Tibor Hajdu
The Party Did Everything for You
Preparing the Show Trial: Farkas and Kádár Visit Rajk
[...]
On June 7, Mihály Farkas, the Minister of Defence, and the Minister of the Interior, János Kádár, appeared at the villa. However, they came not as members of the Cabinet (the ÁVH was answerable only to Rákosi), but as Politburo members, on Rákosi's instructions. Except for the three of them, no one else was present at the interrogation, which took place at 11 p.m. on the night of June 7. However, the conversation was recorded - a routine procedure at the time. The recording was destroyed some time after Kádár came to power in November 1956, but an authentic transcript had been made by ÁVH typists immediately after Rajk's interrogation.
[...]
In Hungary, as in the other satellite countries, these trials were also faithful imitations of the Soviet model. In early 1949, Rákosi, the ÁVH and its Soviet advisors, felt that the time was ripe for this type of public trial. As the machinery was set in motion, the script was rewritten several times, with the list of the accused being adjusted accordingly.
[...]
Mihály Farkas and Gábor Péter decided to get rid of their rival, László Rajk, Rákosi's potential successor, whom they had recently managed to oust from his position as Minister of the Interior.[...]
On May 23 they commenced tapping Rajk's phone, and arrested several of his former colleagues. They next persuaded both the young János Kádár, Rajk's successor as Interior Minister, to cooperate, and Rákosi, to agree to Rajk's arrest.
What Rajk's offence would be was, for the time being, undecided; as the reader will see, the hastily assembled accusations only partly match those brought up at the actual trial four months later.[...]
[...] In 1956, Kádár said that he "happened by accidentally," and that is how he became an eye-witness to this "supervised" interrogation; "surrounded by Gábor Péter, Ernõ Szûcs and other ÁVH officers, Mihály Farkas stood at the head of the table, screaming at Szõnyi, more dead than alive from fear, things like 'you rotten bastard, you spy, stop lying and admit it, was Rajk a spy, or not?!'"
Kádár may have thought that the door of the interrogation room was left open inadvertently. In fact, it was his initiation as interrogator to make the otherwise soft-spoken Kádár realize that if he hoped to be as important a man as Farkas, he would have to conduct himself accordingly - something he attempted on June 7th.
[...]
It was Kádár whose life took the strangest turn. In his own interest he tried to believe in Rajk's guilt but as in the long run he could not silence his growing doubts, he was also arrested and imprisoned. This happened in 1951. It was one year after Stalin's death, in 1954, that he was released. One or two days before his release he was asked to write down his opinion about the Rajk affair. In this piece of writing, a self-confession of sorts, Kádár said that Rajk's execution, which he witnessed, had left a lasting mark on him: "I was present at the executions of Rajk, Szõnyi and Szalai. While Rajk died praising Stalin and Rákosi, Szalai shouted that he was not a traitor." Soon after this staggering experience, Kádár told Rákosi that he would like to leave the Interior Ministry. His request was granted, but by then, he had also fallen under suspicion.
[...]
