Underground Streams: National-Conservatives after World War II in Communist Hungary and Eastern Europe 9789633861974

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UNDERGROUND

STREAMS NATIONAL-CONSERVATIVE S AF TER WORLD WAR II IN COMMUNIST HUNGARY AND E A STERN EUROPE E dited by

J á n o s M. R a i n e r

Central European University Press Bud ap e st—Vien n a—Ne w York



Copyright © by János M. Rainer 2023 Published in 2023 by

Central European University Press Nádor utca 11, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary Tel: +36-1-327-3138 or 327-3000 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.ceupress.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the permission of the Publisher. ISBN 978-963-386-196-7 (hardback) ISBN 978-963-386-197-4 (ebook)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rainer, M. János, editor. Title: Underground streams : national-conservatives after World War II in communist Hungary and Eastern Europe / edited by János M. Rainer. Description: Budapest ; New York : Central European University Press, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023029387 (print) | LCCN 2023029388 (ebook) | ISBN 9789633861967 (hardback) | ISBN 9789633861974 (adobe pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Conservatism--Europe, Eastern--History. | Conservatism--Hungary--History | Nationalism--Hungary--History | Nationalism--Europe, Eastern--History. | Political culture--Hungary. | Right and left (Political science)--Hungary. | Right and left (Political science)--Europe, Eastern--History. | BISAC: HISTORY / Europe / Eastern Classification: LCC DJK50 .U534 2023 (print) | LCC DJK50 (ebook) | DDC 320.5409439--dc23/eng/20230629 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023029387 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023029388

In memory of the founders of the 1956 Institute György Litván (1929–2006) András B. Hegedűs (1930–2001) and János M. Bak (1929–2020)

CONTENTS

List of Acronyms and Abbreviations Acknowledgments

ix xi

Introduction Underground Streams: National-Conservatives after World War II in Communist Hungary and Eastern Europe János M. Rainer



Part One The Right-Wing Tradition in Eastern Europe after 1945

 21

Chapter One The Romanian Ideology: Merging Political Extremes in a National Stalinist Discourse Vladimir Tismaneanu and Bogdan C. Iacob

 23

Chapter Two Absent Traditions: Right-Wing Strands in Slovakian Politics Attila Simon

 65

Chapter Three A Round-Trip through the Czech Lands: The Origins of a Liberal Right Revolution András Schweitzer

 95

Chapter Four Conservative Right-Wing Political Thinking in Hungary after 1945 János M. Rainer

129

Part Two Right-Wing Enemies through the Lens of State Security

 159

Chapter Five Social Resistance under the Kádár Regime and the “Right-Wing” Enemies of State Security Krisztián Ungváry

 161

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Chapter Six Christian Democrats under Fire from the Political Police, 1945–1989 Gábor Tabajdi

 191

Chapter Seven “Petty” Arrow Cross Supporters in the Interior Ministry Files András Lénárt and Rudolf Paksa

221

Part Three Personal Life Paths and Strategies

 257

Chapter Eight “I Was Brought up the Old Way, I’m a Conservative”: A Middle-Class Christian Looks Back on His Life Zsuzsanna Kőrösi

 259

Chapter Nine A Nationalist of Successive Periods: Miklós Mester (1906–1989) Katalin Somlai

 281

Chapter Ten From Right to Left—or Not? Béla Csikós-Nagy, a Paradigmatical Opportunist of Transition Iván Miklós Szegő

309

List of Contributors Index

 345 349

ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

ÁBTL

Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára (Historical Archives of the State Security Services), Budapest AIESEE Association internationale d’études du Sud-Est européen (International Association for Southeast European Studies) ANIC Arhivele Naționale Istorice Centrale (Central National Historical Archives), Bucharest ÁVH Államvédelmi Hatóság (State Security Authority), Hungary ÁVO Államvédelmi Osztály (State Security Department), Hungary BFL Budapest Főváros Levéltára (Budapest City Archives) BRFK Budapesti Rendőr-főkapitányság (Budapest Police Department) CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union DNP Demokrata Néppárt (Democratic People’s Party) FKgP Független Kisgazda-, Földmunkás- és Polgári Párt (Independent Smallholders’ Party) HSLS Hlinkova slovenská ľudová strana (Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party) ISRMH Institute for Studies and Research in Military History, Romania KDH Kresťanskodemokratické hnutie (Christian Democratic Movement) KDNP Kereszténydemokrata Néppárt (Christian Democratic People’s Party) KISZ Magyar Kommunista Ifjúsági Szövetség (Hungarian Young Communist League) MDF Magyar Demokrata Fórum (Hungarian Democratic Forum) MÉP Magyar Élet Pártja (Party of Hungarian Life) MKP Magyar Kommunista Párt (Hungarian Communist Party) MMP Magyar Megújulás Pártja (Party of Hungarian Renewal) MNL OL Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára (National Archives of Hungary) MNP Magyar Nemzeti Párt (Hungarian National Party), Slovakia ix

MSZMP Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt (Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party). NIT Népies Irodalmi Társaság (Popular Literary Society) NPP Nemzeti Parasztpárt (National Peasant Party) OK Országgyűlési Könyvtár (Library of the Hungarian Parliament) OKSZP Országos Keresztényszocialista Párt (Provincial Christian-Socialist Party), Slovakia RCP Romanian Communist Party (Partidul Comunist Român) RFE Radio Free Europe RWP Romanian Workers’ Party (Partidul Muncitoresc Romîn) SNS Slovenská národná strana (Slovak National Party) SZDSZ Szabad Demokraták Szövetsége (Alliance of Free Democrats) SZETA Szegényeket Támogató Alap (Fund to Support the Poor) UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Underground Streams (Búvópatakok) research project was carried out between 2012 and 2015 by the researchers of the 1956 Institute operating within the framework of the National Széchényi Library in Budapest. Financial support for the entire duration of the project was provided by the Open Society Foundations (New York) to the 1956 Institute Foundation—without this support, this volume would not have been possible. The results of this research have been presented at several conferences and in four collected volumes of studies—a selection of which is presented here in this volume.1 In addition to the authors of the present volume, many people have participated in the research with studies, lectures, and commentaries, such as László Eörsi, Andor Horváth (1944–2018, Romania), Márkus Keller, Marek Kornat (Poland), András Körösényi, József Litkei, János Molnár, Réka Sárközy, Éva Standeisky, Dávid Turbucz, Tibor Valuch, and László Varga (1948–2016). We thank all of them, and the results of their work are indirectly included in this book. József Litkei was not only our research partner, but also played a major role in the editing of this book at CEU Press. The essays in this volume (with one exception) were translated by Brian McLean (1944–2022), a distinguished journalist and teacher living in Budapest. This was the last of many works he did for the 1956 Institute. He is no longer alive to see the publication of this book—which we dedicate to his memory as well. 1 For the published volumes, see János M. Rainer, ed., Búvópatakok—A feltárás: Évkönyv XVIII, 2011–2012 [Underground streams: Exploration; Yearbook XVIII] (Budapest: Országos Széchényi Könyvtár – 1956-os Intézet Alapítvány, 2012); Krisztián Ungváry, ed., Búvópatakok: A jobboldal és az állambiztonság 1945–1989 [Underground streams: The political right and the State Security, 1945–1989] (Budapest: Jaffa Kiadó – 1956-os Intézet Alapítvány, 2013); János M. Rainer, ed., Búvópatakok—Széttekintés: Évkönyv XIX, 2013 [Underground streams: Panorama; Yearbook XIX] (Budapest: Országos Széchényi Könyvtár – 1956-os Intézet Alapítvány, 2013); János M. Rainer, ed., Búvópatakok—Mélyfúrások: Évkönyv XX, 2014 [Underground Streams: Deep drillings; Yearbook XX] (Budapest: Országos Széchényi Könyvtár – 1956-os Intézet Alapítvány – Gondolat Kiadó, 2013). For the documents of the entire project, see http://www.rev.hu/en/node/34.

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UNDERGROUND STREAMS: NATIONAL-CONSERVATIVES AFTER WORLD WAR II IN COMMUNIST HUNGARY AND EASTERN EUROPE János M. Rainer

This volume is the product of years of experiences collectively and strongly felt by the editor’s generation. One of the strongest features of the first twenty-five years of democracy in Hungary was the rapid revival of the Hungarian right-wing tradition. All right-wing strands of modern, twentieth-century Hungarian political thinking made their reappearance, from conservatism to extreme-right radicalism, based on earlier traditions. Various strands of modern Western conservatism proved far less able to gain political traction, with no significant Hungarian historical traditions behind them. “Right-wing” (like “left-wing”) is among the most commonly used epithets in politics, including political thinking and political ideology. It is discussed in textbooks and summaries as a subdivision spanning logical and historical typologies. The phrase and concept derive from the division in the constituent national assembly of the French Revolution, where radical revolutionaries sat on the left-hand side of the chamber and the moderates on the right. Left-wingers in that case were anti-clerical republicans, while right-wingers were believers in an “alliance of throne and altar.” Conceptually, left-wingers believed in the sovereignty of the people and the ability of humankind to develop. They thought of institutions as reparable and of efforts to do so as progressive, and they proclaimed the past to be one of continual progress. In terms of political objectives, they believed in the widest possible spread of civil freedom and equality (seen from various angles through various normative statements). This left-wing historical and anthropological optimism was not shared by the right (although they were not necessarily pessimistic in this re1

János M. Rainer

spect). The latter tended to believe in, and build upon, individual excellence and the values and force of tradition—above all those of religion—and to accept inequality as a natural state. The political and ideological concept of left and right became further imbued with economic content in the latter half of the nineteenth century: the left argued for state control over the free market, state intervention, and protection of the interests of the lower “classes of people,” while the right sought economic freedom and a night-watchman’s role for the state. Critics of this compartmentalization into left and right have rightly pointed out how this once roughly interpretable dichotomy broke down in the twentieth century, with the appearance of political movements and ideas that straddled both. Introducing historical criteria allows political fields to be distinguished in several ways. For example, the logical axis of maximization and minimization of power yields six such fields: fascism, communism, conservatism, socialism, liberalism, and anarchism. Of those considered to be on the right, there remain two: the ideologies of conservatism, and fascism. The aim of this research project was clearly historical in nature: to refine further the concept of the right, with a focus on the region and period examined here. Each researcher involved in the Underground Streams project was able to choose a specific conceptual framework for the topic to be examined. It is worth offering here a brief summary of the basis of principle behind these frameworks: namely conservatism, nationalism, fascism, and populism. The archetype of right-wing political thinking today is conservatism, whose basic intention is to conserve an existing order, the status quo (whatever that may mean in practice). The main component of conservatism can be seen as traditionalism: respect for customs and the preservation of religious, political, and cultural institutions. Conservatism rejects revolutionary change and the universalism, egalitarianism, and utilitarianism of various other ideologies that follow the principle of organicism. In considering society as a complex structure, conservatism criticizes any attempt at radical change. It can be described as a skeptical view of politics, preferring knowledge gained over a long historical period to theoretical speculation. According to conservative anthropological pessimism, human beings are imperfect as such. People are equal only before the law. Various other inequalities are inevitable, so a ruling elite is necessary. What became the focus of the concept of the right and right-wing ideas in Eastern Europe in the twentieth century was nationalism. The universalism 2

INTRODUCTION

of nineteenth-century conservatism was replaced by the aim of creating independent national states and by loyalty to the king and church within the organic nation. The latter was based on ethnic, sometimes racialist dimensions, rather than cultural or political entities from the nineteenth century. Nationalism, as Ernest Gellner defined it, is “primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent. . . . Stateless societies cannot, conceptually, experience nationalism. The state is a prior to nationalism.”1 Nationalism armed with an ideology served to construct modern national communities and inspire movements aimed at creating nation-states in Eastern Europe. Disdain for other nations and their members, and intolerance and violence toward national minorities, represent a radical version of nationalism—that is, chauvinism—which was more widespread in the Eastern part of Europe than the Western. The famous Hungarian poet Gyula Illyés drew a distinction between patriotism and nationalism, describing the latter as a certain negative impetus; in his eyes a patriot defends the law, while a nationalist violates it.2 To the Czech writer Milan Kundera nationalism is dynamic, expanding, and brittle. Patriotism is static, gravitates to the Earth, and is tied to a native land. Fascism is added to the subject matter as an extreme version of ethnic nationalism, as highlighted by Kevin Passmore’s definition of the phenomenon, which has increasingly gained consensus in academic circles. According to him, fascism is a set of ideologies and practices that seeks to place the nation, defined in exclusively biological, cultural, and/or historical terms, in a position superior to all other sources of loyalty, and to create a mobilized national community. This extreme nationalism is reactionary in its hostility to socialism and feminism. It is also radically right-wing, because the creation of the mobilized nation [is] held to depend upon the advent to power of a new elite acting in the name of the people, headed by a charismatic leader, and embodied as a mass, militarized party. Fascists are pushed towards conservatism by common hatred of socialism and feminism, but are prepared to override conservative interests—family, property, religion,

1 Ernest Gellner, Nation and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 1, 4. 2 Illyés expressed his opinion in 1970 on receiving the Herder Prize. See Gyula Illyés, “Szakvizsgán—nacionalizmusból,” Digitális Irodalmi Akadémia, accessed November 16, 2021, http:// dia.pool.pim.hu/html/muvek/ILLYES/illyes02118/illyes02170/illyes02170.html.

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János M. Rainer

the universities, the civil service—where the interests of the nation are considered to require it.3

Michael Mann defined fascism by analyzing its values, deeds, and power organizations. The core of Mann’s approach is an endeavor to achieve a transcendent, cleansing nation-state through paramilitarism. Fascist nationalism is organic, etatist, and integrated by biological constraints. Its etatism is concurrently a means and an end, seeing an authoritarian and corporative state as adequate for achieving national goals and generating social progress. Fascism transcends through its intention of outdoing liberal democracy, creating an alternative to both capitalism and socialism.4 Roger Griffin also argued that fascism is a form of “populist ultra-nationalism” that aims to reconstruct the nation after a period of crisis and decline. To describe fascism, he used the term “palingenetic,” meaning rebirth from practically nothing. In Griffin’s own words, “generic fascism draws its internal cohesion and affective driving force from a core myth that a period of perceived decadence and degeneracy is imminently or eventually to give way to one of rebirth and rejuvenation in a post-liberal new order.”5 Accordingly, his definition distinguishes between the elements of fascism specific to the first half of the twentieth century (especially to the interwar years) and, by extension, non-essential and definitional traits, of which “palingenetic ultranationalism” is one of the most characteristic. Critics of Griffin, like Mann, Passmore, and many others, emphasize that on the contrary, both the ideology and practice of fascism were a specific product of the interwar period. Pierre Manent saw its genesis in the particularities of twentieth-century German history (defeat in World War I, an imposed peace settlement, specific relations of German culture to Western civilization, the sense of a Sonderweg, and so forth). There is no explanation for the whole; only parts can be analyzed separately from one another.6 Obviously nationalism can be assumed as a basis of approach, as its ideological spectrum covers a large area of the terrain of both conservatism and fascism. Here historicizing fascism is all the more im3 Kevin Passmore, Fascism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 31. 4 Michael Mann, Fascists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 1‒31. 5 Roger Griffin, “The Primacy of Culture: The Current Growth (Or Manufacture) of Consensus within Fascist Studies,” Journal of Contemporary History 37, no. 1 (Jan. 2002): 24. 6 Pierre Manent, Cours familier de philosophie politique (Paris: Fayard, 2001).

4

INTRODUCTION

portant as a starting point for research, as is the heritage of the interwar period in the political thinking of the region. As for populist proposals, these were received quite well in East Central Europe, where the awareness of backwardness in modernity, alongside the decline and fall of traditional structures and values ascribed to modernization, generated a series of problems. Constant reference to the people was as common to conservatives as to the radical right wing. Various fascist movements often identified themselves as representatives of ordinary rural people, endangered by industry and finance capitalism, the exponents of which were mainly described as aliens (more precisely, Jews). Even among conservative reformers, “third road” visions based on traditional values and genuine popular will instead of what they perceived as pretended democracy were widespread. Hungarian right-wing political thinking was banned from official discourse for the duration of the Soviet-type system in Hungary, beginning in the transition period of 1945–47. In the mid-1980s, Miklós Szabó claimed that “reactionary Hungary” had been incapable of reinterpreting its position in 1945: “The old Hungary was crushed by history with such force,” he wrote, “that it became risible, a comedy at the moment of its collapse.”7 He considered “the old Hungary” to be more or less dead, along with the “Hungarian reactionaries” with whom he had largely associated, the so-called Christian middle class. This social stratum is usually associated with attributes including “historical,” “public-service” (köztisztviselői), and “gentry” (úri) in Hungarian social history.8 The expression “historical middle class” harkens back to the petty noble or gentry origin of the public-service stratum in the pre-1848 Reform Era and the post-1867 Dual Monarchy. It is valid in terms of tradition and identity rather than sociology. The middle class as a category was central to the works that shaped public views in the 1930s.9 A decisive question in Hungarian public debates of the 1930s and the war years was what kind of new, per7 Miklós Szabó, Politikai kultúra Magyarországon 1896–1986: Válogatott tanulmányok (Budapest: Atlantisz Program, 1989), 230. 8 On the concept of a public-service middle class, see Gábor Gyáni and György Kövér, Ma­ gyarország társadalomtörténete a reformkortól a második világháborúig (Budapest: Osiris, 1998), 227–36. Gyáni examines the concept in historical discourse in Gábor Gyáni, Történészdiskur­ zusok (Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2002), 78–97. 9 To mention just two of the seminal works of the time, see Gyula Szekfű, Három nemzedék és ami utána következik (Budapest: ÁKV–Maecenas, 1989), and Zoltán Szabó, A tardi helyzet: Cifra nyomorúság (Budapest: Akadémiai/Kossuth/Magvető, 1986 [1938]).

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haps renewed middle class to have. Every big issue in Hungary’s reformation affected its role directly, and how it should assert that role of “upholding the nation,” along with its values and thinking. The prominent interwar historian Gyula Szekfű, in his seminal, mid-1930s work Three Generations and What Follows from Them, diagnosed five major problems: the land question, antagonisms among religious (Christian) denominations, the Jewish question, generational conflicts, and the problem of minority Hungarians (“torn off” from the country by the Treaty of Trianon). Lists of problems in other works usually covered reform of the autocratic political system, including the question of democracy and democratic institutions; the need to create an equitable society through social, even socialistic policy; reform of public administration; modernization of the whole economy by moving beyond mere land reform; active intervention and priority assertion through the economic policy of the state; public education, including fostering talent, educating the nation, and emancipating traditional popular culture; and the idea of close, even confederative cooperation among nations.10 New questions arose in 1944 and 1945 with the collapse of the Horthy regime and the end of the war: what (if anything) would happen to this “reform potential”? Did 1945 negate the importance of the Christian middle class, which had seen itself as the cohesive force in the nation? Most contemporaries thought so and the question was widely treated in those terms by historians. The defeat had buried the “historical,” “Christian” middle class and irreversibly discredited its ideas. “After the initial revolutionary steps, which were not taken by the Christian middle class, it faced only one sensible course: to recognize that the old times—when there really was a middle class with a stratum above and a poorer stratum below materially weaker in resources, power, and influence—had passed forever, never to return,” Szekfű wrote of the “middle-class tragedy.” The Smallholders’ Party, to which the middle class looked hopefully amid the destruction, “could not draw this bourgeois middle class into the reconstruction. Restoration of the country began, but the middle class appeared in it at most as directed officials.”11 After the change of system in 1989 came a succession of gestures, references, and political and historical constructions that brought contact between 10 Gyula Juhász, Uralkodó eszmék Magyarországon 1939–1944 (Budapest: Kossuth, 1983), 7–66; 248–67. 11 Gyula Szekfű, Forradalom után (Budapest: Gondolat, 1983), 175. First published in 1947.

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INTRODUCTION

some of the new Hungarian middle class forming at the turn of the millennium and the intellectual heritage of the earlier, historical middle class. But the contact, the accepted continuity, was only sociological in part; it was far more one of ideology and mentality. By the 2000s, János Kis was arguing that “the new Hungarian right wing derives itself from the former middle class, from what was known as the Christian middle class between the wars. This middle class was psychologically—and initially in terms of livelihood as well— oppressed by communist state power. . . . So in 1989, the future Hungarian right wing emerged from communism without having carried out any open self-examination and replete with emotion, anger, and undigested ill-humor.”12 So Szabó’s hypothesis, outlined above, was not vindicated. The self-examination referred to by János Kis either failed to occur or has only just begun. In this context the 1956 Institute community, with support from outside, decided to examine these issues that were newly illuminated in the late 1990s and the first decade and a half of the new century. Most important of them was what happened to the representatives of right-wing political thinking under the Soviet-type system. How was the Hungarian right wing handled by the Stalinist and post-Stalinist elite and its specialist institutions, namely, ideological inspectors and, in particular, the political police? On the other hand, we also intended to research what kind of tacit or concealed discourses provided continuity for the various types of right-wing political thinking. All this was aimed at a better understanding of how traditional Hungarian right-wing political thinking reemerged and became embedded in the new Hungarian political spectrum after 1989. The study of this problem called for primary source research and, above all, precise definition of the framework of concepts and interpretation. Traditional archival documentation came from files in the ideological sections of the state party and especially from the state security organization. The Hungarian chapters in particular provide a specific perspective on the right, drawing almost entirely on police files. The impression may emerge that the reader actually learns more about the security authorities’ visions than about the Hungarian right itself. This one-sidedness in the selection of evidence came mainly from the special character of the sources; we had to face the issue that there are hardly any contemporary texts of self-reflection of the right. The lack of such evidence 12 Detailed analysis was provided in János Kis, Az összetorlódott idő: Politikai írások 1992–2013 (Bratislava: Kalligram, 2013), 121–63.

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makes the reports of state security extremely important, while raising certain issues at the same time. The only solution available was the reflective and critical use of those files. Important results can also come from analyzing relevant interview texts in the 1956 Institute’s Oral History Archive. Finally, it was essential to collate these with similar historical phenomena by surveying experiences in other countries under Soviet rule at the same time as Hungary. Approaches were therefore made to colleagues and experts in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Romania, with questions derived originally from the Hungarian case, as self-understanding seemed to be most viable through comparison. In the first part of this book, Vladimir Tismaneanu and Bogdan Iacob examine the process of cultural and ideological nationalization of the partystate, to show the type of legacies characteristically found in post-communism. The continual rehabilitation of some themes of the “Stalino-fascist baroque”13 in post-communism, and the constant fascination with the palingenetic ideas of local fascism, can be explained by revealing the syncretic nature of the “Romanian ideology.” The latter construct results from a gradual, but extensive symbiosis of traditions of cultural narcissism and ethnocentrism with the Ceaușescu regime’s odd synthesis of isolationism (especially in the 1980s) and pericentrism (particularly from the 1960s until well into the late 1970s). The communist experience in Romania was one cardinally marked by a massive process of symbolic and personnel appropriation of the pre-1945 past. The legacies of national Stalinism in post-communist Romania can be separated into two categories. The first is the Stalino-fascist baroque, manifest both in politics and in cultural debates (especially in the 1990s, but well into the 2000s). The second is arguably more pervasive and potentially threatening: the obsession with uncritical appropriation of tradition to construct usable pasts. Attila Simon in Chapter 2 feels that the influence of right-wing traditions in Slovakian politics after the change of system is hard to discern, mainly because the 1989 Velvet Revolution and ensuing political changes found Slovak society unprepared, after decades when right-wing values had almost vanished. The other important reason was an absence of factual, reusable traditions, partly due to the belated development of Slovak society. It had strong traditions only in nationalism, as Slovak society spent most of its modern history envis13 For detailed definitions of terms used by the authors, see their texts in this volume.

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INTRODUCTION

aging itself in terms of another nation: the Hungarians and later the Czechs. So, although this nationalism in the traditional sense was initially an ally of liberalism, modern Slovak conservatism was able to draw from it, through the idea of a nation-state. András Schweitzer’s paper focuses on the twentieth-century relations between basic political ideologies in a Czech national context. Using a comparative approach, he examines the attributes and sources of the right-wing tradition in order to ascertain how it could become the dominant force in a society frequently characterized as essentially leftist. A dominant right emerged after 1989, although this was a different right than the others, a pragmatic and liberal-democratic political bloc that unambiguously advocated an open society and wide market-oriented reforms. A “rootless” post-1989 economic liberalism sprang from the modernist, receptive Czech mindset (its international openness) and the longue durée of swinging between the two main Czech ideological traditions: egalitarianism and liberalism. The difference between the Czech new right and that of other East Central European countries lies less in the relative vigor of the liberal tradition, Schweitzer argues, than in a lack of alternatives: nationalism, conservatism, or both of these in conjunction, fortifying each other. Pre-1918 Czech nationalism was exceptional in the region due to its being strongly anti-nobility, anti-Habsburg, and anti-Catholic—essentially, anti-conservative. As such, in the Czech context the main cleavage is between an East-oriented, nationalist-leaning egalitarianism and a West-looking, conservative-friendly liberalism. On the contrary, in Hungary’s case (Chapter 4, by the editor of this volume), the most typical and longstanding ideological division was between an anti-conservative and anti-nationalist “alliance” vacillating between socialism and liberalism on the one hand, and an anti-modern, inward-looking conservative-nationalist camp on the other. This study covering the Hungarian right explores the question by focusing on three issues: ideology, organizational history, and post-1945 survival. The intellectual content of the Hungarian rightwing ideology lies in a few basically negative theses like anti-Semitism, anti-liberalism, anti-communism, anti-capitalism, and anti-modernism. Positively it was synthesized from a strong etatism with certain redistributive tendencies on nationalist grounds. After 1945, free discourse ended, and the institutional background of the right disappeared. However, the institutional continuity of right-wing political thought did not succumb entirely to the communist takeover. There were still some illegal or semi-legal refuges for it, such as un9

János M. Rainer

derground forms of resistance, although they appeared only sporadically. The most important survival channel for the right’s political tradition with poten­ tial to be legalized lay within the populist ideological coalition and informal system, which extended also to the right. Hungarian populists (népiek) were recruited mainly from the young intellectuals of the 1930s, who tended to have rural origins. Criticizing the social injustices of the Horthy era, especially the conditions in which the peasantry lived, the populists were formed into a genuine Hungarian left-wing opposition of that time. They tried to keep an equal distance from both the Social Democrats and the moderate and radical right. By the early 1960s, the big issues and proposals of the populist ideological coalition had largely faded away. As they turned toward the nation’s problems, especially the fate of Hungarian minorities abroad, the populists became attracted to those preserving the traditions of the Hungarian right and found ideological refuge in their informal networks. The final part of the study outlines some hypotheses about the post-1945 position of the main social group to espouse the ideology’s system of values in their daily lives. What follows thereafter is a series of case studies of the Hungarian phenomena of underground streams in two parts. There are two main kinds of traces the right was able to leave in the communist period. Firstly, they had become targeted for surveillance, investigation, and documentation by the political police. Certainly, an obviously modified view of reality can be seen in this reflection of them, but with some identifiable features. Secondly, personal sources, memoirs, and life stories were constructed by former conservatives and other rightists themselves. Their approach also raises the issue of what knowledge can be gained from such personal accounts of the past. Both documentation problems can be solved only by an equally emphatic and critical evaluation of such evidence. The first part, consisting of three studies, was inspired by the opportunities of the delayed Hungarian archival revolution. The files of the former state security organs were partly destroyed in 1989 (or earlier), partly taken over by the new national security organs in early 1990, and partly retained in the Ministry of Interior. In 1995, the interior minister set up a committee of historians and archivists to assess the ministry’s records. This committee proposed transferring the documents to special archives, which occurred two years later. At the turn of the millennium, the secret services slowly began to release the pre-1989 documents in their possession to this archive, and 10

INTRODUCTION

scholars began obtaining relative freedom to study the documents.14 The main question posed by the authors of the first three case studies was what could be learned about the post-1945 Hungarian right from such state security documentation. Krisztián Ungváry sets out to present the treatment that state security meted out to the right, placing it first within the Kádár system’s overall view of the enemy. Of the groups hostile to the system, Ungváry argues, those easily classified as right-wing (principally those who labelled themselves as such, those who wished to follow the traditions of the pre-1945 right or could be associated with them personally, and those who saw the West European right as a model) were the most fragmentary. There is a widely exploited statistical database on state security activity that demonstrates how hard it is to define what counted as “right-wing” activity in the Kádár period: the kind of political ideas called right-wing today showed hardly any sign of life in the last twenty years of the party-state. Kádárite state security, however, was working with a wide scope of target enemies, considering them all right-wing except for two narrow groups: hardcore Stalinist veterans on the one hand, and young Maoist intellectuals on the other. Even the reform-minded communist supporters of Imre Nagy were handled as right-wing revisionists and so traitors to Marxism-Leninism. Gábor Tabajdi’s contribution targets one of the genuine conservative factions of Hungarian political life, the Christian democrats. Their representatives were initially critics of the authoritarian Horthy regime, then contributors to the wartime resistance, then condoned opposition politicians in the transition period, and finally branded, persecuted ex-politicians whom the Kádárites sought to neutralize, win over, or manipulate. As the regime steadily gained Western acceptance, even Christian democrat émigrés ceased to be a serious problem to the party-state: only a handful of ex-politicians remained of interest in the context of church policy. Tabajdi argues that most sought some 14 Krysztof Persak and Lukasz Kaminski, eds., A Handbook of the Communist Security Appara­ tus in East Central Europe 1944‒1989 (Warsaw: Institute of National Remembrance, 2005). For more on secret police files in Hungary, see János M. Rainer, “Opening the Archives of the Communist Secret Police—the Experience in Hungary,” Országos Széchényi Könyvtár 1956os Intézet és Oral History Archívum, last modified September 18, 2006, http://www.rev.hu/ portal/page/portal/rev/tanulmanyok/rendszervaltas/rmj_oslo_00_eng_long; and János M. Rainer, “The Crimes of the Communist Regime in Hungary—National Report,” in Crimes of the Communist Regimes: International Conference; An Assessment by Historians and Legal Experts, ed. David Svoboda and Cóílín O’Connor, 157‒192 (Prague: Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, 2011).

11

János M. Rainer

form of modus vivendi with the Kádár regime, a way of agreeing with the authorities on applying their ideas, and unsurprisingly they found some. Apart from promoting human rights (above all freedom of worship), former Christian democratic politicians who remained in Hungary and expressed political opinions were sensitive primarily to issues of social justice and welfare. This led them to a more positive assessment of state socialism than the one held by expelled or émigré groups. Members of the main postwar Christian democratic grouping, the Democratic People’s Party (DNP), dissociated themselves from the conservatives and the extreme right-wing anti-communists. Yet, the persecution lent Hungarian Christian democracy enough anti-communist content to appear as a right-wing political tradition during and after 1989. Like Ungváry and Tabajdi, András Lénárt and Rudolf Paksa, authors of the analysis of former Hungarian Nazis, checked mostly the files of the former political police. Right-wing extremism—and the Arrow Cross (nyilaskeresztes or simply nyilas) truly was extremist in deeds, not just in words, as it demonstrated in late 1944 during Ferenc Szálasi’s bloody dictatorship—seems logically to be the most obvious counterpart of the communist regime. However, the communists were guided by political pragmatism rather than consistent principle in this respect. Their policy would be dramatic condemnation of well-known Arrow Cross leaders and their opinions, but a blind eye turned to “petty” rank-and-file members (more than 100,000 voters in 1939) who had committed no serious war crimes. The Hungarian Communist Party informally supported integration of former “petty” Arrow Cross members, and did not object to their joining it (at least until 1949). As regards the leading personalities of the Arrow Cross movement, up to 1951 the prominent war criminals—including four-fifths of the Szálasi government staff—were caught, sentenced, and executed. The same happened to the second rank, with fewer death penalties. From 1950 up to the late 1960s, the secret police tried to keep the remaining rank-and-file extremist activists under surveillance. But they were not the top priority of state security in the 1950–56 period. The final part of this book concerns the memories and strategies of the former Christian middle class in post-1945 Hungary. The first contribution is an analysis by Zsuzsanna Kőrösi of a lengthy oral history life story from Tibor Pákh,15 a graduate of law who was in a Soviet prisoner of war camp between 15 The interview is one of about 1100 records held by the 1956 Institute’s Oral History Archive (currently Veritas Institute Oral History Archive, Budapest).

12

INTRODUCTION

1945 and 1948, and who took part in the 1956 Revolution. Sentenced to life imprisonment in 1961, he was released ten years later but kept under police surveillance. He was prevented from taking a regular job and made his living through occasional translation work. In the 1980s, he regularly joined opposition events, where he stated his views and was arrested several times. Among other demands, he called for the rehabilitation of József Mindszenty, princeprimate of the Hungarian Catholic Church, advocated the withdrawal of Soviet occupation troops from the country, and demanded remedies for various acts of injustice. Kőrösi sets out to discover what system of values appears in this life story and how it conflicts with the official value system of the post1945 period, what schemes of ideas and topoi are expressed, what identities the subject constructed, and what strategies he followed when his privileged prewar status became one of victimized discrimination and persecution. Religious faith, she emphasizes, was a vital element in Pákh’s identity, as he retained his faith in adult life and practiced his religion with deep conviction. This ties in closely with his relation to church authority. József Mindszenty appears many times in his narrative and occupies the role of an unquestionable leader throughout. Another major element of his identity was being middle class, an expression he uses of himself usually to denote a lifestyle and standard of living, above all for the family, which gave him a firm financial basis (at least until the war), a fine home, an estate, servants, a governess, social life, and access to the arts. Particularly important to him was the acquisition of knowledge. Learning as an integral family value was built into his strategy of life and remained a priority even under the altered political conditions. Pákh was born in 1924, so he was quite young in 1945. The central figure of the next chapter, Miklós Mester, was about forty at that time, and unlike Pákh, had something of a professional and political career in interwar Hungary. He was an MP from the late 1930s, before being nominated to state secretary of religion and public education in the pro-German Sztójay cabinet after the German occupation of the country on March 19, 1944. But Mester, as reliable persons testified after 1945, did his best to save the Jewish community. He succeeded in escaping punishment as a war criminal, but he was exiled from Budapest to a small village in southeast Hungary in 1950‒53. He did not participate in the events of 1956 and remained marginalized until his death in 1989. Katalin Somlai’s contribution sets out to sum up the values Mester lived by—or, more precisely, the values he maintained as central in his memoirs, which he wrote in the 1980s. In this volume, published long after 13

János M. Rainer

his death,16 he traced his commitment to democracy and humanism back to the early 1930s. Democracy was a guiding light in his outlook and the starting point for all his other aims, economic or social. National interest, nationalism, and ties to Hungarian historical traditions and culture were not relegated either. He pressed ever more openly for restoring his country’s independence and improving the rights and living conditions of Hungarians beyond the country’s borders. It was national interest that caused further conflict between him and the prevalent communist system. Over the Kádár period, Mester turned from being an anti-Semitic nationalist into a believer in radical national ideas about democracy. But despite revising his political views and personal contacts, Mester remained an advocate of nationalism, a devotion that constituted the prime political feature of his life. The last chapter of this book, Iván Miklós Szegő’s study of Béla Csikós-­ Nagy, examines a rather exceptional life and political career in twentieth-century Hungary. Between 1942 and 1944, Csikós-Nagy acted as adviser to Finance Minister Lajos Reményi-Schneller, a Nazi collaborator executed as a war criminal in 1946. He was then cabinet vice-minister in 1952–55 to the Stalinist party general secretary and prime minister, Mátyás Rákosi, and later to Imre Nagy when he became premier in 1953. Finally, under Kádár, the longest-serving of all Hungary’s communist leaders, Csikós-Nagy presided over the Price Control Office for twenty-seven years, from 1957 to 1984. With Hungary as an ally of Hitler’s Germany in World War II, Csikós-Nagy in 1943 published an anti-liberal response to the German Wilhelm Röpke, a critic of collectivism. He became, paradoxically, an authority on competition policy during the reforms of the 1960s. Before his death he returned to defensible parts of his philosophical tenets, on which his Austro-Fascist, National Socialist ideas had been based. He relativized Marxism and the “Western” liberal economics in crisis. His prewar views, albeit shorn of their racist logic, reappeared in 1999. In line with the criteria of the Underground Streams research project, Szegő examines how the etatist, anti-liberal extreme rightism of Csikós-Nagy, with its antagonism for banks, speculation, competition, and the market, became submerged in 1945 and then revived after 1990. Despite burying his beliefs as a survival technique, his underground rightist stream can be revealed. 16 Miklós Mester, Arcképek: Két tragikus kor árnyékában; Visszapillantás a katasztrofális mag­ yarországi 1944. esztendőre, részint annak előzményeire és közvetlen következményeire is, 27 év távlatából (Budapest: Tarsoly, 2012), 263.

14

INTRODUCTION

He opposed autarky and championed the national interest within economic integration. As a young man he opposed a currency union based on the German mark; at the end of his life, he was a Euroskeptic opposed to the IMF. The Hungarian Christian middle class almost took it for granted that there would be a new democratic system after 1945. They did not analyze its appearance or examine it as a new system. Instead, they sought an answer to the largely practical question of how they could assert their preserved values and political convictions in this new situation and structure. This produced an attitude of mind based on their individual and collective grievances, designed to prevent the collapse of their livelihoods and strategies. They set about defending Christian national ideology, or possibly an improved version of it. They sought to resume or recommence where the system of political ideas had “broken off” early in the 1940s. Nevertheless, the events of 1944 and 1945 could not be ignored. Their halfhearted self-criticism sprang less from the events or outcome of the war than from the self-examination and search for a way forward that occurred in the 1930s and 1940s. It embraced radical social criticism, out of which emerged the idea of raising the Hungarian peasantry economically and culturally as a way of “refreshing” the middle class. The year 1945 also meant a complex of fears for the Christian middle class. As listed in István Bibó’s 1944 study,17 the Christian middle class feared postwar proletarian dictatorship, the “working class” (or rather its left-wing political forces), and the “collective vengeance” of the Jews, a breach in “the legal continuity and legal system of the Hungarian Constitution,” a new 1919,18 a long-lasting Soviet occupation and possible annexation, a second Trianon,19 persecution of religion and churches, abolition of the privileges of the official caste, an “extended suspension” of public security, confiscation of private property (housing, stocks, small estates), and restoration of the economic power of the Jewish industrialist Weisz, Chorin, and Kornfeld families.20 Almost all these fears proved grounded after 1945, although none immediately or completely. Perhaps paradoxically, this tended to increase, rather than dispel, their anxiety—if not now, the worst will come soon, it was felt— 17 István Bibó, Bibó István összegyűjtött munkái, ed. István Kemény and Mátyás István, 4 vols. (Bern: Európai Protestáns Magyar Szabadegyetem, 1981–1984), vol. 4, 1275–80. 18 That is, a repetition of the Hungarian Soviet Republic of March 21–August 1, 1919. 19 Which is to say, a further constriction of Hungary’s borders. 20 Bibó, Bibó István összegyűjtött munkái, vol. 4, 1275–80.

15

János M. Rainer

even though the Hungarian left in 1945 continually denied they wanted to make these fears come true. The material and spiritual basis for middle-class life disappeared: salaries, allowances, housing, personal belongings, and along with them prestige and respect, all disappeared wholly or almost wholly. The entire Hungarian society was burdened by defeat and losses in the war, but other, more populous sections of society were better used to hardship than the middle class. Most of the respected leaders of the Christian middle class disappeared from public life and public notice. Their ability to speak out was strongly restricted by the armistice agreement, censorship, and self-censorship. The Christian middle class had no party of its own, no organizations or institutions to represent its interests, as they had been dispersed or found it too difficult to reconstitute themselves. The old and new fears may be just what overcame the earlier remorse and suppressed the self-examination among the Christian middle class. Analysis and understanding of the war, defeat, and social collapse were laid aside or interrupted. They seemed like a national, group, or personal misfortune, an ac­ cident from which it might be possible (and necessary) to move on, except that the way was blocked by wreckage from the blast. All they had, in place of diagnosis and analysis, was a deep sense of the painful wounds and yet more painful consequences.21 Even those who conversed quietly behind the scenes became criminalized, guilty of the capital offense of conspiracy against the state and political system. What Miklós Szabó called the capillary action of “democratic interpretation” became blocked for this section of society. Furthermore, it would never operate again, even after 1956, when the members and successors of the former Christian middle class began to rebuild their positions with painful slowness, or after 1989, when the right to freedom of thought was restored. What remained and continued was the capillary action of preservation and inheritance, mainly in families and later in surviving “societies” (where people still referred to themselves privately as “gentlemanly”), among the new generations that had grown up over the decades of “preservation,” which tried to 21 Sándor Márai, a respected liberal novelist of interwar Hungary, in his 1945 solitude stood at once within and without, feeling this life sense while turning away from it in disgust: “The Hungarian tragedy cannot just be explained by inner sins. This is a deeply tragic fate. How rare the times this nation, alone with its fate, manages to heal itself! Once more there is an alien power giving orders, alien bayonets flashing in this country’s streets . . . so what do we want? Yesterday hateful Germans were the marauders, now alien Slavs, and they seize, prey, punish, and pull us about. . . . It will be the death of us.” Sándor Márai, Ami a Naplóból kima­ radt 1945–1946 (Toronto: Vörösváry, 1992), 194.

16

INTRODUCTION

continue or revive the self-examination and self-analysis broken off in 1945. It seems that today the intellectual tradition of preservation is stronger, embedded in political rhetoric and manifest in symbolic gestures. The 1945 interruption and confusion in self-examination and self-analysis seems to apply to this day. Back when it was launched, the goal of the “Underground streams” (Búvópa­ takok) research project was to undertake a historical investigation. Yet, as I wrote at the beginning of this Introduction, we were also seeking answers to personal and, admittedly, current topical, present-day political and cultural questions. We found that no modern political language and culture had emerged during the democratic transition in Hungary and the region. We only partly took it for granted that the legacy of the Soviet-style system was responsible for this. What we have seen in Hungary is that in 1989 a very young political circle with almost no past—a group that has been in power continuously since 2010, including both the time this research was conducted and the very moment of writing these lines—consciously decided to use and adopt many elements of the right-wing discourse between the two world wars. They did this, no doubt, because they were convinced that it is this language and certain elements of it that the most mobilizable part of Hungarian society understands best. Of course, there were many other factors that contributed to their success. This right-wing political language and way of thinking has gained a lot of ground in Hungary, and it openly strives for hegemony. Intellectual workshops work on its formation, and high-ranking state officials—including Prime Minister Viktor Orbán—promote its “ideals.” It is also openly opposed to the Hungarian regime change of 1989, the principles of European liberalism, socialism, and the democratic exercise of power. How did we get to this point, how did the right-wing tradition survive under state socialism like an underground stream, and how did it evolve while lurking below the surface—these were the questions we sought to answer. The framework for this was provided by the 1956 Institute, established in 1989, which operated autonomously for twenty-two years, with the support of the governments of the time. In 2011, this independence ended as the Institute, following a decree by the Orbán government, became a department of the Hungarian National Library. In 2019, this relative autonomy also ceased, and since then the staff—including the majority of the authors of this book—continue to work as a voluntary association. This is how the “Underground streams” project became the last international undertaking of the 1956 Institute, a scholarly enterprise that dates back to the Hungarian democratic transition of 1989. 17

János M. Rainer

Bibliography Bibó, István. Bibó István összegyűjtött munkái [Collected works of István Bibó], edited by István Kemény and Mátyás István, 4 vols. Bern: Európai Protestáns Magyar Szabadegyetem, 1981–1984. Cox, R. H. Ideology, Politics, and Political Theory. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1969. Gellner, Ernest. Nation and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983. Griffin, Roger. The Nature of Fascism. London: Pinter, 1991. ———. “The Primacy of Culture: The Current Growth (Or Manufacture) of Consensus within Fascist Studies.” Journal of Contemporary History 37, no. 1 (January 2002): 21–43. Gyáni, Gábor. Történészdiskurzusok [Historians’ discourses]. Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2002. Gyáni, Gábor, and György Kövér. Magyarország társadalomtörténete a reformkortól a második világháborúig [Hungary’s social history from the Age of Reform to World War II]. Budapest: Osiris, 1998. Illyés, Gyula. “Szakvizsgán—nacionalizmusból” [An exam on the subject of nationalism]. Digitális Irodalmi Akadémia. Accessed November 16, 2021. http://dia.pool.pim.hu/ html/muvek/ILLYES/illyes02118/illyes02170/illyes02170.html Juhász, Gyula. Uralkodó eszmék Magyarországon 1939–1944 [Ruling ideas in Hungary, 1939–1944]. Budapest: Kossuth, 1983. Kis, János. Az összetorlódott idő: Politikai írások 1992–2013 [Congested times: Political essays 1992–2013]. Bratislava: Kalligram, 2013. Manent, Pierre. Cours familier de philosophie politique. Paris: Fayard, 2001. Mann, Michael. Fascists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Márai, Sándor. Ami a Naplóból kimaradt 1945–1946 [Omitted from the diary 1945–1946]. Toronto: Vörösváry, 1992. Mester, Miklós. Arcképek: Két tragikus kor árnyékában; Visszapillantás a katasztrofális magyarországi 1944. esztendőre, részint annak előzményeire és közvetlen következmé­ nyeire is, 27 év távlatából [Portraits: In the shadow of two tragic periods; Retrospective of the catastrophic year 1944 in Hungary, and some of its antecedents and direct consequences, at a distance of twenty-seven years]. Budapest: Tarsoly, 2012. Passmore, Kevin. Fascism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Persak, Krysztof, and Lukasz Kaminski, eds. A Handbook of the Communist Security Ap­ paratus in East Central Europe 1944‒1989. Warsaw: Institute of National Remembrance, 2005. Rainer, János M. “The Crimes of the Communist Regime in Hungary—National Report.” In Crimes of the Communist Regimes: International Conference; An Assessment by His­ torians and Legal Experts, edited by David Svoboda and Cóílín O’Connor, 157‒192. Prague: Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, 2011. ———. “Opening the Archives of the Communist Secret Police—the Experience in Hungary.” Országos Széchényi Könyvtár 1956-os Intézet és Oral History Archívum. Last modified September 18, 2006. http://www.rev.hu/portal/page/portal/rev/tanulmany­ ok/rendszervaltas/rmj_oslo_00_eng_long. 18

INTRODUCTION

Szabó, Miklós. Politikai kultúra Magyarországon 1896–1986: Válogatott tanulmányok [Political culture in Hungary 1896–1986: Selected studies]. Budapest: Atlantisz Program, 1989. Szabó, Zoltán. A tardi helyzet: Cifra nyomorúság [The situation in Tard: Tawdry penury], Budapest: Akadémiai/Kossuth/Magvető, 1986 [1938]. Szekfű, Gyula. Forradalom után [After the revolution]. Budapest: Gondolat, 1983 [1947]. ———. Három nemzedék és ami utána következik [Three generations and what comes after]. Budapest: ÁKV–Maecenas, 1989 [1934].

19

PART ONE

THE RIGHT-WING TRADITION IN EASTERN EUROPE AFTER 1945

CHAPTER ONE

THE ROMANIAN IDEOLOGY: MERGING POLITICAL EXTREMES IN A NATIONAL STALINIST DISCOURSE V ladimir Tismaneanu and B ogdan C . Iacob

Introduction The eminent historian of fascism George L. Mosse argued in his 1964 book, The Crisis of German Ideology, that “national socialism was not an aberration.” Its success as a mass movement, he explained, was rooted in an ability “to turn long-cherished myths and symbols to its own purposes.”1 Seventeen years later, in 1981, Schocken Books republished the work. Meanwhile, in the same year, the nouveau philosophe Bernard-Henri Levy made a great stir in France with L’idéologie française, attempting to expose the mythological foundations of Pétainisme (the spirit of Vichy) and translate it into dominant cultural discourses and political myths within French society.2 This chapter proposes a similar approach by highlighting the rapprochement between communism and fascism in Romania. It examines the cultural and ideological nationalization of the party-state in order to shed light on the legacies it left to postcommunism. However, it does so without claiming to be exhaustive; more as a proposal for a research agenda. Turning to the post-communist period, the continuing rehabilitation of themes of the “Stalino‒fascist baroque,”3 alongside a fascination with pal1 George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Schocken Books, 1981), vi. 2 Bernard Henri-Levy, L’ idéologie française (Paris: Editions Grasset, 1981). 3 See Vladimir Tismaneanu, Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy, Nationalism, and Myth in PostCommunist Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); and Vladimir Tisma-

23

Vladimir Tismaneanu and Bogdan C . Iacob

ingenetic ideas found in local fascism, can be explained by the syncretic nature of the “Romanian ideology”: a construct resulting from a gradual, extensive symbiosis of traditions of cultural narcissism and ethnocentrism with the Ceaușescu regime’s synthesis of isolationism (especially in the 1980s) and pericentrism (especially from the 1960s to the late 1970s).4 The communist experience in Romania involved a massive process of appropriation of the pre-1945 past, both symbolically and in terms of personnel.5 This gave rise to an autochthony that legitimized the social homogeneity conceived by the party. Indeed, “communist nationalism and nationalism after communism” differed from the types of nationalism that existed before communist rule.6 The nation returned, because the communist party reinvented itself mainly under conditions of encirclement through competing visions of socialist construction and sovereignty. The latter reinforced the communist regime’s insulation from change within the Soviet bloc and the world communist movement. Only later did it extol isolationism based on a full vision of international encirclement by both East and West. neanu, Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). In the former volume, Tismaneanu used the term for “a new version of radicalism combining themes of left and right in a baroque, often unpredictable alchemy. Such parties, which exist in most of the post-communist societies, share a number of political attributes: hostility to pluralism and diversity; cultivation of an idealized and self-congratulatory historical tradition; xenophobia and bigotry against minorities; a neoromantic, often irrational glorification of premodern, nonurban values; and strong reservations about, and often direct enmity toward, private property and the market.” Tismaneanu, Fan­ tasies of Salvation, 41. 4 According to the political scientist Tony Smith, “junior actors” in the Cold War—in our case, Nicolae Ceaușescu—“may have interests, passions, and types of leaders wanting to take advantage of what they perceive to be an international contest to give shape to domestic, or regional, or even global organizations of power that they conceive of in their own nationalist or ideological terms.” Tony Smith, “New Bottles for New Wine: A Pericentric Framework for the Study of the Cold War,” Diplomatic History 24, no. 4 (Fall 2000): 591. 5 Referring to the 1920s and early 1930s in the Soviet Union, Katerina Clark spoke of “great appropriation.” Using her definition, it is argued here that in communist Romania, in addition to the civilization transfer from the Moscow center, there were complex appropriation processes that took place both laterally (absorbing contemporary trends in other geographical areas, such as Europe/US or the non-aligned movement) and diachronically (integrating national and European culture of the past). Katerina Clark, Moscow, the Fourth Rome: Stalin­ ism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931‒1941 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 8. 6 Tchavdar Marinov and Alexander Vezenkov, “Communism and Nationalism in the Balkans: Marriage of Convenience or Mutual Attraction?,” in Entangled Histories of the Balkans, Vol­ ume Two: Transfers of Political Ideologies and Institutions, ed. Roumen Daskalov and Diana Mishkova (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 470.

24

THE ROMANIAN IDEOLOGY

The Romanian Communist Party (RCP) began, under the banner of national unity in the 1960s, to create a discursive and institutional space where indigenizing types of eschatology converged on the Marxist-Leninist one. This historical occurrence has yet to be fully appreciated, let alone deconstructed in Romania. Only through uninhibited critical historicization, paying no lip service to usable pasts of an anti-democratic hue, can the infatuations with political myths found in the pre-1989 period be confronted. Under the Ceaușescu dictatorship, essential chapters of pre-communist intellectual and political history were rewritten in such a way as to conform to the official national Stalinist ideology. This monopolistic ideology drew on a syncretic mixture of decayed Marxist tenets, self-aggrandizing ethnocentric myths, and blatant adulation of Ceaușescu himself. Crucial to this process was a gradual, though far from predestined synthesis of autochthonism and unreformed state socialism (i.e., Stalinism). The central position of finde-siècle organic nationalism in the party’s and intellectuals’ vision of national community coincided with an enhanced sense of mission and Messianism behind the building of socialism in one country. Conservative palingenesis merged with its socialist counterpart. As Ceaușescu’s cult of personality reached pharaoh-like dimensions, cultural discourse on overcoming backwardness, ethno-social homogeneity, and exceptionalism became more radical. The last of these resembled the way instances of autochthonism in the early twentieth century changed into charismatic nativism in the 1930s and 1940s. By the late 1980s, xenophobia, antipathy toward the West, and anti-intellectualism had become salient in cultural discourse and political practice. Despite its professions of socialist faith, Ceaușescu’s doctrine embraced significant elements of domestic ultranationalism, notably its emphasis on a predestined role for the Romanian nation. It was under Ceaușescu that references to nebulous Dacian roots for Romanian identity became official views. Radical left and right themes merged in an eccentric mythology resembling the Senderista glorification of “Inca socialism” in Peru or the atavistic terrorism of the Khmer Rouge. As in North Korea,7 hyper-radicalization of identity discourse and the “construction of socialism,” to offset de-radicalization, were part of the regime’s survival strategy. 7 Vladimir Tismaneanu, “Ideological Erosion and the Breakdown of Communist Regimes,” in Why Communism Did Not Collapse: Understanding Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Asia and Europe, ed. Martin K. Dimitrov, 67–98 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

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Vladimir Tismaneanu and Bogdan C . Iacob

This chapter has three sections. The first draws a profile of the communist regime, underlining its national-Stalinist essence. It is not claimed that this outlook is exceptional. Tismaneanu has shown that national Stalinism can be found as a system (Romania or Albania) or as a temptation or tendency at some stage in a regime’s evolution (Bulgaria, Poland, or the GDR).8 The second section discusses the adoption and impact of fin-de-siècle culturalist nationalism. It is argued that its main principles changed into the basis for tradition and epistemic authority in Ceaușescu’s Romania, while preparing the transition to autochthonism. Finally, the third section covers the revived nativism of the regime’s last decade or so. The discussion includes the protochronism, Cenaclul Flacăra, and the historiographic fundamentalism urged by Ilie Ceaușescu, the general secretary’s brother. The chapter ends by showing the clustered but pervasive ethnocentric, self-serving, populist politico-cultural mythology that was communism’s bequest to post-1989 Romania.

Stalinism in a national context National Stalinism in Romania was a symptom of degeneration.9 Narcissistic and anachronistic, it valued uniformity and drew on tribal resentment and primordial allegiances. Its starting point was to territorialize the social and political utopia required to build socialism in one country,10 while its blueprint was Stalin’s Russia from the mid-1930s onward. Robert C. Tucker sees Stalin as “a Bolshevik of the radical right, who blended his version of Lenin8 Vladimir Tismaneanu, “What Was National Stalinism?,” in The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, ed. Dan Stone, 462–79 (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2012). 9 Some authors confine the term “national Stalinism” to the period of “high Stalinism” (c. 1948‒55) in Central and Eastern Europe. See, for instance, Michal Kopeček, “Czech Communist Intellectuals and the ‘National Road to Socialism’: Zdeněk Nejedlý and Karel Kosík, 1945–1968,” in Ideological Storms: Intellectuals, Dictators, and the Totalitarian Temptation, ed. Vladimir Tismaneanu and Bogdan C. Iacob, 345–89 (Budapest–New York: CEU Press, 2019); or Balázs Trencsényi, “Afterlife or Reinvention? ‘National Essentialism’ in Romania and Hungary after 1945,” in Hungary and Romania Beyond National Narratives: Compari­ sons and Entanglements, ed. Anders E. B. Blomqvist, Constantin Iordachi, and Balázs Tren­ csényi, 515–68 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2013). 10 Vladimir Tismaneanu and Bogdan C. Iacob, “Revisiting the Nature and Legacies of the Ceaușescu Regime,” in The End and the Beginning: The Revolutions of 1989 and the Resur­ gence of History, ed. Vladimir Tismaneanu and Bogdan C. Iacob, 331–61 (Budapest–New York: CEU Press, 2012).

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ism with Great Russian nationalism,”11 and Stalinism as “Russian National Bolshevism.”12 The “paranoid” elements in Romania’s Leninist politics embodied an underdog mentality, problematic national credentials, long subservience to Moscow as the Mecca of proletarian internationalism, and distrust of anything that smacked of democratization or liberalization. This combination brought inordinate concern for authenticity and genealogy, along with a fixation on national identity and historical predestination in the intelligentsia—communist, non-communist, and anticommunist alike. The underlying values of the regime were political voluntarism, sectarianism, radicalism, a cult of hierarchy and authority, and scorn for parliamentary democracy and constitutionalism. It remained committed to forced industrialization, state ownership of all means of production (including the land), and the creation of a “new man.” The essence of national Stalinism is its original belief in the validity and importance of Stalin’s civilizational blueprint.13 Neither Ceaușescu, nor Gheorghiu-Dej before him, simply “indigenized Marxism”—that is, they did not solely incorporate “categories of Marxism-Leninism into arguments in which ethnic or national questions had priority”14 with the aim of preserving their hold on state and party power—rather, they redesigned the whole history and development of the national community to match the radical goals and imperatives of Stalinism. The myth of a besieged fortress merged with others of millennial origin: unity in “mind and feeling” (în gînd și simțire), national resurrection, and an endangered motherland. National Stalinism should not only be seen from the angle of self-determination: that is, the aim of implementing a specific type of developmental model in a local context. It is also necessary to examine the outline of individual understanding of the self, as the individual was the regime’s object and sub11 Robert C. Tucker, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above 1928‒1941 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1990), xv. 12 Robert C. Tucker’s interview with George Urban in G. R. Urban, ed., Stalinism: Its Impact on Russia and the World (London: Maurice Temple Smith, 1982), 151 and 170. 13 Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 225‒37; Stephen Kotkin, “1991 and the Russian Revolution: Sources, Conceptual Categories, Analytical Frameworks,” Journal of Modern History 70, no. 2 (June 1998): 384‒425; Stephen Kotkin, “The State—Is It Us? Memoirs, Archives, and Kremlinologists,” Russian Review 61, no. 1 (January 2002): 35–51. For further comment on this view, see Astrid Hedin, “Stalinism as a Civilization: New Perspectives on Communist Regimes,” Po­ litical Studies Review 2, no. 2 (2004): 166‒184. 14 Katherine Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceaușescu’s Romania (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 139.

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ject of radical transformation.15 From the 1960s, socialist citizens in Romania became agents for fulfilling the salvation potential in history. They contributed to a “continuous flourishing of the socialist society, the elevation of the Romanian people’s life to the greatest heights of civilization.” The party concurrently undertook to embody “the will and aspirations of freedom and independence of the masses” and to “unite all national forces for the purpose of capitalizing the country’s human and material potential.”16 National Stalinism became the ideological medium that molded citizens as “historical agents who . . . understood the laws of history and acted on their behalf. Hence the orientation toward individuals’ ‘consciousness,’ their ‘souls,’ as the decisive realm in which the new man became manifest.”17 The basic change in Romania was for the voluntaristic anthropological ideal of the Stalinist state to be increasingly manifest as a national mission. The basic unit of human behavior was not just a socialist individual, but a Romanian consciously building socialism, holding a trans-historical understanding founded on the Nation’s uninterrupted progress toward the end of history. Underlying national Stalinism was a transition from a historical society defining itself in terms of class distinctions to one based on a synthesis of criteria (social, historical, cultural, biological, etc.) that elicited a historiographic narrative of a “socialist nation” marked by primordialism, ethnocentrism, transformism, protochronism, insulation, and homogenization. Such society presented itself as one party striving to construct a national civilization in the aftermath of Sovietization. Behind this explanation and its evolution in Romania lies Stephen Kotkin’s observation that within the Soviet phenomenon, “everything was invested in identity.”18 The communist party instituted a spi15 A concept within the defining spectrum of the national Stalinist synthesis is political scientist Michael Shafir’s “xenophobic communism”; this denoted a “besieged communism in quest of the lowest national common denominator. Its purpose is to mobilize society, a need which it strives to achieve by appealing to national resentment. . . . The ideological enemy is reform.” Michael Shafir, “Xenophobic Communism—The Case of Bulgaria and Romania,” The World Today 45, no. 12 (December 1989): 209. 16 “Expunerea tovarășului Nicolae Ceaușescu, secretar general al CC al PCR la adunarea festivă cu prilejul aniversării a 45 de ani de la crearea Partidului Comunist Romîn,” May 7, Arhivele Naționale Istorice Centrale (Central National Historical Archives, hereafter ANIC), fond CC al PCR—Secția de Propagandă și Agitație, 29/1966, f.68 and f. 70. 17 Peter Fritzsche and Jochen Hellbeck, “The New Man in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany,” in Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared, ed. Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 314. 18 Kotkin, “The State—Is It Us?,” 50.

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ral of politico-economic and cultural struggle for Romanian preeminence at home and abroad. The declared achievement of the latter was seen as proof of the successful modernity project of Romanian communism. Ultimately, “the expressive appreciation of the nation”19 was a mechanism for revitalizing or reviving the party’s heroic mission. The nation in Romania was a master symbol that did not emerge primarily as a renewed enchantment with the past. It was presupposed essentially by the exaltation of the socialist nation-state’s sovereignty. Utopia in action took on a national mantle. The regression into tradition was a useful side-show, a welcome by-product, and a necessary corollary for redefining the space for Stalinist civilization, for the nature of the civilizing agent, and for the identity of the polity undergoing socialist transformation. The main marker of identity was commitment to the Romanian path to socialism. Since the 1970s, belonging had become increasingly linked to ethnicity. National Stalinism first emphasized socialist consciousness and then the individual ability to apply it in a national context. During the process of socialist construction, as Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej put it as early as the early 1960s, “the political, moral, and ideological unity of the entire people around the party developed and deepened.” The communist party, he continued, became the people’s “beating heart, its conscience, [the embodiment of] its collective wisdom and will.”20 In this way, the self-reliant Romanian communist state realized the unique potential of the people. A party that had suffered from a chronic shortage of legitimacy could finally claim loyalty based on national pride and dignity. The path the party had taken emulated late Stalinism, rather than Khrushchevism (or other forms of reformed communism). According to Erik van Ree, the former was “an ideology that . . . has two points of departure: nation and class, and two main goals: national development and world communism, next to each other.”21 It was “national in form, etatist in content.”22 It relied on a diffuse concept of the people, which 19 Kenneth Jowitt, Revolutionary Breakthroughs and National Development: The Case of Roma­ nia 1944‒1965 (Berkeley: University of California, 1971), 273. 20 Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Articole și cuvântări: August 1959–mai 1961 (Bucharest: Editura Politică, 1961), 452 and 442. 21 Erik van Ree, “Stalin as Marxist: The Western Roots of Stalin’s Russification of Marxism,” in Stalin: A New History, ed. Sarah Davies and James Harris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 178. 22 D. L. Brandenberger and A. M. Dubrovsky, “The People Need a Tsar: The Emergence of National Bolshevism as Stalinist Ideology, 1931‒1941,” Europe-Asia Studies 50, no. 5 (1998): 883.

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was “a popular community . . . organized into a state, to which all individuals, all art and all science should dedicate themselves. It was this community that was expected to operate as a self-reliant, more or less closed unit in the world at large.”23 Dedication to the common good meant that “citizens unite[d] with their fellows in all respects—in deed, in word and even in thought. In this state, community of purpose and community of action are among the most respected values.”24 Or to quote Gheorghiu-Dej, “the moral-political unity of the people . . . became the unshakable foundation of our popular-democratic regime.”25 After the two CPSU congresses concerned with de-Stalinization, held in 1956 and 1961, the leadership in Romania confronted in two ways the de-radicalization and reform coming from Moscow. First, the Romanian leaders set to work against the consequences of the personality cult in a way that looked like de-Stalinization to the letter. Secondly, the process was placed in a national framework: a “Muscovite group” led by Ana Pauker constituted the section of the party that had not acted in the interests of the Romanians, disregarding the country’s territorial integrity and despising its people. So, the faction headed by Gheorghiu-Dej represented both enlightened reformed communism and the party center consistently defending the national interest: it was legitimate in Marxist-Leninist and in national terms. The Central Committee (CC) plenary of November‒December 1961 codified the motifs of party history drawn out of successive purges (Ana Pauker, Vasile Luca, Teohari Georgescu in 1952, the execution of Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu in 1954, and the defeat of Iosif Chișinevschi and Miron Constantinescu in 1957). The resulting party image on its fortieth anniversary was one of self-assurance, a party on its way to full national integration. Avoiding de-Stalinization by reinventing party history and by looking inward, it arrived at an exceptionalist picture of Romanian communism, which it would use as the premise for its reinvention and domestic integration. When the Romanian Workers’ Party (RWP) declared in 1962 the completion of the material bases for the new order and a transition to the fulfillment of socialist construction, it also achieved a metamorphosis of socialist patriotism, rooted in obsessive emphasis on the internal forces of historical development. However, unlike in 1955‒58, it increasingly took on a Romanian, national profile. 23 Erik van Ree, The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A Study in Twentieth-century Revolution­ ary Patriotism (London: Routledge, 2002), 189. 24 van Ree, The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin, 19. 25 Gheorghiu-Dej, Articole și cuvântări, 381.

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The next step was the “Declaration concerning the RWP’s position with a view to the problems of the international communist and working-class movement” adopted at the CC Plenary on April 26, 1964. Local communists exploited the intensifying Sino-Soviet conflict and the increasingly centrifugal tendencies in the Leninist world system to affirm their autonomy. They rejected the Soviet-centered tradition of allowing Moscow hegemony. Instead of retaining the old definitions of internationalism (unconditional solidarity with the Soviet Union), they took a more elastic view drawn from propositions advanced by Italian and Yugoslav communists. These stressed polycentricity, or unity in diversity. Emancipation of the domestic communist elite around Dej coincided with clear, egoistic rejection of Khrushchev’s views, which— despite their ups and downs—embodied an anti-Stalinist political strategy. In this sense the 1964 Declaration was a charter of national Stalinism. It was the wishful thinking of many that a Bucharest Spring would ensue, especially after the new party secretary, Nicolae Ceaușescu, condemned the August 1968, Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. They erred. The Declaration was not just a statement of autonomy, but a lifeline for a political group directly to blame for waves of terror in previous years (1947‒53 and 1958‒60). It suggested there was no need for rehabilitation, as Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej’s decisions had made the local form of Stalinism a moderate, if not benign, one. One of the Declaration’s main beneficiaries was Ceaușescu, who by 1964 was a Politburo member, a CC secretary, and head of its Orgburo. He controlled an essential lever of power: the cadres. Unsurprisingly, he continued the line set by the Declaration, though he soon stopped referring to it, preferring to cite the Ninth Party Congress (1965) as the founding moment of the new state of socialist construction in Romania. Yet, in terms of cult of personality and of party line, there is direct continuity between Dej and his successor. The budding synthesis between the party’s new national mission and the intellectuals’ national agendas was most striking at the meeting with “men of science and culture” on May 8, 1964. This was the communist leadership (represented by the chair of the Council of Ministers, Ion Gheorghe Maurer) in spectacular “consultation” with its elites. The cream of the crop in culture and science publicly and demonstrably expressed solidarity with the new autonomy policy. Over 200 influential figures were present, and party membership was not a core selection criterion. The participants, however, were either old party members, some active in the underground years, or longstanding fellow trav-

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elers exemplifying elite conversions since 1947.26 The RWP ensured its national message was transmitted by people with spotless revolutionary credentials. What gave substance to this “spectacle of national unity”27 was the fact that the intelligentsia did support the party’s policy of rejecting the Soviet-led project of economic, cultural, and military integration of the socialist bloc. The specter of integration, which many intellectuals saw as a second Sovietization, boosted the legitimacy of the RWP’s self-proclaimed demiurge role. National emancipation became one with the reassertion of the leading role of the party. The only task for intellectuals was to ensure that the party had enough support in its struggle for cultural, scientific, economic, and ultimately political integrity. This, in a nutshell, was the core of national-Stalinist logic: the political cannot be divorced from the cultural, nor the national dissociated from building socialism. In 1964, the new frame for interaction between intellectuals and party became official. Epistemic and cultural elites became actors and agents in the struggle for identity. They devised the synthesis between the regime’s tradition, disciplinary concerns, and policy priorities, locally and internationally. In a mirror image of the political, this generated a spiral of cultural self-centeredness always searching for originality. Within the regime’s besieged fortress mentality and inferiority complex, autochthony as a substitute for liberalization would become the fantasy that validated constructive, enthusiastic participation by the intelligentsia in the reproduction of the regime. The Ninth Congress, at which the party officially changed its name to the Romanian Communist Party (RCP), provided one of the founding myths of the Ceaușescu cult. It marked the point where the salient elements in his socialism were defined: the thesis of social and ethnic homogeneity of the Romanian nation; the stress on industrialization and maximal use of domestic resources; the view of the party leader as a symbol of the monolithic unity of party and people; active neutrality in the world communist movement; reestablishing cordial relations with some Western communist parties, especially those of Spain and Italy, in an effort to find a joint line of opposition to Mos26 “Stenograma adunării cu oamenii de știință care au dezbătut Declarația CC al PMR adoptată la Plenara lărgită a CC al PMR din 15‒22 aprilie 1964 (8 mai 1964),” ANIC, fond CC al PCR— Secția de Propagandă și Agitație, 31/1964, 41‒168 ff. 27 Peter Fritzsche defined “the spectacle of national unity” as such public manifestations of popular support, system strength, social solidarity, and national unity or greatness: see Fritzsche, Life and Death in the Third Reich (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008).

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cow’s hegemonic maneuvers; and the rhetoric of internal democracy, associated with Ceaușescu’s image as champion of legality, justice, ethics, and socialist equity. There he formulated one of the defining principles of his regime: For a long time to come the nation and the State will continue to be the basis of the deployment of socialist society. . . . Not only does this not run counter to the interests of socialist internationalism . . . it fully corresponds to those interests, to the solidarity of the working people, to the cause of socialism and peace. The development and flourishing of each socialist nation, of each socialist state, equal rights, sovereign and independent, is an essential requirement upon which depends the strengthening of the unity and cohesion of the socialist countries.28

The year 1968 was perhaps crucial in determining the future of Romanian national Stalinism and its evolution into “dynastic socialism.” The Soviet suppression of the Prague Spring served to justify the dogma of the indivisible unity of party, leader, and nation. The leader was simultaneously the main doctrinary source, visionary genius, and “architect of the national destiny.” The ubiquitous slogan “Partidul, Ceaușescu, România” would be kept until the very end. Ceaușescu’s speech of August 21 condemning the Warsaw Pact’s military intervention in Czechoslovakia emphasized the unity of leadership and the symbiotic relationship between party and people. It reassured the party’s old guard that criticizing the Soviet invasion would not lead to any deviation from orthodoxy: “We stand here before you as communists and antifascists who survived the jails, who faced death, but who never betrayed the interests of the proletariat, the interests of our people. Rest assured, comrades, rest assured, citizens of Romania, that we will never betray our motherland, we will never betray the interests of the people.”29 The infatuation of the public and of foreign observers with the regime’s foreign policy misled many into ignoring its true dynamics: an incipient personality cult, reinforcement of the party and its security and propaganda controls; a new cultural orthodoxy (signaled by a Chinese-style miniature Cultural Revolution in 1968‒72) resembling an updated Zhdanov doctrine of culture; and finally, a determination to “do it my way” that turned into full-fledged autarky. 28 Nicolae Ceaușescu, Report at the Ninth Congress of the Romanian Communist Party (Bucharest: Editura Politică, 1965), 60. 29 Scînteia, August 22, 1968.

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The RCP Political Program of 1974 (the Thirteenth Congress) was the “official document that put forward the overall strategy of the party to establish a ‘multilaterally developed socialist society’ [MDSS] and ‘advance toward communism’”; simultaneously, it was a blueprint for “Ceauşescu’s idea of a homogeneous ‘socialist’ nation.”30 The two general ideas behind its concept of nationhood were that (1) the nation was a perennial reality, and (2) the creative efforts of the Romanian people to form the nation were finally fulfilled in socialism under the leadership of the party. In 1974, Ceaușescu became president of the socialist republic, having accepted a ceremonial scepter in a would-be coronation. In celebrating the unity between Leader, Party, and Nation, the propaganda built up a Romanian equivalent of the Nazi her­ oisch-volkisch Gemeinschaft. The song played most on Romanian TV and radio, as an unofficial anthem, was the lionizing formula “Partidul, Ceauşescu, România,” whose initials deliberately coincided with those of the ruling party in Romanian (PCR; Partidul Comunist Român). The incantation “One Leader, One Party, One Nation” summed up the Romanian ideology. By the Thirteenth Party Congress ten years later, there was no one left in the party to challenge or alter the policies of Romania’s ruling family. The familiarity imparted to the party-state was the chief difference between the cults of personality maintained by Ceaușescu and Stalin. The cult of personality was not just a legitimation or outgrowth of the RCP. It developed as a secondary track of symbolic sustenance: the Leader as the bodily expression of the nation’s organic and trans-historical existence. His myth represented the demiurge of history in Marxist-Leninist and National eschatology. He symbolized a unity born of a Gleichschaltung of citizens and party members. It was little wonder that the RCP had almost four million members in 1989. Ceauşescu’s gradual attainment of total power was by individual ingenuity, support within the higher party echelons, the backing of those he promoted, and popularity with the public in the late 1960s and the 1970s.

The return of ethnocentric homogeneity The communist system in Romania underwent gradual change from the late 1950s onward. It searched increasingly for continuities with the pre-1945 peri30 Dragoș Petrescu, “Building the Nation, Instrumentalizing Nationalism: Revisiting Romanian National-Communism, 1956–1989,” Nationalities Papers 37, no. 4 (2009): 534.

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od, rather than basing its legitimacy on discontinuities. The further the party looked into the future, the greater became its reliance on the past. Initially, most ideas taken up by the agents of socialist transformation came from midnineteenth century revolutionaries or reforms. Once the RWP/RCP had declared itself the center of a nation-state, the tradition called upon originated in the late decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, when the modern Romanian state developed. The imperatives of progress and the nation imposed a principle of order that provided the regime with sustainability and reproduction.31 Autochthony represented a communicative basis and a regulatory mechanism within a local intelligentsia much haunted by specters of solidarity, timelessness, and authenticity incumbent in pre-communist legacies. Intellectual discourse in the 1960s brought forth the concept of neam (kin). As one Romanian scholar put it, the transition from popor (people) to neam marked a transition to giving essential value to narratives of origins and “blood and soil.” This brought back the ethnic element into the nation, as “a community of the same blood with cultural-linguistic and political rights on a given territory. In other words, a Kulturnation inspired by a romantic concept of Volk.”32 Or, as one 1966 article on Romanian consciousness by the historian Eugen Stănescu argued, the neam was “an objective historical reality designating human groups characterized by an ethnic and language community.” Consciousness of kinship lent a feeling of belonging to such a group. Here român-românesc (noun and adjective) held the essence of the people’s minds and souls, allowing a historic identification of national consciousness right back to the fifteenth century. In Stănescu’s words, there were “traditions as old as the history of the entire people” that stressed its unity, despite the diversity of socio-economic formations found throughout history.33 The fundamentals of the master narrative of national identity under communism were supra-structural elements and consciousness of kin, which organically and necessarily morphed into national consciousness. The latter re31 Lucian Boia, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness (Budapest–New York: CEU Press, 2001), 29. 32 Victor Neumann, “Neam și Popor: Noțiunile etnocentrismului românesc,” in Istoria Romîniei prin concepte: Perspective alternative asupra limbajelor social-politice, ed. Victor Neumann and Armin Heinen (Iași: Polirom, 2010), 389. See also Victor Neumann, Neam, Popor sau Națiune? Despre identitățile politice europene, 2nd ed. (Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2005). 33 Eugen Stănescu, “Premisele medievale ale conștiinței naționale romînești: Romîn-romînesc în textele romînești din veacurile XV-XVII,” Studii: Revistă de istorie 17, no. 4 (1964): 968, 1000.

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mained constant despite the progress of history. This was a crucial sign of ideological symbiosis: historical materialism intertwined with advocacy of the perennial, resulting in a master narrative of collective identity across history, whereby the Motherland belonged to all Romanians, not just the single class of the proletariat. The premise behind basing the new communist identity narrative on kincultural disambiguation resembled an influential principle formulated before 1945 by the philosopher Constantin Rădulescu-Motru (1868‒1957): “Without culture there is no history; culture grants coherence to a community in both time and space.”34 Culture and progress would make sense only if they encompassed the entire people, while the prerequisite for Romania’s progress was its cultural awakening. The underlying legitimacy of gradually bringing back the nation under communism was to show that the national community possessed a palingenetic consensus based on kinship and culture.35 National consciousness, unity, and ultimately the nation-state were continuing ideals of the people throughout its history. This was the first stage in the fusion of the national and socialist utopias. The community born of this encoding of culture was what Anthony D. Smith called a “vertical, demotic nation”:36 the Romanians were a compact, populous community of kin. Their original culture was diffused across social strata and classes, uniting them around their heritage and traditions, especially if threatened by outsiders. Membership depended on birth in the sense that members shared, at least, a community of origin and language. Ethnic affiliation was not yet required if individuals accepted assimilation. The nation’s demotic nature allowed socio-political conflict and class struggle to be overridden. If the people of common origin, language, culture, experience of struggle, and sentiments were the subject and agent of history, the nation could easily be projected centuries into the past once a state tradition had been established. The emphasis on historical destiny, cultural homogeneity, and national sacrifice reflected what historian Peter Fritzsche called “a battle communi34 Quoted in Balázs Trencsényi, “Conceptualizarea caracterului național în tradiția intelectuală românească,” in Istoria Romîniei prin concepte: Perspective alternative asupra limbajelor socialpolitice, ed. Victor Neumann and Armin Heinen (Iași: Polirom, 2010), 352. 35 Roger Griffin, “The Palingenetic Political Community: Rethinking the Legitimation of Totalitarian Regimes in Inter-War Europe,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 3, no. 3 (2002): 32. 36 Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (London: Penguin, 1991), 53.

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ty” which “dramatizes the deleterious consequences of those [social, political, ethnic, etc.] divisions and eventually realizes the homogenizing project on the basis of their elimination.”37 People and state became one, based on national allegiance and struggle, with one final victory: the construction of socialism. Ceaușescu stated on the forty-fifth anniversary of the Romanian Communist Party that “in the life of any country, the socialist revolution constitutes an era of national rebirth,” and continued: “The transformations that took place, after the liberation, in the economic life and the social structure of the country, the victory of socialism in cities and the countryside, have created the conditions for the full enfranchisement of the Romanian people’s national being through the multilateral development and flourishing of our socialist nation.”38 The national community became an organism living in history. It was not by chance that this motif became central to the regime’s politics of culture by the time Nicolae Iorga was rehabilitated in 1965. Iorga formulated this very clearly in his activity as historian and politician: “A nation is not just a piece of territory or a state or an economic necessity; nor is it a product of treaties (which created it), but a nation is a soul, an elemental, almost mystical being.”39 Since the early twentieth century the dominant image in public discourse was of the nation “as a living organism, functioning according to biological laws, and embodying great physical qualities, symbols of innate virtues transmitted from generation to generation.”40 Historian Marius Turda saw the domestic origin of this in a “conservative palingenesis” occurring at the beginning of the twentieth century, which extolled the traditions of the past as a rejuvenation of the Romanian nation. Authors such as Iorga and philosopher Constantin Rădulescu-Motru advocated “an organic community, completely integrated within its own natural space”41 that would constitute “a new national body amid alleged domestic spiritual decline . . . and unfavorable inter-

37 Peter Fritzsche, “Genocide and Global Discourse,” German History 23, no. 1 (2005): 109. 38 “Expunerea tov. Nicolae Ceaușescu, secretar general al CC al PCR la adunarea festivă cu prilejul aniversării a 45 de ani . . .,” f. 67. 39 Quoted in Nicholas Nagy-Talavera, Nicolae Iorga: A Biography (Iași: Romanian Cultural Foundation, 1996), 325. 40 Marius Turda, “The Nation as Object: Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania,” Slavic Review 66, no. 3 (Fall 2007): 413. 41 Marius Turda, “Conservative Palingenesis and Cultural Modernism in Early Twentieth-Century Romania,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 9, no. 4 (December 2008): 438.

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national conditions.”42 This group opposed technological modernity, a basic element of the civilization brought forth by Stalinism. But in their rehabilitation, the communist regime relegated this to the formula of “limits of their epoch” or “shortcomings of their class.” The principle advocated by this fin-de-siècle intellectual generation, which remained influential in the interwar period and functioned as founding fathers to the national turn in the humanities under communism, was that culture was “a source of authenticity and . . . used against those exempted from the national collective. Moreover, by having a ‘Self,’ or its own individuality, this national collective was envisioned in racial terms—not only as a natural or biological entity but as a cultural ideal created and protected through permanent struggle.”43 There were two factors facilitating this generation’s appropriation. Before World War I, it had pushed for a revolutionary, antipolitical line: its advocates saw politics as an element that de-structured the national consensus and affected its homogeneity. After 1918, they came to epitomize the postwar cultural establishment, which put them in conflict with various fascist trends arising from the end of the 1920s onward. In other words, the 1906 generation could be presented as democratic and progressive. What was lost in its rehabilitation during state socialism was that many of its ideas paved the way for the nativist turn that provided the foundations of domestic fascism.44 For example, Rădulescu-Motru’s influence appeared in 1971 in the volume Națiunea și contemporaneitatea, written by a collective from the Institute of Historical and Socio-political Studies (formerly the Institute of Party History). The authors defined the nation as an ethnic community. In conceptualizing ethnicity, they appealed to Motru’s definition of the concept as “fixed in three states of a community’s consciousness: of origin, of language, and of destiny.”45 Once the idea of Romanian national physiognomy was integrated 42 Turda, “The Nation as Object,” 441. 43 Răzvan Pârâianu, “Culturalist Nationalism and Anti-Semitism in Fin-de-Siècle Romania,” in Blood and Homeland: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900‒1940, ed. Marius Turda and Paul J. Weindling (Budapest–New York: CEU Press, 2007), 358. 44 On the distinction between autochthonism and nativism in twentieth-century Balkan intellectual history, see Roumen Daskalov and Diana Mishkova, “‘Forms without Substance’: Debates on the Transfer of Western Models to the Balkans,” in Entangled Histories of the Balkans, Volume Two (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 1‒97. 45 Ioan Ceterchi, ed., Națiunea și contemporaneitatea (Bucharest: Editura Științifică, 1971), 25.

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in the mid-1970s into the official discourse of the regime, Rădulescu-Motru’s more extensive rehabilitation was inevitable. In a 1984 volume, Gh. Al. Cazan described Motru’s work as an “open synthesis of the life and understanding by the essential strata of the empirical and spiritual history of the Romanian people and of its destiny . . .”46 While local communism was reinventing its heroic mission through national and socialist emancipation, fin-de-siècle considerations gained renewed prominence. Their relevance to national Stalinism lay in the vision of a homogeneous, organic national community. For Iorga and Motru, or for that matter for the national poet Mihai Eminescu, archeologist Vasile Pârvan, or geographer Simion Mehedinți, “the individual was merely the product of society and therefore only a collective ideology could configure the national collective body.”47 The imperatives of solidarity, social discipline, and individual action subordinate to communal aims came close to the mobilizing ethics of local communism. Motru famously argued in 1936 that “nations are formed of individuals, but the individuals that make them up do not have a spiritual existence for themselves. They exist in relation to the achievement of national totality.”48 Rădulescu-Motru became “a cultural leader,” “a rationalist thinker tied to the scientific spirit,” author of “a philosophy with a national, autochthonous character.” Authors under state socialism therefore claimed that despite his fallacies, Motru always aimed to raise the level of civilization in the country.49 Belief in the authority of the scientific method and in the myth of progress brought two major additions to the paradigm of organic palingenesis—along46 C. Rădulescu-Motru, Personalismul energetic și alte scrieri, studiu, antologie și note de Gh. Al. Cazan (Bucharest: Editura Eminescu, 1984). 47 Trencsényi, “Conceptualizarea caracterului național,” 361. 48 C. Rădulescu-Motru, Românismul, catehismul unei noi spiritualități (Bucharest: Fundaţia pentru literatură şi artă “Regele Carol II,” 1936), quoted in Marta Petreu, “De la lupta de rasă la lupta de clasă: C. Rădulescu-Motru,” in Marta Petreu, De la Junimea la Noica: Studii de cultură românească (Iași: Polirom, 2011), 145. In his later writings, as Petreu correctly pointed out, Motru went as far as clamoring for “the absolute reality of national totality . . . negating the idea of universal history” (161). 49 Petru Vaida, “Constantin Rădulescu-Motru,” in Istoria filozofiei românești, vol. 2, ed. Dumitru Ghișe and Nicolae Gogoneață (Bucharest: Editura Academiei RSR, 1980), cited in Cristian Preda, “Un totalitarism pe potriva sufletului românesc: studiu introductiv,” in C. RădulescuMotru: Scrieri politice (Bucharest: Nemira, 1998), 14. Motru was first partially rehabilitated in Nicolae Gogoneață, “Sistemul filozofic al lui C. Rădulescu-Motru,” Revista de filozofie 15, no. 4 (1968): 453–58; and in Simion Ghiță, “Știința și cunoaștere în concepția lui C. RădulescuMotru,” in Filozofia și sociologia românească în prima jumatate a secolului al XX-lea, 11–65 (Bucharest: Editura Academiei RSR, 1969).

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side a deeper understanding of egalitarianism—among the non-antagonistic classes of communist society that gave the nation its socialist appearance. All these authors saw the peasantry as the core of the national community, whose members were not perverted by foreign influence. Their ideas were imbued with a populism on which the legitimacy of socialist modernity could be based. However, the Stalinist claim of hyper-rationality and historical determinism only deepened and worsened the effects of this specific form of nationalism. Its organic side was considered an expression of the people’s genius and eternal spirit. The nation (as a condition and a process) was seen under communism as a necessary, fundamental feature of the irreversible progress of history. In terms of historical materialism, its organic nature could be proved beyond doubt to be an unquestionable, scientific truth. Identity was no longer just a category of Romanian inward nature traceable in its historical evolution: in a hyper-Rankean spirit, it was a hard fact reliant on proof and logic. There came a watershed for the communist regime in the mid-1960s with the vision of the “nation itself as a living being” with “its own inner evolution” and “a united body, one—let us say—circulatory system through which the same live blood flows.”50 One of the founding myths of the Romanian identity narrative had been rehabilitated, revitalizing the RWP/RCP claim to legitimacy and transforming its communism into a national totalitarian movement. Under the new master narrative of national identity, notions of building socialism and being a socialist citizen came to an equal healthy existence. According to historian Constantin Daicoviciu: “When the entire country, when its farthest corner is mobilized, when the blood flows through all veins, then the entire body is healthy.”51 The RWP/RCP account of a community battling for independence, emancipation, well-being, and international recognition echoed traditions in the history of Romania’s struggles for self-representation. These motifs resonated among a national intelligentsia and public frustrated by Soviet hegemony. By the 1970s, the imagined context for the sovereignty narrative was striking50 The two versions of the metaphor appear in various works of Nicolae Iorga, but they are referenced by articles in the special issue of Studii commemorating twenty-five years since the historian’s assassination: Andrei Oțetea, “N. Iorga—Istoric al Românilor,” 1215‒25, and Vasile Netea, “N. Iorga istoric al unității naționale,” 1411‒26, in Studii: Revistă de istorie “25 de ani de la moartea lui Nicolae Iorga” 18, no. 6 (1965). 51 C. Daicoviciu, quoted in “Stenograma întâlnirii conducerii PCR cu membrii Prezidiului Academiei R.S.R. (28 mai 1966)” in PCR şi intelectualii în primii ani ai regimului Ceaușescu, ed. Alina Pavelescu and Laura Dumitru (Bucharest: Arhivele Naţionale ale României, 2007), 66.

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ly similar to that of early twentieth-century nationalism. The regime rested its master narrative of identity on the fin-de-siècle culturalist paradigm, “the new nationalism,” which it appropriated. The historian Armin Heinen called this “compensating for the absence of social cohesion and lack of self-esteem by means of identification with the nation . . . [which] seemed to be an entity in itself, with its own expectations and personality. It was imposed on the idea of individual liberty, which meant it did not form the basis of the will of its members, but existed naturally beyond them. . . . Inequality resulted from the social division of labor and the resulting conflict was eased by awareness of belonging to a nation.”52 Political thought at the turn of the century served as creative inspiration in forging socialist revolution within the national community. It legitimated the 1960s dictum that revolution can only be carried out from within. This hybrid organic approach led to a discourse of redemption and exceptionalism that played upon many obsessions found in pre-1945 debates and policies. The nation was not only an undeniably perennial historical reality, but a form of moral consciousness. Romanians on the way to building socialism were a millennial, organic, united Volksgemeinschaft that surged through history fulfilling its special mission of deliverance into communism. The symbolic progression marking ethnocentric historical evolution was that of ancestors and kin (neam), people, nation, then socialist nation. The nation functioned as a mythomoteur53 for the regime’s politics. The socialist, internationalist, class-dependent Gesellschaft gave way to a country-bound, trans-historical, patrimonialist Gemeinschaft. The language and politics of the revolution remained, but the polity was renationalized. Thus, the grounds of belief within the regime were significantly widened. The mirage of a national civilization appearing in state socialism tempted many, making disenchantment with it ever more difficult.

Communists mimicking fascism The underlying problem with hybridizing Stalinist and conservative palingeneses was that “the new nationalism” in itself was “the most radical rejec52 Armin Heinen, Legiunea “Arhanghelului Mihail”: Mișcare socială și organizație politică; O contribuție la problema fascismului internațional, 2nd ed. (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2006), 75. 53 John A. Armstrong, Nations before Nationalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 182.

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tion of things European from the right” in Southeast Europe.54 As post-1918 Romania experienced crises while becoming a nation, representatives of the 1906 generation became increasingly ethno-populist, xenophobic, and antiWestern. Such change opened the way to nativist currents that fueled domestic fascism.55 The political Messianism under Ceaușescu’s regime and the culturalist exceptionalism tied to this tradition were increased by the party-state’s growing emphasis on social homogeneity and the cult of personality. In the late 1970s and more still in the 1980s, there appeared a radicalization of discourse on national specifics, resulting in, as one historian put it, “an ideological chaos” which meant that “the borders of what could be and at the same time could not be were pronounced extremely porous.”56 By the mid-1970s, there were two factors that catalyzed a radicalization of identity stories within the Romanian communist regime. As shown earlier, the first was the arrival of Ceaușescu as a providential leader. Official myth saw perfect continuity from the Thracian‒Dacian chieftains through medieval princes to Ceaușescu. Several authors awarded Ceauşescu “mystical avatars”: young revolutionary, architect of contemporary Romania, the great Marxist-Leninist theoretician, son and father of the nation, champion and hero of world peace, and guarantor of national unity and independence.57 The Ceauşescu cult rested from the start on an assumed continuity of a heroic, consistently autonomous nucleus within the party. Alice Mocănescu underlined the strength of Ceaușescu’s sense of his place in national history and preference for “plebiscite-like” manifestations of collective adulation: “The adulation by the masses became the most satisfying for the already estranged dictator.” These spectacles of national unity “relied not only on the human 54 Daskalov and Mishkova, “‘Forms without Substance,’” 36. 55 On relations between fin-de-siècle nationalism, Dimitrie Gusti’s school (with its heterogeneous development, as some members turned to the Iron Guard), and the theory of national apriorism, see Vintilă Mihăilescu, “Autochthonism and National Ethnology in Romania,” CAS Working Papers, no. 1 (2007): 3‒26. On the mixed relations between Nicolae Iorga’s and Constantin Rădulescu-Motru’s political thought and Iron Guard doctrine, see Radu Ioanid, “Nicolae Iorga and Fascism,” Journal of Contemporary History 27, no. 3 (July 1992): 467‒492; and Balázs Trencsényi, The Politics of “National Character”: A Study in Interwar East Europe­ an Thought (New York: Routledge, 2012), 33‒37 and 55. 56 Trencsényi, “Afterlife or Reinvention?,” 550. 57 Manuela Marin, Originea și evoluția cultului personalității lui Nicolae Ceaușescu 1965–1989 (Alba Iulia: Altip, 2008); and Angelo Mitchievici, “Biografia unei secunde: 4 martie 1977 si Mitul Marelui Arhitect—Nicolae Ceaușescu, eroul fondator,” in Comunism și represiune în România: Istoria tematică a unui fratricid național, ed. Ruxandra Cesereanu (Bucharest: Polirom, 2006), 234–50.

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body (the use of the plural would be a more adequate description as the goal of these performances was to render the idea of the nation’s body, the leader being the supreme viewer of this metamorphosis) but also on the employment of light, music, and loudly spoken patriotic commentaries.”58 One of the clearest examples was The Song of Romania (Cîntarea Romîniei) of 1976, supposed to encompass all cultural manifestations in the country.59 The cult, however, epitomized a larger phenomenon in society at the end of the 1970s: the almost uncontested hegemony of charismatic nationalism. The historian Constantin Iordachi, in his analysis of Romanian fascism, defined this identity discourse as “an ideology that regards the nation as an elect community of shared destiny living in a sacred homeland which, on the basis of a glorious past, claims a divine mission leading to salvation through sacrifice under the guidance of a charismatic leader.”60 Despite the differences in the charismatic practices of national Stalinism and of the Iron Guard, the proliferation of nationalism centered on authenticity and ethnic homogeneity joined with the encoding of socialist modernity as historical destiny and with the cult of personality. This led to a totalitarian ethos with striking resemblances to the ideological right-wing extremism of the 1930s and 1940s. Ceaușescu’s Romania became what Robert C. Tucker called a “Siegfried nation”: a collective joined with its leader in a revolutionary march to the end of history, which was to bring to fruition all national desiderata and achievements of the past.61 Iordachi’s formula of “fascist mimicking”62 emphasizes on the one hand the hybrid nature of conjoining ideological appetites and practices from the extreme left and right. On the other, as seen in the last section, the communist regime largely appropriated mainstream advocacy of the perennial, alongside an essentialism which later morphed, in some strands of the partystate, into radical nativism and chauvinism (with anti-Semitism as a corollary). 58 Alice Mocănescu, “Practicing Immortality: Schemes for Conquering ‘Time’ during the Ceaușescu Era,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 10, no. 3 (2010): 421‒22. 59 For a brief overview of the festival, see Dragoș Petrescu, “Cântarea României sau stalinismul naţional în festival,” in Miturile comunismului românesc, vol. 2, ed. Lucian Boia (Bucharest: Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti, 1997), 115‒26. On its beginnings and relationship with the movement for amateur arts, see Cristian Vasile, Viaţa intelectuală şi artistică în primul de­ ceniu al regimului Ceauşescu (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2015). 60 Constantin Iordachi, “Fascism in Southeastern Europe: A Comparison between Romania’s Legion of the Archangel Michael and Croatia’s Ustaša,” in Entangled Histories of the Balkans, Volume Two, 402. 61 Tucker, Stalin in Power, 63. 62 Iordachi, “Fascism in Southeastern Europe,” 462.

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In Romania under Ceaușescu, fascism was presented as an import without domestic roots. The only serious Marxist approach to it was made in three books by Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu,63 but he remained largely within the Comintern definition of fascism, failing to explore the generation of 1927 as a spiritual phenomenon, rather than merely a political one. Mihai Fătu and Ion Spălățelu, two historians appointed officially to look into the Iron Guard, stopped short at the questionable postulate that the Guard was merely a Nazi-sponsored terrorist organization with no truly Romanian roots.64 Such simplistic rhetoric merely excited interest in the Guard’s mysterious past and elicited knee-jerk criticisms of the official versions of Romania’s history. The national Stalinist synthesis was not just aimed at emancipation and political survival. It reflected an attempt by the regime and its intelligentsia to tackle backwardness and evolve a Romanian type of modernity. One of the main efforts at a cultural model “based on a discursive compromise of the inter-war and communist languages” was the literary historian Tudor Vianu’s interpretative matrix for Romania’s originality across history and in a European context.65 In 1962, a theory of the “unity in diversity” of Balkan cultures and civilizations was proposed by Vianu, the general secretary of the national UNESCO commission, at a Colloquium on Balkan Civilizations in Sinaia. He argued that the unity of “old Balkan civilization” did not imply homogeneity; the complexities of such a world, which historians never cease trying to disentangle, belong to what the philosophers call the given. But the given provokes a reaction from the recipient, the one who chooses, interprets, and creates new meanings in line with certain specifics, with a view to his or her own genius [génie propre]. The given is not identical with what is received. Moving from one to the other brings local factors and personal originality into play.66 63 Sub trei dictaturi, Curente și tendințe în filosofia românească, and Problemele de bază ale României. 64 Mihai Fătu and Ion Spălățelu, Garda de Fier: organizatie terorista de tip fascist (Bucharest: Editura Politica, 1971); Aurică Simion, Regimul politic din România în perioada septembrie 1940‒ianuarie 1941 (Cluj-Napoca: Dacia, 1976). See Adrian Cioflâncă, “A ‘Grammar of Exculpation’ in Communist Historiography: Distortion of the History of the Holocaust under Ceaușescu,” Romanian Journal of Political Science 4, no. 2 (2004): 29‒46. 65 Trencsényi, “Afterlife or Reinvention?,” 539. 66 Tudor Vianu, “Les régions culturelles dans l’histoire des civilisations et le colloque de civilisations balkanique,” in Actes du Colloque International de Civilisations Balkanique (Sinaia, 8–14 juillet 1962) (Bucharest: Commission Nationale Roumaine pour L’UNESCO, 1962), 13.

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Vianu’s ideas were taken further by the historian Alexandru Duțu, who, having absorbed the methodology of the nouvelle histoire, argued that “a longue durée analysis can lead to defining certain permanent features. These reveal a specific mode of thinking, an original way to organize consciousness, translate thought into deed. . . . Subsequently originality appears as a resultant of successive syntheses.”67 Two concepts stand out in this argument: originality and synthesis under circumstances of an onerous historical fate. Interpretation of their interplay over time and their relevance to the construction of socialism were keys to fixing the level of exceptionalism, autochthony, and Europeanness attached to the cultural readings of modernity under communism. As Vianu said in 1962, these ideas reenacted his 1920s generation’s search for “a major style for Romanian culture,” meaning that “we, representatives of the Romanian people, could make our stand [să ne spunem cuvântul] in relation to the problems of the world.” As historian Balázs Trencsényi remarked, his initiative resembled Vasile Pârvan’s “jump into universal culture, while avoiding ‘denaturization’” and philosopher Lucian Blaga’s principle that “It is not the ‘minor culture’ that gives birth to ‘major culture,’ for both are products of one and the same stylistic matrix.”68 The problem with this argument was that it became ideological fodder for affirming officially the alternative socialist modernity of the Ceaușescu regime. In 1974, the year of the Twelfth Party Congress and Ceaușescu’s presidential anointing, Alexandru Tănase, future head of the Academy’s Institute of Philosophy, published in the Bulletin of the Romanian UNESCO Commission an article entitled “Romania in the Context of European Culture.” He argued that socialist culture produced “an axiological restructuring of the entire domestic cultural system” which entailed “overcoming what was once called the provincial mode of the old culture and finding a major style [stil major] for Romanian culture.”69 Vianu had announced in 1960 that “Old Romania becomes New, socialist Romania, a country with the most advanced civilization.”70 67 Alexandru Duțu, Sinteză și originalitate în cultura română 1650‒1848 (Bucharest: Editura Enciclopedică, 1972), 33. 68 Trencsényi, The Politics of “National Character,” 47 and 49. 69 Alexandru Tănase, “România în contextul civilizației europene,” Buletinul Comisiei Naționale a R.S.R. pentru UNESCO 15, no. 3‒4 (1973): 10‒11. 70 See Gazeta literară, June 2, 1960, and his interview on the originality of Romanian culture in the issue of December 27, 1962, 3.

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Tănase went on to show how Romania in the modern period, and in the twentieth century in particular, had rapidly improved by overcoming backwardness. But this modernization and progress, though a “historical necessity,” led to disenchantment with the West and with capitalism. Indeed, “despite the fascination with the West felt initially among advocates of modern Romanian culture, it did not take long for the disillusionment generated by the misery and servitude of capitalist society to come.”71 In the end, the historical and cultural negotiations between Europe and Romania became a pretext for pointing out the genius of the Romanians in rejecting Western modernity as a model for civilization. Tănase’s article ends by noting that the “major style” of Romanian culture synthesized the progressive elements of all European cultural traditions: “The cultural ideal of our nation presupposes critical assimilation of the rational values and spirit of classicism, the tension and unbridled élan, the dialectics of great passions, the generous optimism characteristic of Romanticism, and the lucidity and critical spirit of realism.”72 This reading shows an extreme charismatic vision of national identity in tune with the heroic features attached to building socialism in one country. It was hardly coincidental that 1974 was the year when the literary historian Edgar Papu, who had been mentored by Tudor Vianu, published an article called “Protocronismul românesc.”73 This triggered an intellectual and political radicalism reliant on the compensatory mechanism of “value reversion” and the constant confirmation of autochthonous forward-mindedness.74 Emulating the nativist turn of the interwar period, protochronism not only challenged the cultural-historical hierarchies between East and West, but postulated the former’s preeminence. National Messianism was now supplanted by identity-based supremacy. The main themes of protochronism were:75 narcissistic assertion of Romanian priority and originality in the main cultural fields (from political economy, aesthetics, and sociology to logic, cybernetics, and mathematics); rejection of Western-style liberalism and pluralism as alien to “indigenous” traditions; exultation of the autochthonous, includ71 Tănase, “România în contextul civilizației europene,” 7. 72 Tănase, “România în contextul civilizației europene,” 12. 73 Edgar Papu, “Protocronism românesc,” Secolul 20: Revistă de literatură universală, no. 5‒6 (1974): 8‒11. 74 Daskalov and Mishkova, “‘Forms without Substance,’” 79, and Steliu Lambru, “Note despre protocronismului românesc,” Studii și materiale de istorie contemporană 10, no. 1 (2011): 193. 75 Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism, 167‒214; and Alexandra Tomiţă, O istorie “glorioasă”: Dosarul protocronismului românesc (Cluj: Cartea Românească, 2007).

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ing the myth of the Dacian‒Thracian pre-Christian and pre-Latin heritage as the cradle of world civilization; and an attitude of contempt for liberalism, avant-garde experimentation, and bourgeois civic values as things shallow, decadent, and non-conducive to genuine cultural creation. The main exponents of protochronism were grouped around the magazine Săptămîna, the official publication of the Bucharest Committee for Culture and Socialist Education. Its editor-in-chief (1972‒89) was the novelist Eugen Barbu, whose protégé was the poet Corneliu Vadim Tudor. The influence of Săptămîna reached its apex when protochronism merged with Nicolae Ceaușescu’s counterpropaganda against the Romanian section of Radio Free Europe,76 along with the Thracism promoted domestically and internationally by former Iron Guard sympathizer Iosif Constantin Drăgan. The latter was a Romanian millionaire with Italian citizenship who had been co-opted since the second half of the 1960s by the communist regime in its cultural diplomacy and who had very close links with the Securitate.77 In the second half of the 1970s and in the 1980s, the impact of this group on the radicalization of charismatic nationalism was accentuated by the backing they received at the highest level of the party leadership. The patron of these trends was Dumitru Popescu (nicknamed Dumnezeu, “God” in Romanian), the president of the State Committee for Culture and the Arts (from 1971) and head of the Committee for Press and Publications (the main censorship institution until its disbandment in 1977). As coordinator of propaganda, Popescu was one of the principal authors of Ceaușescu’s cult of personality; his declaration at the Eleventh Party Congress that “Ceaușescu is our shepherd” became notorious. He gave full backing to obscurantist, anti-Western, autarchic, and xenophobic groups in the debates of those times, and he remained a member of the RCP’s Political Executive Committee until the end of the regime. Another important figure in the alchemy of power that sustained the fascist mimicry of national Stalinism was Eugen Florescu, chief of 76 Monica Lovinescu, Etica neuitării: Eseuri politico-istorice, foreword by Vladimir Tismaneanu (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2008). 77 For extensive details on the relationship between Săptămâna and Drăgan, see Alina Pavelescu, “Le Conducător, le Parti et le Peuple: Le discours nationaliste comme discours de légitimation dans la Roumanie de Ceauşescu (1965–1989),” Ph.D. diss., Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris-Science Po, 2009. On Drăgan’s early involvement with the regime’s cultural diplomacy, see “Notă,” March 29, 1969, ANIC, fond CC al PCR—Secția de Propagandă și Agitație, 9/1969 or C. C. Giurescu, “Informare cu privire la ciclul de conerințe prezentate într-o serie de țări europene,” May 27, ANIC, fond CC al PCR—Secția Propagandă și Agitație, 5/1970.

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the press section of the Central Committee. His influence was greater than his position in the nomenklatura, as he was one of Elena Ceaușescu’s trusted henchmen, who, by the 1980s, was second in command in the regime’s hierarchy of power.78 Florescu was the direct protector of Săptămîna, Luceafărul, and Flacăra, the megaphones of protochronism.79 The backing of such high-profile members of the leadership not only gave the upper hand to the protochronist camp in intra-systemic conflicts over symbolic and material capital, it also allowed for manifestations of extreme chauvinism that embarrassed Ceaușescu himself. For example, novelist Ion Lăncrănjan published a book in 1982 entitled Cuvânt despre Transilvania (A Word on Transylvania). It had a print run of 50,000 copies and was highly praised in Luceafărul and Săptămîna. The volume attacked Romanian policy, suggesting the state had been too soft on the Hungarian minority in the past, and insinuated that communist Hungary still had irredentist desires. Its shrill tone and content generated an unprecedented protest letter signed by twenty-two Hungarian intellectuals and addressed to the Central Committee. When János Fazekas protested to Ceaușescu himself,80 the dictator retorted that “the party did not write the book, and it is not Lăncrănjan, but the party which directs Romania’s nationality policy.”81 What made matters worse was that the novelist had founded his claims about Hungarian irredentism, among others, on the misquotation of a speech by János Kádár in 1966 about the effects of the Trianon treaty. Ultimately the Romanian leadership managed to contain the situation, chastising Lăncrănjan for his attack on Kádár.82 Another example is Corneliu Vadim Tudor’s anti-Semitic article “Idealuri” published in Săptămîna in 1980. It was an attack against Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen, who opposed the uncritical recuperation and publication of Mihai 78 On Elena Ceaușescu’s role and the creeping dynastic socialism in later communist Romania, see Tismaneanu, Stalinism for All Seasons. 79 For details about Popescu’s and Florescu’s biographies, see Vladimir Tismaneanu, Lumea secretă a nomenclaturii: Amintiri, dezvăluiri, portrete (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2012), 221–32. 80 From 1974 until 1982, János Fazekas was member of the Executive Political Committee of the RCP’s Central Committee. His intervention in the Lăncrănjan affair hastened his demise within the highest echelons of power. 81 Martin Mevius, “Defending ‘Historical and Political Interests’: Romanian-Hungarian Historical Disputes and the History of Transylvania,” in Hungary and Romania Beyond Nation­ al Narratives: Comparisons and Entanglements, ed. Anders E. B. Blomqvist, Constantin Iordachi, and Balázs Trencsényi (Bern: Peter Lang, 2013), 587. 82 Mevius, “Defending ‘Historical and Political Interests,’” 588–89.

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Eminescu’s political journalism, which was highly xenophobic and anti-Semitic. Rosen’s internal protests, as well as the harsh critiques against the regime from both Israel and the US, had a snowballing effect, pushing the communist leadership to control the anti-Semitic campaign in Săptămîna. The magazine was forced to publicly recant and Vadim Tudor was reprimanded (his visibility in the publication was curtailed). But, as Alina Pavelescu pointed out, Eugen Barbu’s semi-covert campaign against members of the Writers Union of Jewish origin continued.83 The two incidents reveal the limits of the officialization of fascist mimicry. Their aftershocks and the direct embarrassment for Ceaușescu brought about the Săptămîna group’s fall from grace as it gradually lost influence among the highest levels of power in the 1980s. Another manifestation of the phenomenon of “fascist mimicry” was the increased visibility and importance of Ilie Ceaușescu, the dictator’s brother, and of his Institute for Studies and Research in Military History (ISRMH). Ilie Ceaușescu was the main advocate of what Dennis Deletant called “[t]he demotion of the Romans in the ethnogenesis of the Romanian people.”84 The focus shifted to Thracism and/or the Geto-Dacian symbiosis as the radicalization of existing narratives of autochthonous ancestry. Since the late 1950s, the regime and its “historical front” were obsessed with subjects such as the origin and formation of the Romanian people, or their continuity across history on the country’s contemporary territory. The topic was so greatly emphasized during the 1960s and early 1970s that it triggered a competition among Romanian archeologists in terms of underlining the main hearths of Romanian ethnogenesis and continuity.85 The debates and epistemic practices of the previous decades laid the ground for the exacerbation of these trends in the 1980s. In fact, the Thracism promoted by Drăgan and embraced by Ilie Ceaușescu came onto the scene as an international discipline under the umbrella of the International Association for Southeast European Studies as a Bulgarian initiative. The first international congress of Thracology took place in Sofia in 1972; only in 1976 did the Romanian party-state transform this 83 Pavelescu, “Le Conducător, le Parti et le Peuple,” 262–67. 84 Dennis Deletant, “Rewriting the Past: Trends in Contemporary Romanian Historiography,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 14, no. 1 (January 1991): 71. 85 Constantin C. Giurescu, “Al doilea congres internațional de studii privind sud-est European,” May 18, ANIC, Fond Academia de Științe Sociale și Politice, 26/1970, f.13. For details, see Bogdan C. Iacob, “Stalinism, Historians, and the Nation: History-Production under Communism in Romania (1955–1966),” Ph.D. diss., Central European University, 2011.

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field into a national showcase by organizing the second international congress of Thracology. Even then, the most high-profile national representatives were established archeologists from the Romanian Academy. After all, the general secretary of the Association internationale d’études du Sud-Est européen (AIESEE) was archeologist Emil Condurachi, former head of the Academy’s Archeology Institute and a scholar fully socialized in the pre-1945 epistemic tradition, while simultaneously boasting an impressive track record of functioning as a regime expert on “the national agenda.” The prominence of the ISRMH historiographical discourse coincided with Ilie Ceaușescu’s ascent to the highest levels of power.86 In 1982, he became general-lieutenant; in 1983 he was secretary of the High Political Committee of the Army and deputy minister of National Defense; in 1984, he became a member of the RCP’s Central Committee; and in 1987 he joined the Executive Bureau of the Council of Culture and Socialist Education. Ilie Ceaușescu’s activity was centered on providing historically legitimizing dimensions for his brother’s doctrine: the principle of “the struggle of the entire people”; the absolute Romanian preeminence in the history of Transylvania; and the putative de facto status of Romania’s co-belligerence in World War II based on the country’s presupposed central role in ending it. Ultimately, Ilie Ceaușescu represented an indigenizing challenge to the established authority and themes within the academic historical front.87 Historical fundamentalism (in the forms of xenophobia, exceptionalism, and Thracism) had a precise political function during communism. While emphasizing the Romanians’ archaic presence in the region (their claim to chronological preeminence, as opposed to ethnic minorities seen as latecomers and intruders), the regime was trying to convey the idea that contemporary Romania inherited a unique history and therefore a special “mission.” Protochronism was the theoretical counterpart to Ceaușescu’s alleged providential role in the history of the country (and the world). It was also the mythological rationale for the country’s increasing autarchy. Despite its influence in the 1980s, the historiography promoted by Ilie Ceaușescu and ISRMH was consistently challenged by historians associated with the Acade86 The gradualism of the national Stalinist synthesis is obvious if one looks at the fact that, from 1970 until 1978, the head of the Center for Historical Research and Military Theory (which morphed into the ISRMH) was Colonel Eugen Bantea, who was of Jewish origin. 87 Deletant, “Rewriting the Past,” 77.

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my.88 The problem was that, more often than not, the conflict was between these scholars’ ethnocentric reading of national history and Ilie Ceaușescu’s nativist radicalization of their scholarship. In his memoirs, Dan Berindei, a scholar with intense involvement in official history production during communism and head of the Academy’s historical section after 1989, recounted a story that nicely reveals this identitarian catch-22. At the fourth international congress of Southeast European studies in Ankara (1979), after Ilie Ceaușescu made an intervention in line with his Dacian-centric reading of ethnogenesis, some participants from other countries criticized his pseudoepistemic fancies. Berindei jumped in and, though he agreed with criticism against the unmediated connection between Dacians and Romanians, he persisted in underlining that “through its ancestors, Romania boasts an ancientness of two millennia. This evolutive continuity cannot be denied and Romanians can evoke Rome just as the Italians of today can evoke the old Rome.”89 The last manifestation of fascist mimicking that we wish to deal with is Cenaclul Flacăra, along with its leading figure, the poet Adrian Păunescu,90 in creating and manipulating a socio-cultural phenomenon of mass mobilization that facilitated the ideological reproduction of national Stalinism. Păunescu started as a nonconformist poet in the 1960s, probably trying to emulate the Soviet anti-Stalinist writer Evgheny Evtushenko. As deputy editor-in-chief of Romania Literară, he encouraged literary experimentation, while at the writers’ meetings with Ceaușescu he asked uncomfortable questions. His initial heterodoxy was in service of building socialism, of the continuation of the revolution, and not a challenge against the party. In those years, Păunescu replicated the illusions of Polish and Hungarian revisionism. 88 For a detailed account of Ilie Ceaușescu’s role and activities, see Pavelescu, “Le Conducător, le Parti et le Peuple,” 157–69. 89 Dan Berindei, Drumuri în lume 1965–1980: În vremuri de speranță și incertitudini (Bucharest: Editura Paralela 45, 2005), 130, original emphasis. 90 For an analysis of Păunescu’s activity in communism and post-communism as well as his role of symbol for an unmastered past, see Vladimir Tismaneanu, “Menestrelul comunismului dinastic sau cine a fost Adrian Păunescu,” Contributors.ro, last modified November 5, 2010, https://www.contributors.ro/menestrelul-comunismului-dinastic-sau-cine-a-fost-adrian-paunescu/. The article was written as a reaction to the wave of revisionist readings of Păunescu’s involvement with Ceaușescu’s regime and the dictator’s cult, triggered by the poet’s death. It was one of the first reactions to what became de facto national funerals for Păunescu, a criticism against what Tismaneanu called “a parade of amnesic unanimity.” See Vladimir Tismaneanu, “Trubadurul ‘Epocii de Aur’: Un an fără Adrian Păunescu,” Contributors.ro, last modified November 10, 2011, https://www.contributors.ro/tobosarul-epocii-de-aur-un-anfara-adrian-paunescu/.

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In 1971, upon returning from a fellowship in the US,91 he experienced a shock upon realizing the huge developmental gap between that country and Romania.92 From this point on, he unreservedly channeled his activism, as a coping mechanism, into effervescent, fanatic mobilization in support of Ceaușescu’s national-Stalinist utopia. In 1973, Păunescu became editor-in-chief of the cultural review Flacăra (The Flame), which fell under the jurisdiction of the Socialist Front for Democracy and Unity. What had been a small literary circle would soon balloon into a full-fledged youth movement. Its activities consisted of events organized in the country’s stadiums that combined a hippie ethos with intense Romanian folk influences, political sloganeering, and nonconformist, rebellious behavior, all mixed-up in a double-bind personality cult: Ceaușescu’s and Păunescu’s. As historian Alina Pavelescu stressed, “under the slogan ‘light, struggle, and liberty!’ [lumină, luptă, libertate!], Cenaclul rediscovered patriotic literature and music from the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century that had fueled the nationalism of Greater Romania.” Cenaclul Flacăra offered the illusion of alternative culture in an autochthonous version, thus allowing its adherents the belief that they were breaking ideological taboos.93 The impact of this phenomenon was so great that the party leadership decided upon its inclusion in the failing national festival The Song of Romania (Cîntarea Romîniei) in 1976. At the initiative of its ideological patron, Dumitru Popescu, Cenaclul also received its own slot on the national television program from 1977 until 1982, while it was broadcast on radio from 1979 until 1985. The sheer numbers of people who took part in Cenaclul is impressive. In 1973, at its beginnings, there were 4700 individuals involved. By 1976, when it joined The Song of Romania, it counted 288,500 people and organized 108 public shows across the country. After a downward trend in attendance and organization between 1977 and 1981 (though the numbers fluctuated between 70,000 and 100,000 persons), in 1982 Cenaclul shattered the mark of one million participants.94 Until 1985, 91 While in the US, he interviewed Mircea Eliade, but the publication of their conversation was heavily censored in the cultural magazine Contemporanul. See Florin Țurcanu, Mircea ­Eliade: Prizonierul istoriei (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2006), 581–588. 92 On this issue, see the journal of his first wife: Constanța Buzea, Creștetul ghețarului: Jurnal 1969–1971 (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2009). 93 Alina Pavelescu, “Idéologiser la culture alternative: Adrian Păunescu et le Cénacle Flacăra” in History of Communism in Europe, no. 2 (2011): 59. 94 Pavelescu, “Idéologiser la culture alternative,” 62–63.

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when an accident during one of its shows triggered its disbanding, Cenaclul experienced an ideological routinization similar to those of the regime and its leader’s personality cult. We consider that Cenaclul Flacăra was, among other things, a mass manifestation of the charismatic nationalism that was all-pervasive in Romanian society, as well as a demotic form of the sacralization of politics that was so central to national Stalinism.95 Literary historian Paul Cernat judiciously remarked that: no institutional history of Romania in the Ceaușescu period can ignore the massive and entrancing personality of Adrian Păunescu. This would be so even if one takes into account only the fact that throughout the existence of Cenaclul Flacăra (especially between 1976 and 1985, when it was encompassed by The Song of Romania), the poet was, de facto, the fourth person in the state based on his influence, after the presidential couple and their youngest child, Nicu . . . [Păunescu exerted an] expansionist and totalitarian urge to constantly be the center of attention that probably originated in his vital need to address an angst of evanescence.

Cernat continues by stating: “A sounding board of local complexes, resentments, and hubris, a communitarian, etatist poet, Păunescu is the paranoid product of the imposture of an authoritarian and discretionary system, which he supported, ultimately giving it authenticity and popular credibility.”96 Cenaclul Flacăra generated among its adherents a sense of belonging that was in constant interpenetration with the regime visions of national rebirth and the New Man. The novelty was that this was an identity game that was permanently mediated through symbols and by the free performance of the autochthonized and controlled alternative culture. The potentially decadent and degenerative influences of Western trends in cultural consumption from the 1960s and 1970s were made good in national Stalinism through their filtering, adaptation, and regimentation into a participatory, messianic revivalism. 95 Vladimir Tismaneanu, Dorin Dobrincu, and Cristian Vasile, eds., Comisia Prezidențială pen­ tru Analiza Dictaturii Comuniste din România (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2007), 329–30. 96 Paul Cernat, “Îmblânzitorul României Socialiste,” in Explorări în comunismul românesc, vol. 1, ed. Paul Cernat, Ion Manolescu, Angelo Mitchievici, and Ioan Stanomir (Iaşi: Polirom, 2004), 241–42.

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Conclusion In 1968, as the regime put together a grandiose celebration of fifty years since the creation of Greater Romania, the historian Dumitru Almaș (who would become one of the most important popularizers of the communist Pantheon of the Nation through history, and a crucial cog in Ceaușescu’s cult of personality)97 published an article in the Bulletin AIESEE about the centrality of Transylvania for national unity. In it, he offered a near-biological, Völkisch, highly anthropomorphic description of the Motherland. He argued that: For a long time, scientists—historians and biologists, economists and linguists, sociologists and geographers—have been amazed by the perfect unity of the Romanian soil and people, who inhabited the CarpathianDanubian space for more than a millennium and a half. The geographic environment of this country reveals a striking harmony. The Carpathians, a veritable backbone of the ensemble, provide the support, reinforcing within their arc a magnificent citadel: the plateau of Transylvania. The walls of this natural fortress are surrounded by hills, whose soft curves descend into plains bursting with light. The great rivers carry their bright liquid richness toward the Danube, crossing or framing the plains neighboring the illuminated seaside of the Black Sea. The originality of this landscape is equaled only by its great beauty. The same people lived on this soil since the most ancient times of history’s first dawn.98

The quotation epitomizes the injection of culturalist, ethnocentric perennialism into the construction of socialism in one country. As Ceaușescu condemned the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, intellectuals provided the fodder for a fusion between the eternal nation-in-danger with the party’s pariah syndrome and ethos of the besieged fortress. The result was a national Stalinism founded on palingenetic, Messianic, inclusionary narratives of unity, ho97 In the 1980s, he published three volumes entitled “Historical Tales,” which were written for children and pupils. They had huge print runs and were compulsory reading in schools. See Lucian Boia, History and Myth in Romanian Consciousness, 223; and Angelo Mitchievici, “Povești, legende, utopii: Dumitru Almaș la școala istoriei,” in Explorări în comunismul româ­ nesc, vol. 2, ed. Paul Cernat, Ion Manolescu, Angelo Mitchievici, and Ioan Stanomir (Bucharest: Polirom, 2005), 367. 98 Dumitru Almaș, “Le cinquantenaire de l’union de la Transylvanie avec la Roumanie,” Bulle­ tin AIESEE, nos. 1–2 (1968): 48.

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mogeneity, and exceptionalism. The hyper-radicalization of the late 1970s and 1980s, characterized by the increasing addition of fascist motifs into cultural discourses, reflected the upward spiral, the cumulative overbidding of salvational fantasies. The latter were formulated through the permanent, selective appropriation of traditional essentialisms and identitarian obsessions from the early twentieth century, up to and including the 1930s. In this sense, the legacies of national Stalinism in post-communist Romania can be separated into two categories. The first is the Stalino-fascist baroque, which manifested itself in both politics and cultural debates (especially in the 1990s, but continuing well into the 2000s). Individuals such as Eugen Barbu, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, Adrian Păunescu, Ioan Talpeș (an associate of Ilie Ceaușescu), and many of their associates from communist times continued unabated green-red99 narratives that were radically anti-Western, nativist, centered on Christian Orthodoxy, and collectivist. Politically, their apex was Nicolae Văcăroiu’s government (1992–1996) which, de facto, brought together most of the elites who were successors of the Ceaușescu regime. In the general elections of 2000, the Greater Romania Party won more than 20 percent of the vote, thus becoming for four years the second political force in the country. After 2004, these trends dissipated across the entire political spectrum as anti-European autochthonism became a useful tool in populist campaigns from the various parties in government. This phenomenon was obvious during the constitutional crisis of 2012.100 Since 2016, the legacies of national Stalinism played a central role in the buildup and aftermath of the referendum on the heteronormative constitutional definition of the family. While this illiberal mobilization failed, it anticipated the political re-institutionalization of nativism in the form of the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), a party that in March 2023 ranked third in opinion polls.101

99 “Green-red” here refers to red, the traditional color of the communists, and green, the dominant color of Iron Guard uniforms. 100 Vladimir Tismaneanu, “Democracy on the Brink: A Coup Attempt Fails in Romania,” World Affairs 175, no. 5 (January/February 2013): 83–87; and Vladimir Tismaneanu, “The Legacies of 1989: The Moving Ruins,” Journal of Democracy 25, no. 1 (January 2014): 59–70. 101 Raul Cârstocea, “First as Tragedy, then as Farce? AUR and the Long Shadow of Fascism in Romania,” Lefteast, January 11, 2021, https://lefteast.org/first-as-tragedy-then-as-farce-aurand-the-long-shadow-of-fascism-in-romania/; Luminița Pârvu, “Sondaj INSCOP,” Hotnews, March 9, 2023, https://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-politic-26130641-sondaj-inscop-aur-continuacreasca-preferintele-romanilor-timp-psd-este-scadere-pnl-usr-stabili.htm.

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The second legacy is arguably more pervasive and potentially threatening: an obsession with the uncritical appropriation of tradition in order to construct usable pasts.102 The tip of the iceberg was the debate on the relationship between the generation of 1927 (with its towering figures of Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran, and Constantin Noica)103 and the Iron Guard, as well as the attempts to rehabilitate Marshal Ion Antonescu with the corollary of denying Romania’s responsibility during the Holocaust.104 Further virulent manifestations of this legacy were the vehement attacks at the end of the 1990s against Lucian Boia’s deconstruction of the mythologies of Romanian historical writing.105 Last but not least, the massive campaign to misrepresent, delegitimize, and belittle the Final Report of the Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship since the moment of its publication in 2006 is additional proof of the serious reluctance within Romanian public

102 Constantin Iordachi and Balázs Trencsényi, “In Search of a Usable Past: The Question of National Identity in Romanian Studies, 1990–2000,” East European Politics and Societies 17, no. 3 (Summer 2003): 415–53. 103 An additional section in the present chapter could have outlined the process of recuperating, during communism, some of the ideas and partially rehabilitating representatives of the generation of 1927. We decided not to include the topic in our analysis for two reasons. First, we wished to emphasize the nature of mainstream nationalism and officialized, institutionalized tradition in the 1960s and 1970s. Second, we wanted to point out its potential for radicalization by way of fascist mimicking. It is undeniable that the ideas of Constantin Noica, Dumitru Stăniloae, Nichifor Crainic, and Petru Comarnescu overlapped to an important extent with the charismatic nationalism dominating the cultural and political establishment of state socialism. One can identify, for example, a selective appropriation of Mircea Eliade’s writings from the mid-1970s onward, as well as those of Nae Ionescu. The debates about the generation of 1927 during postcommunism were in direct continuation of its incremental reassessment in the last fifteen years of Ceaușescu’s regime. 104 The rehabilitation of Ion Antonescu was a stop-and-go process. Its first signs appeared in 1972 with Marin Preda’s novel Delirul and historian Aurică Simion’s book Preliminarii politico-dip­ lomatice ale insurectiei române din august 1944 (Cluj-Napoca: Dacia, 1979). This issue gradually became Ilie Ceaușescu’s pet project. There was a direct continuation of these initiatives into the post-1989 period with the volume by American historian Larry Watts, Romanian Cassandra: Ion Antonescu and the Struggle for Reform, 1916–1941 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1993), a book heavily promoted by the historians’ group under the umbrella of Ilie Ceaușescu’s Institute for Studies and Research in Military History. In a more recent development, Larry Watts is the central character in an attempt to rehabilitate the purportedly patriotic role of the communist secret police and to lionize the nationalism of Ceaușescu’s foreign diplomacy. See Larry L. Watts, Ferește-mă, Doamne, de prieteni: Războiul clandestin al blocului sovietic cu România (Bucharest: RAO, 2011). 105 See Lucian Boia’s preface to the second edition of Istorie și mit în conștiința românească (Bucharest: Humanitas, 2000).

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opinion and epistemic discourse to adopt critical historicization in order to de-fetishize the past, communist or otherwise.106 More than twenty years after 1989, historian Victor Neumann judiciously stressed that a large part of Romanian historiography continues to endorse “a romantic view of Romanian history, an approach which is opposed to critical analysis, methodological renewal, and conceptual progress, and which is not willing to tear itself away from past structures of thought and promote, instead, Western norms.”107 As the present chapter showed, due to only partial (public and scholarly) processing of the national Stalinist experience in Romania, the charismatic nationalism that made such an experience possible is still firmly entrenched in identity narratives and collectivist political visions. Local communism was a textbook case of conjoined nationalization, from both above and below. Intellectuals were experts on the national agenda, as well as dignitaries of the regime’s cultural diplomacy. The various pre1945 traditions and trends appropriated within the system were hybridized with Marxist-Leninist eschatology and determinism. As mentioned at the beginning of this text, nationalism after state socialism is essentially encoded with the cultural particularisms of the communist period. It would be a mistake, however, to consign Ceaușescu’s regime to being simply a form of fascization.108 There was indeed extensive fascist mimicry in its later phases, but what fueled its legitimacy and reproduction was fundamentally the synthesis of ethno-cultural parochialism with the Messianism of the Stalinist utopia. In our opinion, this is the core of what we call the Romanian ideology. In 2006, Dan Berindei self-apologetically wrote in his journal: “[during communism] I strove . . . to show the face of Romania, one of 106 Vladimir Tismaneanu, “Democracy and Memory: Romania Confronts its Communist Past,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 617, no. 1 (May 2008): 166– 80; and Bogdan C. Iacob, “The Romanian Communist Past and the Entrapment of Polemics,” in Remembrance, History, and Justice: Dealing with the Past in Democratic Societies, ed. Vladimir Tismaneanu and Bogdan C. Iacob (Budapest–New York: CEU Press, 2016). 107 Victor Neumann, “Is Rewriting Romanian History Useful? The Evolution of Socio-Political Concepts and Alternative Interpretations,” in Key Concepts of Romanian History: Alter­ native Approaches to Socio-Political Languages, ed. Victor Neumann and Armin Heinen (Budapest–New York: CEU Press, 2013), 13 108 See the exchange between Gáspár M. Tamás and Vladimir Tismaneanu in the cultural weekly, Revista 22: Vladimir Tismaneanu, “Marxism histrionic (G. M. Tamás & co.)” Revista 22, last modified July 20, 2010, https://revista22.ro/dosar/marxism-histrionic-gm-tamas-co-polemici; and Gáspár M. Tamás, “Un delict de opinie,” Revista 22, last modified July 20, 2010, http://www.revista22.ro/un-delict-de-opinie-polemici-8604.html.

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an eternal Romania. . . . I considered myself a Romanian man of science defending my country and its past in case of unjustified denigration, not a political propagandist.”109 In the end, from the point of view of deconstructing and historicizing the Romanian ideology, the participatory aspect of official involvement in state socialism becomes secondary to emancipation from the charismatic nationalism that was at the core of its ideology. Beyond successor elites, the Stalino-fascist baroque and collectivist socio-economic nostalgia are the national Stalinist legacies with the most destructive potential for contemporary Romanian democracy. They continue to fuel essentialist, narcissistic attitudes toward the past. If such fantasies of salvation find their way into political-cultural projects, they could shatter the still-hesitant and vulnerable liberal pluralism of today.

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ited by Vladimir Tismaneanu and Bogdan C. Iacob, 417–74. Budapest–New York: CEU Press, 2016. ———. “Stalinism, Historians, and the Nation: History-Production under Communism in Romania (1955–1966).” Ph.D. diss., Central European University, 2011. Împotriva fascismului. Bucharest: Editura Politică, 1971. Ioanid, Radu. “Nicolae Iorga and Fascism.” Journal of Contemporary History 27, no. 3 (July 1992): 467‒492. Iordachi, Constantin. “Fascism in Southeastern Europe: A Comparison between Romania’s Legion of the Archangel Michael and Croatia’s Ustaša.” In Entangled Histories of the Balkans, Volume Two: Transfers of Political Ideologies and Institutions, edited by Roumen Daskalov and Diana Mishkova, 355–468. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Iordachi, Constantin, and Balázs Trencsényi. “In Search of a Usable Past: The Question of National Identity in Romanian Studies, 1990–2000.” East European Politics and Societies 17, no. 3 (Summer 2003): 415–53. Jowitt, Kenneth. Revolutionary Breakthroughs and National Development: The Case of Romania 1944‒1965. Berkeley: University of California, 1971. Kopeček, Michal. “Czech Communist Intellectuals and the ‘National Road to Socialism’: Zdeněk Nejedlý and Karel Kosík, 1945–1968.” In Ideological Storms: Intellectu­ als, Dictators, and the Totalitarian Temptation, edited by Vladimir Tismaneanu and Bogdan C. Iacob, 345–89. Budapest–New York: CEU Press, 2019. Kotkin, Stephen. “1991 and the Russian Revolution: Sources, Conceptual Categories, Analytical Frameworks.” Journal of Modern History 70, no. 2 (June 1998): 384‒425. ———. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. ———. “The State—Is It Us? Memoirs, Archives, and Kremlinologists.” Russian Review 61, no. 1 (January 2002): 35–51. Lambru, Steliu. “Note despre protocronismului românesc.” Studii și materiale de istorie contemporană 10, no. 1 (2011): 184–201. Lovinescu, Monica. Etica neuitării: Eseuri politico-istorice. Foreword by Vladimir Tismaneanu. Bucharest: Humanitas, 2008. Marin, Manuela. Originea și evoluția cultului personalității lui Nicolae Ceaușescu 1965– 1989. Alba Iulia: Altip, 2008. Marinov, Tchavdar, and Alexander Vezenkov. “Communism and Nationalism in the Balkans: Marriage of Convenience or Mutual Attraction?” In Entangled Histories of the Balkans, Volume Two: Transfers of Political Ideologies and Institutions, edited by Roumen Daskalov and Diana Mishkova, 469–555. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Mevius, Martin. “Defending ‘Historical and Political Interests’: Romanian-Hungarian Historical Disputes and the History of Transylvania.” In Hungary and Roma­ nia Beyond National Narratives: Comparisons and Entanglements, edited by Anders E. B. Blomqvist, Constantin Iordachi, and Balázs Trencsényi, 569–606. Bern: Peter Lang, 2013. Mihăilescu, Vintilă. “Autochthonism and National Ethnology in Romania.” CAS Work­ ing Papers, no. 1 (2007): 3‒26.

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Mitchievici, Angelo. “Biografia unei secunde: 4 martie 1977 si Mitul Marelui Arhitect— Nicolae Ceaușescu, eroul fondator.” In Comunism și represiune în România: Istoria tematică a unui fratricid național, edited by Ruxandra Cesereanu, 234–50. Bucharest: Polirom, 2006. ———. “Povești, legende, utopii: Dumitru Almaș la școala istoriei.” In Explorări în comu­ nismul românesc, vol. 2, edited by Paul Cernat, Ion Manolescu, Angelo Mitchievici, and Ioan Stanomir, 335‒71. Bucharest: Polirom, 2005. Mocănescu, Alice. “Practicing Immortality: Schemes for Conquering ‘Time’ during the Ceaușescu Era.” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 10, no. 3 (2010): 413–34. Mosse, George L. The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich, with new author’s preface. New York: Schocken Books, 1981. Nagy-Talavera, Nicholas. Nicolae Iorga: A Biography. Iași: Romanian Cultural Foundation, 1996. Neumann, Victor. “Is Rewriting Romanian History Useful? The Evolution of Socio-Political Concepts and Alternative Interpretations.” In Key Concepts of Romanian His­ tory: Alternative Approaches to Socio-Political Languages, edited by Victor Neumann and Armin Heinen, 1–26. Budapest–New York: CEU Press, 2013. ———. Neam, Popor sau Națiune? Despre identitățile politice europene, 2nd ed. Bucharest: Curtea Veche, 2005. ———. “Neam și Popor: Noțiunile etnocentrismului românesc.” In Istoria Romîniei prin concepte: Perspective alternative asupra limbajelor social-politice, edited by Victor Neumann and Armin Heinen, 379–400. Iași: Polirom, 2010. Papu, Edgar. “Protocronism românesc.” Secolul 20: Revistă de literatură universală, no. 5‒6 (1974): 8‒11. Pârâianu, Răzvan. “Culturalist Nationalism and Anti-Semitism in Fin-de-Siècle Romania.” In Blood and Homeland: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and South­ east Europe, 1900‒1940, edited by Marius Turda and Paul J. Weindling, 353–74. Budapest–New York: CEU Press, 2007. Pavelescu, Alina. “Idéologiser la culture alternative: Adrian Păunescu et le Cénacle Flacăra” in History of Communism in Europe, no. 2 (2011): 51–71. ———. “Le Conducător, le Parti et le Peuple: Le discours nationaliste comme discours de légitimation dans la Roumanie de Ceauşescu (1965–1989).” Ph.D. diss., Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, 2009. Pavelescu, Alina, and Laura Dumitru, eds. PCR şi intelectualii în primii ani ai regimu­ lui Ceaușescu. Bucharest: Arhivele Naţionale ale României, 2007. Petrescu, Dragoș. “Building the Nation, Instrumentalizing Nationalism: Revisiting Romanian National-Communism, 1956–1989.” Nationalities Papers 37, no. 4 (2009): 523–44. ———. “Cântarea României sau stalinismul naţional în festival.” In Miturile comunismului românesc, vol. 2, edited by Lucian Boia, 115‒126. Bucharest: Editura Universităţii din Bucureşti, 1997. Petreu, Marta. “De la lupta de rasă la lupta de clasă: C. Rădulescu-Motru.” In Marta Petreu, De la Junimea la Noica: Studii de cultură românească. Iași: Polirom, 2011. Rădulescu-Motru, C. Personalismul energetic și alte scrieri, studiu, antologie și note de Gh. Al. Cazan. Bucharest: Editura Eminescu, 1984. 61

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———. Scrieri politice. Bucharest: Nemira, 1998. Ree, Erik, van. “Stalin as Marxist: The Western Roots of Stalin’s Russification of Marxism.” In Stalin: A New History, edited by Sarah Davies and James Harris, 159–80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Shafir, Michael. “Xenophobic Communism—The Case of Bulgaria and Romania.” The World Today 45, no. 12 (December 1989): 208–12. Simion, Aurică. Regimul politic din România în perioada septembrie 1940‒ianuarie 1941. Cluj-Napoca: Dacia, 1976. Smith, Anthony D. National Identity. London: Penguin, 1991. Smith, Tony. “New Bottles for New Wine: A Pericentric Framework for the Study of the Cold War.” Diplomatic History 24, no. 4 (Fall 2000): 567–91. Stănescu, Eugen. “Premisele medievale ale conștiinței naționale romînești: Romîn-romînesc în textele romînești din veacurile XV-XVII.” Studii: Revistă de istorie 17, no. 4 (1964): 967–1000. Studii: Revistă de istorie “25 de ani de la moartea lui Nicolae Iorga” 18, no. 6 (1965). Tamás, Gáspár M. “Un delict de opinie.” Revista 22. Last modified July 20, 2010. https:// revista22.ro/dosar/un-delict-de-opinie-polemici. Tănase, Alexandru. “România în contextul civilizației europene.” Buletinul Comisiei Naționale a R.S.R. pentru UNESCO 15, no. 3‒4 (1973): 5–12. Tismaneanu, Vladimir. “Democracy and Memory: Romania Confronts its Communist Past.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 617, no. 1 (May 2008): 166–80. ———. “Democracy on the Brink: A Coup Attempt Fails in Romania.” World Affairs 175, no. 5 (January/February 2013): 83–87. ———. Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy, Nationalism, and Myth in Post-Communist Eu­ rope. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. ———. “Ideological Erosion and the Breakdown of Communist Regimes.” In Why Com­ munism Did Not Collapse: Understanding Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Asia and Europe, edited by Martin K. Dimitrov, 67–98. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. ———. “The Legacies of 1989: The Moving Ruins.” Journal of Democracy 25, no. 1 (January 2014): 59–70. ———. Lumea secretă a nomenclaturii: Amintiri, dezvăluiri, portrete. Bucharest: Humanitas, 2012. ———. “Marxism histrionic (G. M. Tamás & co.)” Revista 22. Last modified July 20, 2010. https://revista22.ro/dosar/marxism-histrionic-gm-tamas-co-polemici. ———. “Menestrelul comunismului dinastic sau cine a fost Adrian Păunescu.” Contribu­ tors.ro. Last modified November 5, 2010. https://www.contributors.ro/menestrelulcomunismului-dinastic-sau-cine-a-fost-adrian-paunescu/. ———. Stalinism for All Seasons: A Political History of Romanian Communism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. ———. “Trubadurul ‘Epocii de Aur’: Un an fără Adrian Păunescu.” Contributors.ro. Last modified November 10, 2011. https://www.contributors.ro/tobosarul-epocii-de-aurun-an-fara-adrian-paunescu/. 62

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CHAPTER TWO

ABSENT TRADITIONS: RIGHT-WING STRANDS IN SLOVAKIAN POLITICS At tila Simon

The Velvet Revolution and fall of the communist dictatorship in Czechoslovakia at the end of 1989 saw four decades of exclusively left-wing politics replaced with a multiparty system and the return of the political right. Although Czechoslovakia had strong democratic traditions, inherited from the 1918–38 period of the first Czechoslovak Republic, right-wing politics had more difficulty establishing itself than it had in neighboring Hungary or Poland. One major reason for this was that the previous four decades (the forty-one years after the communist coup of 1948) marked a strong break in the integral development of the country’s political life, which practically negated all previous convention. This left the idea of socialism as the liveliest tradition in post-1989 Czech and Slovak politics. Even before 1948 it possessed a strong base: the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia had been a strong, legal presence in the 1918–38 period, as had social democracy. Another major factor was that, thanks to the Prague Spring of 1968, the opposition had espoused left-wing values even before 1989. As such, the forces behind the regime change in Czechoslovakia were mainly from this political camp as well. The specific features of the change of system in Slovakia after 1989 strongly influenced the way the new pluralist political structure developed. As one of the foremost Slovak sociologists, Soňa Szomolányi, points out, the Slovakian change of system is difficult to fit into the triple transition typology of Samuel P. Huntington (transformation, transplacement, replacement),1 as the 1 Soňa Szomolányi, Španielsko a Slovensko: Dve cesty k demokracii (Bratislava: Stimul, 2002), 29–30.

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Slovak model displays both revolutionary and evolutionary features. The other influential factor in the Slovakian change of system was the gradually developing divide between Czech and Slovak politics. Although the question of dividing the joint Czechoslovak state was not raised in the early months of systemic change, all the newly appearing political parties were confined to one part of the country or the other. This applies even though Slovakian politics, particularly in the early months of the transition, simply duplicated what was going on in Prague or continually reacted to it.2 Furthermore, the national question, as a cause of tension between Czechs and Slovaks, became one of the formative factors on the Slovakian political scene. Even compared with the interwar period, the sole realistic basis for comparison, the departure of Slovak politics from Czech was conspicuous, because the main political forces before 1938 had been statewide, operating in both the Czech lands and Slovakia. This distancing process was not confined to the newly formed “democratic” parties; it could even be found in the communist party, despite its strong traditions of centralism. The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia remained as an umbrella organization until 1991, but its Slovak and Czech successor parties were already taking different paths.3 The system-changing force in the Czech lands was the Civic Forum (Občanské forum, OF) and in Slovakia, the movement Public Against Violence (Verejnosť proti násiliu, VPN). Both were broad-tent parties encompassing ranges of opinion. Cracks soon appeared in the VPN, which had emerged victorious in Slovakia; this led to splits ushering in real political pluralism, as future elections would not limit the choice down to merely rejecting communism. Yet, Slovakia’s post-1989 arrangement of political parties differed from the classic Western European model of left and right poles, and the composition of government coalitions in Slovakia since the democratic transition has not been determined by left-right polarization, but by the acceptance or rejection of authoritarian national populism, symbolized by Vladimír Mečiar and later Robert Fico. While usually the camp of Mečiar and Fico is called 2 See Lubomír Kopeček, Demokracie, diktatury a politický stranictví na Slovensku (Brno: CKD, 2006), 166. 3 The party in the Czech lands remained a parliamentary party in the Czech Republic for many years as the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia. The Slovak Communist Party rebranded itself as the Party of the Democratic Left immediately after the system change, but failed to revive itself and was absorbed, as an insignificant body, into SMER, the populist leftwing party headed by Robert Fico.

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left-wing, and those who oppose them right-wing, the boundaries in recent times between the authoritarian and the democratic camps have been so deepened and redrawn by the Russian aggression against Ukraine that the main allies of the left-wing Fico have become far-right nationalist parties. Furthermore, voters in Slovakia find it rather difficult to place themselves on the traditional left/right scale of values.4 To this one needs to add that more than three decades after the political transition of 1989–90, the Slovak party system is still extremely unstable, with old parties disappearing and new ones emerging as a common phenomenon. Although some parties continue to define themselves as left or right, the major political parties, as Judit Hamberger points out, structure themselves by mixing elements from both political value systems.5 Looking at the results of the 2020 parliamentary elections, of the six parties that entered parliament, only one—the Fico-led Smer-SSD— describes itself as left-wing, and one—the extreme nationalist People’s Party Our Slovakia (Ľudová strana naše Slovensko, ĽSNS) led by Marián Kotleba— as right-wing, while the remaining four parties, including the Ordinary People and Independent Personalities party (Obyčajní ľudia a nezávislé osobnosti), which received the most votes, cannot be classified as such. In post-transition Slovakian politics, all the traditional trends of the right could be found, but these parties have either ceased to exist or have been marginalized. Among the bearers of liberal-conservative values, the now defunct Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (Slovenská demokratická a cristianská unia, SDKU) and its predecessor parties stood out. Christian democratic values are most consistently represented by the Christian Democratic Movement (Kresťanskodemokratické hnutie, KDH), which, from 1989 to the present day has almost always aligned with the position of the Catholic Church—however, they have been absent from parliament since 2016.6 The Slovak National Party (Slovenská národná strana, SNS), which carries certain features of national conservatism and shows the characteristics of the nationalist right,

4 Surveys show that 22 percent of Slovakian voters in 1992 and 2000 could not place themselves on a right/left scale. More telling still is the finding that 42.4 percent in 1992, and 41.3 percent in 2000, identified with the political center. For the surveys, see Olga Gyárfásová, Vladímir Krivý, et al., Krajina v pohybe: Správa o politických názoroch ľudí na Slovensku (Bratislava: IVO, 2001), 149 and 152. 5 Judit Hamberger, “Politikai konzervativizmus 1989 után a visegrádi országokban: Szlovák, cseh és lengyel körkép,” Limes 25, no. 3 (2012): 31. 6 Hamberger, “Politikai konzervativizmus 1989 után a visegrádi országokban,” 34.

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also fell out of parliament, and its place among the nationalist voters was taken over by more radical parties. Among the parties of the Hungarian minority, the conservative Party of the Hungarian Community (Magyar Közösség Pártja, MKP) and the more liberal Híd-Most party represented the traditional right. Yet, they both failed to maintain their parliamentary seats and now they have jointly formed a new party called Alliance, which is yet to have representatives in the National Council.7 One factor that hinders investigating the right-wing traditions in presentday Slovakian politics is that the right-wing parties do not draw on them. Essentially, they see their advent as 1989 and look no further back in their statements or manifestos—not even the Christian Democrats, for the pre-1945 representative of political Catholicism, Hlinka’s Slovak People’s Party (Hlinko­ va slovenská ludová strana, HSLS), so besmirched itself in World War II that no democratic political force could condone it.8 The exceptions are the extreme right-wing movements, for whom Jozef Tiso and his policies mark a real tradition, whether secretly or openly. What the present Slovakian right lacks most is right-wing figures that can be condoned. Only Milan Rastislav Štefánik9 and Milan Hodža10 in twentieth-century Slovakian history could be seen as such, but Štefánik’s legacy is unclear as he died so young, leaving Hodža as the only name customarily cited since 1989. The case is similar with the Hungarian minority parties in Slovakia: the interwar right-wing Provincial Christian-Socialist Party (Országos Keresztényszo­ cialista Párt, OKSZP) and the Hungarian National Party (Magyar Nemzeti 7 In the present study, I deal with the political traditions of the Hungarian minority only tangentially. 8 Typical of this distancing is the social and political debate over the statue of the Moravian Prince Svatopluk, erected early in 2010 in the courtyard of Bratislava Castle. Despite professional criticism, the version of the double cross on the pedestal exactly matches the symbol used by the Hlinka Guard. The outrage this caused eventually meant that the sculptor had to alter the badge. However, this does not exclude the possibility of canonizing the nationalist heritage of Andrej Hlinka, of which more is said later. 9 Milan Rastislav Štefánik (1880–1919), Slovak astronomer and politician, graduated from Prague University, then pursued a scientific and military career in France. In 1916, he was a founder of the Czechoslovak National Council headed by T. G. Masaryk, one of the “founding fathers” of the Czechoslovak state, with the task of organizing foreign legions to fight for Czechoslovak independence (principally in Italy and Russia). After the republic was formed, he became defense minister, but died soon after in a plane accident. With hindsight it has been stated that had he survived, he would have been a monarchist, right-wing opponent of the leftliberal politics of Masaryk and Beneš. 10 See Note 23.

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Párt, MNP) cannot offer any viable tradition. Where János Esterházy did feature in MNP rhetoric in the last couple of years, it was more as a symbol of Slovakian Hungarians’ grievances than as a seat of historical tradition. One further problem is an almost total lack of relevant literature: the subject has not been addressed in Slovakian political science.11 In the absence of such treatment, there is little else to do than look to historiography for an account of Slovak right-wing politics and its representatives over the last century. The concept of the right wing in this part of the world varies in content according to period and politico-economic system. The sections below discuss the right in terms of the fourfold model employed by contemporary Hungarian historians—seen as a possible approach by, among others, Ignác Romsics12—whereby the relationship to the ideas of freedom and equality is seen as the guiding principle of the modern-day European political structure. The model permits parties to be grouped as extreme left, center left, center right, and extreme right. This account sets out primarily to identify the political traditions of today’s Slovak center right, although the traditions of the extreme left are not omitted, and heed must also be paid to the overlap between the liberal center left and center right.

Right-wing politics before 1918 The specific features of Slovakia’s historical development mean that only the two decades of the first Czechoslovak Republic (1918–38) show any parallels with the multi-party democracy of today and offer some basis of comparison. To explore the traditions behind post-1989 right-wing Slovakian parties, where conservative and nationalist attitudes are clearly dominant, involves going further back to Slovak policies in the Dual Monarchy period. It is often said—and rightly so—that Slovak political activity before 1918 was embryonic. The one stable Slovak political party before the foundation of Czechoslovakia, the SNS, established in 1871, aimed to gain recognition for the independence of the Slovak nation, but managed to poll only a tenth

11 Much the same applies in the Czech Republic, although the recent work of the Ostrava University political scientist David Hanák on the traditions of Czech conservatism marks a beginning. See David Hanák, České konzervativní myslení (1789–1989) (Brno: Studio Arx, 2007). 12 Ignác Romsics, “Bevezetés: Az európai és magyar jobboldal alaptípusai,” in A magyar jobbol­ dali hagyomány 1900–1948, ed. Ignác Romsics (Budapest: Osiris, 2009), 31.

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of the potential Slovak votes in the period’s parliamentary elections.13 Of the many reasons for this, the strongest were probably the lack of development in Slovak society (as a truncated society),14 the weaker modernization process in the Felvidék region compared with the center of Hungary,15 and the anti-democratic political context in Hungary (limited franchise and restrictive policies toward non-Hungarian national groups). The SNS that took shape in the 1870s resembled most political groupings in Hungary, being an elite party without the main attributes of modern-day mass parties. As an ethnically based party, the concept of nationalism was its main cohesive force, but the rural nature of Slovak society further added elements of agrarianism and conservatism. Moreover, there had begun in the SNS around the turn of the century a process of differentiation which fell short of organizational splits, but foreshadowed the later development of separate right-wing strands in Slovak politics. The traditional marks of the SNS, based on stances clarified by Ľudovít Štúr16 and reflecting the views of its largely Lutheran17 leaders (a Russophile, strongly conservative line that saw Vienna, rather than Budapest, as a negotiating partner), became paralleled increasingly by a Catholic people’s party line that would become the strongest Slovak political tendency in the first half of the twentieth century. Slovak political Catholicism began to develop in 1895 within the Catholic People’s Party, inspired by the teachings of Ottokár Prohászka, but differences over questions of national affiliation led in 1905 to a split between the Budapest party headquarters and its Slovak regional leaders, who pro13 According to the Slovak historian Ľubomír Lipták, 8 percent of Slovak voters cast their votes for candidates of Slovak national affiliation in 1901, and 15 percent in 1906; see Ľubomír Lipták, Slovensko v 20. storočí (Bratislava: Kalligram, 2000), 25. 14 The truncation was because most of the Slovak community worked on the land; a Slovak bourgeoisie and nobility was largely lacking. Most noble families whose native language was Slovak had become Magyarized by the end of the nineteenth century, and most of the intelligentsia had also lost its Slovak national character. For an account in Hungarian of Slovak society in the period, see László Szarka, Szlovák nemzeti fejlődés—magyar nemzetiségi politika 1867– 1918 (Bratislava: Kalligram, 1995). 15 The Felvidék region was the “Upland” region of historical Hungary, or Upper Hungary, which covered most of modern Slovakia. 16 Ľudovít Štúr (1815–1856), politician, publisher, and leader of the Slovak national revival in the nineteenth century. He devised the a standard on which the Slovak literary language came to be based. 17 The term Lutheran here denotes adherents of the denomination known since 1922 as Evanjelická cirkev augsburského vyznania na Slovensku. http://www.evangelical.sk/?p=3ECAC. Retrieved 23 June 2014.

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claimed the formation of a separate Slovak People’s Party. This, however, was not strictly speaking a separate party (which it did not formally become until 1913), but a Catholic people’s party wing of the SNS, in which the leading figure became Andrej Hlinka (1864–1938), the parish priest of Rózsa­ hegy (Ružomberok). Within the people’s party line there also appeared in the SNS a youth movement centered around Milan Hodža, which differed from the official program in placing more emphasis on economic and social issues, democratization of the political elite, and cooperation with other minority nations in historical Hungary, rather than with Russia. Furthermore, he belonged to the Belvedere Circle around the heir-apparent, Franz Ferdinand, among the aims of which was a federative reorganization of the Austro-Hungarian empire. As such, although Slovak political life remained organizationally immature at the beginning of the twentieth century, the right-wing political concepts of the period had already appeared within it. Perhaps understandably in view of the Hungarian context, most weight was given to the ideology of nationalism, which determined the ideological outlook of all the main Slovak political groups. However, this nationalism had yet to possess a coherent national program, stopping short at demands for regional autonomy in Slovak-inhabited areas and federalization of the Monarchy.18 Apart from nationalism, other concepts continued to gain ground, such as Christian socialist (people’s party) ideas, especially in the SNS movement that seceded from the People’s Party of Count Ferdinánd Zichy. The three main pillars of the SNS political program were opposition to secularization and church policy reforms, anti-liberalism and anti-communism, and national demands emphasizing independence for the Slovak nation.19 The traditional right-wing ideas weakest in Slovak politics were conservatism and liberalism. The SNS proclaimed the traditional values of the Slovak people, but a conservative view of the world did not equate to political conservatism. That was far removed from the SNS. The marks of modern conservatism could be discerned best in the ideas of agrarianism espoused by Milan Hodža. Liberal ideas were the ones impeded most by the features of Slovak

18 This first appeared at the 1861 Túrócszentmárton (Turčiansky Svätý Martin) national assembly in the form of a plan for an Upper Hungarian Slav District. 19 Kopeček, Demokracie, diktatury a politický stranictví na Slovensku, 31.

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society already mentioned, and their appearance in Slovak politics could not be discerned in this period.

The First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–38) The years 1918–19 brought both a sharp turning point in the power relations of Central Europe and further development in Slovak politics. The first milestone was the collapse of historical Hungary and the birth of the Czechoslovak Republic, which offered the Slovaks far more favorable prospects of national development than what they had in the framework of the Hungarian state. Equally importantly, this meant the transfer of the Felvidék counties from historical Hungary, with its marked deficit in democracy, to the frames of a Czechoslovak Republic that, within a decade and a half, came to possess the most stable parliamentary democracy in the region. This was despite the limitations in the system, which derived mainly from the Czechoslovak efforts to become a nation-state.20 Respect for the consistently applied universal franchise and for civil liberties came to outline a liberal democracy that offered broad scope for Slovakian political development, placing it, according to Giovanni Sartori’s classification, among the polarized pluralist models.21 “Masaryk’s democracy,” however, had some obvious shortcomings. The greatest appeared in the Czech–Slovak relationship and in the unresolved problem of the minorities, including marked centralizing tendencies, which subordinated Slovakia’s political activity to Prague’s intentions. The parties vying in the Slovakian political field fell into two main groups in this respect: there were so-called nationwide parties imported from the Czech lands, and there were ethnic Slovak or Hungarian parties. These covered a broad political spectrum, including on the right, in the case of the nationwide parties, the Republican Agrarian Party close to the center,22 the nationalist Czechoslovak National Democratic Party, and the fascist groupings. Among the ethnic parties, the most notable were the HSLS, the SNS, and two significant 20 On the nation-state ambitions of Czechoslovakia, see Attila Simon, “A nemzetállam-építés eszközei az első Csehszlovák Köztársaságban,” Közép-Európai Közlemények, nos. 2–3 (2009): 107–13. 21 Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 133. 22 In practice known thus, this Czech, later Czechoslovak party was officially named the Repub­ likánská strana zemědélského a malorolníckeho lidu, or Republican Party of Agricultural and Smallholding People.

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Hungarian parties, the OKSZP and the MNP. Of these, the two most influential in imparting Slovak right-wing traditions were the Republican Agrarian Party and the HSLS. The first laid down important foundations of conservative thinking; the second was a creator of present-day nationalism and Christian socialism, and in a later development, of the traditions of the antiSemitic far right. The Prague-based Republican Agrarian Party, with its Czech-biased support for Czechoslovak national ideology and centralism, cannot count as a classic conservative party. It had a guild-based nature, focusing on defending the interests of the agricultural population. Its right-wing stance derived mainly from this; it always stressed the sanctity of private property when discussing the land question. Its intellectual foundation was agrarian democracy, where it saw as its theorist the Slovak Milan Hodža, though its own center of gravity was in the Czech lands.23 Hodža was thus both the most influential Slovak politician of the age and a beacon of the Slovak (Czechoslovak) right, and so it is worth recalling briefly the main features of his political career.24 This began within the SNS as a member of the Hungarian National Assembly. He soon came into conflict with the SNS’s traditional pro-Russian stance and policy of political passivity, and was among the first to press for closer contact with Czech politicians, and raise concern for the social problems of Slovak peasant society. After the establishment of Czechoslovakia, he rapidly became the most influential Slovak politician through the medium of the Agrarian Party. He twice served as minister of agriculture and then as the country’s first Slovak prime minister in 1935–38. As David Hanák establishes in his work on Czech conservatism, Hodža was never a believer in laissez-faire economic policy, one of the basic conservative ideas.25 Still, his line of thinking was fundamentally right-wing and akin to the conservative system of values in several ways. At the center of his politics lay the notion of agrarian democracy, which he construed to mean a central role for a landowning society of farmers in maintaining democratic val23 Milan Hodža (1878–1944), Slovak politician and journalist, was one of the most influential personalities in Slovakia between 1918 and 1938 when he emigrated. He then advanced plans for a postwar settlement in his book Federation in Central Europe (London: Jarrolds, 1942). 24 On the ample literature on Hodža, see Samuel Cambel, Štátnik a národohospodár Milan Hodža 1878–1944 (Bratislava: Veda, 2011) and Miroslav Pekník, ed., Milan Hodža: Statesman and Politician (Bratislava: Veda, 2007). 25 Hanák, České konzervativní myslení, 139.

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ues. Hodža emphasized above all the sanctity of the private ownership of land, which he saw as a barrier to the spread of both left and right-wing extremism alike. He consciously posed the question: private ownership or communism? Agrarian democracy in this sense meant to him primarily a policy of protecting the interests of farmers and above all a kind of third way interpretation between “Eastern sentimentality” and “Western rationalism,” or of reaction and backwardness as opposed to socialist realism. The other pillar on which his agrarianism rested was the idea of land reform: he wanted to bolster small and medium-sized peasant holdings against great landed estates. This kind of land reform he saw as a strong means of attaining democracy in public life, and concurrently of building up the Czechoslovak nation-state. For Hodža played no small role in ensuring that the Slovakian land reform that began in 1919 also served strong national goals and featured a scarcely-concealed antiminority nature.26 There were also conservative elements in Hodža’s concept of the state: he rejected both the socialist-type state and excessive liberal individual freedom, and declared that authority in a democratic state belonged not to individuals, but to the community. As a Lutheran he saw religiosity as a natural part of the peasant world and a protection against extreme ideologies. Accordingly, protecting and supporting Christianity was in his view a means of preserving democracy. An important part in his concept of democracy was also played by his foreign policy ideas: he saw an anti-communist federation as the only way forward for a Central Europe squeezed between the Bolshevik Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. He worked on such plans during World War II and while in exile in the United States, but reality soon quashed any chance of implementing them. While Hodža was certainly the central figure in the Slovak right-wing tradition, his intellectual heritage never made an appreciable impression on Slovak political thinking for a number of reasons. One was his relatively early death in the United States in 1944, at the age of sixty-six. This rendered him unable to leave his mark on postwar political developments in Slovakia, not least because his legacy was unacceptable to the communist regime that seized power in 1948. Only after the change of system, notably at the time of his reburi26 On the land reform, its aims against the Hungarian minority, and Hodža’s role in this, see Attila Simon, Telepesek és telepesfalvak Dél-Szlovákiában a két világháború között (Šamorín: Fórum Kisebbségkutató Intézet, 2008).

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al in Slovakia in 2002,27 could it come to the fore. Even then its influence was limited, for one thing because he remained throughout his life a believer in the common Czechoslovak state. The other important factor on the Slovakian right at that time was the HSLS, which opposed the centralist Agrarian Party mainly with a campaign for Slovakian autonomy,28 and was inseparable from its founder, Andrej Hlinka.29 Born in Csernova (Černová), near Rózsahegy, he was ordained a Catholic priest. He came to the fore in connection with the Csernova Massacre,30 and his imprisonment qualified him as a martyr in the eyes of Slovak society. The Slovak People’s Party, under his leadership, broke from the SNS in 1913. Although Hlinka supported the Czechs over the idea of a common state, he opposed from the outset the unified Czechoslovak ideology and the model of a centralized state based in Prague. Taking the title “leader” from 1925, he turned the HSLS into an ethnic party whose demand for Slovakian autonomy was addressed solely to ethnic Slovak voters. His nationalism in that period was directed against the Czechs rather than the Hungarians, in line with his party’s political aims. However, the policy of the HSLS rested more on the traditional religious feelings of Slovak society at that time. Bearing in mind that both Hlinka and his successor, Jozef Tiso, were Catholic priests and that the Catholic clergy provided the backbone of the party, it is unsurprising that its basis became a political Catholicism that incorporated many aspects of conservative political thinking. However, the conservatism of the HSLS differed from that of Western Europe or of Milan Hodža, emphasizing strongly anti-democratic elements, 27 Hodža’s remains were reinterred on June 27, 2002, in the National Cemetery in Martin, before the highest state dignitaries of Slovakia. 28 There is plentiful literature on the HSLS, but no modern synthesis yet. Of recent works, Robert Letz, Peter Mulík, and Alena Bartlová, eds., Slovenská ludová strana v dejinách 1905–1945 (Martin: Matica Slovenská, 2006) is worth mentioning. 29 Andrej Hlinka (1864–1938), Catholic priest and politician, was a leading figure in the Slovak national movement before 1918. As founder and president of the Slovak People’s Party (from 1925, the HSLS), he worked after the formation of Czechoslovakia for Slovakian autonomy against Prague centralism. The party he led became strongly nationalist, anti-Semitic, and anti-democratic. 30 A new church was to be consecrated in 1907 in Csernova, Hlinka’s native village. He was invited to officiate, but political activity had led to his suspension by his bishop and a two-year prison sentence for incitement, which he later began to serve while still appealing against it. Officials of the church and the Hungarian administrative county arriving for the consecration found their way blocked by Hlinka’s local supporters. The accompanying force of gendarmes opened fire without provocation, killing fifteen people and wounding many more. Hlinka, though not present, made substantial political capital out of the attack.

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religious fundamentalism, strong anti-liberalism, and nationalism. One key element of HSLS policy was a “cultural war” against the secularization and liberal thinking present since the foundation of Czechoslovakia.31 It turned sharply against the separation of church and state, protesting at “atheist and Hussite Czechs” moving into Slovakia, and fighting against “Jewish socialism.” Present alongside nationalism and rejection of modernization in the daily life of the party were the Christian socialist ideas framed in the 1891 Rerum Novarum encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, although these were far from dominant. The policy of the HSLS underwent a kind of drift toward extreme rightwing ideas. The model in the 1920s was Italian fascism, whose influence led to the attempted establishment of a paramilitary force, the Rodobrana. But by the latter half of the 1930s, as the program adopted at the 1936 Piešťany Congress showed, the model had become German Nazism, accompanied by mounting xenophobia and anti-Semitism. Nor was Hlinka’s aversion confined to the Jews: he showed extreme intolerance toward other Christian denominations, which influenced markedly the spirit of his party. Yet, Hlinka today is seen in Slovak society as embodying a pan-national, not a right-wing tradition. This was shown in 2007, when the Slovak legislature passed into law an appreciation of his merits in working for the “stateconstituting nature of the Slovak nation.” Although the bill was tabled separately by two right-wing parties, the KDH and the SNS, the “Lex Hlinka” ultimately passed in a form recommended by the governing left-wing party, SMER, with both right and left-wing support.32 In fact the debate on “Lex Hlinka,” which was not devoid of protests, was marked by attacks mainly from the right (liberals and Protestants).33 Interwar Slovak nationalism appeared in its purest form in the manifesto and activity of the SNS. This had continuity with the pre-1918 empire and the Slovak National Party founded in 1871, but its political influence among Slovaks had waned, being confined mainly to some Lutheran elements. This was 31 Juraj Benko, “Socialistická ideológia v konfrontácii s religióznym slovenským prostredím v prvej štvrtine 20. Storočia (Politizácia kresťanskej tradície a sakralizácia socialistickej vízie),” in Ľudáci a komunisti: Súperi? Spojenci? Protivníci?, ed. Xenia Šuchová (Prešov: Universum, 2006), 10. 32 Act 531/2007 consists of four clauses which include the declaration: “Andrej Hlinka gained exceptional merit in turning the Slovak nation into a state-constituting nation.” 33 For the text of the petition against the bill and the names of those who drafted it, see “Nedovoľme návrat štátnej propagandy,” Changenet.sk, accessed June 23, 2013, http://www. changenet.sk/?scrl=956&apc=-kampane--306587-375393--------1-1-1&scr_956_Go=3.

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partly because its ideological attraction was a nationalism inherited from the period of the Dual Monarchy, which it had failed to adapt flexibly enough to the changed circumstances. Another pillar of its ideology was conservatism. However, this did not necessarily imply adoption of conservative political thinking; rather, it indicated a spasmodic adherence to tradition. It firmly rejected modernization in the form of Western ideas, taking the view that Slovak national cohesion could be based only on a traditional religious upbringing. It also firmly rejected any liberal or socialist ideas, seeing both trends as manifestations of internationalism. The party showed sympathy in many ways for the Italian fascism of the 1920s, especially its ideas on the formation of a nation-state.34 Two Hungarian parties were also found on the right in Slovakia: the Provincial Christian Socialist Party (OKSZP) and the Hungarian National Party (MNP). The former was under strong clerical influence, rejecting liberalism and marked by Christian socialist ideas. The MNP gained support both from rural society and from urban liberal strata. The two merged in 1936 as the United Hungarian Party, but this organization disappeared in 1938 and was not revived after the war, so they provide no point of reference today.

Tiso’s Slovak Republic (1939–45) On October 7, 1938, Slovakia’s politicians managed to win autonomy, and then, not least in line with the intentions of Nazi Germany, gained independence on March 14, 1939. Occurring in parallel with the process was the fabrication of a totalitarian-type state, in which the role of state party was taken by the HSLS. The party still claimed to represent Christian values, but was already a party of the extreme right wedded to open nationalism, extreme anti-Semitism, and rejection of democratic ideas. The personification of these elements was the president of the republic, Jozef Tiso, who from 1942 adopted the title vodca, meaning leader, as an equivalent of Führer. The HSLS regime under Tiso built up a totalitarian state with many similar attributes to that of Nazi Germany. This was clearest in its measures against the Jews, for the Slovak government had already adopted in 1941 a Jewish Codex35 on racial grounds, with terms comparable to those of the 34 Jaroslava Roguľová, “Slovenská národná strana a fašizmus v medzivojnovom období,” Forum Historiae, no. 1 (2010): 9. 35 Though known by that name in its own time and in present-day historiography, its official designation was Slovak Government Order No. 198/1941 on the Legal Status of Jews. One of

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1935 Nuremberg laws.36 As a direct consequence of this policy, some 58,000 people—two-thirds of the Slovakian Jewish community—were deported to the extermination camps in German-annexed areas of Poland, followed by 13,000 others (under German control) after the German occupation of Slovakia.37 This extreme anti-Semitism and consequent tragedy for Slovakia’s Jewry explain why the activity of the HSLS in World War II and the person of Jozef Tiso cannot be condoned by the center right in Slovakia today.38 For the far-right groups (including the People’s Party Our Slovakia led by Kotleba), Jozef Tiso—whom they are trying to clear of his responsibility for the Holocaust—is a symbolic and exemplary figure. Adherents of the Slovak Community (Slovenská pospolitosť), founded in 1995 and later banned although it still operates as a civil association, wore a uniform reminiscent of the Hlinka Guard and pursued social activities focused mainly on commemorating Tiso. There are similar outward marks on the still-operating SNS, whose very name expresses acceptance of the tradition of Hlinka’s party. Its manifesto for the 2006 general elections did not hide that heritage in its stated objectives: replacement of parliamentary democracy by a guild-based corporatist system; changing the status of churches so as to raise the Catholic, Lutheran, and Orthodox above the others; freeing society from the “program of Satan,” i.e., liberalism, Zionism, and Freemasonry; and clearing the names of Jozef Tiso and other Slovak “heroes” of charges leveled at them by liberals, Freemasons, Czechoslovakists, and Zionists.39

36 37

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39

the features of Slovakia’s anti-Jewish legislation was that most of it was passed by the government, not the legislature, under powers granted in Act 210/1940. While stressing the severity of the legislation, it should be added that many Jews were granted exemption from the initial phase of deportation in 1942, although most of those exempted fell victim to the second phase of the Slovakian Holocaust in 1944. A review of the plentiful literature on the Slovakian Holocaust would exceed the scope of this study. Of notable importance are five volumes of published source materials, Eduard Nižňanský, ed., Holokaust na Slovensku: Dokumenty, 5 vols. (Bratislava: ZNO Bratislava, 2001–2004), and two further treatments: Ladislav Lipscher, Die Juden im Slowakischen Staat, 1939–1945 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1980); and Ivan Kamenec, On the Trail of Tragedy: The Holocaust in Slova­ kia (Bratislava: H&H, 2007). As mentioned, the merits of Hlinka, whose name the party took, were enshrined in law in 2007. This can be questioned even though Hlinka died in the summer of 1938, so he cannot be blamed directly for the Holocaust. Nonetheless, HSLS activity in 1939–45 is inseparable from its development before 1938, when it was moving toward authoritarianism. Responsibility for that lay primarily with Hlinka, its undisputed leader. The points in the program of the SNS are quoted in Dušan Mikušovič, “Mimoparlamentná krajná pravica na Slovensku,” BA thesis, Masarykova univerzita v Brne, 2006, 27–28.

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The aftermath of “limited democracy” (1945–48) Czech and Slovak literature on the period between the end of World War II and the communist takeover tends to describe it as “limited democracy.” In this study the expression “democracy,” even if qualified, is not seen as justified; the Slovakian realities of the time can be rated more appropriately as a kind of “pre-dictatorial” state. The process that would lead to the period of communist dictatorship until 1989 was already well underway. Although absolute power was only taken by the communists in February 1948, Czechoslovakia’s fate had been sealed since December 1943, when the émigré leader, Edvard Beneš, visited Moscow to sign an agreement with Stalin. Although the deal involved the Soviet leader endorsing the nation-state ideas of the Czechoslovak leaders and their plans for deporting the German and Hungarian minorities, Beneš committed the future government to subordinating Czechoslovak foreign and domestic policy to Soviet interests. The Košice Program of April 5, 1945, the first issued by the new Czechoslovak government, adhered to the 1943 agreement and curbed the application of pluralist democracy. It deprived indigenous Germans and Hungarians of their civil rights and limited party politics in a way that skewed the range of parties to the left. Among other moves, it forbade the revival of the two largest right-wing forces, the Agrarians and the HSLS, by confining political activity to the parties and organizations of the National Front, so that no legal opposition to it remained. Effectively there were two poles: the left held by the communist party, and the right by the Democratic Party (Demokratická stra­ na), founded at the time of the Slovak national uprising. The Democratic Party thereafter became a kind of big tent party, whose ideological direction was hard to discern. In some ways it followed on from the Agrarian Party, as most of its voters worked on the land. Furthermore, the key positions in the party leadership were held by Lutheran former Agrarian politicians, and agrarianism became the basis for its thinking. Its first program, issued at the time of the Slovak national uprising, envisioned a democratic, law-based state, while rejecting the liberal and socialist models. Yet, it could hardly be called conservative either, as its support for private ownership was qualified by declaring that it could be limited in the national interest.40 40 See Štefan Šutaj, “Slovenské občianske politické strany (Úvodná štúdia),” in Slovenské občianske politické strany v dokumentoch (1945–1948) (Košice: Spoločenskovedný ústav SAV, 2002).

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The specific features of Slovak society, especially the Catholicism of the rural electorate, made it necessary from the outset to extend the two-party model and create a Catholic party, all the more so because, as already indicated, this had a strong tradition in Slovak politics. Efforts to form such a party succeeded eventually at the beginning of 1946, when the Freedom Party (Strana slo­ body) was founded. The application had originally been for a Christian Republican Party, but this name had been rejected by the National Front and a more ideologically neutral one had to be used. The program of the Freedom Party rested partly on the traditions of Slovak political Catholicism, but adjusted to the context of post-1945 Czechoslovak politics. At its center was the idea of nation, but it combined a reliance on Slovak nationalism with support for the existence of the common Czechoslovak state. Fundamentally right-wing, the program emphasized Catholic values—especially those of Christian socialism—and the sanctity of private property, but without opposing nationalization either, due to the demands of the National Front. Although there had been a strong demand for its formation, the new party soon found itself in a vacuum, as the leaders of the Democratic Party reacted to the risk of losing some of their electoral support by reaching an agreement with its Catholic representatives on March 31, 1946 (which became known by its date of publication as the April Agreement). This gave the Catholics a majority in the party leadership, broad scope for political Catholicism, and greater ideological scope for Christian socialism. The agreement was to a large extent responsible for the fact that the Democratic Party won the May 4 general elections in Slovakia. Yet, it was already no longer possible to talk of real democracy in Slovakia. The communist-controlled Interior Ministry immediately set about fragmenting and discrediting the Democratic Party. Several of its leaders were charged with conspiracy against the state, leading to the beginning of disintegration from within. In the final days of February 1948, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, led by Klement Gottwald, staged a coup and took sole power; political pluralism was ended and the period of one-party dictatorship began. The Democratic Party was dissolved, with some of its leaders imprisoned and others forced into exile. The right-wing tradition of the Democratic Party had very little influence on Slovakia’s subsequent political development, including the development of the right after 1989. It had no charismatic leader to leave its mark in Slovak historical memory, and today’s right shows no inclination to explore its heritage. 80

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One-party communist rule Between 1948 and 1989, Czechoslovakia functioned as a one-party dictatorship within the Soviet sphere of influence, and the attributes of other countries in the socialist camp were largely present. Even so, as a victor in World War II, Czechoslovakia did not come under direct Soviet military occupation until 1968. Nor, in theory, did it have a one-party system. As a curious consequence of the circumstances of the 1948 communist coup, there were other parties besides the communists included in the National Front. These were the Czechoslovak People’s Party and Czechoslovak Socialist Party in the Czech lands, and the Freedom Party and Party of Slovak Renewal in Slovakia. However, they showed no real political activity; even though they operated under registered statutes, they existed only on paper with few party members. Under the direction and control of the communist party, they served solely to present the impression to the Western democracies that Czechoslovakia operated a multiparty system. In terms of Sartori’s categories, it was a non-competitive party system in which, alongside the hegemonic communist party, there existed other, non-competing, secondary parties under the ideological control of the hegemonic party.41 This system (regardless of the attributes of the period) precluded opposition, including institutional forms of right-wing thinking and legal opposition activity. Groups spreading right-wing ideas could act only as illegal opposition (dissident) movements or organize in exile. Three periods can be seen in the history of Czechoslovakia (or Slovakia) after the communist takeover. The first was one of Stalinism, whose distinct development meant it lasted far longer than in, for instance, Hungary or Poland. The second was one of de-Stalinization from the early 1960s up to the events of the Prague Spring, when it ended with military intervention by five Warsaw Pact countries in August 1968. The third was one of so-called normalization up to 1989, which began in 1969 with Alexander Dubček’s replacement as first secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia’s Central Committee by Gustáv Husák. This periodization applies also to the scope for right-wing ideas and to differences of composition and power relations within the right-wing émigré community.

41 Sartori, Parties and Party Systems, 230–31.

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The Slovak right in exile The post-World War II Slovak community abroad was the product of three main waves of emigration. Members of the first wave were prompted to move westward by the collapse of Tiso’s totalitarian state and the end of the war. They were mainly people who had been compromised during the war, along with those still aiming for an independent Slovak state: the so-called ludák (People’s Party) émigrés.42 The second wave, instigated by the 1948 communist takeover, consisted of anti-communists. Finally, the third wave was connected with the defeat of the Prague Spring of 1968 and the Soviet occupation. Most had taken part in the Prague Spring and opposed the subsequent policy of normalization. The cohesive force among the ludák was the rejection of a Czechoslovakian state and the aim of an independent Slovakia. Most had been tied to the wartime Slovak regime and were answerable for its policies, including the Slovakian Holocaust. Their thinking was marked by the rejection of democratic principles and adherence to the ideas of the nationalist right. Accordingly, they provide some ideological roots for the Slovak extreme right of today. They included two politicians of notable influence: Ferdinand Ďurčanský, the first foreign minister of the Slovak Republic formed in March 1939, whom the Slovak people’s court sentenced to death in absentia, and Karol Sidor, interior minister in the same government. Ďurčanský and the Slovak Action Committee he set up in 1946 wholly rejected the line of postwar European development. He expected independence to be restored to Slovakia through a third world war between the West and Bolshevism, with the Slovaks fighting against the Soviets and their Prague allies. The lead in the resulting independent Slovakia was to be played by Jozef Tiso and the former leaders of wartime Slovakia. Ďurčanský also envisaged terrorist activity by illegal armed units to obtain these aims. But the expectations of Ďurčanský and his circle were not met: no war broke out. Prague sentenced Tiso and his prime minister, Vojtech Tuka, to death.43 Ďurčanský avoided his death sentence by escaping to Argentina, which refused to extradite him, but 42 The structure of this wave, the debates within it, and the moves made by the communist police against it are summarized in Václav Vondrášek and Jan Pešek, Slovenský poválečný exil a jeho aktivity 1945–1970: Mýty a realita (Bratislava: Veda, 2011). 43 Tuka was a great admirer of Hitler and the Nazi regime, and a leading figure in the radical proGerman wing of the HSLS.

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he was not acceptable to the West and the political scope open to him narrowed considerably. That isolation largely remained, although he was able to return to Europe later and settle in Munich, a bastion of East European exiles. Karol Sidor, a prewar HSLS radical who fell out with the Germans and was sidelined by Tiso in June 1939 through his appointment as ambassador to the Vatican, took the lead in the moderate wing of the ludák exiles, with independence for the Slovak nation as the most important objective. He had commanded the Hlinka Guard up to 1939 and made anti-Semitic statements, but after the war his radicalism gave way to a conservative nationalism. He rejected the revival of centralized Czechoslovakia and envisaged Slovakia’s future lying within a broader Central European confederation. With that in mind, he founded in Rome the Slovak National Council Abroad (Slovenská národ­ ná rada v zahraniči), whose plans included setting up a Christian democratoriented émigré Slovak party, although this never materialized. Nonetheless, it can be said that Sidor (who died in Montreal in 1953), and the ludák emigrant community in general, had little contact with postwar reality in Slovakia, and had no effect on events in his homeland. Czechoslovakia was a seemingly free country until the spring of 1948, but in fact it was already under Soviet influence and its system of democratic institutions was being continually dismantled. By 1947, the communist-controlled Interior Ministry was taking strong measures to fragment the bourgeois parties and criminalize their leaders. Emigration by those who rejected the communist turn began then and continued until early 1950. There is no consensus among historians as to how many people left Czechoslovakia during this period. According to research by Igor Lukeš, they included thirty-five members of the legislature, twelve ambassadors and ministers, around one hundred other diplomats, eighteen generals, and several hundred public figures, and there were more Czechs than Slovaks among them.44 They formed the backbone of the democrats in exile. The leading figure in the Slovak democratic émigré community was Jozef Lettrich, formerly president of the Democratic Party. Having settled in the United States, he was among the founders of the Committee for Free Czechoslovakia, consisting of exiled representatives of Czech and Slovak political parties. The activity of this émigré organization, split into multiple factions 44 Igor Lukeš, “Československý politický exil za studené války: prvný rok,” Střední Evropa 2, no. 119 (2004): 68–79.

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and full of contradictions, went no further than issuing various statements on Czechoslovakia. Furthermore, the Slovak members saw a way to settle the Czech/Slovak relationship differently, leading to many of them, including Lettrich and Martin Kvetko, leaving to form a new organization, the Permanent Conference of Slovak Democratic Exiles, at the end of 1963.45 As the name suggested, their aim was to differentiate themselves from the People’s Party émigrés, as they rejected all connection with Tiso’s Slovak state. Unlike the Czech émigrés, most of whom looked back to the pre-1938 centralized model of Czechoslovakia, they were believers in a separate Slovak nation, although the events of 1939–45 led them to support a federation rather than an independent Slovak state. However, their political ideas were not uniform. They were drawn together by rejection of the socialist system in Czechoslovakia, but their organization embraced a range of ideas, from proponents of violent anti-communism to believers in various types of social democracy. Above all they were linked by the Slovak national idea and Slovak nationalism, which appeared as a kind of tradition in Slovak politics even after 1989. Their influence in their own time was very limited, although some of their messages reached Slovakia through the medium of Radio Free Europe.46

Right-wing opposition within Slovakia, 1948–68 The events of 1968 certainly mark the sharpest divide in the history of oneparty dictatorship in Czechoslovakia, as the failed experiment in “socialism with a human face” caused a break not just in the character of the regime itself, but also in the behavior of the opposition toward the regime. Furthermore, this divide also applies to historical scholarship, as the post-1968 dissident movements47 were explored relatively well and remain of key interest, whereas oppositional behavior of the 1950s and 1960s received less attention. 45 Miroslav John Ličko, Ako chutí cudzina: Slovenská demokracia v exile 1948–1989 (Bratislava: Kalligram, 1999), 56–57. 46 For a Hungarian account of the activity of Radio Free Europe in relation to Czechoslovakia, see Barnabás Vajda, Egy szabad hang Kelet-Európában: A Szabad Európa Rádió tevékenységéről a hidegháború alatt (Dunajská Streda: Nap, 2011). 47 Czech and Slovak scholars gladly apply the epithet “dissident” to opposition movements, but interpret it in various ways. The opposition activists of Central and Eastern Europe adopted after the 1998 Warsaw meeting a definition that covered those who had worked actively against the communist regime and in defense of human rights and democratic values, for which the authorities had threatened them with reprisals. See Juraj Marušiak, “Nezávislé iniciatívy na Slovensku v rokoch normalizácie,” in November 1989 na Slovensku: Súvislosti, predpoklady a

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In Stalinist Czechoslovakia, there was relatively little room for oppositional and, within that, right-wing political activity and the dissemination of right-wing political views. Czechoslovakian socialism (especially in the Czech lands) produced one of the most stable dictatorships in the region, thanks to a relatively strong economy, a deep-rooted left-wing tradition, and low levels of both anti-Soviet feeling and religious belief. These factors contributed to the way Czechoslovakia (including Slovakia) passed through 1956 without any major upheaval and the process of de-Stalinization was postponed until the early 1960s.48 Under this system, the capacity to express and apply rightwing thinking remained minimal, due to the immediate severe reactions of the dictatorship to such activity: perpetrators were sent to labor camps, prison, or punitive military units. In addition, the near-total collectivization of the land and nationalization of industry (down to the smallest scale) removed the social basis for right-wing thinking and independent ideas. Anti-communist opposition to the regime was signally unsuccessful and directed mainly by foreign intelligence organizations. A good example of this was the anti-communist Biela légia (White Legion) funded by the Americans, which operated an illegal radio station from Austria and helped those preparing to escape from the country.49 Only within the churches was there room for right-wing thinking under the one-party dictatorship, and even there, official church policy after 1948 was ranged against it. The churches were put under political and financial control, the monastic orders disbanded, the Orthodox church banned, and partly successful attempts made to divide the clergy by founding a movement of progressive priests. Nor did the churches escape show trials. The Catholic Church was impeded by hindering the ordination of priests and the consecradôsledky, ed. Jan Pešek and Soňa Szomolányi (Bratislava: Nadácia Milana Šimečku, 2000), 55. Some other authors use the expression only to denote activity in the 1970s and 1980s by excommunist and liberal-minded members of the intelligentsia. See Miroslav Kusý, “Ľudské práva a slobody v období rokov 1968–1989,” in Demokracia a ochrana ľudských práv: Teória, prax, medzinárodná úprava, ed. Viera Koganová (Bratislava: Ekonomická univerzita, 1996), 202–20. 48 Muriel Blaive, Promarněná příležitost: Československo a rok 1956 (Prague: Prostor, 2001) is a useful study on the absence of revolutionary events in 1956 in Czechoslovakia, comparable to those in Poland or Hungary, and on the connection of this with the state of Czechoslovakian society and the communist party; for an account in Hungarian of the events of 1956 in Slovakia, see Attila Simon, “Az 1956-os forradalom visszhangja Szlovákiában, különös tekintettel Dél-Szlovákiára,” Limes 18, no. 3 (2006): 61–70. 49 On Jozef Vicen, the key figure in the Biela légia, see Vladimír Varinský, Jozef Vicen a Biela le­ gia (Banská Bystrica: Univerzita Mateja Bela, 2003).

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tion of bishops.50 Opposition thinking based on Christian values is associated primarily with Tomislav Poglajen-Kolakovič, a Jesuit priest of Croatian origin who headed the movement known as Rodina (Family).51 Poglajen-Kolakovič fled from Croatia before the Gestapo in 1943 and arrived in Slovakia, where he was more or less free to operate. Even in the period of the wartime Slovak state, he had gathered disciples, and he prepared them to combat communist ideas after the fall of fascism. He continued to do this after the communist takeover in 1948. Among these followers was the Greek Catholic priest Pavol Gojdič, who died in prison in 1960. As late as the 1970s, the movement supplied most of the members of the underground church in Slovakia. The church response to the movement of “progressive priests” subordinate to the system and to the obstacles posed by the state in the ordination of clergy was a specific one not found in neighboring countries: to develop a secret, underground church.52 Here a prominent role was played by the Jesuit priests, notably Ján Korec, whom a Jesuit priest secretly consecrated as a bishop in 1951, so that he as head of the underground church movement could conduct a succession of secret consecrations.53 The underground church engaged mainly in pastoral work to maintain church activity, but it also adopted ideas such as hosting underground “universities” and religious retreats, thus contributing strongly to upholding Christian, and thus indirectly right-wing, ideas. Still, it would be mistaken to exaggerate its importance; it worked only within a narrow sphere. The events of 1968 in Czechoslovakia (like those in Hungary and Poland in 1956) were among the most important movements against dictatorship 50 On church policy at the time, see Robert Letz, “Állami egyházpolitika Szlovákiában 1948 és 1989 között,” in Felekezet, egyházpolitika, identitás—Konfesie, cirkevná politika, identita, ed. Margit Balogh (Budapest: Kossuth, 2008), 113–30. 51 On Rodina’s role, see for example the writings of leading figures in Slovak Christian democracy: František Mikloško, “Tri dvadsaťročia cirkvi na Slovensku (1948–2009),” Impulz Re­ vue, no. 3 (2009), accessed June 23, 2014, http://www.impulzrevue.sk/article.php?460; Ján Čarnogurský, “Odpor proti komunizmu,” Impulz Revue, no. 2 (2005), accessed June 23, 2014, http://www.impulzrevue.sk/article.php?26. 52 The underground church activity in Slovakia is well documented (with some interviews) in Jozef Murín, “Skrytá cirkev na Slovensku,” Getsemany, no. 196 (Summer 2008), accessed June 23, 2014, http://www.getsemany.cz/node/1310. 53 Ján Korec (b. 1924), Catholic priest, joined the Jesuit order in 1939 and was interned with fellow members in 1950 when it was dissolved. He was secretly ordained as a priest that year and consecrated bishop a year later. He was sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment in 1960 and released in the Prague Spring of 1968. He then did manual labor until retirement. After the change of system he became bishop of Nitra, serving until 2005.

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to occur within the Soviet bloc. Yet, the aim of the Prague Spring was not to establish pluralist democracy, but merely to reform state socialism from within. The reform socialists under Alexander Dubček firmly opposed legalizing right-wing politics; any right-wing ideas thus arose from impulses outside the system. The new constitution adopted in Czechoslovakia in 1960 declared the country officially to be a socialist state, but it became increasingly clear that the decline in the standard of living and the concomitant public dissatisfaction were precluding the continuation of the kind of Stalinist policies imposed hitherto. The de-Stalinization that began in 1962 included rehabilitating some victims of show trials and introducing some elements of democracy and the market into the economic system, which unwittingly raised demands for the democratization of society and political life. The launch of the reform movement can be traced to many factors, but most of the impulses came from inside the communist party and were not intended to overturn the system. Nor did the 1968 reform program adopted by the party go beyond that. Certainly, the liberalization of the press meant that initiatives beyond the bounds of socialism quickly appeared in society, but their spread was soon ended by the invasion of Soviet bloc armies. The demand for a right-wing restoration did not arise in any serious form. Furthermore, Alexander Dubček and the other reform communist leaders of the Prague Spring enjoyed the support of over 90 percent of Czechoslovak society at the time.

Right-wing politics in the so-called normalization period The military intervention of August 21, 1968 did not succeed politically. The Soviets could not find among the Czechoslovak leaders any figure equivalent to the Hungarian János Kádár in 1956, prepared to collaborate and express support for the occupation. Although the country’s future was clear, Dubček’s reform socialists remained in power for a time. Only in the following year could restoration begin: on April 17, 1969, the communists’ Central Committee recalled Dubček as first secretary and elected Gustáv Husák in his stead. The start of the normalization process brought a new surge of emigration, not just by right-wingers, but also by reform socialists. Initial protests at the occupation gave way to resignation in Czechoslovak society. Some of the public assumed a kind of political passivity, withdrawing into their private lives. A very large number, however, joined the communist party as a way 87

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of asserting themselves. This left the dissident movements extremely isolated and hardly able to rely on public support. The initiatives taken against the communist authorities in the normalization period fall into four phases.54 The first, from 1969 to 1972, was one of building a new, normalizing party elite with its own power structure. This was when most of the reprisals were taken against the ’68ers, some of whom were branded anarchists, others accused of preparing for a reversion to capitalism.55 At this stage almost all the initiatives from left-wing movements adhered to the ideas of 1968 and demanded a return to reform socialism, but they were soon dismissed by the authorities. In the second stage, 1972 to 1979, consolidation of the system was paralleled by a growing opposition devoted to civil rights, which found an organizational form in Charter 77. This movement gradually transformed itself in the third stage, 1979 to 1987, from a human rights-based campaign into a political opposition, although its social isolation remained. In the final stage, the two years from 1987 to the Velvet Revolution, there was a rapid expansion in social support for opposition activity, coupled with differentiation among the dissident movements. Normalization, like the events of 1968, proceeded differently in the Czech lands and in Slovakia. The latter was less subject to reprisals and its society less critical of the Husák regime, whose policies emphasized the importance of Slovakia’s economy catching up with the rest of the country. As such, opposition to the system was rarer in Slovakia, a fact exemplified by the small number of Slovaks who were among the original signatories of Charter 77. It was also important to take into account that the opposition initiatives at that stage, including the Charter, were organized in a strongly elitist way, with emphasis on protection of rights rather than specific political aims. Other groups became active in environmental protection, and still others in alternative cultural aims, but none possessed a specific political program. The first of the dissident movements to appear in Slovakia in the normalization period was the “civil opposition,” whose members were drawn from the reform socialists and the liberal intelligentsia. They included some impor54 The Czech and Slovak approaches sometimes differ in their periodizations. See Petr Blažek, “Typologie opozice a odporu proti komunistickému režimu: Přehled koncepcí a limity bádání,” in Opozice a odpor proti komunistickému režimu v Československu 1968–1989 (Prague: Ústav českých dejín FFUK, 2005), 10–24; and Marušiak, “Nezávislé iniciatívy na Slovensku,” 68. 55 The reprisals bore little resemblance to those in Hungary after 1956. In most cases jobs or party membership were lost, but custodial sentences were rare.

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tant Slovak signatories of Charter 77: Miroslav Kusý, Dominik Tatarka, and Hana Ponická. However, they did not have an expressly right-wing political program. Even the Husák system was criticized mainly in terms of the original ideals of socialism,56 not those of the pluralist, multiparty democracies. Their tradition remains today primarily among the liberal-oriented political forces. There was a similar lack of political initiatives from the movements representing Slovakia’s Hungarian minority. They arose chiefly in defense of Hungarian schools, which the administration was attacking. This applied to the Committee for Defense of the Rights of the Czechoslovakian Hungarian Minority, which was set up by Miklós Duray, László Á. Nagy, and Péter Püspöki Nagy.57 A search for narrowly defined right-wing ideas in the normalization period again leads only to the underground church movement and the ideas of the Catholic intelligentsia associated with it. Associated with the secret church in this period were the legally operating monastic communities, the secretly ordained priests and their lay congregations—who did not pursue religious activity openly—and priests of the official church as well, who contributed at illegal lectures or in distributing samizdat literature. One event of great importance to the expansion of the Slovakian underground church was the election of Karol Wojtyła as Pope John Paul II in 1978, as most of its monastics and much of its church literature came from the new pope’s native Poland. The peak event for the underground church was a “candlelight demonstration” held in Bratislava on March 15, 1988. Several tens of thousands of believers gathered, despite an official ban and reprisals, to show support for freedom of worship and the consecration of new bishops. Although the demonstration was brutally dispersed, its occurrence marked a victory for Catholic values over the authorities. More important politically were the Christian activists who edited Slovakian samizdat publications, including Hlas Sloven­ ska (Voice of Slovakia) and Historický zápisník (Historical Notes), in which many articles appeared that interpreted Slovakia’s past from a national and Christian perspective.58 Among the contributors were several leading figures in Slovak political Catholicism, such as Ján Čarnogurský.59 56 Marušiak, “Nezávislé iniciatívy na Slovensku,” 64. 57 On its activity, see Miklós Duray, Kettős elnyomásban: Dokumentumok a csehszlovákiai ma­ gyarság helyzetéről és jogvédelméről 1978–1989 (New York: Püski, 1989). 58 Marušiak, “Nezávislé iniciatívy na Slovensku,” 62. 59 Ján Čarnogurský (b. 1944), lawyer and politician. As the former he made his name defending persecuted church activists. He was expelled from the lawyers’ chamber in 1981 and earned

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In 1988, just before the end of communism in Czechoslovakia, members of the Christian intelligentsia with links to the underground church were responsible for the first openly political samizdat journal, Bratislavské listy (Bratislava Papers), whose writings reflected plainly the values of Christian democracy. This samizdat, associated with Ján Čarnogurský, Ján Langoš, and František Mikloško, openly attacked the communist regime and backed a Western-type multiparty system with Christian democratic values. Its importance is clear from the way its editors became founders of the KDH and decisive figures in Slovak right-wing politics.

Conclusions The influence of right-wing traditions in Slovakian politics after the end of state socialism is arguably hard to discern. The most obvious reason is that the 1989 Velvet Revolution and ensuing political transition found Slovak society unprepared following decades when right-wing values had almost vanished, except perhaps in initiatives involving the underground church. Secondly, the system-changing forces in 1989 emerged from the Czech, and to a smaller extent Slovak, dissident movement. The roots of this movement went back mainly to the idea of socialism with a human face promulgated in the Prague Spring of 1968, i.e., far removed from right-wing ideas. In that respect the Christian intelligentsia formed the solitary exception through the underground church movement, whose apolitical nature would be superseded when an open political program was announced in the years leading up to the democratic transition. The other important reason was an absence of factual, reusable traditions, partly due to the belated development of Slovak society. It had strong traditions only in nationalism, as Slovak society spent most of its modern history defining itself vis-à-vis another nation—first the Hungarians and later the Czechs. So, despite the fact that this nationalism in the traditional sense was initially an ally of liberalism, modern Slovak conservatism was able to draw from it through the idea of a nation-state. a living from manual labor until the end of state socialism. He was arrested in the summer of 1989 and released only during the Velvet Revolution. Just a couple of days later he was appointed deputy prime minister of the central government. He served as president of the KDH from 1990 to 2000, while holding several state posts, including the premiership of Slovakia.

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Lacking, however, were other usable traditions of conservative politics, as believers in liberal/conservative values had had no iconic figure to draw on as an example, except for that of Milan Hodža. His acceptance was impeded, and remains so, by his position as leader of the Czechoslovakist Agrarian Party and his failure to support the idea of an independent Slovakian state, which makes his legacy hard for today’s Slovakian society to absorb. The other possibility is the Christian/conservative tradition of Andrej Hlinka, but even if Hlinka escapes blame through his early death, the wartime activity of the party he led ruled him out of the presentable past. The outcome is to leave today’s Slovak right largely bereft of historical traditions, as something difficult to integrate into Slovak history, so that its tradition comes to derive simply from its role in the Velvet Revolution.

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Hamberger, Judit. “Politikai konzervativizmus 1989 után a visegrádi országokban: Szlovák, cseh és lengyel körkép” [Political conservatism after 1989 in the Visegrád countries: Slovak, Czech, and Polish panorama]. Limes 25, no. 3 (2012): 31–64. Hanák, David. České konzervativní myslení (1789–1989) [Czech conservative thought, 1789– 1989]. Brno: Studio Arx, 2007. Kamenec, Ivan. On the Trail of Tragedy: The Holocaust in Slovakia. Bratislava: H&H, 2007. Kopeček, Lubomír. Demokracie, diktatury a politický stranictví na Slovensku [Democracy, dictatorship and political parties in Slovakia]. Brno: CKD, 2006. Kusý, Miroslav. “Ľudské práva a slobody v období rokov 1968–1989” [Human rights and freedoms in the period 1968–1989]. In Demokracia a ochrana ľudských práv: Teória, prax, medzinárodná úprava [Democracy and protection of human rights: Theory, practice, and international regulation], edited by Viera Koganová, 202–20. Bratislava: Ekonomická univerzita, 1996. Letz, Robert. “Állami egyházpolitika Szlovákiában 1948 és 1989 között” [State church policy in Slovakia, 1948–89]. In Felekezet, egyházpolitika, identitás—Konfesie, cirkevná politika, identita [Denomination, church policy, identity], edited by Margit Balogh, 113–30. Budapest: Kossuth, 2008. Letz, Robert, Peter Mulík, and Alena Bartlová, eds. Slovenská ludová strana v dejinách 1905–1945 [The Slovak People’s Party in history, 1905–1945]. Martin: Matica Slovenská, 2006. Ličko, Miroslav John. Ako chutí cudzina: Slovenská demokracia v exile 1948–1989 [How foreign land tastes: Slovakian democracy in exile 1948–1989]. Bratislava: Kalligram, 1999. Lipscher, Ladislav. Die Juden im Slowakischen Staat, 1939–1945. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1980. Lipták, Ľubomír. Slovensko v 20. storočí [Slovakia in the twentieth century]. Bratislava: Kalligram, 2000. Lukeš, Igor. “Československý politický exil za studené války: prvný rok” [Czechoslovak political exile in the Cold War: The early years]. Střední Evropa 2, no. 119 (2004): 68–79. Marušiak, Juraj. “Nezávislé iniciatívy na Slovensku v rokoch normalizácie” [Independent initiatives in Slovakia in the years of normalization]. In November 1989 na Slovensku: Súvislosti, predpoklady a dôsledky [November 1989 in Slovakia: Context, assumptions and consequences], edited by Jan Pešek and Soňa Szomolányi, 54–75. Bratislava: Nadácia Milana Šimečku, 2000. Mikloško, František. “Tri dvadsaťročia cirkvi na Slovensku (1948–2009)” [Three score years of Slovakian churches]. Impulz Revue, no. 3 (2009). Accessed June 23, 2014. http://www.impulzrevue.sk/article.php?460. Mikušovič, Dušan. “Mimoparlamentná krajná pravica na Slovensku” [The extraparliamentary radical right in Slovakia]. BA thesis, Masarykova univerzita v Brne, 2006. ­Accessed June 23, 2014. http://is.muni.cz/th/134546/fss_b/bakalarka.pdf Murín, Jozef. “Skrytá cirkev na Slovensku” [Hidden church in Slovakia]. Getsemany, no. 196 (Summer 2008). Accessed June 23, 2014. http://www.getsemany.cz/node/1310. Nižňanský, Eduard, ed. Holokaust na Slovensku: Dokumenty [Holocaust in Slovakia: Documents]. 5 vols. Bratislava: ZNO Bratislava, 2001–04. Pekník, Miroslav, ed. Milan Hodža: Statesman and Politician. Bratislava: Veda, 2007.

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Roguľová, Jaroslava. “Slovenská národná strana a fašizmus v medzivojnovom období” [The Slovak National Party and fascism during the interwar period]. Forum Histo­ riae no. 1 (2010): 1–22. Romsics, Ignác. “Bevezetés: Az európai és magyar jobboldal alaptípusai” [Introduction: Basic types of the European and Hungarian right wing]. In A magyar jobboldali hagyo­ mány 1900–1948 [The Hungarian right-wing tradition 1900–1948], edited by Ignác Romsics, 7–33. Budapest: Osiris, 2009. Sartori, Giovanni. Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. ———. Strany a stranické systémy: Schéma pro analýzu [Parties and party systems: A framework for analysis]. Brno: CDK, 2005. Simon, Attila. “A nemzetállam-építés eszközei az első Csehszlovák Köztársaságban” [Means of nation-state building in the first Czechoslovak Republic]. Közép-Európai Közlemények, nos. 2–3 (2009): 107–13. ———. “Az 1956-os forradalom visszhangja Szlovákiában, különös tekintettel DélSzlovákiára” [Reaction to the 1956 Revolution in Slovakia, notably South Slovakia]. Limes 18, no. 3 (2006): 61–70. ———. Telepesek és telepesfalvak Dél-Szlovákiában a két világháború között [Settlers and settlement villages in southern Slovakia between the two world wars]. Šamorín: Fórum Kisebbségkutató Intézet, 2008. Šutaj, Štefan. “Slovenské občianske politické strany (Úvodná štúdia)” [Slovak civic political parties (Introductory study)]. In Slovenské občianske politické strany v dokumen­ toch (1945–1948) [Slovak civic political parties in documents, 1945–1948]. Košice: Spoločenskovedný ústav SAV, 2002, CD-ROM. Szarka, László. Szlovák nemzeti fejlődés—magyar nemzetiségi politika 1867–1918 [Slovak national development—Hungarian minority policy 1867–1918]. Bratislava: Kalligram, 1995. Szomolányi, Soňa. Španielsko a Slovensko: Dve cesty k demokracii [Spain and Slovakia: Different paths toward democracy]. Bratislava: Stimul, 2002. Vajda, Barnabás. Egy szabad hang Kelet-Európában: A Szabad Európa Rádió tevékenységéről a hidegháború alatt [A free voice in Eastern Europe: The activity of Radio Free Europe in the Cold War]. Dunajská Streda: Nap, 2011. Varinský, Vladimír. Jozef Vicen a Biela legia [Jozef Vicen and the White Legion]. Banská Bystrica: Univerzita Mateja Bela, 2003. Vondrášek, Václav, and Jan Pešek. Slovenský poválečný exil a jeho aktivity 1945–1970: Mýty a realita [Slovak postwar exile and its activities 1945–1970: Myth and reality]. Bratislava: Veda, 2011.

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CHAPTER THREE

A ROUND-TRIP THROUGH THE CZECH LANDS: THE ORIGINS OF A LIBERAL RIGHT REVOLUTION András S chweitzer

Introduction The Velvet Revolution, alongside various other smoother or rougher upheavals in Eastern and East-Central Europe,1 gave over a hundred million people the chance to rejoin the western half of the continent, and with it the benefits of national independence, democracy, and a market economy. At the same time, they offered new, attractive topics to various academics. Several academic works have pointed out that a region once seen from without as a monolithic Eastern Bloc is at least as varied as Western Europe. One relatively early result of these changes was the identification of two ideal types of post-1989 political transformation. Where the economy was strong, minorities were scarce, and the communist government had faced strong opposition (as in Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic), ethnic politics remained insignificant. By contrast, in places where the economy and earlier opposition were weak but minorities substantial (to a degree as in Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania), unreconstructed former communists tended to legitimize their rule with nationalist attacks on ethnic minorities.2

1 In this text, I use the term Eastern Europe to mean the region west of Russia now held by countries which had a Soviet-type communist system up to 1989. By East-Central Europe I mean the area of the Visegrád Group, i.e., Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. 2 Milada Anna Vachudová and Tim Snyder, “Are Transitions Transitory? Two Types of Political Change in Eastern Europe Since 1989,” East European Politics and Societies 11, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 1–35.

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In this respect Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary seem to be a suitable group for comparing post-1989 political developments. And there are further factors to justify a comparison of the trio (and, in many ways, of Slovakia as well). All three descend from Catholic kingdoms of the High Middle Ages: those of Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary. All these kingdoms were incorporated into larger empires after a couple of hundred years, and much of their land became ruled by the Habsburg emperors. For many centuries their societies were shaped by similar experiences to those in the West: a feudal system, political conflicts of the sovereign with the nobility and with the church, religious upheavals such as the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, and the artistic styles of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary became independent in 1918, in an unstable geopolitical zone between two emerging great powers: Germany and the Soviet Union. At some point they were all occupied by Nazi Germany, and then in 1945 by the Soviet Union, which actively and aggressively assisted domestic forces in bringing puppet regimes to power; these regimes then transformed society and the economy along Stalinist totalitarian lines. Over the following forty years of communist rule, mass opposition emerged sporadically to demand democratization: the Hungarian revolution of 1956, the peaceful efforts toward socialism with a human face in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and the mass demonstrations of Poland’s Solidarność (Solidarity) trade union in the early 1980s. As the Iron Curtain was withdrawn from these states, they appeared to be relatively developed forerunner nations within the former Eastern Bloc, ready for a smooth political and economic transition. Indeed, they quickly installed democratic multiparty electoral systems and legal structures to support fundamental political liberties and civil rights. By the mid-1990s they had managed, with price liberalization and widespread privatization, to turn the economy into a market-oriented system dominated by private ownership. However, a closer look at the leading group in each country reveals the need for more subtle analysis. The post-1989 dividing line in the Czech political spectrum was seen, and even measured to be, unique in concerning itself almost exclusively with the problem of how much state intervention was required in the economy.3 In the Czech Republic—as in Hungary and Poland— 3 For example, comparative research on the political systems of the sixteen post-communist countries showed that only in the Czech case was there no major divide other than pro-mar-

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a moderate right-wing bloc became the prime political power and formed the government, but it differed from the other two states in being more pragmatic, more firmly liberal in the way it advocated an open society and market-oriented reforms. This chapter sets out to address this individual quality. It is not an attempt to write a brief (or even cursory) history of Czech right-wing political tradition, partly because such a task—a detailed and insightful study based on thorough, extensive research—has already been written by Seán Hanley (key chapters in his book on the Czech New Right focus on post-1989 developments).4 This chapter focuses instead on the twentieth-century relations between underlying political ideologies in the Czech national context. Using a comparative approach, it seeks to examine the attributes and sources of Czech rightwing tradition, also revealing how it could become the dominant force in a society frequently characterized as essentially leftist. This problem is not previously unexplored. Certain peculiarities of the Czech right wing and its success have been noticed and explained in a couple of different ways by a couple of authors. Besides Hanley, who saw the antecedents of the contemporary Czech right wing in the post-1968 dissident movements, a deeper and more generalized line of historical causation has been offered by Herbert Kitschelt and his team of domestic scholars, and in a brief, but plausible-sounding comparative logic by Václav Klaus, the prime political leader of the new Czech right. While I try here to offer an alternative theory (and a theoretical framework and methodological tool to analyze and compare the ideological and political spectra of different countries), I am certainly not denying the relevance of their contributions. I will refer to them and comment on them later. My different conclusion derives from a different approach and focus. They constructed their narrative of causation primarily on why the post-1989 Czech right was liberal and strong (pointing to factors without which it could have been weaker). I focus more on why rival ideologies were so weak (pointing ket versus anti-market. The author found several dimensions of difference within the political system of every other country. A pro-nation versus anti-nation divide was frequent, and in some cases attitudes toward accountability (Slovakia, Croatia) or toward the dominant church (Poland, Hungary) were significant. See Kevin Deegan-Krause, Elected Affinities: De­ mocracy and Party Competition in Slovakia and the Czech Republic (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), 234. 4 Seán Hanley, The New Right in the New Europe: Czech Transformation and Right-Wing Poli­ tics, 1989–2006 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008).

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to factors that could have made them stronger), because I do not see Czech liberalism as anything extraordinary for the region after the annus mirabilis. What made the difference was more the exceptional weakness of another kind of right wing, usually termed national conservatism. I focus on ideological developments, rather than the group dynamics of elite factions, political movements, or social structures. Ideologies matter a lot; political action is seldom solely rational or interest based. But even if it were, it is rarely clear to political actors at times of major political and social transformations, of which there are many in twentieth-century East-Central Europe, what their rational political choice should be. Therefore, they have to turn to political ideologies for guidance. The first part of the chapter offers a conceptual framework, explaining my terminology and referring to conflicting classifications of the new Czech right. It then analyzes pre-communist, communist, and post-communist politicalideological Czech settings, pointing to ideological developments that I believe impacted the formation of the post-1989 Czech right wing.

Dimensions of the right One reason why the literature on the Eastern and East-Central European right is small and fragmentary, compared with the “voluminous, detailed and often sophisticated” comparative literature on the left,5 may be the plethora of terminological problems on the right. These are by no means confined to the political history of formerly communist countries. The Italian legal and political philosopher Norberto Bobbio, while asserting the continuing relevance of the political terms “left” and “right,” conceded that the dichotomy is sometimes difficult to use. For example, when considering the split in the Italian Communist Party into an old-fashioned anti-capitalist camp and a more pragmatic one: It would in fact be difficult to establish which faction was the left and which the right, because the old guard which could be considered the right on the grounds that conservatism is right-wing and change left-wing could at the same time be considered the left on the grounds of its greater commitment to the struggle against capitalism. On the other hand, the 5 Hanley, The New Right in the New Europe, 2.

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more innovative faction could claim to be the left of the party because it is more favourable to change, but its programme could be considered more right-wing according to traditional criteria.6

The same problem appears widely in Eastern and East-Central Europe. It is cause for academic debate whether former communist parties can be classified as a special type of right wing (especially if they combine their original social program with elements of nationalism), and also how a former opposition party advocating rapid social and political reforms can be considered conservative. In some countries, use of the term “revolutionary conservatism” was suggested: this is all the more problematic because that very term was used more than half a century earlier by Nazi and Italian fascist leaders for their ideology and movement.7 The term conservative is itself problematic—on the international scene generally, in East-Central Europe particularly, and in the Czech case specifically. This is apparent if Václav Klaus’s Why I Am a Conservative8 is compared with the essay written by one of his main intellectual mentors, Friedrich Hayek, titled Why I Am Not a Conservative.9 Hayek wants to distinguish clearly between conservatism, which in his view intends primarily to slow the developmental changes in society but cannot offer an alternative, and true liberalism, which may join forces with conservatism in defending liberty but can also initiate changes on its own (toward a more liberal society). Klaus, while not referring to Hayek’s work, points to the same common enemies of traditionalism and libertarianism (or classical liberalism) that Hayek does: collectivism, socialism, Marxism, and authoritarianism. However, he differs from Hayek in unifying classical liberalism (promoting individualism, freedom, and the market) and traditionalism (calling for the restoration of past moral values) under the banner of “the conservatism of today” (dnešní konzervatismus). This terminological controversy becomes yet more distorted if it includes efforts by thinkers in one camp to typecast those in others. Examples of such efforts include an essay by the president of the Adam Smith Institute assert6 Norberto Bobbio, Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1997), 30. 7 Bobbio, Left and Right, 19. 8 Václav Klaus, Proč jsem konzervativcem? (Prague: Top Agency, 1992). 9 F. A. Hayek, “Why I Am Not a Conservative,” in The Constitution of Liberty: The Definitive Edition, ed. Ronald Hamowy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).

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ing that Hayek is indeed a conservative, although he tries to deny it.10 Another instance came from Roger Scruton, who in 1988 labeled Czech dissidents of the time prospective members of a conservative new right, while admitting that “in describing them as ‘conservative’ and as providing an input into the ‘New Right,’ I have gone beyond anything that the authors of the ideas would recognize.”11 There is another political tradition, far removed from the Thatcherite/ Klausian worldview and sitting closer to Gaullist ideology, usually called national conservatism. This is typical of the moderate right in East-Central Europe. While a defining feature of the first type of “conservatism” is an aversion to central planning (socialist or otherwise) and a desire for an organic, freely developing society where political and civil rights and liberties are respected, the second is more concerned with ideas and practices seen as alien, cosmopolitan, and dangerously modern, such as socialism and liberalism. It is similarly debated whether this second politico-ideological tradition can be termed conservative or not. For clarity’s sake, let us set aside the supposed Czech reluctance to call a spade a spade, as Roger Scruton puts it,12 even if the resulting terms here differ somewhat from his. I will try to use those I think fit best in terms of etymology and original usage. Although I realize that ideologies continually evolve and have various embodiments, I believe they have a fairly constant value core upon which ideal-type versions can be built. Some may find the definitions sterile or artificial, others trivial and obvious, but without them it would be hard to be clear when faced with conflicting terminologies. Let us call liberalism the ideology that works politically for the advancement or defense of individual liberty. It promotes human rights, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, and so forth, while it is against power, authority, and collectivism. Economically, it promotes free, laissez-faire market coordination, freedom of enterprise, and so on, as opposed to central planning, bureaucratic intervention, state regulation, and redistribution. Liberalism’s radical, utopian version is anarchy (not the collectivist kind, but the individual), which advocates a stateless society based on the total freedom of citizens. 10 Madsen Pirie, “Why F A Hayek is a Conservative,” in Hayek—On the Fabric of Human Soci­ ety, ed. Eamonn Butler and Madsen Pirie, 147–67 (London: Adam Smith Institute, 1987). 11 Roger Scruton, “The New Right in Central Europe I: Czechoslovakia,” Political Studies 36, no. 3 (1988): 461. 12 Scruton, “The New Right in Central Europe I: Czechoslovakia,” 461.

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Let us call nationalism the ideology that advocates establishing and upholding or bolstering a nation-state, seeking to cultivate the national language and traditions, maximize national sovereignty, fight for the rights and wellbeing of nationals at home and abroad, and defend or even expand its territory. It defines itself against globalization, national minorities, and rival or enemy states. Economically, it promotes corporatism, protectionism, and the foundation and defense of national industries, while it is suspicious of international trade liberalization and foreign investment. Its radical, utopian version is fascism and Nazism, which envisage a totalitarian state of benefit to a purified, cleansed nation, one which is politically, economically, and militarily capable of overcoming enemy nations. Let us call conservatism the ideology that aims to defend premodern values, principally the role of the church and religion, social traditions, and hierarchies. It is against social change (especially if superimposed, not organic), atomization of society, non-traditional family models, and atheism. Economically, it promotes the agrarian sector and small producers, defending traditional farmers, church property, and families with children. It opposes economic modernization that endangers traditional forms and sectors of production. Its radical, utopian version is fundamentalism, which promotes the reestablishment of a premodern, usually religious social order. These three distinct ideologies can each form a basis for different kinds of right-wing worldviews. Although in political discourse the moderate rightwing is generally labeled conservatism, this merely obscures the picture. The defining element of the Czech right was liberalism: dominated initially by the Civic Forum (Občanské forum, OF), concerned principally with civil liberties and human rights, then by the ostensibly conservative Civic Democratic Party (Občanská demokratická strana, ODS), advocating economic liberalization and mass privatization to create a free-market economy. By contrast, the defining element of the Hungarian conservative right has been nationalism, from the emergence of the so-called populist opposition up to the present day.13 13 Of the countless analyses and observations that point to this conclusion, one is a research study written with the aim of verifying whether the left‒right dichotomy is usable in the Hungarian post-1989 context. According to surveys conducted in 1996 and 1998 among members of the Hungarian legislature, the majority of left and right-wing politicians found the following as typical attitudes of the right wing: “defense of Hungarians living beyond our borders,” “love of the country,” and “defense of national interests.” See János Simon, “Két lábon álló demokrácia, avagy mit jelent a politikai elit számára a baloldal és a jobboldal?,” Politikatudo­ mányi szemle 8, no. 2 (1999): 110‒12.

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Besides the three ideally typical ideologies of the right, there is one that represents the left. Let us call socialism the ideology that promotes the idea of equality in income and wealth. Socialism advocates equal rights in education and employment; its opponent is preference given to elite groups. Economically, it promotes state intervention to help the less affluent through redistribution, thereby supporting central planning and progressive taxation. Its radical, utopian version is communism, which advocates common ownership and a society based on the total equality of citizens. These four ideologies (and the radical, utopian versions of them) shape the basic ideological and political space in most nineteenth and twentieth-century societies of the Western world, now including East-Central Europe. The main reason why analysts tend to leave nationalism out (as something “in another dimension”) and talk of the socialism‒liberalism‒conservatism trio is that it yields a picture that can be described as a left‒right continuum. This is also why at times economic liberal ideas are called conservative while the term liberalism takes on the meaning of socialism, as it has in the United States. To construct a spatial model for understanding and analyzing the development of an ideological construct (here the Czech right wing), let us turn to Friedrich Hayek on how the relations of the conservative‒liberal‒socialist trio can be best understood: The picture generally given of the relative position of the three parties does more to obscure than to elucidate their true relations. They are usually represented as different positions on a line, with the socialists on the left, the conservatives on the right, and the liberals somewhere in the middle. Nothing could be more misleading. If we want a diagram, it would be more appropriate to arrange them in a triangle with the conservatives occupying one corner, with the socialists pulling toward the second and the liberals toward the third.14

To complete this triangular arrangement, I suggest putting the fourth basic ideology, nationalism, at a fourth independent corner in a way that extends the model into a tetrahedron (see Figure 3.1). The tetrahedron symbolizes, firstly, that none of the four basic ideologies can be seen as lying between any two others—all prescribe a different direc14 Hayek, “Why I Am Not a Conservative,” 520.

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Liberalism

Socialism

Conservatism

Nationalism

Figure 3.1. Tetrahedron-like arrangement of ideologies

tion of political action; and secondly, that there is conflict as well as potential for cooperation between any two of them.15 Nationalism and liberalism, for example, disagree about the emphasis on collective or individual approaches to organizing society, culture, the economy, and so forth, but traditionally join forces against external oppression when civic and collective liberty are both at stake (for instance, against a conservative foreign empire or Soviet-style communism). Socialism and conservatism, despite being enemies in their approach to questions of income distribution, the role of the church, and so on, can share a view on solidarity for the poor (the basic idea behind Christian socialism). This, instead of a simple left‒right dichotomy, is the model that represents the framework used in this chapter to analyze Czech politico-ideological developments. 15 This simple model can be easily extended to embrace the radical, utopian versions of the basic ideologies. The model, intended to clarify contradictions in the left-right dichotomy, featured in my MA thesis—András Schweitzer, “Modern politikai ideológiák, baloldaliság és jobboldaliság a XX. század végén” (MA thesis, Nemzetközi Kapcsolatok Tanszék, 1996)—and then in an essay for the Underground Streams project of the Hungarian 1956 Institute; András Schweitzer, “Tengelytörés: A jobb- és a baloldal fogalmi problémáihoz,” in Búvópatakok—Mély­ fúrások, ed. János M. Rainer, 13–54 (Budapest: Országos Széchenyi Könyvtár – 1956-os Intézet Alapítvány, 2014). It offers a better framework for the positions of political ideas held by political actors than a simple left‒right axis or the more sophisticated two-dimensional models, which also usually refrain from locating nationalism. An exception is the 2D model used by Herbert Kitschelt to analyze the East-Central European political space, with a horizontal axis from “non-market allocation” to “market allocation” and a vertical axis from “libertarian cosmopolitan politics” to “authoritarian localist politics”; see Herbert Kitschelt, The Forma­ tion of Party Systems in Eastern Europe (Ithaca, NY: Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, 1991). This model perhaps unnecessarily differentiates libertarianism and market allocation, while incorrectly equates authoritarianism and localism (the latter, as I understand it, being nationalism itself).

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The Left Nation? Just as there can be no view of a house that has only a left side but no right, so political spectra seen as horizontal lines (as is usually done) always have left and right fringes. As such, the idea that the creation of the First Czechoslovak Republic tied in with leftist ideas and its functioning with leftist ideology can only be meaningful in a comparative context (one house can be more to the left than another).16 Even the nominal political structure in the first two decades of the Czechoslovak state shows no categorical signs to substantiate such a claim. One truly significant feature was the legality and relatively strong electoral performances of the communist party.17 Yet, the dominant political force in most of the interwar period—in a fragmented party system where fascists were represented and there were no explicitly liberal parties—was the Agrarians (Agrárníci, or in full, the Republican Party of Agriculturists and Small Peasants [Repub­ likánská strana zemědělského a malorolnického lidu]), which usually provided the prime minister for the governing coalition. Accordingly, Czechoslovakia resembled most Eastern and East-Central European countries, including Hungary, where a broad umbrella organization, the Christian Peasant, Smallholders, and Civic Party (Keresztény-Keresztyén Földmíves-, Kisgazda- és Pol­ gári Párt, or briefly the United Party, Egységes Párt) and its successors won every election until late 1944. Again, the nominal comparison obscures the picture. The Hungarian United Party, while representing agrarian interests, was essentially a nationalist conservative party. By contrast, the Czechoslovak Agrarians represented the ethnically Czech and Slovak small peasants who advocated and benefited

16 The situation is somewhat similar with the “Right Nation” terminology often applied to the United States (notably after the reelection of President George W. Bush and the publication of a book with this title). As political competition occurs in a given social setting, no political side can predominate in the longer term (if a party does, it ceases to be one “side” or the other and becomes the center). Still, it can generally be argued that, despite welfare measures like the Affordable Care Act, America is more (economically) liberal while Europe is more socialist. 17 The communist party (Komunistická strana Československá) received 13.2, 10.2, and 10.3 percent of the vote in 1925, 1929, and 1935. This put it a very close second in 1925 to the Agrarians with 13.7 percent. With the Social Democrats, the two parties received over 20 percent of the votes in all four elections (including 1920 without the communists). See Karel Vodička and Ladislav Cabada, Politický Systém České Republiky: Historie a Současnost (Prague: Portál, 2007), 33‒34.

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from land reforms,18 which often meant lands taken from German and Hungarian land-owning aristocrats, while simultaneously pursuing an egalitarian (socialist), anti-foreigner (nationalist), and anti-nobility (anti-conservative) agenda, alongside a rather pragmatic approach to politics. Nor does the usual participation in government of the Catholic-based Czechoslovak People’s Party (Československá strana lidová) mean a role for the Catholic Church comparable to that in Poland or Hungary, least of all in the early years of the Republic, when its main policy aims were to slow the “Away from Rome” (Pryč od Říma) movement (connected to the anti-Habsburg legacy mindset),19 to fend off the acquisition of its churches and other property by the newly formed, Hussite-inspired Czechoslovak Church (Církev československá), and to find a compromise on questions (marriage, education, etc.) concerning the relations of church and state.20 All five dominant parties, the so-called Pětka (Social Democrats, Socialists, National Democrats, Czechoslovak Populist Party, and Agrarians), supported the enactment of progressive social and labor legislation.21 As the People’s Party is better classified as a Christian Socialist party, it is probably safe to say—as David Hanák does in his book on Czech conservative thought, quoting historian Antonín Klimek—that the Czech part of interwar Czechoslovakia actually had no conservative party, which he adds (perhaps less convincingly) was unique in Europe.22 One factor that clearly distinguishes Czech society at least from the three other nations of East-Central Europe, and which can be interpreted meaningfully as leftist, is its anti-conservative nature. This ties in with the fact that it was the most industrialized (least agrarian) and least religious society in the region, and unlike in Poland and Hungary, the nobility was mostly viewed as 18 Vít Hloušek and Lubomír Kopeček, Origin, Ideology and Transformation of Political Parties: East-Central and Western Europe Compared (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 94. 19 A symbolic manifestation of the anti-Catholic, anti-Habsburg movement was the destruction on November 3, 1918, of the Column of the Virgin Mary (Mariánský sloup) on the Old Town Square (Staroměstské náměstí) in Prague. Inaugurated after the Thirty Years’ War, this Baroque Catholic monument was commonly seen as commemorating the Habsburg victory over the Czechs at White Mountain (Bílá Hora). 20 Miloš Trapl, Political Catholicism and the Czechoslovak People’s Party in Czechoslovakia, 1918– 1938 (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 1995), 16. The party’s defensive mission resembles the one it played, with far less success, after 1945. 21 Sharon Wolchik, “The Right in Czech-Slovakia,” in Democracy and Right-Wing Politics in Eastern Europe in the 1990s, ed. Joseph Held (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1993), 63‒64. 22 David Hanák, České Konzervativní Myšlení (Brno: Studio Arx, 2007), 105.

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foreign. As Eagle Glassheim observes: “Whereas the Polish, Hungarian, and Prusso-German nobilities were deeply enmeshed with nationalist movements in the nineteenth century, nobles in binational Bohemia were latecomers to national identification.” In turn, the “nobility became for a time a pariah class, a symbol of everything the new state’s leaders sought to displace: Habsburg imperial institutions, social inequality, and German dominance.”23 The political movement creating the Czechoslovak state was, by definition, nationalistic, but also remarkably egalitarian and anti-conservative in this respect. Another difference from other states in Eastern and East-Central Europe was the politico-legal framework of the First Republic. Despite an initial program of de-Austrianizing society, interwar Czechoslovakia was more democratic and liberal than other states in the region. This was partly because its founding father and president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, was an admirer of America and derived the foundation of Czechoslovakia from his conception of a glorious world revolution of democracy against theocracy.24 Elections were based on universal suffrage and wide-ranging political and civil rights were granted.25 The lack of a strong liberal party may have been because the system was liberal enough. (There was a similar situation in the Anglophone world, where political and economic liberalism was usually espoused by conservative parties and defended from socialist tendencies.) After a couple of years, the initially strong nationalism in the Czechoslovak state subsided, along with its constituent elements of anti-Habsburg, ­anti-German, anti-nobility, and anti-Catholic feelings. This became possible as Catholics and nobles made efforts to come to terms with the founding ideas of the new state and show loyalty to it. The Czechoslovak People’s ­Party 23 Eagle Glassheim, Noble Nationalists: The Transformation of the Bohemian Aristocracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 7, 5. Glassheim uses the geographical term Bohemia to mean all “the lands of the Bohemian crown” (or Czech lands, České země). These later became the Czech part of Czechoslovakia: the historical provinces of Bohemia, Moravia, and part of Silesia. 24 The New World served as a positive inspiration to many in other strata of society, such as the composer Antonín Dvořák and the footwear magnate Tomáš Baťa. 25 All this was in stark contrast to the situation in Hungary, where the franchise was not universal, but tied to a property census. Furthermore, voting was open in country districts, and an antiJewish education quota, the numerus clausus, was imposed as early as 1920. Even Czechoslovakia’s democracy was somewhat tarnished by the fact that over three million Sudeten Germans were not deemed a state-constituting nation (compared to the 1.8 million Slovaks, who were legally part of the Czechoslovak nation), while compromises on national questions were often reached via backdoor negotiations among the five major parties, the “Pětka,” or by a privy circle around the presidents, Masaryk and Beneš, informally labeled the Castle (Hrad).

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founded by Jan Šrámek immediately became a supporter of the new state, departing from earlier prevalent Catholic support for the Habsburg monarchy, which it tried to hide.26 The Union of Czechoslovak Great Landowners (Svaz československých velkostatkářů) was founded in 1919 to advise its noble members on how to save their property and lobby against the pending land reform, but it wholly accepted the state’s right to dispose of property according to the national interest.27 A sign that the initially anti-conservative Czech nationalism was moderating came with the so-called Gentlemen’s Coalition (Panská koalice) in the last years of the 1920s, which is often described as right-wing. Yet, even this was a far from genuinely conservative government; rather, it was a coalition of agrarian, liberal, and Christian socialist parties, some of them representing ethnic Germans. The direction of reconciliation was felt to be toward the German minority and the Catholic Church. A big factor in the toning down of Czech nationalism, naturally the main ideology during the creation of the multinational state, was its remarkable success.28 It managed to create a state it could call its own, but which spread far beyond the geographical bounds of the ethnic Czechs. As the Hungarian legal scholar and political thinker István Bibó remarked in a famous essay, it embraced German-inhabited lands with which it had historical ties, but no ethnic ones, Slovak lands with which it had ethnic ties, but no historical ones, and Hungarian-inhabited lands with which it had neither.29 Although generally these communities were not subject to racism or oppression, this led to a lack of commitment to the new state among Germans and Hungarians, and to some extent among Slovaks. This in turn gave rise to the West26 Trapl, Political Catholicism and the Czechoslovak People’s Party, 16. 27 Their arguments were “soundly in the liberal economic tradition” in claiming that the reform violated the principle of private property and arguing that the reform was designed to be punitive and failed to compensate landowners sufficiently. Eagle Glassheim, “Ambivalent Capitalists: The Roots of Fascist Ideology among Bohemian Nobles, 1880–1938,” in Czechoslo­ vakia in a Nationalist and Fascist Europe, 1918–1948, ed. Mark Cornwall and R. J. W. Evans (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 32. 28 Again, this is especially so compared to the Hungarian state. This factor is cited as one reason why Czech fascism was comparatively weak: “Czechoslovakia, which had received generous borders, had no irredentist tendencies. Much of the white heat had gone out of Czech nationalism.” David D. Kelly, The Czech Fascist Movement 1922–1942 (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1995), 3. 29 István Bibó, “A kelet-európai kisállamok nyomorúsága,” in Válogatott tanulmányok, vol. 2 (Budapest: Magvető Könyvkiadó, 1986), 206.

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ern condoning of a forced, ethnically presented revision of the country’s borders, followed by the collapse of the state through forcible Nazi occupation of the Czech half of it. The Munich agreement, the first Vienna Award, the Slovak secession, the Nazi occupation, and the establishment of the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren) presaged a new, post1945 outburst of revenge that could easily have led to an ethnonationalist or even fascist ideology being adopted. That this did not happen was due merely to two coincidental factors in international politics. Firstly, as with the geopolitical outcome in 1918, Czech national aspirations and geographical integrity were largely restored after World War II:30 the government of the state of the Czechs and Slovaks was permitted to enhance its homogeneity by expelling the vast majority of ethnic Germans (odsun) and sizeable numbers of ethnic Hungarians. Secondly, the liberal tradition and “the nation’s self-identification as belonging historically and culturally to the West”31 had suffered a serious blow from the general feeling of betrayal in 1938 at Munich. This Munich complex (Mnichovský komplex) was similar in many ways to the Trianon trauma, the Hungarian shock and outrage at the loss of two-thirds of their historical territory after World War I. But the Czechs and their nationalism were not alone. They had a powerful ally in the Soviet Union, coupled with an ideological candidate, socialism (or in its extreme form, communism). The Czechs, unlike the Poles, had no historical accounts to settle with the Soviets. Most people saw them as the great Slavic ally, noting how they had vehemently opposed Munich as typical bourgeois defeatism against German fascism (Nazism) and now backed Czechoslovakia’s reunification and ethnic purification. As such, the aftermath of World War II restored a familiar pattern of ideas to Czech public life: a revolutionary, egalitarian (left-wing, socialist) ideology that was simultaneously nationalistic. This traditional mix differed slightly from that found after World War I (or World Revolution, as Masaryk saw it): it was 1) more radical, 2) both anti-conservative and anti-liberal (anti-Western), and 3) directed not only against Germans and nobles, but against the bourgeoisie. As Glassheim states: 30 Subcarpathian Ruthenia (Podkarpatská Rus), transferred to the Soviet Union after World War II, was not seen as a substantial loss. 31 Bradley F. Abrams, The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation: Czech Culture and the Rise of Com­ munism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 104.

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With the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 and the liberation of Czechoslovakia, the most radical anti-German and anti-noble rhetoric from 1918 came to dominate public discourse. The Beneš Decrees dispossessed the two-thirds of nobles identified as German, and most either fled or faced expulsion with the rest of the Sudeten German population. A renewed land reform targeted [the lands of] remaining nobles for confiscation, a process that began in earnest in 1948 after the Communist seizure of power. With the expulsion of Bohemian Germans and the subsequent destruction of the residual landowning and capitalist elite, Czechoslovakia in effect cut its ties to Western Europe. Indeed, Germans, nobles, and Jews had long been important vehicles for Western influence in Bohemia and throughout East Central Europe. After 1948, the loss of those ties suited Czechoslovakia’s paranoid Stalinists well, though the country’s subsequent isolation from Europe would have a devastating effect on culture and public morale.32

Czechoslovakia’s road to communism was far smoother than that of most countries in Eastern and East-Central Europe. According to research by Bradley Abrams, of the four “major cultural groupings” in postwar Czechoslovakia—the communists, the democratic socialists (centered mainly around the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party [Československá strana národně socialis­ tická]), the Protestants (usually equated with the Czechoslovak Church [Církev československá] and Evangelical Church of the Czech Brethren [Českobratrská církev evangelická]), and the Roman Catholics—the first three accepted there was a need for some kind of socialism. The two Protestant churches “provided largely unexpected support for the furthering of the radical socialist reorganization of Czech society. In this respect they can be seen politically as the left-wing religious analog to the Roman Catholic Church’s moderate social reformism and support of the People’s Party.”33 Catholics, who showed “the most consistently oppositional stance toward communism” and grouped around the People’s Party, “closely resembled their coreligionists in Western Europe and characterized their dialogue 32 Glassheim, Noble Nationalists, 229. 33 Abrams, The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation, 253.

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with communist intellectuals as a struggle to maintain the position of spiritual values against those of materialism.”34 Some Catholic intellectuals connected their resistance to communism to a defense of Western liberal values. Abrams quotes, among others, the intellectual leader Pavel Tigrid, who emigrated from the Nazis and from the communists. Around half a century later, in 1994–96, he served as minister of culture; in this post, he declared that Czechs belong “morally, politically, culturally, and religiously to Western European civilization,” for the sources of their national rebirth and liberalism lay in the West, and this unshakable bond would remain even if the communist party gained unlimited power.35 Although the People’s Party, the Roman Catholic Church, and the cause of political Catholicism “emerged in the liberated republic with considerable moral capital” due to their consistently antifascist position, they were quickly isolated. The Agrarian Party was accused of collaborating with Nazi Germany, but the People’s Party was not. Indeed, it continued to exist after 1945 and even during communist times, formally becoming a member of the National Front (Národní fronta), effectively as an insignificant satellite of the Czechoslovak Communist Party (Komunistická strana Československa).

Socialism without a human face The communist takeover, culminating in the coup d’état of February 1948— or in contemporary communist terms, Victorious February (Vítězný únor)— led to the creation of a totalitarian state, the extension of communist party power, centralization of the economy and cultural life, and an unprecedented economic and social leveling in an already egalitarian country. Institutions that did not fit the communist worldview were banned, destroyed, or abolished as fascist, reactionary, or bourgeois. Even the socialist-leaning Czech national athletic movement, Sokol, was reformed and then abolished, considered too reminiscent of a non-communist or pre-communist national era.36 According to a classification by a group of political scientists led by Herbert Kitschelt, with the aim of providing a historical framework for analyz34 Abrams, The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation, 234. 35 Abrams, The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation, 170‒71. 36 For details of the process of abolishing Sokol, see Mark Dimond, “The Sokol and Czech Nationalism, 1918–1948,” in Czechoslovakia in a Nationalist and Fascist Europe, 1918–1948, ed. Mark Cornwall and R. J. W. Evans (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 203‒5.

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ing different post-1989 political pathways in East-Central European countries, Czechoslovak communism (and that of East Germany) falls into the “bureaucratic‒authoritarian” class. This is in contrast to “national-accommodative” communism (in Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia) and “patrimonial communism” (in most countries of Eastern Europe).37 One definite merit of this classification is that it overcomes the overly simplistic idea of unfreezing, which led early commentators to predict that political and social developments in Eastern and East-Central Europe would restart from pre-communist conditions. This assumption was linked to the pessimistic expectation that post-communist societies would enter into renewed ethnonationalist, intrastate, and interstate confrontations. Kitschelt’s team saw how the post-1989 political conditions in these states differed from those in 1945. They also claimed the changes were systematic. With these three classes of communism and corresponding ideal-typical paths they linked pre-communism to post-communist trajectories. Nevertheless, this elegant explanation is not without its weaknesses.38 Firstly, in each country communism went through various epochs, often mirroring political developments in the Soviet Union. Different epochs in one country were sometimes more diverse than those between two different types of states in the same epoch. In the early Stalinist years, for example, all communist countries showed marks of “patrimonial communism,” such as “vertical chains of personal dependence between leaders in the state and party apparatus and their entourage” or political power “concentrated around a small clique or an individual ruler worshiped by a personality cult.”39 Secondly, the model was also disrupted by government‒opposition interactions. Kitschelt’s team explains how the technocratic experimentation with economic reform during the Prague Spring was short-lived in comparison 37 Herbert Kitschelt et al, Post-Communist Party Systems: Competition, Representation, and In­ ter-Party Cooperation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 21‒28. The core of the theory can also be found in Herbert Kitschelt, “Formation of Party Cleavages in Post-Communist Democracies: Theoretical Propositions,” Party Politics 1, no. 4 (1995): 452‒55. 38 The theory has been criticized on some points. Seán Hanley summarizes these critiques as essentially amounting to three factors: 1) communist regimes seem to be mirrors of the pre-communist order, which is insignificant in explaining varying patterns of left-right competition; 2) unlike empirical measurement and mapping of patterns of party competition, the historical research to identify paths leading to it was less extensive; and 3) there was too much emphasis on the domestic dynamics of state and society and a lack of contemporary geopolitical factors like proximity to Western Europe and processes of European integration. See Hanley, The New Right in the New Europe, 21‒22. 39 Kitschelt et al., Post-Communist Party Systems, 23.

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with Poland and Hungary: “they triggered an almost instant reawakening of a massive political opposition to communism. Unlike technocratic reformers under national-accommodative communism, the economic reformers under bureaucratic-authoritarian communism faced a party elite unwilling to make concessions for the sake of greater popular inclusiveness and economic efficiency.”40 However, “massive political opposition to communism” was much more prevalent in Hungary in 1956 than in Czechoslovakia in 1968, and a further reason why Czech liberalization was short-lived can be sought in the “fraternal help” given to the Soviets by the armies of five other communist countries. Moreover, the communist party leadership in the first half of 1968 showed clear signs of a “propensity to permit modest levels of civil rights and elite contestation” while “relying more on cooptation than repression as ways to instill citizens’ compliance,”41 which is said to be typical of nationalaccommodative communism. Thirdly, geopolitical factors were important in the communist era. The countries of “bureaucratic-authoritarian communism,” East Germany and Czechoslovakia, were not only long-industrialized and possessed of a mobilized working class, but also the westernmost members of the Warsaw Pact, bordering NATO member West Germany. The perceived infiltration risk of Western ideas, agents, or even armies may also explain to some extent why the opposition forces in these countries “encountered a much harsher and more hostile climate than [under] national-accommodative communism” (which was certainly true after 1968) and why there was “an all-powerful, rule-guided bureaucratic machine governed by a planning technocracy and a disciplined, hierarchically stratified communist party.”42 Such classification of communism (types of existing socialism) may be less necessary in any case to explain opposition trajectories and post-communist party structures. Communist regimes and systems were largely uniform in marking a brutal break with the political, economic, social, ideological, cultural, and other developments in all these countries. Such a break became possible only in conjunction with Soviet occupation and the violent imposition of its alien political system.

40 Kitschelt et al., Post-Communist Party Systems, 27. 41 Kitschelt et al., Post-Communist Party Systems, 24. 42 Kitschelt et al., Post-Communist Party Systems, 25–26.

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The Soviet-type regimes of the East-Central European countries were uniformly totalitarian. Their imposition by Moscow went against almost all ideological traditions, political movements, and accomplished legacies: the political, legal, and economic cornerstones of these states. Firstly, communism was anti-nationalist: regimes were placed and held in power by Soviet political and—if need be—military aid, and could only act on major policy issues with Moscow’s approval. Any person or group advocating national independence was accused of fascism. Secondly, communism was anti-conservative: it promoted radical transformation aiming toward an egalitarian utopia, with no place for religion or a premodern social hierarchy. Such regimes denounced as reactionary those of various religious affiliations, those who defended the social functions or proprietary rights of the church, and those who displayed nostalgia or apparent understanding toward the historical role of the former elite. Thirdly, communism was anti-liberal, maximizing the power of the governing center and radically curtailing political rights and civil liberties. In the economic sphere, it erased almost any scope for free enterprise, nationalized chunks of private property, and restrained market coordination in favor of central planning. It condemned as bourgeois those seeking to restore elements of democracy and capitalism. All this implies that potential opposition to the communist system arose mainly as a nationalist, liberal, or conservative movement.43 Most political opposition in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland clearly fell into these categories. Among these three states, Czech dissidence centered almost wholly on the liberal idea of freedom: mainly in the political and cultural spheres at first, then in the economic sphere. In early 1968, during what is generally called the Prague Spring (Pražské jaro), the new First Secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, Alexander Dubček, initiated and permitted cautious reforms, mainly in the form of economic decentralization and looser media censorship. These reforms, liberal in nature, met with popular enthusiasm. Further steps were called for in the manifesto “Two Thousand Words” (Dva tisíce slov), written by the journalist Ludvík Vaculík at the instigation of the Academy of Sciences, signed by over 43 Although there is room even for communist opposition, communism as a utopia is ultimately something not fully achievable. Indeed, from time to time, the regime would be called to account by far-left groups labeled Maoist, Trotskyist or similar, for not carrying out its egalitarian revolutionary mission.

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a thousand individuals and published in several newspapers.44 It urged public participation in politics to “demand the departure of people who abused their power, damaged public property, [and] acted unfairly or harshly,” and called for civic committees and commissions to probe abuses and protect freedom of speech. It was condemned forthwith by the communist party. The liberalization process was ended by the armed intervention of five communist countries and long years of normalization (normalizace) marked by recentralization. The only reform to survive 1968 was the Constitutional Act on the Czechoslovak Federation (Ústavní zákon o československé federaci) establishing a federation of the Czech and Slovak Socialist Republics. Almost a decade later, a group of dissidents wrote Charter 77 (Charta 77), which was soon published in the West. This noted “the extent to which basic human rights . . . exist, regrettably, only on paper” in Czechoslovakia, “despite its signing of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.” It bemoaned the lack of a right to freedom of expression or for workers to gather in trade unions and other bodies freely, the interference in private life by the Interior Ministry and its instigation of discrimination by authorities, organizations, and so forth: in sum, the “systematic violation of human rights and democratic freedoms.”45 Conservative opposition emerged later than the strong opposition movements based almost solely on liberal ideology. It remained weaker and was often connected to the liberal movements. Preoccupied in 1984 with “the principle of the indivisibility of liberty and the universal validity of human and civil rights,”46 Charter 77 published another manifesto—“Right to History” (Právo na dějiny)—emphasizing the need for more professional, ideologically untrammeled historiography freed from the overall negative account of the Catholic Church and the Habsburg legacy.47 Meanwhile, the authors of the 44 Ludvík Vaculík, “2000 slov, které patří dělníkům, zemědělcům, úředníkům, umělcům a všem,” Literární listy 1, no. 18 (June 27, 1968): 1–3. 45 Charter 77, “Charta 77—text prohlášení,” Totalita.cz, accessed September 29, 2014, http:// www.totalita.cz/txt/txt_ch77_dok_1977_01_01.php. 46 Vilém Prečan, “Charter 77 in the Struggle for Human Rights and Civil Liberties: Policy Statement of the International Conference Project,” Charta2007.cz, accessed March 7, 2022, https:// web.archive.org/web/20121214003410/http://www.charta2007.cz/index.php?lang=en. 47 Václav Benda, Jiří Ruml, and Jana Sternová, “Právo na dějiny,” Charter 77 document no. 11/84 (May 20, 1984), Charta2007.cz, accessed March 7, 2022, https://web.archive.org/ web/20070707172655/http://www.charta2007.cz/index.php?sh=dokum/7.

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samizdat “Central Europe” (Střední Evropa) went so far as to question the ideological foundations of the Czechoslovak state, arguing that its destruction in 1938 was caused directly by its “nationalistic, egalitarian and secular ethos” and “above all its antagonistic, unresolved relationship with its German minority,” which also “paved the way for communism.”48 All in all, there was no real tension between conservatives and liberals like that between the two main opposition groups in Hungary.49 Hanley talks rather of “subtle tensions” between liberalism and conservatism dividing the Czech proto-right in the late 1980s: While both Catholic conservatives and Pithart’s more secular brand of dissident “Toryism” stressed the importance of identity, history and legitimate state authority as the key to change, neo-liberals focused instead on the problems of the economy and the need to free economic actors. Dissident neo-conservatives occupied an intermediate position, sharing the concern of other dissident conservatives with moral values and civic cohesion, but seeing the renewal of the market as the key means to effect this transformation.50

The theoretical third path of opposition, one based on nationalism, was virtually absent. During the Soviet-led occupation in 1968, Russian-language posters appeared instructing the invaders to go home (Zakhvatchiki domoy!), reminiscent of the Hungarian call Ruszkik haza! (Russians go home!) from 1956. However, there was nothing of the magnitude of Imre Nagy’s neutrality declaration or any actual fighting against Soviet units, which had been hailed by many at the time as an actual national war of independence. The national question expired in an endless philosophical debate on the Czech national character, rooted in Masaryk’s famous 1895 book Česká otáz­ ka (The Czech Question). Views in the 1970s and 1980s ranged from bald

48 Hanley, The New Right in the New Europe, 51. Petr Pithart was, in Hanley’s interpretation, a dissident Tory, mostly influenced by British conservatism and the “British political style,” who attacked Czech provincialism and inclination to populism as factors that led to the blind alley of communism. 49 As early as 1989, liberal SZDSZ representatives and MDF members with nationalist inclinations accused each other of collaborating with the communists, and fought against each other politically (MDF, for instance, boycotted the referendum initiated by SZDSZ). 50 Hanley, The New Right in the New Europe, 64–65.

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self-confidence in Czechoslovakia’s mission to bring morality to Europe (as Hussitism, or socialism with a human face) or to act as a bridge between East and West, through to utter pessimism about the Czechs’ lowly, un-heroic social origins, manifested in the failure to resist Nazi Germany in 1938 or the communist Soviet Union in 1948 and 1968.51 What could explain that the Czech dissident movement was first and foremost liberal? My views differ from those of Kitschelt, resembling instead the “unfreezing” theory in assuming that the Soviet-type (communist) systems of the Eastern Bloc can be viewed as essentially similar, and that the reasons for the variations in dissident movements’ ideologies lie elsewhere. However, I also doubt whether they were mere continuations of the pre-communist political scene. Nationalist and socialist ideology dominated public life in Czechoslovakia before 1948 (and especially before 1945); liberalism and conservatism were sidelined and on the defensive. I suggest a solution to the apparent paradox, namely, that what became the prime demand of opposition in the 1970s and 1980s was what the people and the non-communist elite most felt to be missing from public life in political, social, cultural, and other terms. In the Czech case, almost uniquely, this happened to be individual freedom. This further ties in with the fact that the First Republic happened to be the most liberal state in East-Central Europe. Eagle Glassheim, in the introduction to his 2005 book Noble Nationalists, talks vividly of “eerie absences that haunt Prague’s historic streets”: There is the old Jewish district, Josefov, with its synagogues and winding ghetto lanes, but there are no Jews. There is the stern but majestic castle, towering forbiddingly above the Old Town from the Hradčany hill, long emptied of king or court. There are the churches, hundreds of them, arching and jutting skyward in styles recalling centuries of Catholic devotion. But, on Sundays in Prague, most churches sit empty. The most splendid district in Prague, Malá strana, the Lesser Side, inhabits the valley bounded by the castle, Petřín hill, and the river Vltava. Its streets are a cascade of baroque palaces and gardens, still bearing the names of their 51 The latest train of thought is that of the eminent Czech philosopher Jan Patočka, founder and martyr of the Charta 77 movement. Aviezer Tucker, a researcher into his oeuvre, considers it somewhat inconsistently elitist and pro-democracy at the same time. See Aviezer Tucker, “Shipwrecked: Patočka’s Philosophy of Czech History,” History and Theory 35, no. 2 (May 1996): 196–216.

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former aristocratic owners: Valdštejn, Ledebur, Lobkowicz, Buquoy, and others. But Malá strana, too, is now a magnificent shell, home to embassies and government offices that have long since displaced the nobility.52

Yet, strolling around the gray, half-empty streets of Prague in the 1980s, something other than king, nobility, or church-goers was shockingly missing, something that had marked life there in the interwar period (and which quickly returned after 1989): colorful shops and providers offering all imaginable goods and services; intellectual and cultural activities; puppet theaters; musicians and other performers; abundant journals and books, in both Czech and foreign languages; people discussing political and everyday issues freely in pubs, restaurants, and cafés; alternative modes of transportation, from horse-drawn carriages to rowboats; and visitors and tourists from all over the world. In a word: freedom, manifest in the political sphere as democracy and the economic sphere as capitalism. Of course, personal freedom was missing in every communist country, if not so intensely: people elsewhere had experienced less of it during the interwar period than in Czechoslovakia. Furthermore, it was in general more available in Hungary and Poland in the last two decades of communism than in Czechoslovakia. But the main difference was that liberalism had a serious challenger on which dissidence could be based: conservatism and nationalism. In Hungary, the latter appeared in the expressed need to remember, discuss, and incorporate into education the rare high and frequent low moments for the nation: heroic national resistance against the mighty Soviet Union,53 the national tragedy of Trianon, the lost beauties and richness of Transylvania, the linguistic oppression of Hungarians outside the borders, the village destruction program of the Romanian Conducător. This again connects with the fact that the lost and partly restored Hungarian national “glory” had been a central theme of political life in 1920‒45. 52 Glassheim, Noble Nationalists, 1. 53 The intense bitterness people felt at the towering statue of Stalin was different in Prague than in Budapest, and the fate of the monuments differed. Prague’s gigantic composition of Stalin leading other figures representing the nation—nicknamed the Fronta na maso, or queue for meat—fell to a controlled explosion during the official anti-Stalinist campaign in 1962. The Stalin monument in Budapest was pulled down by trucks and dragged through the streets by crowds of rebels on the first day of the 1956 revolution as an act of symbolic national liberation: a rare moment in Hungary when liberalism and nationalism, the ideologies of individual and national freedom, acted as one.

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The reason for the general lack of nationalist opposition in Czechoslovakia, apart from the absence of serious national grievances, is that the reestablishment of Czechoslovakia in its integrity and its process of forced ethnic homogenization occurred with Soviet backing. An association of nationalism with communism gave reason for people to turn away from it as communism became less popular. Conservatism, in turn, did become an ideology for dissident activity—in appreciation of the traditional Catholic stance against Nazism and communism—but its influence was weaker than in Poland, due to the low level of religious devotion and relative scarcity of the agrarian population.

The Czech Old and New Right The emergence of an all-powerful liberal opposition, demanding freedom for citizens and above all a liberal democratic political system, is not surprising. When Mikhail Gorbachev made it clear he would not intervene in the internal affairs of the smaller Eastern Bloc states and the wind of change swept through the region, Czech protesters in November 1989 were able to “throw Miloš Jakeš in the trash” in the words of one popular slogan ( Jakeše do koše!). While in Budapest “free” and “Hungarian” democrats54 were already accusing each other of secretly siding with the communists or deceiving the people with a referendum to boost their own support, Civic Forum (Občanské forum), with an optimistic, happy face in its two-letter logo, headed for a decisive win and prepared wide-ranging democratic reforms. It is equally understandable that after a democratic political transformation, symbolized by Václav Havel becoming president, it was time for the more difficult task of systemic change in the economy: eliminating subsidies, liberalizing prices, decentralizing, deregulating, creating an independent central bank, privatizing, and introducing new rules to help free competition and the entry of new businesses. Focusing on these steps as a political program, Vác­ lav Klaus and his Civic Democratic Party (Občanská demokratická strana), in alliance with the Christian Democratic Party (Křesťansko-demokratická stra­ na), won the Czech national and Czechoslovak federal elections in June 1992. Gil Eyal points out that the Czech transition to capitalism, in the absence of a capitalist class, was performed with the unlikely cooperation of dissidents 54 That is, politicians of the aforementioned Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) and the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF).

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and monetarists (monetarism referring here to a technique of government, not an economic theory). He sets out to show that this alliance became possible “due to the homology between their identities, and that such homology derived from their proximate positions in social space,” meaning: 1) a “Cassandra-complex” (not claiming to know the future or being able to plan it); 2) the task of civic education as pastors and civilizers; 3) trying to create conditions for a society “living within the truth” measured in money; 4) action at a distance (no direct intervention); and 5) the rule of law.55 I would approach the problem Eyal raised slightly differently. My explanation for the “unlikely cooperation” of dissidents and “monetarists” would be that the idea of creating a free society was the common denominator. A free society means that citizens have free choice in all social spheres—politics, the economy, cultural life—supplied in a multiparty liberal democracy, a capitalist economy based on free competition and free markets, and a tolerant, inclusively open society. Thomas G. Palmer was another thinker who saw the “remarkable success of the Czech transformation process” as something “of interest to anyone who follows economic policy or foreign affairs generally, as well as anyone concerned with rolling back government powers and substituting a free society for state power.” In his foreword to Klaus’s Renaissance: The Rebirth of Liberty in the Heart of Europe, Parker cited several factors: the “long history of free society in Bohemia and Moravia; the unique Czech attitude toward authority, so well expressed in Jaroslav Hašek’s great work The Good Soldier Švejk; and the relative lack of foreign indebtedness.” Then he quoted, as another factor, a comparison by Klaus made in a December 4, 1995 lecture at the Cato Institute: In our country in the 1970s and 1980s, people like me were definitely on the other side of the barricade and had absolutely no chance to do anything in cooperation with the government. Such was not the case in other postcommunist countries. All our counterparts—in Hungary, in Poland—were members of various government and Communist party commissions on restructuring and reforming the system. They were involved deeply in that process, which not only is time-consuming but influences your thinking because you are engaged in trying to reform the 55 Gil Eyal, “Anti-Politics and the Spirit of Capitalism: Dissidents, Monetarists, and the Czech Transition to Capitalism,” Theory and Society 29, no. 1 (Feb 2000): 79‒83.

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system. We were never involved in such activities. We had no chance to be involved. Nobody asked us for advice, and therefore our thinking remained clear and straightforward. We never considered reforming the communist society and economy. We knew that they had to be rejected.56

While the long-term role of the liberal Czech attitude in the successful transformation, quoted by Palmer, is hard to deny (and in line with the reasoning of this paper), those factors offered by Klaus are problematic. The underlying comparison seems persuasive but relies on erroneous information. For one thing, not all leading Hungarian economists were involved in the pre1989 economic reform process; for another, most were convinced at the beginning of the political transformation that the communist system was in crisis and could not be reformed, and that it had to be replaced by a system based on private property and a free market. This was voiced in the founding document of the major liberal opposition SZDSZ (Alliance of Free Democrats), adopted by its General Assembly in the spring of 1989.57 And although the SZDSZ was left out of the first democratic government and became the leading opposition party after 1990, the nationalist-leaning coalition carried out a rapid economic transformation in Hungary, one different in its privatization methods, but no slower than that in the Czech Republic (Federal Republic).58 Politically, the difference between the Czech and the Hungarian transformations lay elsewhere. While the Hungarian political space after 1989—like that of most other Eastern and East-Central European countries in transformation—was measured as multidimensional, with a strong ideological cleavage on national cultural questions, the Czech political cleavage was mostly (and according to some studies, exclusively) between liberalism and socialism: the free market versus state intervention. This was seen in the democratic political scene of the 1990s, defined by the social democrats and the liberal-led alliance. The swings between economic policies of successive democratic governments favoring more market forces versus more opportunities for the poor

56 Václav Klaus, Renaissance: The Rebirth of Liberty in the Heart of Europe (Washington DC: Cato Institute, 1997), xi‒xii (foreword). 57 Szabad Demokraták Szövetsége, A rendszerváltás programja (Budapest: Szabad Demokraták Szövetsége, 1989). 58 Czechoslovakia was officially the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic from early 1990 to the end of 1992, when the Czech Republic became independent.

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merely continued the huge left-wing swerve of communism toward egalitarianism followed by a forceful swerve back toward a liberal economy.

Conclusion This investigation was aimed essentially at answering two connected questions: How, in the Czech half of Czechoslovakia (which became the Czech Republic) did a pragmatic, liberal-democratic political bloc, which clearly advocated an open society and wide market-oriented reforms, become by far the most successful political power after the Velvet Revolution and form a government, when: 1. Czech society has frequently been classed as traditionally leftist and there were no traces of a strong market-liberal political party or ideology in the interwar period (First Republic); 2. In other Eastern and East-Central European countries (especially Poland and Hungary, the two most appropriate candidates for comparison) national cultural issues were just as important, or even more so, in determining the character of the right. The first equates essentially with the paradox with which Seán Hanley begins his thorough research: “Although the country with perhaps the strongest social democratic traditions in Central and Eastern Europe, in Václav Klaus’s Civic Democratic Party (ODS), the Czech Republic also gave rise to the region’s strongest and most stable free market party.”59 After examining Czech political history, focusing on ideas, movements, and persons associable with the political new right, Hanley concludes it is fruitless to try and trace the origins of the ODS-led, post-1989 right-wing coalition deep in history: the roots are to be found “in the failed reform communist project of the 1960s and reactions to that failure.”60 Most of the emergent proto-right views rested upon Anglo-American neoliberal, neoconservative ideas, and “upon explicit rejec­ tion and critique of the national past.”61

59 Hanley, The New Right in the New Europe, ix (preface). 60 Hanley, The New Right in the New Europe, 38. 61 Hanley, The New Right in the New Europe, 64, original emphasis.

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Hanley is right in finding the direct intellectual sources and personal links to the post-1989 Czech “new right.” He is also right in saying they did not descend from an interwar predecessor. Still, I believe there is also a strong component of historical continuity at work. The rootless but forceful Czech liberal right was the agent that upheld and facilitated political change, a swing back to the core values and social conditions of the interwar era, altered by World War II, then by over four decades of externally mandated communism. The short answer to the first question is: the strong market-liberal traits of the Czech right can be understood as a “right” shift (toward Western liberalism) to counter decades of (Eastern) communism. This century-long fluctuation between a freer and more egalitarian structure of society continued after 1989 as “normal,” democratic, political competition between the two main camps. Indeed, the economic issue of state versus market has been seen as the dominant political cleavage in the first years of the Czech Republic. In trying to identify the long-term origins of the emergence and success of the liberal right, I side with Herbert Kitschelt and his colleagues, who constructed a “deep causality” (in the words of Hanley) to explain differing post1989 political cleavages. Contrary to Kitschelt, however, I found there was no need for a debatable classification of brands of communism that might serve as a causal link in the chain to connect interwar characteristics—like the level of social and economic development—with attributes of the political space after 1989. Nor do I think factors like the interwar level of industrialization, urbanization, or mobilization of the working class predetermined the post1989 political constellation. (It did not even determine the interwar political constellation, which is clear from a comparison between economic and political developments in Germany and Czechoslovakia.) Economic liberalization, as a backlash after communism, happened everywhere, especially in Poland and Hungary. However, in these countries, another interwar tradition also returned: national conservatism. Its presence in Hungary became so strong that liberal economists found themselves on the parliamentary left. If Václav Klaus—a “conservative ideologist”62 and “without a doubt, the most successful leader of a post-communist nation in Europe”63— 62 This is a term Hanley uses when referring to Klaus’s repositioning of himself as a conservative, rather than a liberal, after he became chairman of Civic Forum in October 1990. See Hanley, The New Right in the New Europe, 172. 63 Klaus, Renaissance, xi.

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had been Hungarian, he might soon have been called a leftist, either as a member of the liberal SZDSZ (Alliance of Free Democrats) or like fellow banker Lajos Bokros, the privatization expert turned “neoliberal” finance minister of the governing Socialists. The Hungarian conservative-nationalist right secured a role for the “market versus state” debate as a cleavage between liberals and socialists, but it was a neglected issue in the fight between left and right. The reason for the emergence and success of the post-1989 Czech right can be found less in the relative vigor of the liberal tradition than in the lack of alternatives: nationalism, conservatism, or both acting and boosting each other. Pre-1918 Czech nationalism was exceptional in the region in being strongly anti-nobility, anti-Habsburg, and anti-Catholic: essentially, anti-conservative. This also became characteristic in the new Czechoslovak state, the least conservative in the region, and as nationalism subsided with the excessive accomplishment of its main purpose (the creation of a state for the nation), it also became the least nationalistic. These traits may be called leftist. However, the picture is more telling if seen in terms of the four basic ideologies: Czechoslovakia was the most liberal (democratic) and the most socialist (egalitarian) EastCentral European state, and concurrently the most anti-conservative (modernist, future-oriented) and the most anti-nationalist (internationally oriented). This Czech political course was not at all predetermined (for instance, by social factors like urbanization or industrialization). One can imagine various counterfactual events in Czech history that could have acted as switches to a different development path. If Czech politicians like František Ladislav Rieger had been successful in their fight for Czech autonomy within the Habsburg monarchy or in turning the Austro-Hungarian dualist state into a multinational federation, Czechs would have been more inclined to identify with the Habsburg state; all the more so if the historic Czech kingdom had been partitioned after World War I by the secession of its German-inhabited parts. There would certainly also have been less support for Western ideas if this ethnic partition had been approved by the United States and/or Britain and France. An inward-looking, self-victimizing nationalism could also have resulted from the Munich Diktat, had it not been reversed with Soviet backing. Nationalism could equally have grown to become a major political force after 1989 if there had remained a substantial and vocal Sudeten German minority within the borders of Czechoslovakia demanding the right to self-determination, or if their former transfer (odsun) had caused serious conflict with 123

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Germany, or if the Český Těšín/Cieszyn dispute had reemerged.64 Or if instead of the “velvet divorce” (sametový rozvod), “one of the very few peaceful dissolutions of a state in modern European history,”65 the separation process with Slovakia had turned violent. It is tempting to assume the collapse of Czechoslovakia—as opposed to that of Yugoslavia—was bound to be peaceful for economic and social reasons. Unlike the Yugoslav core state (Serbia), the Czech half of the country was stronger, more populous, more developed, and less dependent on the weaker, seceding part. The Švejk mentality toward the military was in stark contrast to the allegedly widespread Krajina military tradition of “banditry and the practice of merciless looting and plundering,” which one noted commentator quoted as a factor behind the devastating war.66 Even so, Czechoslovak partition would have carried a risk of severe conflict if the internal border had not coincided with the ethnic dividing line of the two communities.67 In the event there was an atmosphere of regained liberty; with Lucie Bílá’s clip “Láska je láska” (Love is love) screaming from Czech TV stations like an anthem of tolerance, it did not occur to ordinary Czechs or the political elite to impede the self-determination the Slovaks sought. Czech nationalism appeared as a potent mobilizing ideology only at exceptional junctures in history, and even then as a seemingly anti-conservative force. Czech history thus produced two distinct, if loosely defined, ideological clusters that remained remarkably stable through the twentieth century. The first of these was the leftist tradition, marked by Russophilism, Slavophilism, progressivism, Czechoslovakism, nationalism, Hussite reformism, messianism, socialism, egalitarianism, anti-conservatism, anti-German and anti-nobility sentiments, and anti-Habsburg views of history. This tradition was more critical of capitalist market mechanisms and Western behavior at Munich, and more understanding of land expropriation and the expulsion of Sudeten Germans (odsun). In contrast, the second of these was the rightist tradition, displaying pro-Westernism, liberalism, free-market capitalism, anti-totalitarian64 This area was contested between Poland and Czechoslovakia after World War I and was the site of the brief Poland–Czechoslovakia War of 1919, also known as the Seven-day War (Sed­ midenní válka). Before being invaded by Nazi Germany, Poland retook the region in 1938. 65 Klaus, Renaissance, xiii. 66 Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War (London: Penguin, 1996), 5. 67 In terms of these factors the recent conflicts between Russia and Ukraine are unsurprising, as the disappointing termination of a longstanding anomaly.

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ism, Catholicism, traditionalism, and conservatism. This tradition was more critical of symbolic matters like Czechoslovakism, political issues like land expropriation and odsun, and economic strategies like central planning, and more balanced over the Habsburg, Catholic, Germanic, and noble heritage. To summarize these two in a simplified model (more telling than a traditional left‒right line), it can be said in the Czech context that the main cleavage is between an Eastward-looking, nationalist-leaning egalitarianism and a Westward-looking liberalism friendly to conservatism (see Figure 3.2).68 Conversely, in Hungary’s case (without elaborating on specific divisions outside the scope of this study), the most typical, established ideological divide is between an anti-conservative, anti-nationalist “alliance” vacillating between socialism and liberalism and an anti-modern, inward-looking conservative nationalism (see Figure 3.3).69 This basic difference is usually concealed behind Liberalism

Socialism

Liberalism

Conservatism

Socialism

Nationalism

Conservatism

Nationalism

Figure 3.2 The dominant Czech politico-ideological cleavage in the twentieth century

Figure 3.3. The dominant Hungarian politico-ideological cleavage in the twentieth century

68 This is, of course, a simplified picture, for politicians like Karel Kramář (the nationalist first prime minister of Czechoslovakia, a Russophile but also anti-Bolshevik) and Masaryk (a Westerner, a liberal democrat, yet leader of the national project of founding the Czechoslovak state), or important political parties like the Agrarians (defending the interests of a traditional form of production, yet egalitarian and anti-conservative in approving the land reform) cannot be coherently classified. Yet these opposing idea clusters shaped the main political discourses in Czechoslovakia through most of the twentieth century, becoming determinant at times of revolutionary change like 1945‒48 and the post-1989 period. 69 This seems to be the main reason why Roger Scruton, reviewing the Czechoslovak, Polish, and Hungarian opposition movements in 1988, struggled—especially in the last case—to find traces of any essentially conservative-liberal “New Right.” He blames this on a “fundamental divide and tensions” between liberal-democratic urbanists and country-based populists. See Roger Scruton, “The New Right in Central Europe II: Poland and Hungary,” Political Stud­ ies 36, no. 4 (1988): 638–652.

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a nominal similarity in the terminology used for them. Analysts of both spectra talk of a “socialist left” and a “conservative right.” This ostensible identity disguises the way the politico-ideological fields run mainly along diagonally opposite axes. This overall pattern, remarkably stable over the twentieth century, may fade in the longer term. Václav Klaus, for example, began quite early to construct a new Czech national narrative, with symbolic actions referring to remote historical times, and connecting Czech virtues with ideas of modern liberalism.70 National liberal thinking appears in his Euroskeptic preference for a Europe based on nation-states and the concurrent rejection of centralization and bureaucratic redistribution. Yet, the age-old, long-term bipolarity lives on at some political moments, for instance, in the 2013 presidential campaign, when the left-wing populist Miloš Zeman defended the Beneš decrees against the liberal-conservative Karel Schwarzenberg, who argued that deporting the Germans after World War II had been so grave a violation of human rights that any similar action today would lead to a political leader being prosecuted at The Hague. Compared to the contemporary Hungarian and Polish political scene, Czech moderate right still seems unique and distinctive in combining conservatism more with liberalism than with nationalism.

Bibliography Abrams, Bradley F. The Struggle for the Soul of the Nation: Czech Culture and the Rise of Communism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004. Benda, Václav, Jiří Ruml, and Jana Sternová. “Právo na dějiny” [The right to history]. Charter 77 document no. 11/84. (May 20, 1984). Charta2007.cz. Accessed March 7, 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20070707172655/http://www.charta2007.cz/ index.php?sh=dokum/7. Bibó, István. “A kelet-európai kisállamok nyomorúsága” [The misery of the small East European states]. In Válogatott tanulmányok [Selected essays], vol. 2., 158‒265. Budapest: Magvető Könyvkiadó, 1986. Bobbio, Norberto. Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction. Translated and introduced by Allan Cameron. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. 70 Consider, for instance, his speech prophesying a bright future delivered in September 1993 from the summit of the Říp mountain in North Bohemia, the legendary site where the mythical forefather, Čech, looked down like Moses on the promised land of the Czechs. See ­K ieran Williams, “National Myths in the New Czech Liberalism,” in Myths and Nationhood, ed. Geoffrey Hos­ king and George Schöpflin (London: C. Hurst & Co., 1997), 136.

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Charter 77. “Charta 77—text prohlášení.” Totalita.cz. Accessed September 29, 2014. http://www.totalita.cz/txt/txt_ch77_dok_1977_01_01.php. Deegan-Krause, Kevin. Elected Affinities: Democracy and Party Competition in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. Dimond, Mark. “The Sokol and Czech Nationalism, 1918–1948.” In Czechoslovakia in a Nationalist and Fascist Europe, 1918–1948, edited by Mark Cornwall and R. J. W. Evans, 185–205. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Eyal, Gil. “Anti-Politics and the Spirit of Capitalism: Dissidents, Monetarists, and the Czech Transition to Capitalism.” Theory and Society 29, no. 1 (Feb 2000): 49–92. Glassheim, Eagle. “Ambivalent Capitalists: The Roots of Fascist Ideology among Bohemian Nobles, 1880–1938.” In Czechoslovakia in a Nationalist and Fascist Europe, 1918–1948, edited by Mark Cornwall and R. J. W. Evans, 27–43. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. ———. Noble Nationalists: The Transformation of the Bohemian Aristocracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Glenny, Misha. The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War. London: Penguin, 1996. Hanák, David. České Konzervativní Myšlení. Brno: Studio Arx, 2007. Hanley, Seán. The New Right in the New Europe: Czech Transformation and Right-Wing Politics, 1989–2006. Abingdon: Routledge, 2008. Hayek, F. A. “Why I Am Not a Conservative.” In The Constitution of Liberty: The Defin­ itive Edition, edited by Ronald Hamowy, 519–33. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011. Hloušek, Vít, and Lubomír Kopeček. Origin, Ideology and Transformation of Political Parties: East-Central and Western Europe Compared. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010. Kelly, David D. The Czech Fascist Movement 1922–1942. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1995. Kitschelt, Herbert. “Formation of Party Cleavages in Post-Communist Democracies: Theoretical Propositions.” Party Politics 1, no. 4 (1995): 447–72. ———. The Formation of Party Systems in Eastern Europe. Ithaca, NY: Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, 1991. Kitschelt, Herbert, Zdenka Mansfeldova, Radoslaw Markowski, and Gábor Tóka. PostCommunist Party Systems: Competition, Representation, and Inter-Party Cooperation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Klaus, Václav. Proč jsem konzervativcem? Prague: Top Agency, 1992. ———. Renaissance: The Rebirth of Liberty in the Heart of Europe. Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 1997. Pirie, Madsen. “Why F A Hayek is a Conservative.” In Hayek—On the Fabric of Human Society, edited by Eamonn Butler and Madsen Pirie, 147–67. London: Adam Smith Institute, 1987. Prečan, Vilém. “Charter 77 in the Struggle for Human Rights and Civil Liberties: Policy Statement of the International Conference Project.” Charta2007.cz. Accessed March 7, 2022, https://web.archive.org/web/20121214003410/http://www.charta2007.cz/index.php?lang=en. Schweitzer, András. “Modern politikai ideológiák, baloldaliság és jobboldaliság a XX. század végén” [Modern political ideologies, left and right at the end of the ­t wentieth 127

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century]. MA thesis (unpublished), Nemzetközi Kapcsolatok Tanszék [Faculty of International Relations], Budapesti Közgazdaságtudományi Egyetem [Budapest University of Economic Sciences], 1996. ———. “Tengelytörés: A jobb- és a baloldal fogalmi problémáihoz” [Broken axes: On the conceptual problems of Left and Right]. In Búvópatakok—Mélyfúrások [Underground streams—Deep drillings], edited by János M. Rainer, 13–54. Budapest: Országos Széchenyi Könyvtár – 1956-os Intézet Alapítvány, 2014. Scruton, Roger. “The New Right in Central Europe I: Czechoslovakia.” Political Stud­ ies 36, no. 3 (1988): 449–62. ———. “The New Right in Central Europe II: Poland and Hungary.” Political Studies 36, no. 4 (1988): 638–52. Simon, János. “Két lábon álló demokrácia, avagy mit jelent a politikai elit számára a baloldal és a jobboldal?” [Democracy standing on two legs, or what does left and right mean for the political elite?] Politikatudományi szemle 8, no. 2 (1999): 95–116. Szabad Demokraták Szövetsége. A rendszerváltás programja [The program of regime change]. Budapest: Szabad Demokraták Szövetsége, 1989. Trapl, Miloš. Political Catholicism and the Czechoslovak People’s Party in Czechoslovakia, 1918–1938. Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 1995. Tucker, Aviezer. “Shipwrecked: Patočka’s Philosophy of Czech History.” History and The­ ory 35, no. 2 (May 1996): 196–216. Vachudová, Milada Anna, and Tim Snyder. “Are Transitions Transitory? Two Types of Political Change in Eastern Europe Since 1989.” East European Politics and Societies 11, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 1–35. Vaculík, Ludvík. “2000 slov, které patří dělníkům, zemědělcům, úředníkům, umělcům a všem” [2000 words that belong to workers, farmers, officials, artists, and everyone]. Literární listy 1, no. 18 (June 27, 1968): 1–3. Vodička, Karel, and Ladislav Cabada. Politický Systém České Republiky: Historie a Současnost. [The political system of the Czech Republic: History and present]. Prague: Portál, 2007. Williams, Kieran. “National Myths in the New Czech Liberalism.” In Myths and Nation­ hood, edited by Geoffrey Hosking and George Schöpflin, 132–40. London: C. Hurst & Co., 1997. Wolchik, Sharon. “The Right in Czech-Slovakia.” In Democracy and Right-Wing Poli­ tics in Eastern Europe in the 1990s, edited by Joseph Held, 61–87. Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 1993.

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CHAPTER FOUR

CONSERVATIVE RIGHT-WING POLITICAL THINKING IN HUNGARY AFTER 1945 János M. Rainer

Conservative right-wing political thinking was banned from official discourse in Hungary throughout the period of the Soviet-type system. The right (and all things right-wing) could never be a participant, but merely an object—that of unilateral censure, or of police or criminal action. From the communist takeover that followed Hungary’s defeat in World War II and its occupation by the Red Army, until 1956, there was not the slightest chance of public reappraisal of the Hungarian right-wing tradition. Nor was there time for it during the 1956 revolution: it was as if the Hungarian right-wing tradition had been cut off at the end of World War II. However, this was belied by the events after 1989, which showed it was very much still in existence and was soon staking a claim for a place on the political scene. The question here is how and why that happened. What happened to the Hungarian right-wing tradition during the period of the Soviet-type system, and what happened to its representatives, those who espoused its political ideology, program, and system of values? Three issues will be explored here. First, the intellectual basis of the Hungarian conservative right-wing tradition is considered, with reference to its emergence and development. Next, the development of the organizational presence of Hungarian right-wing political ideology is examined up to and across (if only a little) the historic boundary of 1945. Lastly, some hypothetical ideas are outlined about the post-1945 position of the main social group that espoused the system of values associated with this ideology in their daily lives.

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The Hungarian conservative right-wing tradition1 In order to outline the intellectual basis of interwar conservative political thinking, it is best to turn to its paradigmatic figure, the historian Gyula Szekfű (1883–1955). Central to his value system were the concepts of justice, Christianity, and Hungariandom (magyarság). His career divides into two contrasting periods. The first, up to the turn of the 1930s, was an attempt to base Hungarian conservatism on a bourgeois, reform-conservative concept of nation. The second, from the 1940s onward, was marked by merciless criticism of the social status quo (above all the position of the middle class). His criticism of the interwar establishment ultimately paved the way after 1945 for his resigned acceptance of the Soviet occupation and consequent communist dominance. Szekfű was never a self-proclaimed political thinker or an ideologist. He worked with a system of signals and reference points. Szekfű’s ideal was the great nineteenth-century conservative reformer István Széchenyi, from whose inconsistencies he assembled an idealized figure. Széchenyi, according to Szekfű’s interpretation, wished Hungary to achieve renewal on its own merits, without upheavals, through Christian morality. Cultivation of the “Hungarian fallow” (a metaphor Széchenyi used to capture the backwardness of the country) must first begin with its realistic assessment, and has to be based on actualizing the potentials inherent in what he saw as genuine Hungarian virtues. The latter he ranged around rational, yet ethical concepts of nationhood and public rationality. Szekfű, notably in his major 1920 essay Három nemzedék (Three generations), criticized Hungarian liberalism and Hungarian capitalism as generators of Hungarian decline. He saw the liberals as driven by the abstract ideas of equality, liberty, and rationality. Yet, the struggle of equals became a life-and-death struggle of unequals, in which most of Hungary’s nobility and urban bourgeoisie perished. Meanwhile, they had neglected Hungarian traditions. When it came to politics, they put the question of Hungary’s status within the Habsburg Empire and the problem of Hungarian domination of non-Hungarian nationalities to the fore, which in Szekfű’s view was a grave and sinful mistake. They introduced capitalism to nineteenth-century Hungary in a hasty, inorganic way. 1 See the introductory study to Ignác Romsics, ed., A magyar jobboldali hagyomány, 1900–1948 (Budapest: Osiris, 2009); also János Gyurgyák, ed., Mi a politika? Bevezetés a politika világá­ ba, 2nd ed. (Budapest: Osiris, 1999), 300–353.

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The nation of “warriors and lawyers” (the prominent occupations of the nobility-based middle class) had failed to turn into the nation of industrialists and merchants, as a consequence of which the leading positions in the bourgeois economy came to be held by the Jews. Hungary, he opined, belonged to what he called the Christian-Germanic cultural sphere—and did so not merely since the rule of the Habsburgs from the sixteenth century on, but ever since the establishment of the Hungarian state in the eleventh century by King St. Stephen, Hungary’s first monarch. This cultural sphere was defined in his view by the Christian concept of respect and the Germanic idea of freedom, which Szekfű distinguished from Graeco-Roman civilization. While he saw the latter as marked by unbounded liberty, not limited by respect for authority, Germanic freedom, in his view, rested on the principles of equity and suum cuique (the concept of “to each his own”), in which eminence was based on merit. Those who, in Szekfű’s view, wanted to divert Hungary from this principle—whether they endorsed radical liberal ideas, class-based understandings of society, or an ethno-racial perception of the nation—all posed a danger. The Hungarian aspect of the Christian conservative state was provided by its Hungarian character, something Szekfű did not idealize. In fact, he firmly criticized its “anti-capitalist talent,” aversion to financial matters, convulsive attachment to the gentry (that is, official-state) professions, self-deception, total lack of political realism, and so on. All this derived from the fact that the Hungarian middle class had largely emerged from the petty nobility—the Hungarian third estate—and it had remained defined by this gentry, because Vienna’s economic policy precluded industrialization, and there was no other model group available. Change, Szekfű argued, entailed abandoning gentry exclusiveness and the gentry mentality, and merging with the intelligentsia and the emerging peasant bourgeois strata. The Jews were flooding into the business professions, but ultimately failed to become an integral and organic part of the Hungarian nation. Jewish assimilation in Szekfű’s view remained unsuccessful, because Jews retained their “national” features: a capitalistic spirit, intellectualism, belief in teleology, voluntarism, and mobility. Szekfű drew a distinction between Western and Eastern Jewry, saying that the latter were given to hair-splitting logic, chicanery, jest, pretentiousness, and fraud. This defined the culture of Budapest and engendered anti-Semitism. The critical overtones in Szekfű’s thinking became more strident in the mid1930s. A further text appended to the 1934 fifth edition of Három nemzedék, 131

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entitled …és ami utána következik (And what comes after) contained sharp political and moral criticism of Horthyite public affairs. He drew the situation in paradoxical terms: alongside the Jewish question, he included the generation problem, the land question, and the predicament of Hungarians cut off from their country by the borders established after World War I in the treaty of Trianon. Yet, his last major work of historical politics, Forradalom után (After the revolution), published in 1947, envisaged eliminating Hungarian conservatism altogether. As he saw it, the time was ripe for revolution after a total postwar collapse of Hungary’s middle class. The main intellectual opponents of Hungarian conservatism in the interwar period were the so-called populist (népi) writers.2 These intellectuals’ interest in the common people formed one of several East European peasant versions of populism, all of which shared a number of similarities. These included the empirical basis for their understanding of society (based on research of rural communities), demands for radical land reform, the endorsement of peasant democracy along a Scandinavian model, and an overall approach imbued with notions of third-road socialism. The populist ideological coalition was open also to neo-conservative and radical right-wing sets of values, manifest especially in the suspicion toward a democratic system of political institutions. Their prime purpose, the liberation of the peasantry, was sought through a realistic system of rights and freedoms, rather than the for­ mal rights of liberal democracy. Among the most effective of their ideologues, the prose writer, physician, and auto-didactic historian László Németh built his anti-Marxist, quality socialism upon the individual spirit of enterprise and the principle of equality, from which combination he expected to see a new nobility emerge, an intelligentsia of “guardians of quality.” Németh viewed the disruptions in the coexistence of Hungarians and Jews as one of the key Hungarian issues. He had no doubts about defining the Jews as a people (a race, an ethnicity), and he too questioned the success of assimilation. While he condemned what he saw as the excessive inclination of writers of Jewish origin to accuse their critics of anti-Semitism, he also rejected the “Talmudbased, jocular” hatred toward the Jews. He drew a line between “Jewish” and “Western” revolutionaries: 2 The word népi here corresponds to völkisch in German, rather than the English populist in the sense of pandering to popular feeling. They were advocates of the demotic who saw a ­specific Hungarian virtue in rural society.

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Where the instinct of the Jews [favors] disengagement, common land, common sky, the statelessness of Yahweh, the instinct of the West is to a higher [degree of] division, a hierarchy of abilities, the establishment of a state. The West also has a need for storms to blow away ruins, but no need for the slave instinct that rebels against Ancient Egypt even in the constructs of the West. Europe is a Greco-Roman creation, and Yahweh seeks to root out the Greco-Latin genius. Marx was essentially Yahweh’s man. What infuriates us about his revolution is not the necessary destruction it entails, but the lack of state-forming Europeanness. What it lacks is the Greek ferment: the quality of organization.3

Jewry, according to Németh, should organize itself into its own state, or be treated as a national minority if it were to remain in Hungary. Németh, like Szekfű, noted the increase in its socio-cultural role, but he emphasized that the Jews who were made scapegoats for Trianon now felt themselves morally superior. He claimed that Jews, therefore, were preparing to strike back and get their revenge in the form of communism. For not unrelated reasons, Németh’s notable works—above all the essay entitled Kisebbségben (In a minority)—present an extremely pessimistic picture of the dilution of the Hungarian nation which began in the eighteenth century. The central mission of his life’s work was to seek a remedy for this, which he thought he had found in a new kind of Hungarian self-awareness that was European and also sought a modus vivendi with neighboring nations. This would require a new middle class, drawn from the peasantry, and a new intellectual elite. The necessary third road at that moment, at the beginning of the 1940s, was a rejection of Nazism and communism and the promotion of Hungarian independence, along with cooperative and quality socialism. It meant encouraging a new Garden Hungary (as opposed to factory) and cohesion among the Danubian peoples, along with the spread of quality work at the expense of modern mass production (and concurrently of mass society), and constraints on private enterprise in the interests of the community.4 The radical right-wing ideology known as Hungarian racial defense can also be traced back to the Great War. Race defenders saw the Hungarians having 3 László Németh, “Két nép,” in Zsidó sebek és bűnök és más publicisztikák, ed. Károly Pap (Budapest: Múlt és Jövő, 2000), 94. 4 For a terse summary of Németh’s essay Magyar építészet (Hungarian architecture), see László Németh, A minőség forradalma: Kisebbségben (Budapest: Püski, 1992), 1334–42.

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emerged historically as one race, with a mission to nurture a Christian-based culture and take the lead in the Carpathian Basin. They used the concepts of race and nation alternately, often adopting a more flexible understanding of the former, according to which those assimilating to the nation would also be considered part of the community of Hungarians, so long as the process of integration was completed “fully.” The race defenders espoused a program of building a radically new, “third Hungary,” one that would reject and supersede both the “first” Hungary of the gentry (úri Magyarország), marked by the rule of traditional ruling elites, and the “second,” the “Jewish Hungary,” defined by the influence of urban-capitalist values. They sought a total replacement of the elite and were militant anti-Semites. The main goals of their political program were the establishment of an agrarian Hungary, based on a land reform that would eliminate large estates (those over around 600 hectares) and redistribute them among the landless; the creation of “Hungarian” private property “limited by the interest of the public”; extension of the system of social insurance; the empowerment of the workers by making them shareholders; the reorganization of cultural life along Hungarian values; and a “national” school system that emphasized physical education. Yet, what was conceived as an elaborate program of reform, often translated, as the historian János Gyurgyák notes, into mere nativist protectionism, into a dream of a flourishing and organic Hungary sealed into an ethnic microcosm: By the time this ideology reached the rank and file of the racial defense movement, nothing remained of it but a wish list: to back our racial brethren by all means possible, read Christian and racially Hungarian books and papers, employ exclusively Hungarian artisans, buy from racially Hungarian traders, and turn only to our Hungarian brethren for medical and legal advice.5

Politically, the racial defense movement remained a seemingly insignificant opposition party during the 1920s. Yet, its concept of nation and social awareness had a great impact on public discourse, influencing both conservatism and the populist movement that criticized the extant Hungarian political system from the left. The ideas of the race defenders gained major social sup5 János Gyurgyák, Ezzé lett magyar hazátok: A magyar nemzeteszme és nacionalizmus története (Budapest: Osiris, 2007), 250.

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port as a political program during the interwar era. This fear of destabilization from the extreme right was one of the major reasons why Prime Minister István Bethlen, one of the main architects of the interwar conservative regime, curtailed the franchise. Unlike race defenders, who subscribed to a definition of race that was more cultural than biological, adherents of Hungarian racial theory trimmed their views directly to the German pattern (and, to a lesser extent, the French). It is hard to posit any unified Hungarian fascist ideology.6 The many small national socialist parties differed ideologically, not just personally; furthermore, their views were confused and self-contradictory. When they received 25 percent of the vote in 1939 (their largest electoral success),7 quarrels between their parliamentary factions broke out immediately. Yet, during the elections, one of these fractions, the Arrow Cross Party under the leadership of Ferenc Szálasi, emerged as the most important group within the fragmented fascist movement—coming even to power after Hungary’s occupation by Nazi Germany in 1944.8 He saw the ideology of his movement, called Hungarism, as the Hungarian version of the unified national socialist world view, but it departed from the original in rejecting German imperialism and superiority and placing not race, but a “total” nation, at its center. The latter was understood as a kind of natural community of destiny, led by an infallible leader. This socialnationale would free workers, peasants, and intelligentsia alike from self-centeredness, materialism, and ungodliness. A new people’s community would arise: the peasantry would sustain the nation, the workers would build the nation, the intelligentsia would lead and direct it, the military would protect it, and women and children would be guarantors of its eternity. The history of Hungarian political thought culminating in 1945 is a multifaceted story. If we look at the ideological palette of the time and consider the extant political groupings along the left-right axis, what we find to the 6 See Kevin Passmore, Fascism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Michael Mann, Fascists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); and Constantin Iordachi, Charisma, Politics and Violence: The Legion of the “Archangel Michael” in In­ ter-war Romania (Trondheim: Trondheim Studies on East European Cultures and Societies 15, 2004). 7 This was despite the fact that they did not stand everywhere. In areas where they did manage to field a candidate, they obtained 40 percent or more of the vote in some cases. 8 The spiked heraldic cross barbée was adopted by several Hungarian groups analogous to the Nazis, notably the Arrow Cross Party, which was in government from October 15, 1944, to March 28, 1945.

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right of the hypothetical center are at least part of the popular ideological coalition (although its center of gravity is strongly to the left, with some of its branches reaching as far as the extreme left), the large, era-defining bloc of conservatives, characterized by Prime Minister Count István Bethlen and Gyula Szekfű, and on the fringes the camp of race defenders and subscribers to various radical, Nazi, and Arrow Cross thought systems—with whom, incidentally, more than one representative of the populist ideology came into close ideological contact in the 1940s. Before the end of the war, the diversity of the right led to a varied system of relations. Bethlenite conservatism (prone to present itself as of the center) became receptive to some populist ideas for reform, which would indeed, in principle, have brought a shift toward the center. Yet, it continued to reject the main consensus demand on the likewise heterogeneous left, as it did not seek radical democratization of the political structure; in this respect, Bethlenite conservatism found itself closer to the populists, who were also reluctant to commit themselves to Western-style institutions of democracy. Conservative terminology remained fully understandable to the extreme right, as it had been in the early 1920s. At least, the entire anti-Semitic discourse formed a somewhat common linguistic space, one that was also understood by populists whose range extended to the left. Nor were the main extreme right topics (social reforms, professionalist government, and so forth) alien to the conservatives, even if they ruled out and even feared radical subversion. The remnants of Hungarian right-wing political thinking failed in 1945 to account for themselves or the previous half-century. Szekfű’s Forradalom után advocated a symbiosis with the Soviet-type system, for which he did not have to abandon the anti-liberalism of the right-wing tradition of the last five decades. The conservatives who remained politically active for a while saw no need for self-examination.9 They sought to ride out the period up to the peace treaty—which they hoped would end the country’s Soviet occupation—by seeking political shelter within parties on the center-right of postwar Hungarian politics. Another strand of conservatives attempted the same in something approaching a Catholic community of suffering headed by the charismatic primate, Archbishop József Mindszenty. Within the heterogeneity of the Hungarian right-wing, there are a number of shared ideological and linguistic elements. These are, in my view: 9 See the introduction to this volume, at 15–17.

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a. Anti-liberalism, the mildest, historico-political version of which was criticism of Hungary under the Dual Monarchy, and at the other pole outright acceptance and propagation of Nazi dictatorship. Anti-liberalism extended to distrust, insensitivity, or rejection of the system of democratic rights and institutions. b. Anti-Semitism was the Hungarian right’s distinct version of anti-capitalism and anti-modernism. It had been integral to public discourse in Hungary since the Great War and the crisis in the Horthy/Bethlen system. Naturally, there was a huge difference between the anti-Semitism of the conservatives who thought in terms of restricting Jews while fundamentally rejecting the ethnic concept of Jewishness, and the anti-Semitism of the populists, or that of the extreme right. c. The organic idea of the nation also rested on anti-capitalism and anti-modernism. Essentially, affiliation to the Hungarian nation and the belonging to Hungariandom (magyarság) as a value in itself overrode any other identity. Indeed, it was hardly possible to sustain another identifying factor alongside it. One major differentiating factor to spring from the organic idea of the nation was its relation to other nations. The concept of a Hungarian political nation, dominant under the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, all but coexisted with the organic idea in the Hungarian version of conservatism, for it was clear that wholesale territorial revision based on an organic, ethnic idea of the nation was impossible. The spread of that idea followed from the advance of the right and was allied closely to efforts toward Hungarian supremacy, Hungarian hegemony in the Carpathian Basin, and anti-Semitism. d. The Hungarian right-wing strands between the wars agreed at several points on their concept of the role of the state. Seeing the Great War as the demise of liberalism raised the value attached to the role of the state, along with its interventions in the market and in the economic and social processes of competition. With economic and social coordination, the right gave preference to bureaucratic reallocation. There were big differences, of course, in the scale and emphasis of etatism. The strong state of the conservatives was, above all, a tool for attaining and maintaining social stability, for which its various interventions were made (for instance, in social policy or in the form of limited socioeconomic reforms). In contrast, whether we look at the concept of the state held 137

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by the race defenders and the Arrow Cross, or at the conception endorsed by the populists, the state is always considered to be the initiator and agent of radical economic, social, and cultural changes. Some examples include the radical land reforms, confiscation and redistribution of Jewish property, radical restriction and close state control of large-scale capital in general, and support given to small-scale agricultural production. Most of the populists, especially their left wing, intended of course a big role for civil social initiatives, and for self-management schemes such as cooperatives. e. Another common denominator was anti-communism, but the rejection of the Soviet experiment was by no means equal among the conservatives, the populist right, or the radical left. The conservatives were strongest in their blanket anti-communism, rejecting any revolutionary legitimacy, egalitarian ideology, anti-clericalism, and expropriation of property. The populists and the Arrow Cross were far more tolerant of revolutionary intervention in property relations, had fewer problems with anti-religious attitudes, and felt express sympathy for some features of the Soviet-type system (such as central planning and central bureaucratic redistribution). f. If democracy is defined in procedural attributes, as in the elitist Schumpeterian concept, most of the Hungarian right tended to be anti-democratic. If they contrasted democracy with any positive alternative, it was with the role of the excellent few and their right to lead: those with a calling of some kind (the intelligentsia of László Németh) or even the entire Hungarian race, as the Arrow Cross envisaged. Hungarian right-wing political ideology was not static. Ideas of reform arose even among the conservatives, prompted by the 1930s depression, competition in the right-wing sphere, and the challenge from the Hungarian left. The emerging fascism and populist social criticism were not only a danger to that ideology, but also a source of ideological nourishment, offering elements for incorporation.10 This reforming potential—from Pál Teleki to the Magyar Szemle11—dynamized and enriched the Hungarian tradition. Moreover, the 10 Gyula Juhász, Uralkodó eszmék Magyarországon 1939–1944 (Budapest: Kossuth, 1983). 11 In English, “Hungarian Review.” This general reform-conservative journal arose as a civil initiative chaired by István Bethlen in 1927. Its initial editor-in-chief was Gyula Szekfű; from December 1938, the literary historian Sándor Eckhardt took over. It survived until March 1944.

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cautious and slow movement that characterized conservatism did not characterize the Hungarian version in the final decade of the tradition’s formation. However, it was not given the chance to reach its full potential.

Refuges All summaries of the history of ideas in Hungary agree in discussing the twentieth-century Hungarian right-wing only up to the point when two important conditions still prevail. One is the (relatively) free public discourse of political ideas; the other is the organizational background that translates political ideologies into programs and is ready to validate and represent them (parties, social movements, press organs, and debating forums). Both conditions were met up to the mid-1940s, at which point a marked change occurred: free discourse ended and the institutional background disappeared. The main institutional frame for conservatism was the governing party (under various names) and its background, partner, and intellectually allied institutions. The governing party was diverse, embracing old-style conservatives, liberal conservatives, conservative reformers, and extreme right racial defense strands. However, its intellectual fulcrum was conservatism in its Bethlenite liberal/conservative form. The two fringes of the rightwing spectrum were also marked by a rich organizational structure. The populist ideological coalition did not manage, at least before the war, to frame itself as a party,12 its members defining themselves as a community and staying in separate organizations and groups on the left (or incorporating left-wingers) and in some cases the radical right. The far right in the Horthy period spread over many diverse political organizations. The number of parties alone was over fifty, ranging from Gyula Gömbös’s National Independence (Racial Defense) Party to the Arrow Cross and Hungarist parties and alliances.13 One could, however, also mention the various movements and mass organizations on the far right, from the Association of Awakening Hungar12 The March Front movement (1937–38) might have produced a political party, but the National Peasants Party appeared only in 1939, did not run in that year’s elections, and showed no appreciable activity up to 1944. 13 On Gyula Gömbös, prime minister between 1932 and 1936 and a defining figure of Hungarian interwar rightwing radicalism, see Jenő Gergely, Gömbös Gyula: Politikai pályakép (Budapest: Vince, 2001); and József Vonyó, “Gömbös Gyula jobboldali radikalizmusa,” in A mag­ yar jobboldali hagyomány, 1900–1948, ed. Ignác Romsics (Budapest: Osiris, 2009), 243–74.

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ians to the Hungarian National Defense Association. To advance its ideas, the right had a profuse press and book publishing wing of varying standard and significance, of which only the radical anti-establishment “white revolutionary” papers were seized occasionally, although the Arrow Cross leaders were under the surveillance of the secret police and a number of them were even prosecuted for incitement. The history of the right-wing tradition ended in 1944–45 rather than 1948, and certainly no later. There was no institutional place for the right in post-1945 politics, even if only the extreme race defender/Arrow Cross right was clearly and fully excluded, both institutionally and from discourse. In practice, no right-wing party could be founded due to the armistice agreement, which placed direct blame for the war on the Arrow Cross parties and the governing party. No party could be formed by conservative reformers or “liberals” of the governing party (admirers of Pál Teleki or István Bethlen) either. For a while, it seemed the liberal wing of the conservatives and the conservative oppositionists (like the legitimists, that is, those who considered Charles IV, the last Habsburg king, as the legitimate ruler of Hungary) might feature.14 Stalin presumably even pondered reviving the Horthy government, following the pattern of Marshal Mannerheim in Finland. If so, it was probably the expected reactions of Edvard Beneš and the Romanians that deterred him, not the views of Mátyás Rákosi, who had attributed blame to Horthy since 1943. Horthy never returned. Although the first statement of the Provisional National Assembly began with his name, Molotov made it plain at the Moscow talks in October 1944 on forming a government that the new administration would not be an integral continuation of the Horthy regime or the Holy Crown of Hungary.15 As for Bethlen, the central figure of the liberals, he 14 Legitimists were seen as an acceptable political partner in 1945 because they had been constitutionally opposed to the Horthy regime and were also inherently anti-Nazi. However, this favorable perception did not last long. 15 Negotiations in Moscow took place in the first two weeks of October 1944 between the armistice delegation sent by Horthy and the Soviet leadership. After Horthy’s attempt to exit the war failed on October 15, the delegation remained in the Soviet capital and was joined by other defecting generals of the Hungarian Army. The Soviet government regarded this group as the nucleus of a Hungarian provisional government. Péter Gosztonyi, Magyarország a má­ sodik világháborúban, II. köt: Magyarország hadszíntér (Munich: HERP, 1984), 111–208; István Vida, ed., Iratok a magyar–szovjet kapcsolatok történetéhez 1944. október–1948. június (Budapest: Gondolat, 2005).

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was soon removed from the political scene.16 Most legitimists (such as György Pallavicini, Géza Pálffy, and Iván Lajos) met a similar fate in 1946.17 However, some individuals like Szekfű managed to remain members of the new establishment into the years following the takeover by Rákosi’s communist party. Only the reform conservatives loyal to the ideas of Teleki set out to create some small organizational and intellectual islands. One possible example was the short-lived Civic Democratic Party, which embraced conservative, liberal, and radical critics of the Horthy regime and was headed initially by Teleki’s son Géza, but the right’s loss of ground was only partly reflected in the party’s modest total of 1.6 percent of the vote in the general elections.18 The Smallholders’ Party, which won the 1945 elections by a huge margin, had also been in opposition during the interwar era, and belonged to the Horthy regime’s left-wing opposition. However, within this real and, to an extent, underground opposition, the party was on the right: its important leaders, such as Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky and Tibor Eckhardt, were right-wingers with a radical past and radical ties. In the political field which developed in December 1944, the Smallholders were the most important party, and could be judged in that situation as partly right-wing: it was not exclusively so, but such a strand was traditionally present. They drew conservative liberals, Teleki-ite reformers, and all who were unable to set up an organization of their own, yet who did not seem compromised as individuals. The latter included individuals who possessed a store of valuable political capital in the early months, earned by opposing the Germans, saving lives, and active work in the resistance. The Smallholders absorbed not only this layer of the right, but also the socialist side of Christian politics (Géza Pálffy, as well as István Barankovics’s attempts to form the Democratic People’s Party in 1945). But it was also here—or mainly here—that the cadres of the right-wing social move16 “If now, when right-wing elements have begun to be active in Hungary, above all in the ranks of the Smallholders’ Party and the Social Democratic Party . . . we allow political activity by experienced representatives of Hungarian reaction such as Bethlen, it will only strengthen the positions of the right-wing forces in the country,” Vladimir Georgievich Dekanozov, deputy people’s commissar of foreign affairs, wrote to Molotov on February 17, 1945, initiating the the removal of the now-arrested Bethlen to the Soviet Union. See “Szovjet levéltári dokumentumok Bethlen István elhurcolásáról és haláláról,” Rubicon 9–10 (2011): 16–17. 17 Gábor Murányi, Egy epizodista főszerepe: Lajos Iván történész élete és halála (Budapest: Noran, 2006). 18 The party left the coalition before the elections were held, so it no longer seemed worth voting for from a tactical point of view.

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ments were concentrated (at least what remained of them, such as the secretive Hungarian Fraternal Community).19 The nature of the Smallholders as a big tent party was also evident to contemporaries. Under communist pressure, groups were sliced off the right end of the left–right axis one by one: first came the expulsion of the Freedom Party and the Hungarian Fraternal Community (former reform conservatives), followed next by all those groups that would secede and run as opposition parties in the 1947 elections, right up to the peasant center and beyond. By 1947, the Smallholders Party no longer offered an organization or a forum for any right-wing force. Nor could any of the opposition parties in 1947 be seen to echo a right-wing political and organizational tradition (least of all the main force, the Democratic People’s Party, which was close to István Barankovics’s Christian socialist line). There was some personal continuity and some reflection of pre-1944 right-wing ideas—confined mainly to sanitized (though still recognizable) messages with pre-1944 Christian political content—but the right (or the “reactionary forces,” as labelled by those on the left) ceased to exist from an organizational point of view after 1944 and especially after 1947. In the period up to the end of communism in 1989, the 1956 revolution was the only moment when the Hungarian right might have organized a platform to make its voice heard again, but the time was too short for firm conclusions about the character of the parties emerging.20 Between 1944 and 1947, the Hungarian right simply disappeared. Worthy of mention is an event that, at its occurrence, may have seemed irrelevant to the right’s institutional background. The Hungarian populist movement evolved from a literary and critical school of thought into a political institution: initially, as a political alliance with left-wing students and intellectuals in 1937 named the March Front, and then as the National Peasant Party (NPP) two years later. The latter joined the Hungarian Front, the clandestine antiNazi organization of political parties and associations formed in 1944. Exiled Hungarian communists, thinking of their future, were encouraged by József Révai at the end of the 1930s to view the NPP as the major partner in an asyet-uncreated Hungarian people’s front. This was predestined by the criticism 19 For their antecedents, see István Papp, A népi kollégiumi mozgalom története 1944-ig (Budapest: Napvilág, 2008); and for their history, see Nóra Szekér, A Magyar Közösség története (Budapest: Norma Nyomdász Kft., 2010). 20 However, many elements of the right-wing tradition emerged in 1956. See Éva Standeisky, Nép­ uralom ötvenhatban (Bratislava/Budapest: Kalligram/1956-os Intézet, 2010).

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that the populist movement had leveled at the Horthy regime. The populists therefore integrated institutionally and intellectually into the interim system. For a time, they even sat on the extreme left as the main ally of the communist party, as it prepared to take power. On some questions, some of the Peasant Party intelligentsia held more radical views than the communists did (at least publicly). Accordingly, the Communist Party of Hungary could table its land reform proposals in the name of the NPP, for it was credible that the Peasant Party would be the strongest believers in land redistribution. The NPP commitment to cooperatives seemed stronger than the public position taken by the communists, and some of the populist writers were more enthusiastic about solving the Swabian question (by means of deporting Hungary’s native German population) than the communist interior minister was.21 The early political trials and retribution did not affect the NPP; nor did the prosecution of the Hungarian Fraternal Community. Of course, the populist ideological coalition was heavily truncated. Those sliced off from the populist tradition were not just individuals who had used extreme rightwing language and forums during the war (József Erdélyi, István Sinka, Géza Féja). They included László Németh and, in general, all who stood to the right of an ideological center now strongly skewed to the left, although the retribution for them was milder. The remaining populists became fellow travelers, treated more favorably than were the left wing of the Social Democrats. This was essentially the only sizable non-communist political group allowed to retain some of its identity, even if not intact. The populists were steered away from politics into the cultural field, into that of literary life, but this did not reduce their political significance within the classic, Soviet-type totalitarian system. For under that system all public appearances had political significance, especially authorial, literary manifestations, with their special place in Hungarian tradition. The importance of integrating the populists into the regime cannot be exaggerated with respect to the continuity of the right’s institutional history. The former ideological coalition between the populists and the right could be dismantled temporarily and its participants made to disown it, but its memory and network of solidarity could not be erased entirely. 21 Only one NPP official, István Bibó, was prepared to clash with Imre Nagy on this, rejecting the argument that local Germans bore collective responsibility for war crimes committed as members by collaborators of the German armed forces.

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Following the communist takeover, the traditional right was no longer a political factor. It no longer had any institutions, organizations, or publications. But its concepts and language did not disappear entirely. The two decisive features of the modern Hungarian right—firstly, an anti-liberalism inherited from neo-conservatism along with deep skepticism about democratic institutions; and secondly, an unclear relation to the Western market economy—was not alien to the communist party either. Nor, as Éva Standeisky has pointed out in several studies, was the anti-Semitic extension of anti-bourgeois sentiment.22 There was also similarity in the concept and methods of forced industrialization through state interventions, which were implemented as innovations by the prewar and wartime conservative systems alike.23 Far more of a contrast to the internationalism of communism was the normative, exclusionist conception of the nation (initially anti-Semitic but later extended to targeting any “aliens”). Yet, communist rhetoric retained the vocabulary of national independence even through the Rákosi period.24 There are several signs that Soviet leaders saw Hungarian society as expressly anti-Semitic and, in 1944–45, even toyed with making concessions to this.25 However, even the hyper-pragmatic Stalin could never countenance the modern turn in the Hungarian right-wing tradition, tied irrevocably to Trianon and territorial revision, because it would endanger the Pax Sovietica. Hungarian communists in 1945 took a uniform view of the right, as shown by the widespread adoption of the terms “reactionary forces” (reakció) and “Horthyite fascism.” The former embraced all opponents of Sovietization, while the latter term provided the former with a historical foundation.26 This huge conceptual bloc covered all right-wing strands of opinion; furthermore, depending on which way the political wind blew and what alliances were impending, it could also encompass left-wing ideological traditions that were, or 22 Éva Standeisky, Antiszemitizmusok (Budapest: Argumentum, 2007), especially 15–58. 23 György Lengyel, “Irányított gazdaság és tervgazdaság,” Medvetánc 1 (1981): 109–19; Miklós Szabó, Politikai kultúra Magyarországon 1896–1986: Válogatott tanulmányok (Budapest: Atlantisz Program, 1989), 217–24. 24 My attention was recently drawn to this again by the research of József Litkei. I am grateful to him for making his manuscript dissertation available to me. 25 Molotov, during the government-forming process in the winter of 1944, even stated at one point that Jews could not be government members. See Gosztonyi, Magyarország a második világháborúban. 26 See Bibó’s classic analytical study in “A magyar demokrácia válsága” [The crisis of Hungarian democracy], in Bibó István összegyűjtött munkái, ed. István Kemény and Mátyás Sárközi, vol. 1 (Bern: Európai Protestáns Magyar Szabadegyetem, 1981), 39–80.

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were seen to be, opposed to the communists: Christian socialists, bourgeois radicals, reform conservatives, left-wing populists, possibly the entirety of social democracy, and even various communist persons and organizations, from Pál Demény and Aladár Weishaus right across to János Kádár at one point. There were strong political purposes behind this vague and undifferentiated enemy image: it made it easy and intelligible to brand as fascist or Horthyite anyone who happened to stand in the way of the new regime. So it was beneath this vast, dark, homogeneous communist blanket over the right wing that a process of revision, reflection, and reinterpretation should have taken place, one where Hungarian conservatisms came to understand and explain their role in instigating the rise of the extreme right and to clarify where their paths forked, or should have forked by 1944 at the latest. However, the lack of appropriate conditions to do this made it impossible. The few initiatives that could be seen at least partly as intelligible analysis came from outside the right: for example, the criticisms of Bibó and Szekfű. The reform conservatives, conservatives, and extreme right radicals themselves sought refuges, and if they found them, planned new political arrangements that they saw as a realistic compromise. However, they did so uncritically, hardly reflecting on the new situation at all.27 Meanwhile, the mass base that supported the extreme right (or much of it) sought refuge immediately in the communist party. While one factor behind this may have been survival instinct, another was their affinity with the intentions of radically transforming society. Some of the conservative reformers sought shelter in the Smallholders Party, others in the revived Hungarian Fraternal Community around it. This hiding place was exposed at the beginning of 1947, when the communist secret police began to deal with the political category of reaction and Horthyism through secret investigations and criminal law.28 The institutional continuity of right-wing political thought did not succumb wholly to the communist takeover. There were still some illegal or semilegal refuges from it. 1. Few though they were, militant elements on the right continued to attempt underground forms of resistance. The so-called anti-communist con27 János M. Rainer, “A volt ‘keresztény középosztály’ és a demokrácia reménye,” in A demokrá­ cia reménye: Magyarország, 1945; Évkönyv, 13, ed. János M. Rainer and Éva Standeisky (Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 2005), 100–118. 28 Szekér, A Magyar Közösség története.

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spiracies and organizations that were revealed in the 1950s show that most participants had belonged to various extreme right-wing movements before 1945. Of course, it must be remembered that the Soviet-type regime, and before that the communist-controlled secret police, knew a great deal about the membership of the Arrow Cross and other movements. It was far easier to reveal and identify such organizations if, for instance, former Arrow Cross members were taking part in them. The situation was similar with the mainly young professional army or gendarmerie officers who tried to form illegal organizations, whether to gather intelligence for the West or to be ready in reserve for any political change or wartime crisis: their illegal refuges could not last long either. Even in 1956, several were still being discovered,29 but the role of any remnants in the 1956 revolution is barely discernible. After 1956, factors like the psychological effect of the defeat and the wave of emigration meant that such opposition largely disappeared and the resistance movement became still less discernible than it had been before 1956.30 Yet, the state security system remained on the lookout and found further ostensible refuges, as Éva Standeisky’s work shows.31 2. The sole surviving and potentially legal channel for the right’s political tradition lay within the populist ideological coalition and its informal networks, which also extended to the right. After the purge of 1945, the populist camp survived the darkest days of Stalinism partly as fellow travelers and partly as marginalized elements. After 1953, they began to cautiously resume semi-organized forms and appear before the public, although their identity was masked in code to some extent. Populist, third-road politics became a distinct factor again in 1956. The Petőfi Party, after shedding its compromised fellow travelers, became part of the revolutionary government coalition. Those politicians who took active part in the revolution were subjected to several waves of reprisals in a campaign that included the first comprehensive condemnation of the populist writers since József Révai’s assessment in 1938. However, this condemnation ultimately closed the campaign because the ruling party still attached importance to the populist left, relieved of those who had “drifted to the right,” particularly to major, symbolic figures in the movement. Dis29 Report by Mátyás Rákosi to the July 12, 1956 Politburo meeting of the Hungarian Workers Party. MOL M–KS 276. f. F. 2437. 30 On the concept of resistance, see János M. Rainer, Bevezetés a kádárizmusba (Budapest: 1956os Intézet/L’Harmattan, 2011), 79–92. 31 Standeisky, Antiszemitizmusok, 96–127.

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playing them was cited as proof of the ruling elite’s national sensitivity and roots within the nation. For those imprisoned, including Bibó and Püski, there was still no way back, no room on the fringes of public discourse (although it is doubtful they would have wanted to take part). Those who were merely criticized were eventually accommodated, as the examples of Gyula Illyés and László Németh show.32 Accordingly, the loosely cohesive populist camp survived the second transplantation of the Soviet-type system as well. By the early 1960s, the main themes and proposals of the populist ideological coalition had become largely outdated. For one, the fate of the peasantry had been clearly altered by the land reform and the second wave of collectivization. Life at the depths of society, depicted so strongly in the populist “sociographies” of the 1930s and revived in the “second exclusion” of the Rákosi period, had ceased by the end of the 1960s. The other major target of populist criticism, the closed elite of the Horthy era, unable to renew itself, was dispersed and dissolved after 1945 in a “changing of the guard” that was more thorough than its advocates could ever have imagined. The populist movement had to make a thematic shift, which it duly did, though none of the new causes it championed were wholly new. The third-road utopia of Hungarian socialism was as old as the populist movement, as was the concern over the breakup of integral peasant communities. The fate of the peasantry as the main question of national destiny was replaced in populist thinking by the fate of the entire Hungarian nation (magyarság). Whether it concerned Hungarians living as minorities (beyond the borders), or as the majority (within Hungary itself), this shift in thinking found its expression both in the centuries-old concern for survival, and in the new-found anxiety about preserving Hungarian qualities (such as language, culture, and customs). Visions of a third road continued to appear before the new coalition of the populist movement, but they no longer concerned true socialism as an alternative to Western capitalism or the Eastern Soviet-type system. Any discussion of the nature of socialism, monitored as it was by the ideological apparatus of the party, seemed less and less suited to convey the opposition and reservations of the populists toward the regime. However, all intimations of the nation attracted enhanced interest and carried extra meaning in the ­specific 32 On Illyés, see Sándor Révész, Aczél és korunk (Budapest: Sík, 1997). The post-1945 literary and political paths of the populist movement have been examined in more detail by Éva Standeisky, Gúzsba kötve: A kulturális elit és a hatalom (Budapest: 1956-os Intézet/Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára, 2005), especially 235–350 and 369–413.

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ideological climes of the 1960s and 1970s. The position of the populists as an “intimate semi-opposition close to power”33 was a curious one: they were sufficiently oppositional for even minimal formal organization to be denied,34 but close enough to power for informal networks (surveyed and documented by the state security service) to escape forcible dispersal except on rare occasions, and intimate enough for communication with the specialist apparatus of the power centers. Most important in this respect was that it expressed sufficient opposition and continuity of tradition for those preserving the heritage of the Hungarian right to find ideological refuge in its informal networks. The turn of the populist movement toward a populist/national (nép-nemzeti) understanding of the Hungarian nation created a more tangible, usable linguistic community than ever before between the former right-wing and the former left-wing opposition to the Horthy-Bethlen regime. The emerging national themes, especially the elements concerning those parts of the nation found beyond the country’s borders, were also very comprehensible for the language of the Hungarian right, derived from ideas concerning a fundamental revision of Trianon. Similarly grasped by conservative anti-modernists was the notion of modernization as a danger to the Hungarian community, especially as this modernization was perceived as being communist, Soviet, and alien. Moreover, the notion of the “alien” as a threat struck a chord with those engaged in anti-Semitic discourse as well. The distance between the gentry and the peasant writers was eliminated by the Soviet-type system, or at least reduced to the point where it was replaced by a sense of a shared community concerned by the fate of the endangered Hungarian nation. It was not a matter of an István Bethlen having to identify with a László Németh, but of a shared identity among the younger successors and followers of both. Those preserving the tradition of the Hungarian right could, therefore, become the “stowaways” of the populist (and populist/national) movement.

Underground streams Let us start by stating that the plain version of Hungarian right-wing political thinking, its everyday world view and value system, was borne as a tradition 33 The expression is from Standeisky, Gúzsba kötve. 34 An excellent example of this was the case of the journal Hitel. See Mátyás Domokos, “Hitel,” Beszélő 4 (1999): 78–87.

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by a middle-class group that called itself historical or Christian, but is today more commonly referred to as civil servant middle class.35 It influenced other social groups, and in its financial position, lifestyle, and some of its values, formed part of the wider middle class. However, at the same time it also maintained distance from other middle-class groups through its identity-shaping narratives, value system, and political stance. The history of the civil servant middle class after 1945 has yet to be adequately explored, although various mobility surveys are available, as are some excellent studies dealing with various aspects of its history.36 The strongly hypothetical account that follows calls for more research and verification. In terms of its everyday outlook and the political values it held, abandoned, and altered—in short, of a hypothetical process of reflection—it is certainly important to know what happened to this middle-class group after 1944.37 35 The concept will not be defined here other than by referring to relevant literature. For the concept of a middle class of civil servants, see Gábor Gyáni and György Kövér, eds., Magyarország társadalomtörténete a reformkortól a második világháborúig (Budapest: Osiris, 1998), 227–36— part of Gyáni’s text. The concept in historical discourse is examined in Gábor Gyáni, “Polgárság és középosztály a diskurzusok tükrében,” in Történészdiskurzusok (Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2002), 78–97. See also Juhász, Uralkodó eszmék Magyarországon 1939–1944; Bibó, Bibó István összegyűjtött munkái, vol. 1, 255–86; Gyula Szekfű, Forradalom után, ed. Ferenc Glatz (Budapest: Gondolat, 1983 [1947]), especially 159–79; Gyula Szekfű, Három nemzedék és ami utá­ na következik (Budapest: ÁKV/Maecenas, 1989 [1934]), 379–499; Zoltán Szabó, Terepfelverés, ed. Lóránt Czigány (Bern: Európai Protestáns Magyar Szabadegyetem, 1986); Gyurgyák, Ezzé lett magyar hazátok; György Kövér, ed., Zsombékok: Középosztályok és iskoláztatás Mag­ yarországon a 19. század elejétől a 20. század közepéig (Budapest: Századvég, 2006); Márkus Keller, A tanárok helye: A középiskolai tanárok professzionalizációja porosz–magyar összehason­ lításban a 19. század második felében (Budapest: L’Harmattan/1956-os Intézet, 2010), etc. 36 Tibor Gáti and Ágota Horváth, “A háború előtti középosztály utótörténete,” Szociológiai Szemle, no. 1 (1992): 81–97; Ágnes Utasi, András A. Gergely, and Attila Becskeházi, Kisváro­ si elit (Budapest: Új Mandátum, 2000); Tibor Valuch, Magyarország társadalomtörténete a XX. század második felében (Budapest: Osiris, 2001), etc. 37 I employ in what follows not only specialist studies but also literary depictions, mainly by Júlia Lángh, Endre Kukorelly, Szilárd Rubin, and Péter Esterházy. I also rely on my own experiences and those of family members, and on the histories of my relatives, the Orth and Ráskay families, through documents and conversations, mainly with my mother, Mrs. Vilmos Rainer-Micsinyei, over the last thirty years. I am grateful to my cousin, the archeologist Pál Rainer, for making available to me his university thesis entitled “A Rainer család katona tagjai és kitüntetéseik” [Military members of the Rainer family and their decorations], of which I also made use. In 2018, this time based on archival research, I presented the fate of the Christian middle class after 1945 through a group biography of the members of a military academy class graduated in 1939, see Rainer, M. János M. Rainer, Századosok (Budapest: Osiris, 2018). For the best recent literary representation of the life of the prewar middle class during state socialism, see Endre Kukorelly, CéCéCéPé abagy lassúdad haladás a kommunizmus felé (Budapest: Kalligram, 2019).

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1. The topmost elite—the one that played an opinion-forming, trendand model-setting role for the middle class—vanished, decimated by German occupation, Arrow Cross rule, Soviet occupation, the criminal proceedings under the new democracy, and finally emigration. Of Hungary’s Horthy-period prime ministers surviving until 1945, three were sentenced to death by the people’s court and executed. One was spirited away by Soviet forces. Miklós Kállay, prime minister before the German occupation who was deported by the Germans, chose to emigrate rather than return home. Géza Lakatos, prime minister between August and October 1944, was interned by Soviet forces in 1945. Only the aged Count Gyula Károlyi died peacefully, in 1947. Other elite groups suffered similar fates. 2. The financial bases of the civil servant middle class disappeared or were severely shaken. Movable property, real estate, wealth, and goods built up were destroyed by the war and the occupying armies. Their savings evaporated in the 1945–46 inflation. Stabilization and increased state control over the economy radically cut their incomes. Socially, they had suffered from political discrimination (certification requirements, the so-called B-listing of some social groups, and other purges).38 This continued with the mass nationalization and reorganizing of the state and public administration. 3. In postwar public discourse, it was seen as self-evident that the middle class of civil servants were to blame politically, socially, and morally (often criminally) for earlier events in Hungary. The conceptual boundaries of a “scoundrel gentry order” responsible for “oppression and slavery” were widened. The elastic concept of “reactionary” spread from the elite to almost the whole middle class, down to the stratum dubbed by Ferenc Erdei, then interior minister, as national petty bourgeoisie. The ideas for reform emanating from Hungarian conservatism and the social changes urged by the right ran aground and were discredited. All such initiatives were dismissed as belonging to the internal discourse of the rotten and immovable gentry order, from which open fascism was the only possible next step.

38 The B-lists were part of the postwar reduction of public administration and contained the names of people who were to be dismissed from public service.

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4. The middle class of civil servants may have felt their world, the whole material and virtual (linguistic) Hungary they had built up, had vanished from around them, or it became extremely doubtful whether it still existed at all. The collapse was total and the outsiders at fault for the disaster—Germans, Soviets, communists, Jews—were so clear and obvious to them that the issue of the victim’s (that is, their) own responsibility could not be raised or even considered. The predicament outlined here left little hope for self-reflection, for which the environment, the vocabulary, and the forums were inadequate. The new political system denied the collective identity of the civil servant middle class. With their very existence unrecognized either currently or retrospectively, they were boxed into Marxist-inspired categories—bourgeois, capitalists, exploiters, class enemies, and so forth—that were alien and baffling to them. Politically, they were treated as real and/or potential enemies for the first decade and a half. The picture remained quite unconsidered. Faced with this situation, the bearers of right-wing tradition focused on preserving the remains of individual and, as far as possible, collective identity, and finding substitutes for them. The strategy in the first one-and-a-half to two decades was plainly a defensive one, in which I see the following components: a. Faced with the ultimate loss of social position—criminal prosecution— the typical strategy, apart from exploiting legal connections, was active, preventative disguise: joining a left-wing party, perhaps even the communists; undertaking more than the minimum required activity; and adopting an ideological and linguistic façade. b. A lesser, but still radical loss of social position for the civil servant middle class was a total loss of job opportunities associated with this stratum and the relegation to the world of unskilled manual labor. The underlying strategy was therefore to retain at least some white-collar employment through retraining and extension training schemes, which were fairly cheap and accessible after the war. The cultural capital brought to these courses and evening university classes was valuable, allowing members of this class to pursue higher qualifications more effectively and speedily with fewer issues. c. One way to prevent loss of social position, maintain it at an acceptable level, or even retain a less favorable but still tolerable position was to 151

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disguise one’s identity. This involved rewriting one’s résumé, a process which might extend to other family members as well.39 To the extent possible, such résumés omitted, translated into the categories of official public discourse, obscured, or simply falsified biographic data related background, property ownership, or any political allegiance. Particularly sensitive were the data concerning military or other armed service, rank, service on the front line, acting as a front person (strómanság),40 owning means of production, and spending time abroad (whether in training or employment, or for other purposes). The less creative side of identity concealment concerned changing personal customs, clothing, behavior, and turns of phrase typical of the middle class, and adjusting to meet another presumed system of expectations. d. One of the main markers of middle-class status was owning a suitably sized apartment and keeping servants. The former became difficult to retain in the cities, above all Budapest, due to the war damage. The housing situation of the middle classes was worsened further by the need to share accommodation with bombed-out families, as well as by restrictions on housing (area, number of rooms) after the nationalization of residential property. The discriminatory measures taken (expropriation of property and forced displacement as a result of criminal proceedings) were aimed expressly at dwellings that reflected social status. Great efforts were made in this period to retain other possessions, such as status furniture, household objects of antique or symbolic value, pictures, silverware, and so forth. As the terror eased, this was coupled with efforts to improve housing standards and restore something similar to the original situation. The desire to maintain the right to keep an apartment with a large number of rooms gave rise to a sophisticated system of registering additional, fictitious resi39 James Mark, “Discrimination, Opportunity and Middle-Class Success in Early Communist Hungary,” Historical Journal 48, no. 2 (June 2005): 499–521; James Mark, The Unfinished Rev­ olution: Making Sense of the Communist Past in Central-Eastern Europe (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2010), 126–93. 40 Since a series of laws commencing 1938 restricted the rights, including property rights, of Hungarian citizens who were considered Jews, it became common practice to transfer on paper the ownership of shops, businesses, and workshops (typically small and medium-sized enterprises) to non-Jews, who most often took on the role of being a front man (stróman, a word originating from the German Strohmann, meaning straw man) in return for financial compensation, or occasionally as a personal favor.

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dents. The number of rooms remained the main quality criterion for housing status, coupled with other requisites of middle-class life such as a telephone line, of which there was an acute shortage throughout the socialist period. e. One important condition for the longer-term social conversion of the former civil servant middle class into what became known as the “intelligentsia” was adequate secondary and higher education for their children. The system of retraining and extended training developed in the postwar years provided opportunities for this, but for a decade after the early 1950s there was negative discrimination against the middle classes in higher education. This could also be evaded through the creative approach to résumé writing highlighted earlier. Such discrimination eased in the early 1960s, but the limited number of university places and continued positive discrimination in favor of the working class still made things hard for children of the former middle class, forcing some to explore alternative methods (evening and correspondence courses). Some areas of traditional public administration, such as the police and the army, remained closed to them. Many children of the old middle class kept up their high standard of qualifications by choosing ideologically more neutral fields such as technical degree courses, where there was rising demand in the period of the Soviet-type system. f. Practicing Christianity, an important identity factor of the former civil servant middle class, was at first a major, then a decreasing risk from the early sixties, although it still remained problematic. Consequently, disguising outward signs of religious belief such as church attendance (for instance by attending further from home), or ceasing to fast during Lent or on Good Friday, became a parallel ritual that might even have boosted the sense of togetherness. An informal system of institutions grew up around religious practice, notably in religious education, training, and upbringing. For the fairly small number who took part, this would have had deeper spiritual significance than the formal religious practice of the previous period. Concealing religious beliefs (more closely than political beliefs) was served by the practice of saying different things in public than in private, something learned and instilled from childhood onward. The subject was taboo outside of the family and a few trusted friends. Yet, the system of little subcul153

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tural signs conveyed the existence of a concealed community of belief, sometimes allowing cautious new contacts to be made. g. The previous sense of vocation and being chosen to lead could not be maintained under the new system. Yet, embracing a professional ethos, with the growth of commitment to the newly chosen professions, created a feeling of being people apart. So “true professionals” (who were naturally educated gentlemen from “good families,” as well as “good Hungarians”) differed significantly from those similarly (or more highly) positioned persons who had risen primarily for political reasons or by exploiting political opportunities. Their activities were seen as basically political, tied to the regime; they differed at most in that the one was perceived as an incorrigible pig-ignorant (with origins in the uneducated lower classes), the other as a well-intended, even decent people’s cadre (raised from the peasantry), while the third as one that cannot hide that he is member of the “congregation” (meaning a Jew). h. Another important element of retaining identity was family solidarity, stronger family ties, and marking family occasions with the old rites and outward appearances. A similar role could sometimes be played by leisure time traditions and activities specific to the social stratum. These might be certain sports (fencing, tennis, sailing, and so on) and associated social occasions, but such a role could also be played by scouting or the pursuit of more extreme sports (such as caving). i. There were huge barriers in the 1950s to contacts with the outside (Western) world, but the visitors’ passports introduced in the early 1960s allowed foreign travel relatively frequently (once every two years). This was complemented by correspondence and the receipt of packages from abroad, not least of all since members of the former civil servant middle class likely had a higher-than-average number of relatives abroad. Frequent foreign travel became something of a status symbol. It allowed sought-after everyday objects to be acquired abroad, along with evasion of the ban on taking forints out of the country: paying the expenses of visitors to Hungary and being repaid abroad in convertible currency. Pál Ignotus, writing in the Guardian and the Paris-based expatriate literary journal Irodalmi Újság, gave an account of a visit back to Hungary along with 154

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his views on the first short decade of the Kádár period.41 What interested him most were the relationships, the “pact,” between the intelligentsia and the authorities. He asked a Budapest friend whether he actively supported Kádár and his immediate circle, and quoted his reply verbatim: “This government relies on two factors: one is the Soviet army, and the other, the intelligentsia outside the [communist] party.” The latter, the “politically colorless” ones, “have advanced unimpeded since 1957; once persecuted, they are grateful to the party today. . . . The intelligentsia is present, some strata of it . . . expressly well-to-do; by intelligentsia is to be understood, like it or not, only the old upper and middle class, and those who have caught up with them, having completed higher education,” he added.42 Sociologically, this statement was greatly exaggerated, although there may have been something in it. Ignotus’s friend certainly overstated the unimpeded advance, and the political colorlessness was similarly questionable. Yet, there was a grain of truth in it, for a compulsorily worn mask can leave its mark on the face, even if the features it hides stay the same.

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Gyáni, Gábor, and György Kövér, eds. Magyarország társadalomtörténete a reformkortól a második világháborúig [Hungary’s social history from the Age of Reform to World War II]. Budapest: Osiris, 1998. Győrffy, Sándor, István Pintér, László Sebestyén, and Attila Sipos, eds. Szárszó 1943: Előzményei, jegyzőkönyve és utóélete; Dokumentumok [Szárszó 1943: Precursors, minutes, and aftermath; Documents]. Budapest: Kossuth, 1983. Gyurgyák. János. “Bal és jobb: Egy politikai-publicisztikai fogalom tündöklése és bukása” [Left and right: The rise and fall of a politico-journalistic concept]. Politikatudo­ mányi Szemle, no. 3 (1994): 152–55. ———. Ezzé lett magyar hazátok: A magyar nemzeteszme és nacionalizmus története [What your Hungarian native land became: The Hungarian national concept and the history of nationalism]. Budapest: Osiris, 2007. ———, ed. Mi a politika? Bevezetés a politika világába [What is politics? An introduction to the world of politics]. 2nd edition. Budapest: Osiris, 1999. Ignotus, Pál. “Bolyongás közben” [While wandering]. Irodalmi Újság 16, no. 13 (July 1965): 1 and 4–5. Iordachi, Constantin. Charisma, Politics and Violence: The Legion of the “Archangel Mi­ chael” in Inter-war Romania. Trondheim: Trondheim Studies on East European Cultures and Societies 15, 2004. Juhász, Gyula. Uralkodó eszmék Magyarországon 1939–1944 [Ruling ideas in Hungary, 1939–44]. Budapest: Kossuth, 1983. Keller, Márkus. A tanárok helye: A középiskolai tanárok professzionalizációja porosz–mag­ yar összehasonlításban a 19. század második felében [The place of teachers: The professionalization of middle-school teachers in a Prussian–Hungarian comparison in the second half of the nineteenth century]. Budapest: L’Harmattan/1956-os Intézet, 2010. Kis, János. “‘Az erkölcsi ítéletalkotás része a politikának’: Kis Jánossal Révész Sándor és Mink András beszélgetett” [“Moral adjudication is part of politics”: Sándor Révész and András Mink talk with János Kis]. Beszélő 9, no. 6 (2004): 6–17. Körösényi, András. “A bal és jobb védelmében” [In defense of left and right]. Politikatu­ dományi Szemle, no. 3 (1994): 188–201. ———. “Bal és jobb: Az európai és a magyar politikai paletta” [Left and right: The European and Hungarian political palette]. Politikatudományi Szemle, no. 3 (1993): 94–114. Kovács, András. “Szimbólumok valósága” [The reality of symbols]. Politikatudományi Szemle, no. 3 (1994): 146–51. Kövér, György, ed. Zsombékok: Középosztályok és iskoláztatás Magyarországon a 19. század elejétől a 20. század közepéig [Clumps: The middle classes and schooling in Hungary from the early nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries]. Budapest: Századvég, 2006. Kukorelly, Endre. CéCéCéPé abagy lassúdad haladás a kommunizmus felé: Regény [YooEsEsAar, or slow progress toward Communism: A Novel]. Budapest: Kalligram, 2019. Lengyel, György. “Irányított gazdaság és tervgazdaság” [Directed economy and planned economy]. Medvetánc, no. 1 (1981): 109–19. Mann, Michael. Fascists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Mark, James. “Discrimination, Opportunity and Middle-Class Success in Early Communist Hungary.” Historical Journal 48, no. 2 (June 2005): 499–521. 156

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———. The Unfinished Revolution: Making Sense of the Communist Past in Central-East­ ern Europe. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2010. Moore, Barrington, Jr. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993. Murányi, Gábor. Egy epizodista főszerepe: Lajos Iván történész élete és halála [The leading role of a character actor: The life and death of the historian Iván Lajos]. Budapest: Noran, 2006. Németh, László. A minőség forradalma: Kisebbségben [The revolution of quality: In a minority], 2 vols. Budapest: Püski, 1992 [1940, 1942]. ———. “Két nép” [Two peoples]. In Zsidó sebek és bűnök és más publicisztikák [Jewish wounds and crimes, and other journalistic writings], ed. Károly Pap, 86–99. Budapest: Múlt és Jövő, 2000 [1935]. Papp, István. A népi kollégiumi mozgalom története 1944-ig [History of the people’s college movement up to 1944]. Budapest: Napvilág, 2008. Passmore, Kevin. Fascism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Rainer, János M. “A volt ‘keresztény középosztály’ és a demokrácia reménye” [The former “Christian middle class” and hope of democracy]. In A demokrácia reménye: Magyarország, 1945; Évkönyv, 13 [Hope of democracy: Hungary 1945; Yearbook 13], ed. János M. Rainer and Éva Standeisky, 100–118. Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 2005. ———. Bevezetés a kádárizmusba [Introduction to Kádárism]. Budapest: 1956-os Intézet/ L’Harmattan, 2011. ———. Századosok [Captains]. Budapest: Osiris, 2018. Révész, Sándor. Aczél és korunk [Aczél and our time]. Budapest: Sík, 1997. Romsics, Ignác, ed. A magyar jobboldali hagyomány, 1900–1948 [The Hungarian rightwing tradition, 1900–1948]. Budapest: Osiris, 2009. ———. Történelem, történetírás, hagyomány [History, historiography, tradition]. Budapest: Osiris, 2008. Standeisky, Éva. Antiszemitizmusok [Anti-Semitisms]. Budapest: Argumentum, 2007. ———. Az írók és a hatalom [Writers and power]. Budapest:1956-os Intézet, 1996. ———. Gúzsba kötve: A kulturális elit és a hatalom [Tied up: The cultural elite and power]. Budapest: 1956-os Intézet/Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára, 2005. ———. Népuralom ötvenhatban [People’s power in ’56]. Bratislava/Budapest: Kalligram/1956-os Intézet, 2011. Szabó, Miklós. Politikai kultúra Magyarországon 1896–1986: Válogatott tanulmányok [Political culture in Hungary 1896–1986: Selected studies]. Budapest: Atlantisz Program, 1989. Szabó, Zoltán. Terepfelverés [Beating the bounds]. Edited by Lóránt Czigány. Bern: Európai Protestáns Magyar Szabadegyetem, 1986. Szakolczai, Árpád. “A bal- és jobboldalon túl” [Beyond left and right]. Politikatudományi Szemle, no. 3 (1994): 171–87. Szekér, Nóra. A Magyar Közösség története [History of the political group Hungarian Community]. Budapest: Norma Nyomdász Kft., 2010. Szekfű, Gyula. Forradalom után [After the revolution], ed. Ferenc Glatz. Budapest: Gondolat, 1983 [1947]. 157

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———. Három nemzedék és ami utána következik [Three generations and what comes after], 379–499. Budapest: ÁKV/Maecenas, 1989 [1934]. “Szovjet levéltári dokumentumok Bethlen István elhurcolásáról és haláláról” [Soviet archive documents on the expulsion and death of István Bethlen]. Rubicon, nos. 9–10 (2011): 16–17. Takáts, József. Modern magyar politikai eszmetörténet [The history of modern Hungarian political ideas]. Budapest: Osiris, 2007. Utasi, Ágnes, András A. Gergely, and Attila Becskeházi. Kisvárosi elit [Small-town elite]. Budapest: Új Mandátum, 2000. Valuch, Tibor. Magyarország társadalomtörténete a XX. század második felében [Social history of Hungary in the second half of the twentieth century]. Budapest: Osiris, 2001. Vida, István, ed. Iratok a magyar–szovjet kapcsolatok történetéhez 1944. október–1948. június [Documents on the history of Hungarian–Soviet relations, October 1944–June 1948]. Budapest: Gondolat, 2005. Vonyó, József. “Gömbös Gyula jobboldali radikalizmusa” [Gyula Gömbös’s right-wing radicalism]. In A magyar jobboldali hagyomány, 1900–1948 [The Hungarian rightwing tradition, 1900–1948], edited by Ignác Romsics, 243–74. Budapest: Osiris, 2009.

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PART TWO

RIGHT-WING ENEMIES THROUGH THE LENS OF STATE SECURITY

CHAPTER FIVE

SOCIAL RESISTANCE UNDER THE KÁDÁR REGIME AND THE “RIGHT-WING” ENEMIES OF STATE SECURITY Kr isztián Ungvár y

This contribution is nothing more than an attempt to present the way state security services treated the political right in Hungary during the communist era: a subject largely neglected in scholarship, with the exception of János M. Rainer’s volume on the surveillance of József Antall, which was an inspiration to me in my work. In my view, establishing the significance attached to the right wing involves initially placing it within the Kádár regime’s overall view of the enemy. I will therefore approach the subject first by recalling the main preoccupations of the state security services.1 The texts and statements seen as hostile by the state security services can be easily sorted into distinguishable groups. The rarest are theoretical forms of political thinking, since the writing or publication of such works would require the presence of political freedom. Far more common are statements that reflect upon daily political events. Most common of all are vulgar expressions of political thinking (graffiti of political slogans or symbols, or simplistic, youthful attempts at organization), but their nature means that broader conclusions cannot be drawn from them; many interpretations are possible, but the paucity of evidence precludes confirming any of them. This shows also that researchers are in a difficult position with most state security cases as any political “conspiracy” involved was nipped in the bud, and without any later 1 This study is a shorter version of the one in the following volume that I edited: Krisztián Ungváry, “Társadalmi ellenállás a Kádár-rendszerben és az állambiztonság ‘jobboldali’ ellenségei,” in Búvópatakok: A jobboldal és az állambiztonság 1945–1989, ed. Krisztián Ungváry (Budapest: Jaffa, 2013), 7–80.

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developments, there is no way to tell what the initiators intended. These conditions justify spending quite some time in this study reflecting on all types of social resistance activity against the Kádár regime. “Nationalism” as a phenomenon cannot be said in principle to belong solely to the right, even if the “fight against nationalism” was one of the main tasks of the state security services and nationalism as such is clearly understood nowadays by political science as a right-wing manifestation. Yet, protests in the 1980s against the oppression of Transylvanian and Felvidék2 Hungarians came not only from those on the right, but also from the so-called democratic opposition, a liberal group of dissenters associated largely with left-wing (or formerly left-wing) intellectuals. In addition, it was the fellow travelers— that is, the left-wing allies—of the party-state who were most affected by the sort of “nationalist” behavior that the state security used to create the benchmark of the right-wing stance.3 The question of nationalism was one to which the Kádár regime had no other response than to stay silent or pronounce it taboo. The Kádár regime represented the antagonistic antithesis of pre-1945 Hungary, and this antagonism was manifested precisely in the denial of nationalism in all its forms. This stance was reinforced by the experience of 1956, which encouraged Kádár to sweep the national question under the carpet, all the more so because there was hardly anything positive to say on the matter. The result was a distorted image of the enemy and an official phobia against nationalism that persisted right up until the disintegration of the system. Research into right-wing resistance runs into several difficulties. Perhaps the most important concerns the nature of the Kádár regime: of the groups hostile to the regime, those easily classified as right-wing (principally those who considered themselves as such, those who wished to follow the traditions of the pre-1945 right or could be associated with them personally, and those who saw the West European right as a model) were the most broken by repression. The right-wing intelligentsia were unable to speak out between 1945 and 1990, except during the days of the 1956 Revolution, and the attempt2 Mainly the part of historical Hungary that now constitutes Slovakia. 3 See primarily Éva Standeisky, Gúzsba kötve: A kulturális elit és a hatalom (Budapest: ÁBTL/1956os Intézet, 2005); also Miklós Csapody, “A világban helytállani…” Bálint Sándor élete és poli­ tikai működése 1904–1980 (Budapest: Korona, 2004); Nóra Szekér, A Magyar Testvéri Közös­ ség története (Hódmezővásárhely: “Norma,” 2010); and Miklós Csapody, “Kileng a mutató: Páskándi, Ilia és a belső elhárítás,” Korunk 14, no. 8 (August 2003): 39–53.

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ed communist transformation of society cost members of the Christian middle class their livelihoods. Although forced resettlement,4 denial of higher education, disqualification from leadership posts, and other similar measures could not eliminate the Christian middle class or other groups holding rightwing ideas, they were still capable of intimidating everyone. It might be ventured that no other group in society bore so much terror as the Christian middle class, a group which, nevertheless, cannot be fully equated with the right. In principle there would have been legitimate reason after 1945 for many of this group to be held responsible for what they did before or during the war. The communist dictatorship, however, was out to punish classes, not individuals, and therefore did not pay much attention to the question of individual responsibility. The difference is clear if the Christian middle class is compared with the peasantry. The breaking of the latter did not begin until 1949 and was far from continual. Indeed, the poorer peasantry profited from a regime that offered them upward social mobility, while the Christian middle class tended to be pushed down, or managed only through great effort to retain their social position. A specific compromise was struck with the agricultural population after the 1968 reforms, which ensured the villages a hitherto unknown degree of material welfare (albeit one premised on shaky foundations). No such gesture did the regime ever make to the Christian middle class, except for lifting social restrictions on higher education, which was less a gesture to them than the offshoot of an ideological tenet: “Whoever is not against us is for us.”5 For the sake of analogy, had the Kádár regime wished to reach a compromise with “the right,” the symbolic sphere of this would have been the settlement of church issues. Yet, the degree of persecution of the churches remained noticeable even compared with other Eastern bloc states (although conducted in misleadingly subtle ways) right up until the collapse of state socialism.

4 Between 1951 and 1953, the communist state forced some of the representatives of the “former oppressive classes” or “class enemies” to move to designated settlements within the country. This measure affected about 13,000 people. 5 The phrase (Mark 9:40), prominent in a speech by Kádár in December 1961, marked a departure from orthodox authoritarian thinking. Lenin echoed the opposite (Matthew 12:30), for instance in V. I. Lenin, “Speech Delivered at an All-Russia Conference of Political Education Workers of Gubernia and Uyezd Education Departments, November 3, 1920,” in Collected Works vol. 31 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966), 363–73, as did Mussolini (“O con noi o contro di noi”).

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The Kádár regime did not persecute all opposition movements with equal force. Support was always given to former Peasants’, Smallholders’, and Social Democratic party collaborators, who could work as non-members of the ruling MSZMP6 via the Patriotic People’s Front, provided that they not only recognized the legitimacy of the regime, but also refrained from pursuing the national question. The borders between condoned and prohibited were not stationary, so no clear distinction between them can be made. The various degrees of persecution gave rise to various types of opposition. The structural advantage for the left-wing opposition in this period proved insurmountable. For a time, many of its members were favored by the regime and their activities for a long time belonged to the category of “supported,” then later to that of “condoned.” This may have been helped by the existence of family ties, since several prominent members of the left-wing opposition turned to dissent by opposing parents who held high positions in the party hierarchy. Accordingly, punitive measures against them were less strict than those against the right, who were seen as ab ovo opponents of the regime.7 Their initial moves to organize, so long as they did not set out directly to form a political party, received publicity and generated debates. They took continual part in the give-and-take relations of the Kádár period, and few rejected consistently the chances of collaboration. The right-wing opposition, however, could expect almost no “condoned” scope for its statements. Their organizing efforts were still being nipped in the bud by the state, even if they were merely of a cultural or social nature. Because of the struggles of everyday life, not many works were written for the drawer, and those that were could not influence public thinking as they were starved of publicity. In the case of György Galántai, who was no right-winger, his exhibits in Balatonboglár chapel were allowed to receive “condoned” publicity for at least a couple of years, while visiting intellectuals with alternative views could feel a sense of freedom, as the exhibits and events embraced directions in art incompatible with the regime’s cultural policy, and the exhib6 Magyar Szocialista Munkáspárt (Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party). 7 The same applies to Sándor Nagy, Katalin Imre, and Mihály Ladányi, who remained Stalinists. Despite their lack of high contacts, they were handled leniently by the Kádár regime. See Gábor Tabajdi and Krisztián Ungváry, “Szélsőbaloldali társaság: Imre Katalin és körének megfigyelése,” in Elhallgatott múlt: A pártállam és a belügy; A politikai rendőrség működése Mag­ yarországon 1956–1990 (Budapest: Corvina, 2008); and Tamás Szőnyei, Titkos írás: A kulturá­ lis elit és a hatalom, 1956–1990 (Budapest: Noran, 2012), 1035–1109.

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itors hardly disguised their distance from official art policy in the period—a gesture that only the willfully blind could have failed to interpret as a political message. Meanwhile, even the attempt to form a scout troop trying to organize weekend trips would have run into immediate official intervention—and it could not even be conceived that such an initiative would receive favorable press coverage. Right-wing efforts at organization could not be expected to last long; hence, the marked difference in the volumes of state security and political work expended on left- and right-wing opposition forces. As such, the difference between the two opposition movements is deceptive. What seems like a difference in importance turns out to derive from different political “treatment,” not embeddedness in society. This was subsequently confirmed by the rapid appearance after 1990 of political trends outwardly reflecting pre-1945 right-wing traditions. Further corroboration appears in the events of the 1956 Revolution, when the same ideologies rapidly arose.

The main lines of activity of the state-security apparatus after 1956 When analyzing the right-wing opponents of the regime within a broader context, it is helpful to look at the main lines of activity in the Kádár-era state security and the main statistics on criminal proceedings. Kádár sought to break with his predecessors’ all-embracing image of the enemy, as is apparent from his rhetoric and the change in the image of the enemy held by state security. As Kádár told a Politburo meeting on October 22, 1957, the mass registering of real or potential regime opponents that marked the Stalinist period was counterproductive. He ordered the number of those listed to be brought below 300,000. Within these there was to be separate monitoring (in the later form of F, or observation, files) conducted on “embittered enemies” of the regime, whose numbers were set at six to seven thousand.8 However, it still sufficed for inclusion in the basic register if people had been members of the Jesuits or army officers before 1945, even if they were recruited into the democratic army or later the Kádár regime.9 In 1960, 440,000 of the 600,000 registered were removed. Of the 160,000 remaining, 91,000 in 1966 had been “members of Horthyite coercive organizations,” and of these, 8 Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára (National Archives of Hungary; MNL OL), 288. f. 5. cs. 47. ö. e. 9 Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára (Historical Archives of the State Security Services, ÁBTL) 1.11.10, box 3, 178. Report of Division II/11. (registration), February 25, 1958.

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1,108 were under strict surveillance. In practice, this meant that ten years after the defeat of the revolution, half of those registered and 15 percent of those under strict observation were there merely for their class position before 1945. Yet, the situation reports of domestic state security admitted that hardly any anti-regime activity could be discerned from this direction. The staffing level of the apparatus and its informers continued to vary, but the numbers observed and the directions of activity hardly altered from the end of the 1960s until the end of state-socialism, with the exception that systematic observation of the “former ruling classes” largely ceased at the beginning of the 1970s. In 1977, only four informers were still dealing with the category of “former ruling classes,” which could indicate that this area of surveillance had basically ceased to exist. In fact, that was not quite the case: some of those belonging to this category remained under surveillance “in their own right,” due to their actual activities, falling into the categories of those with F files, political convicts, or former army or gendarmerie officers, and their surveillance was conducted by informers assigned to these lines of investigation. The main lines of activity can also be discerned from the prosecutions initiated by the state security services. A total of 16,357 persons were tried on political grounds between 1957 and 1972, but after 1961 trials of “former capitalists” or “Horthyite military officers” virtually ceased and those of church figures were much reduced.10 On the other hand, a large number of such cases occurred in 1957–58, accounting for 7 percent of all prosecutions. Based on cases examined so far, most of those put on trial were done so not for acts committed during the 1956 Revolution. Since the political police had its own class-based enemy image in seeking the accused, a large number of cases involving the right were brought up that might have been forgotten but for the revolution.11 The 8,906 prosecutions for crimes against the state and other political matters amounted to 1.5 percent of all criminal proceedings in the 1957–72 period. The courts heard 1,268 conspiracy cases in 1957–63 and 314 in 1964– 68; there were also annual averages of one hundred prosecutions for leaflet distribution and 800 for incitement. This was a big difference compared with the earlier 1950s, when the annual average number of prosecutions for 10 ÁBTL 1.11.1. box 136. Report to MSZMP Politburo on work of Interior Ministry, October 1969. Data for 1968–72 are taken from ÁBTL 1.11.1., box 15, 32-376/1973. Report on trend in crime numbers against the state and of a political nature and their perpetrators. 11 See, Krisztián Ungváry, “Egy emléktábláról,” Élet és Irodalom, August 5, 2005, 6.

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political crimes stood at 6,800. Though the consolidation of the Kádár regime was a ghastly process, the terror was reduced compared to the Rákosi regime. Discounting those in internment camps, an average of 30,000 people were in custody for common law and political crimes in 1949–56, whereas the figure did not exceed 16,000 in 1957–72. Only aggregate figures are available for the 1966–72 period: a total of 22,474 people were prosecuted for crimes against the state (3,901) or political crimes (18,573), with 84 percent of the latter (14,564) in connection with defection abroad. There were forty-three cases involving 319 people concerning conspiracy, organization, and failure to report these crimes. Altogether 3,220 persons were sentenced for incitement against the state (18 percent of them cases of preparing or distributing leaflets). In 1966, 150 such cases were recorded, 1968 saw 179 cases, and 1972 a further 102. The numbers in intervening years were a fraction of those. There were sixty-five prosecutions for espionage and three for treason between 1966 and 1972.12 This confirms the trend found in 1969 at the internal affairs session of the MSZMP Central Committee, whereby “the former ruling classes and their agents committed 2.7 percent of political crimes since 1956 and priests 1.5 percent,”13 from which it was concluded that the “former exploitative classes are subsiding” and the development of socialist society was unbroken. The real explanation was different: the pre-1945 ruling elite had been so intimidated by the Rákosi regime that it eschewed politics altogether. Despite all counter-intelligence efforts against internal reaction, headed by Ervin Hollós, it could not be proved that Arrow Cross members or former class aliens had “committed” the 1956 revolution. Moreover, the pre-1945 political elite had aged considerably by the 1970s. Yet, in 1970, 58,000 people were still recorded in the “class-alien” category, of which 7,575 had been convicted on some grounds since 1945 and 16,160 still had proceedings hanging over them. However, the numbers cannot in themselves be interpreted, as in practice every fifth Hungarian citizen under the Rákosi regime had suffered some kind of condemnatory proceedings.14 12 ÁBTL 1.11.1., box 15, 45-13-7/73, 14. Report on incitement activity by the imperialist powers. 13 ÁBTL 1.11.1., box 136. Report to the MSZMP Politburo on the work of the Interior Ministry, October 1969. 14 ÁBTL 1.11.1., box 136. Report of Interior Minister András Benkei to the MSZMP Politburo on the work of the Interior Ministry, October 1969, 15–19; Interior Ministry session of MSZMP Central Committee, January 9, 1970.

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In 1973, the Interior Ministry launched a comprehensive sociological survey of “former elements”: the Horthy period’s erstwhile leading officials, officers of the coercive organizations and detachment members, right-wing and fascist party members, and remnants of exploitative classes. About 44,000 such people were registered within the country at that time and another 16,000 abroad. The data was obtained from a representative sample of 3.2 percent: 1,400 “elements” and 2,331 descendants were studied to establish what success there had been with the social exclusion of “former elements.” It should not be forgotten how much the Rákosi and Kádár regimes had done in this respect: excluding children from further education and dismissing such “elements” from all leading posts. The report found that out of those occupying 7,231 “important and confidential positions,” 148 persons had to be dismissed for being a “former,” while 403 appointments to such positions were aborted for such reason. The results, however, astonished Interior Ministry staff: 46.1 percent of descendants had a secondary education and 22.6 percent a higher education, which is 3–4 times greater than their proportions in society. . . . A noticeably high share of descendants of “formers” with a lower skill level or manual job have a higher education. University and college admissions discrimination against descendants has not made a marked change in educational attainment. So . . . 21.5 percent of descendants now aged 35–39—whose further education fell in 1951–55—still have a higher education.15

Thus, the communist model of social transformation and elite change did not have deep effects on Hungary; “abolition” of the oppressor classes remained a propaganda boast. Although members of the former social elite had been “submerged,” they had not completely lost their positions. In 1979, the state security services introduced a system of Daily Operational Information Reports (Napi Operatív Információs Jelentések, NOIJ), in addition to two or three-month and annual summaries. When it comes to the period between 1980 and 1988/89 (see Table 5.1), the data shows that the amount of information collected on “fascist elements”—the extreme right—was insignificant; there was hardly any such activity. However, the amount collected on the “radical national opposition” almost equaled that collected on the 15 MNL OL XIX-B-1-ai, 1a-1617/70.

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Table 5.1. Data on perpetrators of hostile activity based on Daily Operational Information Reports 16

Radical bourgeois opposition Radical national opposition Pacifist activity Hostile activity on environmental grounds Fifty-sixers, or members of bourgeois parties or coercive organizations Data on fascist elements Church-based opposition Zionist opposition Total 17

1980 462 400 – –

1985 205 328 41 50

1988 898 592 38 179

80

73

135

15 146 1 1104

30 115 13 854

12 130 9 1993

“radical bourgeois opposition,” that is, the so-called urbánus intelligentsia.18 It might be suspected that there was some adjustment going on, designed to position the regime itself in the center, but in my view, this is not supported empirically. It is clear, though, that all other opposition trends are insignificant compared with these two, not least among the former bourgeois parties, coercive organizations, and “fifty-sixers” (those who participated in the 1956 revolution). This suggests the dominant voices in the opposition were the urbánus rather than the nép-nemzeti,19 while representatives of the traditional Christian middle class kept a low profile; other studies show they did not form the basis of church-based opposition either.20 16 ÁBTL 1.11.1., box 130, 45-78/38/1/1989. 17 For unexplained reasons, no NOIJ figures are given for this one category. The numbers shown are differences between the total of the known figures and the total figures given. 18 The urbánus (urban/urbane) intellectuals constituted a largely cosmopolitan and Western oriented subgroup of the intelligentsia with members that often had Jewish origins. On the divide between this group and a more nation-oriented group of intellectuals, see the next note. 19 With its roots going back to the interwar era and the emergence of the movement of the populist (népi) writers, the divide between the urbánus and the populist/national (nép-nemzeti) intellectuals translated into two different groupings within the opposition during the Kádár era: a Western-oriented liberal group (which called itself the democratic opposition), and a more traditionalist and nation-minded group. During the democratic transition, the two groups formed different parties, the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats and the center-right Hungarian Democratic Forum, respectively. 20 See my publications, although they do not aim at completeness, in Tabajdi and Ungváry, El­ hallgatott múlt; see also Ágnes Tímár, Hivatás és küldetés (Budapest: Kairosz, 2011). Ágnes

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Manifestations of right-wing views also appear among the cases of incitement, but the problem is that the perpetrators were not usually pursuing anti-regime activity in any calculated way: 30 percent of cases were coupled with rowdy, truculent behavior and 12 percent were committed under the influence of alcohol. Of the incitement cases, 4 percent were classified as “left-wing sectarian,” 8 percent as graffiti, 5 percent anti-Semitic in nature, and 10 percent of a fascist character. This last category did not include cases of mainly young perpetrators who were not specifically aware of what the symbols they painted signified. This is an important finding, because the post-1945 social suppression meant that Nazi and Arrow Cross symbols conveyed for many only a general sense of opposition to the regime. Accordingly, they could be found among the subcultures of the 1960s and 1970s on coins of the Third Reich, iron crosses, and so forth, worn as necklaces by young people: a typical instance of people wishing to identify themselves with the right.21 According to the Interior Ministry, 50 percent of such cases involved hostile political motivations. This all goes to show that some 250–300 cases of political “incitement” a year can be found under the Kádár regime. Sadly, there are no statistics available for the 1970s, but it can be assumed that the numbers did not alter until the middle of the decade.22

The right-wing operational files of state security It followed from the logic of class warfare that members of the former ruling classes were seen by the communist state security as the main hostile groups, though many of the pre-1945 social elite had emigrated, while those who remained had lost most of their financial sway by 1948 and withdrawn wholly from politics. In any case, the Christian middle class and representatives of the former right had been intimidated by the post-1945 people’s court proceedings and the atrocities committed by the Soviet army, an effect only heightened by the open seizure of power, the destruction of the coalition parties, and the total expropriation of public political discourse.

Tímár’s memoirs present the life of such a Catholic community in resistance from a personal perspective. Interestingly, not one representative of the Catholic middle class appears. 21 See Tamás Szőnyei, Nyilván tartottak: titkos szolgák a magyar rock körül 1960–1990 (Budapest: Magyar Narancs, 2005). 22 MNL OL XIX-B-1-ai, 34-348/71. Experiences with incitement cases. A Division III/1 report.

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The position of the former ruling classes meant they were far less of a risk to the Stalinist dictatorship than the ordinary working class or the critical leftwing intelligentsia. The handful of conspiracy cases discovered posed no actual danger to the regime. Yet, the premise of the state security services, right up to the early 1970s, was that members of hostile classes lay behind all activity against the regime. As mentioned earlier, proving this point was seen as a main purpose of the post-1956 reprisals: all cases involving gendarmerie, Arrow Cross members, or professional army officers were reviewed. In each case, it emerged that leading 1956 revolutionaries had not come from their ranks, but the reviews lent pretexts for settling old scores. The trial of the Zugló Arrow Cross men, of Mihály Francia Kiss, and of the gendarmerie investigators convicted of the shooting of Endre Ságvári,23 along with the prosecutions, extraditions, and executions in Yugoslavia of those involved in the 1942 Újvidék (Novi Sad) massacres—all served to discredit the revolution, as “by-products” of the struggle against the former ruling classes. The ÁVH, Hungary’s Stalin-era state security service, had deployed very large forces in this area before 1956 (except that Arrow Cross cases were not dealt with separately). Special “lines” of observation were devoted to following former professional army officers, reserve officers from the rank of captain upward, employees of the VKF–2,24 gendarmes and police, along with a group called “lancers,”25 members of the Prónay irregulars (involved in the 1919 White Terror), the (elite) St. Ladislas Division, the Waffen SS, and the Volksbund, and former parliamentarians of bourgeois parties. Reports on these were sent every month before 1956 from county bodies to the police headquarters in Budapest (the BRFK).26 The struggle against the former “ruling classes” retained its priority for some ten years after 1956, as shown by a 1964 Interior Ministry breakdown of cases registered at the central agencies and the numbers of agents assigned to them (see Table 5.2). It is not quite clear what the Interior Ministry meant by “cases,” but let us assume it was investigations manifested in the operational 23 A communist in the period of illegality, killed in a gunfight with men sent to arrest him on July 27, 1944. 24 Department II of the Chief of Staff, dealing with intelligence and counterespionage. 25 The “lancers” (kopjások) were a special military force, similar to the German Werwolf, organized during World War II by the Hungarian military intelligence and cooperating German agencies with the purpose of conducting clandestine operations. 26 ÁBTL O–14458/A. “Volt katonatisztek” (former army officers). Zala Co.

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files. The very low agent numbers in the table exclude county and Budapest police headquarters agents. Table 5.2. Staff members of central agencies employed per case type27

Ideological28 Former parties Sectarians [sic] Horthyite/fascist Youth Leafleting

Agents and case developments

No. of agents employed

6 8 0 31 7 9

62 24 9 125 73 0

The surveillance cases are also instructive for showing how some aristocrats and bourgeois party representatives met with their peers despite the harassment. It is worth mentioning here the surveillance of members of parties operating before 1945 or in 1945–48. Operational files on these individuals were opened for each county or city. In general, decreasing numbers of documents about the pre-1945 and post-1945 parties were archived from the early 1950s onward: their files became slimmer, except in the few months after 1956, when new materials were collected.29 The files on parties were closed in the early 1970s. “Getting together,” in the view of the III/III Division,30 counted as suggestive behavior by elements of suspicious origin, and this was the initiating factor behind a great many state security proceedings. An example is the series of operational files marked “Resisters” (Ellenállók)—one of the largest bodies of surveillance material held by the Historical Archives of the State Security Services (Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára, ÁBTL). These were opened to record the observation of right-wing intellectuals gathering 27 ÁBTL A–1353/1. 60. Report on the struggle against the internal enemy. 45–13–9/64 Interior Ministry, Group Division III/III. 28 Unfortunately, the category is undefined, but it presumably denotes activities not covered by any of the usual categories. 29 One example is O–14967/1: Former Horthyite and fascist parties and mass organizations. 30 Within the State Security Service, the III/III Division of the Interior Ministry was responsible surveilling domestic “enemies” of the regime.

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around the népi (“populist”) and “third road” writers. They form a monumental body of state security material, filling thirty-four volumes between 1957 and 1972, in which even the slightest move was followed. In 1962, proceedings were taken against three persons, who eventually received prison sentences of three to four years without having committed any crime. They were all released under the 1963 amnesty, but watched for the rest of their lives, or up until the end of state socialism.31 One typical example was a confidential 1961 investigation codenamed “Conversationalists” (Társalgók). Of the thirty to forty people covered by it, Dr. Antal Bartha, Dr. László Grigássy, Kálmán Nemes, and Károly Szász made statements against the regime to each other, but these could only be documented by using agents. Since there was no way to prosecute, the case was closed by “disruption,” which meant that three of the group were held for seventy-two hours and fed false information, whereby suspicions about one member were aroused in the others. According to the Interior Ministry report, “all persons attending the meetings made every effort to retain their frivolous principle-seeking lifestyle and ensure the conditions for doing so.”32 Another case worthy of note is that of József Antall Jr., the future prime minister after 1990, who was in the observed category throughout the Kádár period. He was secretly investigated in 1957–61, and recorded as a category F file subject in 1963–71 and from 1981 up to the end of state-socialism, but information was also gathered on him in the intervening eight years. Almost five hundred reports relating to him by twenty-four different informers have survived for posterity, and the signs are that these represent about half of the total material.33 This, incidentally, casts in a rather different light Antall’s own assertion that he simply “kept his head down and avoided trouble.” Certainly, he had not done much—he simply held political discussions with his friends—but that little was enough for state security to treat him consistently as a hostile target, with an imposing quantity of state security documentation produced on him. If the quantity of documentation was to be taken as a criterion for ranking the observed, Antall would certainly be at the forefront. This tells us something about Antall, but also about the other members of the 31 Much of the “Resisters” files were examined in Éva Standeisky, Gúzsba kötve. See also Szőnyei, Titkos írás, particularly 407–554. 32 ÁBTL O–16517. 112. Report, March 10, 1961. 33 János M. Rainer, Jelentések hálójában: Antall József és az állambiztonság emberei 1957–1989 (Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 2008), 26, 77.

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Christian (gentry) middle class: there were hardly any other politicians from this social group on whom so many documents were produced. Antall himself could not identify the agents assigned to him (although he worked actively to do so), but he registered accurately that many such observations were being made, so much so that he lodged personal complaints to János Kádár, Jenő Fock, and András Benkei in 1968.34 Antall thus sensed the activity of the informers busying themselves around him, which makes it unsurprising that he tried to behave as cautiously as possible. It also explains why members of the right-wing intelligentsia with political ambitions refrained from open opposition until the period of the political transition leading to 1989. The Interior Ministry acted in this way not only against members of former parties, but also members of erstwhile coercive organizations: professional army officers, gendarmes, and police. One 1968 report described efforts against informal comradely meetings of veteran service members: “Many initiated class reunions and other such comradely meetings in recent years. Our services successfully disrupted these in the early periods. This is clear from the marked fall in the number of such group meetings.”35 This “disruptive” work continued, strangely, into the latter half of the 1980s, when most of those observed were in their eighties.36 The first such veteran meeting to be held quasi-legally, with local government knowledge, took place in 1986 in Orosháza. There, the town artillerymen also issued a stenciled publication with photographs: this was, it must be said, quite apolitical, even avoiding any assessment of the historical events concerned.37 However, their initiative was not followed before 1989. This ultimately comes as no surprise. The disruptive activity of the Interior Ministry still had deterrent effects in the long term; as the poet György Faludy put it, though Kádár had mothballed the hangman’s rope, everyone remembered what the regime could do.38 That naturally affected what representatives of the right felt able to chance: those with knowledge of the terror under the Rákosi and early Kádár regimes did not dare to profit from the apparent erosion of the system. 34 Rainer, Jelentések hálójában, 231. At the time, Fock was the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, while Benkei was Interior Minister. 35 ÁBTL A–1353/1. Experiences in monitoring F file subjects in 1963–68, 45-13-48/68, 199. 36 Personal communication by the late Frigyes Wáczek, a former staff captain. 37 One copy is in the author’s private collection. 38 See Faludy’s 1981 poem “Egy helytartóhoz 25 év után” [To a viceroy after 25 years], https:// konyvtar.dia.hu/html/muvek/FALUDY/faludy00002/faludy00486/faludy00486.html.

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The struggle against “nationalist” groups in a new guise from 1972 With hindsight, observers tend to put nationalist affairs in the right-wing category. In fact, this had another function in the Kádár regime: Hungary’s party-state was alone in making the national question taboo. There are still appreciable, harmful effects from the largely open ethnic pressure nominally socialist states in neighboring countries could apply, primarily against Hungarian ethnic groups, while neither such instances nor so-called “vital national issues” could be talked about in Hungary. Kádár concluded from his experience in 1956 that the system could collapse if the national question were let loose. Accordingly, there was almost complete silence on it in MSZMP politics. Following MSZMP guidelines, state security saw “nationalism” as cases where commemoration of March 1539 or discussions on the situation of Hungarians beyond the country’s borders were not done according to the official line. The fellow-traveler nature of the system left many areas in society where seemingly nationalistic views could be expressed (though they cannot be seen in those terms in today’s eyes). For the Kádár regime integrated the populist (népi) writers, whereas the churches were condemned to atrophy instead. Of course, the ideological and secret service battle against the populists did not begin in 1972; rather, it had antecedents back to 1948. László Németh, Gyula Illyés, and their fellow writers were target persons of the state security throughout the socialist period,40 though they all to varying extents followed a loyal, “fellow traveler” policy toward the authorities. One result of the “fellow traveler” policy was a fairly fluid dividing line between “condoned” and “prohibited.” In some cases, intellectuals were kept under secret investigation for decades—such as Mihály Ilia and his associates from Szeged, the subject of the investigation codenamed “fleece vests” (subások)—while retaining jobs in the intelligentsia, or in some cases filling important positions. The groups kept under continual surveillance for active hostile activity were listed at a meeting of deputy interior ministers in 1973: eighty-five to ninety persons in that period were “closely observed” for promoting a “nationalist political platform,” a further sixty to seventy for a “right-wing revisionist plat39 The anniversary of the outbreak of Hungary’s 1848 Revolution. 40 See Szőnyei, Nyilván tartottak, and Éva Standeisky, Az írók és a hatalom 1956–1963 (Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 1996).

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form,” and forty to forty-five for a “pseudo-left, anarchist political platform”; a further two hundred were “kept in view” in those contexts. The state security services were registering concern that “efforts and inclinations toward open defiance” had increased and perpetrators were “loosening” the policy line of the day within the frames of the Communist Youth League (KISZ), using it as a “cover,” for example, “in respect of clubs, [music] bands, etc.”41 According to the meeting, 130–200 “signaling reports” (that is, denunciations without legal basis) were sent by state security every year to the relevant social and party organizations with the aim of disruption and exclusion. According to a 1976 report, the “hostile” actions of those with nationalist leanings manifest in incitement, nationalist, anti-Semitic propaganda, and provocation of open debates. . . . Their plans include winning over and gaining the trust of high-ranking functionaries, so that more favorable decisions on positions may be reached with their support. . . . They look out for “honest Hungarian people” within the party, while their plans include recruiting talented young people into the party, where on obtaining positions, they can become the ones who implement their ideas.42

All signs suggest that the Kádár regime had no clear strategy of how to deal with the problem of “nationalism.” This is shown in a passage in the report just quoted, about the dance house movement that arose, where hostile forces “research and propagate uniform features for Hungarian folk art in ‘greater Hungary,’ to ‘prove’ Transylvania is part of Hungary and conclude that the present borders are ‘unfair.’ Their existence is blamed on the Soviet Union, and the party and government are dubbed ‘unnational.’”43 Ten years later, in 1986, it was still thought important for state security to underline that the basic difference between the radical national opposition (the populist writers and their followers) and the radical bourgeois groupings was manifested in the fact that the former “emphatically avoid illegal means and methods, they do not give their writings to samizdat publications, they do not take part in the ‘flying universities,’ or in the events of SZETA, etc.”44 41 42 43 44

MNL OL XIX-B-1-ai, 1-a-726/76., 2. Report of the hostile activity of internal reaction. MNL OL XIX–B–1-ai, 1-a–726/76, 2–3. Report on the hostile activity of internal reaction. MNL OL XIX–B–1-ai, 1-a–726/76, 10. Report on the hostile activity of internal reaction. MNL OL XIX–B–1-ai, 10–52/17–1986, 9. SZETA stood for the Fund to Support the Poor, which was established illegally in October 1979.

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The assessment accurately described the gulf between the two camps, which led to open cultural war after the democratic transition. The struggle against nationalism by domestic intelligence almost became a phobia. From a certain angle it was logical for affairs connected with Jews to be associated with this, but it is hard to see why former ÁVH people saw Jews as so dangerous.45 In 1981, Szilveszter Harangozó, the leading ÁVH figure and later government official, spoke of this with the same mix of cynicism and paranoia that his comrades had exhibited thirty years prior (indeed, he himself produced similar formulations as head of the ÁVH Secretariat in 1951): Based on information about Jewish nationalism, the main feature of the activity is to nurture a Jewish spirit, sustain cohesion, keep alive the grievances [sic] suffered, boost separateness, and in that light raise an elite of Jewish youth. There is a new trend for some people of Jewish origin to be active on the Gypsy question. So-called Gypsy seminars exaggerate party and government responsibility for remaining problems and analyze their relation mainly in terms of a common destiny for Jews and Gypsies.46

The targets of the III/III Division The image of the enemy held by the political police can be gauged from the persons targeted by state security. For the III/III Division, there were several degrees of hostility. State security kept the files on the most dangerous targets in what was called the basic register (alapnyilvántartás) and the others in the research register (kutató nyilvántartás). Those who belonged to the category of the pre1945 “former elements” were entered in the latter. As such, representatives of the Christian middle class were automatically included in the research register, irrespective of what they did after 1945. Significantly, the system survived up to the end of the regime, even though the youngest were over sev45 State security surveillance of Hungarian Jewry has been analyzed primarily by András Kovács. See András Kovács, “Hungarian Jewish Politics from the End of the Second World War until the Collapse of Communism,” in Jews and the State: Dangerous Alliances and the Perils of Privilege, ed. Ezra Mendelsohn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 124–56; and András Kovács, “Körbekerítve: Scheiber Sándor utóvédharcai,” in Papírhíd—tanulmánykötet Scheiber Sándor születésének 100. évfordulójára, ed. Antal Babits (Budapest: Logos, 2013), 349–57. 46 MNL OL XIX–B–1–x, 10–38/2/1981. Report on aspects of internal hostile activity, February 27, 1981.

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enty by then: as late as June 30, 1989, the research register contained data on 127,548 persons. Since only fifty-sixers and suspect citizens of other countries were to be found in these records alongside the “formers” (holders of leading state and administrative posts, members of detachments, army officers, gendarmes, police officers, right-wing party leaders, recipients of certain honors, and so on), it can be assumed that at least 70,000–80,000 were kept on record simply for their pre-1945 class background. In practice, this huge number meant that the entire Christian middle class was included in the research files of the state security. The basic register contained details of those guilty of war crimes and crimes against the state: F file subjects who had conducted hostile activity, played a major role in the 1956 Revolution, been prominent in exile, or been suspected of terrorism. There were 37,352 persons in these records on June 30, 1989, and three to four times as many in the years after 1956. Those featured were considered “prior” offenders who could not be given a clean police record. Preliminary monitoring was used for those only suspected of crime. At this investigative level, some methods could not be used: these included operational surveillance, operational schemes, mail monitoring, disinformation, entrapment, undercover research, and covert frisking. Material on the targets was placed in “personal” files, or “group” files for multiple targets. Greater suspicion would lead to confidential investigation, in which all operational methods could be used. Much about the enemy image shared by the III/III Division emerges from the choices made between preliminary monitoring and confidential investigation. The cases have still not been fully researched, which leaves only the possibility of sampling them to illustrate III/III Division working methods. The only right-wing manifestation to be somewhat tolerated were some shades of “nationalism.” This arose partly from the MSZMP’s fellow-traveler policy of allying with the populist writers, which gave public access to figures like Gyula Illyés, László Németh, and their associates, and placed in the “condoned” category some works of theirs that would not have been tolerated politically from other sources.47 However, the Hungarian approach was unique among Eastern bloc countries; all the other state-socialist regimes espoused more openly nationalistic policies. This meant not only that all neighboring countries continued discriminating against their ethnic Hungarian 47 On this, see Standeisky, Az írók és a hatalom, and Standeisky, Gúzsba kötve.

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minorities, but also (unintentionally) that Trianon and the national question in general remained topical in Hungarian society, despite attempts to silence it in official public forums. From 1975, a high proportion of central, nationwide confidential investigations were against those who could be called “nationalist,” including opposition activity linked with Transylvania. State security investigations in five of the six “nationalist” cases in 1978 were prompted by protests against the oppression of Transylvanian Hungarians.48 Against this backdrop, it is worth examining what confidential investigations were in progress at the III/III Division in 1978 (See Table 5.3). Table 5.3. Persons/groups under confidential III/III Division investigation in 197849 Nation­ alist 6 29%

Other opposition

Ultra-left

8 38%

2 9.5%

Ex-political Church prisoners 1 4.5%

2 9.5%

Nonpolitical 2 9.5%

Total 21 100%

Likewise, little is known of the F file cases of the 1980s, as the documents were singled out for destruction during the last months of the state-socialist regime. Nonetheless, incomplete though the figures for central cases of nationwide importance are, they do provide a glimpse of how state security operated. At least as revealing is to see who did not have an F file opened on them and for what types of activity. There are no data, for example, suggesting such files were opened on high church leaders, populist writers, former Christian democrats, Christian socialists, legitimists, or aristocrats, apart from József Antall and Ferenc Matheovits.50 Strangely, there is no mention in the lists of subjects of F files kept by the state security services of any right-wing figure who became prominent after 1990.51 Only one of those under preliminary monitoring or confidential observation between 1977 and 1985, József Antall, can be linked closely to the right. 48 ÁBTL 1.11.10. Box 7. 49 ÁBTL 1.11.1. Box 2, item 3. 50 The composition of the F files in existence is unfortunately not known, but there cannot have been many in these categories. For more on Antall, see Rainer, Jelentések hálójában. Ferenc Matheovics (1914–1995), lawyer and member of Parliament between 1947 and 1949, was sentenced in 1949 to twelve years in prison for his conservative Christian socialist views. After being released in 1956, he was imprisoned again from 1964 to 1974. 51 On the several cases, see Ungváry, “Társadalmi ellenállás a Kádár-rendszerben,” 61–65.

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Antall was an F file subject in 1963–71 and 1981–89. Some conclusions can be drawn here even if it is assumed that some of the subjects omitted from the statement—F files antedating 1977 or stored at county level—bore a political similarity to Antall. Based on the laws of large numbers, however, the right can be said to be severely underrepresented compared with the grouping identified as the democratic opposition.

Christian democratic and right-wing organizations State security uncovered several organizational activities of a right-wing nature in the 1960s. Aside from a few cases, these have not been discussed in specialist literature or in journalism, whereas there is ample literature on opposition movements in the 1970s. One possible difference is that expressly right-wing opposition movements no longer existed in the 1960s. A bigger difference is that the Kádár regime, despite becoming temporarily tougher after 1970, did not produce major political trials; state security came to prefer various techniques of disintegration, discrediting, and exclusion. In principle, anti-communism might be one criterion of rightism. The populist writers have been mentioned as an exception, since their position as fellow travelers meant that many identified them with the system, as allies of the MSZMP. In any case, their “third road” ideology was an attempt to go beyond the left/right division. In what follows, I count as right-wing organizations those that approached in some form “Christian” political thinking or the pre-1945 middle class, or that were opposed to the regime on an anti-communist basis. Nonetheless, “Christian” thinking is left-wing in an economic sense insofar as its followers, beginning with Ottokár Prohászka,52 opposed large-scale capitalism and proclaimed a Gospel-based socialism. Naturally, these considerations did not feature in the state security assessment of them. Also on the right were the populist writers’ movements, in their approach to Hungarians living outside the country and to the Jewish question, although they cannot be seen as right-wing in the original sense. During the few days of the 1956 Revolution a great many political organizations surfaced. None of these had time to reach fruition, but there were 52 Ottokár Prohászka (1858–1927) was a Catholic cleric and Bishop of Székesfehérvár who became an important political actor after World War I as a prominent advocate of anti-Semitism and the idea of a nation-based Christian socialism.

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several signs that the political relations of 1945–46 had endured the Rákosi dictatorship better than might have been expected. External observers might think that the post-1956 consolidation of the Kádár regime managed to silence all inimical forces for a time, but in fact organization continued even inside prisons, one example being the case codenamed “Inciters.”53 In 1960, seven people received short prison sentences for leafleting in Kispest. The prison security learned from agents that the perpetrators had sought to organize an illegal Christian democratic party and were continuing their activity inside the prison. Luckily, they were all released under the 1963 general amnesty and no clear evidence was found against them within the prison. Nevertheless, observation of them continued until 1975.54 Most right-wing actions were uncovered by the Interior Ministry in an embryonic state, and obliterated without any serious social response. However, there are several signs that the lack of response did not result only from the preventive work done by the Interior Ministry. Hungarian society did not show much willingness to resist after the bloody suppression of 1956. One example was the case of the October Front Illegal Revolutionary Organization, founded by six high school students, who began in 1961 to commemorate 1956 in secret each year. They set up a formal structure in 1964, devised a political program, and made written pledges. They also tried initially to increase their numbers: in October and on May 15, they addressed letters to people condemned for 1956 and to others, to remind them of the days of revolution. However, they met with no response. Their activity tailed off and eventually ceased of its own accord. A change of quality in right-wing organizing efforts appears if pre-1956 cases are compared with post-1956 ones. Before, there had been several rightwing efforts by comparatively large numbers of people. One was the case of the “Christian Socialist Party” set up by Ferenc Szabó and László Forbáth, for which 103 persons were held in September 1953. The naming by state security of the “conspiratorial” groups uncovered between 1964–68, the details of which have still not been fully studied, give some indication of the political content of their activities. From a total of eighteen such cases, the names of four suggest they were right-wing actions. In the other fourteen, it is not 53 In Hungarian, “Bujtogatók.” 54 ÁBTL O–19867/1. 110 and V–147422/23. Summary of 1963 work of the operational group of Budapest National Prison.

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possible to guess at motives from their names: most concerned remembering the 1956 Revolution and their participants did not possess clear political notions. Moreover, there are also data from the 1960s on numerous left-wing anti-state organizations.55 It is questionable whether the anti-state activities just cited had any basis in fact. As late as 1969, the Kádár regime was capable of launching a show trial based on a fictional right-wing plot, such as the one against Batu Bakos and seven associates. This was basically a circle of friends meeting from 1967 at the University of Medicine, voicing in private anti-communist and, on occasion, crude anti-Semitic remarks. Although several participants had a rightwing background, all were members of the university’s KISZ organization and some held office in it. They dreamed of blowing up statues and distributing leaflets, but they never began any preparations. On one wine-soaked occasion they even began handing out ministerial portfolios to each other, but typically, never returned to them again. In July 1969, the society was found guilty of conspiracy against the Hungarian People’s Republic. Bakos was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and the others to shorter terms.56 The case had little political import, but it did have some noteworthy aspects. It is interesting to find that young people with expressly right-wing views, from a right-wing family background, were being admitted to university and being given a chance to organize the KISZ club in the second half of the 1960s. This underlines what was said earlier: the efforts to exclude the “formers” socially did not succeed. No less interesting is the tone of the club’s discussions, which was almost identical with that of the anti-Semitic university students’ bodies of the 1930s. However, these were not the cases given the greatest publicity during the first decade of the Kádár regime. The focus was on cases against members of the Catholic Church who tried to engage in social activities (the fall of Batu Bakos was also influenced by his contacts with priests who had served prison sentences and were kept under strict surveillance). The church trials were a strong enough deterrent to show everyone what they were not to attempt. There was a total change of sides and ultimately submission by the bench of bishops, so that the Church hierarchy became one of the most stable support55 For more detail, see Ungváry, “Társadalmi ellenállás a Kádár-rendszerben,” 13–80. 56 The case was studied in Éva Standeisky, “Mélyrétegi metszet: jobboldali fiatalok az 1960-as években,” in Antiszemitizmusok (Budapest: Argumentum, 2007), on whose account my work rests.

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ers of the dictatorship and excluded the possibility of its assisting any kind of right-wing intellectual movement. There were eight larger show trials, reported in the press, brought against Church figures between 1960 and 1972; the sentences were deterrent indeed. For instance, István Tabódy, a priest organizing secret seminaries, received a sentence of twelve years’ imprisonment, while Ödön Lénárd received nineteen.57 Furthermore, there were over two hundred criminal prosecutions and actions for incitement against former members of religious orders.58 Thus, the Church hierarchy was placed almost wholly in the service of the dictatorship. It was not by chance that no one sought Church backing for activity of a political nature after 1970.59 The “silence” of the right did not mean that the will of those concerned had been broken: even in prison, they did not usually change their views. The state security fears over the incorrigible political opposition nonetheless proved groundless. Looking at what happened to them after their release, most appear to descend into total isolation. Besides Matheovits, another example was Béla Vanek, who was arrested in 1959 for participating in the 1956 Revolution and for concealing weapons, and was released only in 1969. His stubborn behavior in prison meant he could not receive any kind of remission, but he had been one of the important organizers of the “white aid,” and as a radio technician also made illegal detector radios.60 On his release he became isolated, sharing his views only with György Krassó61 and a couple of diehard anti-communist associates. But in political terms Vanek was incapable of organizing any kind of movement, for reasons less concerned with himself than with the total lack of a receptive environment around him.62 Without devoting much space to post-1990 right-wing interpretations of events, it is worth mentioning two persons who joined the radical right af57 Ödön Lénárd was a Piarist monk and the cultural secretary of Actio Catholica after 1945, who was sentenced in three different show trials for illegal clerical activities. 58 MNL OL XIX–B–1–a/1616/70. Report on the position of the “formers” and their descendants. 59 On the submission of the church hierarchy, see Krisztián Ungváry, “A katolikus egyházi hierarchia megtörése a Kádár-rendszerben,” in Tabajdi and Ungváry, Elhallgatott múlt, 285–308. 60 Referring to the “red aid” actions organized by the communist party in the 1930s for imprisoned party members, those who wanted to help people persecuted by the communists after 1956 named their action the “white aid.” 61 Sentenced to ten years in prison for his activities during the 1956 revolution, György Krassó became, after his release in 1963, an important figure of anti-communist dissent in Hungary. 62 On Béla Vanek, see ÁBTL V–145181, V–73262, O19619/1, 3–7, 13, and István Stefka, Ötven­ hat arcai (Budapest: Kairosz Kiadó, 2003).

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ter that year: Lóránt Schuster and Levente Murányi. They had family reasons for adopting anti-communist, right-wing views, but neither had found a social group within which they could voice such commitments more widely. Murányi, born in 1939, took part in the “We Will Start Again in March” (MÚK)63 movement in 1957. The group were arrested and three older colleagues executed, while Murányi received a prison sentence of three-and-a-half years and was freed in an amnesty in the fall of 1959. He managed personally to escape this stigma in the later Kádár years (working as a self-employed artisan after 1981), but had nobody with whom he could join in a political sense, even informally. Schuster, ten years younger, looked back in an interview: I was even discharged from the army after six months and three days as unfit in peace and in war. I was the only one, I think, in the history of the Hungarian People’s Army to read the service regulations. I then calculated how many cubic meters of space we were being given in our quarters: it turned out it was less than the regulations laid down. I sent this in to the complaints department at the ministry, and thirty men had to move out as a result. This showed they couldn’t keep their own regulations, and I looked out sharply for similar cases and bombarded the ministry with various letters. In the end I wrote a very professional study entitled “Freedom of Worship for the Enlisted in the Hungarian People’s Army,” and they discharged me at high speed.64

Even such a short interview extract shows how Schuster rejected the regime not just as an anti-communist, but on grounds of principle. He later pursued a musical career with the popular rock bands Gesarol and P. Mobil,65 where his music became a leading experience for the younger generation of the 1970s and 1980s. Yet, these long-haired, tattooed young fans of “progressive rock” 63 “We will start again in March” (Márciusban újrakezdjük) was a slogan in the intermediate period following the suppression of the 1956 revolution among those who hoped that the revolution could be repeated. The significance of March was that it referred to the Hungarian revolution of March 1848. 64 “‘Én nem a filmben vagyok benne, hanem az emberek agyában’: Schuster Lóránt a Quartnak,” Quart.hu, December 18, 2011 (text no longer available, for archived version, see https://web.archive.org/web/20120614153207/http://www.quart.hu/quart/archiv/cikk. html?id=6941&preview=1&article_version_id=102874). 65 The state security aspects of this were explored by Tamás Szőnyei in Szőnyei, Nyilván tartottak.

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and heavy metal could hardly be dubbed “right-wing,” even if they did oppose the regime to some extent. In the 1980s, there did appear Western-inspired, ultra-right skinhead and punk groups (CpG, Adolf Hitler Oi Band 1984, Mos-Oi!, and so forth) which could be so labeled, but they remained closed groups in an intellectual and social sense, in no way comparable to the mass of fans around P. Mobil.66

Conclusion The examples here show how hard it is to define what counted as “right-wing” activity in the Kádár period. The system of political ideas we call right-wing today hardly showed any signs of life in the last twenty years of the partystate. To quote József Antall, it had “submerged” itself to wait patiently for a turn for the better. Further research is needed to determine to what extent was this the result of a general social and cultural atmosphere not favorable to the right, and what role was played in it by the sophisticated political repressive apparatus of the Kádár regime. What is certain is that all who were part of the right (primarily the Christian middle class) had personal, painful experience of the oppression of the dictatorship. No attempt can be made here to review the right’s frames of interpretation today, but readers may still be prompted to seek analogies between those branded as hostile to the Kádár regime and the present-day right. That task awaits future research, but the existence or absence of commonalities raises several questions. If the right wing is equated with anti-communism, one of the great paradoxes of the political transition at the end of the 1980s from state-socialism to democracy appears. Of the parties arising at that time, the one most strongly opposed to communism was the Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ), founded by a grouping that called itself the “democratic opposition” but was dubbed by state security as the “radical opposition.” Yet, four years after the first democratic elections in Hungary, the SZDSZ entered a coalition with the Hungarian Socialist Party, the post-communist successor party of MSZMP. This alliance was motivated at least partly by fears of the resurgence of interwar right-wing ideas attributed to the center-right coalition that won the country’s first free elections. In retrospect, it is worth consider66 On the musical side, see Szőnyei, Nyilván tartottak, and Róbert Kövessy’s 1999 documentary film Pol Pot megye punkjai (The punks of Pol Pot County).

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ing which choice could be deemed a tactical move by the SZDSZ: its adoption of anti-communism before 1989, its abandonment of this stance not long after, or both. Another question concerns to what extent that abandonment led to Hungarian liberalism’s ongoing and continuing loss of credibility and the dissolution of this particular liberal party as such. When it comes to the party that we now would consider the most typically right-wing among the political forces active in the political transition of 1988– 90, the Hungarian Democratic Forum (Magyar Demokrata Fórum, MDF), this was actually far less anti-communist before 1990 than after. Formed from the populist-national opposition based on the alliance of the populist (népi) intellectuals and what was left of the traditional middle class, the MDF, led by József Antall, tended toward moderation during the regime change and showed willingness to cooperate with the party-state, as was shown in the course of the “four yeses” referendum campaign.67 Neither the Independent Smallholders Party (FKgP) nor the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP)—two “historical” parties that had already been active during the brief post-1945 democratic era and were revived after 1988—was a decisive political force at that time, as they were paralyzed by the compromised and infiltrated political guards they had inherited from the party-state period, who received important positions in the new parties. A significant reason for the slow reemergence of the right after 1990 was the political paralysis of its main allies, the churches, particularly the Catholic Church. More important still, however, was the absence of social momentum behind the classic right-wing parties in 1988–91. Furthermore, none of the influential groups among the intelligentsia saw anything of interest in these parties. All the signs suggest that it was not just the pressure of dictatorship that paralyzed the Hungarian right in the Kádár period; it was impeded at least as much by the absence of political verve. From the Church came repression, not support. The populists who openly declared their national feeling tended more toward the left. As such, the “pure” right wing was left without scope. 67 This referendum, held on November 26, 1989, asked four questions related to the organization of the state after the end of state socialism. While the first question, related to the direct election of the president, was carried very narrowly, the other three (involving banning MSZMPrelated organizations, making the party accountable for its property holdings, and dissolving the Workers’ Militia) passed by a landslide. The real stake in this referendum for the new opposition parties was whether Imre Pozsgay, a Politburo member, should be elected head of state: the SZDSZ strongly opposed this, while the MDF did not.

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Several consequences of the oppression of the right, fatal in the long term, still accompany it. One is the absence of a commitment to historical responsibility. However, it was unsurprising after forty-five years of oppression that those concerned should emphasize their sufferings, not their previous responsibility. Even in West Germany, it took twenty years before a society-wide self-examination could begin, and it could hardly be otherwise in Hungary after the end of state socialism. Moreover, the party-state period made sure that almost all ideological fault lines were blurred. It was because of this that the populist writers, with their roots on the left, could become repositories of the right under the Kádár regime, and that the ruined historical churches lost all contact with progressiveness (with all honor due to the exceptions). This study is not intended to analyze policy characteristics after the democratic transition or post-1990 developments in right-wing ideologies, but it can be ventured that most of the political delusions after the political transition, on left and right alike, have their origins in the previous oppressive regime.

Bibliography Bánkuti, Gábor. Jezsuiták a diktatúra árnyékában [Jesuits in the shadow of dictatorship]. Budapest: L’ Harmattan/Jézus Társaság Budapesti Rendtartománya/ÁBTL, 2011. Bihari, József. “Jampec” [Foppery]. Magyar Nyelv 62, no. 1 (1996): 88–90. Csapody, Miklós. “A világban helytállani…” Bálint Sándor élete és politikai működése 1904– 1980 [“A place in the world”: The life and political operation of Sándor Bálint]. Budapest: Korona, 2004. ———. “Kileng a mutató: Páskándi, Ilia és a belső elhárítás” [The index swings: Ilia Páskándi and internal surveillance]. Korunk 14, no. 8 (August 2003): 39–53. Horváth, Sándor. Kádár gyermekei: Ifjúsági lázadás a hatvanas években [Kádár’s children: Youth rebellion in the 1960s]. Budapest: Nyitott Könyvműhely, 2009. Kovács, András. “Hungarian Jewish politics from the End of the Second World War until the Collapse of Communism.” In Jews and the State: Dangerous Alliances and the Perils of Privilege, edited by Ezra Mendelsohn, 124–56. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. ———. “Körbekerítve: Scheiber Sándor utóvédharcai” [Fenced off: Rearguard actions of Sándor Scheiber]. In Papírhíd—tanulmánykötet Scheiber Sándor születésének 100. év­ fordulójára [Paper bridge: Studies for the birth centenary of Sándor Scheiber], edited by Antal Babits, 349–57. Budapest: Logos, 2013. Rainer, János M. Jelentések hálójában: Antall József és az állambiztonság emberei 1957– 1989 [Caught in a net of reports: József Antall and the state security men 1957–89]. Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 2008. Rév, István. “Ellenforradalom” [Counterrevolution]. Beszélő 4, no. 4 (April 1999): 42–54. 187

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Standeisky, Éva. “Antiszemitizmus a Kádár-korban” [Anti-Semitism in the Kádár period]. Kritika 40, no. 3 (2011): 18–19. ———. Az írók és a hatalom 1956–1963 [Writers and power, 1956–63]. Budapest: 1956os Intézet, 1996. ———. Gúzsba kötve: A kulturális elit és a hatalom [Tied up: The cultural elite and power]. Budapest: ÁBTL/1956-os Intézet, 2005. ———. “Mélyrétegi metszet: jobboldali fiatalok az 1960-as években” [Cross-section deep down: right-wing youth in the 1960s]. In Antiszemitizmusok [Anti-Semitisms], 96– 130. Budapest: Argumentum, 2007. Stefka, István. Ötvenhat arcai [Faces of 1956]. Budapest: Kairosz Kiadó, 2003. Szakolczai, Attila. “Háborús bűnösök elítélése az 1956-os forradalom után” [Sentencing of war criminals after the 1956 Revolution]. In Évkönyv 2004: Magyarország a jelenkorban [Yearbook 2004: Hungary in the contemporary era], edited by János M. ­Rainer and Éva Standeisky, 29–52. Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 2004. Szekér, Nóra. A Magyar Testvéri Közösség története [History of the Hungarian Fraternal Community]. Hódmezővásárhely: “Norma,” 2010. Szőnyei, Tamás. Nyilván tartottak: titkos szolgák a magyar rock körül 1960–1990 [They kept records: Secret servants around Hungarian rock, 1960–90]. Budapest: Magyar Narancs, 2005. ———. Titkos írás: A kulturális elit és a hatalom, 1956–1990 [Secret writing: The cultural elite and power, 1956–90]. 2 vols. Budapest: Noran, 2012. Tabajdi, Gábor, and Krisztián Ungváry. Elhallgatott múlt: A pártállam és a belügy; A poli­ tikai rendőrség működése Magyarországon 1956–1990 [Silenced past: The party-state and the ministry of the interior; The operation of the political police in Hungary, 1956–1990]. Budapest: Corvina, 2008. ———. “Szélsőbaloldali társaság: Imre Katalin és körének megfigyelése” [An ultra-left society: Surveillance of Katalin Imre and her circle]. In Tabajdi and Ungváry, Elhall­ gatott múlt, 329–47. Tamáska, Péter. Politikai elítélt kerestetik: Börtönélet és politikai foglyok Magyarországon 1945–1990 [Political convicts wanted: Prison life and political prisoners in Hungary 1945–90]. Budapest: Mundus, 2006. Tímár, Ágnes. Hivatás és küldetés [Profession and vocation]. Budapest: Kairosz, 2011. Tischler, János. “Hogyan nem szerették a Fradit? A kádári hatalom és a Ferencváros az 1960-as években” [How did they not like Fradi? The Kádár authorities and Ferencváros Football Club in the 1960s]. Élet és Irodalom 20, no. 14 (May 14, 2004): 3–4. Ungváry, Krisztián. “A katolikus egyházi hierarchia megtörése a Kádár-rendszerben” [The breaking of the Catholic church hierarchy during the Kádár regime]. In Tabajdi and Ungváry, Elhallgatott múlt, 285–308. ———. “Egy emléktábláról” [About a plaque]. Élet és Irodalom, August 5, 2005. ———. “Egy klasszikus koncepciós ügy—Péntek István reformkommunista szervezkedése” [A classic case of sham criminal proceedings—The reform communist organization of István Péntek]. In Tabajdi and Ungváry, Elhallgatott múlt, 233–40. ———. “Koncepciós per a Kádár-rendszerben: A Hagemann-ügy” [Show trial in the Kádár regime: The Hagemann case]. In Tabajdi and Ungváry, Elhallgatott múlt, 285–319. 188

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———. “Társadalmi ellenállás a Kádár-rendszerben és az állambiztonság ‘jobboldali’ ellenségei” [Social opposition under the Kádár regime and the “right-wing” enemies of state security]. In Búvópatakok: A jobboldal és az állambiztonság 1945–1989 [Underground streams: The political right and the State Security, 1945–1989], edited by Krisztián Ungváry, 7–80. Budapest: Jaffa, 2013.

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CHAPTER SIX

CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATS UNDER FIRE FROM THE POLITICAL POLICE, 1945–1989 G á b o r Ta b a j d i

The Democratic People’s Party (Demokrata Néppárt, DNP) headed by István Barankovics can be seen as a Hungarian equivalent of the center-right Christian democratic parties that played a decisive role in Western Europe. Having dissociated itself firmly from the pre-1945 “Christian/national” course, it polled remarkably well in the 1947 general elections, partly as a reaction against a forcible communist advance. But the DNP, along with other parties and movements, was eliminated from public life by 1949. Yet, the Christian democratic heritage, based on the teachings of the church (mainly Catholic) and the melding of the principles of democracy and social welfare, played a decisive role in the history of twentieth-century Hungarian political thinking, as exemplified by the part its adherents played in the 1956 Revolution and the 1989 transition to democracy. Its public history, in 1945–49 and 1956, has been partly explored by scholars. This study deals mainly with the intervening period, which is now open to documentary research, mainly from the perspective of state security.1 It seeks to present the scope of action available to former politicians during this period, and the Christian democratic tradition that served as an underground stream of influence upon them.

1 I am grateful to Mihály Soós for eight years’ assistance with archive work and research into the data on Christian democratic politicians, which made this study possible.

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The beginnings of secret service operations As Hungary came under Soviet occupation after 1945, Christian groups that were committed to democracy, oriented toward France or Britain, and had contributed to anti-war, anti-German, and anti-Fascist activity met with legal, administrative, and technical barriers to organization. Hungary was alone in the region in holding elections as early as November 1945 in which Barankovics’s party did not run, having failed to receive a permit that would allow it to do so in time. It urged its followers to support the Smallholders’ Party (FKgP) instead, contributing to the clear victory (57 percent) of what became an anti-communist umbrella party. Minimal though public DNP activity was, it was targeted immediately by the political police. The secret services, already under communist control, sought even then to compromise its potential leaders and background figures. One of these was Béla Kovrig, a reputed social scientist involved in devising the Hungarian social insurance system, and who played a part in organizing Catholic public life during the war. He was seen by friend and foe alike as a leading bourgeois democrat, a Christian-oriented leading light in welfare policy.2 After two months of secret intelligence gathering,3 the political police blackmailed him with threats to ban his book and harass sick relatives. On September 9, 1946, Kovrig was arrested by the secret police after an identity check and taken to their notorious headquarters at Andrássy Street 60, where constant interrogation soon intimidated him into cooperating with them. His main service was to name who was who in Catholic public life, thereby helping to orient state security through his analyses of an area with which its officers were quite unfamiliar. However, his conscience would not let him support the implementation of totalitarian rule, and he chose eventually to emigrate: he and his wife fled the country in November 1948 with the help of István Koczak, a secretary at the United States embassy.4 Another influential Christian democrat (a pre-1945 parliamentarian) was the priest József Közi-Horváth, who also became involved in reporting on “anti-demo2 Gábor Tabajdi and Krisztián Ungváry, Elhallgatott múlt: A pártállam és a belügy; A politikai rendőrség működése Magyarországon 1956–1990 (Budapest: Corvina, 2008), 193–203. 3 Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára (Historical Archives of the State Security Services, hereafter ÁBTL) 3.2.4. K–384. 384. “Bihari.” 4 After 1950, Hungarian intelligence planned to contact him again, but apparently found no opportunities to do so. ÁBTL 3.2.5. O–8–38/1. Washington correspondence file.

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cratic” organized activity.5 Harassed by the political police, he left the country in 1946 and spent his later decades involved in Christian democratic, Christian social, and church émigré activity. Surviving state security papers strongly suggest that from the start, other Christian democratic leaders and allied staff who knew their strategy in depth were also drawn in. These “confidential” informants reported on public DNP events, even handing in several documents from party headquarters.6 The emerging Christian democratic movement had to cope with both explicit and undercover moves made by the authorities, as well as with antagonism within the church. The leaders of the newly formed DNP became involved in personal and strategic conflicts and differences of worldview with conservative dignitaries within the Hungarian Catholic Church. They never reached common ground with the primate, József Mindszenty, despite the attempts of several intermediaries.7 The party cannot, therefore, be seen as governed directly by the church, as was alleged at show trials described later in this chapter and asserted in early communist-period historiography. The DNP was in fact comparable to the Western-type Christian democratic parties in also being independent of the church hierarchy.8 Alongside the difficulties in founding the party were a number of factors that improved its chances of political success. From 1946 there was ever stronger opposition to the communist-dominated coalition, or what could be described simply as a general anti-communist atmosphere. Many members of the governing parties were dissatisfied with their leaders’ performance, along with the power-grabbing intentions and local excesses of communist politicians. First, the hitherto leading political force, the FKgP, fell victim to gradual fragmentation through Mátyás Rákosi’s infamous “salami tactics,” and many local branches began to seek other frames for political activity. This meant essentially that the 1947 DNP turned into an umbrella party as well:9 5 ÁBTL 3.2.4. K–1442. József Közi-Horváth. 6 ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–12145. Former bourgeois parties. 7 István Mészáros, Mindszenty és Barankovics: adalékok a “ keresztény párt” problematikájához (Budapest: Eötvös, 2005). 8 Jenő Gergely, “Christdemokratie in Ungarn 1944–1949,” in Christdemokratie in Europa im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Michael Gehler, Wolfram Kaiser, and Helmut Wohnout (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2001), 464–82. 9 Jenő Gergely, “Demokrata Néppárt alkotóelemei, 1945–1947,” in Kereszténység és közélet: tisz­ telgés Kovács K. Zoltán 75. születésnapjára, ed. Gábor Bagdy, Miklós Gyorgyevics, and József Mészáros (Budapest: Barankovics Akadémiai Alapítvány, 1999), 165–73.

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an amalgam of young neo-Catholics, reform-minded intelligentsia, leaders of Catholic popular welfare movements, and parliamentarians squeezed out of other political parties (mainly the FKgP). Its intensive electoral campaign was assisted by members of disbanded agricultural and youth movements, the people’s college movement KALOT led by the Jesuits, and activists from the Peasants’ Union of landowning farmers. But the domestic political scope open to the DNP was defined ultimately by the communists, intent on building up their own power. Unlike two years earlier, their aim at this point was to broaden participation in the election through an electoral struggle they could control in every way. Indeed, while trimming the results obtainable by their political opponents, they wanted to use an ostensibly progressive Catholic force to divide religiously minded voters (not least to counter the public appearances and mass influence of József Mindszenty).10 This delicate political situation meant the points and aims of the Christian democrats in 1947 tied in with many other lines of thought. Corporatism, legitimism, and Christian social notions were joined by “third road” ideas (promoting an alternative to both capitalism and socialism) from the Democratic Party and even by the political traditions of the Hungarian anti-Habsburg independence efforts. The natural rights-based program formulated by István Barankovics was combined in everyday practice with sometimes strong, sometimes moderate anti-communism, but the frames for implementing Christian democratic policy were narrow. Within weeks, the party’s very operation became impossible.

Eradication of the party’s support The organization of the DNP in 1947 was one of the most successful operations in Hungarian political history. After 1945, amid the political storms of the “coalition years,” it existed as a sidelined political force, showing little public activity between 1945 and 1947. Its agreement with the FKgP had given the DNP two members in both the parliament and the Budapest Assembly, yet for a time even its journal, Hazánk (Our Country), ceased to appear. Then, in the summer of 1947 (after the opposition Hungarian Freedom Party had been paralyzed), a few short weeks’ campaigning in a general election 10 Nicolas Bauquet, “A Mindszentizmus,” in A magyar jobboldali hagyomány 1900–1948, ed. Ignác Romsics (Budapest: Osiris, 2009), 534–55.

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replete with fraud won it 824,259 votes (16.9 percent of those cast).11 The result, which took Barankovics and the general public by surprise, allowed it to form a sixty-strong group, making it the largest opposition faction. The grouping’s capacity to exploit this success was strongly curbed by intimidation from the political police, now holding extended powers as the State Security Department (ÁVO). So the DNP must be classed as an electoral party: the activity of its organizations lasted only a few weeks, before being confined to the parliamentary group. ÁVO agents attended the foundation of its local branches,12 and a comprehensive, centrally dictated campaign against them began after the election. This operation, orchestrated by the communist party, can be traced in reports filed by a nationwide network of party envoys and instructors. The main goal was to coordinate the work of the ÁVO and local party organizations at a time when communist leaders were already able to make their coalition partners, who were likewise under political pressure, to take action against the opposition at the local level. The DNP branches soon ceased to function as it became clear that it was not the party’s elected representatives, with their parliamentary immunity, who were harassed after a meeting, but rather members of the audience. Consequently, the decision was made not to hold such events any more.13 By then, DNP supporters were also aware of another danger to local party relations: the mass appearance of informers.14 Despite these concerns, the total annihilation suffered by other bourgeois parties did not ensue; this was due to the authorities’ aim of using the party to divide the Catholic political camp by playing it off against the primate, József Mindszenty. These were the conditions in which DNP members began their parliamentary work in the fall of 1947. Their political activities constituted, in effect, a rearguard action in the defense of parliamentarianism. In this final stage of the political transition, tactical and strategic issues (including the party’s relation to communist power building and to the nationalization of economic and social activity, as well as likely trends in international power relations) in11 This was dubbed the kékcédulás (blue ballot) election, after the voting slips issued to those voting away from home. Communist supporters made widespread multiple use of these ballots: according to various estimates, they gained 60,000–120,000 fraudulent votes in targeted constituencies. 12 ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–12145. Former bourgeois parties. 13 Author’s interview with Zoltán K. Kovács, Budapest, February 22, 2004. 14 ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–10904. Béla Vid Mihelics. Published by Zoltán Frenyó, “ÁVH-jelentések a Demokrata Néppártról,” Magyar Szemle 2000, no. 1–2 (February 2000): 82–85.

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evitably overlapped. Moves against “bourgeois” parties—communist salami tactics—gained strength. State security agencies also began to collect compromising information on the DNP, so that by the fall of 1948 they had something against almost every one of the party’s elected officials.15 The result of this was resignations, deprival of seats, and the initiation of criminal proceedings.

Show trials and total control (1949–56) The total exclusion of Christian democrats from public life was gained through open political pressure and fabricated trials. István Barankovics left Hungary on February 2, 1949, after the arrest and indictment of Cardinal Mindszenty, head of the Hungarian Catholic Church, and a dramatic discussion with Mátyás Rákosi on January 23, 1949.16 The DNP leader did not agree to join the propaganda campaign against Mindszenty, and so declared his party dissolved in a message sent from Vienna. Ten other members of parliament also managed to cross the border. Those remaining tried to secure their future through various plans for a parliamentary group, but the State Security Authority (ÁVH) learned of these in detail from its informers within the party.17 Ultimately, they lost their seats when the parliament was dissolved, initiating a period of persecution and illegality targeting Christian democrats.18 The aim of compromising and crushing the opposition political force was pursued mainly through the trial of the parliamentarian Ferenc Matheovits, a Pécs lawyer who had run a notably effective electoral campaign in Tolna and Baranya counties. Out of his relationship with József Mindszenty and his criticism of the DNP’s impotence,19 the ÁVH wove a story of a conspiracy, one in which Matheovits was the assumed leader of the political wing of a grandiose conspiracy believed to be controlled by the cardinal. The informa15 Lists survive complete and in parts. In fullest form: ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–12145. Former political parties. 16 Ferenc Babóthy and Zoltán K. Kovács, eds., Félbemaradt reformkor: miért akadt el az ország keresztény humanista megújulása? (Rome: Tip Detti, 1990), 242–52. 17 ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–9044. Dezső Ábrahám. 18 Zoltán K. Kovács and Pál Rosdy, eds., Az idő élén jártak: Kereszténydemokrácia Magyarországon, 1944–1949 (Budapest: Barankovics István Alapítvány, 1996), 119–88; see also György Szakolczai and Róbert Szabó, Két kísérlet a proletárdiktatúra elhárítására: Barankovics és a DNP, 1945– 1949; Bibó és a DNP, 1956 (Budapest: Gondolat, 2011), 47–75. 19 The memorandum Matheovits sent Mindszenty in 1948, criticizing the parliamentary policy of the DNP, remained in the state security files. The arguments led to Matheovits leaving the DNP group and sitting as an independent.

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tion required for this prior assumption was collected by keeping him under intensive surveillance. He was arrested on January 20, 1949.20 According to an interview he gave about his life, he made his confession after being threatened personally by Gyula Décsi, head of the ÁVH department of investigations and later minister of justice.21 The show trial ended with Matheovits being found guilty of “leading a movement directed toward the overthrow of the democratic state order and the republic.”22 Matheovits became a key figure in a web of subsequent show trials, which the prosecution sought to link to his. Ferenc Fehér, a Zala County member, received six years’ imprisonment in 1954 on charges of involvement in the conspiracy, after years had been spent seeking other evidence against him. The former Nyíregyháza member of parliament János Zomborszky was originally held for statements allegedly made on Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953, but for lack of evidence was then implicated in the Matheovits affair through forced confessions and finally sentenced to two-and-a-half years in 1954.23 The Military Policy Department (Katpol), also a secret service under communist control but a long-time rival of the ÁVO, fabricated a colossal military conspiracy from the Mindszenty case. Confessions forced by physical and psychological means produced a picture of an extensive underground movement comprising a thousand military officers. The main individual accused was Bernát Károlyi, a leading Franciscan and the only cleric on the DNP list of parliamentary candidates. Although he did win a parliamentary mandate in 1947, he soon resigned on the orders of the Church.24 Katpol also sought to prove the grouping was in touch with several Christian politicians, military officers, church leaders, and appointees of the American embassy in Hungary, and that it was involved in plans for a US military invasion. The verdict was announced on May 19, 1950, but a filing error suggests it had been reached beforehand, following the Soviet practice of convictions resting merely on confessions of guilt. Károlyi could not serve out his fifteen-year sentence, as he died in a prison hospital on March 2, 1954. 20 ÁBTL 3.1.9. V–149861. Ferenc Matheovits. 21 Ferenc Matheovits, interview by Katalin Ferber, Budapest, 1988, 1956-os Intézet Oral History Archívum (currently Veritas Institute Oral History Archive, Budapest). 22 He was sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment. Of his fellow accused, Mihály Kisházi received seven years and Dr. József Gróh two. 23 ÁBTL 3.1.9. V–116973. Ferenc Fehér. 24 ÁBTL 3.1.9. V–117122. Bernát Károlyi and associates.

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The persecuted Christian democrats were classed with other enemies of the system through the charges and propaganda against them. The old DNP members were presented as imperialist spies, treasonous informers, and Vatican agents. The condemned politicians and party members came into contact with other political prisoners in prisons and internment camps, so the period of terror and “fear of the doorbell” also produced solidarity and a basis for later political actions. As the great trials went on, so did surveillance of retired politicians. Data was provided regularly by a network of informers built up by the ÁVH, and work started on collating and recording the earlier information gathered. The ÁVH subdepartment I/2, dealing with former politicians, opened a series of personal files. These contained both incriminating evidence (pre-1945 activity, 1947 campaign speeches, overheard private conversations) and continuing surveillance schedules. Several cases show how former MPs were consigned to the peripheries of society. Like many others from this group, Lajos Rónaszéki of Cegléd, a former cooperative manager, could only find work as a manual laborer;25 by the time his case was closed in 1956, he was an isolated, broken man, surrounded by informers and sunken by pessimism. Lajos Nagy, a former army officer, was treated similarly, although he was imprisoned for a few months in 1950, charged with agricultural sabotage, and had his possessions confiscated. He found a job as a beet buyer for the Hatvan sugar refinery,26 but his file was closed only in 1957, after he had remained relatively passive during the 1956 Revolution. Most members of parliament of peasant origin returned to their original occupation when their mandates ended. Their complete retirement largely protected them from centrally directed retaliation, but there was still some arbitrary local action, with efforts by the political police to monitor the villages: for example, the surveillance of the retired former KALOT leader Ferenc Pusztai continued until 1956.27 The fragmentary writings at the time and recollections of the period tell of a general mood of fear induced by “total security” and “fear of the doorbell.” At the same time, an examination of some of the local ÁVH cases seems to point to some limits on the organization’s capacity. Information gathering seems often to have been held up by high levels of staff turnover. Former 25 ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–9032. Lajos Rónaszéki. 26 ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–9915. Lajos Nagy. 27 ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–9166. Ferenc Pusztai.

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members of parliament were presumably noted everywhere as potential enemies, but their outlook on the world was often unclear and the secret service work done on them was often shallow, as the authorities tried to implicate them in some case or other. Márton Búzás and Kálmán Hajdú, for instance, were embroiled in an investigation codenamed “Irodalmárok” (literati) concerning a naive political leaflet.28 In the end no further large trials occurred, as political relaxation emerged. State security in Budapest may have used more comprehensive methods of observing its targets, causing ex-politicians to behave more cautiously and secretively. This appears, for instance, in the file on Sándor Eckhardt,29 the notable linguistics professor and initial representative of the DNP. Reports by people in his circle can be found, although he had withdrawn from public life and lived only for his scholarship. Meanwhile, the observation of Dezső P. Ábrahám, prime minister from July to August 1919 in the a counterrevolutionary government formed in Szeged,30 allowed the security services to keep tabs on the oldest DNP member, Dénes Farkas, and on the activities of more active Christian democratic politicians, who expected that communist rule would end soon.31 State security focused its attention for many years on parliamentarians who had left the parliamentary group, sat as independents, and had Budapest contacts.32 There is documentary evidence of former DNP organizers being watched as well. Breaking up the Christian democratic base took years of effort.33 The reports made for the ÁVH also reflect the hopes that the communist regime in Hungary would be short-lived, found initially among a certain layer of Christian democrats. However, the changes in international power relations did not favor such domestic policy plans. Also abandoned were all hopes of any return to a role in public life. Withdrawal and caution became general in an atmosphere of total control, for the ideology of the Christian democrats, among others, was strongly marked by the reality of dictatorship. 28 ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–9992. “Irodalmárok” (literati). 29 ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–9395 30 This elderly politician, having worked within the Independent Hungarian Democratic Party in 1947–49, tried after the dissolution of the DNP to bring the non-party members together. This became the basis for investigations against him. 31 ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–9044. Ábrahám Dezső. 32 ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14460. (Former fascist and right-wing parties in Zala County.) 33 Other county state security departments also prepared summary “monographs” even before 1956.

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Earlier Christian or Christian democratic watchwords and concepts gained new political connotations through personal discussions and leaflets distributed in secret. These veiled manifestations of a desire for freedom show that the political landslide of 1956 was not without antecedents in the Christian democratic tradition.

Christian democrats in 1956 Formal reorganization of the DNP during the 1956 Revolution can be linked to a handful of former members of parliament: Dénes Farkas, Sándor Keresztes, Aladár Keszler, Vid Mihelics, and Imre Kálmán Székely.34 These erstwhile politicians requested to reconstitute their party in a letter of October 30, 1956, to Prime Minister Imre Nagy. Having gained a government permit to do so, on November 1 the party paper, Hazánk, reappeared with an article setting out a program devised by Vid Mihelics. The DNP also gained access to the radio, where Farkas read a speech in its name. After preliminary talks, Cardinal Mindszenty agreed to receive Ferenc Matheovits on November 2, but denied the party his support.35 The DNP leaders also participated in the talks held among the leaders of various parties after the Soviet intervention. While all organizational activities were ceased, DNP representatives (Keresztes and Mihelics) became signatories of István Bibó’s memorandum outlining a roadmap for Hungary under the uneasy and unsettled conditions of foreign and domestic policy.36 Those active in the reorganization soon met with reprisals: Mihelics spent three months on remand in 1957, Székely was arrested in March 1957, and Matheovits, Farkas, and Keszler were each interned for several months. Aside from politicians activated by the events in Budapest, about half the party’s former members of parliament took some kind of public role in 1956, although many of them— as well as other erstwhile public figures—expressly refrained from any political activity or statements. Based on our current knowledge, thirteen former 34 András Mink, “A keresztény politikai pártok és az 1956-os forradalom,” in Pártok 1956: vál­ ogatás 1956-os pártvezetők visszaemlékezéseiből, ed. Zsuzsanna Kőrösi and Pál Péter Tóth (Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 1997), 151–56; Szakolczai and Szabó, Két kísérlet a proletárdiktatúra elhárítására, 136–42. 35 Matheovits, interview by Katalin Ferber. 36 Mária Csicskó and András Körösényi, “Egy harmadikutas szocializmus-utópia földközelben: A Petőfi Párt 1956–57-ben; Dokumentumok,” Századvég, no. 1–2 (1989): 162–64.

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parliamentarians played some local or regional role in organizing the revolution outside Budapest through various bodies and councils. This indicates that the Christian democratic politicians were known members of their local communities, entrusted by the newly freed citizens with representing their interests after the collapse of the earlier institutions of authority. Politicians who had been elevated to leading positions by grassroots revolutionary bodies suffered harsh reprisals once the Kádár regime was consolidated. The long-term outcomes of the 1956 reprisals are still not known in detail today, but they can be reconstructed for some individuals. For instance, the most politically active former Christian democrat during the revolution was János Gábriel. Once a social democratic worker, but a DNP member since 1947, he chaired the workers’ council at the Kaposvár meat combine, then the county revolutionary committee. This earned him two and a half years’ imprisonment and the confiscation of all his property in 1957, on charges of plotting to overthrow the democratic state order. He served his sentence and was released in 1959, but remained under continual state security surveillance until 1965 or his retirement, in line with the relevant regulations.37 The information gathered by state security did not remain within the organization.38 The political police briefed the party leadership daily on the information it received through various channels. Operative data influenced political decision-making, while the direction of secret service work was affected by party resolutions. A June 1957 Politburo resolution of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (MSZMP) instructed the newly reorganized state security apparatus to conduct a broad investigation into “coalition illegality.”39 The MSZMP leadership considered it self-evident that this broad resistance, composed of several parties and revolutionary bodies, would take its lead from the Hungarian Revolutionary Council formed in Strasbourg in January 1957 and be in contact with it. Based on this fictional assumption, it ordered investigations into the activity of each party, along with the infiltration of their centers.40 But such ideas changed rapidly during the consolidation process. Ulti37 ÁBTL 3.1.9. V–145010. János Gábriel. 38 County monographs also cover data on 1956 activity by other Christian democrats besides former members of parliament: ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14994/2. Hostile elements in the field of domestic surveillance (Somogy Co.); ÁBTL 3.1.9. V–145460. Preventive detainees for counter-revolutionary activity (Somogy Co.); ÁBTL 3.1.9. V–150374/1. Somogy County monograph II. 39 Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára (National Archives of Hungary; MNL OL) 288. f. 5/33. ő. e. 40 Not for the first or the last time, the name of the DNP was given wrongly in the resolution.

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mately, political parties and their leaders did not become targets for post-1956 reprisals; stiff sentences went only to a few who had made radical demands.41 Earlier fears and conspiracy theories were dispelled in the early 1960s and the secret services stopped seeking a hostile center. The main aim alongside “penetration” was then defined as the encouragement of “polarization processes”: that is, the disruption of recruitment and personal contacts. It was thus only for a few years that the former parties were seen as a direct danger by the MSZMP leaders. They were not even mentioned in later party resolutions on the internal enemy, as the reprisals had rapidly eliminated any kind of political alternative. However, the fate of the former Christian democrats was affected indirectly by the struggle against the “clerical reaction” that was relaunched strongly after 1956. The threatening atmosphere also offered opportunities for the reconstituted political police to establish itself among the members of the earlier organizations. This was even more necessary given that, at the beginning of 1957, domestic counterintelligence did not have a single person planted among the former members of the DNP.42 Building a network of informants became a prime objective for the unit led from the spring of 1957 by Ervin Hollós.

Infiltration A recurring question in recent debates is how far the infiltration of Christian democrats went and how direct were the attempts made to manipulate the contacts of former politicians. Problems concerning identification and the fact that many files were destroyed during the document shredding during the winter of 1989–9043 mean that only partial responses can be offered, but the reports quoted already give an outline of the main efforts of the political police and reactions of targeted people, although it is mainly cases from the Kádár period that can be analyzed in any depth.44 41 The toughest sentences went to members of the Christian Hungarian Party and Christian Front formed in 1956. 42 ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–12145. Former bourgeois parties. 43 In the months before the first democratic elections, state security employees began to destroy files secretly and illegally, an act that was discovered thanks to a whistleblower. See “Dunagate-dosszié,” Osaarchivum, http://w3.osaarchivum.org/index.php?option=com_content& view=article&id=2023&Itemid=1898&lang=hu. 44 The nature of pre-1956 collaboration in state protection by some identifiable people cannot be reconstructed due to the lack of detailed documentation. See ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14460. Former fascist and right-wing parties in Zala Co.

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The process of infiltration among Christian democratic politicians also reflects the changing aims and operating principles of state security as it was reorganized after 1956. A big stir was caused after the democratic transition by the case of Sándor Keresztes, who came under fire for alleged past state security “involvement” after he became president of the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP) in 1990. However, the file on his recruitment sheds a curious light on the story.45 After he was deprived of his parliamentary seat in July 1948, he made a living through manual and artisan work and was under police surveillance from April 1953. He was interned in July 1957 for his part in the revolution,46 then persuaded on September 30, 1957, during interrogation in the Budapest National Prison, to collaborate in exchange for immunity from prosecution.47 According to a handwritten statement, Keresztes managed to make an unusual stipulation: he would not be given any task that ran counter to his religious and moral convictions. Although the officer responsible for endorsing this was censured by his superior, Keresztes was released, ostensibly on the grounds that he had eight children and the crime he was accused of was relatively minor, although he was kept under police observation. Nonetheless, no real activity as an informer ensued. As early as January 10, 1958, he tried to back out of his commitment in a letter. He was finally released from service in May that same year, when he signed a secrecy statement. However, the state security requests for information still came. According to a later report, Keresztes was approached by internal counterintelligence officers in 1961 and in 1969. Several people studied his files between 1965 and 1973. Finally, preparations to recruit him again began in subdepartment III/ III–1–a (church-related counter activity) in July 1973. Keresztes tried to assert his own concept of church policy in talks with the authorities, raising questions mainly about reorganizing St. Stephen’s Society.48 His official recruitment (on patriotic grounds) occurred on July 24, 1974, when he joined the service as a secret agent under the pseudonym “Magyar Károly.” Sometimes the subdepartment heads would also appear at meetings he had with state security. But the collaboration did not last long. When his ideas were not adopted, Keresztes sought an end to the link, which was severed in May 1977. Af45 46 47 48

ÁBTL 3.1.1. B–82929. “Magyar Károly.” ÁBTL 3.1.9. V–145516. BRFK [Budapest] 13th District internees. ÁBTL 3.1.1. B–82929. “Magyar Károly.” The publisher and bookseller for the Hungarian Catholic Church, founded in 1842.

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ter that, his reports were destroyed, although exceptionally, his recruitment file remained. The last recorded examination of his file was in 1989, two days before the end of the National Round Table talks between the MSZMP and the opposition parties on breaking up the structures of the party-state.49 It can therefore be said that, contrary to what agent-centric narratives suggest, Keresztes managed to escape the informer role on at least two occasions. More broadly, his personal destiny exemplified the limited room for maneuver available to Christian democrats. Sándor Keresztes had been persecuted for his political views and activity consecutively by the Arrow Cross Seat of Reckoning, the ÁVH, and the III/III Department of the Ministry of the Interior; he was subjected to harassment, arrest, manipulation, and recruitment efforts—yet in 1989, he began to organize his party for the third time. Among the important Christian democrats recruited by the security services after 1956 was Vid Mihelics, a social scientist and staff member of the Catholic weekly Új Ember (New Man), who had been classed as a hostile target in 1950. The exact time of his recruitment is unknown, but he was traveling as a correspondent to sessions of the Second Vatican Council of 1962–65 and reporting back to the security services under the pseudonym “Béla Molnár.”50 According to reports from other informers keeping an eye on him there, his behavior was already causing suspicion among those around him.51 The available sources do not give a thorough picture of this secret episode, but it can be assumed that Mihelics, like other politicians arrested and interned in the reprisal period, saw being approached by state security as an opportunity for a special channel of communication, one which represented a last chance for his plans of reaching a modus vivendi with the authorities. His place in this subcategory seems likely in view of his efforts as a scholar to promote dialogue between Marxists and Christians. While the former DNP parliamentarians identified so far were being enlisted, other agents were also operating in the politicians’ immediate or broader circles of acquaintance.52 In any event, the informers’ activities, the posts 49 Police Sergeant Miklós Budai consulted File B on September 20, 1989, and noted: “I do not recommend recruiting [Keresztes] again due to his unfavorable personal traits.” 50 ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14963/7a. “Canale.” 51 ÁBTL 3.2.7. Cs–213. “Hontalanok” (homeless). 52 ÁBTL 3.1.2. M–35968. “Berényi Zoltán” (that is, ex-DNP parliamentarian László Németh); ÁBTL O–14.820/2. 223–27. Report by Dezső P. Ábrahám on counterrevolutionary premiers and their staff.

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they filled in the social bodies of the party-state, and the various ways in which they collaborated politically, will certainly offer future subjects for public and scholarly debate.

Fabricated trials, 1964–65 The state security agencies continued to investigate several Christian-oriented, Christian-party “conspiracies” after the period of the 1956 reprisals was over; these usually involved former DNP parliamentarians. For instance, the names Ferenc Kováts and Bálint Pörneczy appeared in a case codenamed “Bujkálók” (people in hiding) involving a group styling itself the Catholic People’s Association or Catholic People’s Party.53 The documents of the nationwide “Fekete Hollók” (black raven) campaign, designed to intimidate Catholic congregations, mention numerous former members of the DNP. The initial intention in such cases was to broaden out the investigations (total containment), but over time an unmanageable mass of data accumulated. According to a later analysis, the documents of the case codenamed “Bujtogatók” (inciters) initially filled seventy to eighty files. It became necessary to devise an organizing principle or concept to direct the work into a more manageable form, confirm that the services were operating efficiently, and meet the requirements of the political client. This brought Ferenc Matheovits into a central position again.54 Security staff were prompted to restart their activity, and attempts were made to find new recruits. As time went by, a broadening range of surveillance methods were used against Matheovits: his letters were monitored, his apartment was bugged, and information was obtained about his place of work through social and official contacts. They watched him in the Budapest streets and conducted secret house searches in his absence. Unable to find any evidence (there was none, as a later summary report established), the investigators tried to fabricate a plot out of meetings with friends, wine-tasting, Christmas conversations, or program discussions out of wedding conversations. The conclusion of the case was long postponed by the amnesty of 1963, but a framework of a Christian socialist conspiracy was thought up in time for his arrest in January 1964. The motives for the second Matheovits trial lay in changed in53 ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–11048. “Bujkálók.” 54 ÁBTL 3.1.9. V–149861. Ferenc Matheovits.

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ternational relations and in church policy. The timing of the arrest and trial, along with many other signs, show the case to have been part of a diplomatic gambit with the Holy See. But there was a message for Mindszenty as well, as this was yet another instance of an earlier trial being reused to back harsh sentences for laymen closely tied to him. The 1964 case was clearly a revival of the earlier show trial, designed to put pressure on the cardinal primate and act as a warning through harsh sentences for all voluntary organizations among Hungary’s Christians. Furthermore, it served as a model for the new, Kádárite type of state security proceedings.55 Sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment, Matheovits proved unbreakable even in custody. He was released only upon the completion of his sentence on January 6, 1974. Thereafter he was again the target of several secret investigations; the bugs were still operating continually in his apartment in 1979.56 Matheovits, who as a lawyer had been making applications for four decades, eventually had the detrimental legal consequences lifted in 1987. The judgment against him was annulled on December 4, 1989. Apart from the internationally significant case of József Mindszenty, there was another in 1965 that had long been in preparation: that of a reputed ethnographer, Sándor Bálint. His was the last public criminal case against one of the Christian democratic intelligentsia.57 Having withdrawn from politics and been deprived of his university chair, Bálint worked alone on his research in an unheated room. He took no part in the events of 1956 due to an accident, and he could not be persuaded to take on organizing the DNP. Yet, his circle was infiltrated by state security, which brought practically its whole armory of clandestine methods to bear: observation, interrogation, letter opening, and tracking of movements.58 The state security work was motivated by fear of the effects of the Western “policy of loosening up” ( fellazító politika) and Christian socialist ideas. According to present information, reports on the ethnographer were made by twenty-six informers, including his close friend and future lawyer. Local bodies made several proposals for pur55 The case gave rise to a textbook on state security: ÁBTL 4.1. A–3016/25. Miklós Kőnig, A “bujtogatók” fedőnevű ügy [The case codenamed “inciters”] (BM Tanulmányi Osztály, 1964). 56 ÁBTL 1.11.6. Box 2, 327–34. According to an attached note, the investigation of Matheovits went under the codename “Brassói” after January 30, 1979. 57 Miklós Csapody, “A világban helytállani…” Bálint Sándor élete és politikai működése, 1904–1980 (Budapest: Korona, 2004). 58 On the resulting documents, see László Péter, ed., A célszemély: Bálint Sándor; ügynökjelen­ tések, röpiratok, 1957–1965 (Szeged: Belvedere Meridionale, 2004).

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suing the case, but these were rejected on each occasion by the headquarters in Budapest. Having failed to find hostile plans of action in Bálint’s apartment, they sought to demonstrate his hostility with extracts from his diary. An excuse to arrest him was finally found in 1964, on his return from a journey to Bonn, when he “illegally” brought back several books of a political nature, including one on Imre Nagy. He was charged with incitement and given a six-month suspended sentence by Csongrád County Court. These proceedings served their ultimate aim of breaking up Bálint’s relations of trust.59 Such cases show how continued harassment of those seen officially as hostile was meant to be veiled in order not to hurt attempts to foster in the West an image of Kádárite liberalization and of Hungary as the “happiest barrack” in the socialist camp. Citizens judged to be dangerous were no longer subject to show trials, but to successive petty moves that destroyed their trust in those around them. All this augmented wider political efforts to end traditional social communities and atomize society.

Treatment of the Christian democrats in exile Twelve former DNP parliamentarians left the country.60 Classed as defectors (disszidens), they quickly became immediate targets for the ÁVH. The files that became available for study in recent years provide a glimpse of how the struggle against Christian democracy was waged along Cold War lines. János Kolbert was slipping back into Hungary to fetch his wife when Austrian border guards caught him at the newly erected Iron Curtain. He was handed over to the Hungarians and held in several internment camps before arriving at the notorious Recsk labor camp.61 The personal secretary of Miklós Villányi, who had crossed the border, was arrested and also sent to Recsk as an internee. His interrogators wanted him to confess that Villányi and other ex-parliamentarians planned to form a separate party, so that when the British and US forces moved in, they could organize an attack on the rear of the Hungarian and Soviet troops. Furthermore, several people were alleged to have attended a foreign espionage school and received financial support of 59 ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–12554/1-3. “Fellazítók” (rebels). 60 These were Ferenc Babóthy, István Barankovics, Gyula Belső, Dr. György Eszterhás, János Koczor, Károly Zoltán Kovács, Miklós Mézes, Ferenc Pethe, Lajos Pócza, László Varga, Miklós Villányi, and Pál Zoltán. 61 ÁBTL 3.1.9. V–56687. Ferenc Vasi and associates.

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10,000 forints each. This and similar cases were augmented by a press campaign to discredit those abroad. It later became a priority for the expanding Hungarian communist intelligence services to observe, manipulate, or discredit active former parliamentarians. The prime objectives (as for the whole secret service) were simple: either to recruit or to discredit targeted persons. These planned tasks would vary according to changes in the overall political climate or operational scope available. The Hungarian agencies were long curbed by Cold War fears and technical difficulties. Intelligence also concerned itself with those who remained in the country. Secret service data on György Eszterhás, formerly the director of the DNP, was kept in a separate file after 1952. The former lawyer joined the board of the Hungarian Christian People’s Movement and worked also for the Hungarian section of the Central European Christian Democrats’ Union. Accordingly, the ÁVH accused him of performing “espionage activity,” organizing “undermining work,” and issuing hostile propaganda against the Hungarian People’s Republic.62 Also targeted were his relatives who had stayed in the country—particularly his wife, although other relatives were also watched—with an eye to obtaining letters and news from abroad. His acquaintances in prison were also questioned. According to a 1955 report from Washington, DC, contact with Eszterhás (codenamed “Iszer Jenő” in the files) was made but with little progress, perhaps because of the outbreak of the revolution. Since his wife also left Hungary in 1956, the opportunities for blackmail by the intelligence services were narrowed (his file was closed in 1964 and excised from the records in 1974, but still consulted in 1981). The stranglehold on Gyula Belső, a Smallholder member of parliament active in the Catholic reform movement and serving as the Vas County secretary of the Hungarian Peasants’ Union, was even firmer,63 but he managed to slip over the border unobserved in March 1949 and settled in the United States in 1952. State security then traced the relatives and acquaintances of the “defector” at home, monitored their correspondence, and tried for years to come closer to their target through his parents. Ultimately, an attempt was made to recruit the émigré politician active in the Hungarian National Committee under the codename “Bánkúti János,” but this proved fruitless. 62 ÁBTL 3.2.4. K–1435. György Eszterhás. 63 ÁBTL 3.2.4. K–1018. Gyula Belső.

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Similarly unsuccessful was the attempt to lure Pál Zoltán home from the Netherlands; to assist in this case, the secret service had even recruited his brother in 1957. Typically, when the aging émigré visited Hungary on several occasions a decade later, his application to resettle was rejected,64 and he had to stay in Vienna until his death in 1989. The agile lawyer László Varga, who had been imprisoned under the Arrow Cross and contributed to establishing the DNP, caused a significant amount of trouble for the communists during the “coalition years” as they worked to build up their power. The material gathered on him dealt less with his activity as a member of the Budapest Assembly, and later as a member of parliament, than with his work defending prisoners accused of war crimes and crimes against the people. The propaganda of the time tried to discredit him as a lawyer out to save fascists.65 But the majority of state security documents on him concern his role as an émigré politician, for Varga was notably active in the exile community, running several organizations and writing analyses and publications, as well as becoming a figure in American public life. His appearance in the initial reports of the post-1956 reorganized Hungarian intelligence services66 was due to his efforts to keep the “Hungarian affair” on the United Nations’ agenda, along with his political writings and analyses, in which he saw the state system under the Hungarian People’s Republic as comparable to fascism within the totalitarian paradigm. A letter intercepted at the end of 1961 made the state security conclude that the otherwise successful lawyer was suffering from a strong sense of homesickness, and this raised hopes that he might be approached. Various informers, including an employee of the World Federation of Hungarians, visited Varga’s relatives in January and February 1962, and several letters with him were exchanged, some instigated by state security. Varga was visited several times by the Hungarian consul in the United States and by resident members of the Hungarian secret service: these episodes were written up and published by Varga, who was something of a dramatist.67 However, the agencies gradually realized the fruitlessness of their efforts. ­Although the agents voiced repeated hopes, these risky acts were suspended due to the Matheovits trial. Any idea of recruiting Varga (codenamed “Mickey B”) was 64 65 66 67

ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–13654. Pál Zoltán (“Hazatérő”); in English, “returnee.” For his reminiscences, see László Varga, Kérem a vádlott felmentését! (New York: Püski, 1981). ÁBTL 3.2.4. K–1799. “Mickey B.” László Varga, Fények a ködben: Egy életút a nemzet szolgálatában (Salgótarján: Médiamix, 2002).

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abandoned in 1965, and he was handled thereafter as a hostile figure. Only after the end of state socialism was he able to visit Hungary again.68 Hungarian intelligence efforts to recruit or discredit émigrés were not confined to the United States. Of those who sought to continue their public activity in Western Europe, one who received particular attention was Károly Zoltán Kovács,69 who joined Radio Free Europe (RFE) in April 1951 and worked there under the name Károly Zoltán. He corresponded with relatives in Mosonmagyaróvár, who sent him data on agriculture. When this became known, informers were recruited from his immediate family, who were required to write certain letters to him. The aim of the state security services was to lure Kovács, codenamed “Szabadeurópás” (“RFE man”), back to the country.70 The case was protracted, but it gained new impetus in April 1963 with a report from Bern written by agent “Bandel.” The report claimed that Kovács tended to be loyal to left-wing politics, rather than extremism; this had caused him problems several times at Radio Free Europe (on one instance the label “communist” was written on his door). The “Bandel” report was corroborated by those of the informer “Rix Ottó,” presenting Kovács—alongside his religious feelings—as a supporter of the idea of agricultural cooperatives. Based on these reports, the agencies saw the prospect to approach him again. His recruited relative was allowed to visit him several times in Munich and then Vienna; moreover, even the travel of the intelligence officer in charge, Major Gusztáv Simon, was prepared with the recruitment plan. Yet, despite promising signs (a meeting with a specialist to assist in his field of interest), Kovács rejected the attempts at cooperation and the question of recruiting him was dropped. At the end of 1967, state security again classed him as a target to be compromised and he was placed on a banned list. The documents found so far on the party leader, István Barankovics, are extremely fragmentary.71 He seems not to have been an ideal target figure. Despite a constant collection of data (for instance, the speech he made before students of Fordham University, New York, during the 1956 revolution), 68 He later threw himself into domestic politics and became a member of parliament again from 1994 until his death in 2003, thereby personifying continuity in Christian democratic politics. 69 ÁBTL 3.2.5. O–8–018/1. “Colorado”; ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–12467/1. Kovács. K. Zoltán; ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–12467/2. “Szabadeurópás” (Radio Free Europe man). 70 ÁBTL 3.2.4. K–2125. “Welwood Jas.” 71 ÁBTL 3.1.6. P–602.

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there is currently no evidence of state security activity around him.72 Interest was kindled after 1956 by his analyses and public appearances.73 In his writings, Barankovich criticized the Western world’s lack of investment in propaganda against communism, drew attention to the way the Soviets had gained the initiative in diplomacy, and examined China as a communist great power in the making. According to a brief in January 1961, state security had begun to deal with him as an “object of intelligence operation” (elhárítási objek­ tum) and plans were made to compromise him. Thereafter, heads of foreign residences and agency personnel began to pay more regular attention to his travels. Direct action against him ceased in October 1962 (after the reorganization of state security), but he did not disappear from sight completely. Hungarian intelligence became more active during the Second Vatican Council, noting again Barankovics’s travels and his contacts with émigré church leaders in Rome.74 The currently known file on the former party leader contains data gathered up to 1967.75 As demonstrated here, émigré Christian democratic politicians playing an active role in public life, even temporarily, were targeted by the political police right up to the end of state socialism. Despite intensive efforts, only a handful of Christian democratic leaders abroad were persuaded to cooperate to a small extent, but their relatives and acquaintances underwent decades of harassment. It is likely, based on the cases examined so far, that other files may well turn out to contain documents about them.76 The state security work on Christian democrats tied in with several other fields: materials on “clerical reaction” and “counterrevolutionary elements,” the former bourgeois parties or “Horthyite” organizations, imperialist spying, and incitement to rebellion will also contain material on these former parliamentarians. Processing further state security files and tracing missing ones may provide ample material on the Christian democratic tradition which survived for decades as an underground stream.

72 ÁBTL 3.2.4. K–1382/1. Béla Varga. 73 Zoltán K. Kovács and Miklós Gyorgyevics, eds., Híven önmagunkhoz: Barankovics István összegyűjtött írásai a kereszténydemokráciáról (Budapest: Barankovics Akadémia Alapítvány, 2001). 74 ÁBTL 3.2.7. Cs–213. “Hontalanok.” 75 ÁBTL 3.2.4. K–1443. István Barankovics. 76 See, for instance, coverage of Miklós Mézes’s stay in Switzerland. ÁBTL 3.2.5. O–8–095/1. Swiss Hungarian émigrés.

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The Christian democrats and the right-wing tradition Placing the DNP and its members of parliament in the post-1945 Hungarian political field calls for complex analysis. The available sources and interpretations allow for differentiated responses as to where the DNP slots into the Hungarian right-wing tradition. Arriving at a political profile for the party, and for the Christian democrats more broadly, calls above all for analysis of the party programs. These are interesting also for their subsequent influence, as the items, ideas, and ideological strands within them recur in programs, pamphlets, and samizdat of other political associations. The first program, published on January 21, 1945, under the name of the Christian Democratic People’s Party, sought to justify the party’s existence through its anti-fascist activities. The main message in the text, edited by Jenő Kerkai and József Ugrin, was that the Christian democratic politicians had participated in the Hungarian Front, that secret alliance of democratic parties, and so deserved a place in the new constellation of power. In addition, the outline program covered questions of democratic politics, economic reforms, land reform, local autonomy, and popular education.77 The electoral program of the DNP was summed up in a speech by István Barankovics on September 25, 1945, which maintained an emphatic distancing from the past and “pseudo-Christian politics.” Starting from a critique of the interwar counterrevolutionary system, it presented the party as “a political representation of Christianity that seeks the most radical democratic transformation, the broadest social justice, and the most secure human rights.”78 Otherwise, much of the party leader’s speech dealt with the realities of the international situation. The DNP electoral manifesto put forward in Győr on August 10, 1947, stressed the Christian concept of the state, oppositionism, as well as the country’s independence, while expressing economic and social policy aspirations in slogans: “Instead of monopoly capitalism, socialism perfected in the spirit of the Gospel!”79 In addition to endorsing economic planning and cooperatives, the manifesto stressed the vision of “Garden-Hungary” and the need to protect small-scale industry and commerce. 77 Sándor Balogh and Lajos Izsák, eds., Magyarországi pártprogramok 1944–1988 (Budapest: Elte, 2004), 14–16. 78 Balogh and Izsák, Magyarországi pártprogramok 1944–1988, 73–91. 79 Balogh and Izsák, Magyarországi pártprogramok 1944–1988, 147–65.

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Such “third road” notions are even more evident in the program draft published during the 1956 revolution.80 The program—which reflected the ideological ideas that were considered the shared program of the revolution and was in line with the political language of the time—stated that the DNP was “a believer in democratic socialism adjusted to specific Hungarian conditions.” The statement, drawn up by Vid Mihelics, defended certain social achievements of the postwar regime, including the land reform and nationalization of the banks and large factories. On the other hand, it mentioned the scope for “private initiatives restricted and monitored in the public interest” and freedom of private ownership within constraints imposed by the ban on exploitation. While the pre-1945 and post-1945 programs for Christian democracy appear relatively consistent with each other, the party’s political position shifted markedly. The neo-Catholic intelligentsia and the heads of the Catholic social reform movements, critical of the interwar political establishment, clearly formed a left-wing opposition to the regime at that time. The antiGerman politicians active in the 1944 anti-fascist resistance found themselves beyond the bounds of legality. After 1945, however, the party, which proclaimed left-wing programmatic elements, was a political force that was only tolerated for tactical reasons, and was forced to make personnel changes as early as 1945. At the same time, its position and reputation were defined from 1945 by its self-definition as an opposition force.81 Its two National Assembly members acted as such between 1945 and 1947, and the Christian democrats became critics of the coalition after the party gained seats in the 1947 elections. Dénes Farkas, in his radio statement during the 1956 revolution, was building on that tradition when he spoke of his party as an opposition force that would not join the coalition behind the Imre Nagy government. In view of all this, voters saw the Christian democrats as a party with typically anti-communist features that offered legal political representation to those rejecting the dictatorship of the proletariat on various grounds. The protest party nature of the DNP was strengthened by the way communist political texts and propaganda treated the party: its members were described after 1947 as right-wing, reactionary, fascist, bourgeois, and middle 80 Balogh and Izsák, Magyarországi pártprogramok 1944–1988, 295–96. 81 One big step in the political transformation was the foundation of the Left Bloc in March 1946. Thereafter, all other political forces were considered in the dominant public vocabulary to be right-wing.

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class. These “evaluations” later became general in party-state texts, state security documents, public discourse, and historical writings. Turning to its voting support, it becomes harder still to place the DNP on the political spectrum. Recollections and available records show that even in the fast-paced 1947 campaign, voters did not perceive the differences in (Christian) programs and strategies (and were not aware, for example, of the contrast between the DNP and József Mindszenty). The picture of the DNP that remained with many was of an anti-communist, pro-Christian party. Nonetheless, the network of connections that arose and consolidated during the party’s existence remained, after its demise, a source for the official political information dominated by the state party. Yet, the personal conversations, friendly gatherings, and political discussions in party circles infiltrated by the secret service sought primarily to mull over international developments. It remained vital for state security to disrupt any remaining groups based on old Christian social organizations and break up relations of trust. Persons involved in cases of conspiracy or incitement were charged from the mid-1960s with action against the state order. Up to 1965, the authorities were notably sensitive in their reactions to ideas concerning Christian socialism. In the period of international détente, the formulation of such ideas was seen as a particularly dangerous and destabilizing ideological effort, which was opposed with a vigor that was unusual for the period. The fear of foreign influence tended to be enhanced further by the anticommunist activities of the émigré Christian democrats. As such, the political debate and struggle flowed indirectly into the interpretative frames of the capitalism/socialism debate, and the actual former political aims and social policy notions of the Christian democrats faded. This is exemplified by a remark made by János Kádár at an April 1960 Politburo meeting on the materials on the party history of the “coalition years”: “I was a bit troubled about the opposition parties. Many people have forgotten what the Balogh party, the Barankovics party were, so these should be named, it should be said what these were.”82 The omission was partly intentional; the period before 1948 was fading into history in political discourse. In 1963, when state security closed the file devoted to the bourgeois parties of that time, a state security analyst unfamiliar with how parties operate in a parliamentary democracy wrote: “The parties mentioned were so bound together after the Liberation [in 1945] . . . 82 MNL OL 288. f. 5/180. ő. e

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and even more during the counterrevolution that it is impossible to disentangle them in many respects.”83 The generation of politicians to which most DNP members belonged had very little leeway for realizing their ideas. Most were seeking a modus vivendi, a way of agreeing with the authorities in order to apply their ideas amid persecution, custodial sentences, and attempts to recruit informers. The representatives of the Christian democratic tradition were initially critics of the authoritarian Horthy regime, then contributors to wartime resistance, then condoned opposition politicians in the transition period, before finally becoming branded, persecuted ex-politicians during the totalitarian dictatorship, whom the Kádár regime later sought to neutralize, win over, or manipulate. As the regime steadily gained Western acceptance, even émigrés ceased to be a serious problem for the party-state: only a handful of ex-politicians remained of interest in the context of church policy. Apart from promoting human rights (above all freedom of worship), former Christian democratic politicians who expressed political opinions were sensitive primarily to issues of social justice and welfare. This led them to a more positive assessment of the communist regime’s social achievements than that held by other sidelined or émigré groups. When members of the DNP expressed their worldviews, they would disassociate themselves from the conservatives and extreme right-wing anti-communists. However, their persecution caused Hungarian Christian democracy to gain enough anti-communist content to appear as a right-wing political tradition during the political transition around 1989. The political processes that began at that time call for separate analysis.

Bibliography Babóthy, Ferenc, and Zoltán K. Kovács, eds. Félbemaradt reformkor: miért akadt el az ország keresztény humanista megújulása? [The abandoned age of reform: Why has the country’s Christian humanist revival stalled?]. Rome: Tip Detti, 1990. Balogh, Sándor, and Lajos Izsák, eds. Magyarországi pártprogramok 1944–1988. [Hungarian party programs 1944–1988]. Budapest: Elte, 2004.

83 ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–12145. Former bourgeois parties.

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Bauquet, Nicolas. “A Mindszentizmus” [Mindszenty-ism]. In A magyar jobboldali hagyo­ mány 1900–1948 [Hungarian right-wing tradition, 1900–1948], edited by Ignác Romsics, 534–55. Budapest: Osiris, 2009. Csapody, Miklós. “A világban helytállani…” Bálint Sándor élete és politikai működése, 1904– 1980 [A place in the world… Sándor Bálint’s life and political activity, 1904–1980]. Budapest: Korona, 2004. Cserényi-Zsitnyányi, Ildikó. “Az Államvédelmi Hatóság szervezeti változásai (1950– 1953)” [Structural changes in the State Protection Authority, 1950–53]. Betekintő, no. 2 (2009), https://www.betekinto.hu/sites/default/files/betekinto-szamok/2009_2_ cserenyi_zsitnyanyi.pdf. Csicskó, Mária, and András Körösényi. “Egy harmadikutas szocializmus-utópia földközelben: A Petőfi Párt 1956–57-ben; Dokumentumok” [A third road socialist utopia close up: The Petőfi Party in 1956–57; Documents]. Századvég, nos. 1–2 (1989): 118–83. Frenyó, Zoltán. “ÁVH-jelentések a Demokrata Néppártról” [ÁVH reports on the DNP]. Magyar Szemle 2000, no. 1–2 (February 2000): 68–88. Gergely, Jenő. “Christdemokratie in Ungarn 1944–1949.” In Christdemokratie in Europa im 20. Jahrhundert, edited by Michael Gehler, Wolfram Kaiser, and Helmut Wohnout, 464–82. Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2001. ———. “Demokrata Néppárt alkotóelemei, 1945–1947” [Constituent parts of the Democratic People’s Party, 1945–47]. In Kereszténység és közélet: Tisztelgés Kovács K. Zol­ tán 75. születésnapjára [Christianity and public life: In honor of the 75th birthday of Zoltán K. Kovács], edited by Gábor Bagdy, Miklós Gyorgyevics, and József Mészáros, 165–73. Budapest: Barankovics Akadémiai Alapítvány, 1999. Izsák, Lajos. A Kereszténydemokrata Néppárt és a Demokrata Néppárt [The Christian Democratic People’s Party and the Democratic People’s Party]. Budapest: Kossuth, 1985. ———. Polgári pártok és programjaik Magyarországon [Bourgeois parties and their programs in Hungary]. Pécs: Baranya Megyei Könyvtár, 1994. Kahler, Frigyes. A nagy “tűzvörös sárkány” torkában: Koncepciós eljárások ferences szerzete­ sek ellen, 1945–1956 [In the throat of the “fiery red dragon”: Fabricated charges against the Franciscans, 1945–56]. Budapest: Kairosz, 2009. Keresztes, Sándor. Interview by István Javorniczky. Budapest, 1994. 1956-os Intézet Oral History Archívum (currently Veritas Institute Oral History Archive, Budapest). Kőrösi, Zsuzsanna, and Pál Péter Tóth, eds. Pártok 1956: válogatás 1956-os pártvezetők visszaemlékezéseiből [Parties in 1956: selections from the reminiscences of 1956 party leaders]. Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 1997. Kovács, Zoltán K., and Miklós Gyorgyevics, eds. Híven önmagunkhoz: Barankovics István összegyűjtött írásai a kereszténydemokráciáról [True to ourselves: The collected writings of István Barankovics on Christian democracy]. Budapest: Barankovics Akadémia Alapítvány, 2001. Kovács, Zoltán K., and Pál Rosdy, eds. Az idő élén jártak: Kereszténydemokrácia Mag­ yarországon, 1944–1949 [On the edge of time: Christian democracy in Hungary, 1944– 49]. Budapest: Barankovics István Alapítvány, 1996. Matheovits, Ferenc. Interview by Katalin Ferber. Budapest, 1988. 1956-os Intézet Oral History Archívum (currently Veritas Institute Oral History Archive, Budapest). 216

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Mészáros, István. Mindszenty és Barankovics: adalékok a “ keresztény párt” problema­ tikájához [Mindszenty and Barankovics: Contributions to the problem sphere of a “Christian party”]. Budapest: Eötvös, 2005. Mink, András. “A keresztény politikai pártok és az 1956-os forradalom” [Christian political parties and the 1956 revolution]. In Pártok 1956: válogatás 1956-os pártvezetők visszaemlékezéseiből, edited by Zsuzsanna Kőrösi and Pál Péter Tóth, 151–56. Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 1997. Pallos, László, ed. Reménykeltők: az 1945 utáni “ illegális” katolikus politikai szervezke­ dések [Raisers of hopes: The post-1945 “illegal” Catholic political organizations]. Budapest: Püski, 2007. Péter, László, ed. A célszemély: Bálint Sándor; ügynökjelentések, röpiratok, 1957–1965 [Target: Sándor Bálint; Agent reports, pamphlets, 1957–65]. Szeged: Belvedere Meridionale, 2004. Rainer, János M. Jelentések hálójában: Antall József és az állambiztonság emberei, 1957– 1989 [In a network of reports: József Antall and the people of state security, 1957– 89]. Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 2008. Szakolczai, György, and Róbert Szabó. Két kísérlet a proletárdiktatúra elhárítására: Ba­ rankovics és a DNP, 1945–1949; Bibó és a DNP, 1956 [Two attempts to avert proletarian dictatorship: Barankovics and the DNP, 1945–49; Bibó and the DNP, 1956]. Budapest: Gondolat, 2011. Tabajdi, Gábor, and Krisztián Ungváry. Elhallgatott múlt: A pártállam és a belügy; A poli­ tikai rendőrség működése Magyarországon 1956–1990 [Silenced past: The party-state and the Interior Ministry; Operation of the political police in Hungary, 1956–90]. Budapest: Corvina, 2008. Varga, László. Fények a ködben: Egy életút a nemzet szolgálatában [Lights in the fog: A life in the nation’s service]. Salgótarján: Médiamix, 2002. ———. Kérem a vádlott felmentését! [I call for the acquittal of the accused]. New York: Püski, 1981. Vida, István, and József Marelyn Kiss, eds. Az 1947. szeptember 16-ra Budapestre összehívott Országgyűlés almanachja: 1947. szeptember 16.–1949. április 12 [Almanac of the National Assembly convened in Budapest on September 16, 1947: September 16, 1947– April 12, 1949]. Budapest: Jelenkutató Alapítvány, 2005. Available online at http:// www.ogyk.hu/mpgy/alm/almanach_1947-49/index.htm Vida, István, and Vince Vörös. A Független Kisgazdapárt képviselői, 1944–1949: Életrajzi lexikon [Independent Smallholders’ Party parliamentarians, 1944–49: A biographical dictionary]. Budapest: ELTE Szociológiai és Szociálpolitikai Intézet, 1991. Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára (Historical Archives of the State Security Services, ÁBTL) ÁBTL 3.1.1 B–82929 “Magyar Károly” ÁBTL 3.1.2. M–35968 “Berényi Zoltán” ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–12145 Former civilian parties ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–10904 Béla Vid Mihelics 217

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ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–9044 Dezső Ábrahám ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–9032 Lajos Rónaszéki ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–9915 Lajos Nagy ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–9166 Ferenc Pusztai ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–9992 “Irodalmárok” ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–9395 Dr. Sándor Eckhardt ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–9044 Ábrahám Dezső ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14460 Former fascist and right-wing parties in Zala Co. ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14994/2 Hostile elements in the field of domestic surveillance (­Somogy Co.) ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14863 Ex-members of fascist and bourgeois parties (Szabolcs–Szatmár–Bereg Co.) ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14963/7a “Canale” ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–11048 “Bujkálók” ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–12554/1–3 “Fellazítók” ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–12467/1 Kovács. K. Zoltán, ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–12467/2 “Szabadeurópás” ÁBTL 3.1.6. P–602 Dezső Augusztin ÁBTL 3.1.9. V–149861 Ferenc Matheovits ÁBTL 3.1.9. V–116973 Ferenc Fehér ÁBTL 3.1.9. V–112441 János Zomborszki ÁBTL 3.1.9. V–117122 Bernát Károlyi and associates ÁBTL 3.1.9. V–145460 Preventive detainees for anti-revolutionary activity (­Somogy Co.) ÁBTL 3.1.9. V–145010 János Gábriel ÁBTL 3.1.9. V–150374/1 Somogy Co. monograph II. ÁBTL 3.1.9. V–56687 Ferenc Vasi and associates ÁBTL 3.1.9. V–14972 János Mocsári, István Kröninger ÁBTL 3.1.9. V–145516 BRFK [Budapest police] 22nd District internees ÁBTL 3.2.4. K–1422 József Pálffy ÁBTL 3.2.4. K–384 “Bihari” ÁBTL 3.2.4. K–1018 Gyula Belső ÁBTL 3.2.4. K–1435 György Eszterhás ÁBTL 3.2.4. K–1382/1 Béla Varga ÁBTL 3.2.4. K–1018 Gyula Belső ÁBTL 3.2.4. K–1442 József Közi Horváth ÁBTL 3.2.4. K–1799 “Mickey B” ÁBTL 3.2.4. K–2125 “Welwood Jas” ÁBTL 3.2.4. K–1443 István Barankovics ÁBTL 3.2.5. O–8–018/1 “Colorado” ÁBTL 3.2.5. O–8–38/1 Washington correspondence file ÁBTL 3.2.7. Cs–213 Stateless ÁBTL 1.11.6. Box 2 (BM III/III. Csoportfőnökség iratai—documents of Interior Ministry Group III/III directorate) ÁBTL 4.1. A–3016/25 Miklós Kőnig, A case codenamed “bujtogatók.” Description of the anti-state activity of Ferenc Matheovits and associates, methods of operational processing work, list of lessons to be learned from the case. 218

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Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára (National Archives of Hungary, MNL OL) MNL OL 288. f. 5/33. ő. e., Meeting of the MSZMP Politburo, July 2, 1957 MNL OL 288. f. 5/180. ő. e., Meeting of the MSZMP Politburo, April 26, 1960. Politikatörténeti Intézet Levéltára (Archives of the Institute of Political History, PIL) 274. f. Group 16, Hungarian Communist Party Organization Department

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CHAPTER SEVEN

“PETTY” ARROW CROSS SUPPORTERS IN THE INTERIOR MINISTRY FILES András L énár t and Rudolf Pak sa

Several small “Hungarian fascist” parties arose in the second half of the 1920s to publicize the views of Mussolini and imitate his policies, but they constituted groups of enthusiasts around bar tables rather than serious political figures.1 In any case, in the political life of interwar Hungary, dominated by an all-powerful governing party, there was little room for opposition politics. That changed when the number of discontented seeking something new in politics was swollen by the effects of the Great Depression. Of the many new parties founded during this period, several sought to imitate the Nazis.2 Some noted legislators in 1932–33 took to wearing a swastika. The government strove to stifle the movement and its radical demands: for instance, it became illegal after Hitler’s rise to power to display the swastika, which was seen as declaring allegiance to a foreign power. That led to the adoption of a new Hungarian national socialist symbol: the cross barby or Arrow Cross (nyilaskereszt), which soon doubled as the term used to identify the movement’s supporters (nyilasok). It became clear in the mid-1930s that there was a demand in Hungarian society for the radical change of regime the Arrow Cross movements advocat1 See Rudolf Paksa, Magyar nemzetiszocialisták: Az 1930-as évek új szélsőjobboldali mozgalma, pártjai, politikusai, sajtója (Budapest: MTA BTK TTI – Osiris, 2013) 53–58. 2 For the history of the Hungarian national socialist, Nazi-imitator parties, see Paksa, Ma­gyar nemzetiszocialisták, and more briefly in Rudolf Paksa, “Ferenc Szálasi and the Hungarian FarRight between the World Wars,” trans. Máté Veres, in Vers un profil convergent des fascismes? “Nouveau consensus” et religion politique en Europe centrale, ed. Traian Sandu (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2010), 125–39.

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ed. However, it also emerged that this political agenda would be represented not by a single party, but by several rival groups. The biggest of these groups was the movement associated with Ferenc Szálasi. What helped this particular group, among all movements advocating radical change, to gain greater credibility and popular support was paradoxically the very efforts of the government to weaken the movement’s influence. Its leaders, including Szálasi, were jailed, its press banned, its events broken up by the police, its members variously intimidated, and its views derided. In the 1939 parliamentary elections, the various Arrow Cross parties gained 18 percent of the seats, making them the strongest opposition group in the parliament. Initial euphoria, however, soon gave way to the realization that their numbers meant little against a government majority of almost three-fourths: the Arrow Cross could keep none of their promises, but the government itself implemented many of their manifesto demands (notably restrictions on the Jews). This conscious government policy of divide-and-rule weakened the Arrow Cross and made inroads into its membership. A second major event ensued in 1941–42, when two significant blocs developed among the Arrow Cross movements. Alongside the Szálasi party (“Hungarists”), there appeared the party of ex-Prime Minister Béla Imrédy—defectors from the governing party who likewise called themselves national socialists, although their program differed little from that of the government. It soon emerged that Imrédy and his experienced fellow politicians had far better links with the Germans than Szálasi’s people did, and it was not long before more agile politicians were deserting Szálasi’s party for Imrédy’s. In the spring of 1944, the German occupation forces sought to appoint a Hungarian government loyal to them in all respects. Imrédy was therefore invited to join the quisling Sztójay government, as the Germans saw Szálasi and his people as unreliable. The new government met the German requirements: more troops were sent to the front, more goods were exported to the German war economy, and Hungarian Jewry was served up to the Germans. Regent Miklós Horthy, however, taking advantage of the increased room for maneuver gained after the Allied landings at Normandy, halted the deportations, so saving temporarily the Jews of Budapest and those in military labor service. In September 1944, the situation in the country became so critical that the German aim became to amalgamate all pro-war, anti-Soviet forces. Szálasi was willing to participate in this collaboration only if he were allowed to form the government. This ultimately happened on October 16, 1944, af222

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ter the Germans and collaborating Arrow Cross had suppressed an attempted armistice and change of sides in the war, which Horthy had instigated. Chaos reigned in Szálasi’s six-month rule, mainly because the Soviet army occupied a growing area of the country. Nonetheless, Hitler ordered that Budapest be defended to the last man, largely to keep control of the Zala oilfields in southeast Hungary. This protraction of the war cost a great many lives and led to much of the country’s wealth being destroyed. The chaotic conditions meant that all who had an Arrow Cross badge and a gun could do what they wished: they took out their frustrations mainly on Budapest’s Jews. All of these elements significantly contributed to the fact that after the war, it was the figure of Szálasi that public opinion most associated with wartime destruction. The new political forces that arose in Hungary in 1945 strove to dissociate themselves wholly from the Horthy period and its wartime defeat. This policy was expounded primarily and most forcefully by the Hungarian Communist Party (Magyar Kommunista Párt, MKP), which had been banned and its few hundred illegal members persecuted in the Horthy period. On two matters, however, they were guided by political pragmatism rather than consistent principle. First, on Stalin’s instructions, Miklós Horthy could not be charged, lest a verdict against him turn him into a national martyr. Secondly, there could be no blanket condemnation of the Arrow Cross party membership (and the several hundreds of thousands voting for the party), not least because the MKP saw the social groups from which the Arrow Cross rank and file was recruited as a potential basis for increasing its own—at that point very small— membership. As such, the policy was to be the demonstrative condemnation of well-known Arrow Cross leaders and their views, while turning a blind eye to “petty,” rank-and-file members who had committed no serious war crimes. The MKP therefore officially supported the integration of the former “petty” Arrow Cross (kisnyilasok) and put up no obstacles to their joining the communist party (at least until 1949). Party leader Mátyás Rákosi spoke on membership recruitment at the MKP’s Third Congress on March 29, 1946: There have come into our party, albeit in small numbers, workers and poor peasants whom the poison of counterrevolution and fascism has affected to a greater or lesser extent. Elements such as these, among which we can also find the petty Arrow Cross mentioned earlier, have to be tried out under proper supervision during their long-term work in the interests of democracy. Not the smallest concession can be made to such remnants of re223

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actionary and fascist ideology as they may have brought with them, such as anti-Semitism, chauvinism, racial prejudice, et cetera, but their reeducation must be furthered. The incorrigible and recidivists among them must be purged rapidly from the party.3

Similar sentiments were voiced by Mihály Farkas, the head of police and state security in 1948, at the time when the Hungarian Workers’ Party (Magyar Dolgozók Pártja, MDP) was born from the merger of the MKP with the Social Democrats. Speaking of the membership revision carried out at that time, he said, “We must remove from our party the elements who were leading members, organizers, or propagandists of the former fascist and other reactionary organizations.”4 Apart from attracting members and maximizing votes, the third motive behind these statements may have been to counter earlier anti-communist propaganda. Striking national slogans, denial of a Bolshevization program, and a gesture of selective “pardon” all served to assuage the widespread aversion to communism drummed into the public for twenty-five years. The integration of the Arrow Cross was significantly facilitated by two factors (which, in turn, would make it more difficult to hold them accountable later on). One was the ideological kinship of the communist and Arrow Cross party programs in many respects, notably the economy. The other was the pre-1944 party policy of the communist movement, which was far from anti-fascist throughout. It is still an open question to what extent this contributed to the fact that back in the 1930s and early 1940s, a number of disillusioned communists joined the rank of the Arrow Cross: there, thanks to their ideological and organizational skills, they could easily move into important positions.5 The official postwar communist position concerning the interwar era—including the Arrow Cross dictatorship—was formulated by leading communist historian Erzsébet Andics in her booklet Fascism and Reaction in Hunga­ ry.6 According to this work, the “reactionary regime of Horthy” amounted to 3 Quoted in Tibor Zinner, “Árpád-sávos kommunisták: Az osztálypolitika védőhálójában,” Ru­ bicon 4, no. 10 (1992): 17. 4 Zinner, “Árpád-sávos kommunisták,” 17. 5 Among the better known were Ferenc Kassai-Schallmayer, István Párkányi, István Péntek, Béla Áts, and so on. 6 Erzsébet Andics, Fasizmus és reakció Magyarországon (Budapest: Magyar Kommunista Párt Központi Vezetősége Propaganda Osztálya, 1945).

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the first fascist dictatorship in Europe. Yet, if the entire era was already “fascist,” as this thesis suggested, then the crimes of the Arrow Cross constituted by definition only one category among many. Andics’s line of argument could thus paradoxically be seen as to actually exonerate the Arrow Cross, rather than vilify it.

People’s courts However, this is not to imply that no mass prosecutions of former Arrow Cross members ensued after the war. According to state security statistics compiled in 1960 for internal use, after 1945 proceedings were taken against some 2,500 Arrow Cross members.7 According to the figures, which do not indicate the exact period in question, 960 of the 2,500 prosecuted received prison sentences of under three years, mostly ranging between six months and a year. Another 506 persons were interned without evidence, and 1,050 put under police supervision, including some party leaders and members of the armed party service who were acquitted due to incomplete investigations. Worthy of note is a confidential ruling by Interior Minister Ferenc Erdei on June 21, 1945, that those who were Arrow Cross members after June 22, 1941 (the date Hungary entered the war against the Soviet Union) had to be interned.8 Worker and peasant members who had spent under two months in the party could be exempt. Paradoxically, internment could also shield those affected, as internees escaped probing by the people’s courts. Erdei ruled simultaneously on police supervision: regular members who had joined the Arrow Cross before the German occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944, and were industrial workers, smallholders, or agricultural laborers had to be put under supervision. The minister stressed the importance of individual assessment based on social position and the role the given individual once played in the party: the idea was that members of the laboring classes should be seen as people misled by “Arrow Cross demagogy.” Furthermore, the labor of the manual workforce was needed to rebuild the country. But there was in principle no pardon for those 7 This figure, however, is dubious. The same document gives earlier a total of 5,500 persons being investigated and later, without explanation, states that 2,500 former Arrow Cross members were being prosecuted. These discrepancies have yet to be explained. Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára (Historical Archives of the State Security Services, hereafter ÁBTL), “Nyilaskeresztes Párt” 3.1.5. O–14937/operational file 1, 70. 8 On the internments, see Zinner, “Árpád-sávos kommunisták,” 18.

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who had turned Arrow Cross in 1944: they were arraigned before the people’s courts, interned, or put under police supervision.9 According to one study of the operation of the people’s courts, almost half the trials concerned atrocities against the Jews. The cases that mainly came up were murders committed by members of the Arrow Cross armed party service (pártszolgálatosok), predominantly in Budapest.10 On the other hand, the question of the persecution of the Jews was “tabooed” from the start of people’s court proceedings and many petty Arrow Cross received very lenient sentences. According to István Bibó, this produced a strange psychological situation where persecuted Jews were utterly dissatisfied with the proceedings, while much of the rest of society saw them as a witch hunt.11 Since the group examined in this study were closely involved in those proceedings, the legal background needs to be outlined further. The prosecution of Hungarians who had committed war crimes or crimes against humanity (in Hungarian communist terminology, “crimes against the people”) during World War II was prescribed under Point 14 of the armistice agreement signed by Hungary and the Soviet Union in Moscow on January 20, 1945, and thereafter in Act V/1945. The institution of people’s courts was established under Act VII/1945. Local people’s courts were set up in twentyfour cities, with Budapest as the senior court, also dealing with national matters. Appeals against the courts came before the National Council of People’s Courts (Népbíróságok Országos Tanácsa, NOT). The people’s courts were initially intended to call to account the pre-1945 political elite and the officials who implemented their decisions, members of the military who had played decisive parts in the war, and those who had committed “abuses” under war9 On policy in relation to “petty” Arrow Cross, see also Sándor Szakács and Tibor Zinner, A háború “megváltozott természete”: Adatok, adalékok, tények és összefüggések, 1944–1948 (Budapest: n.p., 1997). 10 Ildikó Barna and Andrea Pető, A politikai igazságszolgáltatás a II. világháború utáni Buda­ pesten (Budapest: Gondolat, 2012), 116–27. While originally established with the task of providing security at party events, the Arrow Cross armed party service (pártszolgálat) became the armed force of the Arrow Cross Party, especially after the party came to power in October 1944. Due to the lack of enough uniforms, members marked their affiliation with an armband with the Arrow Cross symbol. The armed party service became notorious as the main enforcer of the reprisals against Jews, deserters, and other civilians, often acting without higher orders, robbing and murdering their victims—with at least eight thousand Budapest Jews falling victim to executions committed by armed service members. 11 István Bibó, “Zsidókérdés Magyarországon 1944 után,” in István Bibó, Bibó István összegyűjtött munkái, ed. István Kemény and Mátyás Sárközi, vol. 2 (Bern: Európai Protestáns Magyar Szabadegyetem, 1982), 481–89.

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time conditions.12 From the outset, however, the MKP utilized these courts as political weapons.13 The organization of the first people’s courts began in January 1945, and they had all completed their activity by April 1, 1950; in fact, most of the trials had concluded by 1947. Altogether more than 40,000 cases were heard, of which over 22,000 ended with a guilty plea. Of these, 414 of the accused were condemned to death, and in 180 cases, the sentence was carried out. Of around 22,000 receiving custodial sentences, 20,000 were imprisoned,14 and 2,000 sentenced to forced labor.15 Two types of people’s court proceedings can be distinguished. The trials of the main culprits were held publicly in the great hall of the Academy of Music in Budapest. The others were classed as “regular” trials. The former had a clear purpose beyond trying the accused: the policy they symbolized was also on trial.16 The regular trials were further subdivided according to who was accused. The prosecutions covered mid-ranking officers of extreme-right parties, members and soldiers of the armed party service after the Arrow Cross took power, and officials, gendarmes, and police belonging to the staff of officers in the Horthy period. Apart from being tried in the people’s court, they were also the main target of job dismissals (under what was known as B-listing) and later of forced displacement (kitelepítés).17 Volksbund membership was treat12 Curiously, the people’s courts did not cite existing laws on assigning political responsibility or earlier precedents. The idea of the international accountability of those defeated countries declared to be responsible for the war arose after World War I, but was never applied. Yet in Hungary there had been legislation (Act I/1849, Act XXIII/1919) through which revolutionary or war criminals could be called to account. 13 On the people’s courts, see Tibor Lukács, A magyar népbírósági jog és a népbíróságok 1945–1950 (Budapest: Közgazdasági és Jogi, 1979); Zoltán Bernáth, Justitia tudathasadása: Népbíróság a nép nélkül, a nép ellen (Budapest: Püski, 1993); Szakács and Zinner, A háború “megváltozott természete”; and Pál Pritz, A Bárdossy-per (Budapest: Kossuth, 2001). 14 The three grades of prison in Hungary in descending order of severity are fegyház, börtön, and fogház. The figure refers to the first two. 15 The data appear in Tibor Zinner, “Háborús bűnösök perei, internálások, kitelepítések és igazoló eljárások 1945–1949 között,” Történelmi Szemle 28, no. 1 (1985): 118–40. 16 The main trials were covered throughout in the press, with tendentious summaries and quotations from the evidence, designed to show the accused in the worst possible light. Some trial details of László Bárdossy, Imrédy, and Szálasi appeared in a series entitled Ítél a történelem (History passes sentence). 17 Although performed under the label of the reduction of public administration after the war, the screening process named after the so-called B-lists, which contained the names of people who were to be dismissed from public service, became a politically motivated purge. Forced displacement affected between 1948 and 1953 some 100,000 to 300,000 members of the groups labelled as class enemies (nobles, aristocracy, political opposition, former military officers, ku-

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ed notably more severely than Arrow Cross membership: Volksbund members could lose all their property and their citizenship, whereas with Arrow Cross membership the principle of collective guilt appears not to have been applied.18 They were instead given a chance to “get back on the right track.” The case was different with well-known Arrow Cross figures in leading positions.19 Thirteen out of the seventeen members of the Szálasi government were executed, as were the three members of the Arrow Cross Council of Regency and Arrow Cross Party founder Kálmán Hubay. One government minister (Béla Jurcsek) committed suicide in March 1945 and two others (Emil Szakváry and Vilmos Hellenbronth), who were not members of the party, were given prison sentences. Only Árpád Henney managed to flee. Four-fifths of the Szálasi government were therefore executed after people’s court trials, as were almost half the members of the Sztójay government. At the same time, some two dozen trials were launched against government members or extremeright politicians of the Horthy period. The stiffest sentences went to extreme right-wingers and to politicians and military officers who had taken a direct part in the war: they constituted the bulk of the 180 executed mentioned earlier. Of the fifty-six Arrow Cross who won seats in Parliament in 1939–44,20 fourteen were sentenced to death and four to life imprisonment, while practically all who remained in Hungary received prison sentences. We can therefore see that the extreme-right elite, unlike the Arrow Cross rank and file, faced serious retaliation in the early stage of the prosecutions. At the conclusion of the people’s court proceedings in 1950, Legislative Decree no. IX/1950 granted a general amnesty “on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the liberation,” meaning that members of extreme-right parlaks), who were resettled, under penalty of confiscation of property, to rural areas, where they were employed in very primitive agricultural work. 18 The Volksbund der Deutschen in Ungarn (National League of Germans in Hungary) was a Hungarian organization of ethnic Germans established in 1938 as a gesture to Nazi Germany. Although the Volksbund had its role in promoting Nazi policies, like recruitment into the Waffen SS, most members of Hungary’s German minority joined it on cultural grounds. Even choral group membership might translate into Volksbund membership. The otherwise politically passive rural Germans were drawn also by material incentives such as access to artificial fertilizers. Nor could the Volksbund as such be seen clearly as extreme right-wing, according to research in Norbert Spannenberger, A magyarországi Volksbund Berlin és Budapest között, 1938–1944 (Budapest: Lucidus, 2005). 19 On these, see Paksa, Magyar nemzetiszocialisták, 309–24. 20 The maximum number of members from the Arrow Cross parties at any one time was 49, but the aggregate number was greater due to lost seats and replacement of the deceased.

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ties who had not committed a common crime no longer feared reprisals for their former political views. However, 1950 also marked the end of prosecutions for common crimes committed before 1945. Yet, even before the people’s courts concluded their proceedings, their role had already undergone a significant change. From 1947 onward, the functioning of the people’s courts was defined by increasing communist pressure that turned the courts into a means of discrediting the MKP’s opponents, rather than of investigating war crimes. As such, postwar retribution became one of the elements of the process that undermined democratic norms and paved the way to a one-party rule, which, with the abolition of the multi-party system, took final shape with the new constitution adopted in 1949.

The beginnings of operational work The task of state security changed after the 1950 amnesty, with emphasis shifting from investigations connected with people’s court proceedings to “operational work.” This mainly meant setting up and handling a network of agents able, in principle, to survey the whole of society. Surviving data on the scale of the network are astounding: its strength during the Rákosi era, the period between 1948 and 1956 that constitutes the most repressive phase of communist rule in Hungary, exceeded 20,000 persons.21 This vast apparatus was supposed to ensure total control over society for the communist party leadership. While building up the informer network, less attention was paid to the gathering of background knowledge necessary to support the operational work, which could have helped to provide a more realistic assessment of informer reports and interrogation testimonies. State security investigators were generally rather insensitive to the nuances of reality, seemingly for want of suitable qualifications, education, and personal qualities (above all empathy). What they tried to do was chart, as accurately as possible, the sphere of “hostile elements.” They made numerous lists and quasi-archontologies,22 placing Ar21 Gabor Tabajdi and Krisztián Ungváry, Elhallgatott múlt: A pártállam és a belügy; A politikai rendőrség működése Magyarországon 1956–1990 (Budapest: 1956-os Intézet/Corvina, 2008), 188. 22 Notable background materials compiled at various times and still available in the ÁBTL are: Files A–955, “List of fascist and right-wing party leaders”; A–961, “List of Arrow Cross armed party service members and other Arrow Cross criminals, Arrow Cross functionaries”; A–962, “Materials on the Hungarist Legion and Arrow Cross terrorist units”; A–965, “Materials on Budapest Arrow Cross leaders and party workers”; A–966, “List of Arrow Cross criminals liv-

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row Cross, “Horthyites,” and “class-enemy elements” (such as aristocrats) in one basket. Although investigators also collected materials on former Arrow Cross—as shown by the earliest surviving register of the volume Nyilaskeresz­ tes Párt (Arrow Cross Party)—they were not really the focus of state security between 1950 and 1956.23 The attitude of state security toward the Arrow Cross changed significantly in 1957. Motivated by the working hypothesis that former Arrow Cross had been playing an active role in the 1956 revolution, known officially as a “counterrevolution,” state security started again on collecting and processing information to be used against them. Their investigations proceeded slowly and met several obstacles due to shortcomings in preliminary work and the loss of earlier files. It was only at the national meeting deciding on the tasks for the year 1959, and a subsequent meeting of Department II/5, that Subdepartment II/5a was assigned to attend to the “fascist line.”24 Still, work did not need to start from scratch again in 1957. The various documents and reports at the investigators’ disposal included one concerning seventy officials who worked at the Arrow Cross headquarters at Andrássy Street 60 (called the “House of Fidelity”) and a list of 100 fascist (Arrow Cross) party leaders and activists, complete with addresses and occasionally occupations and positions. There were also separate notes on the perpetrators of the 1939 bomb attack on the Dohány Street synagogue,25 on those who distributed Arrow Cross leaflets, and even the names of editors and authors of the extreme ing in the provinces”; and A–1005, “Arrow Cross parliamentary candidates and government commissioners.” 23 The source of subsequent examinations here is the summary “object file” entitled “Nyilaskeresztes Párt.” The two volumes compiled before 1956—“Nyilaskereszt Párt maradványai Budapest terület, 10–10714/50”—were destroyed in 1956, but renewed collection work between 1957 and 1972 yielded four volumes of material: the operational files “Nyilaskeresztes Párt,” ÁBTL 3.1.5 O–14.937/1–3 and 3/a. Furthermore, the material collected on one person was also attached to that inventory number, making 184 files (more later about the personal materials), of which eighty-two are accessible. 24 Between 1957 and 1962, Department 5 of the Political Investigation Division (Division II) of the Ministry of Interior was responsible for “domestic counter-reactionary intelligence,” with subdepartment II/5a investigating the pre-1945 right-wing parties and organizations, II/5b focusing on members of the pre-1945 military and police personnel, and II/5c tasked with the surveillance of the churches. 25 On February 3, 1939, a hand grenade was thrown into the crowd leaving the Dohány Street synagogue in Budapest. A police investigation at the time linked the terrorist attack, which resulted in one death and at least a dozen and a half wounded, to the National Socialist Hungarian Party, although it was later suspected that the political police might had possibly organized it in order to discredit the far-right party in the run-up to the elections.

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right press. The latter were reconstructed from the closed collection of the National Széchényi Library that archived news materials banned after 1945.26

A state security working hypothesis Preparations in 1957–59 were followed by intensified investigation of the Arrow Cross in 1959, accompanied by comprehensive reports. The necessary basic knowledge and future tasks were summed up on June 20, 1959, by László Bodrogi, police major and deputy head of the Interior Ministry subdepartment II/5.27 The introduction described briefly the main national socialist parties and their leaders that operated before 1945. The report underlined: “We had no data on location or whereabouts for leaders and activists of the said fascist parties and so started mapping work that has so far yielded the names of three and a half thousand fascist functionaries. The majority of those identified worked in Pest, Fejér, Komárom, Győr, or Borsod counties, or the area of Budapest. Through mapping work, we have learned the organizational structure of the Arrow Cross Party, which allows us to specify the direction of network building.”28 Bodrogi overstated somewhat the knowledge gained by mapping. The documents show that during 1959–60, a number of informers and suspects arrested in the course of various investigations were required to write comprehensive summaries about the National Socialist movements, and most of the Interior Ministry’s knowledge likely came from these summaries rather than any mapping work.29 The research was not limited to Hungary: they also sought to map the fascist émigré community, on which they had minimal information. One report tried to summarize their views through analyzing a plan of action published in Út és Cél (Path and Aim), the official newspaper of the émigré Hungarist Movement, in Salzburg, Austria on July 20, 1957, concluding that it was an ideological hotchpotch. 30 Major Bodrogi noted proudly in October 1957 that 26 ÁBTL O–14937/1. d., 102–29. 27 László Bodrogi, “Összefoglaló jelentés a volt fasiszta pártok vonaláról, 1959. június 20” [Summary report on the strand of the former fascist parties], Nyilaskeresztes Párt, ÁBTL 3.1.5 O–14937/1, 154–76. 28 László Bodrogi, “Összefoglaló jelentés,” 155. 29 Several of these were appended to the object files on the Arrow Cross Party. 30 László Bodrogi, “Összefoglaló jelentés,” 154–76. Based on their program, it was concluded that the Hungarists were anti-West and anti-Soviet, their aim being to liberate Hungary from the Soviets and revise its territory. They aspired to a peasant state with industry based on private

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Út és Cél, along with its successor, Út, had been banned by the Austrian authorities after a protest note from the Hungarian government. When it reappeared under the name Cél in Munich, Bodrogi reported that it was inimical not only to the Hungarian government, the Soviet Union, and the Jews, but also to the other émigré organizations. It was typical of the state security mindset, however, to assume that the articles in the journal’s column “Searches,” containing personal ads used by émigrés to find each other, contained secret instructions to spies, which they were unable to decipher.31 The report stressed that while the Arrow Cross émigré community was “not a military unit,” it had an armed terror detachment named the Hungarist Legion. Finally, it stated the importance of further mapping by stating that they had hardly any accurate data on the Arrow Cross émigrés. The investigation at home, despite having begun energetically, was also in a weak state. A report written by Bodrogi around April 1960 stated that “the covering of the category fascist from the network viewpoint shows great distortion in favor of the coalition parties. . . . We do not possess the most minimal network potential.”32 According to the report, there were only seven informers dealing with this task in Budapest and a total of thirty-six throughout the country. Bodrogi stressed that the dispersion of these informers was also unfortunate. Moreover, one third of the agents were not gaining access to substantive information and would be withdrawn. While, for example, in Vas County ownership, which they called socialism, but stressed its Christian character as well. Moreover, they were believers in an authoritarian system of rule, rather than democracy or dictatorship. The report attributed the authorship of the program to Emil Csonka, who worked for Radio Free Europe, based on the assumption that he had written Szálasi’s work entitled Út és Cél. The “philological attempt” to establish authorship shows that Bodrogi was not at all familiar with the history of the far right: Csonka could not have written Szálasi’s programmatic works of 1935 and 1937 because he was not born until 1923. Bodrogi may have been misled by two factors: Csonka had indeed been the chronicler of the Arrow Cross Party in 1944, while Bodrogi was also keen to implicate Radio Free Europe and West Germany in the matter using Csonka as a proxy. However, Út és Cél appeared in Salzburg, edited by Árpád Henney, who headed the Hungarist émigrés and almost certainly authored the program. Nor did Bodrogi heed the fact that this ideology was a mixture of Szálasi’s Hungarism and the demands that surfaced during the 1956 revolution, written with an eye to winning over new émigrés. To be fair, the report did note that the Hungarist émigrés were agitating actively and successfully among the 1956 “defectors.” 31 This assumption was certainly a typical expression of the exaggerated discernment of conspiracies. 32 On further tasks relating to individual fascist parties, organizations, and categories and aspects of the further struggles against them, see the undated (April 1960?) ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14397/1, 82–83.

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there were nine informers observing fifty “right-wing social democrats,” only two informers worked “on the fascist line,” and neither had any substantive intelligence-gathering scope available. From the report, we learn that they failed to monitor even the prominent Arrow Cross people living in Budapest. There was a chance that an informer codenamed “Győri” would have been able to do so if his efforts to penetrate their circle, planned to take six or seven months, were successful. It is also clear that the number of informers recruited after 1956 to report on former fascists was very small: just two in Budapest and six in the countryside (according to known data). Furthermore, Bodrogi considered that the agents’ performance was far below their potential. He also criticized the earlier reexaminations, in which he claimed too many “fascists” had been erased from the operational register. He gave the example of Szabolcs County, where only thirty-four of the 300 Arrow Cross originally registered remained on the operational list, along with eleven in the research register. The result of this erasing led to the, in his view, “not realistic” situation that the number of former Arrow Cross on the register was almost the same as the number of those who had displayed counterrevolutionary activity. The report repeated that the efficiency of investigative work was hampered by several factors: the mapping of social networks of the former Arrow Cross had begun only at the end of 1958 and information was too scant to build up a network. In the light of the political desire to link 1956 with 1944, as well as prevalent police investigation practices, the proposal Bodrogi arrived at was hardly ingenious: to make better use of individuals who could be blackmailed for their 1956-related activities. He also saw a need for stronger cooperation with partner departments, both in the central apparatus and at the county level, as the Arrow Cross Party was joined also by individuals—like those who served in the various state apparatuses of the Horthy regime, such as the army or police, or were recruited to the Waffen SS—whose surveillance was the task of different subdivisions. None of these proposals contained any ideas that were fundamentally new: the best they could achieve was to improve the organization and accessibility of existing Interior Ministry data. He urged priority for the advancement of the case of Rezső Csiza (most likely because he could be linked to one of the most controversial events during the 1956 revolution, the siege of the Köztársaság Square party headquarters),33 along with prose33 The report of July 4, 1957, recounts that Rezső Csiza, a casual worker resident in Dankó Street, Budapest’s eight district, was interned in 1949 and sentenced in 1953 to three and a half years’

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cutions of Arrow Cross members who committed murder and war criminals more generally. He assigned importance to infiltrating high-ranking Arrow Cross members and emphasized that the investigations had to extend to all former fascist parties, not just Szálasi’s.34 Finally—as a curious, state-security interpretation of the consolidating post-1956 Kádár regime’s motto, “whoever is not against us is with us”—he envisaged that those figures who were no longer being investigated should, instead, be recruited. His proposal regarding “fascist émigrés” was to cooperate with Department II/3 (foreign intelligence) on establishing who the leaders and active members of this group were and mapping their connections and relatives in Hungary. The work that began in 1959 seems to have started with great force. The first partial successes were the subject of a report on November 26.35 Less than two weeks after that came the annual summary report of December 12, 1959, in which Bodrogi reported on factors impeding prosecutions. He again mentioned first that the investigators lacked general knowledge of the subject: they had to get the basic picture at the same time as investigating those implicated.36 Their work was also impeded because there had still been hardly any network infiltration. Moreover, no contemporary documents on the 1944–45 murders survived—if any were produced, the Arrow Cross organs destroyed their own documentation—and the cases were not investigated thoroughly even by the postwar people’s courts. In 1960, fifteen years after the crimes were committed, investigators could rely only on recollections and hearsay witnesses. Some incriminating witnesses had died in the meantime and others left Hungary in 1956 for fear, according to state security, of a new wave of anti-Semitism. Bodrogi’s report stated that the aim at this point should not be to broaden further the range of suspects, but to bring those persons implicated in the murders to justice, and, in order to show some demonstrative progress, select ten custody for crossing the border illegally. According to his statement, he took part in the siege of the Köztársaság Square communist party building and in the execution of state security members on October 30, 1956, but the “statement” should be treated with caution, especially as the summary report of December 12, 1959, merely suspected Csiza of hiding weapons— a charge that was also not proved. Nyilaskeresztes Párt, ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14937/1, 130 and 143. 34 To this he appended what appears—even to the eye of a present-day researcher—an accurate list of the national socialist parties, including Imrédy’s Hungarian Party of Renewal (MMP). 35 László Bodrogi, “Jelentés a nyilas vonalról, 1959. november 26” [Report on the Arrow Cross line, November 26, 1959], Nyilaskeresztes Párt, ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14937/1, 209–17. 36 László Bodrogi, “Fasiszta pártok és szervezetek 1959. évi összefoglaló jelentés, 1959. december 12” [1959 annual summary report on fascist parties and organizations, December 12, 1959], ÁBTL O–14937/1, 233–51.

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or fifteen of the most important former Arrow Cross journalists, who could be easily identified, for prosecution. As for the work done on the émigrés, Bodrogi complained that the intelligence department II/3 would ask for information from them, but provide in return only basic items of data of which they were already aware. Although he self-critically admitted that “the reason why the work on the émigrés is weak is not because of department II/3,” at the same time he also found it important to add “that this work is significantly impeded by the [excessive] secretiveness on behalf of the co-department.”37 However, the report noted that good working relations had developed with counterintelligence department II/2 and department II/4 countering transportation sabotage. It becomes apparent from Bodrogi’s account of the results with émigrés that the reason why Ödön Málnási (a former agent who had emigrated in 1956) initiated contact with the agency again is presumably that he wanted to implicate others.38 It emerges that a start was made in 1959 to mapping the Hungarian ties of ten émigré Arrow Cross, but of the twelve émigré papers seen as most important, only Cél could be obtained regularly, if late, and the ideological explications in it were of little use. By 1960, the main tasks Bodrogi identified were to prosecute the main criminals, obtain further background information, build up a network of informers, map the Hungarian ties of the émigré community, and register those who were active during the events of 1956.

The first results of the investigations The next comprehensive report in April 1960 rested on the role former Arrow Cross members were assumed to have played in the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Emphasis was placed on the “very active” former Arrow Cross members (described for whatever reason as “leaders”) in the revolutionary organizations: 1,137 persons were found in the armed or administrative bodies, although the compilers of the survey noted it was incomplete as many did not appear in the operational records, being classed only as “misguided.” The survey—which could hardly be said to rest on professional statistical procedures—covered

37 Bodrogi, “Fasiszta pártok,” 248. 38 Málnási worked under the codename “Béla Erdélyi” until his emigration in 1956. For more detail, see Tabajdi and Ungváry, Elhallgatott múlt, 242–61.

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the data for Budapest and six counties altogether.39 The figures were accompanied by some accounts of how the former Arrow Cross had “incited” people to strike or dismiss communist leaders in 1956, and on some lesser cases of violence in which they took part. However, the report also stated that the Arrow Cross did not play a leading ideological role in most cases, or advertise their earlier views at all: “The majority of those who became active [during the events of 1956] did not state their Arrow Cross or fascist leanings openly. They presented themselves as victims of the system, citing periods in prison, police measures against them, and their patriotism, when moving to overthrow the people’s democratic system, in line with their fascist ideas.” It cannot be said that the police notions were entirely devoid of logic, but the investigating bodies clearly could not point to real extreme right demonstrations or, indeed, any manipulated in the background by the extreme rightwing. The Arrow Cross who were investigated behaved exactly like the majority, either staying at home or taking part in various factory or street demonstrations, supporting the changes but not initiating them. The analysis of what happened leaves plenty of room for retrospective interpretations. It is possible that one reason why Arrow Cross and fascist ideas were not voiced during the revolution is that these were already so discredited by 1956 that it seemed unwise to put them forward. The explanation given by the state security was that former Arrow Cross leaders remained passive due to the presence of Soviet forces. It emerges from the report, self-contradictory in some respects, that the Arrow Cross did not take part in the revolution in an organized way, at most individually, and like most of the public, they mitigated their role for fear of Soviet reprisals. Yet, the investigations, made in response to political instructions, adhered to the political concept of a leading Arrow Cross role: according to the report, proceedings began against 35 percent of the Arrow Cross who were active in the revolution. Even so, several were omitted, including some who sought to found parties and organizations. The 1960 report states regretfully: “Bringing them to justice is no longer possible in view of the Party’s penal policy.”40 39 Pest 172, Borsod [no number given], Győr 123, Komárom 76, Somogy 94, Vas 122, and Zala 91 (these figures add up to fewer than 1,137 people in total). Nyilaskeresztes Párt, ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14937/1, 73. 40 The remark probably referred to the party’s policy of détente. Partial amnesties were ordered on April 3, 1959, and a year later on April 1, 1960. Finally, a general amnesty was declared on March 21, 1963. Nonetheless, the criminal proceedings dragged on into 1962. “Nyilaskeresztes Párt,” ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14937/1, 72–75.

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While the presumed Arrow Cross involvement in 1956 was exaggerated, police documents analyzing the actual events of 1944 treat those Arrow Cross rank and file who did not get involved in the revolution with surprising leniency: “The misguided—having sobered up and abandoned their earlier fascist views—live and work as honest people in various occupational areas of the people’s democratic system, and regret their earlier activity. . . . [T] hey support government policy, having integrated into the social order and shown patriotic behavior during the counterrevolution.”41 They were no longer seen as a mass basis for anti-regime, right-wing (extreme right) revolt, and were treated differently from former Arrow Cross who were deemed still hostile: “The task of state security is to discover and expose those who do not fit in with the system, who oppose the policy of Party and Government, retain a fascist political approach to this day, maintain contacts of a political nature with the West, plan or carry out hostile activity, and hope for a change of system.”42 What makes these criteria absurd is that according to them, the members of the Armed Party Service of 1944 should not have been targeted in 1960, since even though such people did not sympathize with the communist regime openly, they generally kept quiet, tried to integrate, and had no foreign contacts at all. In this sense, it mattered little that these people were not merely “petty” Arrow Cross misled by demagogy, but plain killers who had blended in after the war and lived their later lives unpunished or with only minor reprisals. The leniency toward them is in sharp contrast to the severity of the post-1956 reprisals, where people were imprisoned for long periods or even sentenced to death merely for taking on local leadership during the revolution. In 1960, the state security was aware of some sixty execution sites from 1944 where murders committed by various armed detachments had taken place but had not been investigated in detail. A reason lay behind this sudden burst of activity: “A central issue in our work was to discover and bring to trial murderers who had committed capital crimes but had not been punished for them, before the terms of legal limitation for war crimes and crimes against the people expired.”43 The state security apparatus sensed that if mass murders were not handled by the middle of the decade, the chances of prosecution would dramatically diminish as its legal justification was irrevocably lost. Accord41 “Nyilaskeresztes Párt,” ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14937/1, 71. 42 “Nyilaskeresztes Párt,” ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14937/1, 71. 43 “Nyilaskeresztes Párt,” ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14937/1, 77.

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ingly, a seven-point plan of action was devised. The first was to examine Arrow Cross who had taken part in the “counterrevolution” and another 170 persons suspected of murder during the Arrow Cross period: “Their present hostile activity must be examined, and where proven, proceedings must also be taken against them for their earlier actions.”44 The wording suggests that proceedings would be taken only if those guilty of grave crimes during the Arrow Cross period still showed hostile behavior, in which case they would have to answer for all their deeds. Events, however, did not quite pan out that way. The “unmasking” of Arrow Cross activities during the events of 1956 was only partially successful. However, in the course of research, personal materials slowly started building up, in which the Arrow Cross activities of the people involved were summarized, though initially only very briefly. It took somewhat longer for police interest to turn to earlier, pre-1945 activity. This is shown by the case of Vilmos Kröszl, convicted of a war crime at the end of the 1960s.45 Discounting the first half of the 1950s, the documents show that extreme right-wing persons and organizations were targeted by state security on several occasions: attention was paid to them after 1945 ex officio, then to establish participation in 1956, in the early 1960s in a burst of activity as the twenty-year limitation on prosecutions approached,46 and finally in 1969–71, presumably encouraged by the publicized success in prosecuting Arrow Cross members who had operated in Budapest’s fourteenth district (called Zugló).47 The documents show how extreme right organizations were categorized and what lines of investigation were chosen by state security: 1) former Arrow Cross (especially former leaders) and their organizing activity; 2) the extreme right-wing 44 “Nyilaskeresztes Párt,” ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14937/1, 93. 45 Kröszl’s case and the activity of the group working in Budapest’s fourteenth district are detailed in András Lénárt, “A megtalált ellenség,” in Búvópatakok: A jobboldal és az állambiz­ tonság 1945–1989, ed. Krisztián Ungváry (Budapest: Jaffa Kiadó, 2013), 353–99. 46 A decisive majority of the hitherto mentioned personal files attached to the operational file Nyilaskeresztes Párt, ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14937/1, were reopened in 1964–66, when the political and legal position on the limitation of war crimes was being taken. 47 The trial between January 18 and June 28, 1967, of the Zugló Arrow Cross armed service members was one of the largest and most publicized trials of former Arrow Cross members in Hungary. Three of the 19 defendants were executed, the others received long prison sentences. Although preceded by ten years of investigation, the trial was organized in response to the growing number of prosecutions of wartime crimes in the West. Its primary goal was thus to prove the dedication of Hungary, and thus of the Eastern Bloc, in confronting its Nazi past. At the same time, the trial also had a domestic political message, according to which the state (police) knows everything and, despite the regime’s policy of appeasement, can strike at any time.

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émigré community; 3) examination and preparations for prosecution of the members of the Arrow Cross armed party service for their actions in 1944– 45; and 4) investigation of illegal Arrow Cross/Nazi manifestations (graffiti, pamphleteering, anonymous letters, and so forth). The four defined groups were drawn up in various ways, according to the state security investigations. The first lived in isolation, yielded few conspiracy cases, and had only sporadic direct contact with each other. The émigrés, on the other hand, drew attention to themselves precisely through their organizations and publications. The third group, due to their low qualifications and severe crimes, lived in still greater isolation from each other and even from relatives in some cases. The fourth group comprised a different, younger generation, one born during or after the war, whose actions were not usually even inspired intellectually by the former Arrow Cross in Hungary or abroad. There were also differences between the groups according to their actual activities: the first and third groups were targeted by state security because of their criminal past rather than anything they were currently doing, while the situation with the second and fourth groups was the opposite. Despite the very loose ties between the groups, the police managed to demonstrate spatial continuity: according to their figures, hostile graffiti appeared typically in places of Arrow Cross activity in 1944. Indeed, they stuck by their original concept, stressing that the same places had become “the strongest counterrevolutionary centers.”48 One notable challenge to state security was to interpret the activity of the fourth group. The investigators obviously sought to uncover some “fascist” thread behind the actions of the young, some of whom were in the final grades of elementary school. This they found most often in the person of the father (a former gendarme, army officer, dissident, or convict serving a prison sentence). However, the young themselves could give no explanation when questioned about their acts. Still, in the eyes of the police there was more to it than spontaneous nonsense or teenage rebellion: they discerned deliberateness and organization in finding that the walls of former Arrow Cross buildings and those around them were more often painted with forbidden symbols— 48 The strongest activity was said to have been in Budapest (172 persons), Komárom County (76), Vas (122), Győr County (123), Zala (91), Somogy (94), and Borsod (no figure given). Apart from Budapest and Borsod, these were Transdanubian counties, where the Arrow Cross had at least some degree of activity in their short historical existence. As such, these figures too fail to confirm the causal relationship between 1944 and 1956.

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stars of David, swastikas, or anti-regime slogans (“Down with communism!” “Long live Szálasi!” “Not forgotten!”) There was less of a ready answer as to why primitively phrased leaflets with similar content were scattered along railroad lines. According to testimony from the young people, it was often symbols or slogans found in movies or magazines, or other graffiti, that inspired them to spread unknown and taboo symbols. The reports also remark that gangs of youths, including criminals, had a bad influence as well. Those compiling reports could find hardly anything to say on conspiracy within the first group of former Arrow Cross leaders. Perhaps the most important case was that of István Péntek and seven associates, successfully prosecuted in 1957–59 for conspiracy, although it was not investigated within the “Arrow Cross line,” as there was no informer among them.49 However, state security observed them and found that the fascist conspirators had employed new tactics: “Their form and mode of attack is manifold.” The new tactic was for former Arrow Cross to call themselves socialists and request political rehabilitation, then “present their rejection as exemplifying bureaucratism in lower organizations.”50 Meanwhile, they would incite people against the prevailing 49 According to the report, participants were members of the Arrow Cross and quasi-fascist bodies with criminal records, aspiring to assume government after an awaited change of system. To Bodrogi, István Péntek, though seen as a leading Arrow Cross ideologist, did not advance old Arrow Cross ideas, but mixed fascist and Arrow Cross ideology with Yugoslav national communism. For more on the Péntek conspiracy, see Tabajdi and Ungváry, Elhallgatott múlt, 233–41. Of the post-1945 conspiracies, particular mention goes to the Donáth case, the spy case of István Szentirmay, and the Fiala leafleting case. Curiously, accounts of these cases are absent from the summary file. Donáth was hard to identify from file materials; Szentirmay was no Arrow Cross man but a pre-1945 army lieutenant and prisoner of war in the Soviet Union in 1945–47, included in 1957 in a file opened by the Political Department of the Chief Captaincy of Budapest Police (O–16614/161) on politically compromised persons, mainly ’56-ers, from Budapest’s thirteenth district. No hard data emerged on the leafleting either. It probably arose from a news item in the Vienna-based Express that leafleting in Hungary had been fomented by Arrow Cross figures residing in Schloß Teising in Bavaria. See “Jelentés az 1958–59. évi fasiszta falfirkák és röpcédulázásokról. 1960. január 21” [Report on 1958–59 fascist graffiti and leafleting, January 21, 1960], Nyilaskeresztes Párt, ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14937/1, 279–88. Ferenc Fiala (1904–1988), architect and journalist, was once chief editor of the Arrow Cross paper Összetartás, then press officer to Szálasi from October 15, 1945. In 1946, he was sentenced to death, then life imprisonment, and finally fifteen years’ hard labor. He was freed in the 1956 revolution and left the country. According to a 1959 report, state security was unclear about his emigration, but later found he had settled in West Germany in 1956 under the name Maiser and was working for far-right newspapers. In 1968, he became editor of the Hungarist Hídfő. The observation file opened on Fiala (O–14906) is missing from the archives: it is known only that it was closed in 1973. 50 ÁBTL O–14397/1. d. 79–80, no date (April 1960?)

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system. State security saw the unrest fomented against the 1958–61 program of agricultural collectivization as typical of such incitement, demoralization, and undermining of trust in socialist society and its leading bodies. This, went the explanation, could occur because “socialist legality has consolidated” and “hostile elements feel themselves less under threat.” In other words, state security already felt that the post-1956 reprisals had given way to consolidation, whereas historians date this only from the most extensive—but far from general—amnesty decrees of 1963. However, the police already perceived the “consolidation of socialist legality” in 1959–60, the time of the partial amnesty decrees. They viewed this as a loosening of the reins, which they concluded and feared would let fascists organize almost unimpeded. Still, the summary police report teems with self-contradiction. In some places it speaks of weak fascist organization with little effect, and in others it tries to report successful investigatory work, which could be based only on some rise in the number and severity of the occurrences of hostile organization. Typically the case studies do not divide clearly into the posited categories and the Arrow Cross become bundled with the former Horthyite administrative officers, investigators, gendarmes, army officers, and even hooligans and criminal “bandits.” This blurring of the groups helps permit a flexible interpretation of the figures.51 Based on the summary, within the realm of “fascist parties, organizations, and categories” four bodies were singled out in 1960, with their members’ activities followed: the governing party of 1939–44 (Party of Hungarian Life, MÉP); the old organization of Hungary’s ethnic Germans (Volksbund); the Hungarian Fraternal Community (MTK); and the Szálasi party (Arrow Cross Party–Hungarist Movement). When it comes to the number of identified former Arrow Cross, state security compiled a summary report that contained data on residence, age, and occupation (see Table 7.1). It is easy to find faults with the figures. The residence figures match the aggregate 2,498, but the occupational ones fall short by 56 and the age figures by 681. There could be several reasons for the discrepancies, but guesses are fruitless. Based on the table, the Arrow Cross seem to be aging: some 42 percent of those under local observation in 1960 were over 50. Occupation is the only measure given for social status, but four subcategories of the intelligentsia appear. The police were also keen to know 51 It was not unique, for example, for a gendarme to become an Arrow Cross member at the end of 1944.

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Table 7.1. Summary data on former leading and armed Arrow Cross, around 196052 2,489

Number of former leading and armed Arrow Cross Budapest

957

Place of residence

Provinces

1,532

Age

Under 50 years of age

1,046

Occupation

50–60 years of age

762

Skilled workers

753

Unskilled workers

2,489 1,808 2,433

1,165

Agricultural workers

312

Officials of government offices and large state enterprises

100

Department managers of companies and medium-sized factories

15

Supervisors in companies and medium-sized factories

56

Engineers in companies and medium-sized factories

32

how many former Arrow Cross had gained leading posts and how high they had risen. Most of those examined, however, did manual work; only 8 percent did office or intellectual work. It was found that 15 persons (0.6 percent) were in leading positions, a figure that investigators also criticized. The summary did not give county details, but pointed out that most of those in Budapest were in the seventh and eighth districts (“in general places where the Budapest underground also reside”), while Győr-Sopron, Zala, Heves, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén, and Komárom counties were also higher than the provincial average.53

Adjustment of the working hypothesis In the final days of 1960, subdepartment II/5 of the Interior Ministry once again produced a comprehensive proposal and nationwide plan of investiga52 Source: “Az 1945 előtti egyes fasiszta pártok, szervezetek, kategóriák elleni további feladatokról, az ellenük folyó további harc kérdései,” [The further tasks against the pre-1945 fascist parties, organizations, and categories, along with issues in the further struggle against them], n.d. [April 1960?], “Nyilaskeresztes Párt,” ÁBTL 3.1.5. O-14937/1. Operational file, 76. 53 Nyilaskeresztes Párt, ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14937/1, 76.

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tion.54 The proposal’s starting point was the sizable number of “fascist party members” committing economic crimes both before and after 1945. This gave a good excuse for information gathering, network recruitment, and examining the contacts of former party members. The matter of Arrow Cross being found among “armed counterrevolutionaries” was covered briefly in May 1961 by deputy department head István Agócs.55 However, the most notable statement in the report is that there were no “armed counterrevolutionaries” among the cases being tackled at the time, while a total of only twelve files had been opened on such “ex-Arrow Cross armed revolutionaries.”56 The other “Arrow Cross counterrevolutionaries” were not armed. Table 7.2. State security categorization of former Arrow Cross members in Budapest’s fourteenth, twelfth, and fifth districts Arrow Cross party or members of the Hungarist Legion or the armed party service

39

Active or convicted Arrow Cross party members in the Horthy period

15

Arrow Cross party members convicted by people’s courts

22

Arrow Cross party members convicted on various counts after 1950

6

Arrow Cross party members convicted both by people’s courts and after 1950

4

Arrow Cross party members emigrating in or before 1956

6

Non-Arrow Cross

3

Accordingly, the investigations were extended to cover former Arrow Cross more generally, in case any criminal behavior could be found in their past which could point to hitherto unresearched crimes. The three major probes, conducted among Arrow Cross armed party service members in the fourteenth, twelfth, and fifth districts of Budapest, yielded material on eighty54 “Javaslat a fasiszta bűnöző elemek ellenőrzésének megszervezésére, 1960. december 29.” [Proposal on organizing surveillance of fascist criminal elements, December 29, 1960], Budapesti nyilas vezetők és pártszolgálatosok anyagai [Materials on Budapest Arrow Cross leaders and party workers], ÁBTL 4.1. A–965. 55 István Agócs, “Jelentés fegyveres ellenforradalmárok jelenlegi tevékenységről, 1961. május 16” [Report on present activity by armed counterrevolutionaries, May 16, 1961], Nyilaskeresztes Párt, ÁBTL 3.1.5 O–14937/1, 345–47. 56 These were Nándor Dániel Boros, F–325; Béla Payer, F–486; József Tóth, F–1137; Mihály Balogh, F–792; Gyula Bobori, F–775; Rezső Csiza, F–5382; Géza Németh, F–326; József Sepsei, F–338; Sándor János Szabó, F–330; Sándor Hajesz, F–2532; Dezső Kiss, F–2516; and Pál Koós, F–2543.

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two persons. These were attached to the file summing up the materials on the Arrow Cross Party. The basic data in them can be summed up numerically as shown in Table 7.2. The total is greater than eighty-two due to overlap between categories. It appears from the figures that most of the armed party service members were put before the people’s courts. The history of those studied in eleven of the files confirms only in part the generally held picture of the petty Arrow Cross, that is, that they came from mainly poor, petty bourgeois families, having completed only basic schooling or little more, and had joined the Arrow Cross Party or armed party service mainly for personal gain.57 After 1945 (often after serving a custodial sentence), they had tried to integrate into the new system. They had found jobs mainly as unskilled or skilled manual workers, many of them noticeably attempting to find less physically tiring jobs. Workplace reports described them as workers of average or notable diligence. They made hardly any political statements. A few had accepted workers’ council membership during the 1956 revolution, but this did not lead to them losing their jobs. But some life paths did not fit into the general picture. One, a tailor by trade working for the May 1 Garment Factory, joined the communist party as well as the Workers’ Militia, the party-loyal paramilitary force established after 1956, and received several commendations for his work. When his Arrow Cross past emerged in 1967, he was stripped of his party membership, which dated from 1953.58 Nor was Zoltán Harangi, born in 1913, a typical petty Arrow Cross: he had a higher education. At the time he was registered as living in Újhegyi Street in the tenth district of Budapest and working as a supervisor at Neon Ktsz. His Arrow Cross past and criminal offenses meant that he spent almost the whole postwar period in prison, finally being released in 1963.59 Lajos Kriveczky also belonged to the better educated: he completed three years of higher industrial school and held a technical management job at the Chemical Industry Repairs Corporation in the eighth district of Budapest.60 An unusual case was that of Zoltán Erdődi, who was imprisoned sever57 The files examined were Nyilaskeresztes Párt, ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14937/30, 35, 39, 49, 51, 75, 112, 158, 173 and 178 (personal files), and András Mihály Falussy’s personal file in “Fasiszta pártok, szervezetek és polgári pártok tagjai” 3.1.5. O–14847/30. 58 Personal file of János Németh, ÁBTL O–14937/173. 59 Personal file of Zoltán Harangi, ÁBTL O–14937/39. 60 Personal file of Lajos Kriveczky, ÁBTL O–14937/51.

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al times. His father had been an army officer in the Horthy army graduating from the Ludovika military academy, although he passed the postwar confirmation process and retired in 1955 as a major. His son also chose a military career, studying at the air defense military academy in 1948–50 and serving as a regular officer until 1958, when he was dismissed from the army for “misuse of a weapon.” Though he had spent twelve years in the communist party, he was expelled in 1963 and deprived of a 1957 decoration. His marriage broke up, and he served a total of five years and three months under a strict prison regime for continual incitement and other crimes.61 The most interesting case was a family drama in Pestererzsébet, the twentieth district of Budapest. In the summer of 1962, Mrs. György Lettner and the man engaged to be married to her daughter reported the woman’s brother-in-law, Ferenc Lettner. It emerged at the hearing that Ferenc Lettner had lived in illegality from 1945 to 1962, hidden and supported by his wife, who worked as a nurse in a specialist medical clinic in the fourteenth district of Budapest. A factory worker, Mrs. György Lettner—née Edit Rothschild— learned only in the mid-1950s, after getting married, that her husband had been in the Arrow Cross. “There was no particular problem with that, even though my husband knew I was a Jew.” But the woman became suspicious that her husband was visiting her ostensibly widowed sister-in-law more often than necessary. When challenged, her husband admitted that they were hiding his brother Ferenc: he was the one being visited. Ferenc Lettner dared not go out in the street because he had “played a part in the deportation of Jewish individuals” as a member of the Arrow Cross armed party service. The Lettner family were effective conspirators. Aside from relatives, only a doctor was in on the secret: “Apart from the above, she learnt that the [communist] party secretary at Mrs. Ferenc Lettner’s place of work, the Szövetség Street hospital, had apparently gone out once to Pesterzsébet to pull a tooth of Ferenc’s.” After the case was examined, nothing ultimately happened: Ferenc Lettner was employed at the Capital City Sewage Works as a grid operator earning 1,700–1,800 forints a month. They were satisfied with his work, but having been isolated for so long, the former armed party service member seems to have sought greater recognition. It appears from a 1966 workplace description that he “takes part in mass protests and contrib-

61 Personal file of Zoltán Erdődi, ÁBTL O–14937/30, 14.

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utes on general political questions at work. His fault is that he is garrulous and, in many cases, only arrives at the correct position on a specific subject after requisite instruction.”62 State security had great hopes when they began investigating the multiple killer András Mihály Falussy, but his case did not go to trial, nor did he even become an addition to the surveillance network. Falussy, a high school graduate from a landowning family,63 began to be observed in 1959. Several agents were put onto him with little success, but he was followed almost until his death as a declining alcoholic. His name appeared in several investigation files of the 1940s, as he had served in the notorious twelfth district group as a member of the Arrow Cross armed party service. The people’s court sentenced him to five years’ imprisonment, from which he was released in 1952. Thereafter, he changed his job frequently and from 1958, he was on sick leave. The investigation in his case reached an open stage: he was interrogated in 1960 and his earlier contacts—for whom informing against each other to the police obviously posed no problems—were questioned regarding him. Falussy suffered successive blows in the following year: his wife died, as did a cohabiting sister-in-law, he developed thrombosis of the leg, and his sight weakened. It was found that his co-tenants had relieved him of his flat in Kertész Street and he had moved in with relatives in Mosonmagyaróvár, with whom he signed a dependency agreement. He later moved to a care home, where he lay ill for some years and deteriorated mentally. Even in 1970, Major József Radics did not give up entirely on Falussy. As a “basic subject of investigation,” he was demoted from the register of dangerous elements to that of anti-democratic elements.64 Another interesting case is that of Géza Tiborc (Teichmann),65 fined and held in prison in the 1960s for fraud, price hiking, profiteering, and other charges. Tiborc, a worker, had befriended (among others) György Baksa Soós, a sculptor, and Lajos Hendel, a silversmith. He was known at the headquarters of the Association of Hungarian Germans, whose general secretary, the legislature member Frigyes Wild, also informed on him. Wild personally went to the police when fateful documents on Tiborc’s Arrow Cross past were found hid62 63 64 65

Personal file of Ferenc Lettner, ÁBTL O–14937/158, 13. His father had, for a short while, been lord lieutenant of Szatmár County. Personal file of András Mihály Falussy, ÁBTL O–14847/30, 77. Personal file of Géza Tiborc, ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14937/112.

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den in a headquarters restroom.66 From 1963, he was a well-regarded worker at the Chemical Works Installation Enterprise, where he was a socialist brigade member several times and sent on his release to a one-year supervisors’ course. The common factor in these lives was the interest of the Interior Ministry in their activity in 1944–45 and their behavior in the 1960s, but only in Falussy’s case was action taken against them. Falussy was likely singled out for his involvement with the twelfth district armed party service, this is why he was investigated more closely. The biggest results in terms of the former members of the Arrow Cross armed party service achieved by state security, after long preparations, were two group prosecutions: against the fourteenth district armed party service members in 1967 and those of the twelfth district in 1971. The former, a highly publicized trial, resulted in three death sentences. The latter, which was on a smaller scale, ended in three long custodial sentences for its elderly and infirm accused.67

For want of more . . . The last great surge of activity by state security came with the investigations of the Budapest armed party service members, which took place between 1965 and 1972. They show a strong desire to conclude the Arrow Cross cases from the late 1960s. Paradoxically, this may have been served by an instruction from the deputy interior minister in May 1968—a year after the highly publicized Zugló Arrow Cross trial—that investigatory work should focus on undiscovered war crimes, not those already revealed.68 The order calling for the work to be hastened urged extra attention to Western undermining: that is, it hoped to dig up contemporary acts and networks that hardly existed at that time. In any case, the call to broaden the investigatory work ran counter to an investigatory principle of two years before, issued at the highest political level as part of the anti-West German, international anti-fascist struggle, where it had been decided to keep the investigations within narrow bounds 66 The documents handed in were visiting cards from Aladár Hehs and Gábor Jeszenszky, a certificate of the Revolutionary National Committee and certification to the Music Printing Press, three certificates of the Prónay detachment, certification by the Arrow Cross Party to the Vannay battalion, four conscription documents, and a letter of dismissal from Vacuum Rt. 67 For more on this, see Lénárt, “A megtalált ellenség.” 68 Order of the deputy interior minister No. 010 on prosecution of war crimes, Budapest, May 9, 1968.

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and not begin further, more comprehensive ones, even when under international pressure to do so.69 A year later, the deputy minister took action on those already on file.70 Three groups were distinguished among those listed in the register: 1) those integrated; 2) those whose danger to society is no greater than that of antidemocratic elements in the basic register;71 and 3) those potentially dangerous, who oppose the regime. The order rated the number of the final group as significant. The categorization cannot have seemed new to state security staff as it had been employed for some years. Furthermore, such cliché, meaningless categories did not work well in practice, as the most widespread investigations were of people largely integrated into society. The order called for a reappraisal of the register by June 1, 1970, so that it would include only potentially or actively dangerous persons.

“Results” The number of former leaders and “active” members in all five “fascist” parties and eighty-two organizations was put at 14,000. Several aggregate tables were made during the register reappraisal (see Table 7.3 and 7.3.a).72 69 Minutes of the March 30, 1966 meeting of the Coordination Committee [of the ministries of justice and internal affairs and the party leadership], http://allambizt.osaarchivum.org/sites/ allambizt/files/dosszie/koordinacios/1966/koord_biz_66_03_30.pdf. 70 Order of the deputy interior minister No. 004 on identifying and monitoring hostile persons dangerous to society, August 27, 1969. ÁBTL 4. 2. BM parancsgyűjtemény [orders collection]. 71 It is important to note that state security maintained two types of register: the basic register (alapnyilvántartás) with records on persons convicted of, or under trial for, crimes against the state and other political offences, with information on whether the person under investigation was “compromised” for deeds done before 1945 and in 1956, and whether he or she was arrested for these. The research register (kutató nyilvántartás) contained records on those who were either investigated for political crimes but evidence was not sufficient for prosecution, or the statute of limitations had already expired, or were convicted for such crimes but their case fell under amnesty. The main difference was that while incriminating data in the basic registry could be used for criminal proceedings, information in the research register served mainly as background information and was not to be used for legal purposes. When the two registers were used combined, it was referred to as an operational register (operatív nyilvántartás). 72 István Agócs, “Jelentés a felszabadulás előtt működött fasiszta pártok és szervezetek elhárítási vonal felülvizsgálatáról, 1969. november 11” [Report on the reappraisal of the preventative policy against fascist parties and organizations operating before the liberation, November 11, 1969], Nyilaskeresztes Párt, ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14.937/2, 133–52. This discusses the fascists’ activity in 1956 at length. It is omitted here, as it was not based on new research and earlier data were unreliable, as has been shown in several parts of the study.

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Figure 7.3. Summary data on those registered as “fascists,” 1969.73

Type of Register Gender

Number

Total

Basic register

4,161

10,320

Research register

6,159

Men

9,828

Women Place of residence

Age (years)

Subject to prosecution

492

Budapest

2,377

Provinces

5,729

Abroad or unknown

2,214

40–50

2,164

50–60

2,725

60+

5,431

Deceased

3,680

Acquitted for lack of evidence

1,055

Released under a general amnesty

Subject to police restrictive measures

10,320

10,320

7,552

46

Convicted in court

3,746*

Placed under restrictive measures

2,705

Internment

1,853

Police observation

10,320

2,705

818

Banned from place of residence

22

Police warning

12

* For more detail on this category, see Table 7.3.a.

73 Based on István Agócs, “Jelentés a felszabadulás előtt működött fasiszta pártok és szervezetek elhárítási vonal felülvizsgálatáról,” November 11, 1969, “Nyilaskeresztes Párt.” ÁBTL 3.1.5. O-14.937/2., operational file, 133–52.

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Table 7.3.a. Type of crime and sentencing of those convicted in court

Type of crime

Duration and severity of sentence

Conspiracy, rebellion Crimes against the people’s economy Incitement Espionage War crimes and crimes against the people Other (concealing a weapon, illegal border crossing, etc.)

106 25 138 24

Total 3,746

3,343 110

Less than one year

1,278

1–5 years 5–10 years 10–15 years 15+ years Capital punishment (carried out)

1,708 499 117 83 61

3,746

The report did not list the parties and organizations,74 nor did it define clearly what was meant by active members. But it emerges from the report’s appendix that the figure of 14,000 referred to leaders and identifiable members who were active in 1944, divided into 10,000 party members, 3,000 members of the armed party service, and 1,000 members of organizations classified as fascist.75 The ensuing tables show various distributions of the 10,000. The report underlined how few appeared in the active files, that is, they were no longer under surveillance in 1968–69. One fundamental statistical mistake was not to give time scales. It is unclear when the data were collected, making it not inconceivable—indeed, even likely—that postwar people’s court sentences were included, which confuses the statistics of reprisals.

74 Named as “major organizations” in Appendix 1: Arrow Cross Party (NYKP), Armed Party Service, Hungarist Legion, Eastern Front Comrades’ Union (KABSZ), Death’s Head Legion, Party of Hungarian Life, Anti-Bolshevist Youth Camp, National Camp, National Labor Center, Turanian Hunters’ Society, Baross Society, Hungarian National Defense Unit (MOVE), and Association of Awakening Hungarians (ÉME). 75 The document adds that the figures given are “mid figures”: that is, clearly estimates.

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“PETTY” ARROW CROSS SUPPORTERS IN THE INTERIOR MINISTRY FILES

Observation files were open in 1969 for 411 of those cited. A later report, issued in July 1971, already covered the reappraisal of such files ordered under the deputy interior minister’s instruction No. 004/1969, for completion by June 30, 1970.76 Reportedly, there were only 208 such observation files open on former Arrow Cross members nationally (See Table 7.4). Table 7.4. Number of active observation files on former Arrow Cross members by county County

1969

1971

191

110

Baranya

4

1

Bács-Kiskun

8

7

Budapest

Békés

6

3

Borsod

22

12

Csongrád

15

2

Fejér

13

 0

Győr-Sopron

18

2

Hajdú-Bihar

7

4

Heves

7

6

Komárom

12

7

Nógrád

10

2

Pest

31

14

Somogy

6

6

Szabolcs-Szatmár

4

2

19

4

5

5

15

4

Veszprém

9

12

Zala

9

5

411

208

Szolnok Tolna Vas

Total

76 “Jelentés a felszabadulás előtt működött fasiszta pártok és szervezetek elhárítási vonal felülvizsgálatáról, 1971. július” [Report on the reappraisal of the intelligence policy against fascist parties and organizations operating before the liberation, July 1971], Nyilaskeresztes Párt, ÁBTL 3.1.5. O–14.937/1, 419–31.

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Table 7.5. Sociological composition and criminal history of former Arrow Cross members listed in active observation files in 1971

Age

Occupation

Type of crime prosecuted for

26–35 36–55 56–65 65+ Industrial workers Intellectuals Agricultural cooperative, state farm employees Church employees Commercial and other employees Self-employed and others Retired, dependent Espionage

Number 29 56 94 29 101 38

208

6 6 17 5 35 4

Conspiracy, illegal organization activity War crimes and crimes against the people Convicted in the USSR Incitement

Total 208

189*

22 144 5 14

* Not including seven persons who received only police warnings.

The sociological data of those on whom observation files were kept in 1971 (see Table 7.5) reflect a number of uncertainties, due to the problems mentioned earlier. It is certain that twenty times as many men as women were put on the register, and that this was an aging population: unsurprisingly, as twenty years had passed since the war. There was nothing attached to the file on the Arrow Cross Party about younger age groups being recruited. Some 20 percent of the group emigrated (although we do not learn precisely when). It is interesting to see that Budapest residents make up some 25 percent of the aggregate data (2,377 persons out of 10,320), but more than 50 percent (110 out of 208) of the observation files—as many as 60 percent if Pest County is included. One factor behind this may be the general movement of people in

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the capital and its conurbation, but it is also evident that state security investigation and surveillance work was more active there. The majority of those in the observation files were over 55, that is, were pensioners or near pensionable age. Half were workers and a fifth intelligentsia, with hardly any agricultural workers. Crimes were proven against 189 observation file subjects, three-fourths (144) being war crimes or crimes against the people. The type of people still under state security observation had therefore committed their misdeeds 20–25 years before, but they had not necessarily shown any activity or organizing intentions since. It would only make sense to compare the scales and types of punishment for the crimes with similar data for those in other social groups, but it is likely that the categorization by the Interior Ministry was not exact enough to do this. The report also stated that for some time, operational work on this line of enquiry was confined to examining war crimes. In the countryside, from 1965 onward, state security activity was narrowed to the monitoring of persons with observation files, with a focus on war criminals escaping retribution. One surprising remark in the report is that the network dealing with this line of enquiry was found to be adequate and sufficient. István Agócs, the deputy department head, summed up his experience by saying that “during the examination of the state security line, it was found that some of the leaders and active members of former fascist parties and organizations did not abandon their opposition, but they did not go beyond making hostile comments on topical foreign and domestic political events. They did not abandon hopes of a change of system one day, but they refrained from committing illegal political acts. They did not maintain relations with each other of an organized type.”77 The fault in these professional-sounding statements is their eerie resemblance to those found in the reports of ten or fifteen years earlier.

Closure of the project The summary report by Agócs in summer 1971 essentially concluded the post1956 “anti-Arrow Cross” project, in which the state security’s premise had been that many Arrow Cross members were reactivated in 1956. The assumption was confirmed only in part: it could not be proved that they took part in the armed action, but their role in political initiatives was confirmed. How77 Apart from the prosecutions, police warnings were given to another eight people.

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ever, most of the “anti-regime” activity, organization, and incitement was insignificant or simply fabricated. The case of István Péntek can be considered as one where the accused received attention and punishment far in excess of his importance, so that the new regime could signal that it did not support any kind of “national communist” views. One key finding of the Interior Ministry’s work was that a marked proportion of the acts attributed to former Arrow Cross had not been committed by them. This applied even more to minors and activity against the system that was clearly associable with their age group. Also exaggerated was the assumed impact of the West. In the authors’ view, it is hardly surprising that most of those who had been imprisoned or interned never became wholly friendly to the regime, although there were quite a few cases of successful integration. The most conspicuous result for state security was gained from examining the 1944 Arrow Cross murders, although again only a handful of cases were emphasized, and after the Zugló Arrow Cross trial, it was mainly internal reports that urged further detective work: only a couple of further similar cases were ever found. The temporarily prominent “fascist” line of detection, which ultimately produced few results, is an example of how ill-fitted such a dogmatic, simplistic view of society was for explaining the background to real events, like the 1956 revolution. However, the subordinate position of state security is confirmed by its real success—the prosecution of the Arrow Cross armed party service members—coming just when the politicians needed to show results, for reasons not necessarily discerned clearly by those at the Interior Ministry carrying them out. Finally, the case studies and aggregate data show that the “former” fascists, including the Arrow Cross, had withdrawn almost wholly into their private lives and posed no threat to the state socialist system.

Bibliography Barna, Ildikó, and Andrea Pető. A politikai igazságszolgáltatás a II. világháború utáni Bu­ dapesten [Political justice in Budapest after World War II]. Budapest: Gondolat, 2012. Bernáth, Zoltán. Justitia tudathasadása: Népbíróság a nép nélkül, a nép ellen [Justicia’s split consciousness: The people’s court without the people and against the people]. Budapest: Püski, 1993. Bibó, István. “Zsidókérdés Magyarországon 1944 után” [The Jewish question in Hungary]. In Bibó István összegyűjtött munkái [Collected works of István Bibó], vol. 2, edited by Mátyás Sárközi and István Kemény, 391–503. Bern: Európai Protestáns Ma­ gyar Szabadegyetem, 1982. 254

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Lénárt, András. “A megtalált ellenség” [The fabricated enemy]. In Búvópatakok: A job­ boldal és az állambiztonság 1945–1989 [Underground streams: The political right and the State Security, 1945–1989], edited by Krisztián Ungváry, 353–99. Budapest: Jaffa Kiadó, 2013. Lukács, Tibor. A magyar népbírósági jog és a népbíróságok 1945–1950 [Hungarian people’s court law and the people’s courts, 1945–1950]. Budapest: Közgazdasági és Jogi, 1979. Paksa, Rudolf. “Ferenc Szálasi and the Hungarian Far-Right between the World Wars.” Translated by Máté Veres. In Vers un profil convergent des fascismes? “Nouveau con­ sensus” et religion politique en Europe centrale, edited by Traian Sandu, 125–39. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2010. ———. Magyar nemzetiszocialisták: Az 1930-as évek új szélsőjobboldali mozgalma, pártjai, politikusai, sajtója [Hungarian national socialists: The new extreme right movement of the 1930s, its parties, politicians and press]. Budapest: MTA BTK TTI – Osiris, 2013. Pritz, Pál. A Bárdossy-per [The Bárdossy trial]. Budapest: Kossuth, 2001. Spannenberger, Norbert. A magyarországi Volksbund Berlin és Budapest között, 1938– 1944 [Hungary’s Volksbund between Berlin and Budapest, 1938–1944]. Budapest: Lucidus, 2005. Szakács, Sándor, and Tibor Zinner. A háború “megváltozott természete”: Adatok, adalékok, tények és összefüggések, 1944–1948 [The “changed nature” of war: Data, contributions, facts, and correlations, 1944–1948]. Budapest: n.p., 1997. Tabajdi, Gabor, and Krisztián Ungváry. Elhallgatott múlt: A pártállam és a belügy; A poli­ tikai rendőrség működése Magyarországon 1956–1990 [Unspoken past: Party-state and interior; Operation of the political police in Hungary, 1956–1990]. Budapest: 1956os Intézet/Corvina, 2008. Zinner, Tibor. “Árpád-sávos kommunisták: Az osztálypolitika védőhálójában” [Communists with Árpád stripes: Under the shelter of class politics]. Rubicon 4, no. 10 (1992): 17–18. ———. “Háborús bűnösök perei, internálások, kitelepítések és igazoló eljárások 1945–1949 között” [War criminal trials, internments, internal exiles, and identification procedures between 1945 and 1949]. Történelmi Szemle 28, no. 1 (1985): 118–40. Archive sources Historical Archives of the State Security Services (ÁBTL) A–955 “Fasiszta és jobboldali pártvezetők névsora” [List of names of fascist and rightwing party leaders]. A–961 “Nyilas keretlegények és más nyilas bűnözők névsorai, nyilas funkcionáriusok” [List of Arrow Cross thugs and other Arrow Cross criminals, and Arrow Cross functionaries]. A–962 “Hungarista Légió és nyilas terrorista különítmények anyagai” [Materials on the Hungarist Legion and Arrow Cross detachments]. A–965 “Budapesti nyilas vezetők és pártszolgálatosok anyagai” [Materials on Budapest Arrow Cross leaders and armed party service members]. A–966 “Vidéken élő nyilas bűnözők névsora” [List of names of Arrow Cross criminals living in the provinces]. 255

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A–1005 “Nyilas képviselőjelöltek, kormánybiztosok” [Arrow Cross parliamentary candidates and government commissioners]. O14847/30 “Fasiszta pártok, szervezetek és polgári pártok tagjai” [Members of fascist parties and organizations and bourgeois parties]. Personal file of András Mihály Falussy. O–14937/1–3 and 3/a “Nyilaskeresztes Párt” [Arrow Cross Party]. O–14937/30, 35, 39, 49, 51, 75, 112, 158, 173, 178 a Nyilaskeresztes Párt anyagához tartozó személyi dossziék [Personal files belonging to the material on the Arrow Cross Party]. O–14967/523 “Volt horthysta fasiszta pártok és tömegszervezetek” [Former Horthyite fascist parties and mass organizations]. Personal file of Ferenc Kopasz. O–16614/161 “Budapest XIII. kerület területén politikailag kompromittált személyek” [Politically compromised persons in the thirteenth district of Budapest]. Personal file of István Szentirmai. O–16615 “Budapest XII. ker. politikailag kompromittált személyek” [Politically compromised persons in the twelfth district of Budapest]. O–16655 “Budapest XIV. kerület területén politikailag kompromittált személyek” [Politically compromised persons in the fourteenth district of Budapest]. O–11802/26 “Fekete Hollók” [Black ravens]. 4.2 “Belügyminiszter-helyettes 010. sz. utasítása a Háborús bűntettek üldözése tárgyában” [Order of the deputy interior minister No. 010 on the prosecution of war crimes]. Budapest, May 9, 1968. 4.2 “Belügyminiszter-helyettes 004. sz. utasítása A társadalomra veszélyes ellenséges személyek kiválasztása és ellenőrzése tárgyában” [Order of the deputy interior minister No. 004 on identifying and monitoring hostile persons dangerous to society]. August 27, 1969. Open Society Archives (OSA) “Koordinációs Bizottság 1966. március 30-i ülésének jegyzőkönyve” [Minutes of the March 30, 1966, meeting of the Coordination Committee], http://allambizt.osaarchivum.org/sites/allambizt/files/dosszie/koordinacios/1966/koord_biz_66_03_30.pdf.

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PART THREE

PERSONAL LIFE PATHS AND STRATEGIES

CHAPTER EIGHT

“I WAS BROUGHT UP THE OLD WAY, I’M A CONSERVATIVE”: A MIDDLE-CLASS CHRISTIAN LOOKS BACK ON HIS LIFE Z suzsanna Kőrösi

This study analyzes the oral reminiscences of a subject born into the middle stratum of interwar Hungarian society, the Christian middle class.1 It seeks to discover what system of values appears in his life interview and how it conflicted with the official value system of the post-1945 period, what schemes of ideas and topoi are expressed, what identities the subject constructed, and what strategies he followed when his privileged prewar status became one of victimized discrimination and persecution. So far, no scholarly consensus has emerged on certain concepts important to this study, namely “middle class” and “bourgeoisie.” Both remain problematic as categories. Descriptions of the structure of Hungarian society in the earlier twentieth century mainly rely on a frame of interpretation that follows Ferenc Erdei,2 who—describing interwar Hungarian society as having a dual structure—distinguished between a gentry (Christian national) and a bourgeois strand of middle class.3 Gábor Gyáni, examining the financial condi1 This is an abridged version of the study “A keresztény középosztály élettörténeti emlékezete” [Reminiscence of a life story of the Christian middle class], which appeared in Hungarian in János M. Rainer, ed., Búvópatakok—A feltárás: Évkönyv XVIII (Budapest: Országos Széchényi Könyvtár/1956-os Intézet Alapítvány, 2012), 47–104. 2 Ferenc Erdei, “A magyar társadalom a két világháború között,” I–II, Valóság, no. 4 (1976): 22– 53; and no. 5 (1976): 36–58. 3 See, for example, Zoltán Fábián, “A középrétegek: adalékok a poszt-kommunista átmenet társadalmi és társadalomlélektani hatásaihoz,” in Társadalmi riport 1994, ed. Tamás Kolosi, 351–77 (Budapest: TÁRKI, 1994); János Béri, “Középosztály vagy középosztályok?” Mozgó Világ, no. 4 (2004): 37–48, http://epa.oszk.hu/01300/01326/00050/06beri.htm.

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tions and livelihoods of civil servants, concluded that many of them did not and could not live what would be considered traditionally a middle-class life.4 He noted that “although the social middle did not form an integrated social group, that is, a true middle class, it was more than just an unorganized conglomeration of some middling strata.”5 Accordingly, Gyáni questions the existence of a distinction between the middle class and bourgeoisie and prefers a three-way division based on occupation and lifestyle: civil service, bourgeoisie, and intelligentsia. It is not possible to provide here an account of the concepts of social history concerned in the question, beyond an agreement that the middle class is a combination of various strata, and noting that all the attempts at definition revolve around factors including private possessions, lifestyle, dwelling size, the employment of domestic servants, mentality, and ethos. Subjects telling their own life story present a self-interpretation of how they perceive their personality and their narrower and broader environment. In reminiscing, they draw on a stock of events, which they view in a manner appropriate to the current situation (which need not mean self-justification, of course). The narratives recount events and ideas. So, what is important when interpreting them is not what is true and what is not, but the subjective truth that interviewees wish to impart to the interviewers, and through them to posterity. In examining the life interview of Tibor Pákh,6 it is vital to note that no generalizations about the scions of the middle class can be drawn from either my conclusions or the content of the interview. His life story is instructive in itself. Tibor Pákh was born on August 11, 1924, into a middle-class family in Komárom. His father was an attorney, agronomist, and county chairman of the Independent Smallholders’ Party, for which he stood for parliament several times. His mother was a pianist. He graduated from high school in Komárom in 1942 and enrolled in the Faculty of Law and Political Science at Pázmány Péter University in Budapest, but his studies were interrupted in 1944 after he was drafted into the army. He was taken prisoner in Austria in 1945 and 4 Gábor Gyáni, “A középosztály társadalomtörténete a Horthy-korban,” Századok, no. 6 (1999): 1265–1305. 5 Gábor Gyáni “Social History of Hungary in the Horthy Era,” in Social History of Hungary from the Reform Era to the End of the Twentieth Century, ed. Gábor Gyáni, György Kövér, and Tibor Valuch (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 2004), 375. 6 Tibor Pákh, interview by Eszter Balázs, Budapest, 1997–98, 1956-os Intézet Oral History Archívum (currently Veritas Institute Oral History Archive, Budapest), no. 690. Quoted text from Pákh in this study, unless noted differently, are from this interview.

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transported to the Soviet Union, from where he was able to return to Hungary only in the fall of 1948. He graduated with a law doctorate in 1949 and prepared for a career in international law, but could find work only as a technical translator (from Russian, English, and French). In 1950, he joined the library of the Csepel Vehicle Works as a translator. He was married in 1954. During the 1956 revolution, he was injured in the October 25 massacre on Kossuth Square and remained in hospital until mid-November. In 1957, he refused to sign a Kádár government declaration protesting against the United Nations debate on the Hungarian question, and was dismissed from his job. Thereafter, he worked as a translator for the Power Plant Design Enterprise and the Technical Translation Bureau. He was arrested in 1960 and sentenced in 1961 to life imprisonment, later reduced to fifteen years. From 1966 he went on a hunger strike in prison several times, partly to get his case reopened in the civil courts and partly to protest violations of the rights of the condemned. Attempts were made in the prison hospital to break his strike by using electric shock therapy, insulin treatments, and drugs. In 1971, he was declared insane by a civilian mental institution; he was released but remained under police supervision. He was prevented from taking a regular job and made a living through occasional translation work. He regularly joined opposition events in the 1980s, where was outspoken in his convictions, for which he was arrested several times. Among other things, he called for the rehabilitation of József Mindszenty, prince-primate of the Hungarian Catholic Church, for the withdrawal of Soviet occupation troops from the country, and against various acts of injustice. He joined a hunger strike by Polish opposition activists in the spring of 1980 at Podkowa Leśna church, and went without food again in 1981 over the arbitrary confiscation of his passport. He was confined in the National Institute for Nervous and Mental Health and administered inhuman and life-threatening treatment against his will, eliciting protests from several Hungarian intellectuals and international organizations that led eventually to his release. Though a legendary figure in the opposition to the Kádár regime, he did not join any opposition grouping. In 1993, an ad hoc committee of the Hungarian Psychiatric Institute, initiated by the American Psychiatric Association, rehabilitated Pákh, officially declaring he was not mentally ill. In 1992, he was elected an honorary member of the Nassau County Bar Association in the State of New York; in 1994 he became a freeman of Podkowa Lesna city. In 2013, he received the Officer’s Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit, and in 2020 he was also award261

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ed with the Mindszenty Memorial Medal, an award that was especially important to him. He passed away in 2022, in the age of 98. In introducing himself, Tibor Pákh gave only statistical facts and “essentials.” But reticent as he was, those sentences conveyed his identity. His forebears had once owned a substantial estate, he was baptized a Roman Catholic, and he had roots in the intelligentsia: I was born on August 11, 1924, in Komárom, more precisely in South Komárom,7 the Komárom that still belongs to Hungary, in the part known in those days as Konkoly-telep, so named because that’s where the Konkoly family had an estate. My mother came from that Konkoly-Thege family. My father married her from there. He was a lawyer and an agronomist. There I was baptized as well. In those days I bore a forename, Karácsfalvi, but such names were abolished in 1947.8 I’m a Roman Catholic.

His mother’s Konkoly-Thege forebears could be traced back to the thirteenth century. Their estates were located in Komárom County, in and around Kömlőd and Szőny. His father’s side was also notable: an imperial deed of 1662 awarded Hungarian nobility to an ancestor for valor against the “pagan Turks”—this was the origin of the noble forename Pákh mentioned in his introduction, noting that he was deprived of it. Pákh’s mother, Gizella Konkoly-Thege, had been a renowned concert pianist, but as a wife she played only for pleasure. Her task was to keep the family happy, as was the custom at the time.9 His father, the lawyer and estate owner Dr. János Pákh, took up Smallholders’ Party politics in the 1930s. He supported the line of Tibor Eckhardt, pressing for land reform, smallholder support, and the promotion of Danish/Dutch-style cooperatives. These not being typical middle-class ambitions, he came into conflict with his social environment several times. His law practice shrank as old clients dropped away. Moreover, practical politics at that time meant paying one’s own way. Election campaigning cost him much of the old Konkoly estate. 7 In 1919, the Czechoslovak Army occupied the northern part of Komárom. As a result, the city was ripped apart, which was reinforced by the Treaty of Trianon. In accordance with the First Vienna Award, Upper Hungary was reassigned to Hungary and the two cities merged again. 8 This refers to legislation in 1947 that abolished and prohibited the use of certain hereditary nobiliary titles and other ranks. 9 Married women in such a social position were discouraged from working for prestige reasons.

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Tibor Pákh had a carefree childhood, like most children in his social position. His landowning grandfather Béla Konkoly-Thege was a justice of the peace (táblabíró), who later founded a lawyer’s office. On the family estates inherited from him rested the family’s comfortable means. Tibor and his brother Ervin enjoyed great freedom as boys, able to play all kinds of games on the estate. Looking back, Pákh made a point of emphasizing that his playmates were not of his own rank, a theme that would become particularly important in the context of his later life. The varied society surrounding him in boyhood may have contributed to his ability as an adult to accept others who thought differently from him. My childhood was spent in ideal, idyllic surroundings. We had great wealth, vineyards, farms, and orchards. We lived in a vast house, we had servants, we had farm laborers, who lived in a separate house. In fact, my childhood playmates were mainly the children of these employees. We played Indians, various kinds of cops and robbers, and similar games together. . . . We had an estate in Komárom and then in Szőny. We lived for the most part in Komárom, but we also had our eighteenth-century peasant Baroque manor house in Kömlőd, with five rooms and a long veranda.

Clearly, the general assumption that the Christian middle class was characterized by isolation from the lower classes did certainly not apply to the Pákh children. Not much is known in this respect about the adults in the family, but their social contacts were presumably with similarly situated families; however, the fact that their children could play with those of the servants and laborers belies their exclusiveness. Another, similar belief is that middle-class families spent a lot on outward display—often more than they could afford on presenting themselves well. There is no clear denial in this life interview that ostentation was typical of the family, but it can be assumed—for example, from the way the head of family is said also to have sacrificed some private wealth to support the land reform—that it was not typical for the family to dwell on or glorify its noble past. Tibor Pákh said nothing of his feelings, either in his childhood or later in life, but it seems probable that he sensed emotional stability around him as a boy. It is hard to imagine otherwise how he could speak so fondly of his parents. We know little of his childhood, but what he says is presumably important to him. One detail is where he speaks of the family’s way of life and various 263

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indispensable forms of acculturation: books, music, and domestic theatricals were natural parts of his daily life. Interestingly, he mentions all this in a defensive way, as if retorting to those who would belittle the cultural habits of provincial middle-class families: We would visit each other by carriage or sleigh and have a very good time. People are wont to present provincial life and customs as none too cultured. I have to say quite the opposite was so. These families, including ours, had big libraries and often made music with each other. My mother, for instance, was a pianist and a female friend of hers a violinist. We put on plays that brought the children in too.

A high educational standard for their children had long been a strategic goal for middle-class families, and it gained even more emphasis early in the twentieth century. Pákh, like many boys similarly placed, graduated from a church high school. Studying and performing excellently became matters of fundamental importance to him: I started elementary at the age of six. I went to Komárom elementary school like the other Komárom children, and then began high school with the Tata Piarists. There I completed the first four grades, but when Komárom was freed from Slovakian rule in 1938, I transferred and continued my studies with the Komárom Benedictines, graduating with them in 1942, with grade A, if that’s of interest. Not straight A’s, because I was given a B for drawing, which made my graduation results plain A not straight A’s.

After this idyllic (and/or idealized) childhood, he seemed to have a promising future ahead, and began to study diplomacy and international law. With the Piarists and the Benedictines, he had not only studied Latin and Greek, but learned to speak English, German, and French (to which he would later add Russian during his imprisonment in the Soviet Union). On entering the university as a law student, he had every chance of entering Foreign Ministry work—“that was how I wanted to promote my country’s wellbeing”—but historical events prevented him. Pákh’s choice of career was justified by his personality traits, foreshadowing a lifelong search for justice. Furthermore, sons of the middle class typically chose law, as a law degree had great prestige. 264

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I . . . had an argumentative nature.10 I could only put up with discipline within limits. I couldn’t put up with any injustice I found. And I wasn’t intending expressly to contribute to legal knowledge as an attorney. . . . I sought to apply it in dealing with international law, and so I prepared myself for a diplomatic career, which I couldn’t accomplish because it was interrupted by World War II.

The war turned Pákh’s life upside down. He was drafted in the final stage but did not see active service; his unit was in retreat when news came of the surrender. He became a Soviet prisoner and spent years in inhuman conditions in a mine, in a quarry, and tilling frozen soil. But he survived.11 He was received on his return, at the end of 1948, by news of his mother’s death. His father had been obliged to abandon his political career and his legal practice: as a former landowner, he was classed after the change of system as a kulak, and could only find heavy manual labor. Pákh found his older brother as a déclassé, destitute truck driver.12 Furthermore, the family home was lost. He had also lost social status after 1945 on top of his personal losses. Nevertheless, he did not complain about his lost past. Despite being branded as a kulak and put to agricultural work, he did not abandon his goal, and struggled on to better himself. He studied hard each night, passed his exams, took his law degree at the end of 1949, and gained his doctorate.13 But the degree was no longer worth anything in the hands of a class alien. He tried to find a job suited to his qualifications: he guessed that it was hopeless, but he had to try,

10 His brother Ervin, who chose a military career, “felt close to the land, to nature, to animals, and so he trained to be a hussar officer and received his commission in August 1943.” 11 The interview includes detailed, moving accounts of the Soviet gulags, but they are not covered here. 12 “He’d returned a year earlier, in 1947. He was in another camp, as we were separated in the spring of ’46. He didn’t move up to Budapest, because it wasn’t allowed at the time. He couldn’t have found an apartment there. He lived in Dunaharaszti. We moved much of the furniture there and he lived in Dunaharaszti, taken in by a family we knew. And the furniture and things went in the cellar, right up to the 1956 war of liberation, when he left the country. He’s been living in Sweden since ’56. . . . Back in the fifties, the words ‘Horthy army officer’ were enough to stop anything of that kind. What’s more, he counted as a class alien and a kulak. He’d graduated from the Ludovika military academy and been commissioned a hussar lieutenant in 1943, and made his living up to 1956 as a gear wheel mechanic. But after that he couldn’t risk staying any longer. He visited me in hospital and then vanished, and I only learned afterward he’d gone out to Sweden.” 13 A degree in law in Hungary bestows the title of doctor.

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to satisfy his sense of justice and ambition. In the end, he was taken on as a technical translator at the Csepel Vehicle Factory. He was married on October 23, 1954. In the interview, he hardly spoke of his wife, who stood by her husband while bearing her share of the losses, sufferings, and disgrace. This is very sad of course, because it is even harder for ladies to bear such a position than for men. . . . Ladies have a more sensitive nervous system and spirituality than men, so she naturally suffered even more from it than I did. But she stood up to it and waited, heroically and stubbornly. And then she had to live through these trials with me. . . . And she lost her child, which she was expecting when I was arrested. And while I had my preliminary hearings, the child lived for a few days. He lived for altogether ten days. . . . He could certainly have been saved if these circumstances or whatever had not intervened.

There is no telling whether Pákh would have played an active role in the 1956 Revolution had he not got seriously injured on the third day. What we do know, however, is that when he heard news of the demonstration on October 23, he left Csepel for Pest and joined the marchers. Yet, the one revolutionary event he mentioned in his interview in detail was Bloody Thursday, when fatal shots were fired on the protesters in Kossuth Square. This passage has dual significance: for the fact that he was shot in the leg and spent the remaining days of the revolution in hospital, and for his interpretation of the events of that day. As he recalls, I was wounded in front of Parliament on October 25, ’56, when according to some others as well there was a volley of firing. Well, it wasn’t just a volley, it was a continuing massacre. When the shooting started I was standing next to a Russian armored car and at first I tried to duck behind it. They say the volley came from the roof of the Agriculture Ministry.14 Well, it wasn’t just from there, but from the roof of the Parliament building as well. For instance, this Russian armored car started by strafing the 14 The question where the firing came from gained importance in the light of the widely-held assumption that the massacre was provoked by the Hungarian secret police in order to prevent the fraternalization of the demonstrators with the Soviet military guarding the square.

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Parliament roof. . . . There was no escaping it. They weren’t trying to disperse us, they wanted to massacre people. You see there were armored vehicles in the access streets as well. Then, when the firing died down a bit, I was one of many who sought shelter under the arcade by the south entrance to Parliament. . . . That was where we took shelter and it was crammed full. I knocked, telling them to let us in, because they were shooting from the mouth of Akadémia Street as well. . . . So when the shooting died down a bit, we tried to flee again, because we were right opposite that armored car. And that’s when I was wounded by shots from the armored car at the mouth of Akadémia Street, and I lay there among the dead for a while, and later I tried to make it to the construction building. Anyway, that shooting, that massacre lasted about an hour and a half. There were a great many dead.

Pákh was being treated for his wound in a hospital run by the West German Red Cross when, in mid-November, the Russians ordered the volunteers to leave the building forthwith. He could have gone with them to the West—the Germans wanted to transfer him as wounded to a hospital in West Germany— but he declined as he dismissed any idea of emigration or flight. I wasn’t prepared to go. Actually I don’t blame those who went, least of all if they were persecuted, for they didn’t harm anybody by going, and it’s still a very good thing that those out in America, or like my brother in Sweden, are doing most for the interests of the minorities in the various detached territories; they do a lot. That’s how I see it now with hindsight. Then I wasn’t happy to see a society I valued so much, to see most of them, the potential leading stratum, leave the country. But that’s how it was, waste of time thinking on it now. I didn’t go—I might have done so easily, but I didn’t.

After the defeat of the revolution, the United Nations regularly raised the Hungarian question, condemned the crushing of the revolution and the reprisals, and sought to isolate the Kádár regime internationally. The reaction of Kádár’s people was to hold protest meetings and collect signatures against the UN. When one such paper was put before him at work, Pákh refused to sign. He was dismissed at the end of 1957, but found other translation work at the Power Plant Design Enterprise and then at the Technical Translation Bureau. Meanwhile, on his own initiative he prepared analyses of the Hungar267

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ian question, of Soviet activity in Hungary, of contravention of the right to self-determination, and of the show trials. These he tried to send to the West and the UN, but to no avail: the Interior Ministry had been watching him for a long time. He was discovered and arrested in 1960, and sentenced in a secret trial to life imprisonment for his study of Soviet–Hungarian relations, for writings in English on the 1956 Revolution, and for a list he made of minors executed for their part in the revolution. The sentence was later reduced to fifteen years. It was in the context of describing these events that he gave a clear expression of his political views, especially his desire in the Kádár period for freedom, epitomized by independence and parliamentary democracy. As to why [I was arrested] at that point, I don’t know. I thought earlier I’d be arrested and taken away after I’d received my wound, and in fact that could well have happened. I hadn’t done anything less before, I’d behaved just the same. . . . I’d never denied I sought freedom, insisted the occupation forces bug off, demanded parliamentary democracy. I never denied it, always stated it outright, never made a secret of it. The pieces I wrote were on things like that, so why did they put me away? Among others I wrote about ’56, quoting Wilhelm Röpke, for example, on what significance ’56 had. I cited Camus on ’56, and that they take the Hungarian freedom fighters off to the empire. But I never made a secret of it, there was never anything in it. They classed it as treason when it had nothing whatever to do with treason.

Kádár’s agreement with the Americans at the beginning of 1963 covered an amnesty for political prisoners, while in exchange the US would not raise the Hungarian question in the UN General Assembly again. News of this reached the prison, where the prisoners hoped for an early release, but that was not the outcome. According to Pákh, as many as half were classed as common criminals instead of political prisoners, so that the amnesty did not apply to them. While he could, Pákh lodged complaints with the chief prosecutor on his fellow prisoners’ behalf. Thereafter he voiced his objections against every injustice, writing complaints right and left, all in due legal form. He was taken before a commission, threatened, and placed in restricted solitary confinement, but he continued to lodge his complaints. He argued that Hungarian prisons did not abide by Hungary’s legal system or observe the prison regulations: they simply obeyed the whims of operational Interior Ministry offi268

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cials. When his protests came to nothing, he resorted to a hunger strike, hoping it would have some impact, as it had for the communist inmates when they were imprisoned during the interwar era. Instead, he was held down and artificially fed through a rubber tube put down his throat. After that, he was kept in a darkened cell for daring to starve and protest against what had happened.15 He was tortured like this for over five years, but resisted and survived with his sanity intact. In April 1971, he was moved to the prison’s mental wing and put before an investigation board of “reformer psychiatrists,” who found him incurably mentally ill, with obsessive political delusions and “nutritional negativism.” He discovered after his release that an Amnesty International group had adopted three prisoners of conscience in the world’s anti-democratic countries and had been fighting for their release, one of whom was Tibor Pákh. This foreign pressure presumably persuaded his captors to release him in the end. For years Pákh was unable to find a place that would employ him, as he was followed everywhere by the stigma of being mentally ill and having a criminal record. After a while he managed to do some translation work, using the names of fellow prisoners, for the National Translation and Verification Bureau. Finally, he was given a job at the National Technical Library, where he continued to translate until his retirement. Early in the 1980s he came into contact with the democratic opposition to the regime. Although these young people were very different from him and his style differed from theirs, what brought them together was a community of values: the struggle for democratic rights, freedom of the press, and the freedom fighters of 1956. He took part in fundraising to send Polish children 15 Pákh related in detail and almost without emotion how he was tortured for years on end: “I was laid on a treatment table. I’d be gagged, tied up, and restrained, and men on each side would attach the electrodes and switch on the current. Well, that’s how my first shock treatment went. . . . You lose consciousness when the shock comes. Well, in principle you can only administer shock treatment if you give the person an injection first and switch off his conscious mind. But I was always given the shock direct. . . . Still, the Lord was merciful, because I was given shocks many, many times, but my memory always returned. . . . There was a time when they tried an insulin coma. Maybe that’s even more unpleasant than electric shock, because if somebody is afraid of dying, they’re really giving you that experience, the state of final exhaustion. They inject a big dose of insulin, which diabetics get, and then you start to weaken as it takes effect. And as they wait until coma ensues, they amuse you with questions and so forth. Then after, when it’s happened, they fill you up through a nasal probe, a thin tube up your nose, and they spray the liquid in through that. They once did that for something like three weeks, a long time.”

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on holiday in Hungary and help the poor, and in the March 15 and October 23 demonstrations.16 In 1980, he visited Poland to join the protests against the arrests of opposition figures there and join the hunger strikers in Podkowa Leśna church, after which his passport was confiscated. He protested against the illegality of this and immediately began another hunger strike. He was confined in the National Institute for Nervous and Mental Health, where he was force-fed through a tube and drugged again, but this time there were reactions: he was released after protests by the democratic opposition. In 1983, he was examined by Professor Charles Durand, an expert adviser to the Swiss society opposing the use of psychiatry for political purposes. He concluded that Pákh was not mentally ill. He had feelings of persecution, but he was indeed being persecuted; he often felt he was being followed, but he was indeed under constant observation. Pákh continued to tilt at windmills, seizing every chance to express his view. He protested against the Soviet military occupation and demanded the right of self-determination for his country.17 After a visit to Western Europe in 1986, several books of his, mainly on religious subjects and in foreign languages, were confiscated at the border and his passport was withdrawn for five years. The Interior Ministry regarded him as increasingly dangerous, feared what he might do, and prevented him speaking in public. On March 15 and October 23, he would regularly be picked up, driven about for hours and mistreated, then dumped out of the car at the edge of the city. This occurred for the last time on October 23, 1988. Pákh, like most people, rested his identity on several pillars, defining himself in his life interview in terms of various roles and systems of values. He displayed a great many “common features of thought and expression” with interwar Hungarian conservative and/or right-wing thinking, although his system of ideas was far from homogeneous, permanent, or immobile.18 The features of his identity were similarly dynamic and appeared in changing forms over time. One major constituent appeared in his initial, introductory sentences: “I’m a Roman Catholic.” This he reiterated several times, saying “I, as a believing Catholic Christian man.” He came from a religious family and had practiced his Catholicism since childhood; accordingly, he had a very strong, pervasive faith in God. The mercy of God, he thought, had helped him to 16 March 15 and October 23 are dates commemorating Hungary’s revolutions in 1848 and 1956, respectively. As such, they gave occasion to anti-regime demonstrations in the late 1980s. 17 Several such occurrences are described in the interview. 18 János M. Rainer, “Búvópatakok (bevezetés),” Élet és Irodalom, February 10, 2012, 9.

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survive the Soviet gulags, the prison years, the solitary confinement, and the shock treatments: I attended church throughout, consistently. And I have to say that religion meant a great deal to me, for it gave me, in the forced labor camps of the Soviet empire, in this country’s prisons, or in the psychiatric institute, complete reassurance and full confidence that the mercy of the Lord God was always available, and to the extent which we have need of, if required.

Attending church could be interpreted as a kind of resistance to the Kádár regime, especially in its first two decades. It can be seen that the spirit of resistance remained in Tibor Pákh throughout, but of still greater weight was his very strong faith in God. It would be hard to rank his identity pillars in order of importance, but it emerges clearly from the interview that membership of the gentry middle class was the other decisive element in Pákh’s life. Indeed, in his case it was of utmost importance, and stated proudly several times, that his family had a long history—unlike what he saw as the majority, who had joined the gentry middle class recently. For it can be said [we belonged to] the gentry middle class, because after all, quite a few misapprehensions about this old social stratum have arisen these days. When I was a law student at Pázmány Péter University of Sciences in Budapest, we Pest lawyers were being attacked from the right, with “plutocrat” and other stupid attributes being thrown at us, and later this attack came from the left.

Pákh attached great importance to the development of his personality and outlook to his upbringing, where training in accepting others, in toleration, was central. One cardinal moral value in the Pákh family was a respect for truth, which was among his personal traits as well. Through my life I have been one to demand and love truth to a high degree. I grew up in that kind of milieu. . . . I, thank the good Lord, was raised that way, and it was a blessing of childhood that the spirit of truth was dominant. And my home upbringing and school education were always in harmony. So I grew accustomed to being tolerant of people’s statements. I try 271

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to reach the truth, and try hard if need be. But if somebody sided unrepentantly with untruth, it was not my task to judge him. For the Lord God is the depository of absolute truth, and time will tell where those who side with untruth will end, according to His judgment.

According to his beliefs, he always had to strive for truth and justice at any price, and furthermore, to battle for it. This task he had received from God, he thought, and so he placed his whole life in its service. In my view, a man’s personality depends on the one hand on what he received from God, then on what he inherited and on what his environment, his ever-worsening environment requires. . . . Now my father was a lawyer, my mother a performer, inherited genes and whatnot. But from the Lord God, presumably, I received a propensity to enforce justice at all cost. What I can conclude about myself with hindsight, with my seventy-three-yearold head, is that I have spent a lifetime fighting for truth.

His paragon was Cardinal József Mindszenty,19 who in his view “was, and remained until his imprisonment, in the forefront of the human rights battle” and “fought to save Hungarian minorities from any kind of atrocity.” Pákh equated Mindszenty’s memory and activity with resistance to the occupying Russians, just as the values disseminated by the Catholic Church were tantamount to the Hungarian nation’s thousand-year history. This applied even in the 1980s, when I might say I was the only one striving for the rehabilitation of our martyred prince-primate Mindszenty of sacred memory and spoke up in several places, sometimes in church circles as well. For instance, when there was a big conference on church history in Esztergom in ’83 or ’84, and they failed even to mention him, trying to pass him over altogether. I spoke out and asked how it was possible, here in Esztergom of all places, to hold a congress and conference on post-World War II church history without recalling our martyred prince-primate Mindszen19 József Mindszenty was Cardinal of the Catholic Church, Archbishop of Esztergom and as PrincePrimate of Hungary served as the leader of the Church in the country from 1945 to 1973. He was arrested by the communist authorities in December 1948 and sentenced to life in prison in a show trial in 1949. Freed from prison during the 1956 Revolution, Mindszenty was granted political asylum by the United States embassy in Budapest, where he stayed until 1971.

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ty at all,20 the one who had come out most decisively against the Muscovite spirit that had brought the country into spiritual, moral, and financial ruin.

As a conservative Catholic, he took as an example the martyred St. Adalbert, when the talked about dismissing the communist system. I was always a firm enemy of the empire that entered and occupied our country. . . . St. Adalbert was the one to convert people to the spirit of Christianity at the end of the first millennium. He was bishop of Prague, right? He took part in confirming St. Stephen, our king, and then went to Poland and Prussia, where he died a martyr. He’s patron saint of Esztergom and of Gniezno. So I join a great many others in seeing him as patron saint of Central Europe.

A conservative “always opposes anti-clericalism.” Pákh did not speak more specifically about this, but his unconditional respect for the dignitaries and authorities of the Church, above all Mindszenty, is plain: “We [supported] the prince-primate in that period, when we returned [from deportation], or at least my kind did, let’s say, the intelligentsia: we held the prince-primate to be a kind of second public leader, because the prince-primate was indeed a public dignitary under Hungarian public law.” There were three matters—public matters—which Pákh consistently embraced in opposition to the Kádár regime: the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary, the return and rehabilitation of Cardinal Mindszenty, and recompense for the damage caused to hundreds of thousands who were illegally deported to the Soviet Union after the war, as well as, indirectly, to the country. The first two were achieved after the change of system; he did not cease to campaign for the third. I reckon there were about 600,000 Hungarian citizens for whom Moscow is liable and for whom Moscow should pay the reckoning under valid international law. . . . So I submitted a claim to the UN Human Rights Committee against the Muscovite empire for the damage I had suffered. . . .  I wanted in that way to set a precedent. Well, I received a reply in which I was told 20 “Our martyred prince-primate Mindszenty of sacred memory” is a standard expression in Pákh’s reminiscences; he almost always refers to him in those words.

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that I could not, as a private individual, submit a claim against the Muscovite empire through the UN Human Rights Committee. . . . Unfortunately, no action was taken on it.

One of the main criteria of conservatives, perhaps the most widespread in public speech as well, is that they mistrust the new, but respect the past and traditions, in which they see primarily the valuable knowledge built up over history. This appeared in Pákh’s text and interpretation, and also on a daily basis: “I was brought up the old way, I’m a conservative. . . . I mean conservative in the noble sense, a preserver of things of value, of the system of values.” The Christian gentry middle class are taken in general, or for the most part, to be (to have been) anti-Semitic, at least “involuntarily and unconsciously, you might say instinctively.”21 Pákh’s interview contains no reference to anti-Semitism. There is nothing about Jews, nor does the Jewish question arise in any context, except in a single subordinate clause, where he condemns the massacre of the Jews. In his reading, “in line with the concept of the Holy Crown, all Hungarian citizens count as Hungarians.”22 And this leads over to another idea: the concept of nation. Conservatives consider natural the existence of the nation and existence within the nation; they are an inseparable part of the nation and follow its customs and past. Pákh declares proudly that the Holy Crown is democratic and that it gives positive direction to the whole Hungarian nation: Those who say things these days like “we are marching into Europe” are being stupid. It sounds quite incongruent to me because I have never, for a moment, seen myself, my generation, or my nation as under any obligation of “having to march into Europe.” I grew up under the notion that we are the shield of Europe and have been since our king St. Stephen received the Holy Crown from Pope Sylvester II and we took to Christian

21 Júlia Lángh, Egy budai úrilány (Budapest: Magvető, 2003), 108–9. 22 According to the Holy Crown doctrine originating from the sixteenth century, the Crown of St. Stephen embodies the unified Hungarian nobility, which formed the Hungarian nation of those times. By the modernized version of the doctrine, those who are in the country are members of the country of the Holy Crown, irrespective of what language they speak or what religion they practice.

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culture and civilization. Incidentally, it’s not just the Hungarians who see themselves that way, but the Croatians and the Poles.

Pákh is self-evidently anti-communist, having shown throughout his entire life that he rejects the Soviet system. Nor is it odd that he sees nationalization as unlawful and analyzes its background as a lawyer. Moreover, he suffered personal damage: the houses and buildings of his family were all confiscated and nationalized. I was branded as anti-Soviet, which is no insult at all to me, because it is stupid to say anti-Soviet, because I see this word Soviet, apparently meaning council, as a nonsense term. I saw the occupying forces as the forces of the Muscovite Empire that were stationed here as such. . . . I demanded the withdrawal of its occupying forces. . . . I have to say that Muscovite Leninism managed to turn upside down everything that used to be sacred, accepted, and familiar to us.

He took the same stance when analyzing the situation that arose after World War II: only the Soviets were to blame for the new government’s failure to operate properly. So a conservative government took shape and that conservative government would have acted if it had been allowed to exercise any further its right of self-determination, but Moscow deprived us of that right. So it was not the Yalta Agreement that divided the world, but the forcible intervention of the Muscovite Empire. That forcible intervention prevented the Yalta principles from being applied.

In the context of events in the 1950s, he defined himself as an opponent, a resister to the communist system: I worked in the library of the Csepel Automobile Works and from there young people went to evening university classes, studying to be engineers. And they liked to come to me. For one thing, I translated for them, and they had talks with me. I was known generally there as a so-called reactionary element. The so-called communists kept themselves quite aloof from me, and personally I wasn’t too interested in those characters. The 275

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one stratum with which I had absolutely nothing to do was the so-called reform communist circle of intelligentsia.

In private life, there was another term used for self-identification that referred to the impoverishment of the middle class, its slide down the social ladder, and the discrimination against it: déclassé. Impoverishment changed little in the middle-class system of values, but far more in its lifestyle, although characteristically, most would try to preserve as much of that as possible. There was known in middle-class “circles” to be a general conviction (or perhaps only hope) that the communist oppression would soon end. My circle of friends in Budapest formed a déclassé society that had lost its livelihood. We’d meet up in various inns and in family homes big enough for us to fit in and enjoy ourselves. There was a strong belief in those days that it couldn’t last long . . . that we’ll stick it out even if we have to squat all along. . . . There was hope, and hope bore fruit, because the ’56 Revolution came along, and however much some would like to expropriate that, it was a movement that extended over the whole nation and every stratum and class of society played a part in it.

He did not place himself among the democratic opposition before the democratic transition, but there were many shared values with which they and Pákh could identify. Examples during the years of the Kádár regime were criticism and total rejection of the system, along with a demand for the return of selfdetermination. To Pákh, even the term “consolidation,” used to describe the stabilization of the regime in the early 1960s, was unacceptable, as the injustices continued, and as he emphasized, people lived their daily lives in fear and deprivation. The Kádár regime was in fact the most evil and repugnant thing, all its statements replete with hypocrisy and falsehood in its attempts to mislead the public. . . . Many people say that consensus, resignation, acquiescence, and goulash communism ensued after the ’63 amnesty, and that Kádár produced welfare and took the wind out of our sails. Kádár didn’t produce welfare. . . . Because if you look at the East Germans or the Czechs, the standard of living of the average person there, the ordinary average person in both those countries, was better than that of the average Hungar276

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ian. What was possible here is that we could travel. They weren’t allowed to travel to the West from there. That’s all.

Pákh struggled all his life for basic democratic rights and such a system of institutions: he fought for the truth as one almost infatuated by the rules of justice. The strength to do so came first and foremost from his faith in God. He retained his faith in adult life and practiced his religion with deep conviction. This ties in closely with his relation to church authority: József Mindszenty appears many times in his narrative, and always as an unquestionable leader. Pákh in his recollections described himself as one of the Christian, conservative middle class, who primarily blamed Soviet power for the baneful turn in Hungary’s destiny. Indeed, being middle class was a major pillar of his identity, and he used the term to describe himself several times, usually to denote a lifestyle and standard of living. Above all, he employs it to describe his family, which gave him a firm financial basis (at least up to the war), a fine home, an estate, servants, a governess, social life, and access to culture. Particularly important to him was the acquisition of knowledge. Learning as an integral family value was built into his strategy in life and remained a priority even under difficult political conditions. In his recollections, Pákh discussed the importance of his higher education, which he began in the Horthy period, several times. After his period of deportation, he put great effort into completing his studies under the new regime. Meanwhile, the whole family became victims of the communist system. Its members, on grounds of their descent, lost their jobs and had to move out of Budapest. They had substantial estates taken away from them, causing a serious deterioration in their livelihood. The Pákh family were almost in penury after the communist takeover. It is clear from the narrative what hardships the family members underwent, but there is no word of complaint in the reminiscences. Pákh clearly opposed the post-1948 system. He confronted the authorities several times, continuing the battle through the Rákosi and Kádár periods. He spent long periods imprisoned: three years as a Soviet prisoner of war and eleven as a convict in Hungary. Apart from detaining him, the state security kept him under constant watch and restricted his basic rights. He did what he thought was his task with incredible perseverance, perhaps even obstinacy, staying true to his decision, belief, and purpose. While his family background and many of his views clearly placed him into the Hungarian right-wing tradi277

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tion—and he was certainly seen as belonging to the right by the authorities— he himself, maybe somewhat strangely, never once used the term right-wing to describe either an identity or a political orientation. Rather, he called himself a conservative working to retain past values, and did so both under the communist regime and after the democratic transition.

Bibliography Béri, János. “Középosztály vagy középosztályok?” [Middle class or middle classes?] Mozgó Világ, no. 4 (2004): 37–48. http://epa.oszk.hu/01300/01326/00050/06beri.htm. Erdei, Ferenc. “A magyar társadalom a két világháború között” [Hungarian society between the two world wars], I–II. Valóság, no. 4 (1976): 22–53; and no. 5 (1976): 36–58. Fábián, Zoltán. “A középrétegek: adalékok a poszt-kommunista átmenet társadalmi és társadalomlélektani hatásaihoz” [The middle strata: contributions to the social and socio-psychological effects of the post-communist transition]. In Társadalmi riport 1994 [Social report 1994], edited by Tamás Kolosi, 351–77. Budapest: TÁRKI, 1994. Gyáni, Gábor. “A középosztály társadalomtörténete a Horthy-korban” [Social history of the middle class in the Horthy period]. Századok, no. 6 (1999): 1265–1305. ———. “Polgárság és középosztály a diskurzusok tükrében” [The bourgeoisie and the middle class in the light of the discourses]. In Történészdiskurzusok [Discourses among historians], 78–98. Budapest: L’Harmattan, 2002. ———. “Social History of Hungary in the Horthy Era.” In Social History of Hungary from the Reform Era to the End of the Twentieth Century, edited by Gábor Gyáni, György Kövér, and Tibor Valuch, 270–507. Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 2004. ———. “Társadalmi nemek a munkaerőpiacon a polgári Magyarországon” [Social genders on the labor market in bourgeois Hungary]. Rubicon 20, no. 4 (2009). https://web.archive.org/web/20110821012902/http://www.rubicon.hu/magyar/oldalak/tarsadalmi_nemek_a_munkaeropiacon_a_polgari_magyarorszagon/. Lángh, Júlia. Egy budai úrilány [A girl of the Buda gentry]. Budapest: Magvető, 2003. Losonczi, Ágnes. Az életmód az időben, a tárgyakban és az értékekben [Lifestyle in time, objects, and values]. Budapest: Gondolat, 1977. Nagy, András W. “Keresztes vitéz” [Crusading warrior]. Beszélő 3, no. 24 (1991): 17–19. http://beszelo.c3.hu/cikkek/keresztes-vitez (Retrieved 1 October 2012) Pákh, Tibor. Interview by Eszter Balázs. Budapest, 1997–98. 1956-os Intézet Oral History Archívum (currently Veritas Institute Oral History Archive, Budapest), no. 690. Rainer, János M. “A volt ‘keresztény középosztály’ és a demokrácia reménye” [The former “Christian middle class” and the hope of democracy]. In A demokrácia reménye: Magyarország, 1945; Évkönyv XIII [The hope of democracy: Hungary, 1945; Yearbook XIII], edited by János M. Rainer and Éva Standeisky 100–118. Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 2005. http://www.egyhazestarsadalom.hu/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/2005_ Evkonyv.pdf.

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———. “Búvópatakok (bevezetés)” [Underground streams (introduction)]. Élet és Iroda­ lom, February 10, 2012, 9, https://www.egyhazestarsadalom.hu/2012/06/06/rainerm-janos-buvopatakok-bevezetes/. Róbert, Péter, Matild Sági, Ágnes Utasi, and Imre Kovách. A középosztályok nyomában [On the track of the middle classes]. Budapest: MTA Politikai Tudományok Intézete, 1995.

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CHAPTER NINE

A NATIONALIST OF SUCCESSIVE PERIODS: MIKLÓS MESTER (1906–1989) Katalin Somlai

Miklós Mester is best remembered historically in Hungary as a state secretary who saved Jews.1 He became known to the wider public through Péter Bokor’s 1977 portrayal Egy naiv ember bársonyszékben (A naive man in a top position) for the Hungarian television series Századunk (This century). He served the Western émigré community during the Kádár period as an expert on Jewish and minority issues.2 Mester’s position in the pro-German Sztójay government placed him among the right-wing conservative/nationalist political elite of the Horthy period, but neither by origin nor ideology did he belong to the traditional conservative political establishment. He entered the House of Representatives in May 1939 as a member of the ruling Party of Hungarian Life (Magyar Élet Pártja, MÉP), but switched a year and a half later to the Party of Hungarian Renewal (Magyar Megújulás Pártja, MMP), part of an increasingly anti-Semitic, pro-German far right. In interwar Hungary, it was basically the relation to the revolutions of 1918 and 1919 that defined the place of political actors in the dichotomy of left and right. As a young Transylvanian Hungarian—socialized in the traditions of 1 See Randolph L. Braham, A népirtás politikája: A Holocaust Magyarországon (Budapest: Belvárosi Könyvkiadó, 1997); Maria Schmidt, “Komoly Ottó, a Magyar Cionista Szövetség elnökének naplója 1944,” in Kollaboráció vagy kooperáció? A Budapesti Zsidó Tanács, ed. Miklós Mester, Tamás Majsai, and Mária Schmidt (Budapest: Minerva, 1990), 126–221; Bálint Török, “Ember az embertelenségben: Száz éve született Mester Miklós,” Magyar Napló, no. 2 (2007): 36–39; and others. 2 Zoltán Sztáray, “Mester Miklós 1906–1989,” Új Látóhatár, no. 3 (1989): 391–92.

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anti-Habsburg independence efforts and having come of age in the atmosphere of counterrevolutionary ideology—Mester and his family were personally affected by the post-World War I territorial losses of the country, which counterrevolutionary propagandists blamed on the proletarian dictatorship of March– August 1919. The territorial losses had cut him off from the land of his birth, and his urge to belong to a national community drew him toward right-wing forces and their nationalist principles. The communist dictatorship emerging after 1945, based on a revolutionary ideology and maintaining a “monopoly” on leftism, considered all those who did not share its “scientific” worldview, or whose earlier social position or political role was seen as a threat to a system that claimed power for the working class, as right-wing, “reactionary,” political enemies, regardless of the fact that their opponents’ ideas of social and economic reform might have been considered left-wing in other political contexts. Mester was labeled right-wing during both of the tragic periods in which his life was spent, under the conservative and communist systems. He found it hard to define his political positions in terms of right and left, and rightly so, but on a basic level he saw himself as being “more on the right.”3 Under Horthy, he called himself a “Hungarian socialist”; under the communists, his reflections place him as a convinced believer in bourgeois democracy and humanism.4 Mester died in 1989, the year of the end of the communist regime. One can only speculate about the side he would have been drawn to in a political landscape that was divided between left and right along the closely related axes of nationalism and modernization. However, there are strong signs that the national Christian right seeks to place Mester in its own historical pantheon.5 He is seen as a conservative politician who, by saving Jewish lives, cleansed himself of a racist, anti-Semitic past and thus can be fashioned as a role model, while at the same time can also be presented as a victim of communism. 3 Miklós Mester, Arcképek: Két tragikus kor árnyékában; Visszapillantás a katasztrofális magyar­ országi 1944. esztendőre, részint annak előzményeire és közvetlen következményeire is, 27 év táv­ latából (Budapest: Tarsoly, 2012)., 559. 4 Péter Bokor, “Egy naiv ember—bársonyszékben: 24 részlet egy végtelen beszélgetésből,” in Vég­játék a Duna mentén: Interjúk egy filmsorozathoz, 126–89 (Budapest: MTV/Minerva/Kossuth, 1982); Miklós Mester, interview by János Gyurgyák and Tamás Varga, Budapest, 1986, 1956-os Intézet Oral History Archívum (currently Veritas Institute Oral History Archive, Budapest), no. 45; Mester, Arcképek. 5 See Schmidt, “Komoly Ottó”; Bálint Török, Farkas esz meg, medve esz meg… Szent-Iványi Domo­ kos és a Magyar Függetlenségi Mozgalom (Budapest: Európai Protestáns Magyar Szabadegyetem, 2004); Török, “Ember az embertelenségben”; “Konzervatív tea-kör,” accessed April 14, 2022, konzervativok.blogspot.hu; and others.

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This study explores Miklós Mester’s political career and views: how his political habitat affected his system of values; what roles he took; and, at some junctures, how his contemporaries placed him and how his self-perception and political values changed. It also attempts to identify the features in his political convictions that, despite the radical change to the political environment after the communist takeover, remained as constant values informing his actions throughout his life—values that help resolve the contradictions of his career and can be embraced by the post-1989 right to sympathize with his figure.

Political beginnings Miklós Mester’s political career began in 1939, not long before World War II broke out, when the ruling right-wing conservative MÉP nominated him for the House of Representatives for the Ráckeve constituency. He was a discovery of Prime Minister Pál Teleki himself,6 who tried to consolidate the ruling party, which had been fragmented due to internal tensions, by relying on new people “from the people” and on representatives from territories recently reannexed to Hungary under the Axis-sponsored Vienna Awards of November 2, 1938, and August 30, 1940. By making Mester elected as a member of parliament, Teleki wanted to take the wind out of the sails of the young intellectuals brought up in an irredentist spirit, who, in opposition to the stability embraced by the gentry middle class in political power, called for radical social and economic changes, and who, in keeping with the “European spirit of the age,” sought the political path to modernization by sympathizing with the “conquering zeitgeist” and thus endorsing the model of authoritarian—fascist, Nazi—regimes.7 By then already known as a professor, an expert on national minorities, a proven manager of Hungarian-Transylvanian cultural relations, but also a film producer who recognized the importance of modern propaganda, Mester sympathized with Teleki, who for him embodied the ideal of a puritan, scholarly teacher and politician. Mester seized the chance he was offered, despite having doubts about the ability of the conservative, gentry middle class to mod-

6 Pál Teleki was prime minister of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1920 to 1921 and from 1939 to 1941, and leader of the right-wing Party of Hungarian Life. 7 Balázs Ablonczy, Teleki Pál (Budapest: Osiris, 2005), 415.

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ernize the country. He saw elected office as a means of accomplishing his political aims and, presumably, of fortifying his middle class status. Mester entered politics as tensions at home and abroad were causing a lurch to the right in both Hungarian and broader European politics. Hungary had withdrawn from the League of Nations and was busy rearming. The second Jewish Law of May 5, 1939 made the racial discrimination between Jews and Gentiles clear. The partial success of reannexation (in Slovakia and Subcarpathia) fueled further irredentist demands in Transylvania and the Southern Lands (Vojvodina), even at the cost of closer ties with the Axis powers. During his election campaign, Mester lined up behind Teleki’s “national and Christian” program, which blended fascist-style nationalist and populist strands into a vision of a new Hungary, with commitment to change, the strengthening of Hungarian consciousness, and racial defense. At the age of thirty-three, Mester became a member of the governing party faction, which won 187 seats in the House of Representatives, and, thanks to a generational change and the political trend, saw the decline of conservative-liberal forces, while the radical grouping around Béla Imrédy was strengthened by the entry of far-right politicians.8

Parliamentary representative Although Mester’s political patrons—Prime Minister Teleki among them— knew from his writings and speeches that he held more radical views than they did, his career so far showed that although he did not keep his critical views silent, he was also willing to adapt to the existing institutional system and strove to become an accepted member of the middle class. Though he was wont to criticize the conservative political elite, not least for its insensitivity to social problems, his disgust was overridden by a sense of mission. A contemporary recalled, “I remember he always explained: ‘what I see here is that scholarship gets you nowhere, one has to be a politician!’”9 Reaching his peak as director of the Foreigners’ College of the influential Popular Literary Society (Népies Irodalmi Társaság, NIT), he saw only limited opportunities in 8 Béla Imrédy was prime minister of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1938 to 1939, and was later the founder and the leader of the anti-Semitic Party of Hungarian Renewal. 9 András Révész, interview by András B. Hegedűs and András Kovács, Budapest, 1986, 1956os Intézet Oral History Archívum (currently Veritas Institute Oral History Archive, Budapest), no. 5.

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scholarship. Politics also offered far broader possibilities than a film company did to be “a force for social development” and work toward the uplifting of the Hungarian community.10 In parliament, he spoke mainly on cultural and educational issues. He defined the purpose of cultural policy as being the “broad, comprehensive education of the Hungarian nation.”11 He was an enthusiastic supporter of the education reforms initiated by Bálint Hóman, which included the introduction of eight-grade elementary schools and a program of further school building.12 More generally, Mester supported the democratization of public education and the extension of adult educational and cultural activity. As a governing party representative, he also obtained the position of deputy president of the National Labor Center, a right-wing workers’ organization, where he introduced educational lecture courses for its members.13 “I was interested as a politician mainly in three things: culture, reconciliation among the nationalities, and above all the question of Hungarian land reform,” was how Mester summed up his objectives.14 Cultural policy was in the hands of Hóman. Teleki, who disagreed with Mester on national minorities policy, did not even give him a chance to act as an adviser. Born into a destitute peasant family who had managed to obtain land and livelihood only under special conditions—namely, from income earned in America—Mester felt the untenable situation of the landless strongly. He was dissatisfied with the government’s moves toward land reform. Furthermore, he thought legislation limiting the chances for the Jewish community to acquire real estate and promoting a system of small-scale tenancies was inadequate compared with a general land reform ensuring much of the peasantry could acquire land of its own. Successive letdowns and disappointments eventually led him to break with Teleki and his conservative camp. In the fall of 1940, Mester moved toward Béla Imrédy, seeing in him a statesman able to push through radical reforms by parliamentary means, not by the “brutal, primitive methods of the Arrow Cross parties.”15 Imrédy, “amidst the many stupid, mediocre politicians and parliamentary representatives, count10 Mester, Arcképek, 374. 11 Országgyűlési Könyvtár (Library of the Hungarian Parliament, hereafter OK) 116 (116th session of the House of Representatives of the National Assembly), June 12, 1940. 12 Bálint Hóman was minister of religion and education in 1932–38, and again in 1939–42. 13 Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára (Historical Archives of the State Security Services, hereafter ÁBTL), V–98728. Oszkár Réhelyi Régenhold. 14 Mester, Arcképek, 20. 15 Mester, Arcképek, 482.

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ed undoubtedly as the best qualified and educated. . . . What impressed me was . . . his reputation for being a puritan.”16 He and a couple of dozen others withdrew from the MÉP group in October 1940 and founded the Party of Hungarian Renewal (MMP) under Imrédy’s leadership.17 The new party’s stated objectives were to serve the interests of the Hungarian people rather than party politics, and to do so by lifting up the peasantry and excluding the alien races in a future people’s (népi) Hungary. Mester joined the extreme right in the hope of “effectuating free criticism and reforms.”18 He accepted its political program, not only to further his goal of land reform, but because he also agreed with it in several other respects. He consistently defined himself as a “populist right-wing oppositionist”19 and a “Hungarian socialist,”20 who was proud of having pure Hungarian ancestry.21 Even after falling out with the MMP’s political strategy, he continued to consider himself a socialist.22 Compared with the views Mester espoused as a historian, his position on minority policy moved from supporting democratic norms of ethnic coexistence toward demanding the political supremacy of the Hungarian political class: “Here in the Carpathian Basin, every Hungarian would like to see exclusively people with Hungarian names, who understand and think in Hungarian and view themselves as Hungarians.”23 However, as this was not the situation at hand, the vital question became how the issue of interethnic coexistence was to be resolved. The initiative had to come from the Hungarians, as the people running the state.24 Working within his new party, he proposed two tasks for the nation: firstly, to regain the territories Hungary lost after World War I, and secondly, to establish “an up-to-date, purposeful new homeland, in which both Hungarians and minorities could feel content.”25 In principle, recognition of the collective rights owed to minorities cleared the way to turning the Hungarian Germans into a cultural community, something Mester had supported for years. Indeed, he counted among his friends Ferenc Basch, head 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Mester, Arcképek, 20–21. Mester, Arcképek, 20; Török, “Ember az embertelenségben.” Schmidt, “Komoly Ottó,” 155. OK 318, December 2, 1942. Mester, Arcképek, 62; OK 350, December 3, 1943. OK 62, December 4, 1939. Gyula Dózsa, interview with Miklós Mester. Egyedül Vagyunk, May 5, 1944. OK 62, December 4, 1939. OK 158, November 22, 1940. OK 139, October 11, 1940.

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of the Volksbund. Joining Imrédy’s party moved Mester toward accepting a closer alliance with the Axis powers, especially Germany, which he saw as furthering the policy of territorial revision26 and restoring links between the fragmented parts of the Hungarian nation.27 This support for a pro-German policy meant turning his back on several previous fellow party members and people with shared principles, who similarly saw themselves as racial defenders and reform supporters, but whose anti-Semitism was coupled with anti-Germanism and who were concerned by an increase in the influence of either group. Mester himself placed only one limitation on an acceptable alliance with the Germans: the preservation of his country’s sovereignty.28 In Mester’s mind, the “establishment of a new homeland” to overcome social injustice required a radical change in the structure of land ownership. The MMP agrarian program promised to expropriate Jewish-owned land, expand the small-scale tenancy system, make such tenancies tradable, and abolish entails,29 in line with the intentions of Mester, an advocate of the smalltenancy system for Hungary.30 Aside from expropriating Jewish estates, the MMP program also looked to “engagement in a general European solution” to the Jewish question, while eliminating Jews from leading positions as an interim measure.31 Mester’s cliché-based anti-Semitism, which identified Jews with wealth and privilege in contrast to poor Hungarians,32 saw the solution of the Jewish question in the support of Zionism and the postwar expulsion of Jews.33 In the meantime, they should be treated in a “Christian manner”: allowed a modest livelihood, but prevented from amassing or retaining wealth, “in the clearly understood interests of the Hungarian race.” These interests meant taking precedence over the principle of the inviolability of private property.34 However, the discrimination and measures taken against Hungary’s Jews were also curbed by the interests of the Hungarians: “Anti-Semitism can only be condoned insofar as it equates with Hungarian racial defense.”35 In 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

Mester, Arcképek, 23. OK 223, November 21, 1941. OK 350, December 3, 1943. Péter Sipos, Imrédy Béla: Politikai életrajz (Budapest: Elektra Kiadóház, 2001), 78. OK 262, June 5, 1942. Sipos, Imrédy Béla, 77. OK 271, June 24, 1942. OK 158, November 22, 1940; OK 262, June 5, 1942; Bokor, “Egy naiv ember—bársonyszékben.” OK 262, June 5, 1942. OK 262, June 5, 1942.

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addressing the House of Representatives, Mester spoke of modernizing the country, following the spirit of the age,36 and encouraging the country’s incorporation into the new European order.37 Although he did not discuss the need of transforming the politico-legal system, he believed that the dictatorial administration brought about by the war economy for a limited period could succeed in “using the time of war to reorganize the country.”38 In parliament, in addition to supporting the MMP line, Mester was a frequent advocate for the problems affecting the lost territories, above all Transylvania. In opposition, it became easier for him to bring up social grievances,39 along with pressing for issues like Transylvanian industrialization, than it was for the Transylvanian Party representatives allied with the ruling MÉP, many of whom were his close friends.

“In a top position” On March 19, 1944, Hungary was occupied by German forces. Within days, the Sztójay government emerged, made up of politicians on the extreme right of the conservative camp and the National Socialist Party Alliance (Nemzeti Szocialista Pártszövetség, NSZP). The German occupation of Hungary wrought a radical change in Miklós Mester’s political behavior. He was astounded and thrown into crisis by the country’s loss of independence. At the party conference of the MMP, he spoke out against his party taking part in the new government in such a shameful situation. He was also deterred from following the party line of the MMP by the fatal consequences of the German occupation for the Jews. A day or two after the arrival of Gestapo forces, he received a visit from two Zionist intellectuals. Their request was that “I, as a capable and now prominent politician, arrange that the Jews should not be deported.”40 Mester broke with his old policy: hitherto, he had seen the Hungarians’ interests lying in friendship with the Germans and discrimination against the Jews. He had come to realize that the former led to loss of sovereignty, while the latter brought the German solution to the Jewish question and the deportation of the Jews, which 36 37 38 39 40

OK 205, June 2, 1941. OK 227, November 28, 1941. OK 227, November 28, 1941. Mester, Arcképek, 490. Mester, Arcképek, 490; Bokor, “Egy naiv ember—bársonyszékben,” 132.

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went against the country’s material and intellectual interests and against his own strongly held Christian convictions. In his uncertainty he sought other, anti-German, political possibilities that accorded with his nationalism and, to some extent, his commitment to social reforms. At the request of the Transylvanian Party and with encouragement from several other directions (old associates from the MMP and forces bound up with left-wing resistance), he chose to follow his sense of mission rather than withdraw from politics. With the existential interest of the Hungarians as his most important criterion, he made a compromise with some of the conservative elite, which he had often scolded, and even with Regent Miklós Horthy, whom he incidentally saw as being to blame for Hungary’s antiquated political system. Finally, he accepted an offer to become state secretary in the ministry of religion and public education of the Hungarian quisling government, despite his turn against the pro-Nazi policies of Imrédy and his own political crisis of conviction. His continuing supporters had assigned him a new role, that of a mediator. The expansion of his personal connections—toward Horthy on the one hand, and toward the Smallholders’ Party on the other—also entailed the promise that prospects could open up for him in postwar political life. The fact that Mester’s relationship with the Smallholders was not bad had already been evident in the previous years. When he was elected a representative, he defeated his National Socialist opponent with the support of the Smallholders, and also shared platforms with them on the issue of land reform. His religion, alongside his ties within the Reformed Church and the Hungarian Fraternal Community,41 all pointed toward the Smallholders. In addition to mediating between the Smallholder opposition to the rightist government forces and Horthy, Mester also acted in 1944 as a bridge between the regent’s cabinet office and various opposition forces through his daily contact with Reformed pastor Albert Bereczky, one of the most active organizers of the anti-German Hungarian Front which wanted to withdraw Hungary from the war.42 Also pushing Mester in this direction was his close friendship with Miklós Csomoss, a founding member of the secret society Hungarian Frater41 The Hungarian Fraternal Community was an underground anti-Semitic, anti-German patriotic movement of Hungarian intellectuals from the 1920s to 1947, when it was disbanded by the communist authorities and its leaders put on trial. 42 Albert Bereczky was a crucial figure of the Hungarian anti-fascist opposition, member of the Smallholders’ Party, member of parliament from 1945 to 1948, and from 1948 to 1958 Reformed Bishop and Chairman of the Reformed Synod.

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nal Community, who had spent years setting up antiwar groups, creating links between existing ones, and supporting antiwar propaganda. With his excellent political contacts, Csomoss ensured that another Community member became Mester’s personal secretary. So Mester joined the government headed by Döme Sztójay, backed by the trust of Horthy and with support from the Reformed Church and the opposition.43 His break with the MMP became public early in August, when his former fellow members condemned him for his volte-face on the Jewish question.44 He did not resign from his post when Imrédy and his fellow party members left the government at the beginning of August. In fact, the support of the regent’s cabinet office and the Jewish community allowed him to keep his job under the Lakatos government, which was loyal to Horthy and the conservative right.45 The best-known period in the life and career of Miklós Mester was his stint as state secretary in the ministry of religion and public education, lasting barely more than six months. It is also central to his own accounts of his past,46 as well as to historical analyses of it.47 He underlined two issues in his actions that got him “very agitated” at that time: “the case of the Jewry, which I was dealing with at the time, the other thing being the secret moves toward an armistice.”48 One big factor behind his increasing determination to act as the protector of Jews was that Horthy’s chief advisor, Gyula Ambrózy—and, through him, the regent himself—had begun to see the consequences of the discrimination against Jews in a similar light. Having rejected Imrédy, Mester found new like-minded, paternal backing from Ambrózy, “the liberal-mind43 The Sztójay government was formed in March 1944 after the German occupation of Hungary. As a Hungarian quisling government, it pursued the continuation of the war until final German victory, the elimination of antiwar and left-wing politicians, and ramped up the pace of the forced deportation of the Hungarian Jews. 44 Schmidt, “Komoly Ottó,” 127. 45 General Géza Lakatos was appointed prime minister by Horthy in August 1944 with the secret aim of negotiating an armistice with the Allies. 46 Bokor, “Egy naiv ember—bársonyszékben”; Miklós Mester, “A zsidókérdés Magyarországon,” Új Látóhatár, no. 3 (1985): 367–89; Mester, Arcképek; and Mester, interview by János Gyurgyák and Tamás Varga. 47 See, for instance, Schmidt, “Komoly Ottó”; István Papp, A népi kollégiumi mozgalom története 1944-ig: Népi tehetségekgondozása, vagy tudatos elitnevelési kísérlet? (Budapest: Napvilág, 2008); Török, “Ember az embertelenségben”; Jenő Lévai, Szürke könyv: Magyar zsidók mentéséről (Budapest: Officina, 1946); Albert Bereczky, A magyar protestantizmus a magyar zsidóüldözés el­ len (Budapest: Református Traktátus Vállalat, 1945); and others. 48 Mester, interview by János Gyurgyák and Tamás Varga.

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ed, upright, elderly head of the cabinet office.” 49 Seen as an excellent international lawyer and authority in his profession, Ambrózy was the one in Horthy’s circle to urge individual exemption for some Jews—leading intellectuals and artists—from wearing a yellow star, being herded into camps and ghettos, and being deported. Adjudication of the exemption claims was the task of the interior minister up to the end of July 1944. Since pro-German government members were blocking an increase in such exemptions, the regent’s office put out an order transferring the right to grant exemptions to Horthy himself. This measure was prepared by Mester,50 and after it was pushed through, it was he who gathered the names of those the regent should exempt.51 Some sources put at 8,000 the number receiving exemption, in almost all cases via proposals from Mester,52 who himself recalled gathering some 30,000 such applications at a dedicated prime ministerial bureau and processing 8,000– 10,000 of them before the Arrow Cross coup on October 15, 1944.53 In the course of his efforts on behalf of the Jewish elite, Mester came to reassess his attitude toward Jewry and assimilation: “It was then that I realized that assimilation, natural assimilation, has a great value for Hungarians. There is one difference between assimilated and unassimilated Hungarians: what they represent in character and values. That is the big lesson. It was when interacting with people that I realized this.”54

Abandonment of politics Mester’s role in politics and public life ended with the Arrow Cross takeover. He was imperiled by his opposition to deporting the Jews, along with his largely secret anti-German activity pursued under the cover of his state secretaryship. He had to go into hiding until Budapest was liberated by the Soviet forces. Mester, and those who had worked with him, foresaw problems with his postwar exoneration as state secretary in the quisling regime. In the spring of 1944, he still trusted he could return to politics and power after the war unMester, Arcképek, 18. Bereczky, A magyar protestantizmus a magyar zsidóüldözés ellen, 27. Lévai, Szürke könyv, 233. Schmidt, “Komoly Ottó.” Mester, interview by Péter Bokor for the Századvég series, Budapest, National Széchényi Library, Collection of Historical Interviews, no. 303, 1976. 54 Mester, interview by Péter Bokor.

49 50 51 52 53

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der the auspices of the Smallholders, which he rightly saw as a major postwar party of government able to espouse the essential social reforms Mester had expected earlier of the extreme right. He officially joined its ranks on October 12, 1944.55 Once the frontline had passed over, his Smallholders card gave him relative protection. He had a chance to join in party politics, but preferred to refrain from public activity until he had cleared himself of political blame.56 In March 1945, Mester, as a state secretary under the Sztójay government after the German occupation, was placed on the list of war criminals to appear before the people’s court.57 By that time he already possessed a character statement by the secular leader of the Pest Israelite Congregation: it declared that “Dr Miklós Mester, former state secretary for religion and public education, had done service in the field of regentship exemptions of Jews in the time of the Sztójay and Lakatos governments”; that he had opposed the two state secretaries running the deportations; and that he had, “out of pure humanity . . . served bravely and successfully the true cause of persecuted Hungarian Jewry.”58 Barely a month later Mester’s closest associate, Albert Bereczky, who by then represented the Smallholders in the Provisional National Assembly and served on the new local government commission for the capital city, wrote a long study on Mester’s activity during the German occupation. Apart from Mester’s efforts to save Jews, Bereczky tailored his message to the new powers by stressing that Mester had “intervened with the police on behalf of imprisoned communists, most of all communist students.” 59 Furthermore, in June 1945, miners from Dorog who had been hiding with Mester in the forests of the Pilis in the autumn of 1944 also testified in his favor.60 After Mester’s role had been clarified in several respects, his name was

55 Budapest Főváros Levéltára (Budapest City Archives, hereafter BFL) XXV, 2b. People’s prosecution department material on Dr. Miklós Mester (81365/1949). Letter by Dr. József Egri, people’s prosecutor, to the minister of justice, n. d. 56 Mester, Arcképek, 259. 57 Károly Szerencsés, “Az ítélet: halál”; Magyar miniszterelnökök a bíróság előtt (Budapest: Kairosz, 2002), 51–52. 58 Mester, Arcképek, 15–17.; BFL XXV, 2b. People’s prosecution department material on Dr. Miklós Mester (81365/1949), 156; Schmidt, “Komoly Ottó, a Magyar Cionista Szövetség elnökének naplója 1944,” 124; Török, “Ember az embertelenségben,” 38. 59 BFL XXV, 2b. People’s prosecution department material on Dr. Miklós Mester (81365/1949). Statement by Albert Bereczky, March 10, 1945. 60 BFL XXV, 2b. People’s prosecution department material on Dr. Miklós Mester (81365/1949). Statement, June 25, 1945.

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removed from the register of war criminals by the requisite interparty committee on August 7, 1945.61 Despite his official exoneration, Mester’s problematic past dissuaded the Smallholder leaders from giving him a public role.62 Instead he was employed as an adviser on minority matters. Mester himself was discouraged from moving back into politics by the fear of having responsibility pinned on him after the war and by the activity of the communist political police. Several of those hitherto close to him politically, including Béla Imrédy, were sentenced to death by the people’s courts. “A spirit of vengeance and recriminations reigned,” Mester recalled of the first half of 1945.63 This fear of being held responsible was not unfounded: he was indeed arrested by the Soviet military prosecution service directly in February 1945. Mester heard he had been denounced by an arrested Arrow Cross youth.64 He was then held in a cellar for three weeks, along with other members of the Horthy-era establishment, before being released by the Soviets, although the interrogation notes were handed over to the Hungarian political police. His case passed to the political police department at the Budapest Captaincy-in-Chief of the Hungarian State Police and then to the Budapest People’s Prosecution Service.65 There, an investigation was initiated on how his name had come to be on the list of war criminals, even though he had already been “politically” exonerated by the attesting committee. Meanwhile, the Soviet state security turned to Mester again. The Soviets had been keeping track of Mester’s contacts with Miklós Csomoss, whom they saw as an American spy.66 Though Mester never took an active part in Csomoss’s schemes, he certainly belonged to the close group that Csomoss saw as possible members and leaders of a new reforming party. Mester’s once diverse network of contacts had shrunk, but it was still extensive enough to draw the attention of the political police. Most noticeable were his visitors from Transylvania, whose movements were monitored under the assumption that they were the “emissaries of Transylvanian reactionary forces” meeting at Mester’s 61 BFL XXV, 2b. People’s prosecution department material on Dr. Miklós Mester (81365/1949). Statement by Csomor Gusztáv. 62 Mester, Arcképek, 260. 63 Mester, Arcképek, 58–59. 64 Mester, Arcképek, 292. 65 BFL XXV, 2b (81365/1949). Report of the Budapest Captaincy-in-Chief of the Hungarian State Police to the People’s Prosecution Service, February 20, 1946. 66 ÁBTL A–872 Materials received from Soviet state security bodies I.

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home.67 In other words, Mester, as “Csomoss’s partner,” was the link between Transylvanian elements dangerous to the system and those around Csomoss. Mester could not withdraw completely into private life for other reasons too. He was called as a witness in the people’s court trial of Ferenc Basch, head of the association of Hungarian Germans called the Volksbund, and gave testimony firmly in favor of the Hungarian Germans’ efforts to gain ethnic status, which caused such uproar that he was accused of treason again in January 1946.68 His name emerged as a possible accused in the show trial against the Hungarian Fraternal Community. However, from the beginning of 1945— due to the change in his stance on Jewish assimilation—he kept his distance from the organization. Accordingly, he could avoid any involvement—on the grounds of his membership of that secret society—in the show trial of the Smallholders’ Party, then seen as a right-wing rival to the communist party.69 It was common for those who drew the attention of political investigators or who were placed on a list of opponents to the system to find that their surveillance ceased or was suspended, only for their cases to be taken up again in another context: this happened to Mester, too. Despite his obviously passive stance, the Military Policy Department took him into custody at the end of October 1948 on suspicion of disloyalty due to his role as the former vicepresident of the right-wing National Labor Center.70 His files were also reopened by the People’s Prosecution Service in March 1949.71 The prosecutor saw sufficient cause in Mester’s parliamentary interventions to press charges, concluding that “he had over a long period conducted himself in a way conducive to disseminating and reinforcing fascist and anti-democratic trends and fomenting racial and religious hatred.”72 The indictment was prepared, but before issuing it, the prosecutor turned cautiously to the justice minister for a political decision. The minister closed the enquiry for a lack of evidence 67 ÁBTL A–1133 Hungarian Resistance Movement. Material on Dr. Csomoss’s organization. 68 BFL XXV, 2b (81365/1949). People’s Prosecution material on Dr. Miklós Mester. Denunciation, January 18, 1946. 69 Mester, Arcképek, 370. 70 ÁBTL V–91291 László Barla and partner. Proposal for omitting Dr. Miklós Mester from the basic records, June 21, 1965; V–98728 Oszkár Réhelyi Régenhold. Order for release, November 5, 1948. 71 BFL XXV, 2b. Dr. Miklós Mester’s People’s Prosecution material (81365/1949). Order from Dr. József Egri, people’s prosecutor, to the People’s Prosecution Office at the State Security Authority, March 12, 1949. 72 BFL XXV, 2b. Dr. Miklós Mester’s People’s Prosecution material (81365/1949). Indictment.

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upon seeing repeated statements in Mester’s favor made by Bereczky, who was rising rapidly in the hierarchy of the Reformed Church.73

Mester’s life in the communist period As a consequence of this political stigma, Mester withdrew from the public sphere into his work and private life. His aim was to conform to the system to the degree needed to ensure him a livelihood, while retaining his intellectual and moral integrity.74 His Smallholder contacts allowed Mester to remain head of the College of the Popular Literary Society until 1950,75 when education was nationalized. By 1945, he had drawn his conclusions from the political power relations of the early postwar months and from the international situation: the Soviet influence in Hungary would persist. Bearing this in mind, he began to study Russian with one of his teacher friends.76 He had been convinced since his youth that understanding among the various ethnicities could be furthered by acceptance of each other’s cultures, the route to which lay through knowledge of each other’s languages. It was with this realization that he approached the realities of Soviet occupation. For Mester, essentially a man with an open mind, the extremity of compliance with the system was to study Marxist literature.77 Yet, as the basis of his view of the world was nation-based thinking and religious belief, he could not identify with either the internationalism of Marxism or its atheism. When he gave up his political career, he could have returned to his historical work, but the Marxist view of history became ever more dominant and ultimately obligatory, which closed this path before him. He did not possess any other knowledge that could be adapted to the new system. Mester lost his job because of the nationalization of the NIT College, but after a few months of uncertainty, he received a “warm offer” from Reformed Bishop Albert Bereczky, and from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences president István Rusznyák, whose escape from deportation in 1944 could be as73 BFL XXV, 2b. Dr. Miklós Mester’s People’s Prosecution material (81365/1949). Order of the justice minister, January 25, 1950. 74 Mester, Arcképek, 316. 75 Mester, Arcképek, 260. 76 Mester, Arcképek, 279 and 303. 77 BFL XXV, 2b. Dr. Miklós Mester’s People’s Prosecution material (81365/1949). Minutes of the interrogation of Miklós Mester, December 5, 1945.

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cribed to Mester’s activity of saving Jewish intellectuals.78 For a short time, Mester found safety working for the Horizont Soviet–Hungarian Book Enterprise, where his organizing abilities, energy, and intellect soon brought him close to the director general of this Soviet cultural establishment, Frigyes Kőnig. Mester’s adaptive strategy eventually failed when he was subjected in 1951 to forced displacement that targeted those classified as “class enemies” of the new regime: not even the support of his influential director could prevent him sharing the fate for former members of the interwar elite.79 The displacement committees operated automatically, without differentiation, while appeals to his peasant background and the efforts of his supporters were fruitless.80 He had to live with his family in the village of Felsővadász in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County until 1953. He was released when the sentences of forced displacement were repealed under Prime Minister Imre Nagy’s government, but the discrimination against him did not cease; he was not allowed to move back to Budapest, and could only circumvent this by somehow arranging employment in the city’s suburbs at the Electrical Measuring Device Factory as a vehicle maintenance supervisor. By the mid-1950s, political persecution had finally broken him: at this point, he steadily lost his supporters and tried to vanish into the crowd as a simple office worker, while concentrating his efforts on supporting his family. Even then, the everyday peace and quiet did not last long. The 1956 Revolution broke out at the end of October. “I didn’t take part in anything! They told me I should join the workers’ council and they would elect me to it. I did not accept. I didn’t accept anything whatsoever,” Mester stated in a 1986 life interview, at the time still fearful of official reprisals. Since his youth he had been uncertain about mass movements, and what happened at his place of work, as well as to him personally in October 1956, confirmed his rejection of revolutionary methods. The factory’s workers’ council wanted to use the fuel coupons for which Mester was responsible. Mester objected, but his desk drawer was broken open and emptied in his absence. His abstention from political activity and reluctance to be drawn in turned his colleagues against him. They took revenge by accusing him of embezzling 78 ÁBTL 2.5.6. 32/1 Dr. Miklós Mester. Letter of Frigyes Kőnig, July 5, 1951. 79 In the summer of 1951, several thousands of the pre-1945 social and economic elite (from aristocrats to military officers) were moved forcibly from Budapest to rural areas where they had to live in poverty, laboring in the fields, while their former properties were allocated mostly to Communist functionaries. 80 ÁBTL 2.5.6. 32/1 Dr. Miklós Mester. Letter of Frigyes Kőnig, July 5, 1951.

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the coupons. He was acquitted, but not without being remanded in custody for four months.81 His situation at his workplace, however, became untenable. It was at this point, as he recalled, that his fortunes took a turn for the better. “I met with the party secretary at Horizont [his former workplace] . . . and the party secretary, a fine person, an old social democrat, invited me back.”82 This time, under the protection of a communist party functionary, he was able to remain an ordinary office worker at this state-owned book distribution company until his retirement. He set up the provincial book distribution system, and although he was intellectually engaged with more literate and educated people than the average, the work itself was far below his capabilities and qualifications. “It was interesting because I gained certain experiences,”83 was his summary of the best position he could attain under that political system. The question arises as to why Mester did not choose to emigrate, as his many beleaguered fellow politicians or friends, including Miklós Csomoss, did. His origins meant he lacked relatives abroad to support him or material goods to take with him to the West. His widespread ties were centered on Hungary and the Hungarian-inhabited regions of neighboring countries, notably Transylvania. As such, emigration could have jeopardized the social advance he had made, although of course the same applied to staying in Hungary. Nonetheless, working for the Hungarian people was Mester’s political creed and the keynote of his life. As he noted in an early essay on Romanian politician of minority issues Joan Raţiu, he did not accept the idea of emigration because “that would have lost his life’s work its moral credibility in the eyes of the abandoned Romanian people of Transylvania.”84 Mester obviously thought of himself as being in a similar position when he carried on despite his exclusion from society.

The enemy image formed of Mester After World War II, Miklós Mester would have been blamed under any democratic system for having held a position in the pro-German quisling govern81 82 83 84

ÁBTL 2.5.6. 32/1 Dr. Miklós Mester. Letter of Frigyes Kőnig, July 5, 1951. ÁBTL 2.5.6. 32/1 Dr. Miklós Mester. Letter of Frigyes Kőnig, July 5, 1951. Mester, interview by János Gyurgyák and Tamás Varga. Miklós Mester, Az erdélyi románok első törvényhatósági küzdelmei a magyarokkal és a szászok­ kal (1860–1863) (Budapest: Magyarságtudomány, 1936), 22.

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ment, but under the restricted democracy of the new system installed in 1945 in accordance with Soviet intentions, it became possible for him to cleanse himself of war crime charges. However, the communist-led political police still kept his file open and gradually formed a war crime-based enemy image. Initially, this drew exclusively on certain aspects of his life, but the perceived danger was exacerbated in the 1960s by political comments Mester made as an ordinary citizen that were overheard or reported. He was treated as an enemy right up until 1987, and even then he was dropped from the lists merely on account of his age.85 As seen earlier, Mester was treated as an enemy of the people’s democracy during his investigation, a judgment made clear in 1951 by his removal from Budapest as a class enemy. Several attempts were made in the 1950s to find evidence for criminal charges. In a revision of the list of enemy elements that occurred after the 1956 Revolution, he was considered primarily as a member of political groupings potentially hazardous to the communist regime.86 Mester remained listed as a suspect because of his former membership in the Hungarian Fraternal Community. Later, his name came up during the collection of evidence against prominent members of the Peasant Party, which was reorganized in October 1956, although, as we have already pointed out, he did not play an active role in the revolution. Mester, linked to those around György Bodor, a Peasant party politician, by Transylvanian and friendship ties, was judged to belong to Bodor’s wider circle and was consequently surveilled.87 The secret agent assigned to him dubbed him an anti-Semite, and in a marked distortion of his earlier role, labeled him a leader in the Hungarian Fraternal Community, a follower of Béla Imrédy, and an erstwhile sympathizer with extreme rightist ideas: in other words, all the clichés that still clung to him.88 Ostensible evidence for his opposition to the system was found in the political roles he had played and, increasingly, in his circle of friends. It spoke ill of his connections that it was the Independent Smallholders’ Party that had backed the vindication of his wartime role. Also brought against him was evidence from his past that he had taken a part in disseminating fas-

85 ÁBTL 2.2.1, I/8.8. 86 See, among other sources, ÁBTL V–2000/19. Hungarian Community. 87 Éva Standeisky, Gúzsba kötve: A kulturális elit és a hatalom (Budapest: 1956-os Intézet/Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára, 2005), 387–413. 88 ÁBTL O–11803/9. Resistance members.

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cist propaganda, given that he had been a government commissioner for film and the proprietor of his own film company. In 1968, the authorities allowed him to have a passport and visit his mother, still in his native Romania, whom he had not seen since the war.89 This was an isolated event, however: he remained under state security observation due to the overall opinion that his political views made him liable to conspire and spread hostile ideas.90 The few surviving documents of the 1970s suggest that the communist authorities were concentrating mainly on momentary behavior and political pronouncements, as Mester’s increasingly strident nationalist outlook returned to the fore. After his retirement he set about writing his memoirs and returned to the issue of national coexistence in Transylvania, and through his connections (of which the Transylvanian ones had remained to the greatest extent) explored the problems of the remaining Hungarian community there. By that time, his ties with the minority Hungarians and his anxieties about their fate were the main reason the authorities saw him as a nationalist and collected information about him. Not long after the Kádár–Ceauşescu summit in Debrecen and Oradea (Nagy­ várad) on June 15–16, 1977, Mester was given a “verbal warning” about his ostensibly nationalist statements.91

Mester on the communist system The Independent Smallholders’ Party that Miklós Mester joined after World War II had stood in opposition to the interwar conservative course. Mester expected from the party a Hungary modernized in its social structure and able to secure the livelihoods of the agrarian population that made up the majority of its inhabitants. He anticipated that the power relations after defeat in the war would mean the renewed loss of the territories restored to Hungary in 1939–40, but he believed the minority issues in the Central European countries regaining their sovereignty could be resolved peaceably with the spread of democratic rights. Aware though he was of geopolitical realities, he sought— through a British historian friend—to submit to the UK Foreign Office a proposed new regional settlement based on the minorities’ interests. This envis89 Mester, Arcképek, 502. 90 Only once, in old age in 1981, did he receive a passport for travel to the West, allowing him to visit his son in California. 91 ÁBTL 2.2.1, operative file I/8.8.

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aged “a step-by-step plebiscite along Hungary’s borders. Should the majority of the inhabitants decide—this concerns the destiny of the border Hungarians—that they wish to accede to Hungary, we should acknowledge this, while ensuring autonomy for the Hungarians remaining outside.”92 After the war, Mester quickly realized that the country’s future would depend on the power interests of the Soviet Union. Looking back on the prewar and postwar periods in the 1970s, he saw both as “anti-democratic, inhuman, and merciless.”93 He drew a parallel between the excesses of the officer detachments in the White Terror of 1919–21 and those of the communists.94 However, despite the similarity, he saw shades of difference in favor of the conservative period. The Hungarian people had lived under oppression, but after 1945 they were “subjugated” by a “political clique system more inhuman” than that of the Horthy period.95 To Mester, whose political creed called for the advancement of the Hungarian people embodied in the peasantry, and as a racial defender for guarding the Hungarians against aliens, a political system serving alien interests and those of a specific strata was quite unacceptable. He rejected an internationalist ideology that ignored national aspirations. Although he steered clear of economic policy, it can be seen from his support for a land reform to provide land for the agrarian population, from his own puritan way of life, his attacks on enrichment by Jews and non-Jews alike, and his aspirations to improve the livelihood conditions of the middle and lower classes, that he believed in restricting market forces and private property through state intervention. He had strong ties to the Reformed Church, where he had been active in the student movement and later as a lay official. He was likewise prompted to reject the communist system by its elimination of church autonomy and propagation of atheist ideology. But despite his opposition to the Soviet-style system on principle, he preferred in his memoirs to condemn it not on the basis of theory but for the human lives it had ruined. Political theory was not one of his strengths; rather, he was an active, organizing, connection-building type, who followed closely the lives of both dear friends and distant acquaintances. It was from individual tragedies that he concluded the communist system could not be accepted. He saw 92 93 94 95

Mester, interview by János Gyurgyák and Tamás Varga. Mester, Arcképek, 11. Mester, Arcképek, 307. Mester, Arcképek, 243.

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the Rákosi years96 and the Kádárite97 consolidation as dictatorship devoid of any self-determination or democracy,98 which had sent “intellectual and moral life into deep crisis.”99 Although he saw no political distinction between the Rákosi and Kádár systems, he noted under the latter that “a respectable rise in material welfare had taken place for a broad strata of the people,” even if it could not make up for lost freedom. As an ethnic minority expert, he was appreciative of the position of such minorities in Hungary under the Kádár regime, and thought that Kádár was following a minority policy “suited to a people of culture,” but blamed the communist leaders for not championing the Hungarian community beyond the state’s borders.100 Based on his views on communist power, Mester also revised his verdicts on leading Smallholder politicians. He turned away from those he saw as being too accommodating to the communist regime, like Zoltán Tildy and Albert Bereczky, who till then were his ties to the Smallholders’ Party, while admiring émigré figures like Ferenc Nagy,101 among others, for having the courage of their convictions.102 He passed judgment on those who sacrificed human values for their political career when he asserted there were two possible ways to respond to the absolute power of dictatorship: either entering into compromises or offering a “hopeless opposition in defense of moral integrity”103 and enduring consequent persecution.

Reassessments It is not known how Miklós Mester rated his own activity or position between the world wars. His rise from peasantry to intelligentsia was a rapid success, behind which stood patrons but also his own talents and commitment to improving the lot of the Hungarians. As a historian, his views on collective minority rights coexisted easily with the irredentism of the student movements, 96 Mátyás Rákosi was the first secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party, later Hungarian Workers’ Party, between 1945 and 1956. 97 János Kádár was the first secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (the Communist Party) between 1956 and 1988. 98 Mester, Arcképek, 321. 99 Mester, Arcképek, 375. 100 Mester, Arcképek, 449. 101 Ferenc Nagy was leader of the post-World War II Smallholders’ Party and prime minister of Hungary between 1946 and 1947. He emigrated in 1947. 102 Mester, Arcképek, 247. 103 Mester, Arcképek, 279.

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notably the racial ideology of the Hungarian Fraternal Community. He was convinced that collective, “national” interests took precedence over civil, individual freedoms. To him and to others, this justified discrimination against Jews and support for measures of racial defense. Yet, as a believer in equal ethnic rights, he also supported the claims of Hungary’s German minority. Even in the period when blame was being apportioned, Mester would not dissociate himself from the Volksbund, the minority movement of the Hungarian Germans that was tied to the Third Reich. It has been seen that his concern for a general land reform to modernize and advance the peasantry led him to the extreme right-wing MMP; furthermore, he also identified with its proGerman foreign policy, trusting that this would restore Hungary’s severed territories as soon as possible. On experiencing Hungary’s loss of sovereignty in March 1944, the annihilation of the Jews, and looming defeat in the war, Mester drew closer to the Smallholders, as the left-wing opposition of the ruling government. His political views underwent several long processes of renewal, promoted also by a new wave of postwar political discourse centered on democracy. After the war, Mester was prompted repeatedly by the political cleansing process and investigations to reflect on his political deeds. He was placed on the defensive and so brought forward past episodes and ideas that he felt would show him in a favorable light. When questioned by the political police at the end of 1945, the elements of his political career that he emphasized were his promotion of free education, the minority question, Zionism, and a democratic solution to the peaceful coexistence of the Danubian peoples.104 Admitting to his racial defense views and the anti-Semitism that led him to support Jewish deportation, he pleaded, “I was the one representative who drew a distinction in parliament between the poor and the wealthy Jews. I recognize now that I underestimated the value of voluntary assimilation, that I was too rigidly in favor of the Zionists.”105 On his period as a state secretary, he dwelt on his efforts to save Jewish artists and intellectuals and free left-wing internees, along with his role in the ceasefire commission sent to Moscow. In view of the power relations of the coalition period, his account of himself gave due weight to his close political cooperation with the Smallholders. Accordingly, it had been 104 BFL XXV, 2b. Dr. Miklós Mester’s People’s Prosecution material (81365/1949). Minutes of the interrogation of Miklós Mester, December 5, 1945. 105 BFL XXV, 2b. Dr. Miklós Mester’s People’s Prosecution material (81365/1949). Minutes of the interrogation of Miklós Mester, December 5, 1945.

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Tildy, he claimed, who told him to stay within the “regime” and assist the resistance. Tildy’s key role in him accepting the position of state secretary also remained a constant theme in his reasoning throughout the postwar years of the coalition governments. Yet, he was silent on the support for his candidacy from other political parties and from the Hungarian Fraternal Community, with which he split on the assimilation issue. He cited Miklós Csomoss as a resistance member, and not as a member of the Hungarian Community.106 In a study written right after the war (but only published in 1985 in the Hungarian émigré press) he urged sincere assessment of the past, so that relations between the Hungarian and Jewish communities could be placed on new foundations to the advantage of both.107 A few months later, he was denying his racial defense views and listing his Zionist links instead. He defined himself not as a politician but as an “expert on the national minority question.”108 Still, he was quite silent on his parliamentary speeches in favor of excluding the Jews from economic and public life. Instead, he cited his contribution at the Council of Ministers on June 21, 1944, where he opposed the state secretaries directing the deportations, at significant personal risk. At the end of the 1940s, Mester came across the writings of István Bibó, whose work The Jewish Question in Hungary after 1944 held up a mirror to him, forcing him to reexamine his views.109 Speaking a good deal later about the new direction he had taken, Mester noted, “I am traveling more or less along [Bibó’s] path: what István Bibó went through in 1948, and demonstrated in a very fine, thorough study, and unfortunately there was no response to it at all.”110 He appealed against his removal from Budapest in 1951 on the grounds of his peasant background and lack of wealth. His conviction that he could ride out the “merciless” period by avoiding any public role and passively adapting to it proved wrong. He had to realize that the political judgment of him did not depend on how he presented himself, or even on objective facts. Enemies were those whom the communists designated as such in 106 BFL XXV, 2b. Dr. Miklós Mester’s People’s Prosecution material (81365/1949). Minutes of the interrogation of Miklós Mester, December 5, 1945. 107 Mester, “A zsidókérdés Magyarországon.” 108 BFL XXV, 2b. Dr. Miklós Mester’s People’s Prosecution material (81365/1949). Accusation, January 18, 1946. 109 In Hungarian, Zsidókérdés Magyarországon 1944 után (Budapest: Válasz, 1948). Published in English in István Bibó, Democracy, Revolution, Self-determination: Selected Writings, ed. Károly Nagy (Boulder, CO: Social Science Monographs, 1991), 155–324. 110 Mester, interview by Péter Bokor.

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order to further their exercise of power. As such, he tried to lose himself among ordinary people after he was allowed to return to Budapest and his previous job. His forced displacement confirmed him in his change of political thinking; in Felsővadász, he shared his persecution with middle-class Jewish families. His daily contact with them and shared predicament confirmed him in his acceptance of assimilation. His circle of friends and acquaintances declined further, having already been depleted by the surge of emigration after the 1956 revolution was suppressed. He kept up primarily with his friends in the Transylvanian intelligentsia, contacts who were active in the Reformed Church, and those in publishing and similar trades who shared his views. Through István Kovács (once active in the Transylvanian Party, then an organizer for the MMP) and ­György Bodor (who was writing a history of the Székelys in his spare time), he came to be loosely in touch with those around Sándor Püski, who gathered in an informal association that called itself the Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Memorial Society and wished to further the intellectual legacy of interwar politician and journalist Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky and his a national radical program. The political views of the members of this circle—who, like Mester, were excluded from public life under the communist system and labeled as “undesirables”111—were close to the outlook of Mester as reformulated in the 1960s: their political understanding helped to confirm Mester’s principles, old and new. One reason why Mester felt affinity with this circle is that it consisted of expoliticians sympathetic to the wing of the National Peasant Party led by Imre Kovács.112 Although Mester, after leaving the right-wing MMP, moved to the Smallholders, seeing them as a more viable force, some of his friends joined the Peasant Party instead right after the war. Having lost faith in Zoltán Tildy over collaboration with the communists, Mester and others began to see in the by-then-émigré Imre Kovács the virtues of a farsighted politician who believed in restricted capitalism and negotiated social change.113 The other reason had to do with Mester’s relation to Bajcsy-Zsilinszky himself. Bajcsy-Zsilinszky had been an anti-Jewish, then an anti-German politician concerned about racial defense, and the promotion of social reforms on socialistic principles. In the thirties and forties, Mester and Bajcsy-Zsilinszky tried to press 111 Standeisky, Gúzsba kötve, 387. 112 Imre Kovács was leader of the National Peasants’ Party. He emigrated to Switzerland in 1947. 113 Standeisky, Gúzsba kötve, 388.

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for changes in almost the same direction, but while Bajcsy-Zsilinszky made his efforts through his own party, the National Radical Party (which in 1936 merged with the Smallholders’ Party), Mester did so by joining the Imrédy party. The biggest difference in principle between them at the time was their attitude to Hitler’s Germany, which in Bajcsy-Zsilinszky’s case led him to become a leader of the wartime anti-German resistance and to his execution by the Arrow Cross in December 1944.114 Given the parallels in their political paths and the trajectory of Bajcsy-Zsilinszky’s career—a former anti-Semitic race defender who eventually became an antifascist martyr, and as such remained in the pantheon of celebrated national figures even during the communist era—Mester could easily see in Bajcsy-Zsilinszky’s figure a model to rethink and reshape his own life story. All the more so, as the goal of BajcsyZsilinszky’s followers after the war, a modern, democratic, and civic Hungary, was increasingly shared by Mester too. Noticeably, it was after his contact with the Memorial Society that Mester, in his memoirs, began to present some past details in a new light. For instance, he described in his memoirs as a “very noble cause”115 the Balatonszárszó conference in 1943 to bring anti-German forces together, though he and several far-right politicians in May 1943 still urged the Hungarian government’s identification with Hitler’s Germany and curbs on the activities of the opposition forces.116 He traced his commitment to democracy and humanism back to the early 1930s, when he was doing historical research.117 Democracy became a guiding light in his outlook and starting point for all other aims, economic or social. Yet national interest, nationalism, and ties to Hungarian historical traditions and culture were not relegated either. He pressed ever more openly for the restoration of his country’s independence and improving the rights and living conditions of Hungarians outside the state’s borders. It was this perception of national interest that caused new conflict between him and 114 As one of the leaders of the Smallholders’ Party during World War II, Bajcsy-Zsilinszky was arrested by the Gestapo after a brief gunfight on the day of Germany’s occupation of Hungary. He was released from prison in October 1944, after which he founded the Committee of Hungarian National Liberation in order to unify the anti-fascist forces. In November, his network was uncovered by the Arrow Cross authorities, which led to Bajcsy-Zsilinszky’s renewed arrest and, ultimately, execution. 115 Mester, Arcképek, 359. 116 Miklós Szinai and László Szűcs, eds., Horthy Miklós titkos iratai (Budapest: Kossuth, 1962), 390. I am grateful to Krisztián Ungváry for drawing my attention to this. 117 Mester, Arcképek, 263.

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the prevalent communist system. By the time the Soviet-type regime in Hungary had reached its zenith, Mester turned from being an anti-Semitic nationalist to a believer in radical national ideas about democracy. Yet, despite the rethinking of his political views and his personal relationships, his Hungarian identity remained firm and nationalism continued to constitute a political leitmotif in Mester’s life.118

Bibliography Ablonczy, Balázs. Teleki Pál. Budapest: Osiris, 2005. Bereczky, Albert. A magyar protestantizmus a magyar zsidóüldözés ellen [Hungarian Protestantism against the persecution of Hungarian Jews]. Budapest: Református Traktátus Vállalat, 1945. Bokor, Péter. “Egy naiv ember—bársonyszékben: 24 részlet egy végtelen beszélgetésből” [A naive person—in a top seat: 24 parts of an endless discussion]. In Végjáték a Duna mentén: Interjúk egy filmsorozathoz [Endgame by the Danube: Interviews for a film series], 126–89. Budapest: MTV/Minerva/Kossuth, 1982. Previously published in Valóság, no. 10 (1981): 53–74. Braham, Randolph L. A népirtás politikája: A Holocaust Magyarországon [The politics of genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary]. Budapest: Belvárosi Könyvkiadó, 1997. Lévai, Jenő. Szürke könyv: Magyar zsidók mentéséről [The gray book: Rescue of Hungarian Jews]. Budapest: Officina, 1946. Mester, Miklós. Arcképek: Két tragikus kor árnyékában; Visszapillantás a katasztrofális magyarországi 1944. esztendőre, részint annak előzményeire és közvetlen következmé­ nyeire is, 27 év távlatából [Portraits: In the shadow of two tragic periods; Retrospective of the catastrophic year 1944 in Hungary, and some of its antecedents and direct results, at a distance of twenty-seven years]. Budapest: Tarsoly, 2012. ———. Az erdélyi románok első törvényhatósági küzdelmei a magyarokkal és a szászokkal (1860–1863) [Transylvanian Romanians’ first legislative struggle with the Hungarians and Saxons (1860–63)]. Budapest: Magyarságtudomány, 1936. ———. “A zsidókérdés Magyarországon” [The Jewish question in Hungary]. Új Látóha­ tár, no. 3 (1985): 367–89. ———. Interview by János Gyurgyák and Tamás Varga. Budapest, 1986. 1956-os Intézet Oral History Archívum (currently Veritas Institute Oral History Archive, Budapest), no. 45. ———. Interview by Péter Bokor for the Századvég series. Budapest, National Széchényi Library, Collection of Historical Interviews, no. 303, 1976. Papp, István. A népi kollégiumi mozgalom története 1944-ig: Népi tehetségekgondozása, vagy tudatos elitnevelési kísérlet? [The history of the People’s College Movement to 118 Török, “Ember az embertelenségben,” 39.

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1944: Fostering people’s talents or a deliberately trying to raise an elite?]. Budapest: Napvilág, 2008. Révész, András. Interview by András B. Hegedűs and András Kovács. Budapest, 1986. 1956-os Intézet Oral History Archívum (currently Veritas Institute Oral History Archive, Budapest), no. 5. Schmidt, Maria. “Komoly Ottó, a Magyar Cionista Szövetség elnökének naplója 1944” [The 1944 diary of Ottó Komoly, president of the Hungarian Zionist Association]. In Kollaboráció vagy kooperáció? A Budapesti Zsidó Tanács [Collaboration or cooperation? The Budapest Jewish Council], edited by Miklós Mester, Tamás Majsai, and Mária Schmidt, 126–221. Budapest: Minerva, 1990. Simon, János, ed. Ezredvégi értelmezések I–II: Demokráciáról, politikai kultúráról, bal- és jobboldalról [End-of-millennium interpretations I–II: On democracy, political culture, left and right]. Budapest: Villányi úti könyvek, 2001. Sipos, Péter. Imrédy Béla: Politikai életrajz [Béla Imrédy: A political biography]. Budapest: Elektra Kiadóház, 2001. Standeisky, Éva. Gúzsba kötve: A kulturális elit és a hatalom [Tied up: The cultural elite and power]. Budapest: 1956-os Intézet/Állambiztonsági Szolgálatok Történeti Levéltára, 2005. Szerencsés, Károly. “Az ítélet: halál”; Magyar miniszterelnökök a bíróság előtt [The judgment: death; Hungarian prime ministers in the dock]. Budapest: Kairosz, 2002. Szinai, Miklós, and László Szűcs, eds. Horthy Miklós titkos iratai [Miklós Horthy’s secret writings]. Budapest: Kossuth, 1962. Sztáray, Zoltán. “Mester Miklós 1906–1989” [Miklós Mester 1906–89]. Új Látóhatár, no. 3 (1989): 391–92. Török, Bálint. “Ember az embertelenségben: Száz éve született Mester Miklós” [Man amid inhumanity: Miklós Mester, born 100 years ago]. Magyar Napló, no. 2 (2007): 36–39. ———. Farkas esz meg, medve esz meg… Szent-Iványi Domokos és a Magyar Függetlenségi Mozgalom [Wolf eats me, bear eats me… Domokos Szent-Iványi and the Hungarian Independence Movement]. Budapest: Európai Protestáns Magyar Szabadegyetem, 2004.

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CHAPTER TEN

FROM RIGHT TO LEFT—OR NOT? BÉLA CSIKÓS-NAGY, A PARADIGMATICAL OPPORTUNIST OF TRANSITION Iván Miklós Szegő

The gravest error of human coexistence is a solemn belief, typical of the nineteenth century, that a market economy directed by competition is a viable world in itself controlled, as Adam Smith put it, by an invisible hand. (1943) 1 The law of value in a socialist economy does not operate spontaneously. (1958)2 The invisible hand also operates in a socialist planned economy, but here the conditions of operation are set by state (societal) awareness. (1980) 3 Thus the so-called invisible hand brings about a balance of supply and demand. Marx still assumes state planning makes a better regulator of that balance than the price mechanism. . . . Eliminating the equilibrium function of prices causes op­ erating disturbances in the socialist economy. (1982) 4 The hypotheses behind the price that marks the economic optimum are unverifi­ able. (2005) 5

The italicized phrases in the above texts point to continual changes over time in the arguments advanced by Béla Csikós-Nagy, the seventh most frequent-

1 Béla Csikós-Nagy, Kapitalizmus vagy kollektivizmus? (Megjegyzések Wilhelm Röpke könyvé­ hez) (Szeged: Szegedi Új Nemzedék Lapvállalat, 1943), 4. 2 Béla Csikós-Nagy, Árpolitika az átmeneti gazdaságban (Budapest: KJK, 1958), 15. 3 Béla Csikós-Nagy, A magyar árpolitika: Az 1979/80. évi árrendezés (Budapest: KJK, 1980), 75. 4 Béla Csikós-Nagy, Az értéktörvény szerepe a szocialista gazdaságban (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1984), 23–24. 5 Béla Csikós-Nagy, Közgazdaságtan a globalizáció világában, vol. 1 (Budapest: MTA Társadalomkutató Központ, 2005), 113.

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ly quoted Hungarian economist in the international literature.6 These are Csikós-Nagy’s typical ideas on the self-regulation of the market, competition, and Adam Smith’s “invisible hand.” He was clearly referring to a “price that signifies the economic optimum” and the application of “the law of value” to the balance of supply and demand. With Hungary as an ally of Hitler’s Germany in World War II, Csikós-Nagy, an official of the Hungarian Finance Ministry in 1943, gave an anti-liberal response to the German Wilhelm Röpke, a critic of collectivism who had left his country in 1933. When CsikósNagy gave his inaugural Academy of Sciences lecture in 1982, he was a state secretary under Hungary’s Soviet-type system, yet he still accepted, as a theorist of the socialist economy, Röpke’s famed assumption that “the equilibrium price clears the market.”7 Röpke had based this on classical economics, which Csikós-Nagy criticized both at the beginning and the end of his career. Béla Csikós-Nagy was born in 1915 in Szeged, South-Eastern Hungary, where he graduated with a law degree in 1938. From 1942 to 1944, he acted as an adviser to the then Finance Minister Lajos Reményi-Schneller, a Nazi collaborator executed as a war criminal in 1946. He then served as a deputy minister between 1952 and 1955, first to the Stalinist party general secretary and prime minister, Mátyás Rákosi, and later to Imre Nagy when he became premier in 1953. Finally, under Kádár, the longest serving of all Hungary’s communist leaders, Csikós-Nagy presided over the Price Control Office for twenty-seven years, from 1957 to 1984. He died at the age of 90 in 2005. By the 1960s, his 1942 work (banned in 1945) which presented competition as a grave disease,8 had already been sunk into oblivion, which paradoxically paved the way for him to become an authority on competition policy during the economic reforms of the period. Before his death, he repeated the philosophical tenets (or, at least, the defensible parts of them) on which his once Austro-Fascist,9 national socialist ideas had been based.10 He relativized 6 He comes seventh also in the Social Science Citation Index (for citations between 1975 and 2001) and EconLit (between 1969 and 2002). See “Magyar közgazdászok hatásának mérése,” Wargo, archived September 3, 2007, https://web.archive.org/web/20070903123039/http:// econ.core.hu/~tothij/others/hatas/hatas10.html. 7 Wilhelm Röpke, Die Lehre von der Wirtschaft (Bern: Paul Haupt, 1994), 193. 8 Béla Csikós-Nagy, Nagytérgazdaság (Budapest: Gergely, 1942), 147–48. 9 He referred not to the Austro-Fascist Othmar Spann, but to his precursor Adam Müller. See Csikós-Nagy, Közgazdaságtan a globalizáció világában, vol. 2, 57–59. 10 Csikós-Nagy, Közgazdaságtan a globalizáció világában, vol. 1, 78 and 82–83; Csikós-Nagy, Na­ gytérgazdaság, 65–66.

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Marxism and the “Western” liberal economics in crisis.11 His prewar views, albeit shorn of their racist logic, reappeared after 1989.12 This study examines how the etatist, anti-liberal extreme rightism of Csikós-Nagy, with its antagonism for banks, speculation, competition, and the market, was submerged in 1945 and revived again after 1990. Despite burying his personal convictions in order to thrive during the communist period, his underground rightist stream can be revealed. He opposed autarky and championed the national interest within economic integration. As a young man he opposed a currency union based on the German mark; at the end of his life, he was a Eurosceptic opposed to the IMF. Parallels to his thinking in 1938–44 can be drawn with two other bursts of Hungarian right-wing politics (in 1917–20 and 2010–14). The cabinets of Viktor Orbán, in power since 2010, are anti-liberal and against speculation and competition, just as Csikós-Nagy swung toward etatism in the 1930s, similarly in response to market failures.13 But the two periods differ: Hungary in the 1930s did not belong to international organizations such as the EU and NATO. The ideological shifts in Csikós-Nagy’s thinking can be divided into two stages: in 1938–53, his economic ideas remained within the framework of a more authoritarian understanding of the state’s role in the economy, moving along the plane of collectivist conservatism—communism—fascism.14 This refers to the periods during World War II (1938–44), postwar reconstruction and gradual Sovietization (1945–48), and the darkest age of Stalinism in Hungary (1949–53). After 1945, Csikós-Nagy made his jump from right to left and joined the communists. When asked whether his new views were compatible with his former views, he conceded: “Essentially there was directed economic activity in the past as well, as there is now. So, there is no ‘difference’ be11 Relativization of economics is typical of the German historical school, according to Schumpeter. See Takashi Negishi, History of Economic Theory (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1989), 16–17. 12 Csikós-Nagy, Közgazdaságtan a globalizáció világában, vol. 2, 17 and 319; Csikós-Nagy, “A faj és a gazdaság viszonya az új német gazdaságelméleti irodalomban,” Közgazdasági Szemle 83, nos. 1–2 (January–February 1940): 52–58. 13 “There persists as a dire illness of the liberal approach the ‘corporate outlook’ of seeing business expediency in unbridled competition.” Csikós-Nagy, Nagytérgazdaság, 147–48. In 2013, state secretary János Fónagy pressed for “emotional unity among tried and tested people instead of competition.” See “Fónagy: Nem hiszek a versenyben,” 444.hu, accessed May 20, 2022, https://444.hu/2013/09/28/fonagy-nem-hiszek-a-versenyben/. 14 For a visual representation of these ideological planes and the possible movement along and between them, see the tetrahedron constructed by András Schweitzer, in his chapter “A RoundTrip through the Czech Lands: The Origins of a Liberal Right Revolution” in this volume.

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tween the two.”15 His shift in support did not require him to change his views on planned economic activity. His liberalization and move away from collective economics began after the appointment of Imre Nagy as prime minister in 1953. His diminishing radicalism also brought Csikós-Nagy closer to a more liberal understanding of economic policies, with his ideological shifts remaining within the plane of socialism—nationalism—liberalism. His gradual rightward shift in this stage manifested itself in liberal–etatist terms, and did not indicate a return to his prewar rightism. Nor did his acceptance of a welfare market economy and the democratic turn of 1990 rooted in his earlier prewar views, as he had rejected similar ideas back in 1943. Csikós-Nagy’s almost unbroken career was atypical.16 It was exceptional for anyone with a past on the right or extreme right to rise so high in post1945 Hungary, let alone to stay in government for decades. His career lacked ideological consistency: from 1939 to 1984 he was pro-government regardless of the government in power. To him, the twentieth century was a continually transitional economy embracing a number of moves from a war economy to a peacetime one, the disintegration of the Nazi Großraum, the post-1945 aim for communism, the 1989–90 democratic transition, and finally graduation into an information society. In his own words, “price is a temporary phenomenon that persists historically for a relatively long time”: much like the dominant economics he saw rise and fall, he did not consider the prices he examined so closely to be eternal either.17 Ideologies can be placed along axes as right or left-wing depending on the country and period concerned. Csikós-Nagy embraced democracy in 1990 along with the welfare market economy,18 which at that time counted as rightwing. On the liberal–etatist scale, the rightist market principle gained ground after 1953. On the fascist–communist axis, he swung left in 1945. He justified these tactical leaps as deriving from “subordinating scientific commitment to the political ideal of the ultimate scientific goal.”19 His opportunis-

15 ÁBTL (Historical Archives of the State Security Services), O–8757 “Szervező,” no. 88. 16 The biggest break was his dismissal as deputy minister in 1955. See Tamás Halm, ed., Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció: Tanulmányok Csikós-Nagy Béla akadémikus 80. születésnapjára (Budapest: Akadémiai—Magyar Közgazdász Alapítvány, 1995), 297–98. 17 Béla Csikós-Nagy, Szocialista árelmélet és árpolitika (Budapest: Kossuth, 1966), 11. 18 Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 259. 19 Béla Csikós-Nagy, “A gazdálkodás (ökonomia) tanának új megalapozása,” Közgazdasági Szem­ le 82, no. 3–4 (March–April 1939): 261.

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tic, modernizing creed was: “Those in responsible leading positions . . . sense a constraint that responsibility imposes on the free flow of thought. Someone in such a post develops a feeling . . . of the capacity of policy and society for the new, as opposed to the mutable.” His publisher wanted to omit such statements from his 1987 book, but the manuscript’s reader (the future prime minister Miklós Németh) left it in, although he altered the title from The So­ cialist Market Economy to Socialism, Market, Economy.20

Family experiences and right-wing response to crisis as underground streams Nationalism in Hungary split from liberalism and embraced conservatism in the late nineteenth century; Hungarian neo-conservatism rejected liberalism and incorporated anti-Semitism as an integral element of its worldview.21 After World War I, it outgrew conservatism and leaned toward the far right, for instance in the Magyar Társaság (MT, Hungarian Society). Founded in 1917 by pupils of the conservative jurist Győző Concha, the MT was dedicated to defending the middle class and gentry, and was made up of public officials, lawyers, and economists.22 Concha was a key figure linking conservatism and the extreme right: “The conservative Hungarian concept of the state is rooted far more in the premodern organic view of the state than in its modern Western equivalent. . . . Concha’s organic state concept merged later with the notion of ‘racial’ cultural superiority.”23 Also formed at the time was the Social Darwinist Hungarian Society for Racial Health and Demographic Policy,24 whose founder Pál Teleki would later become prime minister. This pattern of radicalization is supported by Csikós-Nagy’s own words,

20 Csikós-Nagy, Szocializmus, piac, gazdaság, 7; Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 262. 21 Miklós Szabó, “Középosztály és újkonzervativizmus: Harc a politikai katolicizmus jobbszárnya és a polgári radikalizmus között,” in Politikai kultúra Magyarországon, 1896–1986 (Budapest: ELTE–MKKE, 1989), 177–78; Ignác Romsics, “Bevezetés: Az európai és a magyar jobboldal alaptípusai,” in A magyar jobboldali hagyomány, 1900–1948 (Budapest: Osiris, 2009), 18. 22 At that time, the term gentry (dzsentri) in Hungarian applied to the country’s increasingly impoverished lower and middle nobility and had a connotation not conveyed by the English term. 23 Miklós Szabó, “A ‘magyar girondistáktól’ az ébredő magyarokig: Az 1919-es ellenforradalmi kurzus előtörténetéből,” in Politikai kultúra Magyarországon, 1896–1986 (Budapest: ELTE– MKKE, 1989), 205; András Lánczi, “A politika mint tradíció,” Politikatudományi Szemle 3, no. 2 (1994): 97. 24 In Hungarian, Magyar Fajegészségügyi és Népesedéspolitikai Társasága.

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describing the starting point of his thought: “The state is an organism whose parts are under organic mutual influence.”25 Csikós-Nagy, like many members of the MT, came from a middle-class family that was losing status. His parents were involved in the public life of the southern city of Szeged: his mother as a leader of the Catholic association for the protection of women, and his father, a lawyer from 1913, as patron of the Catholic students’ association. Csikós-Nagy himself became the top mathematician of his conservative Buda school, but the Great Depression steered him toward economics. His father and grandfather were victims of speculation, in both cases falling into bankruptcy “when they followed the advice of the leading Szeged bank. To me it was hard then to understand how my grandfather, as a Szeged notary public, and my father, as a Szeged attorney, could fall into economic straits overnight.”26 This experience sheds light on his anti-liberalism and aversion to speculation.27 The logic forms a rightist underground stream: blaming the Depression, the banks, and speculation, and then turning toward state intervention. The rightist logic of the young Csikós-Nagy was shaped by the political culture of the 1930s, when the conservative liberalism of István Bethlen (head of government between 1921 and 1931) lost ground.28 The dominant figure of the 1930s was Gyula Gömbös, prime minister in 1932–36, who had stood out for his support of racial defense in the 1920s and later sought to place the working class on a “national footing.”29 Csikós-Nagy was undoubtedly swayed by the times, for Gömbös in 1933 openly advocated for a directed economy and proclaimed a “union of all social strata.”30 His successor, Kálmán Darányi (1936–38), tried to protect the masses, saying “the power of the state stands 25 Krisztián Ungváry, A Horthy-rendszer mérlege: Diszkrimináció, szociálpolitika és antiszemitiz­ mus Magyarországon, 1919–1944 (Pécs: Jelenkor, 2012), 71; Béla Csikós-Nagy, A termelékeny­ ség elméletének története: Különös tekintettel a nemzetgazdasági termelékenységre (Szeged: Városi Nyomda és Könyvkiadó, 1938), 15. 26 Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 254. 27 Csikós-Nagy, Nagytérgazdaság, 108. 28 Balázs Ablonczy, “Bethlen István és Teleki Pál konzervativizmusa,” in A magyar jobboldali hagyomány, 1900–1948, ed. Ignác Romsics (Budapest: Osiris, 2009), 167, 178 and 181. Bethlen also moved toward a directed market economy. See Ignác Romsics, “Bethlen István életpályája,” Kommentár, no. 5 (2013): 21. 29 Gömbös represented biological (not religion-based) racial protection. József Vonyó, “Gömbös Gyula jobboldali radikalizmusa,” in A magyar jobboldali hagyomány, 1900–1948, ed. Ignác Romsics (Budapest: Osiris, 2009), 251 and 254. 30 Gyula Gömbös, Válogatott beszédek és írások, ed. Vonyó József (Budapest: Osiris, 2004), 583–84.

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on the side of the weak,” for “we have seen that the principle of Manchester liberalism is wrong.”31 The subsequent prime minister, Béla Imrédy (1938– 39), envisaged the “annihilation” of the speculators.32

The historical school impact, Austro-fascist underground streams, and Marxist influences Csikós-Nagy’s early History of the Theory of Productivity (1938) was influenced by his professor, Tivadar Surányi-Unger, who had also started from philosophy in his approach to economics. The underground streams of following extraeconomic targets came to light in Csikós-Nagy’s works in 1969 and again in 2005. Csikós-Nagy and Surányi-Unger also dealt with the political and power factors that influenced economics.33 Another influence was the romantic teachings of the Austro-fascist Othmar Spann, whose universalism had initially enthused the Nazis. However, watched by the Gestapo since 1933, Spann was eventually arrested as he prepared to mark the Anschluss with his family as “the finest day of his life” (Csikós-Nagy cited him until 1938 but not after).34 Csikós-Nagy recalled studying Schumpeter, Ludwig von Mises, and Spann in Vienna up to 1938, but it is unlikely that Schumpeter or Mises had a great impact on him;35 instead, he was influenced far more strongly by the neo-Romantic Spann and his forerunner Adam Müller. “The correct basic principles of productivity were laid by the Romantics,” he wrote in reference to Spann 31 Pesti Napló, January 1, 1938, 2. 32 Pesti Hírlap, October 23, 1938, 6. 33 Tivadar Surányi-Unger, A gazdaságpolitika tudományos alapkérdései (Budapest: Grill, 1927), iv; Béla Csikós-Nagy, Bevezetés a gazdaságpolitikába (Budapest: Kossuth, 1969), 39 and 43; Csikós-Nagy, Közgazdaságtan a globalizáció világában, vol. 1, 71–73. 34 Robert Leonard, Von Neumann, Morgenstern, and the Creation of Game Theory: From Chess to Social Science, 1900–1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 82; Michael Hänel, “Exclusions and Inclusions of a Cosmopolitan Philosopher: The Case of Ernst Cassirer,” in Crossing Boundaries: The Exclusion and Inclusion of Minorities in Germany and the United States, ed. Larry Eugene Jones (Oxford; Berghahn Books, 2001), 127; Eric Voegelin, The Authoritari­ an State: An Essay on the Problem of the Austrian State, trans. Ruth Hein, ed. Gilbert Weiss, vol. 4 of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 15. 35 Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 279; Surányi-Unger, A gazdaságpolitika tudo­ mányos alapkérdései, iv. Had Csikós-Nagy been swayed by Mises, he would not have turned toward the Nazis. According to Shawn Ritenour, Mises’s works were exactly what diverted Röpke from socialism. See Shawn Ritenour, “Biography of Wilhelm Röpke (1899–1966): Humane Economist,” last modified August 1, 2007, https://mises.org/library/biography-wilhelm-ropke-1899-1966-humane-economist.

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and Müller in 1938. He focused not on “individual” profitability, but on pannational efficiency (or productivity). Müller subordinated business to the intrinsic ends of the state, which can be related to the “national goal” of Gömbös.36 Such arguments continued to be espoused by Csikós-Nagy as late as 1996. His economic nationalism derives from Georg Friedrich List, forerunner of the German historical school of economics marked by relativism, anti-rationalism extending beyond economics, evolutionism, and an organic outlook.37 Csikós-Nagy was not influenced exclusively by the romantic and the historical school in 1938. He condemned exploitation using the “human economy” concept of the “social biologist” Rudolf Goldscheid, and took Marx as “the preeminent figure in socialism.” So “the worker has a right to the rewards of all production,” the “surplus value” that entrepreneurs and capitalist exploitation expropriate.38 Nevertheless, the inclusion of Marxist thought in 1938 did not necessarily mean communism. The impact could come from elsewhere, as Marxian teachings were accepted in part by the Arrow Cross, the main exponents of the extreme right in Hungary, in preferring a command economy to the market.39 The 1945 swerve to the left by Csikós-Nagy can be traced to Spann, who saw the economy as “serving the goals of the society, the state . . . [and] the intellectual values of human existence.”40 He arrived from an idealist position to the same stance held by the materialist Marx: the supremacy of public interest over that of the individual. Csikós-Nagy thus easily switched world views after 1945. Public interest by then rested on another collective ideology, as Csikós-Nagy replaced Spann’s God-entity with the Marxist goal of a classless society. He had identified an earlier example of this transition occurring in reverse, saying that Spann’s anti-Marxism resembled Marxism, except that Spann “replaces matter with the leading role of the spirit.”41 In 1938 and in 2005, Csikós-Nagy returned to Johann Gottlieb Fichte, for whom unproductive employment did not exist, but who also argued that the

36 Csikós-Nagy, A termelékenység elméletének története, 14–16 and 21; János Gyurgyák, Ezzé lett magyar hazátok: A magyar nemzeteszme és nacionalizmus története (Budapest: Osiris, 2007), 251. 37 Negishi, History of Economic Theory, 16–17. 38 Csikós-Nagy, A termelékenység elméletének története, 12, 48–49. 39 Ungváry, A Horthy-rendszer mérlege, 316, 319. 40 János Sebestyén, Marx és Spann (Szeged: Ablaka Gy. Könyvnyomdája, 1941), 10. 41 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, A Kommunista Párt kiáltványa (Budapest: Kossuth, 1983), 58; Csikós-Nagy, A termelékenység elméletének története, 54.

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state should even out “gluts or shortages.”42 Add in Spann’s universalism: economics is “just part of a higher whole, society,” which is “in turn part of a higher entity and so on, to the Universe and apex of all: the Deity.” The state, in his formulation, is “an integral intellectual community adopting the individual’s cause,” while there is no “autarkic individual whose goals break the coherence of the whole.”43 In his 1940 work Hungarian Economic Self-Sufficiency, CsikósNagy likewise underlined the international division of labor, which “offers mankind optimum conditions for living.” In 1971, he again rejected self-sufficiency. Only the biggest states, he argued, could work on an “autarkic basis”; “the international division of labor resolves and makes proportionate what appears disproportionate in a national structure seen in an autarkic way.”44 He would argue similarly after the 1990 political transition, so that this truly marked the course of an underground stream in his intellectual career.

Berlin, 1939: A Nazi professor and a moral low point The pre-1945 Hungarian right was characterized by anti-liberalism, anti-Semitism, organic nationalism, etatism, anti-communism, and anti-democracy. The Great Depression, along with rivalry on the right and a challenge from the left, had dynamized Hungarian conservatism through reform.45 This was sensed by Csikós-Nagy, whose old conservative, Austro-fascist influences gave way in 1939 to reform conservative, national socialist ones: “The most varied currents of ideas were flowing across Europe and I was not entirely aloof from them. I surely made a good many mistakes.”46 In 1938 and 1939, while at the Collegium Hungaricum in Berlin on a scholarship from the Wirtschaftstag, a body for boosting German influence in Southeast Europe, he encountered the works of Friedrich von Gottl-Ottlilienfeld.47 The professor, who became a Nazi in his old age, reappeared in Csikós-Nagy’s writings in 1999, where his 42 Csikós-Nagy, A termelékenység elméletének története, 14–15; Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, mod­ ernizáció, 259; Csikós-Nagy, Közgazdaságtan a globalizáció világában, vol. 2, 57. 43 Sebestyén, Marx és Spann, 8–10. 44 Béla Csikós-Nagy, Magyar gazdasági önellátás (Szeged: A M. Kir. Ferencz József Tudományegyetem Jog- és Államtudományi Intézetének Kiadványai, 1940), 4–6; Béla Csikós-Nagy, Mag­ yar gazdaságpolitika (Budapest: Kossuth, 1971), 161. 45 János M. Rainer, “A magyar jobboldal és a szovjet típusú rendszer—közelítések és hipotézisek,” in Búvópatakok—A feltárás (Budapest: OSZK–1956-os Intézet Alapítvány, 2012), 26–28. 46 Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 258–59. 47 In 1935, he was head of the economics department of the German national socialist lawyers’ association. Csikós-Nagy, Magyar gazdasági önellátás, 1; István Arató, Béla Csikós-Nagy, and

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pre-1933, universalist works were quoted: in Gottl’s formulation, economic activity meant simply attending to the whole.48 Csikós-Nagy distinguished in 1939 between lower-level (personal) and higher-level (collective) activity, singling out the völkisch (German Nazi) politics, the Italian fascist state politics, and the Hungarian national/nationalist politics. On the primacy of politics, he saw “the aim of all political activity in the political ideal,” namely, the German people, Italian state, and Hungarian nation. “This ‘single’ higher-level goal or communal ideal,” Csikós-Nagy argued, was the purpose of political leadership. Science too succumbed to politics, even if it was national socialist. At the end of the millennium, he noted more cautiously that economists “do not work in a politics-free environment,” and also acknowledged the existence of non-evaluative economics.49 The moral nadir of his career came in 1939, when he and fellow scholars in Berlin wrote a pamphlet (the so-called White Book) against the historian Iván Lajos, targeting Lajos’s prewar Gray Book in which he foresaw German defeat.50 The pamphlet roundly criticized Lajos, whose “biggest crime” was to “infect Hungarian public opinion with the work of Jews and Marxists who had fled Germany.”51 Prime Minister Pál Teleki, partly under Arrow Cross pressure, banned the Gray Book, though he may have been among the funders of the publication.52 Nonetheless, the rejoinder by Csikós-Nagy and his henchmen served the prime minister well, as the foreword told of Hungarian loyalty to Berlin.53 The arguments in the White Book were not completely uniform: according to a scenario that would eventually vindi-

48

49 50 51 52 53

Tibor Török, Válasz a Szürke könyvre (Berlin: Magyar Nemzeti Front, 1939), 4; Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 279. Béla Csikós-Nagy, “Közgazdaságtan a globalizálódó világban,” Magyar Tudomány 44, no. 9 (1999): 1027. Gottl wrote in 1926 on “Fordism”: “white” or “leader socialism.” The Fordist method admired by the Nazis also fit the theory of “non-capitalist private ownership.” See Ingar Solty, “Hundert Jahre Fordismus,” Junge Welt, August 16, 2013, 10. Csikós-Nagy, “A gazdálkodás (ökonomia) tanának új megalapozása,” 260–61; Csikós-Nagy, Közgazdaságtan a globalizáció világában, vol. 1, 71–72. Iván Lajos, Németország háborús esélyei a német szakirodalom tükrében (Pécs: Dunántúl Pécsi Egyetemi Könyvkiadó és Nyomda, 1939). Arató et al, Válasz a Szürke könyvre, 5, 9, and 17. Balázs Ablonczy, Teleki Pál (Budapest: Osiris, 2005), 482–83. Legitimate funding also occurred. Gábor Murányi, Egy epizodista főszerepe: Lajos Iván történész élete és halála (Budapest: Noran, 2006), 88. Arató et al, Válasz a Szürke könyvre, 3; Béla Török, A XX. század sodrában (Székesfehérvár: Alba Civitas Történeti Alapítvány, 2012), 114 and 118.

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cate Lajos, if Germany were blockaded, American resources would tip victory toward the West.54 The weight attached to the pamphlet was made clear in 1946, when charges of a crime against the people were brought against Csikós-Nagy, who by then held a leading post at the Economic High Council under the communist Zoltán Vas. His career was interrupted, but he was cleared of the criminal charges in 1948.55

Start of a forty-five-year government career and the underlying dilemma of planning (1939–53) Upon his return from Berlin in 1939, at the first great turning point in his life, Csikós-Nagy actually confirmed the theses of Lajos, but only in secret. That year, Teleki had founded the Economic Studies Department (Gaz­ daságtanulmányi Osztály, GTO) of the Prime Minister’s Office. It was headed by Surányi-Unger, who called in the sociologist Gyula Rézler as well as Csikós-Nagy. Early in the war the GTO, at Teleki’s request, calculated that the Germans had sufficient raw materials to fight up to the end of 1943.56 Rézler edited a sociographic volume for the GTO entitled The Hungarian Large-Scale Industrial Workforce; its contributors included Rudolf Nőtel, a later colleague of Röpke, and Vilmos Olti, later a hanging judge under the Soviet-type system. In the volume’s foreword, Surányi-Unger explained the need to survey the situation, because “the low income-distribution strata will increase their pressure for a larger hunk of bread once the noise of war is over.”57 Csikós-Nagy himself wrote on the subject of the leather industry, occasionally employing a Marxist tone in parts, as he noted that the “manufacturing industry is steadily extracting the leather-making tools from the tanner’s hands and planting him in a factory” as a skilled worker. He noted that wages fell in 1931–38, although he praised the reform conservative government for the fact that from 1939 both the minimum wage and regulation of working hours improved (the Darányi government in 1939 intro54 Sándor Révész, “Tényelhárítás, hőselhárítás,” Beszélő 11, no. 9 (2006), accessed June 4, 2022, http://beszelo.c3.hu/cikkek/tenyelharitas-hoselharitas. 55 Csikós-Nagy’s promotion was opposed by Ernő Gerő: “The pamphlet affair must be closed first.” Murányi, Egy epizodista főszerepe, 82–85. 56 György Lengyel, “Beszélgetés Rézler Gyulával,” Szociológiai Szemle, no. 1 (2002): 80–81. 57 Tivadar Surányi-Unger, “Előszó,” in Magyar gyári munkásság: Szociális helyzetkép, ed. Gyula Rézler (Budapest: Pester Lloyd, 1940), 5.

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duced a minimum wage, except in agriculture, along with an eight-hour working day and paid vacations).58 The development of reform conservatism was not uniform: historian Gyula Szekfű was open to ideas from the left, Teleki to those from the right. Csikós-Nagy worked under Béla Imrédy, then governor of the national bank, on the 1938 Győr Program,59 which Teleki and Surányi-Unger treated as a five-year plan, and after 1945 was seen as preparation for war. Others saw it as a program of economic development, following the Polish and Czech patterns of funding promising industries. Surányi-Unger stressed the production/consumption antithesis at the time as the dilemma of planning.60 By 1940, Csikós-Nagy wanted to reduce surplus purchasing power, lest the armament process cause inflation. When Reményi-Schneller spoke of consumption curbs in 1941, Csikós-Nagy looked to Moscow and its consumption-curbing industrialization, with which the Soviet Union had avoided the Depression.61 Csikós-Nagy did not alter his views after the war. During the stabilization of the forint in 1946 (which meant halting one of the highest hyperinflation rates in history), consumption was curbed by regulating prices and wages. When rationing was abolished in 1950, he worked on a 20 percent cut in real wages. Mátyás Rákosi then threatened him: whatever would be leaked in advance about price increases, Rákosi stated, could only come from CsikósNagy. As he spoke, he mimed a noose around his neck. “That was the most perilous period in my active life,” Csikós-Nagy later recalled.62 58 Béla Csikós-Nagy, “A bőrgyári munkásság,” in Magyar gyári munkásság: Szociális helyzetkép, ed. Gyula Rézler (Budapest: Pester Lloyd, 1940), 108 and 110–15; Levente Püski, A Horthykorszak, 1920–1941 (Budapest: Kossuth, 2010), 75–76; Ignác Romsics, ed., Magyarország tör­ ténete (Budapest: Akadémiai, 2010), 817; Ungváry, A Horthy-rendszer mérlege, 179. 59 Ungváry, A Horthy-rendszer mérlege, 328. The Győr program was announced on March 5, 1938, by Prime Minister Kálmán Darányi. The program provided for a state investment of 1 billion pengős, and as such is considered as the beginning of the Hungarian rearmament before World War II. At the time, it was also referred to as a “five-year plan.” According to Ungváry, “it was the first openly plan-like economic measure” in Hungary, which also raised the “Jewish question” as a source for funding of the program. Krisztián Ungváry, A Horthy-rendszer és antiszemitizmusának mérlege: Diszkrimináció és társadalompolitika Magyarországon. 1919– 1944, 3rd. rev. ed. (Budapest: Jelenkor Kiadó, 2017), 211. 60 Csikós-Nagy, Magyar gazdasági önellátás, 21; Tivadar Surányi-Unger, “Átmenetgazdasági alapelvek,” Közgazdasági Szemle 85, no. 1–2 (1942): 4–5, 7, and 17–23; Miklós Szabó, “Az aranytojást tojó tyúk történetéhez: Piacelvű gazdasági tervezés a Horthy-kori politikai publicisztikában,” in Politikai kultúra Magyarországon, 1896–1986 (Budapest: ELTE–MKKE, 1989), 220–22. 61 Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 257; Béla Csikós-Nagy, A szovjetgazdaság három Achilles sarka (Szeged: Szeged városi nyomda rt., 1941), 16–17; Pesti Hírlap, February 7, 1941, 3. 62 Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 269.

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His outlook moved in 1953 in favor of consumption. In the fall of that year, he wrote a study backing Prime Minister Imre Nagy’s push for a rise in the standard of living.63 After 1956, he served the standard of living policy of a new party leader, János Kádár, and in 1958, the year of Nagy’s execution, he noted that “in abandoning the error of too rapid industrialization, the central task became to raise the living standard and enhance the care of the people in general.” He did not return after 1990 to favoring the realm of production, yet saw imports of some products with liberalization as luxury consumption.64

Economic design with racial logic: Planning and the command economy The Győr Program of 1938 marked the outset of planning in economic policy, not of a planned economy. For Prime Minister Darányi, the “plan” was important in another way: he thought the “Jewish question” could be resolved “only in a planned and lawful way.” At that point, conservatism moved beyond equality of civil rights. Economic planning and the “Jewish question” became coupled: the billion pengő needed for the program was found mainly by taxing the manufacturing industry, so that half of public spending was covered by people of Jewish origin.65 The steady erosion of equal civil rights continued under premiers Imrédy (1938–39) and Teleki (1939–41). Teleki’s anti-Semitism, anti-democratism, and his sacrifice of equal rights “gained respectability in the thinking of the Hungarian conservative tradition.”66 He drew no sharp divide between right and extreme right, yet moved against the Arrow Cross,67 and saw independence as important, which also impressed Csikós-Nagy. His 1940 study The Relationship between Race and Economy in the New German Economic Literature quoted Nazis “on the 63 János M. Rainer, Nagy Imre, 1953–1958: Politikai életrajz II. (Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 1999), 129; Béla Csikós-Nagy, “A helyi ipar feladatai az új kormányprogramm keretében,” Állam és Igazgatás, no. 10–11 (1953): 27. 64 Csikós-Nagy, Árpolitika az átmeneti gazdaságban, 10; Béla Csikós-Nagy, A XX. század magyar gazdaságpolitikája: Tanulságok az ezredforduló küszöbén (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1996), 289–90. 65 Randolph L. Braham, A népirtás politikája: a holocaust Magyarországon; 2. bővített és átdolgo­ zott kiadás (Budapest: Belvárosi Kvk, 1997), 119; Ungváry, A Horthy-rendszer mérlege, 180–81. 66 Gyurgyák, Ezzé lett magyar hazátok, 381–82. 67 Rudolf Paksa, “Erős kézzel a rendszer ellenfeleivel szemben: A hatalom és a szélsőjobb a Horthy-korban,” Rubicon, no. 9–10 (2013): 15–35 and 23.

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bankruptcy of traditional economic thinking” and “the racial foundation of the new thinking.”68 However, influenced by reform conservatism, he rejected racial biology: “The concept of the Hungarian national economy cannot be explained solely from the biological point of view.”69 Teleki sympathized with the idea of a centralized state and gave a 1941 speech on the “natural character” of a planned economy and the creation of industrial cities. According to historian Krisztián Ungváry, Hungary “in some sense” had turned into a managed planned economy by 1939.70 Nor did the Hungarian extreme right entirely reject planning: some saw the solution in state socialism and the redistribution of Jewish wealth. While Csikós-Nagy might have been familiar with the views on a planned economy held by Arrow Cross leader Ferenc Szálasi and party propagandist and ideologue Ödön Málnási, in his case the influence of national socialist ideas can be dated to after his scholarship in Berlin—thus what linked Csikós-Nagy to the Arrow Cross’s economic ideas was the commonly held German “intellectual founts.” Ungváry sees in Csikós-Nagy an example of the kinship of extreme right and extreme left economic policy, as he had a singular interest from all systems: a  regulated planned economy. Although he made a statement confirming this after 1945, he began in 1953 to move from the state toward the market.71 Thus the underground stream in his case is not a preference for a command economy (which he advocated only temporarily in 1948–53) but planning as such. Csikós-Nagy’s underground stream can be linked to a 1941 speech by Finance Minister Reményi-Schneller. His old chief spoke of two methods for a “program of planned economic activity”: “One was to say in advance what had to be produced, in what quantity and quality, and in what time.” This, in Reményi-Schneller’s conception, was “Russian” planning. The other type was the German/Italian method of following broad guidelines and “main targets.”72 Like Reményi-Schneller, Csikós-Nagy supported the latter. He wrote in 1942, in relation to German “non-total” planning, of an “economy regulated in a planned way,” looser than the Soviet one, and where market elements and pri68 69 70 71

Csikós-Nagy, “A faj és a gazdaság viszonya az új német gazdaságelméleti irodalomban,” 52. Csikós-Nagy, “A faj és a gazdaság viszonya az új német gazdaságelméleti irodalomban,” 56. Ungváry, A Horthy-rendszer mérlege, 417. Ungváry, A Horthy-rendszer mérlege, 328–30; ÁBTL (Historical Archive of the State Security Services), O–8757 “Szervező,” 88. See Csikós-Nagy, Szocializmus, piac, gazdaság, 276. 72 Pesti Hírlap, February 7, 1941, 3.

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vate business remained. In 1943, he was stressing not “rigid, consistent observance of timed deadlines and quantities,” but a flexible understanding of proportions and trends.73 Likewise, in his 1941 work Three Achilles’ Heels of the Soviet Economy, he underlined that “a planned economy can never be an end in itself; for that reason there must be a limit even to a planned economy that embraces imperialistic aims—for such too may be justified—beyond which the people’s rightful conditions of life cannot be guaranteed.” He placed the problem with the socialist planned economy: “in its essence,” planned economic activity relies on organization, but “the Russian people, inept at organizing, overly organize their economic life.”74 In 1941, he pointed to something János Kornai would later analyze: the main problem with the socialist planned economy was over-centralization. But Csikós-Nagy, unlike Kornai, was analyzing not peacetime production, but Moscow’s military vulnerability. The Soviet planned economy was never devoid of mistakes, and although they could be overcome, new ones appeared. “That is the eternal, inescapable dilemma of the inertly planned economy.”75 Nonetheless, Csikós-Nagy’s opportunism appears in what he wrote in 1948, when he was employed at the National Planning Office: the economy of a people’s democracy is of a socialist type and so “cannot exist without a planned economy.”76 In the 1960s, Csikós-Nagy switched again: he suggested that an end to “petty directing” could allow faster, more efficient growth, though he also stressed the need for state planning and planned economic management. At that time, planned activity denoted influencing firms with regulations and he saw planning in terms of the 1938 productivity/profitability pair of opposites: “In addition to profitability measured at the microeconomic level, there is an independent efficiency measured at the macroeconomic level.” Then, as in 1942–43, he spoke again of planned activity,77 writing about the organic ties of national economic efficiency, as he had in the 1930s. This continuity went unnoticed by those unfamiliar with his earlier works. It also anticipated his 1987 work on the socialist market economy: the owner73 Csikós-Nagy, Nagytérgazdaság, 58 and 65; Csikós-Nagy, Kapitalizmus vagy kollektivizmus?, 3–6. 74 Csikós-Nagy, A szovjetgazdaság három Achilles sarka, 20–22. 75 János Kornai, A gazdasági vezetés túlzott központosítása: 2. kiad (Budapest: KJK, 1990), 5; Csikós-Nagy, A szovjetgazdaság három Achilles sarka, 22–24 and 37. 76 Béla Csikós-Nagy, Helyi iparunk a fejlődés útján (Budapest: Könnyűipari, 1954), 69. 77 Béla Csikós-Nagy, “Gazdasági mechanizmusunk fejlesztésének főbb kérdései,” Közgazdasági Szemle 17, no. 4 (1970): 450; Csikós-Nagy, Magyar gazdaságpolitika, 29.

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ship relations differ, but both the capitalist and the socialist economies have a market framework.78 As reactions to the 1968 economic reforms rallied, Csikós-Nagy was among those adapting to a harder line: the regulators “could only be operated in a way consistent with the plan” and directed by the planning office. He dismissed the exclusive use of either directives or incentives and advanced the idea of “pressurizing” enterprises.79 However, others argued that regulator guidance simply replaced plan bargaining with regulator bargaining, which still rested on bureaucratic coordination, as firms remained state-owned.80 Nevertheless, he did not abandon reforms entirely. While admitting in 1971 that “the people’s economic plan is the basis for central direction of the economy,” he emphasized the importance of direction through regulators. The reform, he claimed, had brought a mean annual growth increase of 1.2 percentage points. To his mind, it was no solution amid global problems (such as the volatile price of oil) to use a mechanism that “simply ends the imperative to respond to world economic impulses.” He sought reforms in which price could play “an orienting part in economic decisions.”81 Real change came in the 1980s. Csikós-Nagy argued for a socialist market economy that “does not dispute planning, but denies the exclusive savior role of plan directives.” In line with Kornai, he stated that planned economic activity was desirable “if the means of production are publicly owned,” just as a market economy is necessary “if socialist society is not to end goods production.” Of course, Kornai shows it was different in practice: in 1985, the price authority made 14,311 checks and set several hundred thousand prices per year.82

From one central price control to another As minister of economy, Reményi-Schneller successfully attacked the GTO, so much so that it existed only up to 1941.83 This did not bother Csikós-Nagy, 78 Csikós-Nagy, Bevezetés a gazdaságpolitikába, 22 and 46. 79 Csikós-Nagy, “Gazdasági mechanizmusunk fejlesztésének főbb kérdései,” 449 and 456–57. 80 Károly Attila Soós, Terv, kampány, pénz: Szabályozás és konjunktúraciklusok Magyarországon és Jugoszláviában (Budapest: KJK–Kossuth, 1986), 27 and 135–40; on the link between ownership and coordination mechanism, see János Kornai, A szocialista rendszer: Kritikai politi­ kai gazdaságtan (Budapest: Heti Világgazdaság Kiadói Rt., 1993), 472–75. 81 Csikós-Nagy, Magyar gazdaságpolitika, 32; Csikós-Nagy, A magyar árpolitika, 72–74 and 78. 82 Kornai, A szocialista rendszer, 132, 536 and 545; Csikós-Nagy, Szocializmus, piac, gazdaság, 8–9. 83 Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 255.

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as he found a job at the finance ministry through Béla Rényi, deputy head of the economics department, where he became a supernumerary dealing with pricing matters in the unfolding war economy. From 1939, he worked as a government commissioner for prices until the Material Control Office was created in 1942. At the time he was framing the finance ministry’s positions on pricing matters. According to Ungváry, centralization anticipated post-1945 economic control, and state redistribution also appeared.84 In 1957, Csikós-Nagy reorganized the National Price Control Office, in what some saw as a revival of the price control system of the Horthy period.85 Yet, Csikós-Nagy began liberalizing as early as in 1953, and in 1957 joined in the economic reform experiment led by István Varga, with whom he had worked on the stabilization of the forint in 1946. In 1957, he supported the move to free purchasing prices in agriculture.86 After the Price Control Office was formed, he was asked what purpose it had. He responded: “To work, to create conditions where such an office is not needed,” for in his view price setting was not an intrinsic element of the socialist planned economy. Márta Nagy, his former colleague and vice president of the Business Competition Office after 1990, saw Csikós-Nagy as “far ahead of his time” in seeking to abolish the Price Control Office from within, on the grounds that “nobody can set prices better than the market.”87 More doubtful is whether Csikós-Nagy thought that way in the post-1956 reprisal period. He moved toward liberalism (cutting subsidies to heavy industry in 1959), but conceded that “this is not yet the time to make clear progress toward freeing prices.”88 There was continuity in Hungarian pricing policy between the 1930s/1940s and the 1950s, but centralization first rose, then fell again between 1931 and 1953.

1942 and the economy of the Großraum: slogans of the 2010s The extreme right in Hungary regained strength in the 1930s. Liberalism was supplanted by national socialism under Szálasi’s new “global order,” and a new 84 Ungváry, A Horthy-rendszer mérlege, 416 and 418–19; Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modern­ izáció, 255. 85 Csaba Dupcsik, “A ‘tüdő hangszerelése,’ tömeges rablógyilkosság és a trappista sajt-paradigma,” Socio.hu, no. 4 (2013): 172–73. 86 Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 265, 267, 270–71. 87 Csikós-Nagy, Szocializmus, piac, gazdaság, 8; József Péter Martin, Tiszta verseny: Interjúk a Gazdasági Versenyhivatal 20 évéről (Budapest: GVH, 2010), 34. 88 Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 271–72.

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world system replaced nation-states. Key concepts included “Lebensraum,” “politico-economic Großraum,”89 and the “leading nation” (vezetőnép, that is, the leading people).90 With respect to the latter, Csikós-Nagy substituted “leading states.” By 1941 he was publishing extremist pieces,91 but in his most contentious book, The Economy of the Großraum (1942), the Großraum notion he employed was the most important of Szálasi’s key concepts. The book was not wholly successful in its time. István Varga, director of the Hungarian Institute of Economic Research and later a decisive figure in the stabilization of the forint, was among one of its critics.92 Csikós-Nagy opposed the term Lebensraum, although it does appear in his work.93 Szálasi envisaged three Großräume (in Europe, Asia, and America) which also appear in the writings of Csikós-Nagy,94 although he analyzed the British and Soviet systems, not just that of the Nazis. For the latter, he used the attribute völkisch (in Hungarian, népi), dubbing the German system one of “völkisch worker rule”: Berlin, “in developing the Großraum economy,” defined, in his view, “the underlying criteria for the politico-economic lines of the New Europe.” This “promised new working areas and more favorable living conditions” for the Hungarians. The system of völkisch worker rule did not deny the importance of capital but placed work at the fore. Its two principles were the right to work and the right to livelihood, leading to constraints on private ownership within the bounds set by völkisch interest. After 1945, he again underlined the importance of full employment for the state socialist system.95 In 1942, he stressed the protection of small states as distinct from colonies. He admitted that leadership belonged to Berlin and Rome, but “that cannot mean great power imperialism,” nor could the result involve “ceding national independence.” These additional caveats were influenced by domestic reform conservatism. A “member-state within a grossräumige division of labor” is an economic unit, but a colony is “an auxiliary territory of the moth89 In this context, the overall sphere of influence of a great power. 90 Krisztián Ungváry, “Szálasi Ferenc,” in Trianon és a magyar politikai gondolkodás: 1920–1953, ed. Ignác Romsics (Budapest: Osiris, 1998), 123; Gyurgyák, Ezzé lett magyar hazátok, 271–72. 91 He had praise for Hitler: see Csikós-Nagy, A szovjetgazdaság három Achilles sarka, 3–4. 92 Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 258. 93 Csikós-Nagy, Nagytérgazdaság, 37–38 and 149. 94 Csikós-Nagy, Nagytérgazdaság, 61–71 and 130–31. 95 Csikós-Nagy, Nagytérgazdaság, 4 and 55–57; Csikós-Nagy, Az értéktörvény szerepe a szocialis­ ta gazdaságban, 6.

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er country.”96 (Szálasi too wished to abolish colonial systems.97) After the war he wrote of the breakup of the colonial system, where “capitalists of Western Europe and North America exploit the Third World.”98 The slogan for the Orbán regime’s “war of independence” from the EU and the IMF after 2010 was “We won’t be a colony!”99 This has no direct link to the works of CsikósNagy, but the schematic arguments are related. The Nazi treatment of Axis countries’ currencies was opposed by CsikósNagy as “even less fair than the gold standard,” as the leading country “would gain unearned advantage from it.”100 It could be assumed that he was simply talking of regional economic integration in 1942, but this is not the case. He opposed the currency union with a mixture of Marxism and racialism: the variation in productivity among states, he argued, “also relates in a sense to their racial characteristics.” He proposed distinguishing between the leading and national currencies, whereby all exchange rates would be tied to the leading currency.101 Hitler opposed pan-European plans, and in relation to a draft commissioned by Göring, the German economic minister, Walther Funk, criticized those who fantasized about the great economic sphere of a united Europe. It is hard to say whether Csikós-Nagy over-fulfilled expectations with his Großraum emphasis or met them. After all, Funk rejected the plan of Göring’s people for all currencies of Central Europe to gain a “uniform basis” and all customs tariffs to be abolished.102 Csikós-Nagy’s view was closer to those of Hitler than Göring: he backed protective tariffs between the Großraum and some states, but rejected a customs union.103

Csikós-Nagy, Nagytérgazdaság, 61 and 68–72. Ungváry, “Szálasi Ferenc,” 123. Béla Csikós-Nagy, Új árforradalom árnyékában (Budapest: Kossuth, 1978), 125. “Participants in the peace march marched behind the slogan ‘We won’t be a colony!’ I fully agree with the peace march—our work is aimed at ensuring that Hungary really never becomes a colony.” See Viktor Orbán’s response to Zoltán Balczó, Országgyűlési Napló [Minutes of the National Assembly], May 27, 2013. See also Orbán’s speech on March 15, 2012, quoted in “Orbán Viktor: Nem leszünk gyarmat,” Magyar Hírlap, March 16, 2012, 1. 100 Csikós-Nagy, Nagytérgazdaság, 80–81. 101 Csikós-Nagy, Nagytérgazdaság, 99–100. 102 Pál Pritz, “‘Új Európa’: Német propaganda és béketervek—Sztálingrád előtt,” Századok 132, no. 6 (1998): 1238–40. 103 Between states that differ strongly in economic structure and social and technical development, “a customs union must lead to economic imperialism by the leading industrial state. The idea of a European customs union . . . was a liberal effort, an economic expression of pan-European ideology.” Csikós-Nagy, Nagytérgazdaság, 91–92. 96 97 98 99

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In 1996, Csikós-Nagy’s prewar skepticism returned with the prospects of joining the EU and the Economic and Monetary Union. He cited List’s economic nationalism and saw the liberalization urged by the IMF as overreaching. However, in his view this had not been foisted upon the country, for it matched the views of the financially minded politicians running Hungary’s economic policy. An equivalent to Csikós-Nagy’s antagonism toward bankers and financiers appeared in the post-2010 Fidesz-led government: the post of the finance minister was abolished, replaced by a minister of national economy, and moves made against the banks in a wave of twenty-first century plebeian conservatism.104 Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, furthermore, spoke out in 2011 against the IMF interfering in Hungarian economic policy.105

Nationalization or privatization: issues in 1943 and after 2010 “One cannot talk of collectivism or state socialism” in the German national socialist system, Csikós-Nagy stated in 1943. He underlined the “supra-state” position of the political leaders, asserting that “economic policy is not a state function here.” Instead, the political leaders decided on the basis of public interest “what tasks qualified as the state’s and what lay within the sphere of private enterprise.” The state had to take on a task in cases where “it appeared necessary in the interest of the people.” Furthermore, a task “originally belonging to the state might pass into the competence of private firms.” The aim was neither the growth of either the public nor the private sector.106 This is echoed in the actions of the Hungarian right-wing regime of the 2010s. They did engage in state socialist transformation, but their interventions were highly targeted: for instance, the repurchase made of the Hungarian gas sector from the German firm E.On. What applied to expropriated private pension funds or centralized school textbook supplies was nationalization-cum-state control. With the latter, the state secretary for public ed104 The expression has been used to describe the politics of Fidesz since 2002: see Gergely Egedy, “Patríciusok és plebejusok: Változatok nemzetépítésre,” Kommentár, no. 5 (2013): 5. 105 Csikós-Nagy, A XX. század magyar gazdaságpolitikája, 229, 272, 277 and 281–82; In December 2011, Orbán declared that “if the IMF takes control of the country, then we, the people with nationalist sentiments, are not needed here. But that is not the case.” “Orbán: Ha az IMF irányítása alá kerül az ország, akkor ránk semmi szükség,” Világgazdaság, December 22, 2012, https://www.vg.hu/vilaggazdasag-magyar-gazdasag/2011/12/orban-ha-az-imf-iranyitasa-alakerul-az-orszag-akkor-rank-semmi-szukseg (accessed April 22, 2023). 106 Csikós-Nagy, Kapitalizmus vagy kollektivizmus?, 2–3; Csikós-Nagy, Nagytérgazdaság, 57.

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ucation, Rózsa Hoffmann, opined that “less choice also gives a cheaper answer,” an approach typifying not only anti-liberalism in education policy, but also views on competition policy.107 There are parallels with the anti-competition views of Csikós-Nagy in 1942, or with the 1941 view of ReményiSchneller: “Superfluous and unjustified intermediary hands and speculative profit that drive up prices must be eliminated, for retaining them does not make for honest commercial policy.”108 The Orbán government used a mix of nationalization and privatization with the creation of “national” tobacco stores: only selected private firms could operate in this reorganized slice of the retail sector. Returning to Csikós-Nagy, he travelled from the “sickly competition” of 1942, through advocating competition, to finding new faults in 1996,109 but he did not go so far as to turn against the free market. His views on competition policy changed ceaselessly. He had long been one of the country’s experts in the field of economic competition, which was the result of a paradoxical situation. It was most likely his knowledge of languages, expertise, and Horthy-era education that predestined him in the eyes of the economic leadership to be entrusted with competition policy during the economic reform.110 In the course of this, he argued that “economic competition calls for special legal protection,” the importance of anti-monopoly laws, and a ban on unfair competition. He was also able to write about this after 1990, and duly did so: the ideas recur in a 2005 work.111 Of course, there were no competitive markets in Hungarian industry in the 1970s and 1980s, and reforms remained largely on paper. But most of the top managers of the post1990 Business Competition Office came from the Price Control Office that Csikós-Nagy had led.112

107 “A tankönyvellátó rendszer megújítása,” Magyarország Kormánya, YouTube, accessed May 26, 2022, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWiFBGBDRxc 108 Pesti Hírlap, February 7, 1941, 3. 109 Csikós-Nagy, A XX. század magyar gazdaságpolitikája, 302. 110 Csikós-Nagy, Magyar gazdaságpolitika, 494–95. 111 Csikós-Nagy, Bevezetés a gazdaságpolitikába, 115; Csikós-Nagy, Közgazdaságtan a globalizáció világában, vol. 1, 149. 112 Csikós-Nagy’s ex-employees were Mrs. György Boytha, vice president of the Business Competition Office (1991–2000); András Bodócsi, Competition Council member (1991–2009); and Márta Nagy, vice president of the Business Competition Office (1997–2009). Martin, Tiszta verseny, 19, 30, 40 and 70.

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1944–46: passive resistance, survival, and a new career start; forint stabilization Csikós-Nagy’s finance ministry period as a German rapporteur lasted until Berlin in the summer of 1944 demanded him to be excluded from handling German affairs. He explained this during questioning in 1945, sketching how he resisted the efforts by the German-oriented Surányi-Unger, his teacher and former superior.113 But in 1995, he neglected to mention his time as a German rapporteur. In 1942, he appeared as an adviser to Reményi-Schneller; then, as general secretary of the Economic Information Bureau under the Kállay government, he weighed the chances of a lost war and prepared for the future. Following the 1944 German occupation, he noted in a book written jointly with Rézler and László Hantos that “Hungarian industry must look far more to the East than it did.” Planned industrial development could not hurt Western industry, but would depend on “Eastward industrialization.”114 It is hard to reenact the events of the second half of 1944. In 1945, CsikósNagy said he had been offered the post of secretary of the central committee of the bloc of resistance organizations, with endorsement from the central resistance figure Endre Bajcsy-Zsilinszky, but declined because of the “exceptionable literary works of his youth,” lest “the movement incur attack through me and be weakened” (which sounds more like post factum self-justification). Still, he admitted to cooperating in ministry sabotage. In November 1944, he fled from the authorities.115 His 1945 version is backed by a later state security report.116 Rézler too stated that Csikós-Nagy had taken refuge with the writer János Kodolányi. As Rézler put it, “he also became involved somehow, partly to save his own skin, as he was quite right-wing minded.”117 The next piece of data has Csikós-Nagy, a secretary at the finance ministry, being questioned by the political police in 1945 on his role in the 1939 pamphlet affair. Five earlier books of his were proscribed at that time.118 113 Budapest Főváros Levéltára (Budapest City Archives, hereafter BFL), no. 1621/1945: 29, 30 and 51. 114 Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 255–56; Béla Csikós-Nagy, László Hantos, and Gyula Rézler, Magyar gazdasági élet (Budapest: Király, 1944), 310–11. 115 BFL Nb. 1621/1945. 49–51. 116 O–8757 “Szervező”; BM (Interior Ministry) subdep. V/4; “Halász” “Ü.” Report of July 6, 1954, 151. 117 Lengyel, “Beszélgetés Rézler Gyulával,” 78–79. 118 The banned books were A német honvédő gazdaság irodalma [The literature of the German defense economy] (1939), A szovjetgazdaság három Achilles-sarka (1941), Nagytérgazdaság (1942),

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This interrogation could have become dangerous, but two of his superiors, Béla Rényi and ministry secretary Lajos Dömös, gave evidence on his behalf. He was lucky as well: Rényi took Csikós-Nagy with him to a meeting about an economic racket, with the communist Zoltán Vas, general secretary of the Economic High Council (Gazdasági Főtanács, GF). During the talks, Vas handed a report to Rényi, who did not know what to make of it, but Csikós-Nagy saw the situation immediately and gave Vas a lecture on how the authors of the report should be fired. The explanation reassured Vas so much that he tore up the report and asked Csikós-Nagy to come and work for the secretariat of the GF. Csikós-Nagy began to bargain and managed to gain promotion to the position of ministry adviser in exchange. That is how he joined the GF, although he would describe it as false hearsay that Vas ever saved him from the clutches of state security.119 István Hetényi, who would go on to become finance minister, recalled that Vas was never an independent operator in economic policy. He was “seen as shock troops. The factotum beside him was Béla Csikós-Nagy, who organized everything.”120 He took part in running the credit distribution committee of the National Bank of Hungary, which may be where he met István Varga, who during the war had criticized Csikós-Nagy’s Economy of the Großraum.121 Their expertise was much needed in subsequent decades. Csikós-Nagy was already acting as a communist expert when he took part in the 1946 forint stabilization alongside Varga, president of the Price Control Office at the time. This succeeded because, from their knowledge of wartime conditions, they set prices and wages that kept consumption under control. The wage level in 1946 did not exceed half of the 1938 figure in real terms: they had cut the standard of living.122 Having survived the events of 1945, Csikós-Nagy moved from the GF to the National Planning Office (Országos Tervhivatal, OT). He steadily lost status in 1948 and 1949. As GF deputy general secretary, he had worked alongside Vas, but at the OT he was merely a head of division, then “sidelined” as A faj és a gazdaság viszonya az új német gazdaságelméleti irodalomban (1940), and Kapitaliz­ mus vagy kollektivizmus? (1943). 119 Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 260–61. Csikós-Nagy denied having been arrested: see Népszabadság, July 12, 2002. 120 Éva Voszka, “Beszélgetések Hetényi Istvánnal (2.)” Hetényi Kör, June 6, 2012, http://hetenyikor.blog.hu/2012/06/06/voszka_eva_beszelgetesek_hetenyi_istvannal_457. 121 ÁBTL, FM-ügy, V-86000/42, 58–59, 77, 251 and 275. 122 Csikós-Nagy, A magyar árpolitika, 31.

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head of the advisory college. Initially, he had not been a lightweight at the OT: the Economics Division was its brains trust, at least according to Hetényi. Csikós-Nagy was thus the brains trust head, although major matters of economic policy were decided at the party center (primarily by Central Committee member Ernő Gerő).123 György Lázár, who would subsequently become prime minister, remembers the sidelining of Csikós-Nagy: in his recollection, Zoltán Vas became head of the OT and kept on all the GF staff. As GF head, Csikós-Nagy “was not arrested, but dismissed and placed elsewhere on vigilance grounds.”124 According to Lajos Trajanovits, a finance ministry official, Csikós-Nagy was intimidated and blackmailed for his prewar Arrow Cross party membership by senior state security officer József Száberszki.125 Confirming his opportunism, Csikós-Nagy wrote in 1951 of the “ceaseless battle against the internal and external enemy,”126 though he himself had been on the “enemy” side just a few years prior. One factor may have been his vulnerability between 1945 and 1956. From 1945, he was stymied by the criminal investigation into the 1939 pamphlet affair, which only ended in 1948. After 1950, Csikós-Nagy was threatened by the secret state security surveillance of Lajos Tordai, a National Bank official: Iván Meznerics gave statements in 1952 that linked Csikós-Nagy with a social group he had visited up to 1948, which included the aforementioned Trajanovits. This investigation ended inconclusively in 1956.127 There is no evidence as to whether or not CsikósNagy knew of this, but he referred in a 1995 interview to the state of general fear in which he spent the 1950s: “Every six months, Rákosi would attack all that had happened, either from the right or the left.” He remarked significantly, “those of my age who stayed in the country had to undergo so many 123 Voszka, “Beszélgetések Hetényi Istvánnal.” 124 György Lázár, “Emlékezésem Hetényi Istvánra,” Hetényi kör, June 6, 2012, http://hetenyikor.blog.hu/2012/06/06/lazar_gyorgy_emlekezesem_hetenyi_istvanra. 125 Lajos Trajanovits, Életem története [My life story] (Debrecen: Kossuth Lajos Tudományegyetem, 1993), 122–25. Quoted in György Kövér, “Írott orális történelem,” Forrás, nos. 7–8 (2011): 178. There is no other indication of Csikós-Nagy’s Arrow Cross membership: see Népszabadság, July 12, 2002. State Security Colonel Száberszki, the Finance Ministry head of division, committed suicide before he could be arrested. Rolf Müller, Politikai rendőrség a Rákosi-korszak­ ban (Budapest: Jaffa, 2012), 57; György Gyarmati and Mária Palasik, “Az ÁVH intézménytörténetének társadalmi-politikai környezete, 1953–56,” in Trójai faló a Belügyminisztériumban: Az ÁVH szervezete és vezérkara, 1953–1956, ed. György Gyarmati and Mária Palasik (Budapest: ÁBTL–L’Harmattan, 2013), 19. 126 Csikós-Nagy, Béla. “Feladataink a tervmunka fejlesztésében,” Magyar–Szovjet Közgazdasági Szemle, nos. 10–11 (1951): 347 and 366. 127 ÁBTL, O–8757 “Szervező,” 84, 88 and 218–19.

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changes of system and political turns that they either perished or adapted to it.”128 The latter applied in his case: he became first deputy minister for local industry in 1952, then went on to devise liberalizing legislation for Imre Nagy. Still, he would have regulated small-scale industry more strictly than the new prime minister did.129

Opportunism and outbursts against fascists: six-monthly switches In 1952, Csikós-Nagy proved himself to be a cold-blooded hypocrite: his condemnations of opportunism (“bargaining with the difficulties”) did not ring true. The new element in his 1952 study was decentralization, while enterprise-level planning commands “issued earlier by the Planning Office . . . passed into the province of the ministries.”130 This was no true reform, just a customary “Stalinist” fluctuation between centralization and decentralization.131 Still, the decentralization campaign began to look like an effort at reform in 1953, with liberalization and successive regulatory amendments on ownership matters. One sign of restraint was that Imre Nagy, as new prime minister, never used the term “reform.”132 Csikós-Nagy took part in the “renewal,” but trimmed his tactics: his spring study after Stalin’s death in March 1953, titled “Building local industry according to Stalin’s teachings,” was no real reform either. In this, he denounced “exploitation” in the cottage industry and wrote about sanctions against bunglers. This passage is stranger still: “Thefts and embezzlement occur daily; ultimately cadre work is incomplete, meaning that in many cases, posts go to class enemies, fascists, embezzlers, who try to exploit the cooperatives for their own ends.” Here, he clearly comes out against the fascists—astonishing in view of his own past. Less surprisingly, he ended his paper with a quotation from Stalin.133 128 Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 253. 129 Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 270. 130 Béla Csikós-Nagy, “Feladataink a tervmunka fejlesztésében,” Magyar–Szovjet Közgazdasági Szemle, nos. 1–2 (1952): 43 and 50–51. 131 Kornai breaks the system into blocs. The most important blocks are (1) the absolute power of the party, (2) the ruling position of state ownership, and (3) the predominance of bureaucratic coordination. Kornai calls reform relatively radical alteration in these blocs. (He does not consider such alterations in two further blocs as reform.) Kornai, A szocialista rendszer, 381 and 407. 132 Rainer, Nagy Imre, 127. 133 Béla Csikós-Nagy, “A sztálini tanítások alapján építsük a helyi ipart,” Állam és Igazgatás 4–5 (1953): 185, 189.

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This Stalinist tone changed rapidly in July 1953, with Imre Nagy’s new line on economic development.134 Csikós-Nagy, by then deputy minister for small-scale industry, published a new study in the fall of 1953, again on local industry, but references to Stalin were displaced by “Leninist genius.” Rákosi was cited, but references to Imre Nagy appeared twice. There was no word on disciplining small-scale industry or moving firmly against bunglers. Also dropped were charges of fascism, but the “spring idea” stayed: “large numbers of former wholesaler-capitalist elements crept into the small-scale industrial cooperatives and, in some cases, took leadership into their hands.”135 Csikós-Nagy may have seen Imre Nagy’s reforms were in trouble, for he was more wary in summer 1954 when analyzing local industry for the third time in eighteen months. He still quoted Nagy, but the Stalin quote of the previous spring reappeared (not to conclude the study, but hidden away on page seventeen). He backed decentralization, but hesitated in judging small-scale industry: “The small-scale form of production is not the most apposite under the given conditions, so it may be a backward form of production.” He would again curb the market or “purposely keep operation of the law of value within strict limits” using state regulations (for instance, sanctions against bunglers).136 Csikós-Nagy was again in a transitional period: planning, he said, was not the only regulator—“there are factors beyond planning under the conditions of a transitional economy”—but small-scale industry was also needed. As such, he had not given up on reform. At the end of 1954, after his halfturn, a summary of Imre Nagy’s plans for economic reform appeared. Some parts of the plan, in János M. Rainer’s view, differ from the rest in a way that could indicate different authorship—which in turn raises the possibility that these might have been written by Csikós-Nagy himself. What may have interested Csikós-Nagy (his authorship is not claimed) was planning and the radical transformation of the pricing system.137 Csikós-Nagy came closer to Nagy again in 1955 and gave a talk on local industry at the prime minister’s request. Nagy himself failed to appear and was soon ousted from the premiership, but Csikós-Nagy’s speech was enough for Rákosi to turn him out of office as well.138 134 Ágnes Ungvárszki, Gazdaságpolitikai ciklusok Magyarországon (1948–1988) (Budapest: KJK, 1989), 35. 135 Csikós-Nagy, “A helyi ipar feladatai az új kormányprogramm keretében,” 3–4, 6, and 8–9. 136 Csikós-Nagy, Helyi iparunk a fejlődés útján, 3, 11–15, and 61–67. Emphasis added. 137 Csikós-Nagy, Helyi iparunk a fejlődés útján, 11; Rainer, Nagy Imre, 131–33. 138 Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 263 and 270.

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Reforms after 1956: “I was not prevented from picking up the thread” During the Hungarian Revolution which broke out on October 23, 1956, Csikós-Nagy was elected to the workers’ council of the Budapest Chemical Industry Trust, where he had been manager since 1955. This was a revolutionary, self-managed body, a “product” of the workers’ movement aimed at the Stalinist system. In November 1956, when the revolution had been crushed and a new regime was installed by the Soviets, Csikós-Nagy was invited to join in devising economic policy. He countered with two provisos: nobody was to tell him what to do, and the Price Control Office was to be revived. The new head of government and party leader, János Kádár, offered him instead the post of president of the National Bank, but he insisted on the separation of the Price Control Office from the Planning Office. Csikós-Nagy succeeded and headed the new office from 1957 to 1984. His requests were respected, he wrote. Indeed, “they did not even stop me picking up the thread of economics research with which I had begun my career.” He indeed resumed his prewar line of research: not the racial characteristics, but the philosophical approach and planned management. His career peaked in the 1960s, as he supported the economic reform and joined the main committee that ran it.139 According to Tamás Nagy, head of a separate three-person reform secretariat, debate arose over making the plan indices compulsory. The two models proposed by the secretariat were rejected (Csikós-Nagy had a hand in this). The less planindexed model was opposed as it could later have grown many more plan indices. The introduction of compulsory profitability was rejected as superfluous if enterprises had profit incentives. They sought a system that combined “planned management (without plan directives) and a self-regulating market.”140 There were several problems at the time with simulating world market prices, upon which Comecon prices were largely based. Such a system operated badly with semi-finished and finished products. Several Comecon countries amassed trade surpluses with the Soviet Union. For Hungary in 1989, it may have meant an extra one billion US dollars; a group headed by Csikós-Nagy studied the matter at the Economics Institute in Budapest.141 139 Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 264–65 and 272. 140 Adrienne Molnár, ed., A “ hatvanas évek” emlékezete: az Oral History Archívum gyűjteményéből (Budapest: 1956-os Intézet, 2004), 85–87; Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 272. 141 Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 288–89. World market prices were adopted in trade among Comecon countries, but comparable world market prices for machinery and

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Both the Hungarian and Comecon reforms were halted in the 1970s. Hungary’s leaders, pushing in vain since 1967 for joint planning, sought multilateral settlements better attuned to world market prices and, in the longer term, convertibility for the ruble and other socialist states’ currencies. CsikósNagy also took part,142 and went on to write a study on creating a socialist world market and economic integration that approximated market conditions, which can be seen as reflecting the contemporary Hungarian official position on the reform of the Comecon. Underground streams reappear in connection with the international integration of national economies, which concerned him from the time of Germany’s 1942 New Europe scheme up to the European Union.143 He was reviving the “plan-like activity” he had analyzed in the war years, though his specific proposals ran counter to his views in the 1940s. He had opposed a currency union in 1942, but in 1969 sought a unified monetary system of convertible currency.144 As the reforms halted, however, Csikós-Nagy’s influence steadily waned.

Counter-reform, new waves of reform, and a change of system The worldwide oil price shocks of the 1970s led to cuts in real wages in the West, but Hungary chose a path toward indebtedness, despite another solution being advanced in 1976 by Csikós-Nagy (namely, a cut in domestic consumption).145 His 1978 book presaged the idea of sustainable development he would advance at the turn of the millennium.146 The state’s indebtedness prompted Hungary to join the IMF in 1982, which reinforced the reform efforts: committees equipment were lacking. Producers used these and made their products dearer. “So, Moscow subsidized the others and then had enough of doing so, recommending ‘its own pricing basis.’” Communication from Iván Schweitzer. 142 He headed a committee on cooperation among socialist economies. István Feitl, “Magyar elképzelések a Kölcsönös Gazdasági Segítség Tanácsának megreformálására (1967–1975),” Század­ ok 147, no. 6 (2013): 1383–91 and 1401. 143 Csikós-Nagy, Nagytérgazdaság, 3–4; Béla Csikós-Nagy, “A KGST-országok közötti együttműködés továbbfejlesztésének kérdései,” Közgazdasági Szemle 16, no. 2 (1969): 133– 34; Csikós-Nagy, Közgazdaságtan a globalizáció világában, vol. 1, 157. 144 Csikós-Nagy, Nagytérgazdaság, 93 and 111–12; Csikós-Nagy, “A KGST-országok közötti együttműködés továbbfejlesztésének kérdései,” 134 and 143. 145 Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 288–89; Mihály Ivicz, “A magyar mezőgazdaság XX. századi helyzetének elemzése különös tekintettel a kisbirtokra” (Ph.D. diss., Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem, 2004), 88. 146 Csikós-Nagy, Új árforradalom árnyékában, 175; Csikós-Nagy, Közgazdaságtan a globalizáció világában, vol. 2, 79 and 352.

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were set up with Csikós-Nagy on them. In his inaugural address to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1982, he argued that Marx’s theory on ending goods production was unrealistic: “The relation between price and relative shortage is created and sustained by market estimates of value. The so-called invisible hand then creates equilibrium between supply and demand. Marx still assumed that state planning would be better at creating equilibrium than the price mechanism. . . . Excluding the equilibrium function of prices causes operating disturbances in the socialist economy.”147 But a shadow was cast over his career: he and his office became the butt of jokes.148 Although he had pressed for reform, he became the scapegoat for the counter-reform, and he eventually retired in 1984. He was later an adviser to the two last state socialist cabinets, headed by Károly Grósz and Miklós Németh. By 1987, he had reached a point where he was able to write that the socialist economy was a kind of market economy, distinguished from the individual market economy only by restrictions on ownership. He also stated that “an imperfect market is a better alternative to an imperfect bureaucracy.”149 Csikós-Nagy shed his leading scientific posts in 1990. In 1996, he criticized the IMF and Hungary’s politicians. His old economic nationalism was revived and his support for the market weakened, but he still endorsed free competition and welfare reform. He referenced the “Marxist trap”: liquidating the market economy then partially reinstating it gave rise to a less efficient system than capitalism, one in need of an entrepreneurial stratum. He explained the difference between capitalism and state socialism using the Schumpeterian innovation model of creative destruction, which failed to appear in the socialist states. He questioned Marx’s theory of exploitation as a “never-proven hypothesis.”150 His prewar arguments that reappeared after 1990 were less extreme, although he quotes some extreme right-wing economists in support of them (such as Gottl on universalism) and whole sentences are taken from his 1942 Economy of the Großraum. There may even be some ambiguous hints of

147 Attila Mong, Kádár hitele: A magyar államadósság története, 1956–1990 (Budapest: Libri, 2012), 128 and 222; Csikós-Nagy, Az értéktörvény szerepe a szocialista gazdaságban, 17–18 and 23–24. 148 In 1982, he was the most featured Hungarian politician in the satirical paper Ludas Matyi. 149 Halm, Reform, rendszerváltás, modernizáció, 281–82 and 298; HVG 35, September 3, 1994, 79; Csikós-Nagy, Szocializmus, piac, gazdaság, 78 and 275–76. 150 János Kornai, “A posztszocialista átmenet és az állam,” Közgazdasági Szemle 39, no. 6 (1992): 489; Csikós-Nagy, A XX. század magyar gazdaságpolitikája, 229, 281–82, and 301–02; CsikósNagy, Közgazdaságtan a globalizáció világában, vol. 1, 87.

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racism.151 Before his death he was calling for sustainable development to oppose modernization,152 but this no longer had any political effect.

Underground streams channeled: five tips for success in a forty-five-year government career Despite Csikós-Nagy’s opportunism, three ideological features stayed relatively stable, constituting the main—not necessarily rightist—underground streams of ideological history: a. Planning: To Csikós-Nagy, state intervention does not mean primarily planning directives. His approach points to his contact with extreme right, extreme left, and reform communism. b. Universalism: He backed regional economic integration throughout, which helped his internationalist transformation in 1945 (his economic nationalism remained an underground stream). c. Theories of economic transition: These help avoid ideological traps, whether from the right or the left. He learned to “channel” his underground streams through the ever-changing systems and so remain in government for forty-five years, through five main success factors: 1. Opportunism: Short-term planning, pragmatism, lack of scruples, laying blame on Jews (1939), on fascists (1953), and even on opportunism if need be (1952). 2. Professionalism: A good school mathematician, he obtained a doctorate at the age of twenty-seven. Expert on pricing policy, participant in forint stabilization (1946). 3. Correct self-assessment, reflection on self: Took no post for which he lacked knowledge (declined the National Bank presidency in 1956). 151 It is worth examining “differences of view arising objectively between countries due to development level and growth-regulating factors, or even ethnic distinctions.” Csikós-Nagy, Közgaz­ daságtan a globalizáció világában, vol. 1, 88. 152 Economics cannot explain from a basis of Western civilization or modernization, as it endorses growth trends that preclude the conditions for life on Earth. Béla Csikós-Nagy, “Közgazdaságtan és világmagyarázat,” Közgazdasági Szemle 51, no. 12 (2004): 1188–98.

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Protected himself through his public confession: psychological means by which he also learned from mistakes. 4. Up-to-date leadership methods: Popular manager who drew colleagues into decision-making. Holds meetings over several days to bridge bureaucratic divisions. 5. Stocktaking: Declined post of secretary to anti-Nazi resistance. Survived two inquests (1945–56). Shortage of experts in 1945 and 1956 gave him a good bargaining position. Expertise allowed him to survive five-yearly changes of course.153 Csikós-Nagy sought to influence Hungary’s economic policy over six decades from positions in government (1939–84) and two decades more as an analyst. His part in the forint stabilization of 1946 meant he played a part in one of the outstanding achievements of Hungarian financial history. However, his extremist past cast a shadow over his accomplishments, and he ended his political career as a scapegoat.

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344

CONTRIBUTORS

Bogdan C. Iacob is a researcher at the “Nicolae Iorga” Institute of History in Bucharest (Romanian Academy). His work centers on the role of Eastern European experts (historians or doctors) at international organizations and in post-colonial spaces. He is co-author of the collective monographs 1989. A Global History of Eastern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and Socialism Goes Global: The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the Age of De­ colonisation (Oxford University Press, 2022). Zsuzsanna Kőrösi, sociologist, research fellow at the former 1956 Institute, and since 2020, at the Oral History Archive of the Veritas Institute. Her main works include Carrying a Secret In My Heart: Children of the Victims of the Reprisals after the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, co-authored with Adrienne Molnár (CEU Press, 2003); A forradalom emlékezete: Személyes történelem (The memory of the revolution: Personal history), co-edited with Adrien Molnár and Márkus Keller (1956 Institute, 2006); and Egy magyar republikánus életútja: Kozák Gyula és Kőrösi Zsuzsanna interjúi Kende Péterrel (The life path of a Hungarian republican: The interviews by Gyula Kozák and Zsuzsanna Kőrösi with Péter Kende, Osiris, 2019). András Lénárt, historian and sociologist, former research fellow at the 1956 Institute. He has been working at the Budapest Holocaust Memorial Centre since 2019. His research focuses on various aspects of the Holocaust in Hungary and its memorialization. Most recently, he published two book chapters, one appeared in Where do we go from here? Jewish families in Hungary after WWII (2022), while the other is part of A World-changing Story: A Handbook on the 1956 Hungarian Refugee Crisis (2022). Lénárt is a member of the Holocaust Photography Expert Group of EHRI. He was the co-founder of  such Holocaust information websites as yellowstarhouses.org and budapest100.hu. As an editor, Lénárt also regularly contributes to the websites holokausztfoto. hu and jphotoarchive.org. 345

Contributors

Rudolf Paksa is a former research fellow at the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He lectured history at several Hungarian universities. His work focuses on the history of the Hungarian far-right, especially the national socialist movements during the Horthy era. His monograph, based on his doctoral dissertation, was published in 2013 under the title “Magyar nemzetiszocialisták” (Hungarian National Socialists). His works on Hungarian national socialists and their leader include “Ferenc Szálasi and the Hungarian Far-Right Between the World Wars,” in Vers un profil convergent des fascismes? “Nouveau consensus” et religion politique en Eu­ rope centrale, ed. Traian Sandu (L’Harmattan, 2010), 125–39; “The Legacy of the Arrow Cross,” co-authored with Anita Kurimay in L’Europe à con­ tre-pied: idéologie populiste et extrémisme de droite en Europe centrale et orien­ tale, ed. Traian Sandu (L’Harmattan, 2014), 115–35; and “Hungary,” in Eu­ ropean Fascist Movements: A Sourcebook, ed. Roland Clark and Tim Grady (Routledge, 2023). János M. Rainer, historian, former head of the 1956 Institute, currently professor of contemporary history at the Eszterházy Károly Catholic University (Eger, Hungary). His field of expertise is Hungarian history after World War II, with a focus on the 1956 Revolution and the Kádár-period. He is author of Imre Nagy: A biography (I. B. Tauris, 2009); editor of The 1956 Hungarian Rev­ olution: A History in Documents (with Csaba Békés and Malcolm Byrne, CEU Press, 2002); Muddling Through in the Long 1960s: Ideas and Everyday Life in High Politics and the Lower Classes of Communist Hungary (with György Péteri, 2005); The 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the Soviet Bloc Countries: Reactions and Repercussions (with Katalin Somlai, 2007). His latest work is Újratervezés: Szocializmus Magyarországon a 20. században (Redesigning: Socialism in Hungary in the 20th century, 2023). András Schweitzer is associate professor at the Institute of Political and International Studies of Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest. He also regularly teaches as guest professor at Masaryk University, Brno. His academic articles cover contemporary political history and the history of political ideas and include “Treasures in the Backyard: How a Peaceful Region can Contribute to the Study of International Conflicts,” Journal of Internation­ al Relations and Development (2021); and “The Contemporary Relevance of István Bibó’s Theoretical Framework for Analyzing and Settling Territorial 346

Contributors

and State-Formation Conflicts,” Intersections: East European Journal of Soci­ ety and Politics (2015). He is currently working on a book about the lessons of the post-1989 transformation of Hungary, revisiting his article “Factors That Made Hungary a Borderline Democracy (and Are Likely to Stay),” Hungar­ ian Spectrum (2014). His ongoing project is the explanation of the different meanings of political left and right with a three-dimensional model (also applied in his chapter of this volume). Attila Simon is director of the Fórum Minority Research Institute in Šamorín (Somorja), and associate professor at Selye János University in Komárno (Komárom) in Slovakia. His professional interests are centered on the history of Hungarians in Slovakia between the two world wars. He is the author of about a hundred academic works, including eight monographs. His most important works include The Hungarians of Slovakia in 1938 (Columbia University Press, 2013); Az átmenet bizonytalansága: Az 1918/19-es impériumváltás Pozsonytól Kassáig (The uncertainty of transition: The 1918/19 change of sovereignty as experienced from Bratislava to Košice, Fórum Minority Research Institute–MTA BTK Institute of History, 2021); Az elfeledett aktivisták: Ko­ rmánypárti magyar politika az első Csehszlovák Köztársaságban (The forgotten activists: Pro-government Hungarian politics in the first Czechoslovak Republic, Fórum Minority Research Institute, 2013); and Telepesek és telepes­ falvak Dél-Szlovákiában a két világháború között (Settlers and settler villages in southern Slovakia between the two world wars, Fórum Minority Research Institute, 2008). Katalin Somlai, historian and oral historian, was formerly a research fellow at the 1956 Institute, and is currently a research fellow at and member of the Board of Trustees of the 1956 Institute Foundation. Her scholarly activities focus on the role of technocrats in autocratic regimes as well as on the scientific and cultural relations of the Hungarian communist regime. She is coeditor of The Hungarian Revolution and the Soviet Bloc Countries: Reactions and Repercussions (1956 Institute, 2007), and author of studies like “Nyugati tapasztalatszerzés állambiztonsági béklyóban: az Akadémia főrezidentúra” (Western scholarships hobbled by the state security: The intelligence station “Academy”) in Évkönyv XXIV (1956 Institute, 2019); “Agenti femminili dell’intelligence comunista ungherese sul fronte italiano” in Italia e Unghe­ ria tra una rivoluzione e l’altra (Morlacchi Editore, 2023). 347

Contributors

Iván Miklós Szegő is a research fellow at the 1956 Institute Foundation in Budapest. His work centers on comparative economic history of Finland and Hungary in the 20th century, and comparative analysis of elites in Soviet-type societies of Eastern Europe. His first monograph, Kihívások és válaszok: Gaz­ daság, politika és az elitek Finnországban és Magyarországon 1945–1990 (Challenges and responses: Economy, politics and the elites in Finland and Hungary, 1945–1990) was published by Kronosz Kiadó in 2023. Gábor Tabajdi was a research fellow at the 1956 Institute–Oral History Archive Department of the Széchényi National Library (2014–2019), and is currently a research fellow at the Office of the Committee of National Remembrance (Budapest). As a young scholar, his interest focused primarily on the history of the state security police and the politics of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party. He is the author of the monograph Kiegyezés Kádárral (Compromise with Kádár, 2013). Vladimir Tismaneanu is professor of comparative politics at the University of Maryland, College Park. His research focuses on communism, fascism, and twentieth century Central and Eastern European politics. In 2006, he chaired the Presidential Commission for the Analysis of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania. His works include Communism and Culture: An In­ troduction, co-authored with Radu Stern (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Putin’s Totalitarian Democracy: Ideology, Myth, and Violence in the Twenty-First Cen­ tury, co-authored with Kate. C. Langdon (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), Roma­ nia Confronts its Communist Past: Democracy, Memory, and Moral Justice, coauthored with Marius Stan (Cambridge University Press, 2018), The Devil in History: Communism, Fascism, and Some Lessons of the 20th Century (University of California Press, 2012), and Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy, Nation­ alism and Myth in Post-Communist Europe (Princeton University Press, 1998). Krisztián Ungváry, Doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, is a historian and wine producer, current professor at the University of Miskolc and a former research fellow at the 1956 Institute. His field of research focuses on the political and military history of the 19th–20th centuries. He is author of the book The Siege of Budapest (published in Hungarian, German, English, Romanian, Russian, and Chinese) and contributor to the volume Germany and the Second World War, vol. 8. (Oxford University Press, 2017). 348

INDEX

Ábrahám, Dezső, 199 Abrams, Bradley, 109, 110 Adalbert, Saint, 273 Agócs, István, 243, 253 Almaș, Dumitru, 54 Ambrózy, Gyula, 290–91 Andics, Erzsébet, 224–25 Antall, József, 161, 173–74, 179–80, 185, 187 Antonescu, Ion, 56 Bajcsy-Zsilinszky, Endre, 141, 304–5, 330 Bakos, Batu, 182 Baksa Soós, György, 246 Bálint, Sándor, 206–7 Barankovics, István, 141, 142, 191, 194, 195, 196, 207n, 210, 211, 212 Barbu, Eugen, 47, 49, 55 Bartha, Antal, 173 Basch, Ferenc, 286, 294 Belső, Gyula, 207n, 208 Beneš, Edvard, 68n, 79, 106n, 109, 126, 140 Benkei, András, 174 Bereczky, Albert, 289, 292, 295, 301 Berindei, Dan, 51, 57 Bethlen, István, 135, 136, 137, 138n, 139, 140, 141n, 148, 314 Bibó, István, 15, 107, 134, 145, 147, 200, 226, 303 Bílá, Lucie, 124 Bodor, György, 294, 304 Bodrogi, László, 231–35, 240n Bokor, Péter, 281 Búzás, Márton, 199

Čarnogurský, Jan, 89, 90 Ceaușescu, Elena, 47, 48n Ceaușescu, Ilie, 26, 49–51, 55, 56n Ceaușescu, Nicolae, 8, 24, 25, 27, 31–34, 37, 42–43, 45, 47–52, 54, 299 Charles IV of Austria, 140 Concha, Győző, 313 Csikós-Nagy, Béla, 14, 309–39 Csiza, Rezső, 233 Csomoss, Miklós, 289–90, 293–94, 297, 303 Darányi, Kálmán, 314, 319, 320n, 321 Décsi, Gyula, 197 Deletant, Dennis, 49 Demény, Pál, 145 Drăgan, Iosif Constantin, 47, 49 Dubček, Alexander, 81, 87, 113 Durand, Charles, 270 Duray, Miklós, 89 Ďurčanský, Ferdinand, 82 Eckhardt, Sándor, 138n, 199 Eckhardt, Tibor, 141, 262 Eliade, Mircea, 52n, 56 Erdei, Ferenc, 150, 225, 259 Erdélyi, József, 143 Erdődi, Zoltán, 245 Esterházy, János, 69 Eszterhás, György, 207n, 208 Eyal, Gil, 118–19 Faludy, György, 174 Falussy, András Mihály, 246–47

349

Index

Hetényi, István, 331, 332 Hitler, Adolf, 82n, 185, 221, 223, 326n, 327 Hlinka, Andrej, 68, 71, 75–76, 78, 83, 91 Hodža, Milan, 68, 71, 73–74, 75, 91 Hoffmann, Rózsa, 329 Hollós, Ervin, 167, 202 Hóman, Bálint, 285 Horthy, Miklós, 140–41, 144, 222–23, 289, 290, 291; Horthyism, 132, 144, 145, 165, 166, 172, 211, 230, 265n; regime/period of, 6, 10, 11, 137, 139, 140–41, 143, 148, 168, 223, 224–25, 228, 233, 227, 281, 300, 325 Hubay, Kálmán, 228 Huntington, Samuel P., 65 Husák, Gustáv, 81, 87, 88, 89

Farkas, Dénes, 199, 200, 213 Farkas, Mihály, 224 Fehér, Ferenc, 197 Féja, Géza, 143 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 316 Fico, Robert, 66–67 Florescu, Eugen, 47–48 Fock, Jenő, 174 Fónagy, János, 311n Forbáth, László, 181 Francia Kiss, Mihály, 171 Funk, Walther, 327 Gábriel, János, 201 Galántai, György, 164 Gellner, Ernest, 3 Gerő, Ernő, 319n, 332 Gheorghiu-Dej, Gheorghe, 27, 29, 30, 31 Glassheim, Eagle, 106, 108–9, 116 Goldscheid, Rudolf, 316 Gömbös, Gyula, 139, 314, 316 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 118 Göring, Hermann, 327 Gottl-Ottlilienfeld, Friedrich von, 317– 18, 337 Griffin, Roger, 4 Grigássy, László, 173 Grósz, Károly, 337 Gyáni, Gábor, 5n, 149n, 259–60 Gyurgyák, János, 134

Iacob, Bogdan C., 8, 345 Ignotus, Pál, 154, 155 Ilia, Mihály, 175 Illyés, Gyula, 3, 147, 175, 178 Imrédy, Béla, 222, 227n, 234n, 284, 285– 86, 287, 289, 290, 293, 305, 315, 320, 321 Iorga, Nicolae, 37, 39, 40n, 42n Jurcsek, Béla, 228 Kádár, János, 14, 48, 87, 145, 155, 162, 163n, 165, 174, 214, 268, 276, 299, 301n, 310, 321, 335; regime/period, 11–12, 155, 161– 64, 167–78, 170, 174–76, 180–82, 185– 87, 201, 202, 206, 207, 215, 234, 261, 267, 271, 276, 277, 299, 301 Kállay, Miklós, 150, 330 Károlyi, Bernát, 197, 198 Károlyi, Gyula, 150 Keresztes, Sándor, 200, 203–4 Kerkai, Jenő, 212 Keszler, Aladár, 200 Khrushchev, Nikita, 29, 31 Kis, János, 7 Kitschelt, Herbert, 97, 103n, 110, 111–12, 116, 122

Hajdú, Kálmán, 199 Hamberger, Judit, 67 Hanák, David, 69, 73, 105 Hanley, Seán, 97, 111n, 115, 121 Hantos, László, 330 Harangi, Zoltán, 244 Havel, Václav, 118 Hayek, Friedrich, 99–100, 102 Hellenbronth, Vilmos, 228 Hendel, Lajos, 246 Henney, Árpád, 228, 232n

350

Index

Mann, Michael, 4 Mannerheim, Carl Gustaf Emil von, 140 Marx, Karl, 133, 309, 316, 337; 11, 14, 25, 27, 30, 34, 44, 57, 99, 151, 204, 295, 311, 316, 319, 327 Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue, 68n, 72, 106, 108, 115, 125n Matheovits, Ferenc, 179, 183, 196–97, 200, 205–6, 209 Mečiar, Vladimír, 66 Mester, Miklós, 13–14, 281–306 Meznerics, Iván, 332 Mihelics, Vid, 200, 204, 213 Mikloško, František, 90 Mindszenty, József, 13, 136, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 200, 206, 214, 261, 272, 273, 277 Mises, Ludwig von, 315 Müller, Adam, 315–16 Murányi, Levente, 184 Mussolini, Benito, 163n, 221

Klaus, Václav, 97, 99–100, 118, 119–20, 121, 122, 126 Koczak, István, 192 Kodolányi, János, 330 Kolbert, János, 207 Kőnig, Frigyes, 296 Konkoly-Thege, Béla, 263 Konkoly-Thege, Gizella, 262 Korec, Ján, 86 Kornai, János, 323, 324, 333n Kőrösi, Zsuzsanna, 12–13, 345 Kotleba, Marán, 67, 78 Kovács, András, 177n Kovács, Imre, 304 Kovács, István, 304 Kovács, Károly Zoltán, 207n, 210 Kováts, Ferenc, 205 Kovrig, Béla, 192 Közi-Horváth, József, 192 Kramář, Karel, 125 Krassó, György, 183 Kriveczky, Lajos, 244 Kröszl, Vilmos, 238 Kundera, Milan, 3 Kusý, Miroslav, 89 Kvetko, Martin, 84

Nagy Á., László, 89 Nagy, Ferenc, 301 Nagy, Imre, 11, 14, 115, 143n, 200, 207, 213, 296, 310, 312, 321, 333, 334 Nagy, Lajos, 198 Nagy, Márta, 325, 329n Nagy, Sándor, 164n Nagy, Tamás, 335 Nemes, Kálmán, 173 Németh, László, 132–33, 138, 143, 147, 148, 175, 178 Németh, Miklós, 313, 337 Nőtel, Rudolf, 319

Lajos, Iván, 141, 318 Lakatos, Géza, 150, 290, 292 Lăncrănjan, Ion, 48 Langoš, Jan, 90 Lázár, György, 332 Lénárt, András, 12, 345 Lettner, Ferenc, 245 Lettner, Györgyné (Mrs György Lettner, née Edit Rothschild), 245 Lettrich, Jozef, 83–84 List, Georg Friedrich, 316, 328 Lukeš, Igor, 83

Olti, Vilmos, 319 Orbán, Viktor, 17, 311, 327, 328, 329 Pákh, Ervin, 263, 265n Pákh, Tibor, 12–13, 260–78 Paksa, Rudolf, 12, 346 Pálffy, Géza, 141

Málnási, Ödön, 235, 322 Manent, Pierre, 4

351

Index

Sidor, Karol, 82, 83 Simon, Attila, 8, 347 Simon, Gusztáv, 210 Sinka, István, 143 Somlai, Katalin, 13, 347 Spann, Othmar, 310, 315–17 Stalin, Joseph, 26, 27, 34, 79, 117n, 140, 144, 197, 223, 333, 334; Stalinism, 8, 23, 25–29, 31–33, 38–40, 44, 47, 51, 52, 53, 55–58, 81, 85, 96, 111, 165, 171, 311, 333, 335 Standeisky, Éva, 144, 146 Štefánik, Milan Rastislav, 68 Stephen I of Hungary, Saint, 131, 203, 273, 274 Surányi-Unger, Tivadar, 315, 319, 320, 330 Sylvester II, Pope, 274 Száberszki, József, 332 Szabó, Ferenc, 181 Szabó, Miklós, 5, 7, 16 Szakváry, Emil, 228 Szálasi, Ferenc, 12, 135, 222–23, 227n, 228, 232n, 234, 240, 241, 322, 325–27 Szász, Károly, 173 Szegő, Iván Miklós, 14, 348 Székely, Imre Kálmán, 200 Szekfű, Gyula, 6, 130–31, 133, 136, 138n, 141, 145, 320 Szomolányi, Soňa, 65 Sztójay, Döme, 13, 222, 228, 281, 288, 290, 292

Pallavicini, György, 141 Palmer, Thomas G., 119, 120 Papu, Edgar, 46 Passmore, Kevin, 3, 4 Patočka, Jan, 116n Păunescu, Adrian, 51–52, 53, 55 Péntek, István, 224n, 240, 254 Pithart, Petr, 115 Poglajen-Kolakovič, Tomislav, 86 Ponická, Hana, 89 Popescu, Dumitru, 47, 52 Pörneczy, Bálint, 205 Prohászka, Ottokár, 70, 180 Püski, Sándor, 147, 304 Püspöki Nagy, Péter, 89 Pusztai, Ferenc, 198 Radics, József, 246 Rădulescu-Motru, Constantin, 36, 37, 38, 39 Rainer, János M., 161, 334, 346 Rákosi, Mátyás, 14, 140, 193, 196, 223, 301n, 310, 320, 332, 334, 344; regime/period of, 141, 144, 147, 167, 174, 181, 229, 277, 301 Ree, Erik van, 29 Reményi-Schneller, Lajos, 14, 310, 320, 322, 324, 329, 330 Rényi, Béla, 325, 331 Révai, József, 142, 146 Rézler, Gyula, 319, 330 Rieger, František Ladislav, 123 Rónaszéki, Lajos, 198 Röpke, Wilhelm, 14, 268, 310, 315n, 139 Rothschild, Edit, 245 Rusznyák, István, 295

Tabajdi, Gábor, 11–12, 348 Tabódy, István, 183 Tănase, Alexandru, 45–46 Tatarka, Dominik, 89 Teleki, Géza, 141 Teleki, Pál, 138, 140, 141, 283, 284, 285, 313, 318, 319, 320, 321–22 Tiborc (Teichmann), Géza, 246 Tigrid, Pavel, 110 Tildy, Zoltán, 301, 303, 304 Tismaneanu, Vladimir, 8, 24n, 26, 57n, 348

Sartori, Giovanni, 72, 81 Schumpeter, Joseph, 138, 311n, 315, 337 Schuster, Lóránt, 184 Schwarzenberg, Karel, 126 Schweitzer, András, 9, 311n, 346 Scruton, Roger, 100, 125

352

Index

Tiso, Jozef, 68, 75, 77–78, 82–83, 84 Tordai, Lajos, 332 Trajanovits, Lajos, 332 Tucker, Aviezer, 116n Tucker, Robert C., 26, 43 Tudor, Corneliu Vadim, 44, 46, 47, 48–49, 55 Tuka, Vojtech, 82

Varga, István, 325, 326, 331 Varga, László, 207n, 209 Vas, Zoltán, 319, 331–32 Vianu, Tudor, 44–45, 46 Villányi, Miklós, 207 Weishaus, Aladár, 145 Wild, Frigyes, 246 Wojtyła, Karol (Paul John II), 89

Ugrin, József, 212 Ungváry, Krisztián, 305n, 320n, 322, 325, 348

Zeman, Miloš, 126 Zichy, Ferdinánd, 71 Zoltán, Pál, 207n, 209 Zomborszky, János, 197

Vaculík, Ludvík, 113 Vanek, Béla, 183

353