Revolution 1956
The Hungarian Quarterly devotes much of
this issue to the aftermath of the revolution that broke out on 23
October 1956.
Imre Nagy and János Kádár are featured: the first through János
Rainer’s account of the executed Prime Minister’s image
over the passing years, the second through the final, rambling,
address he delivered to the Party’s Central Committee, part
apologia, part justification, in the Spring of that fateful year
1989. (The address is footnoted by Tibor Hajdu, who also writes a
commentary on it.)
Both Nagy and Kádár are mentioned in the second of two lengthy
extracts from the diary kept by the then twelve-year-old Gyula Csics
during that Autumn and into the Spring of the following year, when
Kádár’s regime had already begun its savage reprisals. (His
diary, recently published in facsimile form, is reviewed alongside
another diary written in tandem by his best friend, fortuitously
discovered and published simultaneously with his.)
Ten poems written by their coeval György Petri between 1971 and
1999 reflect how the Revolution has remained in the national
consciousness.
The aftermath is also touched on in extracts from the
autobiography of the leading economist János Kornai and described in
György Litván’s review. The English version of Kornai’s
"intellectual autobiography" is due out this year.
Finally, our theatre column is devoted entirely to an important
production that captures the ambiguities of the Revolution, its
actors and spectators.
Imre Nagy: Life and Image
by János Rainer
"Was it possible as a (Communist) politician to choose what was
right from a human point of view and how was Nagy able to do this at
decisive moments?"
An historian who has written extensively on 1956,
János Rainer begins with a brief summary of Imre Nagy’s
political career before describing the assessments, at
the time and up to the present, of his role in
the Revolution.
The Confession of János Kádár
by Tibor Hajdu
Three months before his death, János Kádár, for
the last time, addressed a meeting of the Central Committee of the
Party on April the 12th, 1989.
Tibor Hajdu sets the context in
which Kádár delivered his paranoid and often incoherent statement, in
which he returned again and again to his role in the suppression of
the Revolution and the execution of Imre Nagy, his collaboration with
the Soviet occupiers, his belief that he was considered a Soviet
agent and his part in the show trials of 1948-1950.
I Was Not a Soviet Agent
János Kádár’s Address to the Central Committee of the
Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party
"Whatever you may say from now on, whatever that will be, I
will not mind. They can shoot me for all I care. I am fully aware of
my own responsibility now, and I will never name names; will never
suggest a name, except the person you will elect by secret ballot.
And please let me have lots of water; I am nervous."
In the Spring of 1989, word of a confused and
obsessive speech by an ailing János Kádár quickly spread through
Budapest. The obsessions centred on his (and his wife’s) state
of health, an interview for the Party newspaper that had been
requested from him (he thought he was being set up to take
the blame for the savage post-1956 reprisals), Imre Nagy,
comments on his contacts with the Soviets and his sense
of no longer being consulted ("even though I am
older than anyone else").
Tibor Hajdu has provided explanatory footnotes.
God Bless the Hungarians! Part II
by Gyula
Csics
Extracts from a diary kept by a twelve-year-old
resident of Pest
The second and concluding set of extracts from the diary kept by
Gyula Csics from the Autumn of 1956 to the Spring of the following
year.
The entries here run from New Year’s Day to
the 15th of March, the day on which Hungary celebrates the
1848 Revolution, when the schoolboy broke off his diary.
He describes how the shattered city
gradually returns to life, the Red Cross parcels
he and his schoolmates received, notes the jokes and political
pamphlets he hears and sees and records a memorable and
moving tribute to the fallen mounted in their schoolroom by
his classmates.
Again, the author's original drawings are included.
Counterpart Diaries
by Gábor Murányi
[János Kovács]: Magyar Forradalom 1956. Napló
(Hungarian Revolution 1956. Diary). Facsimile edition in numbered
copies. Budapest, Tamás Kieselbach, 200 pp.
Gyula Csics: Magyar Forradalom 1956. Napló
(Hungarian Revolution 1956. Diary), Budapest, 1956-os Intézet, 222
pp.
"…
the biggest sensation has been the publication, by two separate
publishing houses, of reproductions of parallel diaries kept by two
boys who were close friends."
In our previous issue Gyula Csics describes the making of the two
diaries, mentioning that the one written by his best friend János had
since been lost. Not so: an art historian trawling through a Budapest
flea market had discovered it and took it to an art publisher, who
brought it out in facsimile, not knowing anything of its provenance
or author. These were only established after the book launches.
Gábor Murányi reviews and describes these two
remarkable diaries, one of which has graced the pages of the current
and the preceding issues of The Hungarian Quarterly.
Poems
by György Petri
György Petri (1943-2000) was almost the same age as the two schoolboy
diarists when the Revolution broke out. An open critic of the Kádár
regime, he was silenced in 1975, managing, however, to get his poetry
published in samizdat and abroad. The selection here is from those of
his poems that reflect on the Revolution and Imre Nagy.
In George Szirtes’s translations.
1956 on the Stage
by Tamás Koltai
András Papp & János Térey: Kazamaták
(Casements)
"...surprise
and resistance on the part of the audience were palpable. Some walked
out; others did not join in the applause at the end."
Our theatre critic devotes his review to a play that is centred on
the lynching in Republic Square, calling it "the strangest, the
most original and the most outstanding new Hungarian play of recent
years."
I Prefer the Drier Idiom
by György Litván
János Kornai: A godolat erejével (By Force of Thought), Budapest,
Osiris, 2005, 428 pages
The historian here reviews the autobiography of
his long-standing friend, at the same time sketching something
of the history of their generation (in their late twenties in 1956).
By Force of Thought (extracts)
by János Kornai
János Kornai is probably best known for his 1980
work, Economics of Shortage, a critique of the socialist
economy that caused all the more stir because it was written by an
economist working behind the Iron Curtain.
By 1959 he had come to some important decisions which would govern
his life and career:
"1) I would break with the Communist Party.
2) I would not emigrate.
3) My vocation would be research, not politics…"
Describing the path of his research, Professor
Kornai wryly touches the realities of "existing socialism":
circumventing the system by simply posting Mss for publication to
professional journals in the West, how to acquire
a bathtub, an attempt by the political police to set up a
case against a visiting American professor as a spy, how
he became a member of the Academy of Sciences (consternation
at Party headquarters!)
Here we publish extracts from his forthcoming autobiography (MIT
Press, Cambridge Massachusetts and London)
Bartók’s Great Crescendos
by László Somfai
"Béla
Bartók’s mature music is essentially non-classical … the
entirety of his oeuvre and his whole artistic personality are
fundamentally Romantic."
With this in mind, the leading Bartók scholar,
through the evidence of the composer’s recordings, letters and
some autograph and printed Bartók scores, seeks to "encourage
a young artist who reads them with fresh eyes to make his or her
performance more expressive, more personal."
Challenging the Canon
by Ilona Sármány-Parsons
"Before the First World War, Europe was more cohesive
culturally than it is now; it is ironic that there seems to have been
a greater nobility and genuine exchange in the fine arts than exists
under globalization …"
The art historian responds to an important exhibition (and its
catalogues, one in English) on the Hungarian Fauves that run this
year in Budapest.
She feels that Eastern Europe has been terra
incognita to the international art world for too long and
hopes that the situation will be redressed by exhibitions such as
this, involving French fauviste works alongside those of their
Hungarian counterparts (some of whom worked in Paris and
actually participated in the exhibitions of 1905-1910). Turning to
the catalogues, she finds evidence of a long overdue dialogue between
Hungarian and foreign specialists, prompting an enlargement of the
canon of twentieth-century painting.
With eight pages of colour plates.
Freed
by Krisztina Tóth
From the poet’s first collection of short
stories, just published and reviewed by Miklós Györffy
in his survey of new fiction in this issue.
A Swish Mansion
(Chapter from a novel, Part 1)
by Péter Nádas
The first of two extracts from Parallel
Stories, his new novel. (Reviewed in our Spring 2006
issue.)
