Last Days in Old Europe

by Richard Bassett

  I chose a compartment where three soldiers, all wearing the black collar patches and distinctions of a Soviet armoured regiment, had already taken seats, but as soon as I entered they stood up and left, marshalled by a junior officer down the corridor. For a moment I imagined their senior officer might join me in the empty compartment, but no such luck. Throwing me a scornful glance, he walked past and into an empty compartment further up the carriage. For a Soviet field officer I was a low form of life, a civilian and a foreigner.

  The train moved at barely 20 miles an hour through picturesque country which might have been part of Eastern Styria had the fields not been so large. As Barbara had explained to me, the Communist collectivization of the Hungarian agricultural estates had been made easy by the stupendous size of the Magyar magnates’ landed holdings, many of which were the size of a small English county. Certainly the landscape I beheld was of an almost feudal character, unrelieved by much building or even roads. Those roads which I did pick out seemed to be carrying horses and carts rather than cars.

  The station for Pannonhalma, or St Martinsberg as it was known to the Austrians for centuries, lay about three miles from the monastery. With the sun low in the sky, I watched the train depart with its Soviet soldiery and turned to walk up the hill, a mile or so to the east, where the severe classical outlines of the monastery dominated the surrounding landscape.

  It was about 5 p.m. when I arrived at the abbey church on the summit. The monks were gathering for Vespers. There was a powerful smell of polish mixed with incense as I entered the dark recesses of the choir to find a place on one of the rear benches. The cantor intoned the medieval chant. Around me was the architecture of the fourteenth century, more recent than the plainsong I was listening to. Hooded and dressed in black, the monastic community numbered barely a dozen souls, but they sang out confidently in two-part harmony. The unchanging ritual of the Benedictine order seemed to offer the traveller some respite from Marxist austerities.

  By the time the service ended, it had grown rather late to continue the journey to Budapest. I sought out the Guest-Master who without hesitating showed me to a large vaulted room, empty of furniture save for a bed and a fine empire writing desk. On one of the walls hung an oil-painting of The Temptation of St Benedict, a theme I had come to know well as an undergraduate. Gorley Putt had had a sixteenth-century Italian version of the same subject on an easel opposite his Carolingian fireplace in the Fellows’ Building in Christ’s.fn13

  In monotonic-accented German, the Guest-Master told me to wait because one of the younger monks, who spoke better German and even some English, would soon join us. Dom Valentine, probably in his early twenties, with cropped hair and an engaging manner, offered to give me a tour of the monastery library and its treasures the following morning. Breakfast would follow the first service of the day, shortly after 5.00 a.m.

  Although too late for dinner, I was brought some sandwiches of salami and cheese and a flask of tea. By the time I had consumed them, darkness had fallen and with it a stillness and calm which only centuries of practised silence can create.

  The following morning I awoke to find the sun streaming through my window and the abbey bell sounding. I was too late for the first order of the day – it was now just after 6 a.m. – but as I wandered down a staircase I was scooped up by a couple of smiling novices and ushered into the dining hall where a hot breakfast was served while one of the monks, standing at a small lectern, read an extract from the scriptures in Latin. On the walls hung two large portraits of Emperor Franz Josef, one in a glorious white hussar uniform surrounded by exotic Japanese blossom.

  After warm goulash, Dom Valentine, dressed in an immaculately pressed black habit, took me to the library, a magnificent neo-classical interior whose columned shelves were crammed with, he told me, more than 100,000 volumes. Globes and writing desks bore witness to the spirit of the Josephinian Enlightenment but Dom Valentine insisted that however much Joseph II might be admired in the West by intellectuals, he had been no friend of the Church.

  The Communists had simply restored that monarch’s anti-clerical policies. Pannonhalma was allowed to exist only because it served a purpose: it had become the Ampleforth of Hungary and its boys’ boarding school was ironically the most popular destination for the sons of the Communist Party leaders. ‘Because we have a school we can pray,’ Dom Valentine observed. ‘Just as Joseph II said monasteries can only exist if they serve a practical purpose, so the Communists have revived this theme. We cannot devote ourselves to our traditional vocation of prayer unless we also fulfil a practical role for the state. This is not what St Benedict had in mind.’

  I was visiting out of term time, so the school was closed, but Dom Valentine showed me round the classrooms. In its way Pannonhalma was testament to a peculiarly Hungarian sense of Magyar history and destiny. Because it had been founded by the father of St Stephen, the patron saint of Hungary, and because his cloak had been preserved in its vaults, this monastery had so far survived the worst excesses of Communism.fn14

  Conversing with the monks in the beautiful orchard behind the abbey, I gleaned much about the Hungarian sensibility and the strength of character which was the hallmark of the patriotic Magyar. As I walked back down to the railway station after lunch, I felt I had been afforded an unusual glimpse of contemporary Hungary. The insights gained in those first twenty-four hours were to prove vital to my understanding of much that I later witnessed in the Hungarian capital. Beneath the verities of the Catholic faith, the sense of Magyar patriotism and Hungary’s destiny at the heart of Central (not Eastern) Europe had been repeatedly and powerfully expressed.

  Budapest was buzzing. The early 1980s were a time of optimism in that city which, in its liveliness and energy, still outstripped its more sleepy neighbours, Vienna and Prague. It was a curiosity of those days that the trains from the West arrived at the Eastern Railway Station, a veritable cathedral of nineteenth-century glass and iron. It was thronged with passengers running to catch their trains – an unheard-of occurrence in Vienna where nearly everyone arrived dutifully half an hour early for even a brief journey. Once established in the apartment I had been promised, I set about finding Barbara’s ‘writers’ with the help of my Baedeker. As nearly every street had had its name changed since 1910, a modern map superimposed on the earlier one was essential.

  Gáspár Miklós Tamás, László Rajk, Gábor Demszky were perhaps accustomed to meeting rather more informal representatives of the Western ‘liberal press’, but they quickly shared their views on the shortcomings of the regime. It was inspiring to see what faith they had in the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who had visited Hungary a few months earlier.

  It is hard to recall today how robust and energetic London was in the 1980s in standing up for the rights of Central European intellectuals who were largely ignored by the other European states. The West Germans did not wish to rock the boat of their relations with the East Germans. The French were reluctant to speak out in case it damaged their ‘special relationship’ with Moscow. The Italians and Spanish preferred to focus on commercial interests. In Europe, only London resolutely and consistently defended the human rights of the subject populations of the Soviet empire. In this cause, the Americans happily cooperated and offered a dazzling example of what Anglo-Saxon solidarity could achieve.

  At that time, the British embassy in Budapest was staffed by several bright young men who seemed markedly less lethargic than their counterparts in some other Central European embassies. They eagerly supported any interest in the region showed by Western correspondents. Ably advised by Michael Alexander in Vienna, Mrs Thatcher had decided that Hungary was ripe for a more ‘forward’ British policy.

  Official Hungary appeared to tolerate this and I found I was encouraged to explore further. A visa was quickly forthcoming to visit the state Tokay wine cooperative. Because this was an official visit, we were unfortunately obliged to use ‘organized transport’ from the moment we
set foot on Hungarian soil, but the pretty village of Tokay, nestling in the folds of the hills east and north of Debrecen, appeared unchanged since feudal times. The former Imperial and Royal Hotel Adler also appeared at first glance intact, but inside it had suffered from its occupation by the Soviet army in 1956. The rooms were overlaid with plastic fittings, and the prevailing colour was brown.

  In a pleasing counterpoint to this were the seemingly unaltered subterranean tasting rooms of the state cooperative cellars which were reached via a long stone staircase. The walls were lined with black tufts of mould which, we were assured, were the sign of a good Tokay cellar. Across a wooden table sat our hosts, unsmiling, polite and correct. The three men wore ill-fitting grey suits, red ties and white socks. As junior officials of the cooperative, they knew their position in the hierarchy perfectly. After a few initial courtesies, their silence heralded the arrival of more important figures.

  The first of these was a grey-haired man in his early sixties whose suit and tie were covered by a white medical coat which invested him with a professorial air, although his rapid movements dispelled any hints of an introspective or reflective temperament. From his well-practised Magyar German, it was apparent he had entertained many of the East German nomenklatura. He rattled off at high speed a detailed analysis of the reasons why the wines we were about to taste were the finest dessert wines in the world. ‘The king of wines, the wine of kings’ was the summit of the wine-maker’s art, but it owed its pre-eminence to the unique qualities of the Tokay soil, in particular the presence of disintegrated trachyte, commonly known as igneous volcanic rock.

  After we had listened for nearly forty minutes to this scientific discourse delivered with the relentless and humourless pedantry of a political commissar, the moment finally arrived when footmen appeared, with great ceremony, carrying opened bottles of Tokay. Our glasses were filled repeatedly as the professor warmed to his theme. He urged us to sample the 1954 five puttonyos or degrees of richness (Ausbruch), then the 1937 Essenzia before attacking a horizontal tasting of eight wines from 1927 of ever increasing intensity. ‘Tomorrow, you will have no hangover from this wine,’ he promised, and he was right. The following day, as I passed over the frontier into Romania and the beautiful land of the seven castles, Transylvania, my head was crystal clear.

  This clarity was just as well because it was apparent from the first moment that the easy-going ways of the Hungarians were not shared by the Ceauşescu regime which clearly felt more vulnerable to destabilization and ruled with a far heavier hand. Despite the most sophisticated of precautions, it was soon obvious that any attempts to meet with Romanians other than those designated to accompany me on the official programme would be thwarted. This crude and pervasive surveillance was symptomatic of the general atmosphere of suspicion which had descended on Romania after an attempted coup by some officers in the early 1980s. I had visited Transylvania a couple of summers before and found the Saxon inhabitants welcoming and trusting, so it came as a shock to find official Transylvania so claustrophobic. In Bucharest’s eyes, a Western foreign correspondent was not the representative of a friendly state. He was at best a spy, at worst an agent provocateur.

  After a few days of this oppressive treatment, and having failed to meet anyone who was not part of the state apparatus, I beat a hasty retreat to the comforts of Hungarian hospitality and the freedoms of Debrecen. Suddenly I could walk for an hour around the town without seeing the ubiquitous leather-jacketed ‘escort’ trailing a few yards behind. The Hungarians’ distance from their Soviet masters was often demonstrated by their government in subtle ways. Back in Vienna, I found that my Hungarian friends among the Erste Gesellschaft quickly responded to my knowledge of their country with another flurry of invitations to parties. Their relationship with the representatives of official Hungary was also beginning to thaw. Communist Hungarian diplomats began to attend the annual Hungarian Ball in the Palais Auersperg, despite the presence of representatives of all the great exiled and dispossessed Hungarian magnates.

  Hungarian courtesy towards the English was equally indicative of a certain reserve towards their Soviet brothers. This attitude took on exotic form when official Hungary began to lobby for some kind of British royal visit. Their diplomats began to make discreet enquiries about the health of the sovereign and her immediate family. I was therefore not entirely surprised to be told a few weeks later by a somewhat chagrined Foreign Desk that the editor, Charles Douglas-Home, had had a drink the evening before with one of Princess Margaret’s equerries, a contemporary from Eton, and had been told that the Princess would be visiting Hungary for a few days later that month. Would I mind attending? the Foreign Editor asked. Apparently, I had made a reasonable impression at the lunch at the embassy a few months earlier, although the Foreign Editor, a staunch anti-monarchist, was unamused by this editorial démarche which appeared to him to be a total waste of his correspondent’s time.

  Arriving a few days later at the Budapest Hilton (at that time one of the most comfortable hotels in Eastern Europe, with rooms built into the medieval remains of Buda castle), I was handed a telex from London informing me that the Daily Telegraph was sending its court correspondent, Jenny Shields, to cover the Princess’s visit. Miss Shields cut a dash very remote from the earnest, dishevelled colleagues of the Press Club in Vienna. Beneath her shimmering élan lay deep reservoirs of charm but also, as I soon discovered, steel. She was uncowed by any bureaucratic or diplomatic restriction. Unfailingly polite and impeccably dressed, she breezed effortlessly past uniformed officials, generously allowing me to follow in her wake.

  It said a lot about ‘Communist’ Hungary that Princess Margaret was received with wild cheers wherever she went and that at every corner the normally indifferently turned-out policemen were suddenly dressed in pressed uniforms and white gloves. At the opera, a white-gloved waiter was deputed to carry a silver ashtray discreetly behind her long black cigarette holder to catch each nonchalant flick of ash. I felt that the enthusiastic deference shown by the nomenklatura towards Her Royal Highness during this visit did not augur well for the longevity of socialism in the lands of the former Hungarian crown.

  After an exhausting morning with her entourage looking at Budapest art treasures (including the symbol of Hungarian sovereignty, the famous crown of St Stephen with its crooked cross), we braced ourselves for the following day’s visit to attractions outside the capital. The first of these was the renowned Herend porcelain factory. Our ten-vehicle convoy set off, escorted by motorcycle outriders and the full panoply of security guards. We were soon racing across the deserted roads of the Hungarian plain. Carts and other traffic were halted while the cortège, lights flashing, sped to its destination. After about an hour, we were surprised to see a number of helicopter gunships above us and several squadrons of tanks trundling over the fields to right and left. Our route, agreed well in advance by the Hungarian authorities, had taken us through the principal Warsaw Pact military training ground at the height of a combined operational exercise. Perhaps the Soviets had calculated that this would provide an awe-inspiring display of military might for Her Royal Highness. For the various British attachés in two of the cars behind us, such a close-up view of the latest Soviet equipment in action was no doubt the stuff of dreams. In the space of half an hour, we saw a good selection of the latest Soviet armoured vehicles as well as their helicopter gunships, then deployed all too effectively in Afghanistan. The timing of this journey was as remarkable as the route. Its significance was confirmed by the resolute insistence of all the British diplomats present that they had seen nothing unusual at all. No one else mentioned the incident, even obliquely, either.

  At the Herend factory, Miss Shields and I, Princess Margaret’s equerry and the Deputy Director of the factory, were siphoned off into a neighbouring room while the Director and HRH lunched in the principal guest salon. The equerry was a jovial pilot of enormous height, known to all as ‘J.J.’. Once we had settled down to a long and
formal lunch of several courses, he soon demonstrated his skills outside the cockpit. Our host, the Deputy Director, was less versed than his boss in the social niceties and from the moment the ubiquitous consommé arrived he displayed a stiff unyielding toeing of the Communist Party line. Fixing the blue-uniformed Group Captain in the eye, he proceeded in a sleep-inducing monotone to berate us all for the ‘terrible events’ in England and the ‘awful difficulties’ we were having with ‘the miners’. The clashes between the government and parts of the National Union of Mineworkers were then reaching a violent climax. While our host intoned these criticisms, I found Miss Shields’s eye expectantly meeting mine. The glance betrayed anticipation and excitement. She had seen J.J. in action before.

  He now rose memorably to the occasion. Taking his cue from the Deputy Director, he began solemnly in an unemotional but fruity voice: ‘Yes, you are quite right, Deputy Director. We have had some real problems with the miners, but do you know why that is, Deputy Director?’ His voice became more earnest and confiding. ‘You see, in England, we had a socialist government after the war which gave children free milk and orange juice so that now … well … they have all grown up so healthy and tall … they simply cannot fit into the mines any more!’

  I looked at the Deputy Director. He was seriously confused. J.J. continued to fix our host with a serious deadpan look while Miss Shields and I bit our lips and avoided looking at each other in an attempt not to betray the laughter desperately struggling to escape. There was not much room to develop our host’s mining theme after this and the rest of the lunch moved on to discuss more tepid subjects, mostly connected with horses.

  On the whole such ideological polemics were rare and Hungary always struck me as a country still eager for a restoration of the Habsburg monarchy, if only circumstances could permit it. A few months after Princess Margaret’s visit, I found myself in a queue for a cinema in Budapest which was showing a recently filmed interview with the heir to the Habsburg throne, Archduke Otto von Habsburg. Otto spoke faultless Hungarian throughout and provided intelligent answers to probing questions about his family’s relationship with Hungary and his views about Budapest’s future. He arrested the audience’s attention with his observation that the twentieth century had been dominated by two great movements, Nationalism and Socialism, and that these had reached their climax in the terrible symbiosis of National Socialism. Since then, he said, both movements had been in inexorable decline. This was strong stuff for a theoretically loyal Communist audience.