Marianna Kiscsatári

Annus Mirabilis

The Year 1989 in Photos

Part 2
Two Funerals

 

The last days of the one-party dictatorship and the dawn
of democracy in the summer of 1989 were marked by
two events charged with symbolic content: the reburial
of Imre Nagy and his fellow victims, and the death of János
Kádár. The first took place on June 16, the second on July 6:
two days which were to ring in the new and ring out the old.

A red star first appeared on signets and seals of official bodies of the shortlived Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919, and later, in emulation of the Soviet Union, over a hammer and sickle as part of the arms of the new Hungarian socialist state in 1949. Insurgents removed the hated symbol from public buildings in the very first days of the 1956 revolution. The same happened during the dying days of the Kádár regime in 1989, albeit more peacefully.
The red star in flowers in the middle of the traffic roundabout at the Buda end of the Széchenyi Chain Bridge was a characteristic element of the cityscape, being replanted at least two or three times a year with new flowers in accordance with the season. White flowers and green-leafed plants were set around the red star to make up the national red-white-andgreen and mitigate the socialist symbolism a little. That "little garden" was refreshed for the last time in the summer of 1989, with a start being made on removing the bedded plants on September 22. Before long the red star was also taken down from the Parliament building on the Pest side of the Danube, to be followed by countless other red stars. Within months, statues of Lenin, big and small, were removed from public places, streets reverting back to their earlier, pre-Communist names. Owing to domestic and Soviet protests, the Soviet war memorial stayed put in Budapest's Freedom Square. Some of the outlandish monumental Soviet-era public statues ended up in Statue Park, an outdoor museum opened on the second anniversary of the withdrawal of Soviet troops, and now a prime attraction for visitors to Budapest.

Vital measures in the reform of the economy were accompanied by the transformation of an educational system that was based in many respects on the Soviet model. Obligatory Russian language lessons and teaching of ideologically-based subjects were discontinued, while West European languages were taken up by syllabuses. Support was extended to more up-todate programmes of scientific research, and a start was made on revising the grant system to allow financial assistance for culture (education, films, book publishing, etc.). The state monopoly for setting up and funding of schools was abolished, with freedom for school choice being introduced.
The traditional three-stage—elementary, middle and higher—educational system of the Kádár era was revamped, giving the younger generation a wider set of alternatives after the transition. In vocational education, greater emphasis was placed on training in up-to-date technical, economic, commercial and catering skills, while teaching for apprentices was also overhauled, with the number of company-based workshop schools dropping to one third over the period 1989 to 1995, largely due to the closure of many factory sites.

Following economic reforms introduced between 1986 and 1988 (the bankruptcy law, twotier banking system, sales tax and income tax), the Law on Companies came into effect on 1 January 1989. It encouraged the transformation of state-owned enterprises into business organisations (syndicates, joint ventures, limited companies, stock companies, etc.), allowing private individuals to form companies as well as attracting foreign investment. This Act, coupled with the 1984 Company Law, which had already stripped ministries of some ownership rights and handed these to enterprise councils, opened the way to privatisation on an unprecedented scale. Heavilyindebted large industrial enterprises transformed themselves into new companies, which were then able to lay off unnecessary staff at minimal cost, while company managers at company headquarters were able to obtain large bonuses.
The 'rationalisation' of an energy-intensive heavy industry that was operating at huge losses accelerated. The mass unemployment that resulted from layoffs, especially in the mining industry, and was accompanied by a drop in living standards provoked a profound moral crisis as social differences between the upper and lower strata continued to widen. In 1989, the annual bonuses of some 200 company managers exceeded HUF 2 million (about 20 times an average Hungarian annual salary), while the average worker's monthly salary before tax, health insurance and other deductions was HUF 13,000. The registered unemployment rate rose in 1989 from 0.35 per cent in late 1988 to 0.7 per cent in late 1989, and 1.2 per cent in 1990, but the actual figures were much higher. Around two thirds of the jobless lived in Budapest or in other urban areas. Half were untrained and unskilled workers (most of them Roma) with little chance to find new employment.
A new generation of photographers and documentary-makers emerged in the press and film world prepared to focus on new problems appearing for workers in heavy industry and mining (see the work of director Tamás Almási discussed on pp. 142–151 of this issue of HQ).

Hungary had homeless people and people without their own homes even in the times of full employment. According to the 1980 census, some 30,000 Hungarians lived in garages, caves or huts, while 90,000 lived in workers' hostels or in temporary quarters. As a result of the downscaling of large firms and the gradual elimination of workers' hostels, more and more of the second group ended up on the streets by 1988 and 1989. No one knew their precise number. A 1987 survey mentioned 30,000–60,000 people, and other estimates for late 1989 put their number at 40,000–45,000. The majority of these were in the capital or in its immediate vicinity. An amnesty granted to some 3,000 convicts on 23 October 1989, on the occasion of the proclamation of the Republic, further increased the number of the homeless and reduced public safety. Although several aid organisations, such as the Maltese Caritas Service and the Salvation Army had arrived in Hungary by this time, running soup kitchens and shelters, the number of those needing assistance far exceeded the available capacity.
To this day, when cold weather arrives, underground passages and train stations fill up with homeless people, most of them in a miserable physical and mental state. With the current economic crisis a further dramatic rise in their numbers is expected.

The 'Inconnu' Group of independent and oppositionist artists have already begun their activities during the Kádár era. They are still working today.
With their 'mail art' letters they made fun of the authorities by using a fictive name for the addressee but designating as "sender" the place they really intended as recipient, so that by the indirect means of using the inscription 'INCONNU' the dispatch would ultimately reach its goal. Originally based in the town of Szolnok, due to harassment by police and secret-service officials, members of the group (Péter Bokros, Tamás Molnár and others) moved to Budapest, although harassment still continued. They put on performances and happenings on a regular basis, and they took part in many exhibitions, gatherings and samizdat publications eventually launching their own underground periodical Inconnu Press.
On 10 July 1989 the group organised a demonstration in Vörösmarty Square in central Budapest to protest against the repression of Chinese dissidents. Just five weeks before, huge processions of students had thronged the streets of Beijing to demand democratic rights and an end to corruption and dictatorship. On 4 June 1989, Chinese communist authorities had attacked a crowd in Tienanmen Square with tanks, leading to the massacre of an estimated 3,600 people.
At the demonstration in Budapest, opposition politicians delivered speeches after which members of the 'Inconnu' Group daubed with red paint an expanded polystyrene copy of the statue of 'The Goddess of Democracy' erected seven weeks before by students in Beijing. The paint caused the statue to shrink, as a result of which a hand dropped off, becoming a potent symbol for the truncation of freedom.
The group had also had a part, some months earlier, in relocating and restoring Plot 301 in the New Public Cemetery of Budapest, where Imre Nagy and his executed associates had been anonymously buried. They set up identical graveposts to mark the graves.

In the course of the reprisals that followed the revolution of 1956, the remains of the executed prime minister and his associates were moved at various points in time before ending up in the New Public Cemetery (the biggest in Europe). The plot in which they were buried there was in a distant, tuckedaway corner, overgrown with long grass and shrubs, the very borders of the plot being indistinct. The locations of the graves were marked by the way the earth settled rather than regular burial mounds. Relatives had long suspected who was concealed in these unmarked graves, but they were driven away. Some individual members of the opposition movement in Hungary had braved the police harassment already in the early eighties to hold remembrance ceremonies on each anniversary of Nagy's execution.
Since the summer of 1988 the government had been engaged, through a Committee for Historical Justice (TIB = Történelmi Igazságtétel Bizottság), in examining the materials of the post-1945 show trials and other grievances. This was eventually extended to include the cases of those executed after 1956 as well. According to the opposition's view, a reassessment of 1956 was an absolute precondition to any substantive political change. On 24 November 1988, the TIB issued an appeal in which they encouraged the relatives of those executed to request the release of the remains of their family members. After prolonged negotiations in Spring 1989 the government announced that "in order to satisfy the demands of duty and humanity, and with a view at all times to social reconciliation, [it] assents to the reburial of those executed on 16 June 1958."
Identification of the bodies of Plot 301 began on 29 March in the presence of family members and representatives of the TIB. The bodies of Imre Nagy and his associates had been placed face down and wired up. The press releases, radio and television programmes that preceded and accompanied the event stirred public opinion, shaking many. The subsequent 16 June 1989 state reburial of the victims became a milestone in Hungary's transition to a new, more democratic regime.

The commemorative funeral service on 16 June 1989 of Imre Nagy and other victims of the post-1956 restoration of Communist rule was the single symbolic event of Hungary's peaceful transition.
Following the disinternments from Plot 301 it soon became obvious that the reburial would not be a simple tribute but a large-scale demonstration. Squabbling between the authorities and the opposition groups as to the venue and the organisation of the event ended with a compromise: permission was granted for representatives of Parliament and the government to participate, but not for the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party to take part as an organisation.
The ceremony at Heroes' Square began at 9 a.m. Of the six coffins placed on the steps of the Art Gallery, five contained the remains of convicted and executed victims of the 1958 trial—Prime Minister Imre Nagy, State Minister Géza Losonczy, Minister of Defense Pál Maléter, journalist Miklós Gimes and József Szilágyi, Imre Nagy's secretary. The sixth remained empty and symbolised the more than 300 others who were executed. The large-scale spectacle, building in contrasts of black and white, was designed by László Rajk, Jr. and Gábor Bachman. Family members and the victims' former co-defendants took turns standing in the guard of honour beside the coffins. People arriving from all over the country and high ranking personalities from all over the world paid their respects before the bier.
At 12:30 pm, the tolling of bells announced the beginning of the ceremony. At that moment, traffic stopped throughout the country, and factory and car horns sounded for one minute. The nation remembered the martyrs with one minute of silent mourning. During the approximately five-hour funeral service, at least 250,000 people paid their respects.

Six eulogies were delivered, the harshest comments came from 26- year-old Viktor Orbán, a future prime minister, in the name of Fidesz, the Alliance of Young Democrats:

We stand here unable to comprehend how those who not so long ago slandered the Revolution and its prime minister in unison today suddenly realise that they are the continuers of Imre Nagy's reform policies. Nor do we understand why those party and state leaders, who decreed that we should be taught from textbooks lying about the Revolution, today almost scramble to touch these coffins, as they might a lucky talisman...
We cannot make do with the promises of Communist politicians that do not commit them to anything: we must see to it that the ruling party, should it wish to, cannot employ violence against us. Only in this way can we avoid coffins and belated funerals like today's.

The divisive effect of the speech highlighted what was to become a central issue in the ideological and political debates of the post-transition years: the assessment of the nearly half-century after 1945, or, in other words, the assessment of Communist rule.

Two days before the June 16 commemoration, Minister of Justice Kálmán Kulcsár announced that Parliament wished to render justice to the people executed or imprisoned after the collapse of the 1956 Revolution through a separate law. He indicated that in addition to the approximately 300 executed people, nearly 15,000 trials also needed reexamination, and they wished to make amends to approximately 12,000 former political prisoners. Among these, the most important was the trial of Imre Nagy and his associates. The rehearing and the announcement of the Supreme Court's decision took place on 6 July. The 1958 verdicts were overturned and the accused were acquitted in the absence of any crime.
Shortly after the proceedings began someone stepped into the court chamber and sent a piece of paper around to those present. The note read: Kádár is dead. Thus, the rehabilitation of Imre Nagy and his fellow victims and the death of János Kádár took place on the very same day. The coincidence of these two events symbolised the reality of the change of regime.

János Kádár witnessed the momentous changes of 1988–89 in rapidly declining physical and mental state, tortured by his own responsibility in the reprisals. (For a translation of Kádár's last speech delivered on 12 April 1989 at a closed session of the Central Committee of the HSWP, see HQ 183). In late May 1989 he sent a letter to Party Secretary General Károly Grósz, in which he pushed for a "judicial examination of the Imre Nagy affair." "Should the court consider me guilty," he wrote, "let it say so. If I am not, I ask the Central Committee to use its influence, and let the insinuations and innuendo against my person cease." He spent the final weeks of his life believing that he would be evicted from his home. He lived to see June 16 and knew of what happened. "Is today the day?" he asked one of his visitors.
Kádár's funeral was arranged and carried out by his party, the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party. His coffin was placed in the entrance hall of the party headquarters building near Margaret Bridge. To the surprise of even the organisers, tens of thousands came to say their farewells. The end of the human wave stretched all the way to the other side of the Parliament building, and it remained that way until late in the evening, recommencing the following morning. (The viewing schedule had to be revised several times.) Some 60,000 people placed a flower or bouquet, or just simply bowed their heads before the bier. When, on the following day, the cars bearing the coffin escorted by police on motorcycles, rolled down the Great Boulevard all the way to Kerepesi Cemetery, on this occasion, too, hundreds of pedestrians formed groups on both sides of the route, and windows overlooking the boulevard were also filled with people.
Data from public-opinion polls conducted in the days preceding and following the funeral suggested that the surprisingly large-scale show of sympathy was not some prearranged demonstration but the spontaneous expression of much of Hungarian society's true feelings. Most people by this time knew the details about the inglorious birth of the Kádár regime, and they suffered at first hand from its economic policies. There were many, however, who believed that the tranquillity and relative well-being characteristic of the 1960s and 1970s outweighed these negatives, and moreover they also found Kádár appealing as a person. Weighing up both positives and negatives, 75 per cent of those polled in 1989 held the opinion that "with his death Hungarian political life lost one of its greatest figures." This favourable view of Kádár has not changed since. According to surveys conducted in the late 1990s, 42 per cent of those questioned considered him to be the most likable Hungarian politician of the 20th century. Only 17 per cent named Imre Nagy.

On 11 July 1989 George Bush had visited Hungary, the first time for an American president to do so. The visit was brief, just 40 hours altogether, although the message was unmistakable: the division of Europe would soon be over, the opportunity for democratic transformation was given, and the United States supported both. This was the essence of his ad lib speech in the pouring rain on Kossuth Square (after ostentatiously tearing up his prepared text), of his toast at the parliamentary dinner given in his honour, and finally of his statements on the following day at the Karl Marx University of Economics as well as during his brief talks with the leading opposition and Party politicians. "Open elections which Hungary had promised will mean a great step forward on the path to democracy and political freedom and will make it possible for your great nation to enjoy the blessing of pluralism," he declared in his toast.
On the other hand, he did not bring money, or at least brought very little, and no sort of new Marshall Plan would be forthcoming, something that many hoped for then and later. Of the promised $30 million, he earmarked $25 million for an American-Hungarian entrepreneurial foundation and offered $5 million for environmental protection. (Poland was given the same type and amount of support.) Instead of immediate and effective financial assistance, Bush encouraged his Hungarian audience to follow what many felt was a somewhat idealised model of a market economy without state intervention.

In Romania, Ceaus¸escu had reigned for nearly a quarter of a century. A pampered favourite of the West, his star began to wane in the eighties as his ruthless system of terror revealed itself. The 'systematisation plan', launched in 1988, was especially harsh on Transylvanian Hungarians. Hungarian foreign policy by then was willing to take on their cause, with the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party Central Committee declaring: "We have a responsibility for the fate of the more than two million ethnic Hungarians who live in Romania for both domestic and foreign-political reasons. In the interests of the Hungarian people and universal culture, we must do everything in our power to prevent the forcible assimilation of Hungarians."
Amidst tense relations between the two states, growing numbers of ethnic Hungarians from Transylvania attempted to flee to Hungary, often with the intention of making that a permanent move. Others, in seeking to alleviate the catastrophically low standard of living in Romania merely sought casual work or risked often brutal harassment from Romanian customs inspectors at the border in order to bring out a few goods to sell.
Womenfolk from the village of Szék, who even today wear their traditional costumes, brought to sell in Budapest items of homespun cloth, pottery from Korond (Corund), and intricately embroidered leather waistcoats. Some of them also worked as cleaners in private homes.

The 'Iron Curtain', the term coined by Winston Churchill in a famous speech delivered at Fulton, Missouri, in 1946 for the tightly guarded boundary that separated citizens of the West from the countries of the Soviet bloc, was the symbol of Europe's political division. In order to hinder illegal border crossing, a variety of systems, barbed wire fences and minefields were established after 1949. A start was made in the autumn of 1955 on clearing up the minefields, by the autumn of 1956, it ceased to be effective. After the suppression of the Revolution, the government, in March 1957, decreed its re-establishment. The modernisation of the frontier was completed in 1963. In 1965 it was decided to pick up the mines on the Hungarian–Austrian frontier and to replace them by a 260-km-long electronic signalling system maintained at astronomical costs. Dismantling this was discussed on a number of occasions; after being first mooted in 1981, a decision to do so was finally taken by the Political Committee on 28 February 1989. Dismantling started on 2 May and was

completed on 27 June 1989, when Gyula Horn and Alois Mock, the then foreign ministers of Hungary and Austria, in the presence of nearly one hundred reporters, ceremonially clipped through the barbed wire that separated the two countries on Mount Hubertus, near Sopron.

 

Marianna Kiscsatári
is curator of the contemporary section (1956 up to the present) of the Historical Photographic Collection of the Hungarian National Museum, Budapest, which holds all the photographs in this article. Much of the text accompanying the photos was based on From Dictatorship to Democracy. The Birth of the Third Hungarian Republic 1988–2001 by Ignác Romsics (East European Monographs, No. DCCXXII. Social Science Monographs, Boulder, Colorado. Atlantic Research and Publications, Inc. Highland Lakes, New Jersey, 2007. Distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, vii + 471 pp.) The book is reviewed on pp. 136–139 by Géza Jeszenszky.