Com munist towards political pluralism in Hungary. The
(HCP), but you are no longconference was faithfully reported in the
Were you er a member.
expelled?
main opposition daily and in other daily
No, I left the HCP in 1924 newpapers. The Hungarian radio broadcast with others because of deep two interviews with Mandel about the Fourth which political disagreements centred on three questions.
International. During his stay in Budapest,
On the prompting of the Com-
Mandel met Pál Demény, one of the last munist International (Cominsurvivors of the Hungarian Republic of tern), led first by Zinoviev and
Workers' Councils and a founder of the later by Stalin, the HCP leaders cut off from the real life of the
Hungarian Communist Party. We publish country, wanted to impose a sulbelow an interview that was given to IV by cidal leftist policy on us. They promoted the theory that the social democrats were social fascists and pursued the policies Nowing from the theory.
from to prevent wanted
They wurking in the unions and the social democracy, which was still legal under the Horthy regime, when the CP was outlawod. [sec box for historical references).
They were against the united-front tactic.
They wanted us to agitate for the dictatorship of the proletariat, at a time when the working class was on the delensive.
These policies were leading the CP into a dead-end and a near complete paralysis.
We did not accept this. Nor were we prepared to accept the financial blackmail whereby funds would be provided or cut off depending on whether or not one was prepared 1o slavishly follow
The slogans promoted first to his neck in the GPU's murders in Spain and the assassination of Trotsky - next by
Margaret Andez by Rákosi, had no resonance in the country.
The result was an extreme
The HCP had hardly members in 1945 when Sovict iry.Our group had been able to bring together five to ten times more, despite the fact that we relied entirely on our own resources.
In our view, the Comintern
% was a real international in
Demeny. Lenin's time, that is between 1919 and 1923. After 1924 it degenerated. If we had submitted to its mechanical discipline that would have been more or less the end of the communist movement in Hungary. • Were you accused of Trotskyism?
Yes, but we did not consider ourselves to be Trotskyists. We believed that Trotsky was also responsible, along with Zinoviev, for the leftist policies of 1924-25, and for the theory of social fascism. You say that this is not true. I will study the documents.
But we refused to attack or criticize was a matter of principle for us not to pass judgement without a scrious study of the texts. We could not make a decision on the basis of one-sided information. 1 will read with interest all the documents and books of Trotsky that you can provide.
• What did you publish under
Horthy's dictatorship?
Our material corresponded 1o the demands of work in the unions the Socialist Party. There and were leaflets, circulars, pamphlets and agitation, for propaganda
Marxist textbooks. Most of our publications were semi-legal, some illegal. We did not have a regular paper. This would have had to be illegal and the opcration would have absorbed too many resources.
At the same time we adapted our organizational forms to the real situation in the country. For example, we did not call our
"cells", since this base organizations would have automatically brought worse prison sentences for our comrades.
We called them "groups". For the same reason we did not describe ourselves as the "Communist Opposition" but as the
"left of the workers movement" or the
"left workers movement". But this did not mean that we did not function as a coher discistructured and ent, plined organization.
We kept out of the factional apart the disputes that lore in communists
Hungarıan
Paradoxically, this exile meant that the official organ of the HCP as well as Moscow's publications did nol attack us very often or very
They considerd us as hard.
"left social democrats". We ourselves tried to avoid pubthe HCP lic polemics with except on very rare occasions.
• Was the problem of repression that serious?
Certainly, and not only during the period of the white lerror that followed the fall of the Sovict Republic. But il
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HUNGARY
Historical notes
October 30, 1989
From Bela Kun to Horthy: After the col lapse of the Habsburg Empire in Novem ber 1918, power in Hungary tell into the hands of Count Mikilos Karolyl, who proved wholly unable to put an end to the instability in the country. On March 21,
1919, in the revolutionary wave that fol lowed the defeat of the Central Powers and the birth of the Soviet regime in Hussia, power passed into the hands of the
Socialist Party and the newly created
Communist Party short-ived Workers Councils headed by the communist leader Béla Kun, was militarily crushed by the Allies, who immediately afterwards conquered the Bavarian Soviet
Republic This was the and of the hopes for an extension of the Russian revolu tion into Central Europe Bela Kun's gav emment resigned in August 1, 1919. In the inter-war perlod, Hungary was under the military dictatorship of Admiral
Horthy who unleashed heavy repres sian against the workers movement The
CP was forced into clandestinity Many of its leaders were arrested and others
The Stalinization of the Communiet
Party: The process of subjecting the communist parties to the total control of the Russian CP was set in motion in the tramework of a so-called "bolsheviza tion" in 1924 when the Comintern was still led by Zinoviev, At the Sixth Con gress of the Communist International in
1928, the theory of social fascism which claimed that fascism and social democracy were identical, was imposed on the sections. This theary ruled out common action with reformist currents in the workers movement Criticism of this ultra-left and sectarian onentation, which fed a belief in an imminent revolution at a time when the workers movement was in a phase of retreat and weakening, was.
at the root of the first opposition groups in the communist parties
The Hunganan CP was led from Mos cow by, in succession, Era Gero, Margaret Andez and Matyas Räkosi The communist leaders Laszlo Rajk and
Janos Kadar played a leading role in
Hungarian history after the Second got still worse under the fascist dictatorship (in the full sense of the term) that came in after the Nazis overthrew Horthy in 1944. Nonethtless we could survive and defend ourselves as long as we behaved politically and organizationally in a way suited to the real situation in the country. • You were yourself a victim of the repression under Horthy.
Yes. I was arrested for the first time in 1919 then again in 1921, and once more
The founding of the People's Republic: When the Hungarian Republo was proclaimed in 1946, after the end of the Nazi occupation and the invasion of the country by the Red Army, a gov emment of national unity was formed After 1947, with the onset of the Cold War, Hungary was transformed into a "People's Democracy' The mult-party system was replaced by the rule of a sin gle party - after the fusion of the SocialIst Party and the CP. The economy was completely natonalized, and 'assimilated to the Soviet model. In 1949, the Hungarian Peaple's formed and joined the Warsaw Pact In the framework of the new Stalinist regime, successive waves of repres sion reaching their height above all between 1949 and 1953, unleashed against opponents and critcs, including communists Among the latter category were Rak, who was exe cuted and Kadar.
Ime Nagy and the 1956 revolution: On October 23, 1956, following on mobilizations by workers and intellectuals in solidanty with the strikes in Poz nan in Poland, Imre Nagy became head of the government. The intervention of Soviet troops radicalized the popular mobilization, giving rise to the formation of workers councils co-ardinated on a national level. Nagy proclaimed Hungary's neutrality as a protest against the arval of Soviet troops and took part, along with the workers leaders of the insurrection in the formation of a new communist party, the Hungarian Social-
The demonstrations for democracy turned into an ant-bureaucratic political revolution. On November 4, the Soviet army attacked Budapest The second Hungarian Soviet Rapublic was definitively crushed, a month later after fierce resistance. The regime of Janos Kadar continued the repression Ime Nagy was hanged along with Marshal Pal
Malater and the journalist Miklos Gimes on July 16, 1958, after a secret trial. * later. I spent in all six years in prison under the dictatorship. • What was your main activity under the Horthy dictatorship?
We defended the workers' interests. We organized many strikes. We tried above all to work in the legal organizations of the workers movement - the unions, the friends of nature, the Esperantists and the cultural associations.
Sometimes, we were able to have a pre-
HUNGARY ponderant influence in these for long periods. • What did your tendency do under fascism after 1944?
We gave priority to armed struggle, 1n sabotage, to protecting persecuted com rades, including CP Icaders such as Rajk and Kádár, and to protection of Jews threatened with extermination. Almost all the armed resistance in Budapest was Ied by us.
We were helped by the left-socialist Jewish organization, Hashomer Hatzair.
We created three legal businesses where we could provide for our own comrades, communist comrades, Sovict prisoners of war and jews direcily threatened with extermination. The State of Israel recog nizes us as among the "Just" who saved many human lives from the Nazi butchers. • What happened at the moment of the liberation of Budapest?
On November 6, 1944, the two communist factions fused. But it was impossible to do much given the intensity of the bom bardment of Budapest. At the start of February 1945, the Soviet army liberated the district in Budapest where I lived with my family. On February 13, 1945, Gábor Péter (later chief of the Stalinist political police) came to visit me.
He told me that Gerö, the number two in the party after Rákosi, had just arrived in Budapest from Moscow and wanted to meet me to discuss the future. I followed him. But the car took me straight lo the local office of the political police. I was prisoner. I asked why I had been arrested. They replied: "You are more intelligent than us, and we therefore refuse to discuss with you. You are an opponent of Rákosi and you are under arrest in the name of the party.
Eleven years and eight months. I have therefore spent more than 18 years in prison, under Horthy and under the Stalinists. I was given two trials. Once in 1946, when I was sentenced to four years and six months for "espionage and collaboration with the dictatorship and the fasshowed that the accusers did not even believe their own slanders. But what is worse, this was when there was still a coalition government, and both the social democrats and the Smallholders Party!
believed these Stalinist calumnies and repeated them in their press.
In 1953, 1 was sentenced again, this time for 10 years forced labour for "activities against the Constitution and agitation hos-
1. The Smallholders' Party was a popular peasant party that won the clections in 1947, beating the Hungarian
CP. Is participated in the national coaltion govemment g immediately after the Second World War.
• #172 International Viewpoint