The Well of Discontent

(Click here for part one)

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The changes that I observed in the very brief period between my two visits to Hungary are so numerous that they ought to be listed and discussed separately.

First of all, waiters in restaurants and cafés don't listen to what you say any more. This is very important because Hungarians have begun to talk openly in public places about politics and about the regime, something which they never did before. The waiters don't listen because they no longer have instructions to do so. The police are no longer processing this kind of information - no one is.

Secondly, the ÁVO¹, according to at least one party member, is no longer following through on personal denunciations. They are, according to reports, restricting themselves chiefly to frontier security.

Thirdly, more people are getting passports than ever before. In a good many cases both husband and wife are permitted to leave at the same time even though they have no children. This is something that just never happened before. Some entertainers are being permitted to go to Czechoslovakia, Romania, and even to Vienna. This also never happened before. A Hungarian I know, who has a daughter in America and whose daughter was not particularly popular with the regime, was told by a regime official that if he wanted to he could go out and visit his daughter. He felt a little bit the way a soldier would feel if an army sergeant came over and asked permission to make up his bunk. These things just never happened in Hungary and it testifies to the great change in the general atmosphere.

One Hungarian remarked to me about Rákosi's going, "Only the wording is different, Russia's servants are the same." But, he added, and this is change number four, "Atmosphere in Budapest has changed in the last weeks as the result of so many people getting out of imprisonment." A very common greeting in Budapest today is, "When did you get out of jail?" People told me that recently they had been at parties or at meetings at someone's home where almost everyone had just gotten out of jail and was comparing notes. Without exception everyone concerned was, of course, completely innocent. This included a couple who had gone abroad on state business and had been sentenced to seven years for espionage. Also included were a couple and their child who had been caught trying to cross the frontier. The child was only twelve but had spent part of his time in prison with them and then had been kept separately from them in a home for criminal juvenile delinquents. The frontier, incidentally, is regarded as being about 60 per cent de-mined and de-wired. A number of Hungarians who have tried to escape, have encountered the barbwire and come back and spread the word. This may have something to do with the fact that not so many people are trying to leave. With regard to these people who are getting out of jail, they are having trouble getting jobs. About the only work that they can get is as common labourers at about 600 forints a month. It requires about 2,000 forints to keep alive and furthermore they are not completely pardoned. They are out on probation and their cases will be reviewed at the end of six months. Some of these people, incidentally, have been sent enormous and staggering bills for their board and lodging while they were in jail. A good example concerns a person who was arrested for distributing news handouts from a western legation and who became sick in jail. He spent most of his time in a prison hospital and when he got out he was given a bill for something like 8,000 forints for all of his food and upkeep while he had been in jail. It seems a curious kind of thing but there have been a number of cases like this.

Change five. The deportees have been permitted to return to Budapest.² This concerns between 12,000 and 20,000 people. Previously they were not specifically banned from returning to Budapest but were proscribed from visiting three Hungarian cities which, allegedly on the grounds of overcrowding, required a special permit for residence. These were Miskolc, Debrecen, and another city, Gyõr, I believe. This permit has been now eliminated and it means that between 10,000 and 20,000 Hungarians, many of them Jews, many of whom were living in the city illegally, or in the suburbs illegally, have been able to come back and look for an apartment and a job.

Change Six. Social Democrats who have emerged from internment or prison are being given jobs. There is an office set up for this. They are also being given apartments and sometimes they are being given bonuses to make up for their false imprisonment. These bonuses amount to between 4,000 and 6,000 forints.

Change Seven. The government has begun to hold press conferences. I believe that this was done, until now, only in Czechoslovakia. It was started there about four months ago but now the Prime Minister's office has begun to have press conferences. The first was just two weeks ago and the Foreign Office has been holding a weekly press conference since July 8. Questions have to be submitted in writing, of course, on the grounds that the person answering them can in that way prepare much better answers for correspondents. But even so, some questions get asked and some get answered and it is a kind of a forum.

Change Eight. There are thousands of foreigners in Budapest and in Hungary as compared with just a few dozen a few months ago. There are so many that the government couldn't keep track of them if it wanted to and it doesn't want to. There is almost no interest in any foreigner in Hungary, even in newspapermen. No attention whatever is paid to where we go or who we talk to. In this sense, it is a completely relaxed atmosphere.

Change Nine may not be so big but it is worth reporting. A man who runs a state enterprise told me that he had been instructed to hire people for their ability instead of whether or not they belonged to the Party or what kind of political friends they had. This is a minor revolution and he tells me that it is going on in a good many of the other state enterprises.

Change Ten concerns Hungarian journalists. All of them have been rehabilitated, that is, all of them who were put on the black list. This amounts to some 400 or 500. There are three newspapers coming up soon and one of them is said to be a Smallholders' Party newspaper. One will be a weekly boulevard sheet, an opinioned feuilleton which will be edited by Iván Boldizsár³. A few months ago Boldizsár swore to some friends of his that he had left journalistic life forever but Rákosi is gone now and Boldizsár will return to journalistic life. He is an interesting case because he was the Press Chief for Foreign Affairs prior to the communist takeover in Hungary and also for a brief period under communism. He is a very able man and I suspect that the fact that he couldn't stomach the way things were going resulted in his "retirement" during the past year.

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Notes

1 * ÁVO: State Security Orgazination, later State Security Authority; the infamous secret police of the era.

2 * In June 1950 around two thousand members of religious orders, both male and female, were expelled from Budapest, Székesfehérvár and the Yugoslav border area; a year later several thousand former "exploiters" mostly from Budapest had to leave their homes.

3 * Hétfõi Hírlap, a weekly, was first published on October 8th 1956, and Iván Boldizsár was, indeed, the editor.

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Notes by Csaba Békés