Tibor Hajdu

Kádár's Shadow

Tibor Huszár: Kádár János politikai életrajza. 1. kötet 1912-1956.
(The Political Biography of János Kádár. Vol. 1. 1912-1956)
Budapest, Szabad Tér Kiadó-Kossuth Kiadó, 2001, 406 pp.
László Varga (ed.) Kádár János bírái előtt. Egyszer fent, egyszer lent 1949-1956.
(János Kádár Before His Judges. Ups and Downs. 1949-1956)
Budapest, Osiris-Budapest Főváros Levéltára (Osiris-The Municipal Archives of Budapest), 2001, 728 pp.

Foreigners may be surprised by the interest Hungarians take in the personality of those who ran their country in the century that has just passed. There has always been an intense interest in history here, and even though the EU will open a new road leading far afield from bygone days, common discourse still enjoys dealing with them. The average reader is not interested in economic theories or ideologies, but in events of the recent past, and willingly equates defunct regimes with their leaders. The last Hungarian king (Charles IV-Charles I as Emperor of Austria) died 80 years ago, yet the person with the greatest authority in the country, until 1989, held more power than any constitutional monarch in the 20th century. The Regent Miklós Horthy did so in law too, invested as he was with some of the rights of a reigning king; the Communist first secretaries, Mátyás Rákosi and János Kádár, wielded authority without legal authorization. Given this interest in history, it is not surprising that the latest National Book Festival this spring saw two new Horthy biographies, along with the final volume of a trilogy on Rákosi, and four books dealing with the controversial figure of János Kádár.
Of these last, only two will be discussed here. (The others are one by an economist, Sándor Kopátsy, which is more a volume of personal reflections, a portrait of the age, than a biography, and a substantial collection of studies [edited by Árpád Rácz], developed from a successful special issue of the journal Rubicon, on Kádár, deserves a special review but not by me who was one of the contributors.) The two works dealt with here are alike in that both deal with Kádár's personality and his path to power, and both stop at the point, 1956, when Kádár, then 44, arrived at the peak.
Tibor Huszár, who is a sociologist, was the first to write a detailed and scholarly biography of Kádár; this volume is the first of two, the second will deal with Kádár in power. I think he is ideally placed to author such a work (already a bestseller): after 1945 he was a leading figure among the young Communists in Budapest, until he was forced out of politics in 1956; the right author, not only because he was personally acquainted with Kádár and the age, but also as his position at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences allowed him to maintain an objective distance from the events of everyday politics and to assume the position of a critic with empathy for his subject. His first critics charge Huszár with excessive leniency in his treatment of Kádár, yet I feel it is difficult to maintain one's objectivity when the subject himself was in power for the greater part of one's life. In such circumstances one can only write a biography that either debunks or understands. Huszár wrote the latter.
For Hungarian readers, the greatest amount of new information is to be found in the chapter dealing with Kádár's boyhood. This is only fair since a knowledge of the boy is essential for an understanding of the man. The history of Kádár's early years has been surrounded with almost complete darkness. Little was known in the West and less in Hungary. Huszár's meticulous research added many details. Kádár was illegitimate from the moment he was born: his father, a soldier serving in Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia), the Austro-Hungarian Empire's large naval base, denied paternity nor did he contribute to the support of Kádár's mother, a housemaid. She brought him up in the greatest poverty, under her own name (Csermanek). In 1945, following the contemporary fashion, he changed his foreign-sounding name and opted for an anagrammatic solution, taking the first and last letter of his new surname from his father's. After his birth, his mother moved to Budapest, where she worked as a housemaid, washerwoman, concierge and papergirl; her son spent his first six years with foster parents in the country before they were reunited.
Borbála Csermanek was a simple, un-educated woman, but she wanted her son to do better: she managed to send him to school until he was 14, afterwards making him acquire what was then a prestigious trade, that of typewriter mechanic. But this was to be the second decisive tragedy in his life. Though he got as far as his apprenticeship, no one would employ him. Huszár claims this was because he was rumoured to be a Communist; I think it was simply because trade skills were not enough: offices wanted to have their typewriters serviced by well-mannered neat young men. Kádár not only did not possess decent clothes, he refused to be helped: when his apprentice master offered him a used shirt so that he stood a better chance of employment, he angrily refused. Despite having a trade, until the age of 30 he grubbed along on badly-paid occasional jobs; he never left his mother's social level, to the pull of which he reacted not with adaptive ambition, but with dogged adherence to his class and a wounded self-consciousness. It is hardly surprising that, at the age of 19, during the Depression, he joined the then very active Young Communist Workers' Association; even less surprisingly, he was soon grabbed by the no less avid police. He got away with the customary beating and humiliation, and three months in prison. In 1933, however, he was arrested again and this time was sentenced to two years' imprisonment.
He served the two years (in instalments) but his comrades found fault with his behaviour under police interrogation: more out of inexperience than panic, he gave evidence against two of his fellows. In court he retracted his testimony, claiming that he had been tortured, a claim that was accepted neither by the court nor the Young Communist Workers' Association, who expelled him. There is nothing peculiar about this story up to this point, and we can hardly find it odd that experienced policemen should trick a young man of 21. But this event, discussed by Huszár with subtle psychology, was determinative in the life of Kádár. Other people in such cases could either conceal the lapse in their party record, or quit politics altogether; some went on to work in the labour unions, and some went abroad to escape suspicion. Kádár took none of these established solutions. He acknowledged his mistake, lifelong remorse hardened him, and he never again became such an easy prey; though he was expelled from the underground organization, he continued to consider himself a Communist. As wines have their vintages, so there are politicians -or artists, or writers-whose personalities are fully mature at a certain age, after which they neither improve nor deteriorate. Kádár, despite all the experience, cunning and political knowledge he later gained, retained all along the personality and mentality of a Hungarian Communist of the year 1933: class struggle always seemed to him as simple as it may have looked during the Depression, he hated the "opportunist" Social Democrats, and though he accepted the popular front policy for tactical purposes, it always remained alien to him. He was always to be lonely, distrustful and reticent: an illegal activist.
For years after his release nothing special happened to him. On his comrades' advice, which he took to be their command, he joined the Social Democratic organization in a Budapest district (the 6th), and became a leading figure among the young, later a member of the district committee. In 1940 he was told that he was a member of the illegal Hungarian Communist Party, which for a time meant no more than taking part in the direction of Communists active in the legal Social Democratic organizations. When, in the spring of 1942, hundreds of Communists were arrested, he became one of the five members of the Party's Central Committee, in which position he remained, with only a few intervals (spent in Horthy's and then Rákosi's prisons), to the end of his life. During the war he was one of the leaders of the underground organization, which completely suited his disposition. Other reasons for choosing him included the fact that he wasn't a Jewish intellectual (or an intellectual, for that matter), and besides being a "Christian Hungarian working man," his speech and look embodied a type: thin, raggedly good-looking but badly-dressed, careful and taciturn. Hungarian nationalism, which grew during the war, influenced many of the old members of organized labour. Kádár had been immune to any new influence since 1933.
Huszár devotes a mere forty pages to the years spent in the Social Democratic Party and then in the illegal Communist Party (1937-1944), though most readers would probably appreciate more information, and at least recollections of contemporaries, if original documents are unavailable. It would be good to know, for instance, why Kádár was never conscripted, or what love affairs he had. On the latter Huszár is not merely laconic, but substitutes his knowledge with the thesis that Kádár "had almost no private life" until he married in 1949, which is hardly likely. That he married late is another question: Kádár pleaded that a young wife would not tolerate his mother's cantankerousness, which Huszár accepts. I myself think Kádár was protecting his own loneliness, not so much from women as from marriage; his late marriage was successful, with a wife sharing his mentality and not wanting to enforce on him a lifestyle that would have been alien, such as any form of luxury or a great number of friends. Professor Huszár is a widely known sociologist (member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences) and is well-versed in psychology, two disclipines that benefit this biography. That he isn't a trained historian usually does not show in his book; when it sometimes does, it concerns his inability to track down all sources, thus being forced to drop lines of inquiry, although these are cases of minor importance.
Most readers would probably appre-ciate the fact that four fifths of the book deals with the post-war decades (1945- 1956), when Kádár's activity was linked with the fate of the country as one of the leaders of the party that was in power. Accordingly, these chapters throw light on major issues of the period that historians have failed to deal with or have misrepresented. Huszár makes it clear that from the beginning there was a brutal power struggle going on within the party elite, even if behind the façade of party discipline (and not openly, as in other parties). First Secretary Mátyás Rákosi, returning from exile in Moscow in 1945, knew he had to find a successor. Like his comrades arriving with him who took up leading posts, he was a Jewish intellectual who knew little about the daily life of the people, and he was old, in poor health and ugly. These were disadvantages at the coming (and then still democratic) elections, in a post-war public milieu saturated with nationalism and anti-Semitism. Keen-eyed, he chose the two best candidates as heirs: László Rajk, a 36-year-old teacher of French, and Kádár, 33, whom he knew from prison, where Kádár confessed his "sin" to him. Rajk was better educated and more experienced, had taken part in the Spanish Civil War and spent some time in a French internment camp and was good-looking. Kádár was second behind him, followed him in his positions, as secretary of the Budapest party committee, minister of the interior and deputy to Rákosi. But Rákosi had become embittered by the idea of relinquishing power, and started hating the pretenders of his own choice. He began to find fault with them and their past, until he became completely obsessed with the idea that no one could replace him. So, when he liquidated the parliamentary system in 1948 and introduced a Soviet-style one-party dictatorship, he no longer cared that the people or the young found dashing Rajk or plebeian Kádár more attractive than him.
By that time Kádár was no longer as simple as his look and manners suggested: Huszár rightly points at Kádár's first important public speech, a lecture published by the party in 1945, in which he distinguishes an idealized working class that is rebuilding the country disinterestedly, and the selfish few, who will not abandon their "insignificant private" interests. Kádár knew that those few constituted the majority but, as a professional Communist politician, was aware of the fact that he had to represent an imaginary majority. He retained this duplicity to the end of his life: his declarations always thinly veiled an awareness of the real character of the working class, and revealed a wariness when it came to totally ignoring reality, unlike Rákosi and company. Yet he strived hard to learn from them, and Huszár is again acute in observing that "during these years he became an expert in applying Machiavellian tactics" against the Social Democratic Party, the churches, labour unions, etc. All this is illustrated at length, with examples.
In August 1948 Kádár became minister of the interior, replacing Rajk in this position: Rákosi chose the younger and less independent man, whom he thought he could influence. His tactics proved effective, as Kádár did all he could to be worthy of Rákosi's confidence, and helped to prepare the noose for Rajk. But not a year had passed after Rajk's execution when Rákosi told him he did not trust him. Why? Like Kádár, Huszár tries to put his finger on the reason. When Kádár had to watch the execution, instead of joining the condemning chorus, he fainted. He shared his doubts with Rákosi, who immediately became suspicious of him. "The first serious political suspicion arose when Rajk was unmasked, and we noticed that he [Kádár] behaved unnaturally," said Rákosi at the 21 April 1951 meeting of the Political Committee, after Kádár was arrested. (The minutes are in Varga's book.) Rákosi all of a sudden remembered Kádár's youthful slip, and another one from 1943, when Kádár misunderstood the real meaning of the dissolution of the Comintern, and suggested break-ing up the illegal Hungarian Communist Party, and forming a "Peace Party" instead with a popular front policy. Kádár fretted over these charges to the end of his life, even when he had come to understand Rákosi's motives. After all, the ÁVH (state security police) general Gábor Péter, who arrested him, had been his partner in dissolving the Communist Party, and co-leader of the underground party during the war, yet he was never charged with the "crimes" that Kádár was charged with. The solution is simple: once Kádár had become the main pretender, Rákosi and with him the frustrated Moscow staff, especially the power-hungry minister of defence, Mihály Farkas, started to hate him.
More than a year passed after Stalin's death before Kádár was released from prison. The man who came out was different from the man they had locked up. In the silence of his cell he had time enough to ponder, and on his release he did not rush to Rákosi to pour his soul out to him. He pretended to be a loyal supporter and an unselfish party man willing to settle for a position as district party secretary (in the Budapest district of his youth). Yet at this time he was already striving to defeat Rákosi. He feigned, until the spring of 1956, that he held Péter and Farkas (by then the official scapegoats and in prison), to have been responsible for the show trials and other illegal actions that had been openly exposed. This demonstrates that he was working on taking over the reins of power: otherwise he would have confronted Rákosi immediately after his release. But it was not yet the time to start open combat. Until November 1956 Kádár strove towards his goal effectively. Huszár does a careful and meticulous job of reconstructing the mosaic of Kádár's way to power. (He thus clarifies the ambiguities surrounding the well-known story of Rákosi discovering the transcript of the audio tape taken at Rajk's interrogation, led by Kádár and Farkas, and trying to blackmail Kádár with it. Rákosi let Soviet Ambassador Andropov know what the tape contained, and wanted to play it for the Party leadership: but at their 26 April meeting the Political Committee decided against it, and resolved to take Kádár back into the top leadership.)
There is a point at which I find Huszár's empathy extravagant. When talking about Kádár's still mysterious journey on 1 Novem-ber 1956, when he was driven to the Soviet embassy, then flown to Ungvár in the Ukraine and thence to Moscow, Huszár subscribes to the view that Kádár was trapped by the Russians, helped by Ferenc Münnich, who accompanied him. But Kádár in 1956 was not what he had been in 1949: he knew what it was that he chose or let happen. He may not have been told in advance where he would be taken, but he did not refuse. And had he been kidnapped, he couldn't have been forc-ed to turn against Imre Nagy, and to assume power unless he wanted to do so. He did, and accepted the perhaps unexpected help.
I look forward to the second volume, and hope that in it the publisher will make up for the absence of an index, presumably due to shortage of time. That a bestseller should be printed on newspaper-quality paper is just another oddity in contemporary book publishing in Hungary.

László Varga, a historian and archivist, publishes the documents of the 1951 trial of Kádár, carefully tracing the development of the false charge leading to the indictment, adhering, as far as possible, to the logic and timeline of the case. This was a rigged trial not only because it was founded on false charges, but because Kádár's case was linked to the case of a group (the Communist organizers of the "March Front") with which Kádár had had no political or personal relations. This makes the volume and Varga's introduction lopsided: the trial was effectively about the organizers of the March Front, to whom Kádár was connected via a false charge, whereas Varga is interested in Kádár; thus the introduction deals chiefly with him, just as the documents selected concentrate, whenever possible, on his person. Hence the reissue of the minutes of the 7 June 1949 interrogation of Rajk, in which Kádár had an active and shameful role, which has been published in several places. (The Hungarian Quarterly, No. 141, pp. 83-86.) There are several documents concerning Kádár's position between his rehabilitation in 1954 and 1956, while the story of the others is dropped at their rehabilitation. This inconsistency will trouble only the uninitiated reader: whoever knows what the March Front was (a popular-front type anti-fascist movement in 1937) will welcome this abundance of new information about it as it was, untainted by subsequent Communist and anti-Communist narratives.
If Huszár is sympathetic, Varga unmasks: it is very interesting to read them together, as Varga too follows Kádár's career from 1949 to 1956, and also deals with earlier events on which charges were based, such as his weakness when under arrest as a young man, and his role in the formal dissolution of the Communist Party in 1943. Varga pays close attention to Kádár's role in the trial of Rajk, pointing out that he was present at interrogations on more then one occasion and showing that he had a more important function in designing the case than had hitherto been known. He has even settled the date on which Rákosi decided to have Rajk arrested. Varga provides Kádár's self-accusatory letters, which he wrote to Rákosi in the weeks preceding his arrest, and in which he admits that he had been jealous of Rajk as early as 1945: "when upon Rajk's return I was removed by the Party from the Budapest secretaryship, I felt neglected and injured." He retained his aversion towards Rajk even when he no longer believed in his guilt.
While Rajk's arrest came out of the blue, following a quick decision, Kádár was systematically tormented by Rákosi for almost half a year. He dismissed him from his
position of minister of the interior, and though as deputy to Rákosi he seemed to fulfil an important role, the First Secretary indicated he was suspicious of him (as he had earlier told Moscow, in March 1950), made him write reports, until he was driven into the mental state of self-accusation. This is the key to Kádár's behaviour before the secret police and in court: Rajk for weeks entertained the hope that the truth would ultimately be revealed if he stuck to his guns, while Kádár had already been broken by the time of the arrest, knowing from experience that the arrest foreshadowed the court's decision, and thus he needed no third degree, unlike Rajk and his fellows. He fought for his version of the truth for a few days, but let it be known at the beginning that he would sign the false confession if asked. His case was not so much a show trial as a secret one, which is why it was of little importance what he and his fellows confessed to.
Varga is deeply interested in the mania of underground Communist parties: who was a traitor, who "sang" for the police, who behaved in court "like a real Communist"-and as doctors are sometimes infected with the disease they deal with, so this mania sometimes seems to work on him. With hindsight these issues are less important, and I for one concur with Orwell, who pointed out that every man has a weak point, and the police have the time to find it. I have read enough court documents to know how difficult it is to reconstruct who was the first to confess, and what it was the police already knew. Varga, without knowing the documents of the 1925/26 trial of Rákosi, gives credence to hearsay about his "confession" and "betrayal," though these charges were invented by those who were at the time already intriguing against him in Moscow.
Which did not deter Rákosi from always "waking up to" whatever his current paranoia required. Thus he made Kádár responsible for the 1943 manoeuvre of dissolving the Communist Party, even though Gábor Péter, conducting the proceedings in 1951, sat next to Kádár when the decision was made, and gave his support. But Kádár was charged with making the decision in question at the behest of Social Democrat leader Árpád Szakasits, together with March Front members; indeed, it was claimed that Szakasits was instructed by the head of the Political Police, Sombor-Schweinitzer. That none of this was true was only admitted after Stalin's death, during the rehabilitation process-carried out mostly by the same individuals who originally drew up the false charges in 1951. Varga provides the main documents of the rehabilitation process, which are very illuminating, as far as the proceedings and the psychology of the prosecutors and the accused are concerned.
Varga makes a valuable contribution to understanding Kádár's behaviour after his release. Though Kádár was convinced that the time had come for him to replace Rákosi, he did not confront him until he could be sure Rákosi no longer enjoyed the support of Moscow; instead, he offered him the opportunity to shift all the blame onto Mihály Farkas and Gábor Péter, and waited to see who would win out in the rivalry between Rákosi and Imre Nagy. Kádár's conduct between 1954 and 1956 has been commonly characterized as passive, which was otherwise typical of him, but which now, thanks to Varga's (and partly, Huszár's) accurate analysis, is shown to have been determined. He felt he had come near his goal in June 1956, when Suslov came to Budapest to examine in person whether Kádár was a potential successor of Rákosi. His decision was affirmative, though it came to pass, as so many decisions in Moscow, with an irreparable lag of months.
One of Varga's best insights is into how after 1954 Kádár was consciously relying on the sympathy of the Party apparatus. Refuting those who have held Kádár to have been the head of "the Party opposition" at the time (like András Hegedűs, prime minister in 1955Ą56, in his memoirs), he points out: "The case was more that the party apparatchiki-whose influence should not be undervalued in a party dictatorship-had grown weary of the unceasing movement of the pendulum, of the constant insecurity, of not being able to set their alignments and to adapt to the situation, and believed Kádár to be the point of rest, which could guarantee their survival. Kádár was suitable for this role-by his nature, too-and as the perfect embodiment of the apparatchik, the district party secretary, he readily united with them."
Varga's volume has an index, though there are minor mistakes in it, just as there are in the notes. For instance, Malinovsky, the notorious Okhrana agent, who could deceive Lenin himself (as Rákosi mentions in his speech at the Political Committee in April 1951), is confused in a note with the Soviet marshal whose troops liberated Budapest