Marianna Kiscsatári

Annus Mirabilis

The Year 1989 in Photos

Part 4
As 1989 Turned into 1990

 

As 1989 drew to a close, the party-state and state socialism gradually ceased to exist in both a legal and everyday sense. After a 40-year detour, Hungary returned to the path marked out by István Széchenyi, Lajos Kossuth and Ferenc Deák, the nineteenth-century founding fathers of the Hungarian parliamentary state.

The National Round Table Negotiations, which began on 13 June 1989, concluded on 18 September with a broad agreement making clear that the elections scheduled for 1990 would take place without restrictions on the basis of a free contest between parties—the de facto launch of the election campaign. Parties drafted programmes and held rallies in schools, community centres and on the street. Red stars were torn down. Such acts symbolised the irreversibility of regime change. The Socialist Workers’ Party (MSZMP), which had over 860,000 members in the mid-1980s, continued to shrink. Around 10,000 per month left the party throughout 1989 and fewer and fewer paid their membership dues. Still, its membership was strong compared with the new parties. The Party convened the XIVth Congress for 6–9 October to decide its future. Most of the 1,200 delegates were firsttime participants who joined openly organized platforms before the deliberations. The largest of these was the Reform Alliance with around 500 members. The opposing "law and order" conservatives formed several platforms. Although the possibility of a split was mooted repeatedly, in the end the majority chose to stay together. Among the compromise decisions, the most important, on 7 October, was to end the MSZMP and form the MSZP, the Hungarian Socialist Party. In subsequent weeks, the dismantling of the state party apparatus and the registration of new members began.

Laws were enacted to create the constitutional framework for a democratic state governed by the rule of law. Two laws which came into force on 15 October 1989 were pivotal. The first amended the Criminal Code, the second criminal procedure, and their essence was to narrow the scope of crimes against the state and fortify individual liberties. Another law amended the 1949 Constitution and came into force on 23 October 1989 (a respectful nod to the 1956 Revolution). After the noontime tolling of bells on that same day, Speaker of Parliament Mátyás Szűrös proclaimed the Republic on Kossuth Square (and hence became acting president of the Republic). He cited Lajos Kossuth, Mihály Károlyi and Zoltán Tildy as the forerunners of the renascent Hungarian democracy. Thus the partystate and state socialism came to an end de jure. After a forced detour of 40 years, Hungary returned to the parliamentary system whose foundations were laid by the founding fathers of the modern Hungarian parliamentary state in 1848–1849.

Parliament continued ratifying the basic laws of the new Hungarian Republic. On 30 October, another law made way for the establishment of the Constitutional Court. The body, unprecedented in Hungarian constitutional law, was granted wideranging authority. Members were to be elected by Parliament for a nine-year term. The Court’s duties included the preliminary and subsequent examination of bills and acts of Parliament. It was to handle complaints about violations of constitutionally guaranteed rights, interpret the Constitution and end jurisdictional conflicts between central and local authorities. In defence of the Constitution and constitutionality, the Court could nullify any act of Parliament in violation of the Constitution or any government measure violating the law.

The Constitutional Court thus acquired a privileged status in the system of checks and balances. Its first president was László Sólyom, an internationally known legal scholar and a former adviser to an environmental lobby group. (Sólyom has been President of the Republic since 2007.) The body’s size was eventually reduced from the originally planned 15 members to 11. Parliament passed 58 acts in 1989, more than ten times the average between the years 1950 and 1985, and more than twice the number in 1988. With the establishment of the constitutional framework, Parliament decided to dissolve itself on 21 December 1989, and effected the manoeuvre on 16 March 1990—not without some grumbling from the predominantly Socialist deputies who had been ‘elected’ in 1985.

The state budget came close to collapse several times in the course of 1989. The planned figure for the annual balance of payments deficit was reached within two months. In May, the International Monetary Fund announced its refusal to release the final $350 million instalment under an earlier agreed credit agreement. Consequently, the government decided to devalue the forint twice in succession (by 5 per cent in March and 6 per cent in April), to halt the Nagymaros dam project in May, and to submit new budgetary amendments to Parliament in June. These efforts were directed towards pushing down the annual deficit to 20 billion forints, in line with the expectation of the IMF. Further loans were sought from various organizations and banks. Success came in the closing months of the year as various Western banks extended immediate aid.
Imbalances were exacerbated by a trade surplus within Comecon, mainly in trade with the Soviet Union. The government’s aim in this area was to boost imports and reduce exports in order to satisfy growing domestic demand. In reality the opposite happened. Hungarian firms exported 500–600 million roubles in excess of what they imported. This was almost two and a half times the 1988 figure. The basic cause of the failure of this policy was that most Hungarian industrial goods could only be sold on the Comecon market.
In order to avoid impending bankruptcy, on 18 September the government tried to control foreign currency reserves held by the public by legalizing them. When this failed, on 2 November it suspended the convertible currency allowance for Hungarians travelling abroad for 17 days. At the same time, it was announced that tourists travelling to the West could purchase at most $50 annually. Finally, on 10 December the forint was devalued by a further 10 per cent.
In 1989 Hungary’s largest bus manufacturer Ikarusz had a workforce of 8,000. It used to produce 12,000 buses annually for the domestic market and for export to Socialist countries, mainly the Soviet Union. The company faced difficulties when these markets collapsed and technological limitations circumscribed its competitiveness on western markets. Partial privatization started in the autumn of 1989 assuring the Soviet Atex consortium a 30.4 per cent share. Trade nevertheless continued to decline. A crisis management was appointed to no avail, in spite of apparent interest from abroad. A consortium headed by Gábor Széles produced a revival which proved to be fleeting.

(By 1995 the workforce had been reduced to 2,846 and the number of sold buses dwindled to 1,574. Debts accumulated in spite of various reorganizations. Ikarusz ceased operating on 31 December 2007.)

By dismantling barriers and allowing East Germans to cross freely to Austria, Hungary literally tore a hole in the Iron Curtain. An estimated 10,000 ‘vacationing’ East Germans headed westward from Hungary (see Part 3 of "Annus Mirabilis: The Year 1989 in Photos" in HQ 195), more than 2,000 between 21 and 24 August alone, the largest wave of emigration since the construction of the Berlin Wall began in 1961. Others who sought refuge in West German embassies in Prague or Budapest were taken by special trains to West Germany in early October. By the end of 1989, the total number of GDR citizens who had left the country stood at 345,000.
On 18 October, amidst countrywide demonstrations, Egon Krenz took over as party general secretary from the hated hardliner Erich Honecker. His concessions came too late. People took to the streets in the large cities and a crowd of some half a million people near the Alexanderplatz in Berlin demanded a complete political change. The entire leadership resigned. On 8 November, the German–German border was opened both in and outside Berlin. At midnight, after hundreds of people converged at crossing points, permission was given for gates along the Wall to be opened. The crowd surged through cheering and shouting and was met by jubilant West Berliners on the other side. Ecstatic, they immediately began to clamber on top of the Wall and hack large chunks out of the 28-mile barrier.
The Berlin Wall came down on 9 November 1989, heralding the reunification process of the two German states.

Due to the deteriorating economic situation, budgetary imbalance and, not least, the expectations of an IMF threatening to withhold credit, the Németh government submitted an extraordinarily strict budget to Parliament in December 1989. It entailed price increases on an unprecedented scale. Miklós Németh threatened to step down should the budget proposals be rejected. To avoid this, Helmut Kohl, who came to Budapest to express his thanks to the Hungarian nation for their help, appeared at the 18 December session of Parliament and endorsed the proposal. It was probably thanks to him too that, despite the heated debate, members finally passed the proposal by a large majority on 21 December.

In Romania Nicolae Ceauşescu ruled for nearly a quarter of a century at the helm of the most regressive regime in the entire Soviet bloc. Brutal repression went hand in hand with a personality cult that perhaps outdid Stalin’s. By the early 1980s, the standard of living had sunk to unprecedented depths. Permanent shortages led to food rationing. The annual ration for a family of three in Braşov in 1987 was 10.5 kg of sugar, 8.5 kg of meat, 2.5 kg of flour, 10 litres of milk and 10 eggs.
Despite the terror that kept virtually everyone in dread, the first cracks in the structure of the Ceauşescu regime also appeared. In March 1989, in an open letter, six previously high-ranking state and party leaders condemned the "genius of the Carpathians" for human rights abuses, the destruction of the economy and illegalities perpetrated by the Securitate. In the spring of 1989, numerous international organizations, among them the European Parliament and the UN’s Human Rights Commission, condemned Ceauşescu, as did Eugene Ionesco, the noted Romanian playwright who lived in France. Yet the biggest breach in the regime’s façade, and the one which eventually led to its collapse, was opened by László Tőkés, a previously unknown Hungarian Calvinist minister in Timişoara (Temesvár).
László Tőkés was born in Cluj (Kolozsvár) in 1952. He was a successful young pastor who eventually extended his criticism of the Reformed Church to a condemnation of the entire Romanian regime. He spoke out in defence of the rights of the Hungarian minority. In 1988, he condemned the village systematization plan. The number of faithful who came to hear him preach grew continuously in the autumn of 1989. The Securitate sought to frighten him by every means available.
Tőkés had become a symbol of resistance and individual courage, and the authorities finally decided to remove him from Timişoara by force. The date of the eviction was set for 15 December. Tőkés resisted, and the multitude gathered around his house forced the authorities to retreat. On the following day a crowd assembled in the vicinity, forming a human chain in defence of Tőkés and his family. By then the majority were ethnic Romanians. The demonstrators removed the coat of arms symbolizing the regime out of the centre of the flag and chanting the slogans—Freedom for Everyone! Down with the Dictatorship! Down with Ceauşescu!—they overran the streets of the city centre. They smashed the windows of bookshops and burnt Communist books as well as pictures of the dictator. The Romanian Revolution had begun.
The Timişoara militia and Securitate acted brutally, beating and injuring many. On the orders of Ceauşescu and his wife, armed forces began shooting at demonstrators on 17 December, and this continued throughout the night and on the next day. The number of victims exceeded one hundred.

László Tőkés and his wife in custody were taken to a small Transylvanian village.
Believing that the revolt was over, Ceauşescu travelled to Iran on 18 December for a three-day visit. Infuriated by the murders, 100,000–150,000 citizens of Timişoara —one third of the city’s population of 350,000—once again took to the streets on 20 December. The military behaved passively on this day, and a few of them in fact openly fraternized with the demonstrators. Then most units disappeared from the city overnight. Even today, we cannot know for sure whether they acted on local orders or on orders from Bucharest. On their own, the Securitate did not dare confront the crowd. The Ceauşescu regime fell on 20 December in Timişoara. Overnight, the Action Committee of the Romanian Democratic Front was formed, demanding the departure of the leadership in Bucharest, and on 20–21 December it seized control of the entire county.
On returning home from Iran, Ceauşescu, unaware of the momentous changes, in a televised speech on 20 December called the hundreds of thousands of protestors in Timişoara "a few hooligans" and had summoned a mass rally for the following day on the square in front of the presidential palace. But the rhythmic applause and cheering to which he had become accustomed in previous decades failed to materialize. The crowd began to shout, at first barely audibly, then ever-more loudly: Timişoara! Rat! Death! We Want Bread! Down with the Dictator! Since TV broadcast the event live, many were able to see first the confused, and then the terrified facial expression of the "Great Leader". Ceauşescu attempted once again to influence the crowd, with even less success. A few took aim at him with raw potatoes and their shoes. The Conduca˘tor thereupon withdrew inside the building, gave the order to disperse the crowd at any cost, and then, boarding a helicopter, fled the city with his wife.
Chaos and confusion followed, but by 23 December a National Salvation Front Committee was formed. Various declarations and the conduct of the army eventually gave rise to the suspicion that the Romanian Revolution was perhaps not a revolution at all but a coup d’état, the predetermined schedule of which had been disrupted by the uprising in Timişoara. Whatever it was, it ended with Ceauşescu’s hurried execution following summary proceedings on Christmas Day, 25 December 1989, a sordid and humiliating spectacle which, televised, was watched by the whole world with horrified disbelief.

The year of the first free elections started in with a political bomb. The fuse was lit by the Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) and the Alliance of Young Democrats (Fidesz) at a press conference on 5 January. They revealed that as late as November and December, officers and secret agents of the notorious Department III/III of the Ministry of the Interior had been keeping tabs on the activities of more than 20 political parties and several well-known opposition politicians. The reports were submitted to top officials. In the meantime, a largescale project of document destruction was under way at the Department III/III Files with agents’ reports and other sensitive documents were being systematically shredded and records of what was destroyed were rarely kept. The scandal, called "Dunagate", was widely aired in the media. It led to the resignation of the Minister of the Interior and several top officials, and provided further ammunition to the Opposition parties in their election campaign.

Amidst demonstrations and strikes protesting against the closure of factories and soaring prices; and against the backdrop of the scandal in the Ministry of the Interior, the Németh government made every effort to embrace the spirit of the new age. Act IV of 1990, passed on 24 January, declared freedom of conscience and religion to be a basic human right and established complete legal equality among denominations. The law repealed agreements previously reached with the Vatican under which the Pope could appoint Hungarian prelates only with the prior consent of the Hungarian state. On 9 February, Hungary established diplomatic relations with the Vatican—second only to Poland among the countries of the Soviet bloc.

On 1 February, bilateral talks on the complete withdrawal of Soviet troops began. The timetable for the withdrawal had to be made dependent essentially on the capacity of the Hungarian railway junctions, mainly at Záhony-Cop. The Hungarian negotiating team wanted the withdrawal of the troops to be completed by 30 June 1991, something that Czechoslovakia had managed to secure earlier. A drawn-out debate ensued, ending with Moscow accepting the date proposed by the Hungarians. Although no settlement was reached on financial questions, the agreement was signed on 10 March in Moscow by Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Horn. Also present were representatives of the Hungarian Opposition parties.

The elections of 25 March and 8 April were a plebiscite of sorts passing judgement on the Communist past. Twelve parties entered the elections. Six parties dropped out after the first round having failed to cross the 4 per cent hurdle. The Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) obtained 43 per cent and the Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) 24 per cent. Under Prime Minister József Antall, the MDF formed a centre-right coalition government with the Independent Smallholders’ Party (FKGP) and the Christian Democratic People’s Party (KDNP) to command a 60 per cent majority in Parliament. The Socialists achieved a humiliating 8.5 per cent and the emerging liberal Alliance of Young Democrats (Fidesz) an impressive 6 per cent.
The elections completed a peaceful process of political and legal transformation, a process which became known befittingly as the "negotiated revolution".

 

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 except where otherwise indicated.
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.).