Reform to Revolution
Detailed Interview Given by György Heltai to an American Journalist, dated 12th December 1956 and Submitted to the UN Special Committee on the Question of Hungary
[...]
After the Germans occupied Hungary on March 19th, 1944 György Heltai worked with the Communists. When the Arrow Cross Party took over in October of that year, he was engaged in providing fake Red Cross papers for those in danger. He joined the Hungarian Communist Party early in 1945 and was delegated by them into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was active in preparatory work for the 1946 Paris Peace Conference involving negotiations with Czechoslovak and Yugoslav Communists with a view of settling the disputes concerning the position of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia.
Once the Communist Party had fully taken over, when preparations were being made for the Rajk trial, the Party leadership lost confidence in Heltai. In October 1948 he was transferred to the Ministry of Justice, and then, on August 20th 1949, he was arrested and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment in one of the trials associated with the Rajk prosecution. He was released in 1954. Albeit he did not accept any official position, he was closely associated with Imre Nagy, primarily as a foreign policy advisor.
On November 1st 1956, Prime Minister Nagy took charge of the Foreign Ministry as well. Heltai was appointed Deputy Foreign Minister, a post he occupied in the most critical days of the 1956 Revolution. As such he had a major role in the steps leading to Hungary leaving the Warsaw Pact and in the Declaration of Neutrality.
After the Soviet intervention on November 4th, Heltai, unlike Imre Nagy and some of his associates, did not seek asylum in the Yugoslav Embassy but left for Vienna at the end of November with his family. He later settled in Brussels where, between 1959 and 1964, he headed the Imre Nagy Institute of Social Science and Politics established there with American support. A centre for left-wing exiles doing research into contemporary history and politics, it published its findings in Hungarian, English and French. When American support was withdrawn in 1964, the Institute was wound up and Heltai and his family moved to the U.S. At first he did research at Columbia University in New York, and later taught history at a university in Charleston, S.C.
At the time of the 1989-1990 changes, the state of his health made it impossible for him to even consider returning to Hungary. The International Board of Trustees of the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution chose him to be their Life Honorary Chairman. In June 1994, President Árpád Göncz awarded him the Nagy Imre Memorial Medallion in absentia. He died the following month.
After 1956, Heltai gave numerous interviews and wrote many articles reporting on his role in the events. To the best of my knowledge the interview here published was the very first he gave after leaving the country. It took place in December 1956, in Vienna, at the time of the brief stay of the Heltais in that city. It is strongly marked by recent experience. Heltai gave the interview to Dean Koch, an American journalist he had met in the Parliament building in Budapest at the time of the Revolution. The text survived in the archives of the UN Special Committee on the Question of Hungary, which makes it likely that it was used when preparing the report issued in June 1957 after hearing 111 witnesses. It was put at the disposal of the Institute for the History of the 1956 Revolution by Claire Héderváry from her collection of documents pertaining to the UN Special Committee on the Question of Hungary.
In spite of the brief period which had elapsed since the Revolution, errors and imprecisions occur. These are put right in footnotes.
Csaba Békés
[...]
At 20.30 the night of Tuesday, October 23, representatives of the students came to Nagy's home and asked him to accompany them to Parliament. Nagy appeared in Parliament Square that night at 22.00 and said, "I agree to your demands, but I am not in power, and I am not the government, but if I do come to power, I will fulfil them. Now go home quietly." Even at this late hour, he still did not know that the end result would be revolution.
From Parliament he went to the Party House, where he was held a virtual prisoner until the following Saturday and incommunicado the whole of Tuesday night. He was not officially informed of his elevation to Prime Minister until the next morning at 9 a.m. His wife called at 7 and could not talk to him. He was called by Benjámin of the Writers' Association at 8 a.m. and congratulated, although he did not know why.
He did not sign the decree of martial law which was declared at 8.45 a.m. On the contrary, at 10 a.m. he stated that he completely disagreed with it.
It is now, and was soon afterwards apparent that Gerõ consented to the appointment of Nagy because he thought that by making him Prime Minister, and calling in the Soviet tanks, "There would be some people killed, and the Russians would shoot the town up a bit, but nothing more would happen." But by this manoeuvre he hoped to discredit Nagy once and for all with the people and he would be able to remove Nagy for good when he demonstrated his inability to run the country without recourse to the force of arms. So it was Gerõ who called in the Soviets.
The consensus is that Gerõ called in the Soviets at 1 p.m. of the 23rd. It is certain that the Soviet garrison in Székesfehérvár was on the move to Budapest by 4 p.m. that afternoon, and the first Soviet tanks were met outside Budapest that night by Boldizsár. The first tanks entered the city by 4 a.m. on the 24th and the fighting began.
What Gerõ didn't know was that the issue had already been joined by the events outside the radio station Tuesday afternoon and evening. By then, the people had already made up their mind to fight, although it would have been difficult to find anybody to fight except the ÁVH if the Soviet troops had not been called into the city. This was something that Gerõ never considered. He thought the people would be cowed the minute they were confronted by Soviet armour.
I've always felt that there was something vastly suspicious about the events in front of the radio station. We knew that the ÁVH had taken the precaution of blocking all streets leading away from Bem's statue earlier that afternoon, so that if the demonstration there got out of hand they would have been able to channel it to destruction.
Whether the students demonstrating in front of the radio station frightened the ÁVH in the building, or whether the ÁVH were prepared to be frightened, I don't know. Anyhow, they were frightened, and tear gas was fired into the crowd. Then shots were fired, but a ricochet wounded a woman and the students began throwing stones. Hungarian army units began to come up then, and the ÁVH, apparently thinking that the army was about to attack them, fired and killed an officer.
When this happened, the military went over to the side of the people, saying, "This is a fight between the ÁVH and the army. You go home. We'll handle this." But the fighting continued until late at night in front of the station.
Suslov and Mikoyan arrived in Budapest the evening of the 24th, Nagy having become Prime Minister early that morning. Fighting went on all day Wednesday and was severe by that evening. The meeting of the Central Committee was held in the Party Building Thursday the 25th, and from the time Nagy arrived Tuesday evening he was a virtual prisoner until Saturday except for receiving a workers' delegation from Borsod, on Friday, 26 October.
At the Thursday meeting, Suslov personally ordered Gerõ out of his position as Party Secretary. Losonczy, Donáth, Haraszty, Vásárhelyi and Gimes, the only support Nagy had within the Central Committee, became very worried after the Thursday meeting when Nagy permitted Gerõ to remain active within the Central Committee, and they decided to refuse to continue to work with Nagy, saying that he was too weak in dealing with the Stalinists and, moreover, he simply couldn't cope with the Russians.
The writer Tibor Déry came to me later and said that without the support of Losonczy and his friends, Nagy was completely isolated and I must do everything in my power to persuade Losonczy to support Nagy, and not abandon him at this crucial time. I called Losonczy but he refused even to discuss the matter with me. I called others and after four or five attempts I finally persuaded Losonczy to listen to me. About midnight Losonczy changed his mind and agreed to continue his support if Nagy called him. This, of course, I was able to arrange.
The second meeting of the Central Committee was called for Friday morning early. Gerõ and the whole Rákosi gang was present, but Nagy's supporters were also there. Suslov and Mikoyan were again present. Nagy insisted on the repeal of martial law, and a general amnesty for all participants. The discussion actually centered around whether the movement was to be called revolutionary or counter-revolutionary, as the Gerõ clique insisted. Nagy's victory was only made possible by his threat to resign, whereupon the resistance collapsed. Although the government consisted of some 20 old Communist Party members, plus Nagy and three Small- holders (Béla Kovács, Zoltán Tildy, and József Bognár) and one Peasant Party (Ferenc Erdei), Nagy was still able to insist that the amnesty be proclaimed Friday night or Saturday morning. I don't quite remember.
What concern was this of Suslov?
Suslov was our chief. He was present at Rákosi's dismissal, and we heard that he personally wrote out the order dismissing Nagy the first time. He was a great antagonist of Nagy.
On the other hand, Mikoyan was pro-Nagy. Mikoyan was in Budapest in September and held long talks with Nagy, during which he said that he hoped to avoid all these troubles and intra-party disputes. He apparently offered support to Nagy because Nagy was greatly excited after the Mikoyan visit, and was encouraged to work much harder.
It was after this Friday meeting that Nagy saw that he must take a very strong position or lose everything. He could see that the only way was that which had been insisted upon by Losonczy and Donáth, and the others. It was at this meeting that Nagy decided that there was no longer any possibility of working within the Central Committee of the Party, and that the future lay only outside the Party. This was a very painful decision for him because of his sentimental attachments for the Party, but it was then that he decided to move the Communists out and bring in only his own followers and non-Communists.
If Communism is what the Russians say it is, there is no place in it for an honest man.
Nagy is an honest man. Too honest, perhaps, to be a politician.
I remember having read Koestler, and even Orwell's 1984 before I was imprisoned. I thought it was nonsense. But when I was arrested and was taken into the underground chambers of the ÁVH and… the flickering red lights… I was horrified: here it is, happening to me!
But in retrospect, my years in prison were good years, because I learned there that if a man wants to be true to himself, he must experience the whole story, not just part of it… We couldn't receive mail until 1953... then I asked for a copy of Shakespeare.
I first met Nagy in 1945. We were friendly after my release, but it was not until after he was dismissed as Prime Minister the first time that we really became close. But he was courageous. He greeted my wife whenever he met her in public. We were near neighbours. Most people were afraid to even recognize the relatives of the people involved in the Rajk trial.
Nagy was very much isolated right after his deposition. Perhaps only six or eight people visited him in the first month. There were actual preparations for his arrest. One man was tortured in an attempt to make him confess that Nagy had incited him to open revolution, but this man attempted suicide and managed to escape from a hospital and make his way to Nagy. Nagy immediately wrote to the Party denying the whole thing.
Nagy was not really very active in the months after his removal. He wrote a lot on questions of Party policies. He insisted on sending copies to the Party and the Russians. We asked him at least to stop sending copies to the Russians, but he was too much the honourable man. He was too honest. He believed until the very last days of October that the Communists actually wanted to help the country. He was completely bound to the idealism of Communism. It was horrible at times, his naivety. He saw that Rákosi worked against the interests of the country, but it took him so long to see that Gerõ was exactly the same. He rehabilitated István Kovács, for example, and he became immediately the strongest supporter of Rákosi.
It wasn't until he was fired in March or April 1955 that he began to see the whole picture and suspect how terribly wrong things were. Despite this, his honour forced him to continue to send his exposés to both the Russians and the Party.
I remember discussing a chapter, or rather, several lines, on foreign policy that he included in this work in 1955. It was then that we first talked about the neutrality of Hungary, and then only in tentative terms. But he felt that this was the only way to work out a modus vivendi with the Soviets, and the only way to get them out of the country.
This was a long document. Some two hundred pages in Hungarian. I'm sure the Russians never read it. He could never have been returned to power if the Russians had even read the five or so lines about Hungarian neutrality.
I'm absolutely certain that Gerõ or Rákosi never read it. He outlined completely his programme for the dissolution of the collectives and for restoration of small merchants and the return of small industries to the individuals. They would have been horrified.
But until the end, he felt that he owed the Party and the Russians the loyalty of telling them his own mind. You know, he was like a French mayor of a little provincial town: cultured, he loved his family and his garden. He was loyal to his friends. His great weakness was his idealism. He thought that basically the Soviet Union wanted something good for the people, that the Party wanted something good for the people, and the function of the Party leadership is to fulfil the wishes of the people.
[...]
It is strange. The Rajk case is the key to everything. The first thing Nagy did when he became Prime Minister was to ask for the Rajk case file. Gerõ, who was then Minister of the Interior, procrastinated, refused, delayed, until finally Nagy was able to make a three man commission to re-investigate the Rajk case. This commission consisted of Nagy, Rákosi, and Gerõ. Nagy read the entire material and he was convinced of what he had already suspected: the case was phony. He then said that they should release all the participants at once. Rákosi was horrified and asked Nagy if he were crazy. "We can't let these people out," he said. "Everybody will think we're scoundrels for arresting innocent men."
So Nagy agreed, on the condition that the case be officially re-opened for investigation, and that Gerõ immediately improve conditions in the prisons. That didn't happen for six months, but finally we received our first visitors in December 1953.
In the spring of 1954, when Nagy and Gerõ were in Moscow, Malenkov asked what had happened on the Rajk case. Nagy said immediately that he could see no evidence of crime, and although he had ordered Gerõ to do so, Gerõ wouldn't even improve conditions in the prisons. Gerõ was terribly flustered by this and never forgave Nagy. He even repeated it again not six months ago. Gerõ said it had to be done gradually, and Malenkov asked, "Why? We did it fast here."
A few months after this, we were released.
It wasn't until two or three months after his dismissal as Prime Minister that Nagy began to feel his own popularity with the people. He didn't have a car, and sometimes we rode the bus together into the city. The bus drivers used to stop for him even before he had arrived at the bus stop, and people on the bus always wanted to offer him a seat. And within the Party, people began talking about him at meetings, demanding to know the truth rather than the lies which were being published about him in Szabad Nép. The young Communists in the universities were also pro-Nagy, because it had become apparent that he was the only hope for the Party to maintain its identity as a party, rather than a group of resentful people led by a few Moscovites. I was glad to be back in the Party then, because within the Party, action was possible. [...]
It was not until Saturday afternoon, October 27, that Nagy was able to leave Party Headquarters for the first time since Tuesday night. He moved then with his staff to the Parliament building. Radio Budapest, which until this time was in the hands of László Piros, got a new director, Jenõ Széll, a man loyal to Nagy. Then came the famous declaration that Radio Budapest would no longer lie. It was also on this day that Nagy managed to establish permanent liaison and negotiation with the revolutionaries through such intermediaries as the writers Déry and Illyés.
But it wasn't until Sunday the 28th that Nagy was for the first time able to act freely. My only contact with Nagy from the 24th to the 29th was by phone. I had determined that I would never enter into active support of Nagy as long as the remnants of the Gerõ clique were in the cabinet. I was not happy with Nagy's actions, because I felt that he was being much too lenient with the Gerõ group, much the same as Losonczy. Since I knew Nagy so well, I felt that he was still bound to these people by Party sentiment and he was reluctant to use forceful, perhaps brutal methods, against his former Party comrades in order to rid himself of them. What I didn't realize at the time was that Nagy was determined to get rid of them all since the Suslov meeting, but felt he had to go slowly.
On Monday the 29th, Nagy called me and said he was going to take over the responsibility for Foreign Affairs, and he urgently needed me to assist him. I felt it obligatory to respond to this appeal and decided to enter the Civil Service as Deputy Foreign Minister.
Our first discussions again turned to the theme of Hungary's neutrality, which we had discussed the previous summer in theory, but now had to face as an actual fact. I felt that it was now the only "way out" for the Russians, and in face of a declaration of neutrality, they could withdraw their forces without seeming to have suffered a military defeat. I drafted the declaration on a piece of note paper in my own hand. I remember taking it home to my wife to keep as a souvenir, but when the Russians arrested Nagy later, we decided to burn it.
Gerõ had sent Imre Horváth, who was then Foreign Minister, Endre Sík and the other members of the UN delegation to New York via Prague. On Tuesday, October 30 Nagy recalled Horváth from Prague and told him to return to Budapest. They were arrested by the Czech police in Bratislava on Wednesday, 31 October. We heard that Horváth "had been taken to Moscow". That was the last we heard of Horváth until he turned up again with Kádár in Szolnok.
By Thursday, 1 November, reports of Soviet troops pouring into Hungary had become very alarming and at about 10 a.m. Nagy called in Andropov, the Soviet Ambassador, to complain about their troops' movements. Andropov replied that the Soviet government maintains its previous declaration and is ready to negotiate regarding the withdrawal of Soviet troops. He was called back at 1 p.m. and was told that new troops were coming toward Budapest, At 2 p.m. Nagy protested to the UN about the entrance of Soviet troops into Hungary.
At 4 p.m. the cabinet accepted the neutrality declaration and we invited the United States, British, French, Polish and Yugoslav Ministers and Ambassadors informing them that we are going to declare Hungary's neutrality and asked them to guarantee it. Andropov was called back at 5 p. m. and informed of the declaration. He was not particularly upset about it, but said that Moscow had only one request: that these matters be settled among ourselves, and that we should withdraw our protest to the UN against the new troops coming in. He said that the whole matter could be arranged.
It was at this interview with Andropov that Kádár held his impassioned speech in which he took the Soviets seriously to task for reinforcing their units in Hungary. He said that he knew full well that the declaration of neutrality meant the end of Communism for Hungary, and that meant the end of his life, because he had dedicated his whole life to the Communist Party. Without the Party, he would be nothing, because the Party was his life. But if the Soviets attempted to intervene in Hungary with the further use of arms, it would be the Soviets themselves who brought the counter-revolution to Hungary, and he would take to the streets with a pistol against Russian tanks and give his life for his country.
At 10 p.m. that night, Kádár and Münnich were called to the Soviet Embassy. According to the driver, they got out of their car in front of the Embassy, got into another car waiting there, and were never seen again until the Soviets marched in on the 4th.
We again directed an appeal to the UN that night at 8 p.m. as reports of Soviet reinforcements continued to pour in. This time we requested the UN to intervene.
On the 2nd of November we again discussed with Andropov the matter of neutrality. He said his government was willing to accept the wishes of Nagy and was willing to discuss all problems in a conference. The conference about the withdrawal of Hungary from the Warsaw Pact should be held outside of Hungary; we preferred Warsaw. A second conference, to be held in Budapest, should concern itself with the technical aspects of the withdrawal. It was also on Friday that Béla Kovács arrived in Budapest from Pécs. He attended his first cabinet meeting in the morning of 3 November. On Saturday the 3rd, the technical meeting began. We were represented by General Pál Maléter, Minister of State Erdei, and General István Kovács. During the course of that Saturday, our military people told us that up to 4,000 Soviet tanks had entered the country and most of the members of the Government were deeply concerned over this. The Hungarian staff said, however, that Soviet intentions were not certain. There were characteristics of an attack and a withdrawal under duress which were common to both and even Soviet occupation of the airfields two or three days before could well be interpreted as a Soviet defensive measure to protect their rear.
The new government of Nagy was finally announced Saturday afternoon after the morning cabinet session. Nagy had finally succeeded in ridding himself of all Communists except János Kádár, whose whereabouts we still didn't know, and General Pál Maléter. Maléter was a latecomer to the revolution. Previously we had always considered him a too rabid Communist to work with. And along with Nagy was his friend and supporter, Géza Losonczy. The rest of the cabinet was composed of members of all the newly founded democratic parties, including, as Minister of State, Anna Kéthly, the only member of Nagy's government who found herself in freedom when the Russians began their second attack.
Soviet good intentions were further boosted by the results of the morning technical military meeting, which broke up at 4 p.m. The Soviets were very friendly, wanted to leave with the greatest possible saving of face, and requested that the Hungarians give them farewell parties and in general make it seem like a gala occasion. They also asked that the Soviet military monuments be restored. Nothing was said about the Stalin monument. The Soviets suggested that the meeting be continued that night at 10 p.m., and it was from this meeting that Maléter, Erdei and Kovács never returned.
Nagy slept in Parliament the night of 3-4 November, his son-in-law, Jánosi, who had been functioning as his aides, went home. At 5 a.m. on the 4th, a car sent by Nagy came to take Mrs Nagy and the rest of the family to the Yugoslavs. Nagy met them there later in a separate car. Two days later he wrote a note to me asking me to go to his house and get all his personal papers. From then on, I was in constant touch with Nagy. I asked Mrs Rajk to come out, for she had also taken refuge in the Yugoslav Embassy although she had no real reason to, but she was frightened.
[...]
Let's not forget a tragicomic episode.
After the decision had been taken to leave the Warsaw Pact, indeed after we had given verbal notice, and all that was needed was to put it in writing, we wanted to have a look at a copy of the Treaty itself, to discover what exactly we were repudiating. Of course we suspected that there might well be a clause which makes the entry of foreign troops into the country conditional on a request by the Hungarian government. If that was so, then the Russians had broken it, and there was need to refer to that. It was also possible that there was a secret clause of some sort. Well, then, let's read it. None of us, including Imre Nagy, had ever seen the Warsaw Pact. We had a search through the Foreign Ministry's Registry. No Warsaw Pact. The Prime Minister's Archives contained the Foreign Archives, a copy of all the more important foreign agreements was at hand there too - we had a look - nothing there. Where the hell could it be then? We sent a message to the Ministry of Defence. They searched high and low. No luck! The Ministry of Finance also had archives of their own. That was taken apart too. Nothing - they knew nothing of it. Feverish, headless rushing around all along the line. Where was the Warsaw Pact?
Jóska Szilágyi had an idea.
"Perhaps the ÁVÓ (State Security) have a copy."
He rang the ÁVÓ and there it was, the single copy of the agreement.
In next to no time an ÁVÓ messenger brought it.
Just by the way: no secret clause of any kind. And we had been right. It was there, in black and white: the troops of the signatory countries could only enter the territory of any of the contracting countries at the written request of the government concerned, plus its Minister of Defence.
From an oral history interview made by Zsolt Csalog with György Heltai in 1983, in Charleston, S.C.
[...]
Who runs Kádár?
Some Sergeant from the NKVD. Of course, that's too simple, but that's what it means.
But I don't understand what Kádár did. He went through some pretty difficult times at the hands of the ÁVH himself, and was in jail with you. Why didn't he support Nagy fully?
Well, you see, Kádár arrested us. Kádár always supported the Party, although he was opposed to Rákosi. And Kádár always believed in his heart that Rákosi and Farkas one day would come to him and talk over the 1949 evidence and clarify his role in that problem. Even when the question became acute, he continued to support the Party and Gerõ against Nagy, and continued to oppose Nagy as a Party rebel until the last minute. There are two kinds of Communists: those who believe in the Party, and nothing else; and those who believe that what they are doing is for the good of the people. Kádár is a Party man, and the Party is his entire existence, just as he said to Andropov.
Kádár never understood the aims of Nagy and the people around him. As late as at the Rajk funeral, he said to Nagy and Mrs Rajk, "What do you want of the past? We must now unite and build up a new party and new life."
I suppose we were stupid to believe in Kádár, but we did because he was Hungarian, he was a proletarian, and he had never been to Moscow. We actually thought he had been kidnapped by the Russians that night.
[...]
I think Nagy is probably still alive, because they don't want any real martyrs. They saw what an artificial martyr like Rajk could do after he had been dead several years. Besides, they have their methods. Perhaps they think they can soften up Nagy in due time and bring him back a changed man to play on his popularity. But I don't think Nagy will be broken, and if he does return, it will again be on his own terms.
Why did the Soviets arrest Nagy? It was such a cynical move that it denied Kádár any semblance of support from the people forever.
First, if Nagy were really permitted to live in Budapest a free man, deputations and demonstrations would inevitably take place before his house and this would tend to keep the revolutionary spirit stirred up. And secondly, it was a good thing to get the whole Nagy clique at once.
The Nagy arrest denied any support to Kádár, but he could see by then that he didn't have any anyhow.
The problem of which Hungarian rules in Hungary is no great problem in Russia anyhow. The Soviet empire is the real problem. Probably somebody today is asking in the Kremlin, "By the way, what is going on in Hungary these days?" But there can be no real concern, because the army is there in full control.
