclusion, those present assured the government of support and offered the prospect that they would relinquish their weapons to the Hungarian army once the Soviets had withdrawn. Within a few hours, it became clear that this agreement could not be honoured: the fighting groups did not surrender their weapons to Hungarian military units, they did not dissolve and they rather demanded to be incorporated into the new security forces. Early on the 30th an agreement was reached in the Corvin Passage, according to which individual insurgents could join army and police units, the under-age among them could attend the military

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school and all others would surrender their weapons. But this agreement did not hold either: no one gave up weapons and the number of armed insurgents rose. Nagy had probably recognized that, given the poorly trained and unreliable army and police and the politically tainted security forces, the insurgents were the only actual armed force that would be accepted as authoritative ‘on the street’. But he was not in a position, for the time being, to find a suitable organizational form for it. For the first time in six days, Nagy went home on 29 October. Presumably, before he could go to sleep, he wondered whether what he had done in the last 36 hours would be accepted ‘out there’, by the people, as the turning point that he saw, or whether it would be seen merely as a kind of ‘half-turn’ along the way to a genuine turning point.

10

ENDGAME The government declaration of 28 October was received throughout the country with a sense of relief but it fell short of engendering satisfaction. ‘In order that genuine relief and an atmosphere of trust might develop, it is essential that the unfulfilled demands be addressed unambiguously,’ stated the Monday paper Hétfői Hírlap on the 29th in its survey of the mood in the country. Leaflets and homemade posters of the day made similar demands, albeit less politely, and some of these must have landed on the desks in the secretariat of the prime minister. The demands included a complete reorganization of the government, the immediate withdrawal of Soviet troops from the whole country, free elections and – as a new stipulation – the elimination of personnel of the dissolved security force (ÁVH) from the new forces of law and order. Appeals appeared calling for continuing the strike ‘until a conclusive victory’ was achieved and also various announcements of the formation of diverse national committees in rural districts. Furthermore there were numerous handwritten notes calling for the resumption of work and for support for the government and Imre Nagy. Budapest Radio, controlled by the government, attempted to give the impression of a gradual restoration of order, but on the stations in Győr and Miskolc, run by local revolutionary committees, quite a different tone prevailed. Besides the principal news items, the broadcasts included local political demands and calls for a strike. Radio Győr announced, in the name of the regional National Council, that ‘the people of western Hungary would hasten to come to the aid of the fighters of Budapest’ if the government did not end its fight against the insurgents.1 At 9.30 on the morning of 30 October Nagy arrived at his office determined to continue what had been started but also to begin something new: to achieve settled conditions but from a different point of departure. Right after his arrival at the parliament building he had a discussion with János Kádár, Zoltán Tildy and Ferenc Erdei concerning the formation of a new government. Tildy recommended a coalition as the basis for a new government. Before the meeting had gone very far, Kádár proposed that the question be considered first in the party presidium, at which point he and Nagy repaired to the nearby MDP Headquarters where they suggested a renewal of the four-party coalition of 1945. This decision implied not only the restoration of a multiparty system but also, and incidentally, the reversal of the ‘unification of the workers’ parties’, i.e. a revision of the 1948 demolition of the Social Democratic Party. 118

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In his memoirs and also during his interrogation, Nagy described the 1956 attempt to restore the multiparty system as a necessary and unavoidable compromise, but also as a ‘serious step backwards’. To be sure, he had always been, in theory, an advocate of the multiparty system for the period of transition to socialism. In June 1957, during his interrogation, he stated, ‘I believed that, for those countries in which a broad middle class had emerged in the course of social development, the multiparty system was fully acceptable as an expression of the interests of these social strata.’ 2 But at this point his actions were not motivated by the principles of civil liberty; rather, proceeding along pragmatic lines, he thought that, when the active groups of a society no longer ‘buy’ the party’s claim that it will bring about a democratic change, the party could regain the lost trust in association with its former democratic partners, and among them appear itself as democratic. No documentation has been found on the session of the MDP Presidium on the morning of 30 October. That is remarkable – and most regrettable – because this discussion was one of the key events in the history of the Hungarian revolution. In addition to the questions of a ‘coalition government’ and the removal of Soviet troops, the meeting considered the suggestion that the Hungarian Workers’ Party (MDP) be dissolved and a new Communist party established. We know that Nagy and Kádár periodically informed the Soviet representatives Mikoyan and Suslov, who were in the same building, of the progress of the discussion. Strangely enough, the corresponding reports to Moscow by the Soviet guests have also not survived. We know only of the brief comments made in the Presidium of the CPSU after a telephone conversation with the emissaries in Budapest. ‘Nagy is playing a double game,’ said Zhukov, summing up General Malinin’s impression. Khrushchev concluded: ‘Kádár is being good. Five out of six are standing firm. There is controversy in the Presidium about the troop withdrawal.’ 3 In fact the Soviet troops received the ceasefire order first about 6.00 pm on 29 October and not ‘immediately’ as Nagy had announced in his government declaration a day before. Until that time there had still been occasional exchanges of fire. There could be no talk of withdrawal as the troops had not left their positions anywhere in the city. Back at the parliament building, the resolutions of the MDP Presidium were restated as those of the presidium of government (the premier and his deputies) and then broadcast by Nagy just before 2.30 pm. The change was halfway complete. After the opening, still in the style of a Communist politician (‘Toilers of Hungary! Workers, peasants, and professionals!’), came a radical shift in oratorical style: Because of the ever widening revolution and the powerful movement of democratic forces, our country has reached a crossroads. In agreement with the Presidium of the MDP, the national government has come to

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imre nagy a ­conclusive decision that I want to share with the working people of Hungary. The government will continue to pursue democratization, abolish the single party system, and base its work on the cooperation of the coalition parties that emerged in 1945. Accordingly, within the national government a narrow cabinet will be established consisting of Imre Nagy, Zoltán Tildy, Béla Kovács, Ferenc Erdei, János Kádár, Géza Losonczy, and a representative yet to be named from the Social Democratic Party.

Regarding Soviet troop withdrawals, from the whole country, not just Budapest, the government would approach Moscow ‘immediately’. In conclusion, Nagy appealed for the defence of the ‘accomplishments of the revolution’ and hailed a ‘free, democratic, and independent Hungary’. The adjective ‘socialist’ was omitted.4 Nagy had thus claimed the popular movement that began on the 23rd as the basis for the legitimacy of his own position and that of the government. This was the moment of fulfilment of the demand of the Budapest demonstrators, ‘Imre Nagy to the government!’, for although Nagy had previously stood at the head of government, it was still a Communist one, not the kind of government demanded by the popular movement. But the change was still not quite complete. The ministers of the old government remained in office and the composition of the multiparty cabinet (actually a sort of governmental presidium) mirrored Nagy’s earlier notion that ‘people’s democracy’ was the constitutional basis for the coalition government. Three of the six members of the cabinet were Communists – though they too supported Nagy’s line for the moment. Two of them had belonged to the Smallholders’ Party (FKGP) but it was known that Tildy had taken a ‘soft’ line towards the Communists in 1945–48. Ferenc Erdei of the Peasant Party was generally regarded as a compromised fellow traveller, for he had been a minister under Rákosi. In the ensuing 36 hours, Nagy made several moves in order to make his government acceptable and to enlarge the new, revolutionary foundation of legitimacy for consolidating what had been achieved. At this point, he was ‘only’ a few hours behind the volatile public mood. The lessening of tension observable on 28 October reversed itself on the next day and by the 30th one heard only expressions of impatience and rejection. Even though the Soviet troops finally began to leave Budapest, the demand was now generally expressed that Hungary must immediately secede from the Warsaw Pact and declare its neutrality. Most revolutionary councils in Budapest and in the countryside not only denied the government support but would not even recognize it until the new demands were met. The armed groups would not surrender their weapons, even to Hungarian military forces, and wanted assurance that they would be absorbed as integral units into a new armed force. The workers’ councils assumed a waiting attitude towards resumption of work. The slogan was: no one should return to work until the Russians depart. On 30 October in Győr,

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a significant unification of all the revolutionary organizations took place. The Transdanubian National Council (Dunántúli Nemzeti Tanács) attempted to bring the troop units stationed in western Hungary under its own command, and occasional voices were raised for a counter-government. Had the influential chairman of the council, Attila Szigethy, and the workers not opposed it, this could have had serious consequences. Councils were formed also in the central administration, in the ministries and in the armed forces, and they proceeded directly to purge their ranks of the most prominent supporters of the Rákosi regime. All of this fed the anxiety of the government that, after losing control of the events in the streets of Budapest and in the countryside as well as of the press, it could also lose the remnants of its influence in the machinery of state and in the armed forces. The armed confrontation on 30 October in front of the Budapest Party headquarters on Republic Square (Köztársaság tér) indicated the intensity with which hatred, accumulated over years, could take the initiative. The incident played itself out like a well-staged drama of ‘street versus power’. The guards at party headquarters, i.e. state security personnel who, since the dissolution of the ÁVH, now wore police uniforms, seized some armed insurgents who sought to search the building and opened fire on other armed groups that appeared in front of the building, whereupon the insurgents laid siege to party headquarters. A Hungarian tank unit arriving to aid those besieged crossed over to the side of the insurgents, at which point some of the guards left the building intending to surrender (including Budapest Party secretary Imre Mező, a supporter of Nagy) and were brutally slaughtered by the crowd. Even though several revolutionary organizations, along with the Writers’ Union and the free press, spoke out in the next few days against ‘lynch justice’, these events seriously worsened the situation and significantly harmed the image of the uprising. The negotiations that Nagy pursued on 30 and 31 October indicate the precarious balance of power that was to define the direction of the revolution in the subsequent days. The central topic of these discussions was the restoration of public security and order. In this connection, Major-General Béla Király, who had been sentenced in one of the show trials of the 1950s and only recently had regained his freedom, played a decisive role. Since the offer made by the government, that the armed civilians individually join the army or police, had produced no results, Király set forth a new concept of pacification. According to this proposal,5 all army and police should be placed under a unified command, which would also have jurisdiction over the independent National Guards of the armed insurgents and other volunteers (factory guards, workers and students). The Revolutionary Committee of Armed Forces of Order (Forradalmi Karhatalmi Bizottság) thus created should consist half of delegates of the National Guard and half of army and police officers. Army and police units would retain their original rank and service order while National

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Guard units would have their own organizational arrangements, i.e., they could elect their own commanders subject only to confirmation by the Revolutionary Committee. Király’s proposal, which aimed at supporting the government and, at the same time, legitimizing the revolutionary forces, allowed only those persons to bear arms who had joined the National Guard and been registered. Király’s planning committee was received by Nagy and the cabinet on the evening of 30 October and their draft was accepted as the basis for further actions. Afterwards the representatives of the armed groups had agreed to join the National Guard, and the Revolutionary Committee was elected on the next day at the Kilián Barracks, next to the Corvin Passage centre of insurgency.6 Negotiations began thereafter with a variety of political groups. On the evening of 30 October, Nagy received, among others, József Dudás, publisher of the newspaper Függetlenség (Independence), in his role as ‘chairman’ of a Hungarian Revolutionary National Committee. It appeared as if Dudás’s National Committee was an important centre of resistance supported by armed groups or by numbers of partisans. His newspaper appeared on 30 October with the bold headline, ‘We say no to a coalition government’, and, in the evening edition, ‘We refuse to support this government’. And since he had called for a congress of ‘all national revolutionary organizations’ for 1 November and was known for his contacts with innumerable Communist and non-Communist politicians and intellectuals now active in revolutionary organizations (contacts made during a varied career stretching from the Communist underground and anti-fascist resistance through the Smallholders’ Party to internment at the dreaded labour camp at Recsk), it was only reasonable to invite him to a discussion. In reality, however, Dudás was a shallow figure who enjoyed a brief period in the limelight because of the unusual circumstances of the revolutionary situation in Hungary. The prime minister soon recognized this, and although Dudás’s name became known internationally by way of the largely meaningless official communiqué of 31 October regarding the discussion, the government viewed him as no longer relevant to the political situation. Many of the ranking military personnel and insurgent commanders, in their pursuit of a ‘revolutionary order’, regarded Dudás rather as enemy number one with respect to restoring order and treated him accordingly, albeit unjustly for the most part.7 Immediately thereafter, Nagy met with the two respected leaders of the Social Democratic Party, Anna Kéthly and Gyula Kelemen. Because they had rejected the unification of the workers’ parties in 1948, both had been imprisoned and only released in 1956. Understandably they were suspicious of a government led by Nagy, for their party and its leaders had been treated even worse than the Smallholders had been. Nagy wanted to include the Social Democrats in his government and sketched his notion of a coalition government ‘on the basis of people’s democracy’, a notion for which his interlocu-

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tors could have little sympathy. While the Social Democrats, like every other serious political force, rejected the restoration of the Horthy regime, Nagy’s basic ideas, such as the ‘people’s democratic system’, the ‘alliance of workers and peasants’ or the ‘absolute maintenance of our socialist accomplishments’,8 could only arouse mistrust. It all sounded too much like the vocabulary of the period that ended in Communist Party hegemony. There was no sign in the following days that the Social Democrats were in any hurry to decide. At the Congress of the Socialist International on 1 November in Vienna, Anna Kéthly said, ‘We have not agreed to participate in the government.’ 9 She seemed rather to favour non-participation, even though she acknowledged that the situation demanded cooperation with the stabilization efforts. Accompanied by Tildy, Erdei and Kádár, Nagy also received representatives from at least ten local revolutionary organizations in the course of the day. All of the representatives issued the same message: so long as the Soviets remained in Hungary and the country had not seceded from the Warsaw Pact, so long as an election date had not been announced and ministers from the Rákosi era remained in office, there could be no thought of pacification nor of a return to work. Much had been done on 30 October to restore public order, but now the continuation of the general strike had become the number one problem. The worldwide public was surprised on 31 October when the morning news reported the ‘Declaration of the Government of the USSR on basic principles of the development and further strengthening of friendship and cooperation between the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries’. Soviet ambassador Andropov had on the evening before supplied Nagy with a copy of the text. It included among other things the assertion: The Soviet government is prepared, for the sake of mutual security of the socialist countries, to discuss with the socialist countries belonging to the Warsaw Pact the question of the Soviet troops stationed in the above-named countries [Hungary and Romania]. In this regard, the Soviet government follows the general principle that the stationing of the troops of one or another Warsaw Pact member on the territory of another member state occurs upon the agreement of all Pact members and not only by agreement of the state on the territory of which and at whose request the troops were or would be stationed. … Recognizing that the continued presence of Soviet troop units in Hungary could occasion a still greater exacerbation of the situation, the Soviet government ordered its high command to remove its military units from the city of Budapest as soon as the Hungarian government deems it necessary. The Soviet government is also ready to enter into negotiations with the government of the Hungarian People’s Republic and the other member states of the Warsaw Pact regarding the presence of Soviet troops on Hungarian territory.10

For a moment, it appeared that Nagy’s vision, which had gradually taken shape

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25. In front of the parliament building, talking to an old man, 31 October 1956. (Franz Goëss, Vienna)

in the transition of 1955–56, would be realized. The socialist ‘reform countries’ (Poland and Yugoslavia) would support him, and now the Soviet Union would join them. The MDP Presidium met again on the morning of 31 October to consider Zoltán Szántó’s proposal, incompletely discussed the day before, to establish a new Communist Party. Along with the other presidium members, Nagy was convinced that this was necessary, for a party that maintained its continuity with the Rákosi regime and the resolutions of 23–28 October would be vulnerable to constant attack within a coalition government. Even though he participated neither in the founding meeting on the afternoon of the 31st nor in the debate surrounding the text of Kádár’s radio statement about the new party, he was listed among its founding members belonging to the Provisional Executive Committee of the new party. For the next two to two-and-a-half days, Nagy avoided any contact with his party. It appears that he found it neither necessary nor useful to continue observing the old routine. One might say that this was the moment when Imre Nagy, the party politician, became a national politician who happened to be a Communist. After the last session of the MDP Presidium, the cabinet gathered and heard good news from Zoltán Tildy, who had been in the Soviet embassy dealing with the Soviet emissaries eager to return to Moscow. ‘Mikoyan assured me that the Soviet government was prepared to discuss all open questions.’ 11 Actually, most

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of the units of the Soviet army that had entered the capital on 23 October had moved out of the city by the 31st, which could be seen as a step towards withdrawal. The ministers adopted a resolution: ‘In consideration of the Soviet government’s announcement, the Hungarian government will approach the Soviet Union today concerning the Warsaw Pact and the withdrawal of Soviet troops.’ 12 In the afternoon, Nagy addressed the demonstrators gathered in front of the parliament building: ‘We have begun today the discussions concerning the withdrawal of Soviet troops from our country and the renunciation of our responsibilities within the Warsaw Pact. We ask that you show a little more patience. I believe that the results justify your placing trust in us.’ 13 This patience and trust he asked also of the delegations that beset him continuously during the day: the strike must end, work must be resumed and they must spare no effort to restore life to its normal routine. Yet he remained cautious – so far as the premier of a country engulfed by an apparently victorious revolution can be cautious. One of the members in his secretariat recalled the discussion with delegates of the Transdanubian National Committee: ‘Imre Nagy stated that he himself regarded the country’s independence as the principal task. Concerning neutrality, his answer was evasive; he said that independence could be achieved within the framework of the Warsaw Pact. He cited foreign policy considerations and problems with foreign trade as reasons for his standpoint.’ 14 Responding to a foreign journalist’s question, Nagy said, ‘There is the possibility that Hungary could leave the alliance even if the Warsaw Pact is not dissolved, and we will defend this position energetically in the Hungarian– Soviet negotiations now getting under way.’ To the question whether Hungary could conceivably form the nucleus of a neutral zone in Eastern Europe, Nagy replied that ‘this question would arise sooner or later’.15 He had certainly not anticipated that he would be confronted with this question in a little more than 24 hours nor reckoned with the fact that he would soon have no grounds for confidence or for restrained joy. As Nagy said in July 1957 during his interrogation, unsettling news had reached him early on the morning of 31 October: from railroad junctions in Debrecen and Nyiregyháza and from the [Soviet–Hungarian] border crossing in Záhony, later also from various military command posts and administrative offices, came reports that pontoon bridges had been installed on the Upper Tisza and that from there and Záhony strong motorized units and tank and artillery units of the Soviet army had crossed the border and were streaming into the interior. I immediately reported this to Andropov and asked him to verify the news.16

Nagy’s foreign-policy advisor György Heltai recalled that the government imposed a news blackout on 31 October, fearing a Soviet provocation if the troop movements are made public.17 For a short time (28–30 October) Moscow gambled that the Hungarian

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government would succeed, on the strength of Nagy’s announcement on 28 October, in stabilizing the situation, and that the Communist Party would remain the leading political force (even if in a form that was more ‘people’s democratic’ than ‘soviet’). They expected that Hungary, after partial or even complete removal of troops, would remain part of the political-military alliance. That such an option could even be considered in Moscow was the result of the not yet decided power struggle within the post-Stalinist leadership. The process of de-Stalinization also fostered insecurity and the tendency to revise decisions hastily, which had its effect on Soviet foreign policy. Khrushchev explained the ‘revised assessment’, i.e. the decision for the military option, in the Presidium session of 31 October, citing especially the loss of prestige that would threaten the Soviet Union as world power if it gave way in Hungary. After the first successes of Israel, France and Britain against Egypt at the Suez Canal, Moscow was sensitive to such a loss, with the possible weakening of its position in the Third World altogether. Khrushchev’s argument was: ‘If we withdraw from Hungary that would only encourage the … imperialists. They would interpret that as weakness and go over to the offensive. … Besides Egypt, we would then also give Hungary to them.’ 18 Khrushchev also believed that a ‘retreat’ in Eastern Europe under the given circumstances would, regardless of conditions, strengthen the Stalinists in their hard line in Eastern Europe. ‘We would demonstrate the weakness of our position. Our party would in such a case no longer understand us.’ Finally he noted that the situation in Hungary had not achieved the expected stabilization: ‘We have been conciliatory but there is still no government.’ 19 There were undoubtedly some other factors that entered into his calculation even though he did not mention them: for example, the Chinese concern over de-Stalinization and the cohesion of the socialist bloc, or the ‘domino effect’ in Eastern Europe that could not be entirely dismissed. Furthermore he could be certain, on 31 October, that the American government planned neither military initiatives nor political sanctions in regard to Hungary, and that the West was largely divided on – but mainly concerned with nothing but – the Suez question.20 Nagy was faced with the decision as to what answer he should give to the onset of troop movements which he viewed as a prelude to a military attack. For Nagy the Soviet leadership was personified in October 1956 by the two ranking politicians Mikoyan and Suslov. Nagy thought that Mikoyan’s ‘liberal’ attitude, that a settlement could be achieved by political means, was shared generally in Moscow. But that was by no means the case, for there had been from the outset strong opposition in the Kremlin to Mikoyan’s line. Nagy also believed that Mikoyan would feel sympathy for him personally, but in fact Nagy was always characterized negatively in Mikoyan’s regular reports to Moscow. By the time the two Soviet emissaries left Hungary on 31 October, the Soviet position had changed fundamentally. Nagy now attempted to restore

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26. With Zoltán Tildy and Colonel Pál Maléter in his office in the parliament building, around 1 November 1956. (Hungarian National Museum)

contact with Moscow at the highest possible level. At 9.00 am on 1 November the cabinet convened again. Those present, besides Nagy, were Kádár, Tildy, Losonczy, the chairman of the presidential council István Dobi, and a deputy prime minister, József Bognár. Various political and administrative issues were discussed as they pertained to internal stability. Nagy had consulted personally with Andropov before the meeting and met with him again during the session. They also spoke with each other several times on the telephone. The cabinet also adopted two further resolutions bearing directly on the movement of Soviet troops: a note of protest and the strengthening of the military defence of Budapest. But the central theme of the meeting was the question of what was happening on the country’s eastern

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border. János Kádár said a few days later in Moscow: Andropov said that it concerned railroaders. The Hungarians telegraphed from the border that it was not railroaders. Then came the news that Soviet tanks were moving towards Szolnok. That was around noon. The members of the government grew nervous. We called Andropov to the meeting. He said that it concerned transfers of troops. Then we heard that Soviet tanks surrounded the airport. We called Andropov back to the meeting. He told us that wounded soldiers were being moved. Nagy was convinced that an attack on Budapest was in preparation.21

After the unsatisfactory information from Andropov, the meeting asked for the deputy defence minister Pál Maléter, commander of the Budapest defence force Béla Király, and chief of general staff István Kovács, who then informed the cabinet about Soviet troop movements and the actual situation. The meeting then took up the issues of principle involved in the declaration of neutrality. The unofficial record of the meeting reads: ‘The cabinet supports unanimously the position that the government should proclaim the country’s neutrality.’ 22 Although the decision was reached around noon or in the early afternoon, it assumed the force of law only hours later when it was written up in the official minutes and announced. Nagy’s statement to the police in 1957 detailed the course of development of the resolution. First there were ‘conversations’, mainly with Tildy, then with Losonczy and Erdei. The hours-long session was interrupted several times, members leaving the chamber and then returning. Kádár, for example, had a concurrent meeting with party leaders concerning the founding manifesto of the new Communist Party. The formulation of the resolution then proceeded strictly according to protocol. In Nagy’s words: I chaired the meeting and sketched briefly the situation and circumstances forcing the government to act. … I stressed the exceptional importance of the issue but made no proposal. At the same time, I urged the cabinet members to express their opinions. After all arguments were advanced, I concluded that the cabinet members unanimously favoured renunciation of the Warsaw Pact and the declaration of neutrality. Therefore, both questions were embodied in the resolution, without – as best I can recall – individual votes.23

The discussions and arguments lasted for hours. At about 3.00 pm came the announcement that Imre Nagy had taken over the position of foreign minister, thereby suggesting that the government was facing a particularly important foreign-policy decision. (The ‘replaced’ foreign minister, Imre Horváth, was believed to be on his way to the UN Assembly in New York; in fact he was going to Moscow.) After a break the cabinet reconvened about 4.00 pm. Learning that the reinforcement of Soviet forces was continuing, the cabinet summoned

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Andropov again, and he appeared at the parliament building around 5.00 pm. According to his report it was Nagy who first demanded a halt to the intervention; the other members joined him in this. Andropov offered ‘in the sense of his directives’ only evasive answers, and then, according to the ambassador, Nagy proposed that the decision of the day before be implemented: that Hungary secede from the Warsaw Pact, declare its neutrality, and appeal to the United Nations for a guarantee of its neutrality by the four great powers. If the Soviet government halts the military advance immediately and removes its units from the country to their stations in the border region (the Hungarian government being informed of this by its own military forces), then the Hungarian government would immediately withdraw its appeal to the UN, though Hungary would in this case remain neutral.24

At 6.12 pm, following Andropov’s appearance, radio broadcasts were interrupted with this announcement: Prime Minister and appointed Foreign Minister Imre Nagy today, on 1 November, summoned the Soviet ambassador to Hungary, Mr Andropov, and informed him that the Hungarian government had received reliable information about the intrusion of new Soviet troops in Hungary. The prime minister demanded the immediate withdrawal of these Soviet units from Hungary. He announced to the Soviet ambassador that the Hungarian government is renouncing the Warsaw Pact effective immediately and proclaiming Hungarian neutrality. It is appealing to the United Nations for assistance in defending the neutrality of the country through the four great powers. The Soviet ambassador took note of the protest and announcement of the prime minister and appointed foreign minister and promised to request an immediate response from his government. The prime minister has informed all diplomatic representatives accredited in Budapest of the note verbale to the Soviet ambassador. At the same time, he informed the Secretary General of the United Nations by cable of the events and the decision of the Hungarian government and requested of him that he place the issue on the agenda of the General Assembly as an exceptional item.25

Neither the note to the diplomatic representatives nor the telegram to the UN Secretary General referred to the four great powers guaranteeing Hungary’s neutrality; that reference was found only in Andropov’s report to Moscow. The premier had requested only recognition of neutrality and protection of the country’s independence. Of course Nagy did not expect that something that took years in the case of Austria would be accomplished for Hungary in hours or days. He wanted above all to gain time in the nearly hopeless situation, to take the Soviet leaders by surprise and to strike at their vulnerable point with a bold, internationally relevant diplomatic initiative. Nagy wanted to negotiate directly with the leaders in Moscow and therefore left the request to the UN

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Secretary General dangling. He also told Andropov this after delivering the note, and the Soviet ambassador promised to convey his wish for direct negotiation to Moscow. No answer ever came. Nagy’s radio address was broadcast at 7.50 pm: Hungary had declared its independence and terminated its membership in the Warsaw Pact. The prime minister said, ‘Now it is really true that on this issue our people are united as never before in our history.’ 26 And it seemed that his words, for the first time since the revolution began, were absolutely to the point, for the address had an almost immediate effect. Already by 11.00 pm the call went out over the radio from the workers’ councils of the large factories in Budapest to end the general strike and to return to work. One hour earlier, János Kádár’s speech, prepared that morning, was broadcast to announce the founding of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt/MSZMP).27 Late in the evening Nagy informed the Chinese ambassador of the day’s decisions. Other members of the MSZMP Executive Committee, Kádár among them, were present at this encounter. Soon thereafter, János Kádár disappeared from the parliament building. On the morning of 2 November, only three ministers besides Nagy appeared for the cabinet meeting (Tildy, Erdei, Losonczy). They settled on the composition of three delegations. One, led by Géza Losonczy, was to negotiate about the termination of Hungary’s membership in the Warsaw Pact. Another, under Nagy’s direction, was to travel to New York for the UN General Assembly meeting; it included the two most important non-Communist cabinet members (Zoltán Tildy and Béla Kovács) and the Social Democrat Anna Kéthly. And since the Soviet government had indicated a readiness to negotiate regardless of recent developments, Major-Generals Pál Maléter and István Kovács, Colonel Miklós Szűcs and Ferenc Erdei were appointed to negotiate about the removal of Soviet troop units that had entered the country since 23 October. Hungarian aerial reconnaissance noted troop movements in a western direction throughout the day. Nagy informed the UN General Secretary by telegram of the Soviet advance and took the opportunity to urge the Security Council ‘to exercise its influence … to bring about immediate negotiations between the Hungarian and Russian governments’.28 Andropov also received a note of identical content, which was soon answered to the effect that negotiations concerning the withdrawal of the troops that entered the country after 23 October could begin on 3 November in the parliament building. But the indication of readiness to negotiate was illusory. The Soviet leaders resorted to a tactical manoeuvre, for the UN Security Council was to continue its deliberation on the Hungarian issue late on the night of 2 November (Central European Time). Clearly, Nagy did not abandon hope even on this day that he would find a way to engage in direct negotiations with the Soviet leadership. This time he pursued his goal in a roundabout way. In the evening, he sent news to the Romanian

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Party secretary Gheorghiu-Dej along with a request for advice. Nagy obviously assumed either that his message would pass quickly from Bucharest to Moscow (which is what happened: the message was sent directly to Khrushchev) or that the Romanian Party chief would try to mediate in Nagy’s cause (a naive notion, for Gheorghiu-Dej, at the time of the visit by Soviet leaders to Bucharest on 2 November, had offered to supply Romanian troops for the intervention).29 During the discussion with Andropov, Nagy asked, among other things, about János Kádár and Ferenc Münnich, demanding ‘in petulant tone’ an explanation of their disappearance. The search for them had begun already in the morning after József Szilágyi told Nagy that they could not be found. In 1957 in Snagov, Nagy described what he knew about the events of the evening of 1 November: During the talks with the Chinese ambassador, Kádár left the prime ministerial office. We learned from reliable sources what happened later. … Kádár was driven by automobile to Münnich and soon after his arrival the latter received a call from Soviet Ambassador Andropov. Speaking in Russian, Münnich told Andropov that Kádár was with him. The conversation was brief. Münnich assured Andropov that they would join him in ten minutes. Münnich and Kádár were driven to the Soviet embassy where they got out and rang. They waited eight to ten minutes and then another car pulled up at the building. Two Russians got out and told Kádár and Münnich to get in. An extended conversation ensued. Kádár and Münnich asked if they would be driven back and when that was promised they sent their auto away and got into the Russians’ car. … On the basis of this information we assumed that Kádár and Münnich had been led into a trap and abducted. (It is possible that Münnich was an accomplice.)30

Andropov simply denied that the Soviet embassy was involved. According to the script that had been approved on 31 October in Moscow, it was part of the scheme that the two key Hungarian figures were to be brought to Moscow. Already in Moscow on 2 November, Kádár did not yet clearly endorse the military intervention, but he informed neither Nagy nor anyone else that the Soviets wanted to negotiate with him. Therefore it was not only Nagy who later inclined to the assumption that Kádár had, at least semi-consciously, committed treason. The people around Nagy were already persuaded on 2 November that Kádár and Münnich had ‘abandoned the government’ and ‘gone over to the Russians’. But Nagy himself still believed at that date that Kádár’s negotiations with the Kremlin could pave the way for him to go to Moscow. He assumed that this was the reason for keeping the affair secret. On 3 November 1956 the so-called inner cabinet was turned into a coalition government to which, besides the prime minister and the ministers of foreign affairs and defence, only ministers of state belonged. Concurrently, all of the ministers sworn in on 28 October, members of the ‘half-transition government’,

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were relieved of their duties. The government included, from the Smallholders’ Party, Zoltán Tildy, István B. Szabó and Béla Kovács, who had finally reached Budapest from Pécs. The Social Democratic Party had, on 2 November, indicated their readiness to participate in the government and named, besides Anna Kéthly (who was out of the country), Gyula Kelemen and József Fischer as its candidates for ministerial office. The Peasant Party named its chairman Ferenc B. Farkas and István Bibó for the government, notwithstanding the vigorous opposition by the Social Democrats and Smallholders who did not want to allocate two ministerial posts to the NPP, now called the ‘Petőfi Party’. The MSZMP was represented by Nagy, Losonczy and Kádár. Nagy stated later that Zoltán Szántó rather than Kádár had been originally nominated, and that the latter’s name appeared on the list by mistake. Pál Maléter, who had previously proceeded against the insurgents with force but had then negotiated with some of the commanders of armed groups and identified himself with the revolution, was named minister of defence. Zoltán Szántó, who would have been glad to inherit Kádár’s position in the party, charged Nagy, in the session of the provisional Executive Committee of the MSZMP on 2 November, with failing to consult the party leadership regarding important government decisions. Nagy refuted him, noting that Kádár had always been present and could at any time have convened a meeting. From this incident grew the legend that Zoltán Szántó and Georg Lukács (also a member of the MSZMP Executive Committee) had voted against withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. In fact, such a vote was never taken by this body. Nagy could rightly expect his new government – that, incidentally, had only one incomplete and informal session – to bring the establishment of the new, revolutionary transition successfully to its conclusion. At the time it seemed that the pacification of the country was only a matter of time. All signs pointed towards an early return to normality. The late evening radio address of the Archbishop of Esztergom, József Mindszenty, on 3 November provided the day’s conclusion. The house arrest imposed on the cardinal had been terminated on 31 October and the highest dignitary of the Hungarian Catholic Church was rehabilitated on 1 November by government decree. The cardinal urged efforts to achieve normality. He called upon the people to resume work immediately and demanded early ‘uncorrupted elections’. He said, among other things, that the country was lacking many things ‘but what it needs are not more parties and party leaders. … We live in a lawful state, we want to be a nation committed only to cultural nationalism, one that furthers the classless society and democratic accomplishments, on the basis of private property conditioned by social interests and rightful limitations.’ Concerning the Church, he said that it was not against ‘manifest historical progress’ but wished to restore its institutions. The cardinal referred explicitly to the responsibility of the ‘heirs to the fallen regime’, which many saw as an attack on the Nagy government.31

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A Soviet military delegation led by General Malinin appeared at noon on 3 November at the parliament building, and the negotiations concerning troop withdrawal had begun. As would later become clear, the Soviet negotiators had but one goal: they wanted to gain time to prepare an attack. They still needed 16 hours. Time was used up in discussing technical details of the withdrawal. Agreement was reached on interrupting the talks and resuming them at 10.00 pm at Soviet headquarters in Tököl. The Soviet officers gave assurance that no additional units would cross the Hungarian border during the interval. Maléter and Erdei reported to Nagy in the afternoon on the status of the negotiations. Everything looked encouraging – in contrast to the sharp attack by the Chinese Party, about which the Hungarian press reported in the afternoon. The leading article in Zhenmin Zhibao characterized the Hungarian revolution as a ‘conspiracy of a handful of counter-revolutionaries’ who ‘want to reinstate capitalism’ in Hungary and ‘attempt to upset the unity of fraternal socialist countries’.32 When Nagy learned of this he decided not to participate in the press conference scheduled for 5.00 pm. The result was that the last articulation by the Hungarian revolutionary government, which can be described as its ‘testament’, was presented by Géza Losonczy. He declared, among other things, that ‘the government unanimously guarantees that none of the achievements of the last 12 years will be sacrificed: neither the land reform, nor the nationalization of factories and enterprises, nor any of the social accomplishments. It is equally committed to the preservation of all of the achievements of the present revolution, including national independence, equality, and the building of socialism, not through dictatorship but on the basis of democratic principles.’ 33 Nagy of course was not thinking of any sort of ‘farewell’, and he continued his efforts to find a direct route to an understanding with Moscow. That is why he and other functionaries of the MSZMP negotiated late into the night with Deputy Foreign Minister Mălnăşanu of Romania. He still hoped that Romanian mediation would make possible direct negotiations with the Soviet state and party leadership.34 It was well past midnight when the meeting with Mălnăşanu ended and Nagy could go to sleep.

11

NOVEMBER THE FOURTH At his interrogation in summer 1957, Nagy recounted what had occurred in the next few hours: Early on 4 November someone awakened me [in the parliament building], saying I should go immediately to the Secretariat, for there was news that Soviet troops had begun to occupy the capital. Tildy and his attendants were already waiting there, along with Ferenc Donáth … and a few others. … While the telephone rang constantly, I was informed of the latest news from the whole country. The calls came from everywhere, wondering what should happen now, what was to be done. Since I could not answer every call, even when the caller insisted on talking to me, I instructed those taking the calls that there should be no resistance, that provocation must be avoided, and that it was forbidden to shoot at Soviet soldiers.1

Tildy and Donáth urged the prime minister to issue a statement on the radio while it was still possible. Donáth formulated the basic text and, after adding an introduction and a conclusion, Nagy read it at 5.20 am in the radio studio of the parliament building. The speech, accompanied by the background noise of gunfire, thus went out over the air: This is Imre Nagy, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Hungarian People’s Republic, speaking. In the early hours of this morning, Soviet troops launched an attack against our capital city with the obvious intention of overthrowing the lawful, democratic Hungarian Government. Our troops are fighting. The government is in its place. I inform the people of the country and the world public of this.2

The controversy over this speech began a few hours after its broadcast and has continued, albeit in a lower key, right down to the present day. After the sentence with which the speaker identified himself, there followed a statement claiming nothing less than that the Soviet Union was an aggressive, imperialist great power dealing with Hungary in the same way that Hitler’s Germany had dealt with an already truncated Czechoslovakia and Poland. With this sentence Nagy definitely placed himself outside the fortress known as the Communist world movement. Such a sentence had never been heard from the mouth of a Communist politician. The next two sentences are problematic to the extent that they are internally inconsistent and also because they did not 134

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correspond to what was actually happening. On the basis of the facts stated in them, it would have been logical for Nagy to say something about what should be done. He seems at this moment to have thought that, in the strictest sense, nothing more could be done. Major-General Béla Király also perceived this clearly. He was one of the last to have spoken with the premier, and Nagy requested no further report on the military situation.3 The first sentence conveys only a factual statement, but it also expresses a politically dramatic attitude. A conceivable conclusion might have been a call to hopeless but heroic resistance or, on the other hand, an admission that any active resistance, especially armed engagement, appeared to be senseless and that only passive resistance remained a possibility, and also the hope that the international community would not allow the Hungarian situation to develop into a world crisis, that is to say, a call like the now famous ‘declaration’ from minister of state István Bibó written later on that morning.4 Nagy’s statement lay somewhere between these two possibilities. He said neither one thing nor the other. There are many reasons that could be cited by way of explanation, e.g. his confusion in a chaotic situation, the profound fatigue he must have felt after the 12 days just past, his deep disappointment and despair over the fiasco that the ‘cause’ had become, the horrific presentiment of national and personal ruin. All of that may have had some effect, but the prime minister’s statement was totally inappropriate to the situation of the moment, both morally and politically. Nagy could under the circumstances have stated that a defensive battle was hopeless and should not be undertaken. In that regard, he gave clear instructions on the telephone, obviously with a view to preventing major loss of life and destruction of national resources. But on the radio he said something quite different, namely the news that had reached him (‘Our troops are fighting’). To those who stood ready for any action, especially the insurgents in Budapest, that could have been understood rightly as a call for them to take up the fight. For members of the armed forces, on the other hand, the sentence meant that they had no clear command, which must have had a fateful effect on an institution based on command. The men in uniform, waiting for an order, might interpret the sentence as a challenge to offer resistance. Nagy may have meant to bring about the opposite, but the sentence had fatal results for the fighting troops. Many who took up arms on 4 November paid with their lives – then or years later when death sentences were pronounced on the insurgents. If one asks what political considerations guided Nagy, an answer is hard to find. One can only conclude that he was unable to overcome the distressing experience of the night of the 23rd to the 24th, either politically or morally, in the days that followed. He did not succeed in stating plainly that this government, his government, and he personally had not requested the intervention of Soviet forces. The short sentence, ‘the government is in its place’, suggests a

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heroic standing of one’s ground. But if so, why were there no clear directives? Beyond that, in another hour the statement was no longer correct. Those who understood the radio address as a call to action could soon feel disappointed, and rightly so. Shortly after the broadcast, Zoltán Szántó invited Nagy to a private conversation. He told him that he had received word around 1 am on 4 November that the Yugoslav ambassador, Dalibor Soldatić, was anxious to talk with him. Szántó immediately went there and learned from Soldatić that word had come from Belgrade that the Soviet attack on Budapest could begin at any moment. At his interrogation, Nagy recalled that the Yugoslav diplomat ‘called Szántó’s attention to the fact that the Hungarian comrades were in great danger. They should not put themselves in such danger unnecessarily, which is why he is passing on this news. They should repair directly to the Yugoslav embassy where they would be protected.’ One can imagine the consternation and helplessness this news caused the premier: ‘I asked what that could mean. He [Szántó] thought that it had to do with an attack by Soviet troops … that great danger loomed from that side.’ 5 Actually, President Tito was informed by Khrushchev a day before at a latenight meeting on Brioni Island of the plans for military action in Hungary. The Yugoslavs promised to help remove Nagy from political life by persuading him to resign in favour of Kádár who was to form a counter-government. All of that was discussed with Kádár on 3 November in Moscow, and he agreed to head the government under the condition that this happened.6 Nagy of course knew nothing of these discussions, nor of the double-cross by the Yugoslavs, on whose help he had relied before and during the revolution. It may have occurred to him to wonder why the warning was not given to him personally and why Szántó did not inform him immediately. The Soviet game was clear to him even before Szántó’s message: When the news reached me [at 3.30 am] about the Soviet troop movements, I called Soviet Ambassador Andropov. I told him of the news that had meanwhile come from all over the country and asked him to make contact with the Soviet command and then inform me of developments. Andropov promised to do that right away. … He called me later and said that he had unfortunately not succeeded in reaching the command post in Tököl, but that he would keep trying and would inform me. Since no news came from Andropov, I called him personally but was told by an attendant that he had already gone to bed.7

On his way to the studio in the parliament building, Nagy learned from an officer of the guard that Russian tanks were approaching. The same word came from the headquarters of the National Guard on nearby Deák Square. At 5.56 am a message was broadcast that the Hungarian emissaries, defence minister

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Pal Maléter and chief of general staff István Kovács, who were in Tököl to negotiate with the Soviet military, had been ordered to return. This announcement, like the prime minister’s speech half an hour earlier, was little more than a guarded sign of the government’s inability to act – even though it would later be interpreted as grounds for the dramatic kidnapping of the truce delegation.8 Nagy’s collapse was evidenced by his erratic behaviour: After the conversation with Szántó, I slowly gathered my personal belongings together and we then went down to the north entrance, Szántó, Donáth and I. We requested a car that would take us to the embassy. We did not say which embassy. While awaiting the car, I went back upstairs, thinking that perhaps that was where I belonged. But Szántó and Donáth called me back and, as the auto arrived, we boarded it together. It was escorted by two armed policemen.9

In the next few hours, the elite of the erstwhile party opposition and most of Nagy’s close friends gathered at the Yugoslav embassy: Sándor Haraszti, Géza Losonczy, Ferenc Jánosi, Szilárd Újhelyi, Gábor Táncos and Júlia Rajk, along with their family members. Miklós Vásárhelyi found sanctuary in the apartment of a Yugoslav diplomat. All of these people were instructed by Ferenc Donáth where they should go. Two weeks later Szántó recorded what Ambassador Soldatić had said to them: ‘The Yugoslav government has decided to grant asylum to Comrade Nagy, the members of the party leadership and those recommended by the party leadership.’ 10 Had Nagy reacted as a national statesman to the attack on the capital as announced on the radio, he would have found the phrasing of the Yugoslavs, mediated by Szántó, terms like ‘Comrade’ and ‘those recommended by the party leadership’, either nonsensical or applic­able to the whole government. What happened was just the opposite. Imre Nagy, Communist politician and member of the party executive, had understood quite precisely the words of the other member of the party executive. All those called to the embassy were Communists, while Zoltán Tildy and István Bibó, non-Communist ministers of state, were left behind in the parliament building. That Nagy decided not to await the Soviet troops, who were certainly ordered to arrest the government, is quite understandable as a sign of a healthy will to survive. That he left the non-Communist members of his coalition government to their fate is less so. Clearly the revolutionary legitimization of his office had become somewhat irrelevant. From 30 October to the announcement of the Soviet attack, Nagy had traversed a lengthy path, from opposition national Communist to prime minister of a national and democratic revolution. On 4 November he took a step backwards. He had, to be sure, not disowned the achievements of the revolution, but he did, at the decisive moment, betray his personal solidarity with his allies. On the same day, Nagy sustained a further blow, one that sheds light on the background of the Yugoslav helpfulness, as later recollections of the Nagy

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group detailing a communication from Soldatić show: ‘Demanding an official act, the ambassador was to receive a written declaration to the effect that Imre Nagy recognizes the new government and assures the members of this government of his loyalty; and further, that his last official acts were done only under pressure from the reactionary elements in his government.’ 11 Here a point had been reached where, in addition to the political fiasco, a human and moral failure threatened. Nagy spared himself the last. Refusing to resign, he took the path that would lead eventually to a martyr’s death. Zoltán Vas’s wife remembered Nagy’s single comment on the radio broadcast of Kádár declaring the establishment of a Moscow-sponsored government, as he heard it on 4 November 1956 in the Yugoslav embassy:12 ‘They will execute me.’ 13 The way in which he conducted himself thereafter shows that he reckoned on his own death but also that he would not give up the struggle for a political-moral legacy. Having experienced a growing number of friends, followers and sympathizers in 1956, and having known at moments the feeling that the masses stood behind him, Nagy now felt increasingly alone, and he lived his last months in depressing loneliness. The three weeks spent at the Yugoslav embassy in search of asylum did not yet seem like imprisonment but rather as a sort of continuation of the revolutionary days with all their turbulence. Although he was sealed off from the outside world without telephone or radio, he nevertheless received enough information about what was happening. Nagy’s breakdown of 4 November lasted for a while. After one short week, he grasped that an exit to Yugoslavia was as impossible as a return to politics, and on 9 November he began to formulate an antedated announcement of resignation.14 That he did not complete and send it was due to the objections of the MSZMP leadership, above all the categorical refusal of Sándor Haraszti. Except for Kádár and Sándor Kopácsi – who had been arrested already on 5 November – all the leaders of the new Communist Party were gathered at the embassy: Nagy, Losonczy, Donáth, Szántó, Lukács and the editor of the party newspaper, Haraszti. In the second week of their detention they calculated their chances somewhat more optimistically, and Nagy too regained his spirit. For, although the armed insurrection was crushed, the unarmed resistance, above all of the workers’ councils, had gained strength and it seemed possible that Kádár would, sooner or later, be forced to negotiate with them. It was not Imre Nagy who shaped revolutionary Hungary in 1956; rather he came increasingly and through a gradual process to resemble it – until the two became virtually synonymous. The reformist politician was confronted by the revolution, that ‘unknown force’ that he had always feared and wanted to bring under control. He had seen, step-by-step, that he would not succeed in bringing the country back on to the course that he deemed ideal. All his efforts to this end proved fruitless, one after another, until he finally realized

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that everything that mattered to him – the country, the people, socialism – could only be rescued if he boarded the hurtling train and attempted to steer it. He strove constantly for consolidation and, in order to achieve that, saw no other practicable course than to accept the people’s demands. The decision of 1 November to leave the Warsaw Pact and to declare the country’s neutrality was, to be sure, a reaction to Soviet plans for intervention, but it was also a paradigm shift. The Communist Imre Nagy had stood against the interests and dogmas of the international movement and identified himself with national demands. He in no way understood this as a symbolic or heroic gesture. His conduct was not at all an expression of a new identity discovered in the revolution. But in this exceptional situation, aspects of his personality rose to the surface as they had not been able to do in all his years in the Communist movement: his affection for country, people and nation, and his willingness to identify with their urge for freedom. His earlier deviations, all the conflicts that he had weathered, including those that may have seemed unimportant details, now acquired a retrospective value in the moment when Nagy made his decision. His sometimes inconsistent behaviour and occasional small-mindedness, his struggle with himself and with the duties assigned to him by the movement, all these were the same as before and they were also visible in the 13 days as if in fast-forward motion. That the outcome looked quite different from anything that went before in his life could be counted as a ‘plus’ in the balance sheet of the revolution. It is a fair question whether Nagy, particularly on 1 November, acted correctly. If the answer is negative, that is due to the perspective of defeat: if Nagy had been more cautious, if he had refrained from certain acts, then everything might have turned out differently. However, the final act was not determined by Nagy’s decisions but rather by the revolution and the armed uprising. Without the demand, ‘Imre Nagy in the government!’, the revolution might never have taken on a coherent form. It might have stalled before it actually began and, as in Poland, taken the reform route demanded by student demonstrations, or it might have lost its way in a diffuse upheaval. The freedom movement in Hungary in 1956 needed Imre Nagy as bearer of hopes so that the fight against unbearable conditions could be pursued to a worthy conclusion. What Nagy later did was rooted in this perhaps not fully considered insight. That is also the reason why he sought to steer a spontaneous popular movement into the framework of law and order, and also why he bravely sought an outcome in conformity with international practice in the face of a threatening intervention. First, he tried to make the representatives of the popular movement understand what it means to belong to the sphere of interest of a great power. Then, as he grasped what the agents of the great power could not grasp, namely that they were in a historical moment when the popular movement was not open to considerations of practical politics, he turned to a different audience. He

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now tried to persuade the leadership of the great power of the significance of a revolution. That attempt failed. Yet he achieved through his efforts a historic moment for Hungarian society, ephemeral to be sure but important despite the defeat, and one in which the society could identify with its leadership.

12

THE VERDICT One of the motivations that prompted the decision of the Presidium of the CPSU on 31 October 1956 to respond with armed force to the Hungarian revolution was the behaviour of the head of the revolutionary government. Molotov expressed the opinion already on 23 October: ‘We will lose Hungary because of Nagy.’ 1 Khrushchev, who on 28 October still believed in Nagy’s ability to overcome the crisis, did not exclude the possibility that ‘Nagy could turn against us’.2 On 31 October the Soviet leadership sent a telegram to the general secretary of the Italian Communist Party, Palmiro Togliatti, stating baldly, ‘Imre Nagy, according to our information, is engaged in double-dealing and is falling increasingly under the influence of reactionary forces.’ 3 Yet on the same day the Hungarian head of government was granted a chance, as Khrushchev, who provided the justification for intervention and the formation of a ‘provisional revolutionary government’, stated: ‘If Nagy agrees [to the intervention and provisional government], bring him in as deputy prime minister.’ 4 In the days that followed, Nagy’s agreement was sought with the help of President Tito. But at the same time the Soviet troops moving towards Budapest received the order to arrest the members of the government. The premier, who had fled to the Yugoslav embassy, did not resign. Not only did this threaten the legitimacy of the Kádár government, which moved from Moscow to Szolnok on 4 November and then arrived in Budapest on the 7th, but it also greatly stimulated the growing national resistance. János Kádár had never liked Imre Nagy. Although Kádár got out of prison in the course of the rehabilitations under Nagy’s first premiership, a few months later, when the policies of the government were threatened in autumn 1954, Nagy sought contact with Kádár – besides other newly released politicians – but was turned down. Nagy was for Kádár an ‘alien’ kind of person with whom he had little to do – for several reasons. In the first place, Nagy belonged to the Moscow group that aroused inferiority feelings in Kádár. Also Nagy was an irritating mixture of functionary and intellectual, whereas Kádár never really trusted the intellectuals in the party, especially those who intruded in policy matters. Finally, Nagy seemed to him an indecisive man, seriously lacking in the qualities of toughness and decisiveness that were essential for a Communist leader. Kádár abhorred opposition within the party’s structural and ideological framework; thus his antipathy towards Nagy increased steadily from 1955 onwards. Having arrived at the top, the two met each other on 24 October 141

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1956 at party headquarters. Kádár was to be elected the following day as head of the party. But Nagy stood plainly at the helm of the government, from which both the revolutionary populace and the Soviet leadership expected a resolution of the crisis. Thus Kádár was again reduced to playing second fiddle. It may be assumed that he had the thought of changing this situation already on 1 November as he was on his way to Moscow. When it became clear to him that the Soviets had already decided about the Hungarian situation, he immediately took all available measures to get rid of his potential rival. When he returned to Budapest early on 7 November he was prepared to agree that the group in the embassy should be moved to Yugoslavia. But the Soviet leaders did not want to burden Soviet–Yugoslav relations, especially cordial before and during the revolution, by sending an émigré group to Belgrade. For Nagy there was in any case no useful role after his statement of 4 November. The suggestion was therefore made to the Yugoslavs that the group should be turned over to Hungarian authorities. However, because such authorities simply did not exist at that time, that meant the Soviets. Still, that was too much even for the Yugoslavs, who were otherwise ready to win over Nagy to the Soviet side. The Yugoslavs did of course want to be rid of the group that stayed under their extra-territorial protection, but in a manner that would be acceptable to world opinion. In mid-November a high-ranking Soviet delegation headed by Malenkov appeared in Budapest to oversee the establishment of Kádár’s position. After extended vacillation and thanks to a Soviet directive, Kádár and Münnich provided the Yugoslavs with a written guarantee that the Nagy group – assuming that they did not seek political asylum – would enjoy safe conduct and could all go back home. Nagy and his associates were not entirely convinced. As they headed out of the embassy door on the evening of 22 November, Nagy was cautioned and urged to remain in the embassy. He is reported to have said, ‘Now we must look fate in the eye.’ 5 Nagy and colleagues were picked up by a Russian bus that had appeared at the embassy and taken to Soviet headquarters instead of home. Ferenc Münnich found them there on the same day and suggested to them that they should either publicly declare their support for the Kádár government or else decide for themselves to travel to Romania. Nagy was ‘massaged’ by an old acquaintance from his Moscow days, the Romanian Party functionary Walter Roman. Nagy reported his response to Roman in a letter to Donáth: ‘I told him that I would not leave Hungary voluntarily. In the worst case, I may be abducted. And I refuse to sign any declaration. I have vehemently protested against the … developments and stated that I would explain my political position only as a free and independent person.’ 6 One day later the whole group was flown to Romania. What would then happen with the deportees remained for the time being an open question. The Yugoslavs, placed in an embarrassing position, made public protest and held the Soviet

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Union responsible for the situation. But that did not alter the fact that they had been willing accomplices.7 Both Kádár and the Soviets concentrated initially on Nagy’s political responsibility. The CPSU Presidium on 27 November 1956 directed the Soviet Foreign Ministry to join with the KGB and the army to gather material that would discredit Nagy. In the catalogue of transgressions collected by 4 December, besides the wide-ranging exposition of ideological/theoretical ‘confusion’ ascribed to Nagy, his 1956 connections to the Yugoslavs were also listed. Thus more ammunition was gathered for the now emerging conflict with Tito. For Kádár this was unimportant for the time being. He was also unable to do anything with the data offered by the KGB for the 1930s. This information simply stated that Nagy, responsible for the ‘village department’ of the party, had been in contact with persons suspected of spying. Such allegations might have served as evidence of guilt in an old-fashioned Stalinist show trial but were regarded by 1956 as ‘out of date’.8 In the Central Committee resolution of December 1956, Kádár characterized the oppositional activity of the ‘Nagy–Losonczy group’ as one of the causes but not even the main cause of the ‘counter-revolution’. The ‘Responsibility of Nagy and others for the events in Hungary and their juridical consequences’ was the subject of discussion first at a summit meeting of five East European Communist Parties (Soviet, Hungarian, Czechoslovak, Bulgarian and Romanian) held in Budapest from 1 to 3 January 1957. The available sources (the notes of the Czechoslovak and Romanian delegations) do not reveal with whom the idea of the subject originated,9 most likely with the Soviets. Although Kádár was always concerned that decisions in this matter should be associated with as many others as possible and that they should be abundantly documented, the corresponding papers of the party’s leading organs do not mention the suggestion, and the January meeting left little trace. Similarly, one seeks in vain for a resolution to bring the ‘guilty ones’ to accountability. Khrushchev, in the middle of his fight with the arch-Stalinists, wanted to conclude the Hungarian situation with a renewed demonstration of power and display of strength to the angry West and the vacillating Yugoslavs. Kádár, on the other hand, was in no hurry. The country was by no means fully pacified and his depressing memories of the debates with the ‘soft revisionists’ in the party leadership were still fresh on his mind. He therefore took his time, at least for the time being. In January 1957 Kádár sent Gyula Kállai to Bucharest to try to split the Nagy group and move them, Nagy above all, to self-criticism. He credited the former prime minister with scarcely any significance at this point, but an admission of responsibility by Nagy would have promised political gain. Nevertheless Nagy could not be persuaded; he stood by the decisions he had made in October/November. Kállai reported, upon his return on 29 January

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1957, to the Politburo (functioning still as a ‘Provisional Executive Committee’) concerning his mission. He used here for the first time the word ‘court’, saying, ‘With respect to Imre Nagy and Jánosi, who played vital roles as initiators and sources of ideas in the organization of the counter-revolution, one must consider whether one should not resort to the courts.’ Kállai mentioned that he had spoken in Bucharest with both Romanian and Soviet leaders and that ‘the standpoints there all reflect my suggestions’.10 It is highly unlikely that legal proceedings were Kállai’s own idea. The formulation indicates rather that it came from Kádár himself or from someone in the informal circle of leaders and, in any case, the choice of words points towards a Hungarian initiative. The Executive Committee decided that ‘factual material should be collected concerning the activities of the Nagy group in October/November’. After the Provisional Executive Committee had confirmed that decision, a pamphlet appeared with the title, ‘From Rightist Deviation to Class Betrayal: Contributions to the Theoretical and Practical Activities of Imre Nagy and His Group’.11 The pamphlet traced Nagy’s ‘rightist deviationist’ views and their practical effects back to 1948. The intention was to show that the party leader and statesman Imre Nagy had been a traitor to his class long before 1956. Remarkably, however, the booklet was circulated exclusively within leading circles of the party. At the beginning of March 1957, Kállai was again in Bucharest, where he communicated to Boris Ponomarev, head of the CPSU department for relations with foreign Communist Parties, that the majority of the Executive Committee of the Hungarian Party (Kádár, Münnich and Kállai) had agreed to organize the court proceedings against Nagy and his group. But the interrogations had begun first with Losonczy, Fazekas and Szilágyi, which prompted the question from Ponomarev ‘whether that means that the leaders of the Hungarian Party had departed to some extent from the earlier plan to bring Nagy and his entire group to accountability’.12 Finally, at the end of March, there was an accommodation of standpoints. At the first Soviet–Hungarian summit meeting in Moscow after the defeat of the revolution, as Kádár put it, ‘the question of Nagy was discussed. We raised that question. The comrades agreed that we should address the question of responsibility with appropriate rigour.’ 13 That was approved by the Executive Committee and on 5 April also by the Central Committee of the MSZMP. In addition, Kádár sponsored a further resolution of the Executive Committee on 9 April 1957, stating that ‘on the basis of proposals of the Ministry of the Interior, certain elements [whenever possible, Kádár avoided uttering Nagy’s name] should be placed in detention for interrogation, and court proceedings should be initiated’.14 During the same meeting, the ‘concept’ of interrogation and court proceeding was established, which was later published as a lecture by Gyula Kállai with the title, ‘The October/November Events in Hungary in

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the Light of Marxism-Leninism’. The most important ‘determinations’ therein, namely that the uprising was prepared by Nagy and his group ‘in tandem with the imperialists’, were then repeated verbatim in the reports and minutes of interrogation but also in the indictments and even in the justification of the verdict. The ‘concept’ was thus adopted in April, the decisive step leading to the arrest of the defendants. The mechanism thereby set in motion functioned without a hitch right to the end. Police Lieutenant-Colonel Sándor Rajnai, a former security officer, travelled to Romania with a special commando to bring the group home. Imre Nagy was officially arrested on 14 April 1957 in Snagov and transported to Budapest. Khrushchev could now refer to the Hungarian Central Committee resolution against the traitors and to Kádár’s decisiveness in order to silence his opponents, who were trying one last time to bring Rákosi into play. It was now abundantly clear that his protégé Kádár would not take dangerous detours. And, in Budapest as in Moscow, Kádár’s position had become more stable. His political profile seemed more coherent and the contradictions between the Stalinist minister of police of the 1940s and the cautious and moderate antiStalinism of the rehabilitated prisoner were balanced out. The political advantage to be gained from a trial of Nagy was calculated similarly in Moscow and Budapest into the summer of 1957. It was believed that the proceeding and the possible death sentence could solidify Stalinism without Stalin (and without Rákosi), while demonstrating to the world the invincible power of the socialist camp and ‘burning into the memory’ of all potential rebels and dissidents that resistance is pointless. The future defendants were thus arrested and the ‘trial concept’ remained fixed, but the preliminary hearings moved forward gradually because of the ‘strict observance of the law’. The interrogations had already begun in Romania, the state security units trying to proceed according to Kádár’s intentions. (‘One must commence work and reach a decision within a reasonable time; one cannot wait eight to ten months or years before extracting an aching tooth.’)15 Yet a year and a half passed before a verdict was rendered. Because of the political decision on the nature of the proceedings, the main department in the Ministry of the Interior for the combating of political crime was forced to change fundamentally the earlier proposals and devise a completely new plan. The original plan was to make ‘traitors’ in the army and police the ‘principal defendants’ and bring them to trial first for ‘counter-­ revolutionary offences’. Now several months were required in order to delineate the circle of principal defendants. A special trial was planned for Pál Maléter and Sándor Kopácsi, who had been under arrest since 4 November. Now they were shifted, along with Miklós Gimes, one of the active organizers of resistance after the defeat of the revolution, to become co-defendants in the proceedings against Nagy.

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For the time being, it remained unclear how public the trial would be and who, if anyone, would be admitted to the proceedings. Thus, for example, the case of Béla Király, who had already emigrated to the United States, was first included in the trial of Nagy and his co-defendants, then separated from the main trial: there was no point in trying an exile behind closed doors. Zoltán Tildy was to have been arrested already in April according to the original plan of the Ministry of the Interior, but his arrest was postponed for political reasons until May. The procedure for ‘gathering evidence’ went forward slowly because most of the defendants proclaimed their innocence and because in this instance state security was forbidden to extract admissions of guilt by ‘illegal’ means. Nagy and the co-defendants were charged with conspiracy ‘to overthrow the state order of the people’s democracy’, to which end they were said to have agreed already in 1955 to ‘seize power’ in 1956 on the basis of secret plans. Nagy and Maléter were also charged with high treason. The points of the indictment rested almost exclusively on facts – their conduct as party oppositionists, their decisions as responsible officials in government and administration and their public appearances, statements and diplomatic activity – which were then criminalized according to the concept of the trial. Nearly all the trials held after 1956 were conducted according to this method, in contrast to the show trials of the early 1950s where the severe sentences were usually based on charges pulled out of thin air. On 22 June 1957 Kádár spoke in the Central Committee of ‘slow and protracted interrogations’. He mentioned several reasons for this but omitted the most important. The Soviet leaders had good reason, because of the worldwide interest in the trial, to watch closely over it to see that it unfolded within the desired framework. The advisors from Moscow probably had access to all the important documents, though there is no record of their presence at the hearings. Before the aforementioned Central Committee session, Kádár and his interior minister, Béla Biszku, were in Moscow ‘unofficially’ to report on preparations for the first MSZMP Congress and on the status of preliminary interrogations. Kádár delivered three items in writing: a report on the interrogations describing the posture of individual defendants, a list of the charges and a depiction of the connections between Nagy and the Yugoslavs. The Soviet leaders were probably most interested in the last item. A group of orthodox Stalinists around Molotov attempted in June 1957 a putsch against Khrushchev, in the context of which they also referred to his indecisive behaviour in the Hungarian crisis. Although the first secretary won out against his opponents, he evidently felt that a ‘demonstration of strength’ was still necessary. By 1 August 1957 the indictment was completed by the Ministry of the Interior (not the public prosecutor’s office, quite significantly) and taken by Béla Biszku to Moscow. Biszku reported there that the Hungarian Party leadership had reached no conclusion about the severity of the sentences,

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but that ‘during the discussion of that question the opinion was expressed that the highest penalty should be imposed on Nagy, Losonczy, Donáth, Gimes, Maléter, Szilágyi and Béla Király’. He was told that the indictment ‘was in order but must be further developed’, in particular with respect to ‘the connection of the Imre Nagy group and the imperialists’.16 These formulations smacked of routine. Khrushchev was now probably much less persuaded of the importance of the Nagy trial than he had been a few months earlier. Biszku had barely left Moscow when the first Soviet request about postponing the trial arrived. The trial was originally to have taken place at the time of the special session of the UN General Assembly scheduled for September. The report of the special UN commission, established at the end of 1956, concerning the events in Hungary in autumn 1956 and after was on the agenda of that session. Since the Hungarian leadership had, at Soviet request, withheld cooperation with the special commission, it was expected that the report would condemn both the Soviet Union and Kádár for putting down the Hungarian popular uprising. In order to avoid further damaging the Soviet position, it was necessary to prevent the trial from occurring at the same time as the UN session. When that session was over, the trial was again delayed, this time for the Communist summit scheduled for November 1957 in Moscow. In a closed meeting of the Central Committee of the MSZMP on 21 December – the minutes of which Kádár kept in his safe until his death – it was finally decided ‘to give the green light for the court proceeding’.17 The indictment was outlined by Kádár in two points. First, Nagy had ‘betrayed the working class’ by preparing over several years a secret plan to ‘abandon the leading power of the working class, restore the coalition parties and leave the Warsaw Pact’. Second, he had committed high treason against the People’s Republic for he had pursued these plans as an officer of the state. Of the 51 members present, 17 spoke and two sent in their vote in writing. All agreed with the proposal – discussion was only about the number of those to be sentenced.18 The decision was to be discussed with Khrushchev, which was done right away. His reply was surprising: he pretended to have ‘forgotten’ what his subordinates had agreed to in August and inquired what the sentence would be. Kádár reported: ‘Comrade Khrushchev stated that it is correct to put the case behind us, but he wanted to know how it would be done. He was probably referring to the end result: prison, reprimand or what? That we want to put it behind us, he is in agreement.’ 19 At that point Khrushchev was probably more interested in Western public opinion than with the repression in Hungary. The execution of Nagy and co-defendants did not quite fit his new face, assumed at the turn of 1957–58: the sympathetic image of the leading fighter for peace – the ‘Man of the Year’ on the cover of Time, with Sputnik as his crown. The generous gesture of a partial amnesty or at least a gesture of generosity in the Nagy case – granted

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by Kádár but credited to him – would have suited him much better. However, Kádár remained tough and did not intend to relax the repression. Disregarding Khrushchev’s question, the prosecutor’s indictment was finished soon thereafter and the trial could begin on 5 February 1958. But Moscow intervened again, this time even more emphatically. The Nagy trial might interfere negatively with Moscow’s actual short-term political plans, e.g. the proposal to the Western powers for a summit conference. On the very first day of the Budapest trial, 5 February 1958, the Soviet Party Presidium discussed the Nagy trial. It was the only item on the agenda and only a single sentence remained as a resolution in the working minutes: ‘To accept proposition (to express harshness and generosity).’ 20 Although the ‘proposition’ is not known, it probably meant that the Soviets favoured a new solution, different from the one negotiated earlier. They wanted to finish the trial with severe punishments but without death penalties.21 Perhaps this moment can be seen as crucial for Nagy and his associates. And it was the moment when Kádár, trusted ally of Khrushchev, had some space to move towards a more generous resolution of the Nagy case. Kádár could not have openly contradicted Krushchev, but he did not want to relent either. To his credit, Khrushchev did not exactly prescribe anything, leaving the decision to the Hungarians. Kádár immediately had the trial suspended; it was interrupted formally at the request of the prosecutor with the justification that additional evidence had to be collected. The real question was posed by Kádár at another closed session of the Central Committee on 14 February 1958: ‘What are our choices? One: we postpone; two: we continue but influence the trial so it ends in a verdict that would not hurt the international situation. This variant, however, would be quite wrong.’ He suggested that the Central Committee agree to the former and have the trial postponed. One of the candidate members of the Central Committee suggested that after the death sentence (the word ‘death’ was not uttered by anyone earlier) clemency should be immediately granted. ‘That is not a viable solution,’ Kádár replied nervously. All others agreed with him. Thus the Hungarian leadership decided for a postponement, implicitly approving death sentences.22 And János Kádár took a greater responsibility on himself than ever before, even though he was not alone. In March 1958 the Politburo members of the British Communist Party, John Gollan, R. Palme Dutt and D. Matthews, inquired of Kádár whether the Hungarian leadership would take into account the interests of other Communist parties regarding the Nagy trial. Kádár answered brusquely, ‘Had we not respected the interests of world Communism, Nagy and his accomplices would have been long buried.’ 23 Characteristically enough, he spoke repeatedly of delay, as in the Central Committee meeting in December 1957: ‘Retribution would have been easier to understand on 4/5 November, but then we were

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too weak.’ 24 And again on 14 February 1958, during the Central Committee discussion of the Soviet proposals on the trial yet again, ‘The most annoying aspect of the case is that it gets more complicated the more time passes. … When we should have concluded it, our strength did not allow it.’ 25 On the other hand, he was also proud: ‘We have also succeeded in maintaining discretion, and that is a good thing.’ The exile journal Irodalmi Ujság in London was ‘discreetly’ supplied with Kádár’s statement and printed the following: ‘When this trial would have been timely, we lacked the necessary strength. Now, when we are strong enough, the trial is no longer timely.’ 26 It soon became apparent, perhaps because of disinformation, that Kádár had been cited incorrectly. No one in the Budapest leadership was thinking of a milder sentence. Kádár’s position had meanwhile become strong enough to pursue his plan to its end. Soon after Khrushchev’s visit to Budapest in April 1958, he said, ‘Comparing the public mood today with that of a year and a half ago, we see such a clear political success as had been expected by no one.’ 27 At the same time, he approached the issue with great caution. The Politburo scheduled an expanded Central Committee session for the end of April, at which the Nagy trial was among the topics to be addressed. Kádár postponed the meeting until the beginning of June. In the meantime, he had been in Moscow to be informed about the Soviet–Yugoslav conflict that was nearing a high point, and to experience the reaction to the West’s negative response to Khrushchev’s proposed summit meeting. The Hungarian Politburo met on 27 May 1958 and the Central Committee on 6 June. The secret resolution that resulted stated that ‘the way should be cleared for the court proceeding against the counterrevolutionary group that must be held accountable for the attempt to overthrow the state order of the people’s republic’.28 Whereas one can understand the signals that Khrushchev sent as his willingness to allow mercy to prevail, Kádár entertained no similar inclination; in this case he simply did not want to understand Khrushchev’s message. The proceedings against Nagy and his co-defendants were reopened and conducted from 9 to 15 June 1958 behind closed doors. We shall return to that. Already in April, József Szilágyi had been tried separately, sentenced to death and executed. The case against Nagy and co-defendants was tried in the People’s Court of the Supreme Court. Judge Ferenc Vida announced the verdict on 15 June, with no revision allowed. Imre Nagy, Pál Maléter and Miklós Gimes were sentenced to death. The sentences of the others varied: life imprisonment for Sándor Kopácsi, 12 years for Ferenc Donáth, eight for Ferenc Jánosi, six for Zoltán Tildy and five for Miklós Vásárhelyi. The death sentences were carried out on 16 June, one day after the verdicts were rendered. The first official announcement about the trial appeared on 17 June.29 Kádár’s prestige, like Khrushchev’s, was firmly established by early 1958. He did not need the trial because of any expected attack from whatever quarter.

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The original motivation – to signal to the ‘Rákosi left’ that the Kádár centre remained hard, to teach the ‘revisionists’ a lesson and, by no means least, to intimidate society – had paled in the meantime. Now other and quite new considerations had come to the fore. A trial that ended with mild sentences or even with an amnesty would have represented a great loss of prestige and might also have been taken as an encouraging sign by the silent party opposition. The ‘shock effect’ of 1956 was being digested gradually, yet at the same time the urge for revenge was growing. Kádár was convinced that if Nagy remained alive, not only would it threaten him personally but it would also endanger the ‘system’. If the prime minister of the revolution were to be treated with leniency, that would be living evidence of Kádár’s lack of legitimacy, and the deep fissure in the walls of the Kádár system, originating in the efforts of Nagy in the years 1953–56, would never be entirely repaired. For Kádár the trial became a genuine obsession. He insisted that the Central Committee discuss the tiniest details of the proceeding and declare its position on all questions. He spoke often and extensively about the case but was never able to articulate his actual motive in regarding the trial as inescapable. He only talked about the justification for the indictment and the penalty. Even in 1989, shortly before his death and when he was quite confused, he was still involved with Nagy’s fate, even though he could hardly bring himself to utter the man’s name. It was not only bad conscience that tortured him; rather he wanted finally to find the right words to ‘explain’ the truth, namely that the decision was not taken in Moscow but was his own – that was true – and that there had been no other alternative since Nagy had refused to cooperate – that was not true, and in retrospect must count as the lie of Kádár’s life.30

13

FACING DEATH – ALONE When, on 22 November, the group was taken from the Yugoslav embassy and deported to Romania, they were no longer asylum seekers but truly prisoners. Imre Nagy had been arrested several times in his lifetime but, except for his time as prisoner of war, he had never served more than a few weeks or days behind bars. On 4 November 1956 the 60-year-old man began an imprisonment from which, a year and a half later, he was freed only by death. Until his execution on 16 June 1958, the question of freedom, life or death depended very little on what he did or chose not to do. The agonizing feeling of being reduced to helplessness must have been especially tormenting for a politician who, at least for the past 12 years, had rightly believed that his activities could decisively influence his own destiny and that of many others – at times even the fate of his whole country. Yet the situation did not seem altogether without hope of reversal. They were all accommodated at the Snagov vacation resort. Nagy was separated from his friends and family (his daughter and her husband Ferenc Jánosi and their children); he and his wife had a house to themselves. They were well provided for at the outset; outings were arranged for them on occasion as well as film showings. They received books and newspapers and had regular visits from a physician. They occasionally received other visitors, Romanian Party functionaries and, most often, Walter Roman, an acquaintance from Moscow times. Roman tried to engage Nagy in ideological debate and to persuade him to selfcriticism. But the fact remained that Nagy was a prisoner. He and his wife were not allowed beyond the garden of the house, they were under surveillance by Romanian security agents, their conversations were overheard and recorded – including those with Roman and with Gyula Kállai, who visited him as Kádár’s representative – and anything that Nagy wrote down was secretly removed from the house and photographed.1 That made a good deal of work for the guards, for Nagy spent most of his time writing. Though he was unwilling to submit to self-criticism, he found it absolutely necessary to fix in writing a summary of his activities, perhaps regarding that as the last task remaining to him. Géza Losonczy and others had already begun at the Yugoslav embassy in Budapest to record all that had happened to them from 22 October to 4 November. Nagy took part in this effort but he also made notes independently so as to present matters from his own standpoint. Judging by these sketches and the completed parts, he did 151

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not mean to write a history of the Hungarian revolution but wanted rather to fashion a theoretical portrayal of the insurgency. His writings in Snagov read as if he were preparing a new version of that ‘programme’ that he began in 1955 and continued in 1956 but never finished. Basically his approach had not changed: he first disputed the charges and then, on grounds of ‘logically’ presented arguments, protested against his inappropriate and unjust treatment. Those passages that describe events display clearly his concern to fit his own version of the history to the theoretical scheme. He called it a ‘true MarxistLeninist analysis’. The manuscript of more than 500 pages in longhand, styled ‘Gondolatok, emlékezések’ (Reflections, Recollections), remained unfinished.2 But one can say, nevertheless, that it is his most important work, his political legacy, and deserves to be presented separately in Chapter 14. Nagy really only wanted one thing: to tell the truth about the whole story as he saw it, which meant speaking about himself and about the Hungarian revolution – which now became one and the same. He did not, for the time being, conceive it as the witness of a martyr. Even in Snagov he retained the belief that he could overcome his opponents and enemies in a stubborn and protracted debate. He prepared for a polemic like the ones he had conducted in 1947–49 and 1955–56, with the difference that he now wanted to persuade the whole worldwide movement by means of a scholarly lecture. He also wrote many letters which never reached the intended recipients (Khrushchev, Tito, Gheorghiu-Dej, Walter Roman and others) but were carefully preserved in the files of the secret police and first uncovered again late in the 1980s.3 Nagy demanded that the whole group should be conveyed to Yugoslavia and proposed the creation of an international party commission, to which he and others involved in the Hungarian cause could explain themselves. He held that the events amounted to a revolution, a justified popular movement understandable in terms of its causes. But sometimes he had his doubts. Thus he said, according to a (fragmentary) transcript of his bugged conversation with Gyula Kállai on 25 January 1957: ‘I believed that we could put an end to the chaos by our own means. … But for the intrusion of Soviet military force, I would have managed to clarify the situation in Hungary.’ When Kállai then asked, ‘Was it then also a revolution?’ Nagy responded, ‘I cannot call it … anything but a revolution. But that which actually happened, I can only call a counter-­revolution with fascist elements … , that I must say, but it was also a revolution at the same time. What is being said in Europe, that the Hungarian events would have led to the reinstatement of capitalism – that I do not see. That would never have happened.’ Towards the end of the recorded conversation, Nagy had to say repeatedly, ‘About that I have no firm opinion.’ 4 Already at the beginning of the conversation, Nagy said to Kállai, ‘If you want to take me to court or send me to prison, just take me, I don’t care.’ During these months Nagy lived in a state of great tension and high emotion.

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But distance and seclusion made him often insecure and induced periods of depression. Even in sleep, he could find no respite from his opponents. He was overheard saying to his wife, ‘Last night I dreamed that neither I nor Kádár had been elected, they voted against us.’ 5 His notes overflow with negative comments about Rákosi, Révai and Kádár. He condemned them in the manner of an Old Testament prophet for all the crimes of which he knew or thought he knew. The text combines justified complaints with pointless stories. Alongside genuinely serious crimes stand complaints dating from the show trials of the 1940s, e.g. the supposed guilt of Kádár in the ‘dissolution’ of the Hungarian Communist Party in 1943. Included also were remarks about the Jewish origins of Rákosi, Gerő and Révai, supposedly the reason they could not be accepted by the Hungarian people ‘as representatives of the nation, still less as its leaders’, even though they ‘tried to be greater nationalists than the Magyars’.6 That Nagy broke off, as of mid-February 1957, his intended systematic portrayal of the revolutionary events clearly relates to the doubts that overtook him as he re-read what he had written about his political opponents. He was also sufficiently self-critical to close his recollections with these words: ‘After reading through these 550 pages, I have come to the conviction that it is better to stop here. … Under the influence of the events, as was hardly to be avoided, onesidedness, bias, shortage of critical sense and resulting false conclusions have gained the upper hand. Personal ill feelings, taking offence and anger have also played a significant role.’ 7 After Kállai’s visit to Snagov in late January 1957, Nagy drafted a letter to the MSZMP leadership in which he declared his readiness to support the ‘consolidation’ of the Kádár regime. He announced his willingness to forgo oppositional activity and, at the same time, called upon the workers to renounce the strike as a weapon of struggle (plainly he did not know that the resistance had already been put down). He also denied himself an assessment of the October events, wishing to put that off to a later time, and he protested at the charges against him that were appearing in the Hungarian press. Perhaps, in his isolation in a distant Romanian resort, he thought that his willingness to compromise would help to avoid the worst, namely the return of Rákosi and his followers. He maintained his dissent on many issues and, therewith, the possibility of a different road – but only within the party. At this time Nagy was not receiving the daily press and it was several weeks before he learned of the February resolution of the Provisional Central Committee of the party. Then he finally understood that he must prepare himself, not for a discussion but for a trial and death. He did not send his ‘compromise’ letter.8 He was clearly aware how much he needed inner peace and self-assurance in the face of the anticipated threats and accusations. Accordingly, he turned to the past and, in the last weeks of his stay in Snagov, began to work on his autobiography under the title ‘A Stormy Lifetime’.9 The subtitle was ‘Sketch of

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imre nagy 27. First page of the fragmentary autobiography written in Snagov, Romania: Viharos emberöltő: Élettörténetem vázlata (A Stormy Lifetime: Sketch of My Biography). (1956 Institute archive)

My Biography, 1896–195…? ’, and by the question mark he allowed himself two more years. In fact, he had only one. His style of writing here is altogether different from the stilted Marxist-Leninist jargon employed in the 500-plus pages written in the previous months. Although he started out with a precise outline (birth, family, social conditions, etc), soon the narrative took over and Nagy, the boy from Kaposvár, was telling the story of his youth, childhood pranks, first love, tribulations of the war, and so on. As readers may judge from the quotations in Chapter 1, these notes have a real personal touch and are written in a lively, picturesque language as if by an entirely different person from the author of the ‘Reflections’. The memoir breaks off in mid-sentence, recording the events of 1918, at which point a special commando unit arrived on 14 April 1957 to arrest him. On the same day the entire group was flown from Snagov to the Soviet military airport in Tököl near Budapest. From there they were driven, handcuffed and blindfolded like highly dangerous criminals, to the prison of the Ministry of the Interior in Gyorskocsi Street in an investigative department ‘K’ (különleges, for ‘special’) established especially for them as a separate department of the political police. The former security officer Sándor Rajnai was to direct the examination of those persons, 88 in all, ‘who during the counter-revolutionary events had exercised a leading organizational function’. Wooden walls separated

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the department from the ‘normal’ investigation cells placed on a separate floor. Thirty years later, Miklós Vásárhelyi described conditions there: All of us who survived were held from April 1957 until August 1958 in complete isolation … confined in small, dark cells with windows blocked by metal coverings through which an occasional bit of light penetrated; in the cells a 25-watt bulb burned day and night. During the day one had to sit on the cot along the long wall so that the guards could always see us, and for the same reason one could only walk the length of the cell. … The guards wore woollen slippers so one could never know when they were at the door watching through the peephole. We were allowed a walk in the yard only seldom – contrary to rules – perhaps once a month and then only for a few minutes in a narrow passageway separated from the rest of the prison yard by a high brick wall. Of course we were allowed in the yard only one at a time. … We were awakened at 6.00 am, lights went out at 9.00 pm; the time in between was taken up with the daily cell cleaning, the distribution of food and the interrogations.10

The isolation was so perfectly organized that, according to the recollections of most prisoners, no one knew that Nagy and his group spent the entire time in Gyorskocsi Street. Even though the trials had been prepared by that time for at least two months, little ‘material’ was available to the interrogating officers – most with long experience with state security – except for ‘political’ material. The methods of interrogation were as before, with the important difference that they could not use physical force, electric shocks or sleep deprivation. (Interrogations deep into the night were practised, however.) None of them was classified as a ‘suspect’, for that would, by the rules of criminal procedure, have allowed them attorneys. The main goal of the interrogations was to secure confessions according to fixed written plans reached in ‘working discussions’. The minutes were written down by the interrogating officer at the end of an examination and signed by the prisoner – perhaps after he had changed a word or two. The texts thus produced permit only a qualified conclusion as to what was actually said. From the very first questions of his interrogators, Nagy could see, as he had suspected all along, that a show trial was in preparation for him. He remained stubbornly silent, answering no questions from 15 April until mid-June and signing none of the minutes. We find his signature only on two notes to the attorney general on 10 and 15 May in which he protested against his detention and interrogation. He received no reply. The prisoners, sealed off from each other and from the outside world, did not withstand the psychological pressure for very long. In the hearings, they were charged with serious crimes, and most of them acknowledged their ‘responsibility’, even when they resisted the manner of interpretation of the facts of the case by the charging officials. The exceptions were József Szilágyi, who, like Nagy,

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refused to cooperate in any way, and Pál Maléter, who was unwilling to admit any sort of guilt. On the other hand, Géza Losonczy, already seriously affected psychologically at the outset of his imprisonment, broke down completely after a hunger strike and admitted having committed a variety of fantastic crimes. And Nagy’s health was obviously impaired by the end of May; he was mentally exhausted and again suffered heart problems. The interrogating officers told him continuously of the rueful admissions of his fellow prisoners and showed him, with commentary, numerous illustrated newspaper articles on the ‘brutal acts of the counter-revolution’. The pressure exerted on him had its effect as Nagy, who had so far maintained a stubborn silence, reported on 14 June 1957 for a hearing. He was challenged to state for which of the charges he admitted his guilt, and he replied simply, ‘I feel in no way guilty and want only to report on my activities.’ 11 After some days, the interrogators noticed that their prisoner had taken over the direction of their talks. They could not understand why the process did not unfold in the customary way: first, the description of the defendant’s personal history was to be followed by the ‘facts of the case’ and evaluation in terms of the charge, after which the prisoner was expected to break down and confess with self-abnegating repentance. Nagy, however, recounted only what he thought relevant about the views he had represented at the various stages of his political career and defended himself against any ex post assessment from the standpoint of the charge against him. At the end, on 11 July, he stated that he would discuss any further matters only in court. In the indictment that came from the Ministry of the Interior on 10 August 1957 (approved beforehand by Moscow), Nagy was portrayed as instigator of the ‘treasonous group’ that had attempted to seize power. It stated that he had developed the theoretical basis and practical plans for the seizure of power, had employed illegal means towards the realization of these plans and had applied these in his own acts in October/November. It was not claimed that Nagy wanted to restore the capitalist system, only that he combined his ‘treasonous nationalistic policy’ ‘with counter-revolutionary elements’, providing impetus towards a restoration; his actual goal was nothing other than the seizure of power. The indictment sought nothing less than the criminalization of the entire party opposition in all its manifestations and actions, beginning with the memorandum sent to the Central Committee of the party in October 1955. Nagy’s hesitant posture after 23 October was depicted as a ‘double cross’ leading to the ‘reassessment of events’ by the Politburo on 28 October and the falsification of the ensuing Central Committee resolution. The formation of the cabinet was itself judged to be a conscious move towards liquidation of the Communist regime. The indictment also asserted that the formation of a national guard had paralysed the defence forces as a whole, and that was blamed entirely on Nagy. The written indictment then addressed the delicate question of neutral-

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ity by twisting the facts: it claimed that Nagy had proclaimed it already in his speech to the crowd at the parliament building on 31 October and in so doing confronted the cabinet meeting of the next day with an fait accompli. While Nagy’s note of 1 November to the Soviet government was described as an ‘appeal to the imperialists’, his radio address of 4 November was depicted as a ‘call to the populace to pursue the fight against the Soviet troops’. The concluding charge in the indictment consisted of a detailed account of the hostile activity that Nagy had engaged in during his stay at the Yugoslav embassy, ‘contrary to the advice of the Yugoslav comrades’. The indictment charged him with the initiation and direction of a movement against the people’s democratic state order and high treason. According to the prevailing law, both offences carried the death penalty.12 By the end of the interrogation Nagy had been confronted neither by the other defendants nor by any witnesses. On 17 August he was given the confessions of the other defendants to read, and that had an effect hardly expected by his interrogators. As he saw that the others had partly confirmed the charges against him, his resistance was fortified. Whereas he had formerly rejected only the charge of oppositional activity as presented in the indictment, he now disputed every factual detail that he thought could support the charge of forming illicit groups. He now depicted the disagreements that had really separated him from his followers as particularly grave and expressly distanced himself on some points from his friends. Because the trial planned for September had been postponed on formal grounds, the interrogation department ‘K’ had to pretend to continue the interrogation. Thus the prisoners remained in detention for several more months, although nothing more was done with them. Nagy underwent no further examination until the end of January. When the legally correct indictment of the attorney general was presented on 28 January 1958, it contained some changes from the initial charges. This was because on the day of the decision to begin the main proceedings against Géza Losonczy, intended for the role of ‘second defendant’, Losonczy died in detention.13 The formulation of the charge was thus changed from formation of a ‘hostile group’ to formation of a ‘closed group’. Furthermore not all of the persons formerly included in the Nagy group were so counted: the proceedings against some of them (Szántó, Vas, Újhelyi, Ms Rajk and others) were separated from the main trial. Also, instead of the term ‘movement’ that the defendants were alleged to have begun, the charge now read ‘organization’. The reports concerning trial preparations record that Nagy’s health was ‘satisfactory’ but also mention his coronary affliction and the constant treatment with medicine. The long wait for the opening of the trial caused the defendants a loss of mental equilibrium; some became ill, and Nagy had lost more than 30 pounds since his removal to Budapest.14 What Nagy still wanted to do was to render truthful testimony at the final

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scene – the court. He wanted to present at the trial the ‘true’ history of the Hungarian revolution, which is why he altered his conduct in the interrogation during the middle of June 1957. Two elements were decisive for his version of that history: the exceptional revolutionary situation that justified most of his decisions and, beyond that, the extremely limited room for manoeuvre available to the leadership in those circumstances. He understood his role as that of primus inter pares who, on the basis of the experience of a long life and his political convictions, had sought to rescue what could still be rescued. But the basis of the interrogation was not Nagy’s life history, still less his version of revolutionary history, but rather the construction of that revolutionary history offered by the attorney general. Nagy tried to answer the questions put by the interrogators in such a way as to refute the falsehoods implied therein while also expressing his own version of the truth. The simple human language of his memoirs in Snagov was replaced again by party jargon in his treatment of the revolutionary theme. The personality that was transformed between Snagov and the detention for interrogation must have felt, ‘I stand in complete isolation (as has happened so often) in the face of death.’ The trial was opened at 9.00 am on 5 February 1958 by Judge Dr Zoltán Radó. The proceedings were conducted not in the building of the Supreme Court but in the chambers of the military court in the same building complex as the interrogation prison. Besides Dr Radó, the court included four ‘lay-judges’, all party functionaries.15 The prosecutor was the deputy attorney general József Szalai. Apart from them, the court recorder, the defendants and their attorneys, and the interrogating officers who escorted the detainees, no other persons were present in the courtroom.16 It is natural in a political trial that the charges formulated by the interrogation officers should prove decisive. The prosecutor provides the case with a formal framework and the court provides it with a sort of legitimacy. All other details of the proceeding are relatively unimportant. All the defendants in the Imre Nagy trial were more or less aware of this. Most of them tried so far as possible to defend their human dignity, but they finally played the role assigned to them, to get over with the comedy as quickly as possible. Only Pál Maléter, József Szilágyi and Imre Nagy chose a different road. Maléter sought to use every means to refute the charges that he regarded as false. Szilágyi wanted above all to testify to the validity of the cause that he understood as the anti-Stalinist revolution. Maléter, the least political of the defendants, had apparently believed to the last moment that the truth could be revealed finally, thereby demonstrating his innocence. Szilágyi, too, paid little attention to political considerations. Since his experiences prepared him to draw the appropriate conclusions, he conducted himself quite differently, refusing to employ the ‘symbolic language’ of the trial and assuming the role of accuser rather than accused.

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Nagy’s conduct was a mixture of these attitudes. On the one hand, he behaved like Szilágyi, refuting each point of the indictment. But he wanted above all to call attention to the illegality of the trial; thus his close attention to formalities. And he wanted to leave behind footprints for the future world to notice – but not this time about the revolution. He spoke about himself, as if to leave a correct portrait of Imre Nagy to posterity. He was thus more dependent than Szilágyi or Maléter on the structure of the indictment. The charges referred only to Nagy the party member, not to the politician, the Hungarian patriot, the citizen or the lawbreaker. And he wanted nothing so much as to reconstruct the image of the loyal Communist and bring it into harmony with the Hungarian revolution. He believed in a contradiction between his party loyalty and the scapegoat role assigned to him. His admissions thus led unintentionally to a confirmation of the arguments of the indictment, and he was angry and embittered about that. He remained stuck in the mindset of the prosecutor – ‘If there is a sinner there must also be a sin’ – but that had been committed by others, not by him. This approach was not entirely appropriate on the trial days of 5 and 6 February, not least because Judge Radó, so far as was possible and doubtless contrary to expectations, conducted the trial relatively correctly and with scarcely any sign of partiality.17 On the first trial days, Maléter, Szilágyi and Donáth, and also Gimes to some extent, were unwilling to make an admission of guilt. Nagy answered the question whether he had understood the indictment affirmatively and the next, whether he admitted ‘fundamental guilt’, with a laconic negative. The judge then stated that he wanted to confine the proceedings to the facts, since ‘political and ideological issues do not belong in court’ and could therefore not figure in the proceedings. Nagy could express his opinions during the trial but could not elaborate on them. ‘When you have the last word, then you can speak fully.’ Nagy then answered all questions briefly and rejected the insinuations in a few words, but decisively. He built his substantive defence on the general responsibility of a prime minister or minister according to Hungarian public law. He stated that he had developed no directives for the seizure of power and rejected the charge of ‘intellectual initiative in the preparations’. There had never been a ‘closed group’, as every criterion for such a formation (platform, discipline, demarcated field of activity, distinctions, meetings, agendas, negotiations, etc) was absent. He recounted in order his activities of 23 October and asked, does that look like someone trying to seize power? He said he was moved to conduct himself as he did by party decisions, emphasizing that, given the decisions obtaining now, he would choose differently than he did before. During the testimony of his co-defendants, especially Donáth, Tildy and Kopácsi, Nagy engaged in constant wars of words concerning the nature of the proceedings as well as particular matters of fact. When the prosecutor, on the second day of the trial, asked for a postponement (as

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we know, for political reasons) so that he could present additional material, all the defendants including Nagy were astonished. Nagy said, ‘On that I have no opinion, I cannot speak to that.’ Possibly he had found some reason to be hopeful, but any such feelings were of short duration and he lapsed into his old lethargy. There now followed another period of waiting, when nothing happened and the defendants were condemned to total inactivity. The reports of the interrogators read, in Nagy’s case, like medical reports, as in one from 6 March: ‘His condition is worsening noticeably, physically weak, eats little, is always depressed. His nerves are shot and he weeps often in his cell and always during interrogation. He complains to the physician about heart trouble.’ It was noted on 16 April that ‘he said he needed no medicine but rather wished that his present condition would end’. But he did not collapse completely. He again wanted to write a note of protest but was prevented from doing so. He demanded correspondence with his family and said that ‘if his family was not brought home or if he received no mail from them, he would begin a hunger strike. He said that he knew what the consequences would be.’ 18 Nagy’s protestations were not without effect. The conditions of detention were improved and the defendants were moved from cells into lighter rooms, so-called ‘writing rooms’. The ‘supplementary inquiries’ of course produced no new facts. Accordingly, as the trial reopened on 9 June before the same court but with a new presiding judge, Ferenc Vida, the prosecutor offered no addition to the indictment. At this session a documentary film was made by state security, obviously with the plan to offer (properly selected) details of the trial to the public. Nagy protested right away against the ‘closed proceedings’ and appeared in general quite ready for an argument. That was necessary, for the conduct of the trial by Vida, an old and reliable party functionary, was quite different from that of Radó, who had been replaced precisely because of his indulgent behaviour. (Officially it was Judge Radó’s heart trouble that was given as an explanation.)19 Unlike Radó, Vida had minimal interest in the facts and he read the pertinent passages of the indictment as if he hoped that Nagy would simply confirm his presentation and assessment. What happened, however, was just the opposite, for there were constant disputes over wording and Nagy regularly challenged the assessment and insisted that his version be recorded in the minutes. The court recorder had to note several times: ‘One cannot understand a word, both are shouting at once.’ 20 Whenever Nagy took exception to one detail or another, he took the opportunity to recount the whole story. Judge Vida tried not to lose control; he tried repeatedly to restrain the defendant by saying that he would have the ‘last word’ and that Nagy could express himself fully only at the trial’s conclusion. But that was entirely contrary to the attitude of Nagy, who had already on the first day of the trial stated:

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I do not want all these problems, the fundamental decisions and political issues, to fade into the background in the course of the proceedings so that I can speak of them only when given the last word. … I do not wish to carry on a debate here, nor do I want a decision to be reached in these questions, but want only to make my standpoint clear. That is what I ask for.

Vida reassured him that he would be able to enunciate his position when, after the verdict, he was allowed, in correct fashion, to speak for the last time. Between Nagy and his co-defendants there was a continuous and vigorous exchange of words, starting during the proceedings in February. And there were also some witnesses whose testimony Nagy did not want recorded without challenge. Most of the witnesses were themselves prisoners awaiting trial, and they knew precisely that the severity of their awaited sentences depended on how they testified in the Nagy trial. Most of them expressed themselves exactly as the indictment read, with the exception of the secretary of the former premier, Mrs József Balogh, who had been steadfast at his side during the revolution and now again in her testimony. A film presentation took place in the courtroom on 13 June at the prosecutor’s request. From among the many propaganda films fashioned in the meantime, the one chosen centred on the massacre of 30 October in front of the Budapest Party headquarters. Nearly all of the wearied defendants reacted with more or less contrite admissions – except for Nagy, who made no comment on the film. Finally, Zoltán Szántó, brought back to Hungary from Romania, was called as a witness. Szántó, once an ally in the underground, colleague and leader in the party during the Moscow exile, who in 1938 was perhaps the only one who strongly supported Nagy and who was most valued by Nagy in the party leadership, now repeated the most damning charges of the indictment of Nagy, almost as if he were reading the words from a script: Imre Nagy departed from the party resolution in his government declaration of 28 October; he was responsible for Hungary’s secession from the Warsaw Pact without referring to the party presidium; the armed insurrection was organized by his group; they had long enjoyed a close relationship with the Yugoslavs; Nagy was not only at odds with the party but was actually anti-Soviet, to such a degree that the children present in the Yugoslav embassy uttered anti-Soviet slogans. Nagy contradicted Szántó point by point and repeated one more time his main argument against the indictment, namely that for the time period in question it was Kádár, not himself, who was chairman of the party presidium or executive committee. Szántó’s testimony ended the series of witnesses and was followed on 14 June by, first, the closing statement by the prosecutor and then the closing statement by the defence. The defendants had been allowed to choose their defence counsel from a list of attorneys selected by the authorities. Nagy was represented by Imre Bárd, replacing László Virágh, who had remained completely passive during the proceedings in February. Bárd conducted himself like a genuine

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defender, starting from the position that ‘a certain objectivity must prevail in judging events from a year and a half ago’. Above all, he called into question the imputed intentions and sought to counter the charge of ‘initiating and leading an organized movement’ point by point. Then came the moment that Nagy had waited for: he was allowed ‘the last word’. At this point he could have presented his annihilating critique and could have told in summary the history of the revolution, laying down his political testament in a well-grounded lecture. He did none of those things, but certainly not because he had finally become resigned to his fate. His closing words were carefully chosen. One can see in the few surviving film sequences how he read from a notebook in which he had, during the proceedings, prepared the text of his speech: High Court! Mr. Chairman! It is unfortunate that my trial did not include complementary evidence; only the prosecutor’s witnesses were heard and only the evidence for the indictment was admitted. In my humble opinion, a criminal trial has the important function of uncovering the truth, not just that of establishing guilt. The lost opportunity of hearing parallel evidence is mirrored in the closing statement of the prosecutor as well as in the indictment, wherein my activity and my responsibility are presented without reliance on objective facts or the spirit of historical truth. Beyond this general determination, I do not wish to go into further details, hoping that this High Court will judge the charges against me and also my responsibility in recognition of the situation and will do this to the best of its knowledge and conscience. High People’s Court! Mr. Chairman! The prosecutor, in his summation, has demanded the death penalty for me. He supports this demand with the claim that the nation would not accept a milder sentence. Therefore, I place my fate in the hands of the nation. After the summation by my defence counsel, apart from these remarks that I can offer as the last word of a defendant, I have nothing further to say by way of defence. I await a just verdict of the People’s Court.21

Nagy had rendered his verdict, but not on the charges against him. Rather this was the last act of the drama in which he was to play the role of villain. In the face of the spectacular nonsense of the comedy trial, all of the elements of the actual drama must finally have seemed to him to be absurdities. His polite speech, his restrained and factual remarks, display a man who would defend his own dignity even though the court had made a farce of legality, honour and truth. Next day, on 15 June 1958 at 5.00 pm, Judge Vida pronounced sentence: In the Name of the People’s Republic! The principal defendant, Imre Nagy, born in 1896 in Kaposvár, father József Nagy, mother Rozália Szabó, married to Mária Égető with one child, retired university teacher with monthly income of 3,600 forint, without property, Hungarian citizen, with

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no prior convictions, residing at 43 Orsó Street, found guilty by the People’s Court of the criminal act of leading an organization with the aim of overthrowing the people’s democratic state order as well as of high treason and sentenced to death. The court orders the confiscation of his entire property.22

It is unlikely that Nagy paid much attention to Vida’s sonorously delivered verdict. Everything must have struck him as familiar. Most of the phrasing he could have read in the party organ Népszabadság already in Snagov, and he was well acquainted with the formulations used in the ‘question periods’ with the interrogators and in the indictment that he had studied carefully. After the judge had presented his justification of the sentence, Nagy was offered the obligatory option of an appeal for clemency. He delivered only his final message: I appeal to the High People’s Court for permission to present my standpoint as it relates to a request for clemency. For my part, I regard the death penalty imposed on me by the High Court as unjust, the justification for the verdict insufficient, and I can therefore not accept the judgement – though it is clear to me that there is no chance of a revision. My only consolation in this situation is the conviction that, sooner or later, I will be vindicated by the Hungarian people and the international working class, relieved of all the serious charges, because of which I must sacrifice my life. I believe that the time will come when these questions can be considered under quieter conditions, with an appropriate breadth of vision, and in better command of the facts, so that in my case justice can prevail. I believe that I am the victim of a weighty mistake, a miscarriage of justice. I do not wish to appeal for clemency.23

This unadorned message was emblematic of the inner peace that the condemned man had found, indicating that he had come to terms with his fate and found consolation in the thought of a future acquittal. Even now Nagy had not lost his optimism. He still believed that his message would at some point reach the right audience and that the verdict would not be the same as the one issued by Dr Ferenc Vida. Characteristically he named his intended audience quite precisely. His message was aimed not at the workers’ movement but at the working class. One hears on the recording that he gave particular emphasis to that. Meanwhile the significance of his radio address of 4 November had become clear to him and he was ready to draw the consequences therefrom, but without feeling any necessity to doubt the correctness of his own life history. The Soviet-dominated workers’ movement was no longer a reference point for him, but his belief in the ultimate guarantors of utopia was unshaken. When the time on which he had set his hopes finally came, both movement and class, as he had understood them, had vanished. But the Hungarian people never accepted his guilt. They received Nagy’s message, if only after 30 years, and

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28. On the last day of the trial, 15 June 1958. (1956 Institute archive)

gave it confirmation. Since the sentence gained the force of law upon its announcement, Nagy, Maléter and Gimes were immediately separated from the other defendants and moved to the central prison in 13 Kozma Street in the 10th district of Budapest, Kőbánya. After the announcement of the sentence and the closing of the session, the People’s Court reconstituted itself with the same personnel as a ‘clemency senate’ and concluded that the clemency appeal, issued formally by Nagy’s defence counsel, would not be presented to the Presidential Council of the People’s Republic. The execution of the sentence took effect almost immediately. At 11.00 pm on 15 June 1958 the decision to execute and the denial of the clemency appeal were announced by a judge of the municipal court. Nagy had exactly six hours remaining to him and we know nothing of how he spent them. There is a legend that he spent his last night writing. That may well be true, even though no letter or other writing was ever delivered or found.24

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At sunrise around 5.00 am on 16 June 1958 Nagy, Maléter and Gimes were led from their prison cells to the gallows. At 5.09 Nagy was the first to be executed, followed by Maléter and Gimes. The medical report states that ‘the heart of the sentenced Imre Nagy stopped beating at 5.16’.25 Half an hour later his death was reconfirmed by doctors. The bodies were placed in coffins and interred without any identification in the prison courtyard. The coffins were disinterred on 24 February 1961, wrapped in tarpaper and taken to the nearby public cemetery of Rákoskeresztúr. Here they were reburied at gravesite 301 under false names (Nagy as ‘Piroska Borbíró’). The remains of the victims were discovered in spring 1989 after months of searching and exhumed.26 On 16 June 1989, in the course of a day-long ceremony, Imre Nagy was reburied on the same site where he had rested since 1961. Our sources for his last days describe a calm human being. On the last night before his death, except for the pain he certainly felt for his family, he was presumably quite calm. For he had, as he said once at the trial, done everything humanly possible, left enough traces behind, that he could believe that those who came later would, ‘sooner or later’, be able to judge his conduct correctly, understand his history and assess the truth of his life and death.

14

THE LEGACY Imre Nagy is remembered chiefly as a reforming politician. From the time of his return from the Soviet Union in 1944, he considered himself a politician of course, but he thought of himself primarily as a professional revolutionary, a Communist Party worker and functionary, a ‘party soldier’. The Communist politician is distinguished from all other professional politicians, irrespective of conviction and party loyalty, by the fact that his ideological armament, his practical activity (down to the finest details), his language and his thinking, indeed his entire personality are determined by the party, which he encounters as something impersonal. In reality, however, this party is decidedly personified in the leaders (or, in Nagy’s times, one leader) of the given party or of the world Communist movement. The ideology and political praxis of this world movement experienced a historic defeat at the beginning of the 1990s. Apart from some distant regions where it still exists in drastically altered form, Communism is dead. The message, vision and programme – all that with which Nagy was saturated and which served him throughout his life as a guide to political action – today retain only historical interest. Nagy was a convinced Communist in 1956 and it is no exaggeration to say that he still regarded himself as a Communist at the gallows. What distinguishes him from other protagonists of the movement is his often repeated search for a ‘national way’ in socialism. As a politician he had two chances to translate his ideas into practice but was defeated both times: first, in 1947–49 in the arena of agrarian policy, then in 1953–55 in both economic and social policy. On both occasions his programme ran contrary to the leadership of the Hungarian Party and he lost the possibility of direct influence. Then came the revolution, in relation to which the reformer Nagy, theoretically armed but inadequately prepared for practice, had to take up a position. He tried to bring his own ideas into harmony with the social movement. But the aims of the spontaneous movement concerning individual, social and national freedom were incomparably more radical than anything Nagy had ever contemplated. He succeeded, to be sure, in identifying with the goals of the revolution, but was once again, and now tragically, defeated. One or another of the reform ideas for which Nagy had battled were realized later under more favourable conditions by functionaries, such as János Kádár, who better understood the limits of what is possible but were much less committed to Communist ideals. Other idealists, such as Alexander Dubček in 166

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Czechoslovakia in 1968, were also deprived of a political victory. Nagy’s basic conviction, that national independence and democratization can be connected by means of reforms in the people’s democracies, was no longer believed by anyone in the Communist movement. Of course some states did appear, for example Hungary in the 1960s, that offered reform as window dressing, but they were never able to discard their satellite status. On the other hand, there were countries such as Romania under Ceaucescu and North Korea that could travel the path of ‘National Communism’ and achieve a degree of independence from the Soviet Union, but only at the price of a strengthened Stalinist dictatorship internally. The characteristic features of Nagy’s political profile were for a long time known only to a small circle, for he spoke and wrote in the contorted Communist jargon and addressed topics in his writings that, when they were published at all, aroused little interest except among agrarian specialists. Yet the fact that he was somehow different from most of the returnees from Moscow became apparent immediately upon his arrival on the Hungarian political scene in 1944–45. Nagy was truly different. He lacked not only the (often only pretended) ascetic posture but also the tendency towards seclusion that, owing to arrogance or fear, was so characteristic of the leading Communist politicians who came to power in the 1940s. His comrades labelled him immediately as much too comfortable, a bit indolent and a sentimental ‘petty bourgeois’. The reasons for this were obvious: unlike the others he was concerned about his mother (upon his return he fetched her from Kaposvár to live with him) and had time for his daughter and the two grandchildren. He enjoyed life and comfortable circumstances at home, he read and wrote a lot and enjoyed contact with people. In short, he did not conduct himself as if he had constantly to save the world or Hungarian socialism. His way of speaking with people and relating anecdotes, of drinking wine in moderation and tending his roses seemed unstudied, human. All of that came through somehow; otherwise it would be difficult to explain why so many people who had never met him granted him their trust. His appearance, a mixture of old peasant and beloved professor, touched the Hungarian rural dwellers who worked mostly in agriculture or, if they had found work elsewhere, still lived in the countryside – in the villages where the teacher enjoyed great respect. Sándor Kopácsi called Nagy ‘a trustawakening father figure’.1 He was just 50 years old, though he looked older, when he returned home from exile and for the mostly young party functionaries who neared the seats of power after 1945 he was simply ‘Uncle Imre’. In the first decade of Communist rule, at a time when the leaders were usually regarded with antipathy, most people liked Nagy. (It was only later that people learned to view the leaders with indifference.) His speech and demeanour allowed him to mediate in difficult situations. His sometimes hesitant speech and his agreeable deep voice were

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known to nearly everyone in the country in 1956. It was in that year that the radio, the most popular medium of the time, seemed to have been made for him. One did not see that he was reading his text but every word seemed well considered and spoken with a sense of responsibility and care, in contrast to the excitable voice of the streets. Such impressions left strong traces in the minds of his contemporaries and contributed significantly to recollections of him. Many of his acts and political initiatives disappeared from memory, except perhaps for the land reform and the relaxation of 1953, both preserved in radio addresses. The prime minister of the revolution left behind a much more enduring impression. But his tragic end, mostly treated with silence in the Kádár era, could not change the fact that his most important political decisions (multiparty system, Hungarian neutrality, withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact) were held by many to have been uninformed and confused mistakes made by a ‘poor politician’, so far as one wanted to remember him at all. Nagy was not only a faithful Communist politician but also a political writer. He enjoyed that activity, had written a good deal and had discussed theoretical issues often and with pleasure. That is why he was so cherished in Communist intellectual circles. Nagy was like them and encouraged intellectual pursuits. The villa in Orsó Street, one of the handsome houses in the Pasarét garden district in Budapest, where the family lived from 1949 on, became after 1953 home to a kind of political salon of the inner-party opposition. The host had always preferred to work out his ideas in the framework of discussion. He was a persistent and passionate debater, and this excitability is the reason his texts, even if written in strictly orthodox party jargon, are still readable today. This is least true for the books published in Hungary during his lifetime. In 1946 he published his studies from the 1930s, originally written in Moscow for the Új Hang journal, under the title Agrárproblémák (Agrarian problems). The selection was, as usual with Communist leaders, predicated on the actual political canon and the ‘approved’ history of the party. The writings from 1938 to 1940 reflected the ‘popular front’ spirit, which was still valid, while the earlier pieces – although they would have fit into the same ‘line’ – were influenced by the factional struggles in the old KMP, and were therefore left out. In 1950 Nagy published his university lectures, strongly characterized by the period of forced collectivization. For years later (already and still) as prime minister, the party publishing house brought out two impressive volumes of his articles and speeches between 1944 and 1954. These meant to document a consistent stance across the ten years, as their title, Egy évtized (A Decade) suggests. Nagy included his discussion papers of 1948–49, originally written for the Politburo in defence of the ‘people’s democratic agrarian politics’, and his inaugural address at the Academy of Sciences in which he promised to be a guardian of free speech. The volumes contained, naturally, the famous government programme of June 1953 and other writings in defence of the New

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Course. Pamphlets about mandatory deliveries and the commemorative speech at the death of Stalin were omitted. Nagy’s later and most important and still very readable writings, however, did not appear in Hungary during his lifetime. His political essays, written and carefully edited in 1955–56, were published in the West in 1957.2 The interest of the international public had certainly less to do with Nagy the Marxist theoretician, e.g. his views on ‘Topical Questions of Marxism-Leninism’, and more with the premier of the Hungarian government during the revolutionary days – whose fate at the time of the publication was still uncertain. The other substantial legacy, Nagy’s Snagov notes,3 have still not been published after almost 50 years, although they are quite essential to an understanding of the man. The volume in English entitled On Communism, regarded as his ‘political testament’, contains essays and polemics based largely on Nagy’s experience as head of government. They provide a good overview of the basic beliefs that guided the second phase of his quest as an active politician, a quest that was actually a search for a way out of the crisis that had become evident by mid-1953. In the summer of that year the Soviet leaders, as well as the realists among the Hungarian leadership (above all, Nagy himself), had become convinced that a change in course was necessary. The question was, what should be changed and in what degree. The crisis was assessed quite differently by those active on the political scene. Nagy’s belief was that the crisis vindicated the search for the correct way in the years after 1945, i.e. that there should be a return to the latent alternatives of the so-called transitional phase and, specifically, to the period of 1947–48 when the Communists were preponderant but had not yet achieved hegemony. Because of the institutional configuration of Stalinist type, built in Hungary at a frenzied pace, especially in the economic field, and the corresponding political mentality, developed with equal rapidity, the change in course was easily seen as reform. Nagy argued in vain that when a particular developmental phase is skipped then it would be logical to return to the point of departure. Both of his defeats suggested the same experience of the fundamental nature of the Soviet model, namely that it was not primarily about a Communist or any socialist system but rather about an empire. In 1955 and 1956 Nagy tried to draw the consequences therefrom. As he began to formulate his polemics and essays,4 he wanted initially to revert to the internal ‘reforms’ of 1953–54, and to the New Course of June 1953. (It is no accident that, on the evening of 23 October 1956 before the hundreds of thousands that had gathered at Kossuth Square at the start of the revolution, he expressly emphasized the same notion.) However, he soon recognized that he must deal with the Soviet model as such in order to enumerate all the problems that, in his view, stood in the way of a successful de-Stalinization. His text, ‘Ethics and Morals in Hungarian Public Life’, dated December 1955,

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is a passionate critique of the system of terror, one that has still lost nothing of its impact even though Nagy thought he could measure public morality against the internal condition of the Communist Party. He conceived the struggle against the decline of ethical and moral standards in the Hungarian Party under Stalinist domination as a vital political task: The prevalence of Bonapartism, of the personal dictator and the application of force, were not necessary features of life in state and party. Stalinist policy bears heavy responsibility for this. … Bonapartism cannot be the state power and legal order of a people’s democracy. … The abuse of power and the employment of illegal means reached worrisome proportions in 1955, worse than the situation in 1950–52. … There are two ways out of the devastating position to which Hungary was brought by the Rákosi regime. Either we ourselves liquidate Stalinist policy … and thereby avoid economic and political bankruptcy, or growing tensions will send Hungary into a severe crisis – if we fail in altering the course of events. … We must fight to assure that the principle of humanism prevails in the actions of Communists.5

In his essay ‘Nationalism and Proletarian Internationalism’, which he had conceived in the summer of 1955 as a response to the charge of ‘nationalism’ raised against him in party organs, Nagy addressed for the first time questions of international politics and, in this connection, the relationship of the socialist states to the Soviet Union: I want to emphasize that I am proud to be offspring of the Hungarian people and member of the Hungarian nation, that I do not conceal my Hungarianness, that my warmest affection belongs to my Hungarian fatherland and my Hungarian people. … This true patriotism, together with love and respect for other peoples and nations, forms the principle and essence of my proletarian internationalism.6

It is no accident that in this affirmation of proletarian internationalism, Nagy omitted the customary declaration of ‘love for the Soviet Union’, which was the usual code for acceptance of hegemonial claims. In his study of September 1955 entitled ‘A Few Timely Questions Regarding the Application of Marxism-Leninism’, Nagy treated all aspects of the system that he thought in need of reform. Here he stated more clearly than ever before that the Stalinist Soviet model for building socialism could have only limited applicability. (He used the expression ‘Stalinism’, but still regarded it as ‘one of the trends within Marxism-Leninism’.) An extended excerpt from this essay, like his earlier expressions of opinion of the Central Committee (studiously ignored by his intended target but prized by the small circle of inner-party opposition), should make clear how consistently he opposed the Stalinists in his own party well before the Twentieth Party Congress of the CPSU:

the legacy The result of the monopolization of Marxism-Leninism by Stalin was the prevailing view, seen in its version of the theory as in the policies of Communist workers’ parties, that the only correct application of the essential theses of scientific socialism was to be found exclusively in the paths, forms and methods of building socialism pursued and/or realized in the Soviet Union. Leninist teaching on socialism was at the same time pushed into the background in the Soviet Union. … The inflexible and dogmatic variant of Marxism-Leninism divided the world into two hostile systems, capitalism and socialism, the contradictions between them becoming ever greater and sharper. These false and anti-Marxist views … lead to the negation of the many transitional forms, even though we are acquainted with a wide range of such forms. They negate … also the particularities of countries and peoples in different stages of social, economic, political and cultural development. And they negate, finally, that the preconditions for socialism ripen in capitalism and that various remnants of capitalism will long be found in socialism. … Also incorrect are the views that ignore the Leninist teaching on peaceful coexistence of the two systems as they develop. … These views presuppose that the victory of socialism over capitalism on a world scale is possible only through force. … Still more erroneous and dangerous is the view that the employment of force means a military confrontation of the two systems rather than the revolutionary liberation movement of the peoples. At stake is the peaceful coexistence of peoples by means of which socialism may be realized through a dictatorship of the proletariat or one of its variants, with or without revolution, and conceivably along a parliamentary path. A Marxist dare not limit himself to one alternative as between the two possible ways for socialism to succeed in the struggle between the two systems. … One must also consider that the peaceful way for the encounter between the two systems requires the fewest victims. … The theory of the victory of socialism by peaceful means, which stalled in its development decades ago and remains behind cultural development, needs to be reworked and further developed. … It is evident that socialism, in the course of its development in the Soviet Union, China, Yugoslavia or Hungary, displays different features. … When one copies and accepts mechanically the Soviet methods and forms of building socialism and ignores the specific conditions of the individual people’s democratic countries, then one severely prejudices the struggle of the international revolutionary workers’ movement. … The countries of Central and Southeast Europe, and not least Hungary, must in their building of socialism develop and apply forms and methods in all aspects of social, political, and economic life, and must maintain a tempo of development, that makes socialism acceptable and worthy of aspiration to the broad masses and all employed strata and classes of the capitalist countries. The economic and cultural conditions that form the starting point for building socialism for us are in many respects comparable to those that obtain in the western capitalist countries.7

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Nagy concluded from all this that, on the basis of appropriate principles, a ‘more gradual, less arduous transitional path’ should have been chosen. With little concern for the sensitivities of the ‘dogmatists’, he wrote, ‘I do not exaggerate when I say that the forcing of rapid development was a historic error.’ (My emphasis.) Nagy wanted not only to give a new theoretical definition to ‘people’s democracy’ and ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, but also to argue that the reciprocal relations within the socialist camp be conceived according to the ‘Five Principles of International Relations’ adopted in 1955 at the Bandung Conference of non-aligned nations. He took those five principles (mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence) as a point of departure for the formulation of clear political principles bearing on his own situation. In January 1956 he wrote: When they … are subjected to deeper analysis, we observe that the five principles, though they belong to the arena of international relations, acquire a significance reaching well beyond the international sphere: they involve numerous fundamental questions of national existence, of social progress and human freedom. Without the application of the five principles, countries and peoples remain in slavery … they can overcome slavery only when national independence, sovereignty, equality, non-interference in internal affairs and self-determination are protected.8

For Nagy, national independence occupied first place because ‘national independence epitomizes the five principles, representing the decisive and primary factor of national politics. The precondition of national independence is … the creation of national unity and the winning of the popular masses for the cause of national independence.’ He was also convinced that ‘so long as nations and national states exist – and in this regard we face an entire historical epoch – the ideas embodied in the five basic principles remain the driving force in the development of the socialist social system’. Furthermore: The idea of national independence and sovereignty, which is expressed so powerfully today in the five principles and which was never realized in old Hungary, was left to the working class as a legacy. It must defend the ideas of national independence and freedom more effectively than the bourgeoisie did. The working class must not clash with the cause of national independence, sovereignty, freedom and equality and subordinate the universal interests of the nation to its class interests, for it can free itself, and has done so, only in tandem with the other classes of working people and can stabilize its state power only in alliance with them.9

Whatever was or will be written about the decisions of the first three days of November 1956, it can hardly prove that Nagy was merely forced by the ‘street’

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to take up such themes as the multiparty system, neutrality or the Warsaw Pact. In this essay, written many months earlier, we read what the deposed premier thought about the five principles not only regarding the regulation of international relations with countries of differing social systems, but also that concepts such as sovereignty, independence, self-determination, equality and non-intervention mean the same in and in relation to all nations, irrespective of whether they are capitalist or socialist, people’s democratic transitional or other systems. … The ideas embodied in the five principles, which in our case prevailed increasingly during the New Course, were pushed into the foreground of international relations by the Soviet–Yugoslav Declaration of Belgrade. … We Hungarian Communists must realize that neighbourly and friendly relations between the Soviet Union and Hungary are a historical necessity … yet the Soviet–Hungarian relationship must rest on the basis of the five principles, they being respected by both sides.10

Nagy then sketched his notion of the only possible foreign policy: The policy of erecting power blocs contradicts the independence and sovereignty as well as the peaceful coexistence of states as these are rooted in the five principles. The division of states into power blocs leads sooner or later to armed conflict. The only practical way of peaceful development and avoidance of war is, therefore, not the erection of power blocs but rather the dismantling of those that exist. … Hungary must use every means to preserve peace. The most practicable means would seem to be the reciprocal agreement of progressive democratic and socialist countries or countries of similar type, … their cooperation in opposition to forming blocs on the foundation of neutrality or active coexistence. For Hungary, because of its geographical position, it is easier to adopt this course with neighbours such as neutral Austria, countries engaged in building socialism including the Soviet Union as well as Yugoslavia, operating on the principle of active coexistence. … The Hungarian people, conscious of the special interests of Hungary and of the general interest of socialist countries in international politics, must pursue a policy of active coexistence.11

Nagy was definitely convinced of the necessity for a policy of non-alignment of the sort pursued by Yugoslavia, a neighbouring state with obviously socialist forms of state and society that had gradually freed itself from Stalinist foreign policy and exerted growing influence in the formation of the group of nonaligned (Asian and African) states. Nagy made unmistakably clear that he was prepared to fight for a new independent Hungarian conception of policy and practical foreign policy as well as for the opening of the countries of the ‘socialist camp’ (above all, the states of East Central Europe) outward and towards the West. It is the sovereign right of the Hungarian people to determine the form

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To which countries Nagy felt committed by historical tradition and practical politics is made quite clear by his reference to Lajos Kossuth’s ‘Danubian Confederation Plan’, which in light of the experience of two world wars he regarded as the missed opportunity for a resolution that was right for Hungary. After the defeat of our struggle for freedom (1848–49), our great national genius, Lajos Kossuth, drew the great historical lesson (belatedly) and showed the path that needed to be followed. For the preservation of an independent, sovereign, self-sufficient and free national existence for Hungary, Kossuth envisioned not an alliance with a great power or political power bloc but rather a coming together with our neighbouring peoples in the framework of an alliance (federation) of free peoples on the basis of equality. We must return to this idea.13

Nagy’s statements form a logically compelling structure of thought that is persuasive and, because of his manner of expression, consciously Marxist with a flavouring of national pathos. But his proposals for an altered foreign policy rested on the assumption that the de-Stalinization initiated by Khrushchev in the Soviet Union and its allies would continue basically without interruption. Early in 1956, as Nagy was writing his essay, and then especially after the Twentieth CPSU Party Congress, it appeared for a time that the Soviet Union was inclined to remain on the path of reducing tensions as Nagy wished. But this soon proved to be a mistaken forecast. Nagy himself did not examine more closely the practicalities of effecting the ideas he had presented with such enthusiasm. He regarded the procedure for abrogating dependency as an ‘internal affair’ of the Soviet bloc and failed to concern himself with other elements of international politics, such as developments in the West. After 4 November Nagy never again had the opportunity to be engaged politically in any relevant way. His writings, composed in complete isolation in Snagov during 1956–57, contain, alongside personal recollections, many observations on topical political developments after the defeat of the Hungarian revolution, but the main thrust of his studies was a political analysis of the revolution itself. The task proved to be exceptionally difficult, for Nagy was

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faced with an insurmountable dilemma, the contradiction between his own readiness for reform and the revolution as an expression of political determination. Nagy’s plans for reform did already include the democratization of the political structure and the goal of national independence, yet the revolutionary movement finally demanded democratization in its most radical form as a multiparty system with free elections and insisted that the country’s independence was a requirement of the masses that could not be postponed. At the beginning of his analysis, Nagy assigns responsibility for the intensification of the crisis to the narrow-mindedness of the Hungarian and Soviet Party leadership. The root of all evils, he opined, was the characterization of the popular uprising as ‘counter-revolution’ and the resort to force to contain it: Out of this situation … came all of the demands that characterized the national resistance aroused by the armed Soviet intervention: removal of Soviet troops, leaving the Warsaw Pact, declaration of neutrality, and full democratization with the participation of other democratic and socialist forces along with the MDP.14

Had the ‘democratic-revolutionary’ concept been followed from the beginning, it would have been possible to adhere to the June platform of 1953 without going back to the platform of 1945–46.15 We recognized clearly then and still see clearly that the path of democratic development that we had chosen [in October 1956] was a compromise, but one that was, in light of the events in Hungary, an absolutely sound and proper compromise for the sake of rescuing as much as possible from the people’s democratic system, from socialist relations, and from socialist accomplishments.16

In reality, the revolutionary demands had been formulated before the armed conflict with the external forces, as Nagy must have known. In retrospect, it was a one-sided analysis that depicted the demands as the consequence of intervention by security forces and Soviet troops. At a later point in his notes, Nagy addressed the question in greater detail, leaning towards a different viewpoint: The demands that formed the progressive content of the revolutionary uprising and the national struggle for freedom, and that were closely blended with the defence of socialist accomplishments and the demand for expansion of socialist democracy, had been deeply rooted in the broad masses and all strata of the nation for many years.17

In his Snagov notes, Nagy several times addresses the question of the development of an inner-party opposition and its struggles, and described that opposition as a ‘powerful and unified movement embracing the whole people and led by Communists’,18 who were to be sharply distinguished not only from Stalinists of Gerő’s ilk but also from the pragmatic Rákosi opponent János Kádár and his group. Kádár and his comrades ‘remained in opposition only

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so long as they did not see a threat to the power position of the Rákosi/Gerő clique’.19 And in July 1956, after Rákosi’s removal, Nagy avers that the Central Committee resolution of that time was the platform for the accomplished political ‘unity’ in principle between the Stalinists of Gerő’s type and the neo-Stalinist ‘opposition’ associated with Kádár. Neither Gerő nor Kádár was prepared to go further. With this platform they meant to stand against the whole oppositional party membership and the equally oppositional popular masses.20

Nagy knew from his experience in October that one could speak only in a very limited way of ‘unity’ between party opposition and the popular opposition to the system as such. So long as society had no other means of political articulation, the party opposition did indeed function as representative of all the protesters in thinking and in action. For the demise of this unity, Nagy retrospectively blamed the obduracy of the Stalinists, who ‘regarded the fight against the opposition as their main task rather than the creation of political preconditions for development. They thereby prevented the opposition from placing itself at the head of the movement where it could assure the democratic possibility of development.’ 21 Another problem, one that greatly exercised Nagy in his loneliness in Romania, was the dissolution of ‘national unity’ in the course of October. In his fixed belief that such a unity had previously existed, the only way in which he could explain satisfactorily the phenomenon of polarization was to ‘split’ the party opposition intellectually from the party and unite it with the mass movement as a joint opposition in the decisive issue. In this way, he arrived at a conclusion that he had not risked before. As he wrote, the party opposition and the masses together opposed a party leadership that was anti-Marxist and anti-Leninist, forming a clique that built a dictatorship within the party, had ruptured the connection between party members and leadership, between the people and the party, had turned against the people, had erected a regime of terror, had practised immoderate illegality, and had betrayed the basic interests of the country and its independence. In short, it was a clique of traitors to the fatherland. … It is no sin to oppose such leaders and such a party, but rather an honourable deed. … This party was the tool of a terror regime hostile to the people, one that rested on the dictatorship of one person or the clique. With the breakdown of this regime, this party must also break down. That is why the party issue cannot be resolved merely by changing the composition of the leadership. The mistakes resided in the system, the party’s mode of conduct, the selection and arrangement of cadres, the attitude towards people and state, and not just in the leadership and its methods.22

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One seeks in vain in Nagy’s notes for a consistent definition of the October events. But it is clear that he found the sense and significance of the revolution in the striving for national independence. He describes the events usually as a ‘revolution of national liberation’ and regards the striving for independence, also with respect to the democratic efforts and demands, as the enclosing bracket. It was decisive for the anti-democratic system that it had been imposed according to an alien, i.e. Soviet, pattern: Peoples and countries will accept socialism only when it assures independence, sovereignty and equality or when it initiates these features. The essence of the Hungarian tragedy is that the idea of socialism and the idea of national independence fell into contradiction with each other. The fundamental meaning of the Hungarian uprising was to attempt wherever possible to remove that contradiction and to restore the necessary unity and harmony of these two ideas.23

For a definition of that sort, system-critical considerations or questions as to the direction of desired changes play a subordinate role. Another attempt at characterization, found in the notes, illuminates this: For the first time in Hungarian history, the working class placed itself at the head of the freedom fight for national independence, self-sufficiency, sovereignty and equality. … It was characteristic of this struggle for independence that the working class could depend on the unity of the entire nation. This national unity embraced all classes and strata of the community and all political leanings from Communists through democrats to reactionaries of the right.24

The last sentence reveals that Nagy had realized the divergences of revolutionary aims within the postulated national unity. But to consciously acknowledge political polarization would have made the argument for his ‘unity concept’ problematic. ‘The national independence struggle was conducted by the working class on the basis of people’s democracy and socialist achievements. That was the other identifying feature of the Hungarian events.’ 25 Finally, the antagonists were named: typical for the revolution ‘was the fight between the Hungarian people striving for independence and the armed forces of the Soviet Union. The Hungarian working class, as the leading element in the fight for Hungarian independence, was confronted in armed struggle with Soviet military force. Plainly a tragic situation.’ 26 In his depiction of the causes and high points of the national uprising, Nagy returned to the problem of the ‘people’s democratic transition’ to socialism. It was a topic that he had, as we saw, addressed in principle several times. As he summarized his views:

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imre nagy Had the Hungarian revolution succeeded, … had the revolution reached its social and national goals, then a new path from capitalism to socialism would have been found, also a new form of democratic development to socialism, one that would have differentiated itself fundamentally from today’s completely uniform type of people’s democracy. In addition, concepts such as socialism, democracy, independence, sovereignty, etc would have regained their original meaning; indeed, the whole socialist terminology, emptied of its actual sense by Stalinism, would have recaptured its true Marxist content.27

In his notes Nagy took up two further issues besides national independence, which he described as fundamental ‘attributes of the transition period’. In the polemical passages and in the sections devoted to the political history of the revolution, he returns repeatedly to the multiparty system that he treats as an unavoidable and necessary compromise reached between the party and the insurgent people. There are instances when Nagy is less polemical, emphasizing the principled significance of the question: People’s democracy is, in both form and content, a replica of the Soviet one-party state; it has lost its popular democratic character in becoming the state and social system of the period of transition. We have thus leapfrogged over one of the transitional periods of development. … Can socialist democracy be combined with a one-party system? Possibly. Historical experience is not very persuasive in this regard. The corruption of socialist democracy in the Soviet state and party and the severe deformations in both economic base and superstructure – law, politics, morals, etc – argue, as in the comparable phenomena in Hungary, against rather than for the oneparty democracy. … The democratic foundation of society, which allows us to realize socialism, is better secured, in my opinion, in a social and state form with several parties.28

At one point Nagy expresses his opposition to local democratic organizations because of their ‘particularistic’ aspirations and their ‘church-tower politics’.29 His formulation reflects his experience with ‘primary organizations’ of the revolution, which were much more radical than the Nagy government and exerted strong political pressure on it. But he remarks at the same time on ‘a very noteworthy phenomenon’ of the October events, namely that a revolutionary voluntary organization was set in motion by broad strata of the population, parallel to the fall of the old bureaucratic apparatus of the state, whereby entirely new, democratic administrative organs were created, truly by popular initiative, that took over local administrative functions.30

He meant that the workers’ councils assumed similar democratic and anti­ bureaucratic tasks:

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The working class had, in the struggle to establish the workers’ councils, announced its intention to secure state power institutionally by means of the councils and to employ it in governing and in building socialism. It wanted to take power truly into its own hands and no longer permit that power to be used by a clique and its bureaucratic apparatus in the name of the working class.31

The role of the Soviet Party leadership in the intensification of the crisis was for Nagy in Snagov still one of the key points. On the one hand, Nagy understood the Soviet leadership as the executive of a great power that cared little about Hungary’s fate. On the other hand, he thought of that leadership as a kind of higher appellate court, as a wise arbitrator, open to persuasion by reasoned argument and the disclosure of truth; also as security for the humanistic renewal of the international Communist movement and – especially after the Twentieth Congress – as its hope. But the events of 4 November destroyed any such trust. The lesson of his notes provides a hint of the boundless disappointment that Nagy must have felt concerning the Soviet leadership. Only his anger towards the Rákosi–Gerő clique and the weakness and malfeasance of János Kádár may perhaps have been stronger. Nagy had neither the time nor the wherewithal to undertake a comprehensive historical analysis of Soviet socialism and its adaptation in East Central Europe. The Soviet response to the Hungarian revolution was the theme to which he returned frequently and always with a negative judgement. But in his reflections on the reasons for the armed intervention one observes a certain shift. At the beginning of his notes he names two motives, the virulent Stalinist methods and ‘Soviet great power aspirations’, notwithstanding the Twentieth Party Congress: The manner in which the events in Hungary and Poland are analyzed and characterized [by the Soviet Party leadership]; to what degree they shrink from admitting their own mistakes; as they are willing neither to renounce great power chauvinism for the sake of socialism nor to surrender the ideological and political monopoly so that relations among socialist countries exist not just on paper but would be regulated according to the five principles [of international relations]. … as the events in Hungary serve as a screen behind which they return to Stalinist methods; all of this shows that the events in Hungary are not the close of a period devastating for the cause of socialism but rather the opening of a phase in which similar or even worse national and international tragedies will be possible.32

The founding of the Warsaw Pact is assessed in like fashion: ‘The Warsaw Pact is a means of chauvinistic Soviet great power politics, whereby the member states are subjected to Soviet military dictatorship.’ 33 The idea of possible additional tragic events now seems downright prophetic.

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But one can also recognize how much Nagy wanted to believe that, on the basis of a socialism cleansed of Stalinism and with observance of the five principles, a peaceful coexistence between a small country and a great power might be possible. Yet Nagy had certainly realized that Stalinism was not the main driving force of Soviet policy. Had he thought seriously about the real interests of a great power emerging victorious from the war and inclined for centuries towards aggressive expansion, his arguments for a peaceful co-existence would have evaporated quickly. What sort of ideological shift or ‘process of enlightenment’ would have been able to alter the historically deeply rooted urge to expand? As occurred so often in the notes, Nagy’s treatment of the Soviet Union and of socialism was full of contradictions. Had Nagy thought through his subject logically, the pillars of his thinking would have been endangered. He described great-power chauvinism simply as a characteristic of Stalinism and treated it as a subordinate problem. In the later notes, he speaks exclusively of the phenomenon of Stalinism. He should at least in theory not have excluded the possibility that the ‘proletarian internationalism’ that he invoked so frequently might yet emerge victorious if the participants would only be reasonable. Nagy’s notes make clear that at the end of his life he had gone far in his uninterrupted search for new ways, but the insights that he formulated in Snagov, quite apart from his critique of Stalinism, actually represented a retreat from what he had done in October 1956. Nagy, who had to prepare himself for his trial, wanted to see his own path – humanly, theoretically and politically – as a whole. Had he rested his defence solely on justifying his decisions during the revolution, he would have shed light on a very brief phase of his own life. In his notes he had sought to ‘reconstruct’ the 1956 revolution in such a way that the contradictions would not collide too sharply with what he felt to be a coherent overview. In this sense, the people had wanted a socialism ‘with a human face’, a Hungarian variant of socialism freed from coercion. Whoever attempts an analysis today will, without knowledge of the details, easily maintain that these aims were not identical in October 1956, that Hungarian society wanted something more and different and that a socialism as Nagy imagined it was already inconceivable at that time. Nagy’s historical significance resides not in his contribution to the theory of a reformed socialism, but rather in his conduct during the uprising and his posture after the defeat – that he remained true to himself to the bitter end. In order to remain true to himself, the events could not appear as something outside the framework of his life and thought – not even when this postulated unity of values and decisions was evident only to him.

15

POST MORTEM The life of Imre Nagy acquired through his death a special, a very particular meaning, though not immediately and not at the same time everywhere. In those parts of the world where opinions could be freely expressed, this occurred almost in the very moment when the news of his execution became public. Where free expression was not possible, as in Nagy’s homeland, this could happen only decades later. In the West, both the politicians and the public reacted with consternation to the news of the execution of Nagy, who, since November 1956, had truly ‘disappeared’ from people’s attention.1 In 1956 many leading politicians remained rather reserved towards the premier of the revolution and did not grant him a central role in the last days of the uprising. He was judged at best, in contrast to Cardinal Mindszenty, as an unimportant political actor. As in the period of the New Course in 1953–54, when Nagy was regarded as someone who attempted, with more or less success, to rationalize the Soviet regime, it was assumed that in 1956 he was being manipulated by the Soviets. The American administration had ever since the late 1940s backed the ‘deviationists’, the ‘national Communists’ of Tito’s sort, who might be expected to bring about a ‘relaxation’ in the satellite states, but Nagy was not seen as one of them.2 This was mainly due to the fact that in his first period as premier, he had not attempted any independent foreign policy initiatives. Some Hungarians in exile who identified him simply as a Communist loyal to Moscow reinforced the false impression. The Hungarian broadcasts of Radio Free Europe made serious charges against Nagy even during the uprising, in contrast to the active support of Gomułka by the RFE Polish service.3 The news of Nagy’s execution triggered a shift in opinion, albeit belatedly. Nagy now appeared as the tragic and deceived principal figure in the anti-Soviet freedom fight. Most commentators held the Soviets and Khrushchev personally responsible for the execution (a view that has remained essentially unchanged ever since).4 Little was said about the responsibility of the Hungarian leadership, which was regarded simply as a puppet regime subservient to Moscow. That actually proved convenient for János Kádár later, during the time of reduced tensions. For Western observers, the trial and sentence provided new evidence that reform of the Soviet system was illusory and that the hopes aroused by the Twentieth Congress were dimmed by the ‘long shadow of Stalin’. Yet, amidst the general dismay there were also voices emphasizing the realities of power 181

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politics. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of Germany, for example, remarked that ‘the anger that we all feel must not prevent the Western powers from seeking agreement with the Soviet Union concerning general and controlled disarmament’.5 A New York Times commentary offers a good example of the way in which people could waver between aversion and bad conscience in characterizing the death sentence: It is most unlikely that many free persons shed tears over those executed, all of them Communists who fell victim to their own dogma. But every free person will lament and honour as patriots and martyrs those who rose above dogma in the crisis and defended the freedom and independence of their fatherland against a barbaric alien power. And the free peoples, especially the United Nations where Nagy directed his last desperate cry for help, must live with the bad conscience that they were not able to help! 6

Moreover, the Soviet repression of the Hungarian October and the fate of the Communist Imre Nagy gave a powerful boost to the disillusionment of the leftist intelligentsia mainly in Western Europe. True, most of them needed further experiences of the sort – such as the 1968 Czechoslovak intervention – to complete the destruction of their illusions about Soviet Communism. The profound effect on Hungarian society can be glimpsed even from the carefully prepared reports on public opinion directed to the political leadership. A report to the Central Committee of the MSZMP stated: The sentence pronounced in the case of Imre Nagy and co-defendants is generally acknowledged by the working masses and largely approved. That applies particularly to the working class. But a portion of the peasantry finds the sentence too severe and expresses sympathy. The intelligentsia maintains a passive stance and is somewhat intimidated. Therefore, and in recognition of the propaganda conducted by hostile Western radio broadcasts and by enemy elements at home, and also because our party organization does not always speak with one voice … it is necessary to provide party members, mass organizations and leaders of state institutions with more detailed information.7

Initially Kádár himself undertook to inform the political elite. In the Central Committee meeting in July 1958 he described Nagy’s behaviour during the trial as ‘ignominious’ and called him a ‘grovelling liar’.8 This was the view that was to be emphasized as the Nagy trial was presented to the public. There was a plan to put together a film of the trial for the purpose of external propaganda. First a 100-minute, then an 80-minute film was put together with a script by Sándor Rajnai. Neither of them was released for presentation. The appearance of the defendants, particularly that of Imre Nagy, was too dignified, notwithstanding the editing. The image of the emaciated man with sunken face could only arouse sympathy. That was not at all desired.9

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However, by 1958 a ‘White Book’ was published in several languages entitled The Counterrevolutionary Conspiracy of Imre Nagy and Accomplices and containing a selection of statements of participants in the investigation and trial. The defendants were divided into two categories. Because it was difficult to find passages of self-criticism by Nagy, he was assigned the role of an unrepentant traitor who constantly contradicted his associates, accusing them of lying and attempting to deny any responsibility. The co-defendants and the witnesses were cast as repentants who acknowledged their faults. The volume is a perfect example of text manipulation: a collection of facts and citations torn from their context, invented dialogue, false attributions and deceptive claims. A few of Nagy’s loyal associates who had fled abroad after the revolution quickly brought out a book entitled The Truth About the Nagy Affair in several languages.10 They were able to demonstrate with precision that in both the ‘White Book’ and in official communications about the verdict, there was scarcely a sentence that did not rest on falsehood or misrepresentation of facts. Nagy’s own writings from 1953 to 1956, smuggled out of the country, were published in several languages between 1957 and 1959, even before the trial and execution, presenting the true political views of the premier. The journal Irodalmi Ujság, which had been the organ for the inner-party opposition ever since 1955, was refounded first in London (later moving to Paris) as a forum for the democratic political emigration; it remained from the first issue to the last loyal to the memory of Nagy. In 1958 György Heltai, deputy foreign minister of the last Nagy cabinet, founded the Imre Nagy Institute for Political Science in Brussels. The conferences of the Institute and its journals produced a considerable volume of publications on the history of the Hungarian revolution, contributing notably to an understanding of events, of the political aims of the revolution and of the actions and intentions of the participants. As its name suggests, it was a forum where the ideas of Nagy and his actions during the revolution could be presented and discussed. From this circle came also the first authentic accounts of Nagy’s role in 1956: Tibor Méray’s Thirteen Days that Shook the Kremlin and Imre Nagy – Reformateur au Revolutionaire? by Miklós Molnár and László Nagy. These two books and the subsequent monographs by political scientists and historians11 provided a scholarly conceptualization of the events and underscored the image of Imre Nagy as the central figure inseparable from the revolution of 1956, whatever the authors’ political leanings may have been. Méray’s book is probably still the most often cited work about 1956 and Imre Nagy. Its success was due to the fact that it merged the story of the revolution as it could be reconstructed from the sources then available with his own personal experiences. As a professional journalist and an engaging and sensitive writer, he also built on his close personal contacts with Nagy. He started to write his book when there was no news yet about the outcome of the trial. Nagy

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appears in the story as man who in the revolution accomplished the programme of a lifetime: a Communist politician deeply concerned with his responsibility to the people – and thus different from his comrades. The detailed narrative is motivated by an exceptional reverence, even love, for his subject. The short biography by Molnár and Nagy has a similar, though perhaps somewhat more detached approach. While Méray painted the colourful events of the uprising as a background to his hero, the two authors attempted rather to place him in the context of the Soviet-type system of Communist Hungary. They wrote more about the road that led to the revolution – which Méray has done in his joint book with Tamás Aczél 12 – and raised more questions. However, their reply was similar to that of Méray: ‘If his life was a question mark – his death was the answer. … We feel that this man with a turbulent life deserves the grand words: “a hero in his death”.’ 13 Soon after these important biographies, emphasizing the moral-human significance of Nagy, other analyses appeared that started out from the revolution’s – and its premier’s – political failure, without questioning Nagy’s moral stance. One of the first was by Jean-Paul Sartre, who suggested that Nagy, albeit not willingly, ceased to be a Communist: In fact he is a sincere Communist whom the course of events is in process of de-Communizing. A Communist chief, indeed, relies on a structured party, which, in theory at least, assures links with the masses. But the party has gone up in smoke. … That’s the whole tough luck of this good and sincere man: subjectively he remains faithful to his party; objectively, everything happens as if he resigned from it. … Nagy, de-Communized in fact, didn’t represent the party either in the eyes of the Russians or in those of the insurgents.14

This train of thought makes much of the parallel between Gomułka and Nagy. Raymond Aron, in contrast to Sartre, saw Nagy as a Communist, but regarded the cause of failure similarly: Imre Nagy was a Marxist-Leninist even at the time when events placed him at the helm of the revolution. He could have played the role Gomułka played in Poland: he could have given a revolution of national-liberal inspiration an appearance acceptable to the Soviet Union and found compromise between the aspirations of the Hungarian people and the international situation. The main reason for his failure where Gomułka succeeded and his inability to prevent Russian intervention was the weakness, the falling apart of the Hungarian Communist Party. … Imre Nagy, in turn, presided over a government which was incapable of either directing or curbing the revolution.15

Nagy’s Communism – in the assessment of the tragic death or of the reason for defeat – began to recede from attention in the early 1960s. In his major

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monograph on the revolution Ferenc A. Váli compared Nagy to the great heretics of history who similarly placed their trust in institutions rather than in the leaders of these institutions, in observance of strict legality, irrespective of the nature of the men who might decide their fate. … What is most characteristic about Imre Nagy is that he managed to combine his faith in his conception of ‘Socialism’ with genuine Hungarian patriotism. … Nagy, despite his Moscow training, remained essentially Hungarian.16

Ten years after the revolution, Miklós Molnár came to the conclusion that ‘Imre Nagy’s historical role and his life have come to an end’, as his ideological system and set of values could no longer serve as points of departure in a new era.17 In 1968, after Paris and Prague, Nagy came again into the forefront of interest, but in a new light. Instead of the anti-totalitarian politician with moral or national motives, the New Left sought in him a model – or denied him this role. Stephen Borsody called him in short a ‘martyr of Eurocommunism’: It is nothing less than amazing (as amazing as the case of some of the Soviet dissidents) that a Communist who spent a good part of his life in the Soviet Union should be able to create such a synthesis of revolutionary communism and civilized Europeanism as Imre Nagy did. This civilized Europeanism, and not just the Magyar patriotism which Hungarian followers admire in him, accounts for the remarkable ease with which the Communist Nagy could assume the leadership of a national revolution against the Communist regime imposed by force on Hungary by the Soviet Union.18

Ágnes Heller and Ferenc Fehér called Nagy outright ‘the first Eurocommunist’, or, elsewhere, the first ‘Eurosocialist’. The Hungarian crisis of 1953–56, they said, ‘became a representative drama of inner disintegration of Bolshevism’, of which Nagy was a ‘representative figure, … who through his inner torments, through that struggle between anxieties that is indeed dependent upon great moral qualities, had transcended Bolshevism’.19 They attempted to draw the portrait of a ‘new radical political militant’. The major feature of this would be a post- (or rather anti-) Machiavellianism, ‘the craft of forging consensus’ (not in the sense of liberal political consensus, but of a new type, based on the revolt against the dictatorship over the needs), a personality suitable to the anti-totalitarian upheaval – who is neither conservative nor charismatic – and is also able to give a national dimension to all this.20 The view of Heller and Fehér was not shared by all in their ideological camp. Cornelius Castoriadis, for example, sharply criticized Nagy the politician, who was unable to ‘find in himself the clarity of mind and the resolve to speak out loudly against the Russian deception with which he was so well acquainted’. Instead, he wrote, ‘he muddled through and tried to seek help …

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from the United Nations!’ This was in his eyes so mistaken and ridiculous that Castoriadis ventured to say (albeit only in a note) that the personal tragedy of Nagy was ‘irrelevant’.21 A similarly critical posture was taken in the 1970s by Bill Lomax. For him Nagy ‘was more of a social moralist than a radical politician and it is this characteristic that makes his ideas so difficult to classify or systematize … his central and tragic weakness – the lack of any clearly thought-out ideological standpoint beyond his commitment to the vague values of humanism and decency’.22 Lomax even denied the title of a ‘reform-Communist’ to Nagy: Unlike the more extreme Stalinists who clearly sought to use the bureaucracy as a means for implementing their own ends and unlike other reformist Communists who sought to moderate the role of the bureaucracy, Nagy very rarely, and perhaps never consciously, rose above the level of the functionary within the machine, albeit a very decent and reasonable functionary.

Lomax saw in this ideological weakness the cause for the failure of 1956 and Nagy’s personal defeat: ‘When the revolution broke out he was to find himself without any means of orientation in a world which had already broken in practice the bonds within which he was still held captive by the limits of his own thought.’ 23 In the 1980s historiography seems to have left behind these ideological parameters. The appreciation of the human qualities of Nagy – which, of course, was never seriously denied – came more to the fore. The real interest, however, was the historical place of 1956 in the fate of the Soviet system, first in terms of its continuity, then ever more in that of its sudden changes. The political-science-oriented ‘Kremlinologists’, students of the late Soviet Union, were most interested in the decision-making processes, the political institutions and structures. So, for example George Schöpflin analysed the role of Nagy (and others) in 1956 in terms of ‘leadership options’. For him the ideas of the premier, discussed in many writings earlier, played no part, rather his relationships and his perception in the eyes of the different Hungarian and Soviet nodes of power.24 Nagy remained an important actor, but more as an explanatory element within the wider context. Thus it became a commonplace among historians and publicists, as Condoleezza Rice and Michael Fry formulated it, that Nagy had violated the accepted canons of satellite behaviour, going much further than even moderates [in the Kremlin] could possibly allow. The situation in Hungary now presented a quadruple threat: to the Communist Party dominance, to the reliability of the army, to the stability of the Eastern bloc, and to the Soviet security system.25

The historical syntheses of the 1980s gave due attention to Nagy’s role in the reform attempts of 1953 as the roots of his policies during the revolution, but

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at the same time they again emphasized the uniqueness of his personality. For his young reformer friends, Nagy ‘was both a genuine father figure and the last hope for socialism with a human face’, wrote Charles Gati in 1986. He played the same role in the revolution but now in national terms: ‘he became the last hope for freedom and independence for all Hungarians’.26 However, Gati adds, ‘it is one of the paradoxes of East European political life that until the last minutes of the uprising, Nagy was at the same time that person whom Moscow trusted and from whom the Soviets expected to save Hungary for their sphere of interest’. This duality was resolved by the second Soviet invasion, in response to which Nagy decided to take Hungary out of the Warsaw Pact and declare its neutrality. ‘Nagy was for a whole life a faithful Muscovite, but at this moment he changed into a Hungarian revolutionary.’ 27 Even though published in 1991, the biography of Nagy by Peter Unwin, former British ambassador to Budapest, retains essentially the results of research and the image of the previous decade. While Hungarian émigré authors emphasized the significance of the inner-party opposition on Nagy during 1955–56, Unwin sees him rather as the ‘lonely hero’. His summary already reflects the end of Soviet-type Communism, when he writes about Nagy: three things emerged to stand to his credit in the book of history. The first was the service he did to himself when he stood firm against the forces which came to reimpose alien authority upon his country. … The second was the service he gave to the Communist world. … He had shown Communism a way out of the wilderness into which Stalinism had taken it. But Nagy’s greatest service was not to himself or to his party but to his country. He did not make the revolution. But he made it possible. … Nagy and the revolution went down to defeat, but they gave Hungary back its self-respect.28

After the fall of Communism the image of 1956 and Nagy was defined by the new discourse on ‘Cold War history’. Through the ‘archival revolution’ that allowed a detailed study of many aspects of the past decades, the importance of the Hungarian revolution and its premier faded somewhat into the background, above all in American research.29 But in spite of new documentary evidence, the studies about the crises of the 1950s in Eastern Europe more or less repeat the major statements of earlier writings.30 Nagy’s Communism, his heresies and ‘revisionism’ command little attention beyond a small circle of experts. His moral example remained canonized, but with the end of the Cold War lost its political utility. His life and death took its place on the pages of history books. The real issue remained, whether this life and death received a meaning in his own country – and, if so, when.

16

RESURRECTION As we have seen, Nagy did not give up the hope until the very end that, as he formulated it in his last words at the trial, ‘The time will come when these questions can be considered under quieter conditions, with an appropriate breadth of vision, and in better command of the facts, so that in my case justice can prevail.’ He thus believed that in his country, society and courts would one day be able to let justice rule – in his own cause and in that of the 1956 revolution. The Kádár regime, however, maintained for three decades the ideas of the ‘counter-revolution of 1956’ and ‘the high treason of Imre Nagy’. As far as the revolution was concerned, the Kádárist leadership even identified itself with the Rákosi era, from whose ‘evil reputation’ it otherwise sought to distance itself and against which the people had risen in revolution. Thus the evaluation of 1956 and the attitude to the legitimacy of the Kádár regime were inseparable. This single issue remained until the late 1980s a political rather than a historical one. And whoever openly dissented could reckon with retribution. Nothing could change the assessment of the revolution of 1956 so long as the premises of the Kádár regime did not change. That regime was built upon several stabilizing factors: the psychological effects of the capitulation of society in 1957–58, the gradually diminishing but not completely vanished potential for conflict in the Cold War and the partial acceptance of the system achieved by improved living standards. As all that changed by the middle of the 1970s, those in power were again confronted with the problem of legitimacy and hence with the Imre Nagy question. With the first symptoms of a weakening of power, János Kádár responded by introducing a new concept. On his 60th birthday in 1972, he stated that, although ‘all Communists’ knew that ‘counter-revolution’ was the ‘scientific definition’ for what happened in 1956, there is another possibility: ‘we can all reach an understanding,’ he said, that it was ‘a national tragedy’.1 This concept was not to apply, however, to the repression, the executions and the verdict against Nagy. The ‘counter-revolution of 1956’ remained the standard and obligatory formula in textbooks and in schools together with the statement that Imre Nagy was justly condemned and executed for high treason. On days of remembrance, as on the 25th or 30th anniversary of the uprising, special television programmes (‘living history’) were broadcast, and the official version of the court verdict of 1958 reiterated in lengthy newspaper articles. But otherwise, all concerned studiously avoided the topic, and neither political rhetoric nor ‘symbolic’ speech disturbed the self-imposed official silence. 188

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It is unlikely, however, that those in power assumed that Hungarian society would be silent because it had forgotten the revolution and Imre Nagy. Nor could they imagine that people believed the official explanation of the executions. The silence was hardly a sign of agreement, but rather that of ‘all-national amnesia’ (Ferenc Mérei’s words), which meant that people had come to terms with the given situation. The silence certainly did not imply that the Hungarian people had declared Nagy’s innocence, as he had hoped they would. Passage of time and the ‘liveable life’ postponed – permanently, as it seemed then – that day when the Hungarian people would pass the ‘not guilty’ verdict. It was the democratic opposition that began to form in the 1970s that finally broke the silence. Its representatives restored the memory of the revolution of 1956 and gave prominence to its legacy. The executed Imre Nagy, who rested with hundreds of other victims of retribution in a remote corner of the Rákoskeresztúr municipal cemetery without a grave marker, became a symbol disclosing the true nature of the Kádár system, its real origin and foundation. But it took 25 years after the execution before this was put into words. The question was posed by Miklós Vásárhelyi in Irodalmi Ujság (Paris) in 1983: Anonymous graves, weathered wooden crosses, a pot plant, carnations in a vase, a bouquet of roses. That is all. Otherwise, deathly quiet. Imre Nagy, the legal premier of the country, and the thousands of other victims, are denied what is granted to any murderer: a gravesite, a gravestone, a nameplate in the prisoners’ cemetery. Who will assume responsibility for all this? 2

In Budapest, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the execution of Nagy, the most widely read samizdat journal Beszélő published a special issue. One of the leading figures of the Hungarian democratic opposition, the philosopher János Kis, wrote: ‘Most of the conception of the trial … is rather irrelevant today. But a reassessment is still missing. That is a sign of the degree to which the regime founded after 1956 still holds fast to the lie that was its midwife.’ 3 The editors underscored that it was only right and proper that those executed receive a decent burial. But when a young poet, Gáspár Nagy, in a literary journal – hiding the initials of Nagy in a grammatical construction – wrote that ‘Once he has to be buried / And we must not forget / And name the murderers,’ the paper was confiscated and the author silenced.4 Family members had made this demand constantly since 1958. György Krassó, one of those sentenced after the revolution, wrote, ‘It is my opinion that only the Hungarian nation can change conditions in plot number 301 [the far corner of the cemetery].’ 5 Imre Nagy had entertained similar thoughts 25 years earlier. For the 30th anniversary of the revolution in 1986, the opposition organized a scholarly conference on the history of 1956. The initiative came from Ferenc Donáth (who did not live to see it accomplished), and the participants ranged in age and political orientation over the entire spectrum of the opposition move-

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ment.6 Because of the particular world political configuration, the growing crisis in the country and the increasing signs of reform within the Soviet sphere, interest in Hungary had intensified. The dreary picture of the overgrown ‘plot 301’ appeared as a kind of ‘political grave marker’ on BBC television and on the front page of the New York Times. At home and abroad a movement was forming to advocate a suitable interment of the victims, especially of Nagy. In the spring of 1988, former political prisoners founded the Committee for Historical Justice (Történelmi Igazságtétel Bizottsága) which, on the 30th anniversary of the Nagy trial, issued an appeal to the public. It demanded the rehabilitation of those executed, their suitable interment, a re-evaluation of recent history and the release of sources and materials that would make possible untainted historical research.7 On 16 June 1988 the Hungarian democratic opposition in exile dedicated a symbolic grave to the memory of Imre Nagy and his associates in the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris. At the same hour, people in the centre of Budapest took to the streets, which resounded with the name of Nagy. The demonstration was brutally dispersed by the police.8 The issue of an appropriate funeral had become a mass mobilizing political demand that could no longer be ignored, and significantly sped up the demise of the regime. When Kádár was removed from his position as first secretary in 1988, the way was clear for the party leadership to address those matters symbolized by the ‘unburied’ Imre Nagy: the historical roots of the crisis and the revolution of 1956. The leaders of the MSZMP appointed a commission to investigate the recent past, planning to formulate a new party programme on the basis of the commission’s findings. After lengthy discussion and much back-tracking, the Politburo issued its permission in November 1988 for the reinterment of the deceased.9 This was to take place within a narrow family circle. The party sought to treat the occasion as a humanitarian matter and to avoid political implications and public involvement. However, the chairman of the commission, Imre Pozsgay, issued a declaration in January 1989 in which he described the events of 1956 as a ‘popular uprising’.10 Thus the issue of 1956 and Imre Nagy, previously confined to a narrow circle, now suddenly became a concern of the general public. The declaration was explosive and had a much more intense effect than the party leadership or, for that matter, the group around Pozsgay had foreseen. The attempt to legitimize the party on a new and broader basis had the opposite effect. The name Imre Nagy and the date 1956 became in one stroke political features of central importance. A search was initiated to locate the graves and on 29 March 1989 the exhumations began along with preparations for a celebratory reburial. At the same time, Nagy and his co-defendants were added to the list of victims of Stalinism. (It was only the year before that it had become possible in Hungary to discuss fairly openly the fate of those executed before 1956.) Before the party could arrive at some kind of unified evaluation (the

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debate that began in February 1989 was never brought to a conclusion), the leadership had to face a massive moral opposition focused on the personality and fate of Imre Nagy. As it became ever less feasible to control the press and other media, Nagy’s rehabilitation became a fait accompli in the eyes of the public. Several MSZMP leaders would have been glad to associate themselves with the new trend. Some sought to cast the reburial as ‘a day of national reconciliation’ in order to minimize the potential danger that might accompany the event. Some entertained the idea of arriving at a national consensus around the concept of democratic socialism, provided that they could replace Kádár with Nagy. His entire political career after 1945, not excepting the revolution of 1956, would have offered the picture of an exceptional figure who carried his socialist convictions and love of country to the grave. But it did not work. Rather, Károly Grósz, the last leader of that party, decided now (in September 1989), after decades of silence, to make a speech with the eloquent title, ‘Concerning Volodia, the NKVD Agent’.11 But the presentation of this speech (prepared with ‘fraternal help’ from Moscow), aimed at denigrating the martyr who became the symbol for a call for decisive change, did not achieve its goal. On 16 June 1989, more than 200,000 people gathered in Heroes’ Square in Budapest to pay their last respects to Imre Nagy and the other victims of retribution. State television carried the demonstration live throughout the day. The evening before, both radio and television broadcast the voice of Nagy speaking his last words at the trial. (The tapes emerged in the course of a retrial, which, however, dragged on despite the efforts of the Supreme Court.) Thus Nagy’s ‘final message’ did ultimately reach its intended audience. The ritual funeral organized by the Committee for Historical Justice had become a common cause for all of the forces advocating democratic change. The speakers in Heroes’ Square were Nagy’s co-defendant Miklós Vásárhelyi; the former commander of the National Guard, Béla Király; Tibor Zimányi, who had been released from detention during the first Nagy government; the student revolutionary Imre Mécs, whose 1958 death sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment; Sándor Rácz, the former chairman of the Central Workers’ Council in Budapest; and the young political scientist Viktor Orbán. All praised the deceased and referred to the revolution but not in terms of a continuation or renewal of the uprising. They spoke instead of a peaceful transition that would fulfil the goals of 1956. The speeches were political, as might be expected, but, whereas most recalled the deceased and the events of 1956 with sadness and reverence, Mécs, Rácz and especially Orbán (the only one born after 1956) spoke openly of the pertinence of the demands of 1956 (however, only Orbán referred to the removal of Soviet troops). The mood at the Square was both festive and sombre, also somewhat tense, but there were no disruptions. From the loudspeakers came a few lines from Nagy’s radio address

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29. Catafalque of Nagy and fellow martyrs, Heroes’ Square, Budapest, 16 June 1989. (Lugossy Lugo László, Budapest)

of 30 October 1956 in which he called for the preservation of peace and order. The 16th of June 1989 became a historical and psychological turning point in the process, usually described as a system change, of democratic transformation in Hungary. As Peter Kende wrote a few months later, ‘the most important animating factor in the collapse [of the old order] was, as in 1956, moral in nature. … I dare say that this occasion was like the elevation of the host in church, from which the devil flees – so that the believers wonder, at once delighted and puzzled, where the Hell has he gone?’ 12 János Kis summarized the mood as follows: ‘One could no longer say, to others or to oneself, that they are deceivers, liars, and murderers, to be sure, but I still support them because I have enjoyed relative prosperity under their rule.’ 13 Three days before the reburial, the MSZMP met with the opposition parties that had already found their way to the ‘round table’. Three weeks after the moral collapse of his own regime – on 6 July 1989 – János Kádár died. It was the same day on which the Supreme Court cancelled the verdict of Judge Ferenc Vida and declared Imre Nagy and his co-defendants not guilty.14 In the period preceding the reburial, Imre Nagy had unequivocally become a symbol for renewal and change. This was not so much because of his actual historical-political role but rather because he was seen as a victim in whose death and illegal execution the true character of the regime since 1948 was revealed in one person and one occurrence. Through the person Imre Nagy, the

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memory of one of the most hopeful periods of the post-war era, of 1956, was awakened, and through his death the blasting of hope was made obvious, along with the disclosure of the obsolete foundation of the compromise that characterized the now defunct Kádár era. Now one could with a light heart regard the old dictator as finished and could also forget how easily the vast majority had accepted him for the past decade or two. The gruesome act of exhumation was an appropriate means for allowing people to ‘forget the forgetting’. The ugly details – that the corpses were wrapped in tarpaper and laid face down in the graves, that the graves had no identification, or, in Nagy’s case, was identified by a false name in the burial document – allowed people to recognize the vileness of the Kádár regime. Yes, they had all known of the executions – that was taught in the schools – but that the dead were like that, that no one would have thought. Hungarian society, the greater part of which had for several years before 1989 avoided confrontation with the regime erected on the ruins of the revolution, was now busy recalling all those events that now permitted it to define itself as actual or potential opponents of the regime. Recalling the grim years of the Rákosi regime, the years of repression after 1956 and October 1956 itself, the selective memory and lately discovered oppositional posture could view the Nagy interment as the great moment – which in spite of everything was a cathartic and cleansing experience. In contrast to other disputed features of the democratic transition, this one retains its effect even today. Along with the funeral, the regime and an entire era were also buried. But soon, necessarily, the question arose: who can rightfully claim Nagy and/or 1956 as the basis of legitimacy? In place of the ‘one-track’ remembrance of the pious celebration, a diverging one has emerged,15 and this process, a splintering of the history of 1956 into many individual histories, has not yet run its course. On the day of the reinterment, Nagy’s last message was truly heard and he was pronounced innocent of all the false charges by that one judge he had wished for: the Hungarian people. But this celebration of Nagy’s ‘afterlife’ was not entirely free of the contradictions that were so typical of Nagy himself. The celebration denounced that Soviet socialism which Nagy had both criticized and endorsed, which he had served both as seeker for a national way and as fighter for its international movement. Although no one spoke of it at that time, Nagy’s ‘Hungarian socialism with a human face’ was also interred. Indeed, his own fate was the best evidence that this social model was impracticable. Thus the figure that appeared so credible on 16 June 1989 as the embodiment of the transition to democracy in Hungary was a constructed figure. At the centre of the historical picture, the ‘premier of the revolution’ stood – and still stands – as the personification of the struggle for national unity and freedom. The execution confirmed him in a definite and permanent posture that the demonstrators at Kossuth Square on 23 October 1956 would have liked to see but could not

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yet recognize. In the recognition of the significance of his death, everything else melted away in 1989: his commitment to Marxist-Leninist ideals, his role in the establishment of the Soviet regime in Hungary and the reform efforts of 1953. It was not primarily his political aims but rather his personality, his human traits and the life history based thereon, that explains why, in the unified struggle to find a symbol for change (peaceful this time) in 1989, Nagy inherited the same role that he had played in 1956. It was a life history in which everyone could discover his better self, for although that life history ended tragically it reveals a fully rounded history in which the special nature of the final act was foreshadowed already in each episode of the account. For the hero of this drama, in a time that was anything but favourable, was virtually the only one of the representatives of his political movement who, in the great and decisive moments, displayed an exceptional moral stance and determination. More than a decade and a half has passed since the reburial of Nagy’s remains and the change of regime. The dramatic pinnacle of his ‘afterlife,’ 16 June 1989 itself, is no more then a memorable moment, indeed already becoming history. The form that this ‘afterlife’ is to take depends on the ‘reworking’ of contemporary Hungarian history, in particular with the understanding of the Hungarian October. The Hungarian revolution of 1956, along with its most prominent personality, is on its way to becoming canonized, that is, to receiving a ‘worthy place in the national pantheon’ or, in modern terms, to residing in collective memory. Nagy is presented, more or less factually, in all school textbooks as a significant historical figure, public places are named after him, and statues of him were erected on his 100th birthday near the parliament building and in several other places. He is celebrated in speeches and newspaper articles on the anniversary of the revolution and of his death; wreathes are placed on his grave by the government of the Hungarian Republic and by many ordinary citizens. A memorial house was established in his last residence in Buda. In the second legislative period of the free parliament, his name and his achievements were inscribed in a special statute. His person and merits were commemorated in an act of parliament, and in 200216 the left-liberal government established an ‘Imre Nagy Order’ that is awarded annually on 23 October. But all this belongs within the framework of conventional memorial culture. There is no Nagy cult today. But soon after 1989, a passionate, sometimes almost hysterical, political debate ensued on the meaning of the revolution of 1956. The central theme of political commentary and party strategists concerned the ‘correct’ meaning. These arguments were the natural result of free speech and a sign of the necessary discrediting of the old rules. But they were also conditioned by the specific character of the Hungarian system change and by the extraordinary importance attached by all concerned to the memory of 1956.

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As a historical-political instrument, the remembrance of 1956 had a twofold function to perform. On the one hand, October 1956 functioned as a positive historical tradition, not least as an antithesis to the Soviet or Communist regime. The protagonists of the change held that the revolution was a historic event that not only delegitimized the old regime but also granted legitimacy to all those forces that strove for more then a mere reform of Soviet-style socialism. The day of reburial thus served as the day of the burial of an entire epoch. On the positive side, the opportunity was afforded to make good the ‘grieving’ that had been missing earlier and, at the same time, to relieve the troubling stigma of collaboration. However, the theme of 1956 also figured during the period of democratic transition as a sort of ‘negative programme’. In this connection, all of the political forces, including the state party and its heirs and excepting only a small radical group, shared the opinion that now, in contrast to the ‘unpeaceful’ revolution of 1956, there should be a peaceful transition – just don’t repeat what happened in 1956! During the democratic transition this consensus was never challenged, but the symbolism within which it took place drew heavily upon a type of system change that belonged clearly to the category of revolutionary transformation. This contradiction between the desired political praxis and its symbolic context proved decisive for the historical-political significance attached to 1956. The political actors of the Hungarian transition relied in their rhetoric on 1956 as the basis for legitimacy, but they did this without ever questioning the ‘orderly’ negotiated transition. It is highly questionable whether it would have been possible to alter the symbolic context, either to ‘empty’ it or to fill it with a different content. It would then have been necessary to give clear expression to certain matters: first, that one wanted not only to avoid a revolution but also that, now that all parameters had changed fundamentally, the political goals of the revolution of 1956 no longer represented relevant aspirations in the design of the Hungarian transition; and, second, that 16 June 1989 in no way constituted the end of the reworking of the history of the Soviet system in Hungary but, especially with respect to the Kádár era, rather the beginning. Furthermore, the ritual reburial could not function as a strong cleansing agent that would remove every blemish, and the ‘repression’ from the end of World War II until 1989 was not uniform in its impact: not everyone was to the same degree a ‘victim of tyranny’. All of that was, at some time or place, expressed, and the majority probably believed in its validity. Clear-sightedness and proper evaluation would have required a historical debate, however, and that did not happen. Most of the political groups active in the democratic transition did not want to surrender either the ‘rhetoric of 1956’ or the ‘history of 1956’ as a source of legitimacy. A third important issue, also avoided, concerned the role of technocrats and reformers from the time after 1956 who carried the Kádár regime and, as leading cadres

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of the MSZMP in the late 1980s, had become important elements of the transition. In order to operate successfully in the new democratic order, they would have needed a ‘surplus of legitimacy’, and that would have been possible only if they had faced their own past openly and shown an honourable readiness to come to terms with it historically and morally. There were some examples of this, to be sure, but it was not expressed clearly and unambiguously. Readiness for systematic reworking of the past remained weak at best. The active participants in the revolution, survivors of the retribution, represented a special problem. These former members of the revolutionary organizations and armed insurgents, the ‘nameless’ ones, found their voices mainly after June 1989. They did not figure in the ranks of the new elite of the coordinated transition, even when they believed, on grounds of experience or harm suffered, that they had a right to participate. These ‘veterans’ displayed little inclination to take part in the review of events after 1956. They kept to themselves and formed their own organizations, in which a small number of vociferous and radical critics of the new political system soon set the tone. The freely elected Hungarian parliament of spring 1990 began its legislative programme with the passage of a law on the ‘Legacy of the Revolution and Freedom Struggle of 1956’. This legislation, introduced by the coalition government, was preceded by a generally approved draft law in which Imre Nagy was mentioned by name. But his name was dropped at the last minute. It was a clear signal that the government led by the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), along with the national-populist and Christian Democratic-conservative forces, all supporters of the ‘third way’, wished to distance itself from the leftist content and leftist assessment of the revolution and its Communist symbolic figure. Already in summer 1990, during the discussion of the national coat of arms and of 23 October as a national holiday, it became clear that the government parties preferred to emphasize tradition and the ‘continuity of the thousandyear Hungarian state’ rather then ‘the legacy of 1956’ or any other memorable democratic moment of recent Hungarian history. The ‘new’ national coat of arms was not the ‘Kossuth coat of arms’, a ‘republican’ emblem used from 1945 to 1949 and reintroduced in 1956 as an important symbol, but rather the coat of arms of the Hungarian kingdom of the pre-war era, with the ‘Holy Crown’ on top of it. In consistent fashion, the national holiday was not 15 March as a memorial to the revolution of 1848 or 23 October, recalling 1956, but rather St Stephan’s Day (20 August), recalling the ‘state founder’ who had shown the Hungarian nation the ‘way into the Christian West’ a thousand years before. Among the problems connected with the Communist era and 1956, the issue of ‘meting out justice’ soon took centre stage. Already during 1989–90 the demand was voiced that those who engineered the show trials of the Stalinist period or ordered the massacre of unarmed demonstrators in 1956 and the retribution that followed should be prosecuted. But at the time public discus-

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sion was so dominated by the notion of ‘peaceful transition’ that no politically relevant force was prepared to place that issue on the agenda. The peaceful transition, conforming to strict principles of the rule of law, afforded the former political elite an escape route, and all those who had persecuted and tortured people during Communist rule eluded justice. This moral deficit was a serious burden for the new Hungarian democracy. Partly for that reason, but also in order to counterbalance the difficulties of the transition, many in the parties that won the first free elections campaigned for tackling the ‘guilt question’. In the early 1990s, as the campaign to investigate Communist crimes got under way, one heard occasional demands for retribution. The Hungarian Socialist Party, the successor of the MSZMP, naturally opposed this campaign, for the investigations and/or trials could have been dangerous for its active political leadership (for example for Gyula Horn, chair of the Socialist Party in the 1990s and premier from 1994 to 1998, whose political career began after 4 November 1956 in the Communist security forces). No different were the liberals, who came mostly from the political opposition of the Kádárist era. Although most of them were convinced of the moral justification of the demand for meting out justice, they based their posture on principles of the rule of law. Those who stood for purification and punishment, and who were potential witnesses for the prosecution had such trials taken place, came from the ranks of the former insurgents. Yet the debate was not really about 1956. The disputes were in fact motivated by actual political issues and arose out of the conflicts of interest characteristic of the system change. Those who were loudest in demanding a legal restriction on the reworking of the past took over the leading posts in the organizations of veterans and scolded as Communists those who did not accept their argument. That stigma was applied not only to the parliamentary opposition but also to Nagy’s allies in the party opposition before 1956, who were far from being Communists any longer. It was no different for the liberals, once the bitterest opponents of the Communist regime. The Hungarian president Árpád Göncz (sentenced to life imprisonment after 1956 for his participation in the revolution), who had opposed the law of retribution, was driven from the rostrum by the protests of his former fellow prisoners at a memorial ceremony on 23 October 1992.17 The conflict over the ‘justice issue’ gave the discussion of the history of the revolution a new dimension. A new orthodoxy was arising that would soon encompass the whole history of Hungary after 1945. This new ‘true history’ no longer referred to revolution, first because of the Communist/Marxist connotation of the term but also out of a fundamentally conservative, anti-revolutionary posture. The revolution of 1956 was thus understood simply as a national freedom struggle, the nation’s fight against ‘the Russians’; it was portrayed now as an independence struggle innocent of any social content, now as a revolt in favour of the restoration of an undefined (pre-war or similar) regime. For this

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orientation, the inner-party opposition and Imre Nagy himself could only play a subordinate role. At the same time, a new myth was being created, that of a massive national resistance to the Rákosi regime. At the end of the century these debates lost some of their vehemence, except insofar as memorial days or electoral campaigns revived them. Politicians of the national-conservative stamp liked to pose as the only true heirs of the 1956 freedom fight. They portrayed their leftist opponents as ‘post-Communists’ and heirs of the bloody suppression of that struggle. At the other end of the political spectrum, the current socialists now sought to preserve the remains of the ‘social-liberal inheritance’ of the revolution, but with meagre success, perhaps because there is no such inheritance. Following the system change, political rhetoric had settled into the fabric of memory of 1956, for a long time and perhaps indefinitely. That may be the reason why the youth, grown to maturity after the fall of Communism, reject memorial festivals. Nagy as a figure of contemporary history featured in political debate to a diminishing degree. Even the conservatives, who deny on principle that the national or reform Communists had a decisive role in the revolution, usually avoid questioning Nagy’s personal role. The reason for this is clear: in the face of his moral and human stature, sealed by his execution and martyrdom, his leftist or Communist beliefs could be ignored. According to a recent sociological survey, Imre Nagy is regarded as one of the significant personalities of twentieth-century Hungary, but is slightly less highly placed on the scale than János Kádár.18 However, the memory of Nagy is more universal than that of his henchman. He may have received a decimal point less in the survey, but his image is much less divisive: his appreciation comes from a wide range of respondents and is thus similar to that of the great reformers and 1848ers, Count Stephen Széchenyi and Lajos Kossuth. Nagy’s death thus seems to have given some kind of general answer to the questions of his life. The deeper analysis and perception of his life may lead, however, to diverse results and none of them would be final. At best, they may suggest some possible responses to the many questions, old and new, raised by a historical period and a world-historical event.

NOTES Archival sources As mentioned in the Preface, the archival material relevant to the life of Imre Nagy is extensive but scattered in several fonds in Hungary and Russia. The surviving documents of the underground Communist movement were gathered after 1948 by the Institute for the History of the Hungarian Labour Movement, renamed the Institute for Party History in 1955, now Archive of the Institute for Political History (Politikatörténeti Intézet Levéltára, PIL). Individual documents bearing on Nagy are also found in the Budapest City Archive (Budapest Főváros Levéltára, BFL). Documents about Nagy’s legal and illegal activity in his hometown Kaposvár are held in the archives of County Somogy and County Baranya. A few of the early manuscripts and some letters preserved by family members found their way into the Hungarian National Museum after 1990. The greater part of the correspondence between the underground party in Hungary and the exile centres in Vienna, Prague and Moscow, like most of the documents of the Hungarian Communist Party (KMP), landed in the Archive of the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute, now in the Comintern fond of the Russian State Archive for Social-Political History (Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv SocialnoPoliticheskoi Istorii, RGASPI). At the end of the 1980s, copies of a good part of this material were made for the Hungarian Party and are now found in the PIL. This collection offers the richest source for Nagy’s political activity between 1921 and 1930. Concerning Nagy’s time in Moscow, many sources from various institutions are held in RGASPI, including documents of the International Agrarian Institute, where Nagy worked from 1930 to 1935, the files of the International Lenin School and the papers of Comintern chairman, Georgi Dimitrov. The cadre department of the Comintern maintained personal files on all the important functionaries of the world movement. These were moved after 1943 to the corresponding department of the CPSU Central Committee where Nagy’s file was maintained long after his death. These files, questionnaires, autobiographical notes, personnel evaluations and resolutions concerning party penalties are now also kept in RGASPI. Some documents on Nagy’s contact with the NKVD from 1930 to 1943 are found, however, in the archive containing the post-war documents of the CPSU: the Russian State Archive for Recent History (Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Noveishei Istorii, RGANI). For Nagy’s activity after 1945, two large document collections are relevant: the party files and the government archives. The documents of the Hungarian 199

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Communist Party from 1945 to 1948 are, like those of the illegal predecessor party, collected in the PIL. The minutes and resolutions of the leadership of the Communist Party MKP (renamed MDP, the Hungarian Workers’ Party in 1948 and then, in 1956, the MSZMP, Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party), as well as the preparations for those decisions, are found in the Hungarian National Archive (Magyar Országos Levéltár, MOL) as a special collection: M-KS. MOL also holds the government documents and minutes of the Council of Ministers as well as those of the premier’s office at the time when Nagy was premier (1953–55), including the voluminous correspondence of his office. Many reports on Nagy and the situation in Hungary are located in the RGASPI and RGANI (in the files of the foreign department of the Soviet Party) and in the Archive for Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation among the papers of the Soviet embassy in Budapest. So far very little has become public from these collections, either in Hungarian or Russian. Reference to these archives will be by fonds, files (‘cases’ in Russian, delo [d.], or őrzési egység [ő.e.] filing unit), volumes [vol.] and page numbers (if appropriate). Sources of a special sort are provided by the mountain of documents resulting from the investigation and trial of ‘Imre Nagy and co-defendants’. A small portion of these, the so-called ‘operative documents’, are in the Historical Archive of the State Security in Budapest (Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történelmi Levéltára, ÁBTL); the rest is an enormous fond in the Hungarian National Archive (MOL XX-5h, Nagy Imre és társai pere, henceforth referred to as ‘Nagy Trial’). It contains three kinds of documents: investigation records (vizsgálati iratok, henceforth vizsg. ir.), records of the state security (operatív iratok, op.ir) and court records proper (bírósági iratok, bír.ir.). In a sense, the investigation and trial documents portray Nagy’s entire life history. He retold his own history during the questioning by the police, then again in the courtroom, in great detail. All papers that Nagy had kept at his home, such as copies of all the articles he had written since the 1930s, were confiscated at the time of his arrest and added to the trial documents. The records of taped conversations and other materials by the Romanian secret police from Nagy’s exile were included in this collection, but in the meantime additional documents also became available (some of those are now in the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, see note 1 to Chapter 13). Nagy’s testimony, mainly about the revolution of 1956, fills several thick volumes, and the records of witnesses and the admissions of his co-defendants are still more voluminous. The recordings made during the trial and their often incomplete transcriptions have been preserved, along with parts of the film from the courtroom (see p 181 and note 9 to Chapter 15). Besides the trial documents proper, the preliminary investigation produced a large number of contemporary documents as ‘evidence’, including government files from the time of the uprising, speech manuscripts, announcements and notes and drafts of the most varied sort. There is a rather large body of memoir literature concerning Imre Nagy. Most of it emerged a good while after 1956, after his execution, and consequently bears the stamp of his tragic end. An important collection of such testimony is found in

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the Oral History Archive of the Institute for the History of the Revolution of 1956 (OHA); they will be referred to by interview number. Preface to the English Edition 1. János M. Rainer, Homenaje a Imre Nagy, in Hungría 8 (1989), pp 4–6. 2. Tibor Méray, Thirteen Days That Shook the Kremlin, trans. Howard L. Katzander (New York: Praeger, 1959); Miklós Molnár, László Nagy, Imre Nagy, réformateur ou révolutionnaire? (Geneva/Paris: Ambilly, 1959); The Truth about the Nagy Affair: Facts, Documents, Comments. With a Preface by Albert Camus (London: Secker & Warburg, 1959); Peter Unwin, Voice in the Wilderness. Imre Nagy and the Hungarian Revolution (London: Macdonald, 1991). 3. János M. Rainer, Nagy Imre Politikai életrajz 1896–1953; 1953–1958 (Imre Nagy: A Political Biography), 2 vols. (Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 1996, 1999). 4. János M. Rainer, Nagy Imre (Budapest: Vince Kiadó, 2002). 5. János M. Rainer, Imre Nagy. Biografia polityczna (Imre Nagy: A Political Biography), trans Krystyna Zurek-Góralczyk (Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Politycznych Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2003). 6. János M. Rainer, Imre Nagy 1896–1958: Vom Stalinisten zum Märtyrer der Ungarischen Revolution 1956, trans Anne Nass (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2006). 7. Imre Nagy, Viharos emberöltő (Budapest: Nagy Imre Alapítvány, 2002). On the last page of the manuscript (p 147) Nagy was writing about the events in the Berezovka POW camp, ‘In the first months of 1918 …’. Nagy recounted his life story on the first day of his trial, 9 June 1958, now published in Ferenc Dér (ed), Nagy Imre. Egy magyar miniszterelnök (Imre Nagy: A Hungarian Prime Minister) (Pécs: Régió, 1993), pp 12–24. 8. For example, Viacheslav T. Sereda and János M. Rainer (eds), Döntés a Kremlben, 1956. A szovjet pártelnökség vitái Magyarországról. (Decisions in the Kremlin, 1956: Debates of the Soviet Presidium about Hungary) (Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 1996); Jelena D. Orekhova, Viatcheslav T. Sereda and Aleksandr S. Stykalin (eds), Sovietskii soiuz i vengerskii krizis 1956 goda. Dokumenti (The Soviet Union and the Hungarian Crisis: Documents) (Moscow: Rosspen, 1998). Many of these documents and those of American decisionmaking processes were published in Csaba Békés, Malcolm Byrne and János M. Rainer (eds), The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents (Budapest & New York: Central European University Press, 2002 (henceforth 1956: A History in Documents). 9. Imre Nagy, ‘Gondolatok, emlékezések’ (Reflections, recollections), Ms. Snagov, 1956–57. A copy of the complete police transcript, which I have perused, is in the Library of the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Ki-593. It has been published as ‘Gondolatok, emlékezések’, in István Vida (ed), Snagovi jegyzetek. Gondolatok, emlékzések 1956–1957 (Notes from Snagov: Reflections, Recollections 1956–57) (Budapest: Gondolat, 2006) (henceforth ‘Gondolatok’). The quotation is from p 200.

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1. Beginnings 1. Nagy, Viharos emberöltő, p 5. 2. Entry in the record of Kaposvári M. Kir. Áll. főgimnázium, előmeneteli napló 1911/1912 V. osztály, now in the Nagy Imre különgyüjtemény [I.N. special fond], Somogy County Archives. 3. Nagy, Viharos emberöltő, pp 71–5. 4. Ibid., p 75. 5. Ibid., pp 91–2. 6. Ibid., pp 75–6. 7. Ibid., p 93. 8. Ibid., p 95. 9. Ibid., pp 89–91. 10. Ibid., pp 99–101. 11. Ibid., pp 115–17. 12. Ibid., p 123. 13. Ibid., pp 123–4. 14. See Antal Józsa, Háború, hadifogság, forradalom. Magyar internacionalista hadifoglyok az 1917–es oroszországi forradalomban (War, Captivity, Revo­lution: Hungarian Internationalist Prisoners of War in the 1917 Russian Revolution) (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1970), pp 43–50. 15. Nagy, Viharos emberöltő, p 65. 16. Ibid., p 129. 17. See John Francis Nejez Bradley, The Czechoslovak Legion in Russia, 1914–1920 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1991). 18. Benedek Baja (ed), Hadifogoly magyarok története (History of Hungarian POWs) (Budapest: Athenaeum, n.d.), vol. 2, pp 236–7. 19. See Ferenc Dér, Nagy Imre, pp 12–24; and a few questionnaires filled in by him in 1920–21 when joining the Bolshevik Party (see PIL 501 f. 1/27 ő.e.). 20. Several articles in the two weeklies published in Irkutsk are signed by him; he may have also written unsigned ones (see Fig. 3). 21. On the Hungarian Soviet Republic (21 March–1 August 1919) see Rudolf L. Tökés, Béla Kun and the Hungarian Soviet Republic: The Origins and Role of the Communist Party of Hungary in the Revolutions of 1918–1919 (New York: Praeger, 1967); Andrew C. Janos and William B. Slottman (eds), Revolution in Perspective: Essays on the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971). On Kun see György Borsányi, The Life of a Communist Revolutionary: Béla Kun, trans Mario D. Fenyo (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs/Highland Lakes, NJ: Atlantic Research and Publication, 1993) (Eastern European Monographs 263), pp 79–206; Ignác Romsics, Hungary in the Twentieth Century, trans Timothy Wick (Budapest: Corvina-Osiris, 1999), pp 99–108. 22. See G.D. Obichkin et al (eds), A magyar internacionalisták a nagy októberi forradalomban és a polgárháborúban. Dokumentumgyűjtemény (Hungarian Internationalists in the Great October Socialist Revolution and the Civil War.

notes

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Documents) (Budapest: Kossuth, 1967), vol. 1, p 517. 23. See Miklós Molnár, From Béla Kun to János Kádár: Seventy Years of Hungarian Communism, trans Arnold J. Pomerans (New York: Berg, 1990), pp 31–3; Bennet Kovrig, Communism in Hungary: From Kun to Kádár (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1979), pp 69–91. 2. To Remain a Communist 1.

2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11. 12.

In the peace treaty, signed near Paris on 4 June 1920, the historical Hungary lost two-thirds of its former territory and some 60 per cent of its population. Over 3 million Hungarians remained beyond the new borders in the ‘successor states’. On the conditions of post-Trianon Hungary see Ignác Romsics, Hungary in the Twentieth Century, pp 117–25. On the Hungarian Communists in exile and their first attempts at reorganization see Molnár, Seventy Years, pp 30–6, and Kovrig, Communism, pp 81–101. According to local records of County Somogy (Somogy megyei Levéltár, főisp. eln. bizalmas 1914/29) he obtained this position on 20 July 1922. According to description of his person in the Szántó court case of 1927 (BFL, Budapesti kir. Büntetőtörvényszék, VII.5.c.B. XIV.5506/1927); see also Fig. 4. In the agreement signed by Prime Minister Count Bethlen and the general secretary of the MSZDP, Károly Peyer, the Social Democrats promised to use their international connections for the recognition of Hungary’s interests abroad, and in return were allowed to organize in the cities (excluding the railways, the post office and the civil service) but not in the countryside. The party could also get into the reorganized parliament. See Ignác Romsics, István Bethlen: A Great Conservative Statesman of Hungary, 1874–1946, trans Mario D. Fenyo (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 1995), pp 174–6. See the personnel file and autobiographical notes of Imre Nagy of March 1940 (RGASPI, F. 495, op. 205, d. 54, p 171). A MSZDP 1924 április 20, 21 és 22 napjain Budapesten megtartott XXII. pártgyűlésének jegyzőkönyve (Minutes of the XXII Party Congress of the MSZDP on 21–23 April, 1924) (Budapest: MSZDP, 1924), pp 151–3. See the police record of County Baranya: Baranya megyei Levéltár, Pécsi kir. ügyészség 1927-IV-165. See Borsányi, Béla Kun, pp 300–10; Kovrig, Communism, p 92. Kovrig, Communism, pp 93–101. The name of the party was in keeping with Comintern practice, calling the sections ‘in’ or ‘of’ a certain country, indicating their belonging to a worldwide movement. In 1924–28 the MSZMP (not to be confused with the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party – also abbreviated MSZMP – which was founded in 1956 and became the state party of the Kádár regime until 1989) followed this pattern. Dér, Nagy Imre, p 19. Police record of County Baranya: Baranya megyei Levéltár, Pécsi kir. ügyészség 1927-IV-1475, p 4; and trial records in BFL, Budapesti kir.

204

imre nagy

Büntetőtörvényszék, VII.5.c.B. XIV.5506/1927. 13. Szántó’s memoirs, Ms. PIL, 867. f.sz.2, vol. 2, p 338, and his reports on Nagy in the USSR (RGASPI, F. 495, op. 205, d. 54). 14. For the Szántó trial record see BFL, Budapesti kir. Büntetőtörvényszék, VII.5.c.B. XIV.5506/1927, and the police file of Nagy, now in PIL 652 f. N-211. 15. See the correspondence of the KÜB with the underground Budapest secretariat, 1927: PIL 878.f.8/33. ő.e. pp 5–20; and 8/283.ő.e. 16. County Baranya records (as in note 12 above), 1929-IV-545. 17. Correspondence (as in note 15 above) for 1928, PIL 787.f. 8/284.ő.e. 18. The journal, published with the help of Nagy’s sometime unsuccessful parliamentary candidate, Árpád Molnár, addressed issues of peasant land holding and related matters. See Fig. 5. 19. The ‘Blum Theses’ (full title, ‘Project for a thesis on the political and economic situation of Hungary and the tasks of the KMP’) and their discussion are well summarized in Molnár, Seventy Years, pp 40–7. He characterizes Lukács’s work as an ‘attempt at the impossible, namely to infuse the new Comintern line with a minimum of realism when applied to the activities of the KMP, a tiny party, and one moreover in a state of near-permanent crisis’. See also Georg Lukács, Record of a Life. An Autobiographical Sketch, ed István Eörsi, trans R. Livingstone (London: Verso, 1983), pp 78–81. 20. See N. Bucharin (Bukharin), 1929, das Jahr des grossen Umschwungs, ed Wladislaw Hedeler und Ruth Stoljarowa (Berlin: Dietz, 1991). 21. From the extensive literature on Bukharin and his seminal work, The Politics and Economics of the Transition Period (1922), ed and intr Kenneth J. Tarbuck, trans Oliver Field (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), see Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888– 1938 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980); The Ideas of Nikolai Bukharin, ed and intr A. Kemp-Welch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Donny Gluckstien, The Tragedy of Bukharin (London: Pluto Press, 1994). 22. Dated 12 November 1928; in PIL 878.f.8/234.ő.e. pp 76–81, here p 76. 23. Letter from ‘Kemény’ (Révai) to the KÜB, 12 December 1928, PIL 878f.8/285.ő.e., p 154. 24. Minutes of the meeting of the CC of the KMP, 23 February 1930 (PIL 878.f.2/63.ő.e.). 25. Molnár, Seventy Years, pp 40–9; Kovrig, Communism, pp 107–16; Borsányi, Béla Kun, pp 364–83. 26. Minutes of the II Congress of the KMP, PIL 878.f.1/27.ő.e., p 48. 27. Minutes of the meeting of the CC of the KMP, 16 March 1930; PIL 878.f.2/75.ő.e., p 1. 28. See József Sipos (ed), Nagy Imre a magyar parasztságról és a mezőgazdaságról (Imre Nagy on Hungarian Peasantry and Agriculture) (Nyíregyháza: Bessenyei György Könyvkiadó, 1996), pp 88–123. 29. On the Peasant International see George D. Jackson, Comintern and Peasant

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in East Europe, 1919–1930 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966). 30. PIL 878.f. 8/234.ő.e., pp 149–65. 3. Fifteen Years in Moscow 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19.

See Katalin Petrák, Magyarok a Szovjetúnióban (Hungarians in the USSR) (Budapest: Napvilág, 2000). Dér, Nagy Imre, p 20. PIL 878/291.ő.e. Barna (József Bergmann) to the KÜB, 22 December 1930. See Borsányi, Béla Kun, pp 383–4. On the school most recently, see G. Cohen and K. Morgan, ‘Stalin’s sausage machine. British students at the International Lenin School, 1926–37’, Twentieth Century British History 13 (2002), pp 327–55; see also Borsányi, Béla Kun, p 381. So reported in an interview with István Kovács, later a leading light in the MDP, who attended the school in those years (OHA, No. 158). ‘Imre Nad’ (Nagy), Polozheniie krestianstva v Vengrii (Moscow: MAI, 1933). Reminiscences of V.M. Turok, PIL 867.f. t-74. RGASPI, F. 536. op. 1, d. 318. The details on the private life of the Nagy family are based on personal communication between his daughter, Erzsébet Nagy, and the author in 1995. Nagy referred to an earlier decision of the KMP, according to which members who might at some point work in the home underground were not obliged to acquire Soviet citizenship. See RGASPI, F. 495 op. 205. d. 54, pp 164–6. See Kun’s letters to the Personnel Department of the Comintern, 5 January 1936, ibid., p 167. There is no specific document on this decision, but the date can be established from connected records, e.g. ibid., pp 141, 144. RGASPI, F. 536 op. 1, d. 259. RGASPI, F. 495 op. 205. d. 54, p 164. Ibid., p 161–3. No precise date can be established for the grant of citizenship, but according to an application of 5 April 1936 Imre Nagy was already a Soviet citizen. I was unable to find any reference to his later release from the citizenship of the USSR. However, in June 1953 his name was taken off the membership list of the CPSU. Ibid., p 157 (22 May 1936). Szántó’s positive comments on Imre Nagy are in his letter to the Control Commission of the CPSU of 14 February 1937 and later, ibid., pp 150, 156. Lukács’s arrest is documented in Viacheslav Sereda and Aleksandr Stykalin (eds), Besedi na Liublianke. Sledstvennoe delo Giorgia Lukacha (Talks in Liubianka: The Investigation Case of G. L.) (Moscow: Institut Slavianovedeniia RAN, 1999). On the interventions in his case and that of others by Eugene Varga, Zoltán Szántó and Georgi Dimitrov, the records are in RGASPI, F. 495 op. 10a. d. 310 and op. 74, d. 104, as well as RGASPI, F. 495 op. 73, deli 60, 69, etc. Speaking about this episode, Lukács mentioned that ‘almost

206

20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35.

imre nagy everyone [in Moscow] was arrested at one time or another.’ See his Record of a Life, pp 98–9. Altman’s report on the arrest of Nagy, 10 March 1938, RGANI, F. 89. papka 45. dok. 80. p 1. Soon after his release Nagy also requested that his surveillance be terminated and referred to his ‘long-time honest and devoted cooperation with the NKVD’. See Valerii Musatov, ‘What was Imre Nagy?’ New Times International 20 (1993), pp 13–15; Johanna C. Granville, ‘Imre Nagy, aka “Volodya” – a dent in the martyr’s halo?’, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Issue 5 (Spring 1995); Charles Gati, Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution (Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Stanford University Press, 2006), pp 33–40. RGANI, F. 89. papka 45, dok. 82. The proposal of V. Kriuchkov to the PB of the CPSU on 16 June 1989 on the archival materials regarding Imre Nagy’s activities in the Soviet Union was published in Istochnik 1 (1993), pp 71–2. The author is grateful to his colleague Valerii Musatov for a first insight in 1993 into these lists containing 38, 150 and 15 names, respectively, from 20 April 1939, 15 June 1940 and an undated one. See also PIL 960. f. 1–9. ő.e. RGASPI, F. 495. op. 205 d. 54, pp 137–48. Ibid., pp 141–5. Imre Nagy, Agrárproblémák: Tanulmányok, bírálatok (Agrarian Problems: Studies, Reviews) (Budapest: Szikra, 1946), p 4. Lajos Szenmiklóssy (Erik Molnár), A magyar agrárkérdéshez (To the Agrarian Question of Hungary) (Budapest: Gondolat, 1936). Imre Nagy, ‘Egy brosúra margójára’ (Marginals to a pamphlet), in Új Hang 4 (1938), reprinted in Nagy, Agrárproblémák, pp 12–13. Marxizmus és népiesség (1938), reprinted in Marxizmus, népiesség, magyarság (Marxism, Populism, Hungarianness) (Budapest: Szikra, 1949). Undated manuscript note, confiscated at house search, 1956; Nagy Trial, op.ir. vol. 34, pp 99–103. RGASPI, F. 495. op. 205, d. 54, pp 146–9. Ibid., p 130; see also ibid., op. 73, d. 147, pp 12–13. RGASPI, F. 495 op. 174, d. 189 and d. 208; op. 205, d. 54, p 132. RGASPI, F. 495 op. 74, d. 116, p 76. From among the extensive literature on these events see e.g. C.A. Macartney, October Fifteenth: A History of Modern Hungary 1929–1945 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1956–57), especially vol. 2, pp 319–470; Randolph L. Braham, Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, revised ed (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Krisztián Ungváry, The Siege of Budapest (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005). See Charles Gati, Hungary and the Soviet Bloc (Durham: Duke University Press, 1986), p 21; Mihály Korom (ed), ‘A magyar kommunista emigráció 1944 őszi megbeszélései a programkészítésről’ (Discussions of the Hungarian Communist emigrants on the making of a political programme in Fall, 1944), in Múltunk 38:1 (1993), pp 114–33.

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36. Imre Nagy in a text published posthumously: ‘Az 1945-ös földreformban betöltött szerepem meghamisítása’ (The falsification of my role in the agrarian reform of 1945), in Irodalmi Újság (Paris) 2 (1988), p 12. 37. István Vida, ‘Orosz levéltári források az 1944. őszi kormányalakítási tárgyalásokról, az Ideiglenes Nemzetgyűlés összehívásáról és az Ideiglenes Nemzeti Kormány megválasztásáról’ (Russian archival sources on the negotiations concerning the government-making, Provisional National Assembly and Provisional National Government, in Spring 1944), in Az Ideiglenes Nemzetgyűlés és az Ideiglenes Nemzeti Kormány, 1944–1945 (Budapest, 1995), p 86. 38. Personal communication with Erzsébet Nagy. 39. Gerő’s notes on 1–5 December 1944 talks with Stalin, PIL 274. f. 7/8. ő.e. pp 1–3 (Gerő recorded only Stalin’s statements). 4. Forced March Towards Socialism 1.

2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

See, for example, Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996); Norman Naimark and Leonid Gibianski (eds), The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe 1944–49 (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997); Stefan Creuzberger and Manfred Görtemaker (eds), Gleichschaltung unter Stalin? Die Entwicklung der Parteien im östlichen Europa, 1944–1949 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2002), pp 319–52. See, for example, István Bibó, Democracy, Revolution, Self-Determination. Selected Writings, ed Károly Nagy (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1991). Zoltán Szabó, ‘Batthyány sors’ (A fate like Batthyány’s) in Irodalmi Újság (London), 15 July 1958, p 3. For an overview of the reform with statistical analysis see Ivan Volgyes, ‘The impact of Communism in the rural sphere’, in Josef Held (ed), The Modernisation of Agriculture: Rural Transformation in Hungary, 1848–1975 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1980), pp 351–73. See PIL 274 f. 4/77.ő.e. MKP Központi titkárság jegyzőkönyve (Minutes of the meeting of the Central Secretariat, henceforth ‘Secretariat’), 21 August 1945. Ibid., f. 4/73.ő.e. Secretariat, 15 August 1945. Ibid., f. 3/7.ő.e, MKP Politikai Bizottság jegyzőkönyve (Minutes of the meeting of the Politburo, henceforth: ‘PB’), 15 August 1945, pp 7–11. Rákosi to Dimitrov, 3 September 1945, in ‘Dokumentumok Rákositól – Rákosiról’ (Documents of and about Rákosi), ed Henrik Vass, Múltunk 2–3 (1991), p 287. Bibó István (1911–1979). Életút dokumentumokban (István Bibó.: A Life in Documents), ed Tibor Huszár (Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 1995), p 255. PIL 274 f. 3/22.ő.e., PB, 31 January 1946. The decision on Nagy’s resignation was made by the Politburo (PIL 274.f. ő.e., PB, 8 March 1946) and approved ten days later (ibid., 4/123.ő.e., Secretariat,

208

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

23. 24.

25.

26. 27.

imre nagy 18 March 1946). Characteristic for the change is an anecdote of the times: in the first meeting of the ministry, the successor, Rajk, turned to the head of the political police, Gábor Péter, with these words: ‘I hear, Péter, that once Minister Nagy called you, you had no time to come. If this happens again, I’ll have you brought in by two cops!’ A magyar parlament 1944–1949 (The Hungarian Parliament 1944–49) (Budapest: Gulliver Lap- és Könyvkiadó, 1991), pp 268–320. Ferenc Nagy, The Struggle Behind the Iron Curtain, trans Stephen K. Sift (New York: Macmillan, 1948), p 180. Imre Kovács, Magyarország megszállása (Occupation of Hungary) (Budapest: Katalizátor, 1990), p 229. Bibó István (1911–1979). Életút dokumentumokban, p 258. Interview with Artur Sibelka-Perleberg, OHA, No. 87, p 87. OHA, No. 110, pp 170–71. Zoltán Szabó, ‘Batthyány sors’. Well characterized for East Germany in Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p 467. RGASPI F. 495 op. 205. d. 54, p 106. See Nicholas Bethell, Gomuł ka: His Poland, His Communism (New York: Holt, Reinhard & Winston, 1961); Andrzej Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom (Penn State University Press, 2003). The documents of the debate on agrarian policy are in MOL M-KS, 276.f.62/1 ő.e., dossier III. Imre Nagy published a good part of his contributions in the volume of articles, Imre Nagy, Egy évtized. Válogatott beszédek és írások (One Decade: Selected Speeches and Writings), 2 vols. (Budapest: Szikra, 1954), vol. 2, pp 119–52. MOL M-KS, 276. f. 52/9.ő.e., CC of the MDP, 3 September 1949. No documents survive on this matter; however, the records of planned show trials were destroyed in the 1960s. A former ÁVH officer, however, admitted in 1954 that Nagy’s arrest had been contemplated in 1949 (MOL M-KS, 276. f. 74/35 ő.e.). See T.V. Volokitina et al (eds), Vostochnaia Evropa v dokumentakh rossiiskikh arkhivov 1944–1953 (Eastern Europe in Documents of Russian Archives, 1944–53) (Moscow-Novosibirsk: Sibirskii Khronograph, 1997), vol. 1, pp 180–1. Béla Szász, Volunteers for the Gallows: The Anatomy of a Show Trial, trans Kathleen Szász (London: Chatto & Windus), p 160. On these aspects see, for example, Eugen Varga, 20th Century Capitalism (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1962).

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209

5. Up the Ladder 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

13.

They were published in Imre Nagy, Agrárpolitikai tanulmányok. Előadások az Agrártudományi Egyetemen és a Mezőgazdasági Akadémián (Studies in Agrarian Politics. Lectures at the Agrarian University and the Academy of Agriculture) (Budapest: Szikra, 1950). The original university lecture notes ended up among Nagy’s trial records. OHA, No. 23. Interview with A. Gyenes. OHA, No. 13. Interview with F. Fekete, pp 152–4. In 1956 and immediately thereafter few of them stood by their teacher, but later they became active in the reformed agrarian policies of the 1960s. MOL M-KS 276. f. 53/54.ő.e. PB, 1 June 1950. Ibid., 276. f. 54/101.ő.e. Secretariat, 24 May 1950. Gerő’s proposal of 23 May 1950, ibid., p 145. Ibid., 276. f. 53/54.ő.e. PB, 1 June 1950. Kádár János – végakarat (J. Kádár – Testament). Interview by András Kanyó, ed Mária Veres (Budapest: Hírlapkiadó, 1989), p 54. There is no study of these procedures in any foreign language, but see Sándor Orbán, Két agrárforradalom Magyarországon. Demokratikus és szocialista agrárátalakulás 1945–1961 (Two Agrarian Revolutions in Hungary: Democratic and Socialist Transformation 1945–61) (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1972), pp 87–130; Gyula Erdmann, Begyűjtés, beszolgáltatás Magyarországon 1945–1956 (Requisition and Forced Collection in Hungary, 1945–56) (Békéscsaba: Tevan Kiadó, 1992), pp 7–87. Speech of Nagy at the meeting of the CC of the MDP, 27 June 1953, published first by János Kis and Iván Pető, in the samizdat Beszélő 10 (1984). Reprinted in Beszélő összkiadás. 1981–1989 (Beszélő Complete Edition), 3 vols., ed Fanny Havas (Budapest: AB-Beszélő, 1992), vol. 1, p 636. Nagy left this commemoration speech out of the volume of his selected speeches and writings, published only a year later, 1954, so it is available only in the records of the parliament sessions. Christoph Klessmann/Bernd Stöver (Hg.), 1953 – Krisenjahr des Kaltes Krieges in Europa (Böhlau Verlag, Köln-Weimar-Wien, 1999); Yurii N. Zhukov, ‘Borba za vlasti v partiino-gosudarstvennikh verkhakh SSSR vesnoi 1953 goda’ (Fight for power in the leadership of party and state in the spring of 1953), Voprosi Istorii 5–6 (1996), pp 39–57; Nikita Khrushchev, Vospominania. Izbrannie fragmenti (Memories: Selected Fragments) (Moscow: Vagrius, 1997), pp 267–84 (these passages are not included in the English version, Khrushchev Remembers, with an introduction, commentary and notes by Edward Crankshaw, translated and edited by Strobe Talbott (London: Deutsch, 1971)); V.P. Naumov, ‘Borba N. S. Khrushcheva za iedinolichnuiu vlasti’ (The fight of N.S. Khrushchev for personal power), Novaia i Noveishaia Istoriia 2 (1996), pp 10–31. See ‘Notes of a meeting between the CPSU CC Presidium and a HWP political committee in Moscow June 13 and 16, 1953’, in 1956: A History in Docu-

imre nagy

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ments, pp 14–23. 14. András Hegedüs, Élet egy eszme árnyékában (Life in the Shadow of an Idea) (Budapest: ABC Szamizdat, 1985), p 192. 15. See Christian F. Ostermann (ed), Uprising in East Germany, 1953: The Cold War, the German Question, and the First Major Upheaval Behind the Iron Curtain (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2001). 16. Rumours about the negotiations in Moscow held that the Soviet leaders, especially Beria, criticized Rákosi for having filled the leading posts in Hungary with persons of Jewish origin. Supposedly Beria told Rákosi, ‘We heard that there was in Hungary a Turkish sultan, a Habsburg emperor, a Transylvanian prince, but not that there would have been a Jewish king – and you seem to have wanted to be just that.’ See Tamás Aczél and Tibor Méray, The Revolt of the Mind (New York: Praeger, 1959), p 159. Interestingly, at the CC meeting in Budapest only Révai referred to this matter and emphasized that in spite of his Jewish origin he regarded himself as a Magyar. 17. MOL M-KS 276. f. 52/24.ő.e. MDP CC meeting, 27–28 June 1953. pp 3–31. 18. Ibid., pp 32–51. 19. Rákosi maintained later that Moscow recommended the publication of the decision only when its result had become visible. See MOL M-KS 276. f. 53/170.ő.e. MDP CC meeting, 14 April 1954, p 103. 20. The decision was not published in 1953. First printed in the samizdat Hírmondó in 1985. Thereafter it was also published in the party journal Propagandista 4 (1986), pp 136–67. A slightly abbreviated text in English can be found in 1956: A History in Documents, pp 24–33. 21. Printed in Szabad Nép, 5 July 1953. See also Nagy, Egy évtized, vol. 2, pp 349–77. 6. The New Course 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

Mátyás Rákosi, Visszaemlékezések 1940–1956 (Memoirs 1940–56), 2 vols. (Budapest: Napvilág, 1997), vol. 2, p 932. Mátyás Rákosi, Válogatott beszédek és cikkek (Selected Speeches and Articles), 4th ed (Budapest: Szikra, 1955), p 567. Imre Nagy, Egy évtized, vol. 2, pp 377–88. Imre Nagy, On Communism: In Defense of the New Course (New York: Praeger, 1957), p 270. MOL XIX-A-83-a, minutes of the council of ministers, 10 July 1953. See Magdolna Baráth (ed), Szovjet nagyköveti iratok Magyarországról 1953– 1956. Kiszeljov és Andropov titkos jelentései (Documents of the Soviet Embassy on Hungary, 1953–1956. Secret Reports of Kiselev and Andropov; henceforth: Secret Reports) (Budapest: Napvilág, 2002), pp 54–72. Printed in Pravda, 9 August 1953. Rákosi, Visszaemlékezések 2, pp 897–900. See Romsics, Hungary in the Twentieth Century, pp 293–300. For more on economic policy see Iván Pető and Sándor Szakács, A hazai gazdaság négy

notes

10. 11.

12.

13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18.

211

évtizedének története 1945–1985. 1. köt. Az újjáépítés és a tervutasításos irányítás idôszaka 1945–1968 (Four Decades of Domestic Economy 1945–1985. vol. 1. The Period of Reconstruction and Plan-Commanded Economy) (Budapest: Közgazdasági és Jogi Kiadó, 1985), pp 246–61. On the importance of the easing of the political repressions see János Kornai, The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp 409–18. See Zhukov, ‘Borba za vlasty’; A.I. Kokurin and A.I. Pozharov (eds), ‘“Novyi Kurs” L.P. Berii 1953 g.’ (The ‘New Course’ of Beria in 1953), Istoricheskii Arkhiv 4 (1996), pp 132–64. In general see Amy Knight, Beria. Stalin’s First Lieutenant (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). Now available in Iratok az igazságszolgáltatás történetéhez (Documents of the History of the Administration of Justice), ed Pál Solt et al (Budapest: Közgazdasági, 1993), vol. 2, pp 586–7. From the prisons, out of some 40,000 inmates more than 15,000 were released; from the state security camps at Recsk, Kistarcsa, Kazincbarcika and Tiszalök, 3,234 out of 5,000 inmates were freed. At the same time, new criminal proceedings were initiated against 659 persons charged with espionage, war crimes, attempted illegal border crossing and the like. In late autumn some 1,200 foreigners, who as prisoners of war from Western countries had landed in the internment camp at Tiszalök, were released and most of them sent to the Federal Republic of Germany. For those persons, some 22,000 in number, who had been removed from Budapest and other cities as well as from localities near the border, freedom of movement was restored. Fines were nullified in 427,000 instances and about 230,000 ongoing cases of offence against public order were terminated. As a result of the amnesty, nearly 29,000 trials and continuing investigations by police and prosecutors were discontinued. And the 450,000 persons subject to police surveillance were again free to move. MOL XIX-A-2-v, Records of Prime Minister Nagy 70 d. nos. 177–8 contains the report of the head of the State Office for Church Affairs on the meeting and on the open questions. Moreover the termination of a cooperative required a two-thirds majority in open voting. But if ten members wished to continue with the collective arrangement, they constituted a minority veto. Then the cooperative remained in operation and those choosing to leave could do so but with personal responsibility for all debts. Neither withdrawal nor termination of the cooperative was allowed until after the harvest and the winter planting. And local authorities typically made the requirements stricter still. Pető and Szakács, A hazai gazdaság, pp 256–8. MOL M-KS 276.f. 52/25 ő.e., CC of the MDP, 31 October 1953. See Baráth, Secret Reports, pp 103–11. See, for example, research material of Radio Free Europe, Open Society Archive, Budapest, File ‘Imre’, 9 September 1953, pp 7–21. See also Osteuropa-Bibliothek, Bern, David Irving Kollektion. USA Department of State,

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19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

Office of Intelligence Research. Intelligence Report No. 6424. ‘“New Course” in Hungary: Policies and Prospects’, 29 September 1953; NSC 174, ‘United States Policy Towards the Soviet Satellites in Eastern Europe’, 11 December 1953, in 1956: A History in Documents, pp 34–53. Nagy, Egy évtized 2, pp 429–80. Baráth, Secret Reports, p 122. János Kádár was arrested in April 1951 and sentenced to life imprisonment in a secret trial. Ibid., pp 137–47. Nagy, ‘Problémák’ (Problems), manuscript dated 1954, confiscated and now in Nagy Trial, op.ir. vol. 22, pp 68–82. Imre Nagy, Egy évtized 2, p 407; see also MOL M-KS 276. f. 52/26.ő.e., CC of MDP, 19 December 1954. See ‘Note of the Discussion between the CPSU CC Presidium and a HWP Leadership Delegation in Moscow, May 5, 1954’, in 1956: A History in Documents, pp 54–9.

7. Victory and Defeat 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

A MDP III. kongresszusának rövidített jegyzőkönyve (Abbreviated Minutes of the Third Congress of the MDP) (Budapest: Szikra, 1954), pp 159–79, here p 169. Ibid., p 225. MOL M-KS 276 f. 53/179.ő.e., MDP PB, 3 June 1954. Ibid., 53/181.ő.e., MDP PB, 16 June 1954, pp 8–17. Béla Szalai, István Friss, András Hegedüs and József Mekis on the one side, and the finance minister, Károly Olt, and Zoltán Vas, head of the secretariat of the Council of Ministers, from among Nagy’s supporters, on the other; see MOL M-KS 53/187.ő.e., MDP PB, 28 July 1954; see also Nagy, On Communism, pp 269–77. MOL M-KS 53/191.ő.e., MDP PB, 25 August 1954, p 44. Ibid., 53/187.ő.e., MDP PB, 28 July 1954. Ibid., 53/190.ő.e., MDP PB, 18 August 1954. Ibid., 53/193.ő.e., MDP PB, 8 September 1954. Ibid., 53/194.ő.e., MDP PB, 15 September 1954. On these proposals and the plans of the young economists in the New Course, see János Kornai, A gondolat erejével: Rendhagyó életrajz (With the Power of Thought: An Irregular Biography) (Budapest: Osiris, 2005), pp 71–106. MOL M-KS 52/27.ő.e., MDP CC, 1–3 October 1954. Ibid., 65/256.ő.e. See Andropov’s report on his conversation with Nagy on 11 October 1954, in Baráth, Secret Reports, pp 200–3. Magdolna Baráth: ‘Az MDP vezetése és a rehabilitáció (1953–1956)’ (The leadership of the MDP and the rehabilitation), Múltunk 4 (1999). MOL M-KS 276 f. 62/1.ő.e., pp 181–208, Memorandum of Attorney General Czakó to Imre Nagy, November 1954.

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17. Imre Nagy, ‘A Központi Vezetőség ülése után’ (After the meeting of the CC), Szabad Nép, 20 October 1954. 18. A Hazafias Népfront I. Kongresszusa (The First Congress of the Patriotic People’s Front) (Budapest: Szikra, 1954), p 62. 19. See, for example, Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War, pp 137–73; Rudolf G. Pikhoia, ‘O vnutropoliticheskoi bor’be v sovietskom rukovodstve 1945–1958 gg.’ (On the foreign policy fights in the Soviet leadership 1945–58), Novaia i Noveishaia Istoriia 6 (1995), pp 3–14. 20. Tibor Hajdu, ‘Szovjet diplomácia Magyarországon Sztálin halála előtt és után’ (Soviet diplomacy in Hungary before and after Stalin’s death), in Ignác Romsics (ed), Magyarország és a nagyhatalmak a 20. században. Tanulmányok (Hungary and the Great Powers in the Twentieth Century. Studies) (Budapest: Teleki László Alapítvány, 1995), p 200. 21. See Miklós Vásárhelyi, Ellenzékben (In Opposition) (Budapest: Szabad Tér, 1989), p 64. On the demonstrations see Aczél and Méray, The Revolt of the Mind, pp 242–3. The matter was discussed in the highest party organs; see MOL M-KS. 276.f. 53/184.ő.e., MDP PB, 7 July 1954. 22. The demonstrations of Hungarian fans had to be excused and explained by Rákosi in an audience with Ambassador Andropov on 11 August 1954; see Baráth, Secret Reports, p 175. 23. A mass meeting in a proletarian district of Budapest in September, calling for a strike against the municipal transport company, had to be dispersed by police; it was reported as far up as the prime minister’s office, see MOL XIXA-2-v. 69, No. M-1356. 24. Irodalmi Újság, 13 October 1954. 25. See Aczél and Méray, The Revolt of the Mind, pp 270–90. 26. Rákosi, Visszaemlékezések, 2, p 970. 27. MOL M-KS 276.f. 53/206.ő.e., MDP PB, 1 December 1954. 28. Ibid., 276.f. 53/208.ő.e., MDP PB, 9 December 1954. 29. See ‘Notes of the discussion between the CPSU CC Presidium and a HWP leadership delegation in Moscow, on January 8, 1955’, in 1956: A History in Documents, pp 60–5; see also Rákosi, Visszaemlékezések, 2, p 974. 30. MOL M-KS 276.f. 62/1.ő.e., MDP CC; Draft resolution of the Moscow delegation of 8 January 1955, pp 62–3. 31. Ibid., 276.f. 52/28.ő.e., MDP CC, 2–4 March 1955. 32. The draft of the letter was published by György T. Varga, ‘Nagy Imre politikai levelei. 1954. dec. 14-1956. okt. 9.’ (The political letters of Imre Nagy, 14 December 1954–9 October 1956) (henceforth Nagy Letters), in Új Fórum 1:4 (1989), pp 18–25. 33. MOL M-KS 276.f. 52/29.ő.e., MDP CC, 14 April 1955. 34. János Kornai, The Socialist System, p 383. 35. See George Schöpflin, Politics in Eastern Europe 1945–1992 (Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993), pp 105–7. 36. See Nagy, ‘Gondolatok’, p 200.

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8. In Opposition 1. Imre Nagy Letters, pp 26–7. 2. Ibid., p 27. 3. György T. Varga, Levéltári dokumentumok Nagy Imréről 1955–1956. I–VI. rész (Archival Documents on Imre Nagy, 1955–56, Pts. 1–3), Új Fórum, 1989 (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) (henceforth Imre Nagy Documents, 1955–56). 4. Vásárhelyi, Ellenzékben, pp 106–65, 238–315. 5. Chapter title in Miklós Molnár, Budapest 1956: A History of the Hungarian Revolution (London: Allen and Unwin, 1971), p 58. 6. Imre Nagy Letters, pp 11–39; Imre Nagy Documents, 1955–56, Pt. 3, Új Fórum 7 (1989). 7. On writing the treatises see Imre Nagy, On Communism, pp xxix–xliv. On the details of the major studies, see Chapter 14 of this book. 8. Ibid., p 14. 9. Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 2, p 35, interrogation minutes, Nagy, 16 July 1954, pm. Nagy wrote (e.g. in Nagy, ‘Gondolatok’, pp 113–21, 128–34, 202–7) usually in general about the ‘opposition’ and no statement of his is known about the development of his circle of friends. He made a distinction, though, between his ‘like-minded friends’ (such as Haraszti, Losonczy, Donáth, Jánosi, Vásárhelyi, József Szilágyi, Újhelyi, Gyula Hajdu, Benjámin and Kónya) and ‘adherents’ (Gimes, Fazekas, Lőcsei, János Mikó, Balázs Nagy, József Surecz, György Radó and Déry). With some of them (e.g. Donáth) he got in closer contact only in 1956 and counted them among his circle because of their behaviour during and after the revolution. Cf. also vizsg.ir. vol. 1, interrogation minutes, Nagy, 15 April 1957. At that point his interrogators assumed that the ‘Nagy-Losonczi-Group’ would have been identical with those taken to Romania. See also Vásárhelyi, Ellenzékben, pp 304–11. 10. See, for example, Aczél and Méray, The Revolt of the Mind, pp 345–63; Molnár, Budapest 1956, pp 80–1; János M. Rainer, Az író helye (The Writer’s Stance) (Budapest: Magvető, 1990), pp 192–221. 11. Imre Nagy Documents, 1955–56, Pt. 3, p 47; and A Magyar Dolgozók Pártja határozatai 1948–1956 (Decisions of the MDP 1948–1956) (Budapest: Napvilág, 1998), p 387. 12. Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 15. k. Submission of Nagy to the CC of the MDP, June 1956, pp 54–7. 13. Méray, Thirteen Days That Shook the Kremlin, p 41. 14. János M. Rainer, ‘National independence, neutrality, and cooperation in the Danube region: Imre Nagy’s foreign policy ideas’, in Ignác Romsics and Béla K. Király (eds), Geopolitics in the Danube Region. Hungarian Reconciliation Efforts, 1848–1998 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1998), pp 281–304. 15. MOL M-KS 276. f. 52/33.ő.e., MDP CC, 12–13 March 1955. 16. Aczél and Méray, The Revolt of the Mind, pp 383–415; András B. Hegedűs, ‘The Petőfi Circle: The forum of reform in 1956’, in Terry Cox (ed), Hungary

notes

17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32.

215

1956: Forty Years On (London: Frank Cass, 1997), pp 108–34; Rainer, Az író helye, pp 222–72; Vásárhelyi, Ellenzékben, pp 237–317. Cf. ÁBTL V-150.000/85: report of Lieutenant-Colonel Sándor Rajnai and Capt. Zoltán Komornik about ‘Contacts of Imre Nagy and his group of traitors with members of the Budapest Yugoslav embassy’, 31 May 1957; Nagy Trial, op.ir. vol. 35; Pro memoria of the Ministry of the Interior on the Yugoslav connections of the Nagy case, 12 January 1958 etc. It is likely that all these summaries were designed for the information of the Soviets. Based on these, on 31 May 1957, Yurii Andropov, at that time in charge of the contacts to the Communist Parties at the CC of the CPSU, sent a report to all members of the Presidium, RGANI, F. 89. op. 2. d. 5.35, pp 117–37. Ferenc Jánosi and József Surecz, as defendants of the Nagy trial, gave details about the sending of the memorandum to Moscow (see Nagy Trial, vizsg. ir. vol. 34, pp 112–13; vol. 35, pp 232–3, 142); ÁBTL V-150.016/1. dossz., pp 57–8. Nagy himself admitted in court that he passed on his writings to Moscow; Nagy Trial, bír.ir. 27. d. 2. dossz., pp 30–1. OHA Kerekasztal, p 203. Recollection of András B. Hegedűs. Ibid., pp 216–17. Recollection of Miklós Vásárhelyi. For Suslov’s report on his Budapest visit see Sovietskii Soiuz i vengerskii krizis 1956 goda, pp 85–7. Note on talks of MDP Politburo members with Suslov, 8 June 1956, MOL M-KS 276. f. 53/310.ő.e., pp 20, 22. On the press debate see András B. Hegedűs and János M. Rainer (eds), A Petőfi Kör vitái hiteles jegyzőkönyvek alapján, Vol. 4. Partizántalálkozó – Sajtóvita (Debates in Petőfi Circle Based on Authentic Minutes. Vol. 4. Meeting of Former Partisans – Press Debate) (Budapest: Múzsák, 1956-os Intézet, 1991). Report of Andropov, after 27 June 1956, in Sovietskii Soiuz i vengerskii krizis 1956 goda, p 122. MOL M-KS 276. f. 52/34.ő.e., MDP CC, 30 June 1956. Ibid., 276. f. 54/403.ő.e., MDP Secretariat, 2 July 1956. Report of Andropov, 9 July 1956, in Sovietskii Soiuz i vengerskii krizis 1956 goda, pp 137–42. MOL M-KS, F. 2431. MDP PB, 12 July 1956. Report of Andropov, 11 July 1956, in Sovietskii Soiuz i vengerskii krizis 1956 goda, pp 143–7. 1956: A History in Documents, pp 129–35. See also Sereda and Rainer (eds), Döntés a Kremlben, pp 19–21. For Mikoyan’s reports see Sovietskii Soiuz i vengerskii krizis 1956 goda, pp 152–84. Cf. Rákosi, Visszaemlékezések 2, pp 1018–20; András Hegedüs, A történelem és a hatalom igézetében. Életrajzi elemzések (Hypnotized by History and Power. A Biographical Analysis) (Budapest: Kossuth, 1988), pp 266–8. For minutes of the MDP CC, 18–21 July 1956, see MOL M-KS 276. f. 52/35. ő.e., see also Szabad Nép, 19 July 1956. Géza Losonczy, ‘Az értelmiségi határozatról’ (On the resolution about the intelligentsia), Művelt Nép, 2 September 1956.

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33. See, for example, Leo Gluchowski, ‘Poland 1956. Khrushchev, Gomu łka and the “Polish October”’, in Cold War International History Project Bulletin 5 (1) (Spring 1995), pp 38–49. 34. Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 2, pp 71–80, interrogation minutes, Nagy, 19 July 1957, pm.; ibid. vol. 9, pp 191–201, interrogation minutes, Losonczy, 22 July 1957; ibid. vol. 3, S. 92–101, interrogation minutes, Zoltán Vas, 24 May 1957; ibid. pp 208–14, interrogation minutes, Imre Karczag, 26 June 1957. 35. At the student assembly of 22 October at Budapest Technical University several thousand students participated in formulating the demands to be presented on the following day. In addition to the typical inner-party opposition programme – Nagy into the government, a party congress, reforms in agriculture – they called for democratic and national rights, a multiparty system, free elections, economic independence and restoration of traditional national holidays and symbols and, finally, the withdrawal of Soviet troops. The spontaneous nature of the demands is attested by the fact that the famous ‘points of the Technical University’ varied in number (ten, 14 or 16) according to the memory of the note-taker. The 16-point version is printed in English translation in 1956: A History in Documents, pp 188–90. 36. The draft survived in a notebook of Nagy’s that he took to Romania. It is now in Arkhiv SRI (Bucharest) Dosar fond penal No. 40041. 11. vol. 1/2., pp 149–53. It contains some very strong words, such as, ‘The country is impoverished, run-down, backward. Shameful. We used to be admired. … The system’s faults [underlined]: inhuman, unnational, rootless. … We once faced the faulty policies – Started on the road which we have to follow – What happened? Who is responsible? – The country paid dearly for it – Justice has to be done to the people, the working class, the peasantry, the intelligentsia!’ 37. Published as ‘Losonczy Géza sajátkezű feljegyzése az október 23-án Losonczy lakásán tartott megbeszélésrõl’ (Manuscript notes of G.L. on the session held in his flat on 23 October), História 12:2 (1990), p 3. 9. Revolution 1.

For the general narrative and literature on the revolution see György Litván (ed), The Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Reform, Revolt and Repression 1953– 1963. English version by J.M. Bak and L.H. Legters (London and New York: Longman, 1996); 1956: A History in Documents, passim; Lee W. Congdon and Béla K. Király (eds), The Ideas of the Hungarian Revolution, Suppressed and Victorious 1956–1999 (Boulder, CO, and Highland Lakes, NJ: Social Sciences Monographs/Atlantic Research and Publications Inc., 2002). Good collections of sources in translation are Paul E. Zinner, National Communism and Popular Revolt in Eastern Europe (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956); Melvin J. Lasky (ed), The Hungarian Revolution. A White Book (London: Secker & Warburg, 1957) (henceforth Lasky, White Book) and the Bibliography to the present volume. See also the website of the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, www.rev.hu (English version).

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2. Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 1, p 21, interrogation minutes, Nagy, 16 April 1957; ibid., vol. 17, interrogation minutes, Miklós Gimes, 19 April 1957; ibid., vol. 9. p 109, interrogation minutes, Géza Losonczy, June 1957. 3. Ferenc Erdei told the investigating officers that the deputy prime ministers invited Nagy on their own initiative and informed Gerő only later, but he then agreed with them; see Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 3, interrogation minutes, Erdei, 19 July 1957. 4. See Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 1, p 73, interrogation minutes, Nagy, 14 June 1957. 5. Ibid., vizsg.ir. vol. 8, pp 12–13. The interrogators had the text of the MTI (Hungarian News Agency) which was also printed in the papers of 24 October, but these were not sold on the streets. 6. What I wish to allude to is the resounding ‘Granted!’ of the Hungarian parliament in the autumn of 1848, when Kossuth asked for the approval of a budget and a general draft against the advancing Habsburg forces. 7. Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 1, köt. p 75, interrogation minutes, Nagy, 14 June 1957. 8. 1956: A History in Documents, p 217. 9. Nagy Trial, bír.ir., p 352. 10. At the Third Congress 70 members and 19 ‘candidate members’ were elected, but many of them, from outside the capital, would not have been able to attend the late-night meeting, while some ministers, not necessarily CC members, may have been there. 11. No minutes of the session survive, but the sequence of events was successfully reconstructed by Zoltán Ripp, ‘A pártvezetés végnapjai’ (The last days of the party leadership), in Julianna Horváth and Zoltán Ripp (eds), Ötvenhat októbere és a hatalom (October ’56 and the Authorities) (Budapest: Napvilág, 1997) (henceforth Horváth and Ripp, Ötvenhat októbere), pp 190–209. A note on the first part of the meeting in ÁBTL V-150.006/6. dossz., pp 293–4, fully supports his presentation. 12. László Varga and János Kenedi (eds), A forradalom hangja. Magyarországi rádióadások 1956. október 23.–november 9 (The Voice of the Revolution: Hungarian Broadcasts, 23 October–9 November, 1956) (Budapest: Századvég–Nyilvánosság Klub, 1989) (henceforth Voice), pp 29–30. See also Lasky, White Book, p 58. 13. Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 1, p 83, interrogation minutes, Nagy, 14 June 1957; ibid., vol. 2, p 99, interrogation minutes, Nagy, 30 July 1957. 14. Voice, pp 31–2; Lasky, White Book, pp 59–61. 15. Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 1, pp 109–10, interrogation minutes, Nagy, 24 June 1957. Here all this is dated the 24th, but the context suggests the following day. 16. Voice, p 72; Lasky, White Book, p 75. 17. Gyula Kozák and Adrienn Molnár (eds), ‘Szuronyok hegyén nem lehet dolgozni!’ Válogatás 1956-os munkástanács-vezetők visszaemlékezéseiből (‘One Cannot

218

18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

imre nagy Work on the Tip of Bayonets’: Selections from the Memories of Workers’ Council Leaders of 1956) (Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 1993), pp 349–51. Ferenc Donáth, ‘A forradalom első napjai’ (The first day of the revolution), in Donáth, A Márciusi Fronttól Monorig (Budapest: Századvég, 1992), p 109. See the report of Mikoyan and Suslov to the CC of the CPSU, 26 October 1956. okt. 26: 1956: A History in Documents, pp 235–6. ‘A Magyar Dolgozók Pártja vezető testületeinek dokumentumai 1956. október 24–október 28’ (Documents of the leading organs of the MDP, 24–28 October 1956), in Horváth and Ripp, Ötvenhat októbere, pp 57–71. On the negotiations see ÁBTL V-150.001/5. dossz., pp 56–58, interrogation minutes, István Pozsár, 11 June 1957; Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 2, pp 274–7, interrogation minutes, Pozsár, 9 August 1957; ibid., vol. 3, interrogation minutes, László Kardos, 17 August 1957. Horváth and Ripp, Ötvenhat októbere, pp 79–81; 1956: A History in Documents, p 237. Donáth, ‘A forradalom első napjai’, pp 114–15. See 1956: A History in Documents, pp 237–9. The Hungarian representative at the UN received instructions from the Budapest Ministry of Foreign Affairs to oppose all the interventions in the internal affairs of Hungary, the introduction of the Hungarian situation to the agenda of the UN Security Council included. It was also the guideline of the Soviet representative. See 1956: A History in Documents, pp 270–1. András Hegedüs, Élet egy eszme árnyékában (Life in the Shadow of an Idea), p 263. For the text of the letter see Éva Gál, András B. Hegedűs, György Litván and János M. Rainer (eds), A Jelcin-dosszié. Szovjet dokumentumok 1956-ról (The Yeltsin File: Soviet Documents on 1956) (Budapest: Századvég/1956-os Intézet, 1993), pp 56–7. The original, unsigned, copy, with Nagy’s handwritten note ‘Aláírásra átadták okt. 27-én’ (Presented for signature, 27 October), is in Nagy Trial, op.ir. vol. 1, p 157. See Fig. 22. Nagy was repeatedly asked about this delegation (see Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 2, pp 131–5, 223–4, interrogations of 19, 21, 24 June 1957) and there are many other statements about it in the interrogation minutes of, among others, Péter Józsa, Miklós Gimes and József Szilágyi. Horváth and Ripp, Ötvenhat októbere, p 96, n.10. Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 7, pp 99–100, undated handwritten notes of Nagy. See Figs. 23 and 24. Horváth and Ripp, Ötvenhat októbere, p 106. Under the guise of ‘rational allocation of arable land’ (tagosítás), individual farmers were regularly deprived of fertile plots in favour of the cooperatives and assigned poor fields, often far from their village. Voice, pp 131–2; Lasky, White Book, pp 115–16; 1956: A History in Documents, pp 284–5. The minutes of the government meeting were published in 1956: A History in Documents, pp 273–83.

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34. 1956: A History in Documents, pp 262–9. 35. Méray, Thirteen Days That Shook the Kremlin, p 134. 36. See ‘Iván Kovács László a forradalomban. Részlet Iván Kovács László önvallomásából (1957. III. 16.)’ (L. Iván Kovács in the revolution. Selection from the confession of L.I.-K., 16 March 1957), ed László Eörsi, Évkönyv I (1993), p 213. 10. Endgame 1. Voice, p 211; Lasky, White Book, p 114. 2. Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 1, p 230, interrogation minutes of 8 July 1957, pm. 3. Sovietskii Soiuz i vengerskii krizis, pp 457, 460; 1956: A History in Documents, pp 297–8. 4. Voice, p 226; Lasky, White Book, p 139; also printed in the daily papers of 31 October 1956. 5. Published in Párttörténeti Közlemények, 1957, pp 140–4. 6. Voice, p 245; Lasky, White Book, p 139. The original initialled by Imre Nagy is in Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 8, p 106. On the meeting, see ibid., vol. 1, pp 140–50, interrogation minutes of 27 June 1957. The minutes of the committee’s founding meeting are in ÁBTL V-150.393/3, pp 54–61. 7. Dudás’s fame cost him his life: he was among the first to be tried by a military court and executed on 19 January 1957. 8. See Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 1, pp 218–22, interrogation minutes of 6 July 1957, am. 9. Anna Kéthly, Szabadságot Magyarországnak! Írások, beszédek, tanúságtétel a magyar szabadságért a száműzetésben (Freedom for Hungary! Writings, Speeches as Testimony for Hungarian Freedom in Exile) (Budapest: Kéthly Anna Alapítvány, n.d.), p 7. 10. See Zinner, National Communism, pp 485–91; Lasky, White Book, p 146; 1956: A History in Documents, pp 300–2. The declaration was broadcast by Radio Moscow late in the evening of 30 October. Budapest papers printed it partially or fully on the next day. 11. See: Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 19, p 34, interrogation minutes, Zoltán Tildy, 28 May 1957. 12. 1956: A History in Documents, pp 314–15. 13. Voice, pp 292–3; Lasky, White Book, p 155. There exists a complete sound recording of this speech, now on CD in the Institute for the History of 1956. 14. Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 3, interrogation minutes, Jenő Széll, 28 June 1957. 15. Voice, p 293. 16. Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 1, interrogation minutes, Nagy, 1 July 1957. 17. George Heltai, ‘November 1956: The end in Budapest’, off-print from East Europe, n. d., p 11. 18. 1956: A History in Documents, pp 307–8; Sovietskii Soiuz i vengerskii krizis, p 479. Interestingly, three days earlier, at the first news of the Suez bombing, Khrushchev reacted in the exact opposite way, saying, ‘The English and the

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19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

imre nagy French are meddling in Egypt. Let’s not get into one company with them’ (ibid., p 439). At that point, he wished to show that Moscow would not ‘meddle’ in another country’s business. 1956: A History in Documents, p 307. On the United States’ position see documents in 1956: A History in Documents, pp 231–3, 240–5, 324–5. A complete collection in the context of regional policy is: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957. Eastern Europe, vol. XXV (1990). See also John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997); László Borhi, Hungary in the Cold War, 1945–1956. Between the United States and the Soviet Union (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004); Csaba Békés, The 1956 Hungarian Revolution and World Politics (Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC, September 1996, Working Paper No. 16). 1956: A History in Documents, pp 338–9. Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir., vol. 12. Ibid., vol. 1, p 180, interrogation minutes, Nagy, 2 July 1957. 1956: A History in Documents, p 331. Voice, pp 357–8; Lasky, White Book, p 181; 1956: A History in Documents, p 332. Voice, p 361; Lasky, White Book, p 182; 1956: A History in Documents, p 334. The reason for the choice of a name for the new Communist party so close to that of the 1924–28 front organization is not known. The ‘Vági-Party’ was in no way remembered as a particularly successful episode of the Communist movement. It is true, though, that by 1956 few people would have noticed the identical acronym. Two leading figures of the new Communist Party, Nagy and Szántó, were active in the 1924–28 MSZMP, however. 1956: A History in Documents, p 346. On Soviet–Romanian negotiations see excerpts from memoirs of the ambassador of Yugoslavia in Moscow, Veljko Micunovic, 1956: A History in Documents, pp 348–54. On the relationship of the Romanian leaders towards the Hungarian revolution see Ildikó Lipcsey (ed), Magyar-román kapcsolatok 1956–1958. Dokumentumok (Hungarian–Romanian Relations. Documents) (Budapest: Paulus-Publishing/Nagy Imre Alapítvány, 2004). Nagy, ‘Gondolatok’, pp 11–12. Lasky, White Book, p 216. The text of the editorial of the central organ of the Chinese Communist Party, ‘Long live the unity of the socialist countries!’, was published in Hungarian translation in Magyar Nemzet, 4 November 1956. Minutes of the press conference in Lasky, White Book, pp 224–6. Lipcsey, Magyar-román kapcsolatok, pp 130–7, 145–6.

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221

11. November the Fourth 1. Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 1, p 252, interrogation minutes, Nagy, 9 July 1957. 2. See 1956: A History in Documents, p 383. 3. Béla Király, ‘An abortive and the first real war between socialist countries,’ in The Ideas of the Hungarian Revolution, p 60; Nagy Trial, bír.ir. vol. 1, pp 75–6. 4. See István Bibó, ‘For Freedom and Truth. Proclamation on 4 November 1956’, in Bibó, Democracy, Revolution, Self-Determination, pp 325–6; see also his ‘The Hungarian Revolution: scandal and hope (1957)’, ibid., pp 331–56. 5. Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 1, pp 252–4, interrogation minutes, Nagy, 9 July 1957. 6. Radio Uzhhorod in Karpatho-Ukraine broadcast the speech of János Kádár on the wavelength of a Hungarian provincial station, Szolnok, at 5.05 am on 4 November. In this, Kádár announced that he had broken with the Nagy government and established a ‘Revolutionary Workers’-Peasants’ Goverment’ (Forradalmi munkás-paraszt kormány). 7. Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 1, pp 258–9. 8. Voice, p 488; Lasky, White Book, p 228. On the kidnapping of the delegation negotiating the troop withdrawal, see András Kő and Lambert J. Nagy, Tököl 1956 (Budapest: Publica, 1992). 9. Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 1, p 254, interrogation minutes, Nagy, 9 July 1957. 10. József Kiss et al (eds), Top Secret. Magyar–jugoszláv kapcsolatok, 1956 (Top Secret. Hungarian–Yugoslav Relations in 1956) (Budapest: MTA Jelenkorkutató Bizottság, 1995), p 228. 11. ‘Az MSZMP Intéző Bizottsága a jugoszláv követségen 1956. november 5.– november 22 (The Executive Committee of the MSZMP in the Yugoslav Embassy, 5–22 November 1956), ed Ferenc Glatz, in História, vol. 11 (1989), pp 4–5. 12. See note 6 above. 13. Judit Ember, Menedékjog – 1956. A Nagy Imre-csoport elrablása (Asylum: The Abduction of the Imre Nagy Group) (Budapest: Szabad Tér, 1989), p 6. 14. Nagy wrote the draft of this letter in a small notebook that was confiscated during the house search in Romania. It is now in Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 7, pp 107–10. On the discussion of the declaration, see ibid., vol. 1, p 266, interrogation minutes, Nagy, 9–10 July 1957, and bír.ir., dossier 3, pp 2–3, confrontation of Nagy and Donáth in court, 9 June 1958. 12. The Verdict 1.

Working notes from the Session of the CPSU CC Presidium, 23 October 1956, in 1956: A History in Documents, p 217. 2. Working notes from the Session of the CPSU CC Presidium, 28 October 1956, ibid., p 264. 3. Ibid., p 311. 4. Working notes from the Session of the CPSU CC Presidium, 31 October 1956, ibid., p 308.

222

5. 6. 7.

8.

9. 10.

11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

imre nagy The words of Nagy remembered by Mrs Szilágyi and Miklós Vásárhelyi. See Judit Ember, Menedékjog – 1956, pp 28, 145. Letter of Nagy to Donáth, 23 November 1956, published in the Hungarian samizdat periodical Beszélő in 1982. See Beszélő Összkiadás 1981–1989 1:103. On 3 December 1956, Tito wrote to Khrushchev, among others: ‘It is indeed difficult for us that you utterly disregard the standpoint and obligations of our government on this issue – both in respect to our constitution and to international law. We think that it would be most fortunate if you helped us to resolve the Imre Nagy situation.’ See 1956: A History in Documents, p 457. Memorandum on the support extended by the Yugoslavs to Imre Nagy by I. Zamchevskii, head of Department 5 of the Foreign Ministry of the USSR, Arkhiv Vnesnei Politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Archive of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation), F. 077. op. 37, p 191. d. 39, pp 82–93. See 1956: A History in Documents, pp 489–95. A Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt ideiglenes vezető testületeinek jegyzőkönyvei 1956–1957 (Minutes of the Provisional Leading Organs of the MSZMP 1956–57) (henceforth MSZMP Provisional Minutes), vol. 2, ed Karola Némethné Vágyi, Károly Urbán (Budapest: Intera, 1993), pp 79, 76. A jobboldali nézetektől az osztályárulásig. Adalékok Nagy Imrének és csoportjának elméleti és gyakorlati tevékenységéhez, 1947–1956 (Budapest: Kossuth, 1957). Report of Ponomarev. See Viacheslav Sereda and Alexandr Stikalin (eds), Hiányzó lapok 1956 történetéből. Dokumentumok a volt SZKP KB Levéltárából (Missing Pages from the History of 1956. Documents from the Archives of the Former CC CPSU) (Budapest: Móra, 1993), pp 257–63. MSZMP Provisional Minutes, 2:348. MSZMP Provisional Minutes, vol. 3, ed Magdolna Baráth and István Feitl (Budapest: Intera, 1993), p 69. MSZMP Provisional Minutes, 2:348; cf. 1956: A History in Documents, pp 517–23, here p 520. Report by Andropov, Rudenko and Ivashutin to the CC of the CPSU, 26 August 1957, in 1956: A History in Documents, pp 539–40. A Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt Központi Bizottságának 1957–1958. évi jegyzőkönyvei (Minutes of the CC of the MSZMP 1957–1958) (henceforth MSZMP CC Minutes), ed Karola Némethné Vágyi, et al (Budapest: MOL, 1997), p 168. Ibid., pp 153–63. MOL M-KS 288. f. 5/59.ő.e., p 10. MSZMP PB (Politbüro) 28 December 1957. Aleksandr Fursenko (ed), Presidium TsK KPSS 1954–1964, Chernovie protokol’nie zapisi zasedanii. Stenogrami (Presidium of the CC of the CPSU 1954–64. Draft Notes for the Minutes of the Sessions. Stenograms) (Moscow: Rosspen, 2003), p 293. The expression ‘tverdost’ i velikodushie’ sounds very much like a late echo of the Roman legal and Christian command of ‘justice with mercy’.

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21. The same opinion is expressed by the commentary from the editors of the Presidium minutes, ibid., p 1027. 22. MSZMP CC Minutes, p 239–44. 23. A report on this conversation was written by V.S. Baikov, counsellor of the Soviet embassy in Budapest; published by Viacheslav Sereda and Jelena Orekhova (eds), ‘V. Sz. Bajkov naplójából’ (Excerpts from diary of V.S. Baikov), Tekintet 5–6 (1995), p 201. 24. MSZMP CC Minutes, p 163. 25. Ibid., p 243. 26. ‘Budapesti jelentés’ (Report from Budapest), in Irodalmi Ujság (London), 1 May 1958. 27. MOL M-KS 288/5/75.ő.e. MSZMP PB, 15 April 1958, p 34. 28. No minutes survived from the PB session of May 27, but the decisions were published in facsimile in Ibolya Horváth, Pál Solt et al (eds), Iratok az igazságszolgáltatás történetéhez (Documents of the History of the Administration of Justice) (Budapest: Közgazdasági és Jogi Könyvkiadó, 1992), vol. 1, p 640. According to those, an ‘informal PB session’ was planned for 2 June but no records of that are known. The meeting of the CC of 6 June is recorded in MSZMP CC minutes, pp 325–417. See also György Litván, ‘The political background of the Imre Nagy trial’, in Lajos Dornbach (ed), The Secret Trial of Imre Nagy (London and Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994), pp 161–82. 29. Népszabadság, 17 June 1958. 30. His last attempt at this was made as late as a 12 April 1989 meeting of the CC of the MSZMP. See Anna S. Kosztricz, et al (eds), A Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt Központi Bizottságának 1989. évi jegyzkőönyve (Minutes of the MSZMP CC for 1989) (Budapest: MOL, 1993), 1:758–67. 13. Facing Death – Alone 1.

On the conditions in Snagov see the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Romániai 1956-os vonatkozású iratok gyüjteménye (Collection of Romanian Documents Regarding 1956) (henceforth Romanian Documents). Correspondence of Nagy, November 1956–April 1957 and taped material, the letter of Nagy to Walter Roman of 9 February 1957, in Nagy Trial, op.ir. vol. 1. 2. See note 9 to the Preface. 3. Several of these are now published in Nagy, Snagovi jegyzetek. 4. Romanian Documents. Conversation between Imre Nagy and Gyula Kállai, 25 January 1957. Kállai reported to the Executive Committee of the MSZMP on 29 January, see MSZMP Provisional Minutes, vol. 2, pp 76–9. According to Kállai, Nagy stated that ‘he does not feel himself guilty of anything, regards his decisions as correct and refers to the demands of the workers and students for the withdrawal of Soviet troops. … The party knew about his actions of those days. He stands by what he had said at that time, regards the events as revolutionary uprising and the calling upon the Soviet troops and

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5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19.

20.

imre nagy the new government’s actions in this respect as mistaken. He denies having ever encouraged counter-revolution.’ Romanian Documents, taped material, 10 December 1956. Nagy, ‘Gondolatok’, pp 93–4. Ibid., pp 186–7. Nagy Trial, op.ir. vol. 1, p 214, draft letter of Imre Nagy to the provisional CC of the MSZM, February 1957. Nagy, Viharos emberöltő; see note 7 to the Preface. Vásárhelyi, Ellenzékben, pp 179–80. Nagy Trial, vizsg.ir. vol. 1, pp 51–3, interrogation minutes, Nagy, 14 June 1957, am. Ibid., op.ir., vol. 18, pp 69–133. On his last months and the problematic circumstances of his death while on hunger strike, see György Kövér, Losonczy Géza 1917–1957 (Budapest: 1956os Intézet, 1998), pp 337–54. The prison records contain several reports on the poor health of the prisoners (e.g. Nagy Trial, op.ir. vol. 18., report of 28 December 1957). The appalling loss of weight is evident from the picture of Nagy at the trial (see Fig. 28). The ‘lay judges’ were Mihály Bíró, Kálmán Fehér, Ms Péter Lakatos – not an impartial judge, for her husband had been killed in the turmoil on 30 October – and György Sulyán, a judge in the military court and thus not a layman. Nagy Trial, bír.ir. vols. 2–3, minutes of the court session of 5 February 1958, typed from sound recording. In the following the references are to this text unless otherwise stated. The indictment and the sentence (of 15 June) were published in English translation in Dornbach (ed), The Secret Trial of Imre Nagy, pp 27–119. Radó, at the time of the trial, was 56 years old, had been a military judge since 1948 and became presiding judge at the High Court in April 1957. Nagy Trial, op.ir., vol. 18, pp 28–33, reports of József Ferencsik on the detainees of the ‘special group’. After his recovery, Radó remained a High Court judge until his retirement in 1971. He died in 1977. Ferenc Vida (1911–90) was an old underground Communist, jailed in 1942. After 1945 he worked, among other places, in the Ministry of the Interior under Nagy. In the spring of 1957 he became the specialist for the legal preparation of trials of ‘counter-revolutionaries’ and was the presiding judge in the first major political trial against the writer Tibor Déry and co-defendants. See OHA, Vida, Ferenc–Faragó, Jenő, Perbe fogott ítélet. Interjúk a Nagy Imre-per tanácsvezető bírájával (Verdict under Trial: Interviews with the Presiding Judge of the Imre Nagy Trial) (unpublished manuscript), pp 50–8. The records of the June trial survived in two versions. An uncorrected verbatim transcript based on the tape recording is on 495 pages in bír.ir. dossiers 1–7. This version is incomplete, as it lacks the record of several testimonies, but contains every word of Imre Nagy. Therefore, I rely on that. An abbrevi-

notes

225

ated official record of the trial is in bír.ir. vol. 1, pp 346–438. Nagy Trial, bír.ir., dossier 7, p 127. Ibid., p 129. Ibid., pp 129–30. Méray, Thirteen Days That Shook the Kremlin, p 281; Vásárhelyi, Ellenzékben, p 188. It is, though, not impossible that the forensic medical expert, Dr Endre Kelemen, who was the last person to speak to Nagy, communicated the contents of the letter or of their conversation – years later – to the family. Méray maintains that an ‘authentic’ message from death row reached the family, but nothing is known of its contents. According to András Kõ and Lambert J. Nagy (‘A titkok országútján’ (On the highway of secrets), Új Magyarország, 24 June 1995, the letter, together with other belongings of Nagy was discarded from the prison’s storage. 25. Minutes of the execution of the death sentence, 16 June 1958, Nagy Trial, bír. ir. vol. 1, p 393. 26. József Pajcsics, ‘Nagy Imre és mártírtársai sírhelyének felkutatása’ (Search for the graves of Imre Nagy and his fellow martyrs), Rendészeti Szemle 10 (1993), pp 89–106. 21. 22. 23. 24.

14. The Legacy 1. 2.

3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Sándor Kopácsi, In the Name of the Working Class: The Inside Story of the Hungarian Revolution (New York: Grove Press, 1986), p 31. Imre Nagy, A magyar nép védelmében. Vitairatok és beszédek 1955–1956 (In Defence of the Hungarian People. Treatises and Speeches 1955–1956) (Paris: Magyar Füzetek, 1984). In what follows, we are referring to the English edition, Imre Nagy, On Communism (see note 4 to Chapter 6) but have occasionally revised the translation by recourse to the Hungarian original. On the text of Nagy, ‘Gondolatok’, see note 9 to the Preface. He introduced the writings with these words: ‘I wish to state by way of introduction that I wrote this dissertation prior to the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, mainly during the summer of 1955, and I had practically finished it by September 1955. I expected my case to be discussed by the CC of the MDP during the autumn of that year.’ (On Communism, p xxix). Ibid., pp 50–1. Ibid., p 244. Ibid., pp 8–10. Ibid., p 21. Ibid., p 24. Ibid., p 28. Ibid., pp 32–3. Ibid., p 36. Ibid., p 34. Nagy, ‘Gondolatok’, p 56.

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15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

Ibid., p 57. Ibid., p 73. Ibid., p 123. Ibid., p 114. Ibid., p 132. Ibid. Ibid., p 117. Ibid., pp 130–3. Ibid., p 127. Ibid., p 98. The last half sentence was erased from the manuscript by Nagy, but remained in the copy of the security police, ms. p 32. Nagy, ‘Gondolatok’, p 98. Ibid., p 98–9. Ibid., p 127. Ibid., pp 136–8. Ibid., pp 139–40. Ibid., p 139. Ibid., p 157. Ibid., p 77. Ibid., p 80.

15. Post Mortem 1. 2.

3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

On the international reaction to the news see The Truth about the Nagy Affair, pp 163–215. See Csaba Békés, Cold War, Détente and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution (Working paper no. 7, Project on the Cold War as Global Conflict, International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University, 2002); László Borhi, Hungary in the Cold War, 1945–1956; Johanna C. Granville, The First Domino. International Decision Making during the Hungarian Crisis of 1956 (College Station, TX: A&M University Press, 2004), pp 158–202. The words of the former director of RFE, William E. Griffith, at a conference in 1996 suggest that those who were in charge of the radio in 1956 have still not critically evaluated their stance of 40 years earlier: ‘The greatest mistake of RFE during the revolution was most likely that it presented Imre Nagy falsely and attacked him. This was mistaken also insofar as thus only Nagy’s assumed pro-Soviet Communism was criticized instead of pointing out his actual shortcomings.’ See: Évkönyv 1996/1997 (Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 1997), p 265. See, for example, Gaddis, We Now Know, p 211. AFP, 20 June 1958, quoted in The Truth About the Nagy Affair, p 180. New York Times, 18 June 1958, quoted in ibid., pp 187–8. MOL M-KS 288 f., 22/1958 1. ő.e. p 80. MSZMP CC minutes, 1957–58, p 426. Even though several cuts were shown in different documentaries after 1989,

notes

10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

227

the whole ‘work’ was never shown. All other films from the court proceedings were destroyed in 1961 by the Ministry of the Interior. The Truth about the Nagy Affair, pp 163–215. For the monographs of Kecskeméti, Lomax, Molnár, Váli and the several collective volumes, see below, notes 13ff., and the Select Bibliography to this volume. Aczél and Méray, The Revolt of the Mind. Molnár and Nagy, Imre Nagy, p 218. Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘The ghost of Stalin’, in Béla K. Király, Barbara Lotze and Nándor F. Dreisziger (eds), The First War Between Socialist States: The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and Its Impact (New York: Brooklyn College Press, 1984), p 116. Raymond Aron, ‘The meaning of destiny’, in Tamás Aczél (ed), Ten Years After. The Hungarian Revolution in the Perspective of History (Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1966), pp 24–5. Ferenc A. Váli, Rift and Revolt in Hungary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), pp 186, 198–9. Miklós Molnár, ‘The heritage of Imre Nagy’, in Aczél, Ten Years After, p 172. Stephen Borsody, ‘Imre Nagy and Eurocommunism’, in Béla K. Király and Paul Jónás (eds), The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 in Retrospect (Boulder, CO: East European Quarterly, 1978), p 129. Ferenc Fehér and Ágnes Heller, Hungary 1956 Revisited. The Message of a Revolution – a Quarter of a Century After (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983), p 118. Ibid., pp 126–30. Cornelius Castoriadis, ‘The Hungarian source’, Telos 29 (1979), pp 4–5. Bill Lomax, Hungary 1956 (London: Allison & Busby, 1976), p 52. Ibid., pp 53–4. George Schöpflin, ‘Leadership options and the Hungarian Revolution’, in Király et al (eds), The First War Between Socialist States, p 535–48, especially pp 543–5. Condoleezza Rice and Michael Fry, ‘The Hungarian crisis of 1956: The Soviet decision’, in Jonathan R. Adelman (ed), Superpowers and Revolutions (New York: Praeger, 1986), pp 193–4. Charles Gati, Hungary and the Soviet Bloc (Durham: Duke University Press, 1986), pp 126–7. Ibid. Unwin, Voice in the Wilderness, pp 187–9. See, for example, Gaddis, We Now Know, pp 210–11, 235–6. See, for example, Granville, The First Domino, pp 19–24, 71–4.

16. Resurrection 1.

These words are cited in László Gyurkó, Arcképvázlat történelmi háttérrel (Portrait Sketch with Historical Background) (Budapest: Magvető, 1982), pp

228

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221–2. 2. ‘Négy névtelen sírhant’ (Four nameless graves), Irodalmi Újság 1 (1983). The article appeared anonymously; the editor-in-chief, Tibor Méray, conveyed the identity of the author to me. 3. János Kis, ‘Kirakatper zárt ajtók mögött’ (Show trial – behind closed doors), Beszélő 8; see Beszélő Összkiadás, 1:444. 4. Új Forrás (Tatabánya), October 1984. 5. ‘Emlékezés halottakra’ (Remembering the dead), AB Hírmondó 4 (1984). 6. The proceedings of the conference were edited as Ötvenhatról nyolcvanhatban (On ’56 in ’86), ed András B. Hegedűs (Budapest: Századvég/1956-os Intézet, 1992). 7. First printed in Beszélő 25; see Beszélő Összkiadás 3:603–4. 8. See Tetemrehívás 1958–1988 (Reckoning 1958–1988) (Paris: IUS-Szikra, 1988); János Kenedi, Kis állambiztonsági olvasókönyv (Little Reader on State Security) (Budapest: Magvető, 1996), vol. 2, pp 188–217. 9. See Kenedi, Kis állambiztonsági olvasókönyv, vol. 2, pp 218–29. 10. It was broadcast in one the most popular programmes, 168 Hours, on 28 January 1989. 11. On the background of this, see Chapter 3, pp 29–30. 12. Péter Kende, ‘Mitől omlott össze?’ (What made it collapse?), in Kende, A párizsi toronyból. Válogatott politikai írások 1957–1989 (From the Parisian Tower: Selected Writings) (Budapest: Cserépfalvi, 1991), p 154. 13. János Kis, ‘Between reform and revolution: Three hypotheses about the nature of the regime change’, in Béla K. Király and András Bozóki (eds), Lawful Revolution in Hungary 1989–1994 (Boulder & Highland Lakes: Social Science Monographs/Atlantic Research and Publications, 1996), p 45. This collection of articles on the system change treats a number of issues I am going briefly to touch on below, without documenting them in detail. See also András Bozóki (ed), The Roundtable Talks of 1989. The Genesis of Hungarian Democracy (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2002). 14. Remedial petition of the procurator general and the decision of the Supreme Court; see Dornbach (ed), The Secret Trial of Imre Nagy, pp 119–60. 15. See György Litván, ‘A forty-year perspective on 1956’, in Terry Cox (ed), Hungary 1956: Forty Years On (London: Frank Cass, 1997), pp 14–26. 16. It is a peculiarity of Hungarian parliamentary tradition to enact the memory of great men, beginning with Lajos Kossuth (in the late nineteenth century), through Iosif Vissarionich Stalin in 1953. 17. Premier József Antal (a young teacher who had done little during the revolution and had therefore endured no particular penalties) did not distance himself from the demands of the veterans. He did not make much effort on the justice issue, however. His sceptical comment, uttered only in a private circle, was simply, ‘You should have deigned to make a revolution!’ 18. The survey was conducted between 2001 and 2004 by the research team of the Communication Theory Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and

notes

229

Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, under the leadership of Mária Vásárhelyi, to whom I express my thanks here for having allowed me insight into their results. On a 1–5 ascending scale of acceptance, the average for Kádár was 3.5, while Nagy remained below him with 3.4.

GLOSSARY OF PERSONS Aczél, Tamás (1921–94). Writer and journalist, active member of the Communist Party and the Hungarian Writers’ Union from 1945. Laureate of the Stalin Prize for literature. Leading figure of the opposition intelligentsia around Imre Nagy after 1953. Professor at the University of Massachusetts 1966–94. Alpári, Gyula (Julius) (1882–1942). Journalist and Communist functionary, founding member of KMP. Deputy commissar of foreign affairs in 1919. As émigré in Berlin he was editor of the Comintern’s journal Inprekorr. Escaped to France after Nazi takeover. Arrested by the Gestapo in Paris and killed in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Andropov, Yurii Vladimirovich (1914–84). Soviet politician. From 1951 on the staff of the CC Secretariat in Moscow. In July 1953 he became counsellor at the Soviet embassy in Budapest, later ambassador until March 1957, playing an important part in the Hungarian–Soviet negotiations during the 1956 revolution. After his return to Moscow, he became head of the KGB. Andropov took over power on Brezhnev’s death in 1982, when he became secretary general of the CPSU and also head of state. Angyal, István (1928–58). Construction technician and one of the best-known commanders of fighting groups during the revolution. Leader of the armed group that fought in the workers’ district of Tűzoltó Street. Tried and executed after the revolution. Apró, Antal (1913–94). Construction worker, trade unionist, pre-1945 Communist. Member of the party’s central organs over decades. Served in several governments between 1952 and 1961, then as speaker of parliament and member of the Presidential Council. Lost his position in the PB in 1980. Retired from politics in 1989. Bata, István (1910–82). Trade unionist from 1930, studied at the Military Academy in Moscow, became minister of defence 1953–56. During the revolution he fled to Moscow, from where he returned in 1958 but was expelled from the MSZMP and worked in the municipal transport company until his retirement. Benjámin, László (1915–86). Writer and poet. From 1945 a Communist journalist and editor of literary periodicals. After 1953 a member of the opposition intelligentsia around Imre Nagy. Member of the executive of the Writers’ Union in 1956. From 1956 a librarian, later editor-in-chief, of a weekly periodical. Beria, Lavrenti Pavlovich (1899–1953). Soviet politician. First secretary of the Georgian Communist Party 1921–38. Head of the NKVD and minister of

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the interior 1938–53. Became marshal of the Soviet Union in 1945 and deputy prime minister between 1946 and 1953. After Stalin’s death, the new leadership under Khrushchev feared that Beria would try to seize power and inform on them about their deeds during Stalin’s terror. He was arrested in late June 1953 on trumped-up charges and executed on 23 December of the same year. Bethlen, Count István (1874–1947). Conservative statesman, prime minister of Hungary 1921–31. In 1945 captured by the Soviets and died in the USSR. Bibó, István (1911–79). Jurist, historian and political scientist. Department head in the Ministry of the Interior 1945–46. Professor at the university in Szeged 1946–50. Minister of state (for the Petőfi Party) in Nagy’s last cabinet, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1958. After the 1963 amnesty, he worked as a librarian. Bibó’s works and political stance enjoyed a renaissance after his death. Biró, Zoltán (1898–1988). Communist politician, brother of Mátyás Rákosi. Held different instructional and agitprop posts in the MKP-MDP CC office. Fled to the USSR in 1956. Returned in 1958 and worked in the Institute for Economic Research of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Biszku, Béla (b. 1921). Pre-1945 Communist who occupied various party and state offices. Party secretary of a Budapest district in 1955–56, he was minister of the interior 1957–61, deputy prime minister 1961–62 and secretary of CC of the MSZMP 1962–78. Within the party a major figure in charge of the repression. Bognár, József (1917–96). Economist and politician. Originally in the FKGP, served as minister of trade in several governments between 1949 and 1956, and as deputy prime minister in Nagy’s 27 October government. After the defeat of the revolution held major academic and research positions until his retirement in 1993. Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich (1888–1938). Soviet politician and theoretician, Bolshevik from 1906, member of the CC of the CPSU and editor-in-chief of Pravda 1917–29. Chairman of the Comintern from 1926. After Lenin’s death, he first supported Stalin, but opposed his forced industrialization and collectivization policies and was relieved of all his functions in 1929. In 1938, in one of the major show trials, was condemned to death and executed. Rehabilitated in 1988. Bulganin, Nikolai Aleksandrovich (1895–1975). Soviet politician. Member of the CC of the CPSU from 1939 and of its Presidium 1948–58. As marshal of the USSR he was twice defence minister and from 1955 prime minister. However, in 1957, he joined a group intent on removing Khrushchev from power, and when this came to light he had to resign. He was later stripped of his rank and in 1961 expelled from the CPSU. Déry, Tibor (1897–1977). Socialist, later Communist writer. From 1955 a leading figure among opposition writers around Imre Nagy. Expelled from the party after the press debate in the Petőfi Circle in June 1956, he was one of the spokesmen for the writers during and after the revolution. In 1957 sentenced

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to nine years’ imprisonment. Given amnesty in 1960. Dimitrov, Georgi (1882–1949). Bulgarian Communist, leader of the Comintern. Lived in Berlin, where he was charged by the Nazis with having set fire to the Reichstag. Released after a celebrated trial, became secretary general of the Comintern in 1935 and prime minister of Bulgaria in 1946. Dobi, István (1898–1968). Farmer and politician. Member of the Smallholders’ Party (FKGP), later of the MDP. Prime minister 1948–52, head of state as chairman of the Presidential Council 1952–67. Member of the MSZMP CC 1959–68. Donáth, Ferenc (1913–86). Jurist, politician and pre-1945 Communist. From 1945 state secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and leading party functionary. Sentenced to 15 years in a secret trial in 1951, he was later rehabilitated. Active in the group around Nagy, he was interned with the Nagy group in Romania at the end of 1956. Sentenced to 12 years in prison in 1958, he was freed in 1960 and became a leading member of the democratic opposition in the 1980s. Dubček, Alexander (1921–92). Slovak Communist politician. Active in the antifascist resistance, was secretary of the Slovak Communist Party and in 1968 the leading figure of the ‘Prague Spring’ as head of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. Deposed from his party offices after the Warsaw Pact intervention in 1969 and sent into inner exile. Dubček was elected speaker of the free Czechoslovak Federal Parliament in 1989. He died in a car accident. Dudás, József (1914–57). Engineer and active Communist in Transylvania before 1945. In 1956 founded a ‘Hungarian Revolutionary National Committee’ and challenged the Imre Nagy government. One of the first to be executed (on 17 January 1957) because of his role in the revolution. Égető, Mária, Mrs Imre Nagy (1902–78). Daughter of socialist parents, married Nagy in 1925 and bore him a daughter, Erzsébet (b. 1927). Followed her husband to Moscow, remained all her life long a housewife and did not participate in politics. Her brief visit to her parents in Hungary (in 1935) triggered a disciplinary reprimand of her husband. Deported to Romania, she was allowed to return in 1958. Erdei, Ferenc (1910–71). Sociologist and politician. Co-founder, vice-president, later general secretary of the NPP. Held various ministerial posts 1948–56. Led the government negotiating team in Tököl where he was arrested by the KGB on 4 November 1956 but was freed again in a few weeks. Member of the Presidential Council 1965–71, general secretary of the Patriotic Popular Front 1964–70, and general secretary, later vice-president, of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences 1957–71. Farkas, Ferenc B(isztrai) (1903–66). Editor and politician. Leading member of the NPP, in 1956 of the Petőfi Party, and minister of state in Nagy’s last cabinet. In November–December 1956 worked with István Bibó on compromise plans. Retired from politics in 1958. Farkas, Mihály (1904–65). Old Communist. Active before 1945 in the Commu-

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nist Youth International, from 1921 member of the Czechoslovak CP, fought in the Spanish Civil War and was secretary of the Young Communist International in Moscow. In 1944 was made responsible for the trade unions, youth affairs and mass organizations, and later party finances and military and special forces affairs in Hungary. He became a member of the Secretariat of the CC of the MKP and soon of the PB as well and served as Minister of Defence. Dismissed from the party because of his involvement in ‘transgressions against legality’ in summer 1956. Sentenced to 16 years’ imprisonment in 1957 but freed in 1960. Fazekas, György (1913–84). Journalist and editor. As prisoner of war he joined the Soviet army. On the staff of the newspaper Szabadság; member of the inner-party opposition around Imre Nagy and in his secretariat during the revolution. Sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment in 1958. Released in 1963 and resumed work as editor. Fehér, Lajos (1917–81). Journalist and politician. Pre-1945 Communist, editor of the peasants’ newspaper Szabad Föld (Free Land) during the New Course and adherent of Nagy. Became member of the CC of the MSZMP 1956–81, of its PB 1957–75 and briefly editor of the party’s central organ, Népszabadság. As deputy prime minister (1962–74) he introduced reforms in agricultural policies, but after the defeat of the ‘new economic mechanism’ he was pensioned off. Fischer, József (1901–95). Architect and Social Democratic politician. Minister of state in Imre Nagy’s last cabinet. Between 1965 and 1978 lived in American exile. Földvári, Rudolf (b. 1921). Locksmith and party functionary. First secretary of the Budapest Party Committee in 1953–54, then that of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County 1954–56. Member and later chairman of the revolutionary council of the county in 1956. Sentenced in 1958 to life imprisonment. Freed in 1961 and thereafter worked as translator and technical editor. Friss, István (1903–79). Economist and politician. Pre-1945 Communist, after 1935 an émigré. Between 1945 and 1961 head of the MKP/MDP’s department for economy. From 1954 leader of the Institute of Economics at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Gerő, Ernő (1898–1980). Communist politician. Émigré in Vienna 1919–22 in Landler’s group of the KMP, arrested in Hungary but exchanged for prisoners in 1924 and worked in the Comintern, also as its representative in Western Europe and in the Spanish Civil War. Represented the Hungarian Communist Party in the Comintern 1939–41. In 1944 was the top man in the MKP until the return of Rákosi, and remained a member of the CC and the PB, head of the MKP/MDP’s state policy department in charge of economic policy during the entire Rákosi era, also deputy prime minister. After Rákosi’s fall, he was first secretary of the MDP from 17 July to 25 October 1956. During 1956–60 lived again in the Soviet Union. Gimes, Miklós (1917–58). Journalist. Foreign correspondent of Szabad Nép in

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1954, later a leading editor of Magyar Nemzet. One of Nagy’s most active and most radical ‘like-minded friends’ in the 1955–56 opposition. Founded the paper Magyar Szabadság (30 October 1956) and after the Soviet intervention continued the resistance and published papers against the Kádár government. He was tried alongside Nagy and executed. Gomułka, Władysłav (1905–1982). Polish Communist politician. Member of the CP since 1926, he played a prominent part in the Communist takeover of Poland in 1948–49 at the head of different ministries. Accused of ‘rightwing nationalist inclinations’ and removed from his leading positions, he was expelled from the party in 1951 and jailed until 1954. In October 1956 he was brought back to power as the party’s first secretary. During a 1970 demonstration in Gdansk against price increases, Gomułka ordered shots to be fired into the unarmed crowd and several people were killed. He was dismissed from his post a few days later, sent into retirement and in 1971 removed from the CC. Gőgös, Ignác (1893–1929). Carpenter. Joined the Communists in 1918 in Russia, organized in 1923–25 KMP’s front organization, the MSZMP. Arrested in 1925 and died soon after his release of illnesses acquired in jail. Gromov, Evgenii Ivanovich (1909–81). Soviet diplomat. Ambassador in Budapest 1957–59, later head of the European desk in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR. Gyenes, Antal (1920–96). Economist and writer. Communist since 1941. Associated with NÉKOSZ, he later became lecturer at the Agricultural University. Served as minister of supplies in Nagy’s 1956 government, but remained a member of the CC of the MSZMP until 1957. Having protested against the treatment of Imre Nagy, he was expelled from the party leadership. Thereafter he worked in scholarly research. Haraszti, Sándor (1897–1982). Editor, journalist and Communist politician. Sentenced to death in a show trial in 1951, he was released in 1954. One of Nagy’s associates in the opposition, he edited the newspaper Népszabadság between 1 and 3 November 1956. Interned with Nagy in Romania, he was sentenced to six years in prison in 1958 and released in the amnesty of 1963. Háy, Julius (Gyula) (1900–75). Writer and dramatist. An émigré in Vienna, Berlin and Moscow from 1920 to 1945. Active in inner-party opposition, sentenced to six years because of his revolutionary activity. After his release in 1963 he emigrated to Switzerland. Hegedüs, András (1922–99). Sociologist and Communist politician. Before 1956 a leading figure in Stalinist policies; deputy prime minister 1953; prime minister 1955–56. Emigrated to Moscow 1956–58. At the onset of the 1960s, organized and led the sociological research group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Dismissed in 1968 for opposing the Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia. Hegedűs, B. András (1930–2001). Economist and sociologist. Secretary of the Petőfi Circle in 1956. Active in inner-party opposition, he was sentenced to two years in prison in 1959. Founding member and officer of TIB. Co-director

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of the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution 1989–99. Heltai, György (1914–94). Political scientist. Condemned in a show trial during the Rákosi period. Deputy foreign minister during the revolution. Emigrated to Belgium where he founded the Imre Nagy Institute for Political Research. Later became university professor in the United States Hevesi, Ákos (1884–1937). Agronomist and politician. KMP member from 1919. From 1922 in Soviet exile. For years vice-president of the Peasant International (Krestintern). Fell in the Spanish Civil War as commander of the Hungarian battalion of the International Brigade. Hidas, István (b. 1918). Communist politician and an iron turner by trade. Hidas became a party functionary in 1945 and secretary of the Budapest Party Committee in 1950–52. He became a member of the PB of the MKP in 1951 and was a member of several governments between 1952 and 1956. He was dismissed from his posts on 23–24 October 1956. In 1957 he became a divisional head in the Ministry of Foundries and the Engineering Industry until his retirement. Horváth, Márton (1906–87). Journalist and politician. Pre-1945 Communist, jailed for several years. From 1945 editor-in chief of Szabad Nép, leading actor in Stalinist cultural politics. In 1953–56 sympathizer of Nagy, and during the revolution his supporter. Did not join the Kádár group but held leading cultural positions in museums etc until his retirement in 1966. Iván Kovács, László (1930–57). Miner and football player. One of the commanders of the armed freedom fighters in the Budapest Corvin Passage during the revolution. Condemned to death and executed. Jánosi, Ferenc (1916–68). Protestant pastor and chaplain. Imre Nagy’s son-in-law. From 1945 major-general. General secretary of the Patriotic Popular Front 1954–55. A member of the inner-party opposition, he was interned with Nagy in Romania and later sentenced to eight years in prison. Amnestied in 1963. Janza, Károly (b. 1914). Hungarian minister of defence. Originally a metalworker, became officer of the People’s Army in 1949, deputy minister of defence 1951– 56 and minister in Nagy’s national government. Negotiated armistice with freedom fighters and forbade resistance to Soviet invading forces on 4 November. Retired but stripped of his ranks in 1958. Rehabilitated in 1990. Kádár, János (1912–89). Communist politician. Trade unionist from 1931. Member of the underground Communist youth movement, later also active in the SZDP. In 1941–42 elected to the CC of the KMP, and from 1945 became member of the PB of the MKP and head of the Budapest Party Committee. As minister of the interior 1948–50 he played an important role in preparing the show trial of László Rajk. Arrested by the ÁVH in the spring of 1951 and sentenced to life imprisonment, he was rehabilitated and released in July 1954. In July 1956 elected to the PB as deputy secretary of the CC and on 25 October first secretary of the MDP, then head of the new Presidium. Minister of state in the last Nagy cabinet and founding member of the MSZMP, he secretly left for Moscow and returned as the head of Soviet-sponsored ‘Revo-

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lutionary Workers’-Peasants’ Government.’ Kádár remained leader of the government until 1958 (later premier again in 1961–65) and general (first) secretary of the ruling party of Hungary in differently styled positions until May 1988. During the last year of his life he was president of the HSWP. Kállai, Gyula (1910–96). Journalist and Communist politician. Active in wartime resistance in Hungary. Foreign minister 1949–51, condemned in 1951 in a show trial but rehabilitated in 1954. Deputy minister for education 1955–56, then member of the CC and the PB of the MSZMP. Prime minister 1965–67. Kardos, László (1918–80). Ethnographer and director of Györffy College. General secretary of NÉKOSZ. As leader of the Revolutionary Committee of Hungarian Intellectuals, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1958. Released in 1963, he resumed his scholarly activity. Kelemen, Gyula (1897–1973). Mechanic and Social Democratic politician. State secretary for industry 1945–48. Condemned in a show trial under Rákosi. General secretary of the reorganized SZDP 1956. Minister of state in the last Nagy cabinet. Kende, Péter (Pierre) (b. 1927). Journalist and political scientist. On the staff of Szabad Nép from 1947 but fired in 1955 as an oppositionist. Active in the revolution and its aftermath, he left for France and lived in Paris. He was editor of the exile publication Magyar Füzetek (Hungarian Notebooks). From 1989 chairman of the Board of the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Budapest. Kéthly, Anna (1889–1976). Clerk. Social Democratic and trade union activist, member of the Hungarian parliament from the 1920s. Under Rákosi condemned and incarcerated. In 1956 chair of SZDP, minister of state in the Nagy government. Chaired the Hungarian Revolutionary Council in Strasbourg in 1957. Later lived in Belgium. Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich (1894–1971). Soviet politician, Bolshevik from 1918. From 1938 to 1949 was first secretary of the CC of the CP of Ukraine, for a while also its prime minister. In 1949 he became first secretary of the Moscow region. In a power struggle after Stalin’s death in 1953, Khrushchev won out against Malenkov and became first secretary of the CPSU as well as prime minister after 1958. His ‘secret speech’ at the Twentieth CPSU Congress (24–25 February 1956) about Stalin’s crimes was a milestone in the history of the Communist movement. In October 1964 he was removed from his party and state positions, after which he lived in retirement. Király, Béla (b. 1912). Professional military officer and historian. Victim of a show trial in 1951, condemned to death, sentence reduced to life imprisonment, released in 1956. During the revolution, commander of the National Guard and of military forces in Budapest. Emigrated to the United States in 1957, where he became professor of history, editor and author of books on Hungarian history and 1956. Member of the Hungarian parliament 1990–94. Kiselev, Evgenii Dimitriyevich (1908–63). Soviet diplomat. Ambassador to Hungary 1949–54, later to Egypt, then head of protocol in the Ministry of

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Foreign Affairs, 1962. Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations. Kiss, Károly (1903–83). Communist politician. Member of KMP since 1923, many times in jail before 1945. Besides parliamentary and government positions, Kiss was head of the MDP Control Committee (in charge of party discipline) 1946–56. Active in reorganizing the Kádárist MSZMP. Served as member of the Presidential Council from 1957 and remained in the PB of the CC until 1962. Retired as vice-president of the Trade Unions’ Council. Köböl, József (1909–2000). Communist functionary ever since 1928. After 1945 in various party and trade union positions in Budapest. In the MDP central offices 1954–56. After 4 November refused to join Kádár, but remained in the CC until June 1957, when he was dropped because of his opposition to Nagy’s trial. In the State Planning Office 1961–73, he was dismissed from all political positions in 1979, having signed the declaration of solidarity with the Charter ’77 Czechoslovak civil-rights movement. Kónya, Lajos (1914–72). Poet and writer. In the 1950s secretary of the Writers’ Union and ‘official poet’ of the regime. As an adherent of Nagy, he lost his posts in 1956 and became a librarian in various different schools. Kopácsi, Sándor (1922–2001). Worker. Police officer from 1945, police colonel, chief of Budapest police in 1956. A follower of Imre Nagy, he organized the induction of the armed groups into the National Guard. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Nagy trial. Released in 1963, emigrated to Canada in 1975, but returned to Hungary in 1989. Kornai, János (b. 1928). Economist. Until 1955 was on the staff of Szabad Nép, since then active only in scholarly research and teaching. Author of several books on socialist economy. Kossa, István (1904–65). Tramway driver and politician. Trade unionist and Social Democrat, made contact with non-Muscovite Communists in the 1930s and became from 1945 member of the CC (briefly also of the PB) of the MKP/MDP and member of several governments, including Kádár’s, at the head of industrial and financial portfolios. Kovács, Béla (1908–59). FKGP politician. General secretary of the Hungarian Peasant League. Minister of agriculture 1945–46. Arrested and sentenced by Soviet military in 1947. A prisoner in various Soviet camps until 1956, then chairman of the newly organized FKGP. Minister of state in the last Nagy government. Kovács, István (b. 1911). Communist functionary since the party’s underground activity. In its youth movement from 1927. After different positions in the MKP and MDP leadership, he was first secretary of the Budapest Party Committee 1954–56. Left for Moscow on 28 October 1956. Returned in 1958 but was expelled from the MSZMP in 1962. Held managerial jobs until his retirement. Kovács, István (1917–2000). Major-general and chief of the general staff during the revolution in 1956. Member of the Revolutionary Defence Committee. Arrested during negotiations in Tököl on 3 November 1956. Sentenced to six

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years’ imprisonment in 1958 but released in 1963. Krassó, György (1932–91). Economist. Participated in the fighting during the revolution. Sentenced in 1957 to ten years in prison, but was freed in 1963. Founded the samizdat publishing house Magyar Október (Hungarian October). He founded and led the Hungarian October Party from 1989 until his death. Kun, Béla (1886–1939). Communist politician. As a journalist was active in the Social Democratic movement in Transylvania. As a POW he joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917. Became chairman of the Hungarian group within the Russian Communist Party in 1918. Returned to Hungary, founded the KMP and became the leader (as people’s commissar for foreign affairs) of the Hungarian Soviet Republic (21 March–1 August 1919). After the collapse of the commune, he fled to Vienna and then back to Soviet Russia. He was a member of the Comintern Executive in 1921–36 and on its Presidium in 1928–35. Concurrently he was leader of the Central Committee and Foreign Committee of the KMP 1921–36. In 1936 he was stripped of his party positions. Arrested in 1937, he died in the Gulag. Landler, Jenő (1875–1928). Lawyer. Attorney of the Railroad Workers’ Union, member of the MSZDP from 1908 to 1918. In the National Council of the democratic revolution, supported the merger with the KMP and became the commander-in-chief of the 1919 Hungarian Red Army. After its defeat, Landler was the leading person in the ‘realist’ faction of the exiled Communists in Vienna. Died in France; his ashes were interred in the Kremlin wall. Lőcsei, Pál (1922–2007). Journalist and sociologist. Fired in 1954 from the newspaper Szabad Nép, he was a founder of the revolutionary daily Magyar Szabadság. Received an eight-year sentence in 1958 but was amnestied in 1963. Founding member of TIB. Fellow of the Institute of Sociology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Losonczy, Géza (1917–57). Journalist, politician and pre-1945 Communist. Condemned in a show trial under Rákosi. After release, editor of the daily Magyar Nemzet, a leader of the inner-party opposition and one of the closest associates of Imre Nagy. Minister of state in the Nagy government. Interned with Nagy in Romania, he died in detention in Budapest due to an untreated serious illness. Lukács, Georg (György) (1885–1971). Philosopher. People’s commissar for education in the Hungarian Soviet republic of 1919. Lived as émigré until 1945 in Vienna, Berlin and Moscow. Author of the ‘Blum Theses’, rejected by the KMP. A leading ideologue of the MKP, he was excluded from public affairs in 1949. Minister for education in Nagy’s last government in 1956. Interned with Nagy in Romania. After his return he devoted himself to scholarly activity. Malenkov, Georgii Maksimilianovich (1902–88). Soviet politician. Bolshevik since 1920, member of the CC of the CPSU from 1937. He served as a deputy prime minister 1946–53 and 1955–57, and as prime minister 1953–55. In

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June 1957 implicated in the attempted coup against Nikita Khrushchev, he was expelled from the party leadership and in 1961 from the CPSU. Maléter, Pál (1917–58). Professional military officer. Captured by the Soviets during World War II, he later fought as a partisan against Nazi Germany. In the Defence Ministry from 1945, in 1956 he became one of the military leaders of the revolution. Promoted to major-general, he was defence minister under Nagy. Tried, sentenced and executed. Malinin, Mikhail Sergeyevich (1899–1960). Soviet general. Fought through World War II all the way to Berlin. From 1952 until his death was first deputy chief of staff of the Soviet armed forces. He and KGB chief Ivan Serov were despatched to Hungary with a Soviet military commission during the 1956 revolution. Mălnăşanu, Aurel (1911–86). Romanian politician. Ambassador in Budapest 1949–52. In Rome 1952–54; deputy minister of foreign affairs 1955–63. Marosán, György (1908–92). Baker, Social Democratic, later Communist politician. Despite his active role in terminating the SZDP under Rákosi, he was victim of a show trial. Rehabilitated, he became a member of the Politburo of the MDP, later of the MSZMP, secretary of the Central Committee and a minister in the Kádár government of 4 November. One of the most prominent advocates of reprisal, he was removed from all his offices in 1962. Mécs, Imre (b. 1934). Electrical engineer and politician. Participant in the student movement at the Technical University in 1956. Sentenced first to death, then to life imprisonment. Amnestied in 1963. Leading member of the democratic opposition, founding member of TIB. Member of parliament from 1990. Mekis, József (1910–84). Communist politician. Director of the Mátyás Rákosi Ironworks in Csepel 1950–53, and president of the Ironworkers’ Union in 1952. In 1954 he became president of the National Council of Trade Unions and a member of the MDP PB. He was dismissed from his party and state positions during the 1956 revolution. From 1957 to 1966, he served as deputy minister of labour. Méray, Tibor (b. 1924). Writer and editor. Worked for Szabad Nép after 1945. Party secretary of the Writers’ Union in 1953. Joined the opposition around Imre Nagy in 1954. Emigrated to France in 1956. Was editor of Irodalmi Ujság (Paris). Author of several books on 1956 and Imre Nagy. Mérei, Ferenc (1909–86). Psychologist and pioneer of modern child psychology and pedagogy in Hungary. As professor at the university in Budapest in 1956, he was one of the leaders of the revolutionary student committee. Condemned to ten years in prison in 1959. After his release in 1963, became head of a psychodiagnostic laboratory. Mező, Imre (1905–56). Tailor and Communist politician. Active in the Spanish Civil War and the French Resistance. Union and party functionary 1945. Second secretary of the Budapest Party Committee 1954 and a sympathizer of Imre Nagy. Fatally wounded in the attack on the Budapest Party headquarters in 1956.

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Mikoyan, Anastaz Ivanovich (1895–1978). Soviet politician. Member of the Presidium of the CPSU from 1935 to 1966. Between 1937 and 1964, deputy prime minister. After Stalin’s death, he supported Nikita Khrushchev. After Khrushchev’s fall from power, he became head of state in 1964–65 and then a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. In 1956, Mikoyan was one of the emissaries of the CPSU to Budapest. Mindszenty, József (1892–1975). Archbishop of Esztergom, cardinal and primate of Hungary. On trumped-up charges, sentenced in 1949 to life imprisonment in a show trial. Freed in 1956, he fled on 4 November to the US embassy and left Hungary in 1971. Molnár, Miklós (1918–2003). Journalist and historian. Editor of Irodalmi Ujság 1950–55. Active member of the inner-party opposition; one of the founders of the paper Magyar Szabadság in October 1956. Emigrated in 1957. Was university professor in Geneva and author of several books on Hungarian history. Molotov, Viacheslav Mikhailovich (1890–1986). Leading Soviet politician between 1930 and 1957. Foreign minister 1939–49 and 1953–56, member of the CC of the CPSU from 1921. In June 1957, he was expelled from the leadership after an attempted coup against Nikita Khrushchev. He then served as ambassador to Mongolia and in 1960–62 as the Soviet permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. He was expelled from the party in 1962 but readmitted in 1984. Müller, Ernő (1886–1937). Tailor. Bolshevik from 1918, lived in the Soviet Union. Went on secret trips to Hungary where he was arrested but released. After 1928 member of the leading organs of the exile KMP and of Soviet entities. Became a victim of Stalin’s purges. Münnich, Ferenc (1886–1967). Jurist and Communist politician. Founding member of KMP, political officer in the Hungarian Red Army. As émigré in Vienna, member of the Kun faction. After 1922 in the Soviet Union. During the Spanish Civil War served in the International Brigade, rising to be a divisional chief of staff. In 1942–45 head of the Hungarian Section of Radio Moscow (‘Radio Kossuth’). After his return to Hungary, police chief of Budapest, later ambassador in several countries. Minister of the interior in Nagy’s second cabinet in 1956, but left secretly for Moscow and was instrumental in founding the Soviet-supported government of János Kádár. Münnich organized the special forces and later the Communist Workers’ Militia against the adherents of the revolution. Member of the MSZMP PB 1957–66. Head of state 1958–61 and minister of state 1961–65. Nagy, Balázs (b. 1927). Social scientist and politician. Secretary of the Petőfi Circle in 1956. In exile, he was founding member of the Imre Nagy Institute in Brussels but left it to become active in the Trotskyist movement. Lives in France. Nagy, Ferenc (1903–79). Co-founder of the FKGP in 1930. Minister of reconstruction in 1945, prime minister 1946–47. Forced into exile by the MKP.

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One of the leading figures of the Hungarian exiles in the United States. Nagy, Gáspár (b. 1949). Poet and educator. Secretary of the Writers’ Union 1981– 85 but forced to resign because of a poem dedicated to Imre Nagy. Editor from 1988, and member of the Writers’ Union executive. Németh, László (1901–75). Writer, physician and teacher. Leading ideologue of the populist movement of the inter-war period. Silenced between 1948 and 1954. Nógrádi, Sándor (1894–1971). Communist politician. KMP member from 1919, worked in the Slovak and Romanian Communist movement, fought as partisan in Slovakia and Hungary against the Nazis. Since 1948 in the Ministry of Defence. During the revolution escaped to the Soviet Union, later became ambassador to Beijing and Hanoi and head of the MSZMP Central Control Committee. Orbán, Viktor (b. 1963). Lawyer and politician. Founding member of the Party of Young Democrats (FIDESZ). MP from 1990, and prime minister of Hungary 1998–2002. Őry, Károly (1898–1946). Cabinetmaker. In 1924–25 leading figure of the underground KMP. After four years in jail emigrated to Moscow where he became a victim of the purges. Péter, Gábor (1906–93). Tailor. Communist politician, joined the underground KMP in 1931. In January 1945 became head of the political police, the ÁVO (later ÁVH) and was chief architect of the show trials. Arrested in 1953 for ‘trespasses against socialist legality’ and sentenced to life imprisonment. His term was later reduced to 14 years and he was freed in 1960. Piros, László (1917–2006). Butcher. Communist politician and trade union leader. Commander of border police 1950. Interior minister 1954–56. During the revolution fled to Moscow but returned on 4 November as part of the Soviet invasion. Became director of a salami factory in Szeged. Poll, Sándor (1898–1937). Bookseller and politician. In the Communist movement since the 1920s, émigré in Germany and later USSR. In 1930–32 member of the KÜB of the KMP and underground activist in Hungary. After four years in jail he returned to Moscow but died soon after. Pongrátz, Gergely (1932–2005). Agronomist and clerk. Commanded the armed group fighting in the Corvin Passage during the revolution. Emigrated to the United States and became a farmer. Returned to Hungary in 1990 and has served as chairman of various 1956 organizations. Ponomarev, Boris Nikolaevich (1905–95). Soviet functionary. Worked in the Komintern, later in the CPSU central offices. In 1955–86 was head of the International Department of the CC of the CPSU. Pozsgay, Imre (b. 1933). Politician. Between 1957 and 1989 in various positions in the MSZMP, finally member of the PB. Made his name by officially announcing in 1988 that in 1956 a ‘democratic national revolution’ took place in Hungary. Left the socialists in 1990 and has since been politically active in different affiliations or as an independent.

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Rácz, Sándor (b. 1933). Toolmaker. In 1956 a member of the Workers’ Council of the Beloiannis plant in Budapest. Chairman of Central Workers’ Council. Sentenced to life imprisonment in 1958, he was released in 1963 and worked as a toolmaker. Rajk, Júlia (née Földi) (1914–81). Pre-1945 member of the Communist Party and librarian. Arrested with her husband László Rajk in 1949 and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. Rehabilitated in 1954, she became an active member of the inner-party opposition and was interned with Imre Nagy in Romania. Became an archivist upon returning home, researching the atrocities of the Stalinist regime. Rajk, László (1909–49). Leading functionary of the underground Communist Party in Hungary before 1944 and officer of the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. One of the prominent leaders of the MKP, later MDP. Interior minister 1946–48, later foreign minister. Sentenced to death in a show trial in 1949 and executed. Rehabilitated in 1956 and ceremoniously reinterred on 6 October 1956. Rajnai, Sándor (1922–94). Security officer and diplomat. From 1946 in the state security service (ÁVO, ÁVH), interrogator in the Stalinist construction trials. From 1956 was colonel in the Investigative Department of the Ministry of the Interior, in charge of the proceedings against Nagy and co-defendants. In 1962–66 in the Hungarian embassy in Moscow. In 1966–76 back in intelligence position in Budapest, then ambassador in Bucharest (1978–82) and Moscow (1982–89). In 1992 he emigrated first to Israel, then to the USA. Rákosi, Mátyás (1892–1971). Communist politician. During the Hungarian Soviet Republic, deputy commercial commissar, later a commander of the Red Guard. From 1920, in Moscow, appointed a Comintern secretary in 1921. Sent home to Hungary in 1924, he was arrested and sentenced to eight-anda-half years’ imprisonment. Retried in 1934 when international protest saved his life. In 1940, released to the USSR, Rákosi became the leading politician among the Hungarian émigré Communists. In 1945 returned to Hungary and became general secretary of the CC of the MKP. As general secretary of the MKP/MDP and prime minister 1952–53, Rákosi was the central figure in Hungary’s Stalinist dictatorship: ‘the best Hungarian pupil of Joseph Stalin’, he claimed. Forced from office in summer 1956, he lived in the Soviet Union until his death. Révai, József (1898–1959). Communist politician and party functionary. In 1919 on the staff of Vörös Újság (Red News). At the first congress of the KMP (1925) elected head of the Secretariat. Arrested in Hungary in 1930. On his release in 1934, he left for Prague and then for Moscow. During the war, he ran the Hungarian-language Radio Kossuth in Moscow. Révai returned to Hungary in 1944 and was for a decade in charge of the ideological work of the MKP and MDP. Member of the Politburo, editor-in-chief of Szabad Nép and also minister of education 1949–53. Rónai, Sándor (1892–1965). Stonemason and leading Social Democratic politi-

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cian. From 1948, member of the MDP Politburo. Minister and finally head of state of the People’s Republic of Hungary. Rudas, László (1885–1950). Communist philosopher and founding member of KMP. After 1922 professor at various party schools in the USSR. Appointed to a chair at the Karl Marx University of Economics in Budapest in 1948, he was the most vocal critic of Lukács and other ‘deviationists’. Soldatić, Dalibor (1909–81). Yugoslav diplomat. After postings in Washington, Buenos Aires and Rome, he became ambassador to Hungary 1953–56. Thereafter he was head of protocol at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Belgrade. Suslov, Mikhail Andreevich (1902–82). Soviet functionary and politician. After different regional positions, he successively headed the agitprop department and the foreign relations department at the CC of the CPSU 1947–49, and was editor-in-chief of Pravda. He supervised propaganda, ideology and cultural activity from 1947 until his death. As member of the CPSU Presidium (from 1955), he had talks in July 1956 in Budapest with the Hungarian leaders, and returned on 24 October 1956 with Mikoyan as a special envoy. Opposed to Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization moves, Suslov played a part in ousting him in 1964. Szabó, Zoltán (1912–81). Writer and social scientist. Representative of the village research movement. Chairman of the democratic youth movement in 1945, he left Hungary in 1949 and lived in England, later in France. Szabó was general secretary of the Union of Hungarian Writers Abroad. Szalai, Béla (1922–2008). Communist politician. In 1953–54 head of the Planning Office, later minister and secretary of MDP CC (in the PB 1954–56). From 1957 in diplomatic service. Szántó, Béla (1881–1952). Clerk and socialist. From 1919 Communist politician. In the inter-war years in exile in Austria, Germany and the USSR, where he worked in the Trade Unions International (Profintern). After 1945 leader of the cooperative movement. Ambassador in Warsaw 1948–51. Arrested in 1951, released in 1952. Szántó, Zoltán (1893–1977). Communist politician. A leader of the underground KMP, jailed in Hungary for eight years. After 1945 was party functionary and ambassador. In 1956 a member of the executive of the newly formed MSZMP. Interned along with Nagy in Romania. Returned home in 1958 and distanced himself from his former comrades. Szász, Béla (1910–99). Writer and journalist. Press secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture in 1949. Sentenced to ten years in prison in a trial connected to the show trial of Rajk. Emigrated to England in 1957. Commentator for the BBC. Editor from 1959 to 1963 of the journal Szemle of the Imre Nagy Institute in Brussels. Szerényi, Sándor (1905–2007). Cabinetmaker. Member of the underground KMP and known as ‘Sas’. Emigrated to the USSR in 1931 and opposed Béla Kun in the exile leadership. Arrested in 1933, he spent 17 years in the Gulag. Returned to Hungary in 1947 and worked in economic research jobs, from

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1958 as head of the cultural department of the MSZMP CC. Szilágyi, József (1917–58). Politician. Regional police commissioner in 1945. Active member of inner-party opposition led by Nagy. Head of Nagy’s secretariat during the revolution. Condemned to death in a secret trial in 1958 and executed. Szücs, Miklós (1921–98). Professional soldier. In 1945 joined the Red Army and rose to the rank of colonel, having attended Soviet military schools. Was to be commander of the action against the freedom fighters in the Corvin Passage – cancelled on Nagy’s orders. Arrested by the KGB as member of the armistice delegation, but soon released. In 1958 he left the army and worked in publishing. Tánczos, Gábor (1928–79). Philosopher, teacher, youth leader and leader of the Petőfi Circle. Interned with Nagy in Romania and sentenced in 1958 to 15 years in prison. After the 1963 amnesty became a sociologist. Tardos, Tibor (1918–2004). Writer. Active in the French Resistance. Associated with Szabad Nép and Szabad Ifjúság (Free Youth) 1947–54. Expelled from the MDP for his speech at the ‘press debate’ of the Petőfi Circle. In the writers’ trial of 1957, sentenced to 18 months in prison. Emigrated to France in 1963. Tildy, Zoltán (1892–1961). Protestant pastor and FKGP politician. Prime minister 1945–46. President of the republic 1946–48. Kept under house arrest for years during the Rákosi régime. Minister of state in the last Nagy government. Sentenced to six years’ imprisonment in the Nagy trial but freed in 1959. Újhelyi, Szilárd (1915–96). Jurist, politician and pre-1945 Communist. In 1945 he became secretary of state at the Ministry of Welfare. He was appointed general secretary of the Institute of Cultural Relations in 1948, and in December 1949 deputy director general of Hungarian Radio. Arrested in 1951 and sentenced to eight years in prison, he was rehabilitated in 1954. Active in the inner-party opposition, he was interned with the Nagy group m Romania. After his release he worked in the film industry. Vági, István (1883–1940). Carpenter and Social Democratic official. In 1925 founded the Communist front organization MSZMP. After seven years in Hungarian jail emigrated to the USSR, worked in the Trade Unionist International (Profintern) and became victim of the purges. Varga, Jenő (Eugene) (1879–1964). Economist and founding member of the KMP. Became head of a research institute of world economy in the USSR. In 1946 was criticized for his views about post-war world economy and for years removed from his position. Vas, Zoltán (1903–83). Communist politician and writer. Member of the KMP since 1919. Spent 14 years in Hungarian prison but in 1940 released together with Rákosi to the USSR. From 1945 he was first mayor of Budapest, then secretary of the Economic Supreme Council, later, until 1953, of the National Planning Office. Supporter of Imre Nagy, speaker at Petőfi Circle’s debates, Vas was appointed chairman of the government public supplies committee on 27 October 1956. Interned in Romania but allowed back to Hungary in 1958.

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He then retired and worked as a freelance writer and translator. Vásárhelyi, Miklós (1917–2001). Journalist, politician and pre-1945 Communist. From 1945 foreign affairs editor of Szabad Nép; later on the staff of various dailies. A member of the inner-party opposition, he was among those closest to Imre Nagy. Press chief for the Nagy government in 1956, he was interned in Romania and sentenced to five years in prison at the Nagy trial. Founding president of TIB; MP 1990–94. Voroshilov, Kliment Efremovich (1881–1969). Soviet politician and general. One of the organizers of the Soviet political police, he fought in the Civil War in leading military posts. From 1925 he was people’s commissar (later minister) of defence. In 1942 he became commander-in-chief of all partisan forces. In 1945–46 he chaired the Allied Control Commission in Budapest. He was dropped from the CC in 1961, after having joined the rebels against Nikita Khrushchev in 1957. Weisshaus, Aladár (1887–1963). Clerk, socialist and later non-Muscovite Communist politician. Active in trade unions, joined the underground KMP in 1923, from which he was expelled as ‘factionist’ in 1926, but managed to organize a sizeable independent communist movement. Arrested in 1947, released in 1956. Zelk, Zoltán (1906–81). Socialist, later Communist poet. After 1953 a member of the opposition movement of Communist writers. Member of the executive of the Writers’ Union in September 1956. Sentenced to three years in prison in 1957, released in 1958. Zimányi, Tibor (1922–2007). Economist and politician. Participated in the antifascist resistance 1945–48. Became police officer and then sent to forced labour camp for four years. After the revolution again in jail, later in different minor jobs. From 1989 leader of organizations of former political prisoners and politician of the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF).

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Fehér, Ferenc and Ágnes Heller, Hungary 1956 Revisited. The Message of a Revolution (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983) Fejtő, François Behind the Rape of Hungary (New York: McKay, 1957) ___, A History of the Peoples’ Democracies (London: Pall Mall Press, 1971) Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957. Vol. XXV. Eastern Europe (1990) Gaddis, John Lewis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997) Gati, Charles, ‘The democratic interlude in post-war Hungary’, Survey 28:2 (1984), pp 99–134 ___, Hungary and the Soviet Bloc (Durham: Duke University Press, 1986) ___, ‘Imre Nagy and Moscow 1953–1956’, Problems of Communism, vol. 33 (1986), pp 32–49 ___, Failed Illusions: Moscow, Washington, Budapest and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution (Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Stanford University Press, 2006) Granville, Johanna C., ‘Imre Nagy, aka “Volodya” – a dent in the martyr’s halo?’, Cold War International History Project Bulletin 5:28 (1995), pp 34–7 ___, The First Domino: International Decision Making during the Hungarian Crisis of 1956 (College Station, TX: A&M University Press, 2004) Griffith, William E., ‘The revolt reconsidered’, East Europe 9:1 (1986), pp 12–20 Györkei, Jenő and Miklós Horváth (eds), Soviet Military Intervention in Hungary, 1956 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999) Halasz de Beky, I.L., A Bibliography of the Hungarian Revolution 1956 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963) Haraszti-Taylor, E. (ed), The Hungarian Revolution of 1956: A Collection of Documents from the British Foreign Office (London: Astra Press, 1995) Háy, Julius, Born 1900 (London: Hutchinson, 1974) Hegedüs, András, ‘Additional remarks by a major participant in the Hungarian revolution of 1956’, Studies in Comparative Communism 18 (1985), pp 115–23 Hollander, Paul, Political Will and Personal Belief: The Decline and the Fall of Soviet Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999) Hungarian People’s Republic, The Counter-Revolutionary Conspiracy of Imre Nagy and His Accomplices (Budapest: Information Bureau of the Council of Ministers, 1958) Hungaricus (pseudonym of Sándor Fekete), On a Few Lessons of the Hungarian National-Democratic Revolution (Brussels: Imre Nagy Institute for Political Research, 1959) Jackson, George D., Comintern and Peasant in East Europe, 1919–1930 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966) Juhasz, William (ed), Hungarian Social Science Reader: 1945–1963 (New York: Aurora, 1965) Kádár, János, Socialist Construction in Hungary: Selected Speeches and Articles, 1957–1961 (Budapest: Corvina, 1962) Kállai, Gyula, The Counter-Revolution in Hungary in the Light of Marxism-Leninism (Budapest: Zrínyi, 1957)

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Kecskemeti, Paul, The Unexpected Revolution: Social Forces in the Hungarian Uprising (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961) Khrushchev, Nikita S., ‘CPSU CC Presidium meeting on East European crises, 24 October 1956’, (introduction, translation and annotation by Mark Kramer), Bulletin 5, Cold War International History Project, 1995 Király, Béla K. and Paul Jónás (eds), The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 in Retrospect (Boulder, CO: East European Quarterly, 1978) ___, Barbara Lotze and Nándor F. Dreisziger (eds), The First War Between Socialist States: The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and Its Impact (New York: Brooklyn College Press, 1984) ___, and András Bozóki (eds), Lawful Revolution in Hungary 1989–1994 (Boulder/ Highland Lakes: Social Science Monographs/Atlantic Research and Publications, 1996) Kopácsi, Sándor, In the Name of the Working Class: The Inside Story of the Hungarian Revolution (New York: Grove Press, 1986) Kornai, János, The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) Kővágó, József, You Are All Alone (New York: Praeger, 1959) Kovrig, Bennet, Communism in Hungary: From Kun to Kádár (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1979) Kramer, Mark, ‘New evidence on Soviet decision-making and the 1956 Polish and Hungarian crises’, Cold War International History Project Bulletin 8–9 (1996– 97), pp 358–84 Lasky, Melvyn J. (ed), The Hungarian Revolution. A White Book (London: Secker & Warburg, 1957) Litván, György (ed), The Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Reform, Revolt and Repression 1953–1963 (London and New York: Longman, 1996) Lomax, Bill, Hungary 1956 (London: Allison and Busby, 1976) ___, (ed), Hungarian Workers’ Councils in 1956 (Boulder/Highland Lakes: Social Science Monographs/Atlantic Research and Publications, 1990) Lukács, Georg, Record of a Life. An Autobiographical Sketch, ed István Eörsi, trans R. Livingstone (London: Verso, 1983) Méray, Tibor, Thirteen Days That Shook the Kremlin, trans Howard L. Katzander (New York: Praeger, 1959) Mičunović, Veljko, Moscow Diary, 1956–1958 (New York: Doubleday, 1980) Molnár, Miklós, Budapest 1956: A History of the Hungarian Revolution (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971) ___, From Béla Kun to János Kádár: Seventy Years of Hungarian Communism, trans Arnold J. Pomerans (New York: Berg, 1990) ___, and László Nagy, Imre Nagy, réformateur ou révolutionnaire? (Geneva and Paris: Ambilly, 1959) (Publications de l’Institut Universitaire des Hautes Études Internationales, 3) Musatow, Valerii, ‘What was Imre Nagy?’, New Times International 20 (1993), pp 13–15

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Nagy, Ferenc, The Struggle Behind the Iron Curtain, trans Stephen K. Sift (New York: Macmillan, 1948) Nagy, Imre, On Communism: In Defense of the New Course (New York: Praeger, 1957) Naimark, Norman and Leonid Gibianski (eds), The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe 1944–49 (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997) Ostermann, Christian F. (ed), Uprising in East Germany, 1953: The Cold War, the German Question, and the First Major Upheaval behind the Iron Curtain (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2001) Paczkowski, Alexander, The Spring Will Be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2003) Pálóczi-Horváth, György (ed), One Sentence on Tyranny: Hungarian Literary Gazette Anthology (London: Waverley Press, 1957) Péteri, György, ‘New Course economics: The field of economic research in Hungary after Stalin, 1953–1956’, in György Péteri (ed), Academia and State Socialism (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 1998), pp 155–207 Rácz, Sándor, ‘Hungary 56: the workers’ case’, Labour Focus on Eastern Europe, vol. 7, no. 2 (1984), pp 2–17 Radvanyi, Janos, Hungary and the Superpowers: The 1956 Revolution and Realpolitik (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1979) Rainer, M János, ‘The 1956 Revolution in the provinces’, Budapest Review of Books 2:2 (1992), pp 64–8 ___, ‘National independence, neutrality and cooperation in the Danube region: Imre Nagy’s foreign policy ideas’, in I. Romsics and B. Király (eds), Geopolitics in the Danube Region. Hungarian Reconciliation Efforts, 1848–1998 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1998), pp 281–304 ___, ‘The Malin notes’, in Zsófia Zachár (ed), Encounters: A Hungarian Quarterly Reader (Budapest: The Hungarian Quarterly Society – Balassi Kiadó, 1999), pp 189–214 ___, ‘The reprisals’, ibid., pp 249–61 ___, ‘The development of Imre Nagy as a politician and intellectual’, in György Péteri (ed), Intellectual Life and the First Crisis of State Socialism in East Central Europe, 1953–1956 (Trondheim Studies on East European Cultures and Societies 6, 2001) ___, The New Course in Hungary in 1953 (The Woodrow Wilson Center, Cold War International History Project Working Paper 38, 2002) Review, Quarterly Journal of the Imre Nagy Institute for Political Research, Brussels, 1959–63 Rice, Condoleezza and Michael Fry, ‘The Hungarian crisis of 1956: The Soviet decision’, in Jonathan R. Adelman (ed), Superpowers and Revolutions (New York: Praeger, 1986), pp 181–99 Schöpflin, George, Politics in Eastern Europe 1945­–1992 (Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell, 1993) Shawcross, W., Crime and Compromise: János Kádár and the Politics of Hungary since

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the Revolution (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974) Szász, Béla, Volunteers for the Gallows: The Anatomy of a Show Trial, trans Kathleen Szasz (London: Chatto & Windus, 1971) Sztáray, Zoltán, Books on the Hungarian Revolution: A Bibliography (Brussels: Imre Nagy Institute for Political Research, 1960) ‘Time-Life: Hungary’s fight for freedom: A special report in pictures’, (New York: Time-Life Magazine, 1956) The Truth about the Nagy Affair: Facts, Documents, Comments. With a preface by Albert Camus (London: Secker & Warburg, 1959) United Nations, Report of the Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary (New York: General Assembly Official Records, 1957) Unwin, Peter, Voice in the Wilderness. Imre Nagy and the Hungarian Revolution (London: Macdonald, 1991) Váli, Ferenc A., Rift and Revolt in Hungary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961) Volgyes, Ivan, ‘The impact of Communism in the rural sphere’, in Josef Held (ed), The Modernization of Agriculture: Rural Transformation in Hungary, 1848– 1975 (New York/Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 1980), pp 351–73 Woroszylski, Wiktar, Diary of a Revolt: Budapest through Polish Eyes (London: Segal & Jenkins, 1957) Zinner, Paul E. (ed), National Communism and Popular Revolt in Eastern Europe (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956) ___, Revolution in Hungary (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962) Zubok, Vladimir and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996) Zubok, Vladislav M., A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007)

INDEX Aczél, Tamás, 89, 90, 111, 184, 231 Adenauer, Konrad, 182 agriculture agrarian policy, 13, 18, 30, 36, 49, 166, 208 agrarian question, 20, 28, 30–2, 45, 53 collectivization, 20, 49, 57–8, 60, 72 land reform, xxiii, 16–17, 32, 35–6, 38, 40–1, 51, 54, 57, 133, 168 Alpári, Gyula, 14, 231 Andropov, Yurii Vladimirovich, 77, 94–5, 103, 123, 125, 127–31, 136, 213, 215, 231 Angyal, István, 116, 231 anti-Stalinism, xxiv–xxv, 145, 158 Apró, Antal, 110, 231 Association of Working Youth (DISZ), ix–x, 80, 91, 97 ÁVH see Hungarian State Defence Authority Bak, M. János, xxvi Balogh, Mrs József, 161 Bárd, Imre, 161 Bartók, Béla, 89 Bata, István, 78, 115, 231 Benjámin, László, 89, 214, 231 Beria, Lavrentii Pavlovich, 57–8, 64–5, 67, 70, 73, 210, 231 Bethlen, István, 13 Bibó, István, 39, 43–4, 47, 132, 135, 137, 232 Bíró, Zoltán (brother of Mátyás Rákosi), 33, 232

Biszku, Béla, 145–6, 232 Bognár, József, 127, 232 Brusilov, Aleksei Alekseievich, 5, 7 Bukharin, Nikolai, 20, 81, 232 Bulganin, Nikolai, 58, 232 Cheka, ix–x, 9–10, 12 collectivization of agriculture, 20, 49, 57–8, 60, 72 Comintern, ix, xv, 14, 20, 22–4, 25, 27–9, 34, 36–7, 42, 48, 199, 203–4, 231–4, 239, 243 Agrarian Institute of, vii, 22, 24–6, 28–30, 199 International Lenin School of, 23, 199, 205 Committee for Historical Justice (TIB), xi, 190–1 Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU, Bolsheviks), ix, xxi–xxii, 20, 24, 33, 72, 87, 90–1, 115, 119, 141, 143–4, 170, 174, 199, 205, 231–2, 237, 239, 240–2, 244 Hungarian Communist Party (MKP, 1945–48), x, 37, 40–5, 200, 232, 234, 236, 238–9, 241, 243 Hungarian Party of Communists in Hungary (KMP, 1919–45), ix–x, 10, 14–23, 28–9, 168, 199, 204–5, 231, 234–6, 238–9, 241–6 Hungarian Socialist Workers Party (MSZMP, 1956–89), ix–x, 130, 132–3, 138, 144, 146–7, 153, 182, 190–2, 196–7, 200, 203, 231–8, 240–2, 244–5

253

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Hungarian Workers’ Party (MDP, 1948–56), ix–x, 53, 64–5, 69–71, 74, 76, 80, 83, 85, 87, 91, 94, 96, 107, 113–14, 118–19, 124, 175, 200, 225, 232–4, 236, 238, 240, 243–5 Deák, István, xxvi democracy, people’s, 38–8, 43, 51, 59, 61, 71, 74, 76, 109, 120, 122, 146, 170, 172, 177–8 democratic transition (1989), xxv, 193, 195–7 democratization, 51, 78, 120, 167, 175 Déry, Tibor, 89, 94, 214, 224, 232 Dimitrov, Georgi, 35, 42, 50, 199, 205, 207, 233 DISZ (Association of Working Youth), ix–x, 80, 91, 97 Dobi, István, 62, 127, 233 Donáth, Ferenc, 46, 50, 98, 105, 107– 8, 110, 112, 134, 137–8, 142, 147, 149, 159, 189, 214, 218, 221–2, 233 Dubcek, Alexeander, 83, 166, 233 Dudás, József, 122, 219, 233 Dutt, Rajani Palme, 148 Égető, Mária, Mrs Imre Nagy, 13, 14, 16, 17, 25, 27, 28, 45, 172, 233 Engels, Friedrich, 33, 53 Erdei, Ferenc, 100, 103, 118, 120, 123, 128, 130, 133, 217, 233 Farkas, Ferenc, B., 132, 233 Farkas, Mihály, 35, 41, 50, 55, 58, 60, 65, 66, 75, 77, 91, 94, 96, 233 Fazekas, György, 86, 89–90, 144, 214, 234 Fehér, Kálmán, 224 Fehér, Lajos, 55, 74, 234 Ferencsik, József, 224 Fischer, József, 132, 234 FKGP see Independent Smallholders’ Party Földvári, Rudolf, 108, 234

Franz Ferdinand, Habsburg Archduke, 3 Friss, István, 212, 234 Gerő, Ernő, 32, 34–5, 41, 55, 57–8, 60, 62, 64, 70, 75–7, 95–7, 103–5, 107–8, 110, 112–13, 115, 153, 175– 6, 179, 207, 209, 217, 234 Gheorghiu-Dej, Gheorghe, 131, 152 Gimes, Miklós, 86, 89, 91, 93, 100, 111, 115, 145, 147, 149, 159, 164–5, 214, 217–18, 234 Gőgös, Ignác, 15, 235 Gollan, John, 148 Gomułka, Władysłav, 49, 50, 97, 181, 184, 208, 216, 235 Göncz, Árpád, 197 GPU, ix–x, 21 Grősz, József, 68 Grósz, Károly, 191 Gyenes, Antal, 54, 108, 115, 209, 235 Hajdu Tibor, 79 Haraszti, Sándor, 86, 89, 91, 98, 100, 137–8, 214, 235 Háy, Gyula, 99, 235 Hegedüs, András, 46, 58, 82, 93–5, 97, 105, 108, 110, 113, 115, 212, 235 Hegedűs, B. András, xxv, 93, 235 Heltai, György, 125, 183, 236 Hevesi, Ákos, 22, 236 Hidas, István, 58, 236 Hitler, Adolf, 33, 35, 134 Horthy, Miklós, xv, 15, 35–6, 123 Horváth, Imre, 128 Horváth, Márton, 41, 91, 104, 236 Hungarian Association of Students of Universities and Colleges (MEFESZ), x, 97 Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), x, 196, 246 Hungarian Democratic Youth Association (MADISZ), x

index Hungarian State Defence Authority (ÁVH), ix, 55, 77, 95, 108, 116, 118, 121, 208, 236, 242–3 Independent Smallholders’ Party (FKGP), ix, 41–5, 47–8, 108, 120, 122, 132, 232–3, 238, 241, 245 industrialization, 57, 60–1, 64, 69, 81, 232 Iván Kovács, László, 116, 236 Jánosi, Ferenc, 55, 87, 89, 100, 137, 144, 149, 151, 214–15, 236 Janza, Károly, 116, 236 Kádár, János, 41, 43, 49, 55, 56, 70, 77, 89, 91, 94–8, 105, 107–8, 110, 112–13, 118–20, 123–4, 127–8, 130–2, 136, 138, 141–51, 153, 161, 166, 168, 175–6, 179, 181–2, 188– 93, 195, 197–8, 203, 212, 221, 229, 235, 236, 237–8, 240–1 Kaganovich, Lazar Moiseevich, 73 Kállai, Gyula, 105, 143–4, 151–3, 223, 237 Kardos, László, 99, 237 Kelemen, Endre, 225 Kelemen, Gyula, 122, 132, 237 Kende, Péter, xx, xxv, 192, 237 Kéthly, Anna, 77, 122–3, 130, 132, 237 KGB, ix, 29, 104, 143, 231, 233, 240, 245 Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 58, 64, 73, 81, 86, 90, 93, 95, 97, 103–4, 115, 119, 126, 131, 136, 141, 143–9, 152, 174, 181, 219, 222, 237, 240–1, 244, 246 Király, Béla, 121–2, 128, 135, 146–7, 191, 237 Kis, János, 189, 192 Kiselev, Evgenii Dmitrievich, 63, 65, 70, 237 Kiss Károly, 41, 95, 98, 113, 238

255

Köböl, József, 91, 98, 107–8, 238 Kónya, Lajos, 89, 99, 214, 238 Kopácsi, Sándor, 108, 111, 138, 145, 149, 159, 168, 238 Kornai, János, 83, 238 Kossa, István, 41, 238 Kossuth, Lajos, 102, 114, 174, 196, 198, 217, 228 Kovács, Béla, 48, 108, 120, 130, 132, 238 Kovács, Imre, 47 Kovács, István (general), 128, 130, 137, 238 Kovács, István (politician), 41, 95, 97, 108–9, 205, 238 Krassó, György, 189, 239 Kun, Béla, 10, 12, 14, 21–3, 27–9, 202, 205, 239, 241, 244 Lakatos, Mrs Péter, 224 Lakatos, Péter, 224 land reform, xxiii, 16–17, 32, 35–6, 38, 40–1, 51, 54, 57, 133, 168 Landler, Jenő, 12, 14, 21, 234, 239 Legters, Lyman H., xxvi Lenin, Vladimir Iliich, 33, 49, 53, 74, 87, 232 Litván, György, xxv Lőcsei, Pál, 89, 111, 214, 239 Losonczy Géza, 86, 89, 91, 93–4, 96, 98, 100, 105, 107–8, 110, 112, 120, 127–8, 130, 132–3, 137–8, 143–4, 147, 151, 156–7, 214, 239 Lukács, Georg, 18, 19, 20, 21, 29, 50, 105, 108, 132, 138, 204–5, 239, 244 Madách, Imre, 89 MADISZ see Hungarian Democratic Youth Association Malenkov, Georgii Maximilanovich, 57, 58, 65, 72, 142, 237, 239 Maléter, Pál, 127–8, 130, 132–3, 137, 145–7, 149, 156, 158–9, 164–5, 240

256

imre nagy

Malinin, Mikhail Sergeevich, 104, 119, 133, 240 Mălnăşanu, Aurel, 133, 240 Mao Zedong, 55 Marosán, György, 95, 240 Marx, Karl, 33, 53 Marxism-Leninism, 18, 51, 59, 88, 90, 145, 169–71 Matthews, D., 148 MDF see Hungarian Democratic Forum Mécs, Imre, 191, 240 MEFESZ see Hungarian Association of Students of Universities and Colleges Mekis, József, 100, 212, 240 Méray, Tibor, xx, xxv, 80, 89–90, 115, 183–4, 225, 228, 240 Mérei, Ferenc, 189, 240 Mező, Imre, 93, 99, 121, 240 Miklós, Béla, 35 Mikoyan, Anastas Ivanovich, 58, 73, 90, 95–6, 104, 109–10, 112–13, 115, 119, 124, 126, 215, 241, 244 Mindszenty, József, 68, 93, 132, 181, 241 Molnár, Árpád, 16 Molnár, Erik, 31 Molnár, Miklós, xx, xxv, 86, 183, 185, 241 Molotov, Vyacheslav, Mikhailovich, 35, 58, 141, 146, 241 (M)SZDP see Social Democratic Party, Hungarian MSZMP see Socialist Workers’ Party in Hungary Müller, Ernő, 18, 241 multiparty system, 36, 39, 45, 71, 114– 15, 118–20, 168, 173, 175, 178, 216 Münnich, Ferenc, 25, 26, 33, 105, 110–11, 116, 131, 142, 144, 241 Nagy, Balázs, 93, 214, 241 Nagy, Erzsébet (daughter of Imre

Nagy), xxv, 16, 17, 25, 26, 205, 207 Nagy, Erzsébet (sister of Imre Nagy), 1 Nagy, Ferenc, 43, 47, 241 Nagy, Gáspár, 189 Nagy, József (father of Imre Nagy), 1, 2, 162 Nagy, László, xx, 183 Nagy, Mária (sister of Imre Nagy), 1, 2 Nagy, Terézia (sister of Imre Nagy), 1, 2 National Association of Peoples’ Colleges (NÉKOSZ), x, 48, 55, 89, 99, 235, 237 national independence, xxv, 90, 116, 133, 167, 172, 174–5, 177–8 National Peasant Party (NPP), xi, xv, 40, 44, 47, 120, 132, 233 NÉKOSZ see National Association of Peoples’ Colleges Németh, László, 89, 242 neutrality, 79, 90, 120, 125, 128–9, 139 New Course (1953–54), 64–72, 75– 83, 86–9, 98, 169, 173, 181 NKVD, ix–x, xvii, 29, 33–4, 191, 199, 206, 231 Nógrádi Sándor, 109, 242 NPP see National Peasant Party Olt, Károly, 212 Orbán, Viktor, 191, 242 Őry, Károly, 14–15, 242 Pallavicini, Count, 41 party opposition, 86, 88–9, 91, 93–4, 96, 98, 102–3, 111, 114–15, 137, 146, 150, 156, 168, 170, 175–6, 183, 187, 197–8, 216, 234–41, 243, 245–6 people’s democracy, 38–8, 43, 51, 59, 61, 71, 74, 76, 109, 120, 122, 146, 170, 172, 177–8 People’s Front , 78, 107 Péter, Gábor, 70, 77, 95, 208, 242

index Peyer, Károly, 13 Piros, László, 115, 242 Poll, Sándor, 16, 29, 242 Pongrátz, Ödön, 116, 242 Ponomarev, Boris Nikolaevich, 144, 242 Pozsár, István, 110 Pozsgay, Imre, 190, 242 Rácz, Sándor, 191, 243 Radó, György, 214 Radó, Zoltán, 158–60, 224 Rajk, Júlia, 99, 137, 157, 243 Rajk, László, 41, 42, 43, 49, 50, 70, 77, 91, 95, 97–9, 208, 236, 243, 244 Rajnai, Sándor, 145, 154, 182, 243 Rákosi, Mátyás, xv, xvi, xxii, 15, 34–6, 39, 40–4, 48–50, 55, 57–60, 62, 64–6, 70–1, 73–4, 76–86, 88–9, 91, 94–7, 105, 112, 120–1, 123–4, 145, 150, 153, 170, 175–6, 179, 188, 193, 198, 210, 213, 232–3, 236–7, 239–4, 243, 245 reform of socialism, xxiv–xxv, 35–6, 60, 63, 69, 71, 76, 166, 195, 198 Révai, József, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 32, 34, 35, 41, 49, 50, 58, 60, 91, 94–6, 153, 210, 243 revolutionary committees, 106, 115, 118, 121–2 Roman, Walter, 142, 151–2 Rónai, Sándor, 113, 243 Rudas, László, 29, 244 secret police Cheka, ix–x, 9–10, 12 GPU, ix–x, 21 Hungarian State Defence Authority (ÁVH), ix, 55, 77, 95, 108, 116, 118, 121, 208, 236, 242–3 KGB, ix, 29, 104, 143, 231, 233, 240, 245 NKVD, ix–x, xvii, 29, 33–4, 191, 199, 206, 231

257

Serov, Ivan Alexandrovich, 104, 240 Sinkovics, István, 13, 15 Social Democratic Party, Hungarian ((M)SZDP), x–xi, 12–15, 17, 21, 25, 44, 49, 53, 77, 118, 120, 122–3, 130, 132, 203, 234, 236–40, 243, 245 socialism reform of, xxiv–xxv, 35–6, 60, 63, 69, 71, 76, 166, 195, 198 transition from capitalism to, 19– 20, 26, 30, 32, 38–9, 46, 48–51, 63, 71, 82, 119, 124, 169, 171–3, 177–8 Socialist Workers’ Party in Hungary (MSZMP, 1925–28), x, 14–17, 25, 29, 203, 220, 235 Soldatic, Dalibor, 136–8, 244 Soviet system, 50, 181, 186, 195 Sovietization, 38, 46 Stalin, Iosif Vissarionovich, xvi, 20, 33, 35–6, 38–9, 48–9, 53, 57–8, 65, 66, 67, 74, 87, 90, 145, 169, 171, 181, 228, 232, 237, 241, 243 Stalinism, 27, 97, 145, 170, 178, 180, 187, 190 Sugár, Andor, 25 Sulyán, György, 224 Suslov, Mikhail Andreevich, 82, 94, 104, 109, 112, 119, 126, 215, 244 system change, 192, 194–5, 197–8, 228 Szabó, Ferenc, S., 47 Szabó, István, B., 132 Szabó, Rozália, Mrs József Nagy (mother of Imre Nagy), 1, 2, 162 Szabó, Zoltán, 40, 47 Szalai, Béla, 75, 212, 244 Szalai, József, 158 Szántó, Béla, 17, 244 Szántó, Zoltán, 16, 17, 29, 30, 34, 74, 91, 98, 110, 124, 132, 137–8, 157, 161, 205, 220, 244 Szász, Béla, 50, 244 Szerényi, Sándor, 21, 23, 244

258

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Szilágyi, József, 111, 115, 131, 144, 147, 149, 155, 158–9, 214, 218, 245 Szilágyi, Mrs József, 222 Szücs, Miklós, 130, 245 Tánczos, Gábor, 93, 108, 245 Tardos, Tibor, 94, 245 TIB see Committee for Historical Justice Tikhonov, 103 Tildy, Zoltán, 43, 108, 115, 118, 120, 123–4, 127–8, 130, 132, 134, 137, 146, 149, 159, 245 Tito, Josip Broz, 49, 79, 93, 97, 136, 141, 143, 152, 181, 222 transition from capitalism to socialism, 19–20, 26, 30, 32, 38–9, 46, 48–51, 63, 71, 82, 119, 124, 169, 171–3, 177–8 democratic (1989), xxv, 193, 195–7 Újhelyi, Szilárd, 88, 100, 137, 157, 214, 245

Unwin, Peter, xx Vági, István, 14, 15, 25, 220, 245 Varga, Eugene, 50, 205, 245 Vas, Mrs Zoltán, 138 Vas, Zoltán, 76, 97–8, 108, 157, 212, 245 Vásárhelyi, Mária, 229 Vásárhelyi, Miklós, 86, 89, 91, 93, 100, 115, 137, 149, 155, 189, 191, 214, 222, 246 Vida, Ferenc, 149, 160–3, 192, 224 Virágh, László, 161 Voroshilov, Kliment Efremovich, 38, 40, 246 Weisshaus, Aladár, 14, 15 workers’ councils, 106–8, 111, 114, 120, 130, 138, 178–9, 191, 243 Zelk, Zoltán, 89, 246 Zhukov, Georgii Konstantinovich, 119 Zimányi, Tibor, 191, 246