Reinventing Politics

by Vladimir Tismaneanu

  THE HUNGARIAN BREAKTHROUGH

  As previously discussed, the logic of Kadarism was based on the neutralization of political opposition and the conservation of the established order with its increased tolerance for criticism as the best deal under the existing circumstances. Kadarism represented a political stalemate, and it could last only as long as the economic conditions permitted relative prosperity—at least compared with the standard of living in other communist countries.

  In 1968 the Hungarians had initiated a daring economic experiment in the direction of decentralization. It included limitation of the imperative role of central planning, increased autonomy for enterprises, the formation of a managerial class free of ideological illusions, and encouragement of private initiative. Had those reforms been pursued in a consistent manner, they would have released the market forces and might have ensured propitious conditions for Western investment. But dogmatic elements in the Hungarian communist leadership, supported by Moscow, eventually prevailed over the reformers, and the New Economic Mechanism was abandoned. Janos Kadar himself, a seasoned apparatchik with limited political imagination, was reluctant to engage in reforms that could undermine the foundations of the system he considered to be the best from the viewpoint of the working class. The Leninists, obsessed with the specter of unemployment, argued that economic reforms would generate explosive social tensions. They preferred to keep the system in its existing form and accused the liberals of irresponsibility.

  One thing should be made clear: The Hungarian dogmatics were of a different mold from their Romanian, East German, and Czechoslovak counterparts. For them, the principle of government was consensus based on a tacit compromise between rulers and ruled. Neither Kadar nor his Prime Minister, Jenö Fock, not even the chief ideologue, György Aczel, conceived of socialism in such a restrictive and rigid way as Ceausescu, Honecker, or Husak. At the same time, those people were not ready to espouse a radical break with the traditional rules of the game. They saw the communist party as the center of political life, the embodiment of a superior understanding of historical rationality. It was therefore normal for them to resent the attempts of the liberals to open the system and encourage the emergence of pluralist forces in economic life. Rezsö Nyers and Bela Biszku, two party leaders well known for their reformist views, were dropped from the Politburo in the early 1970s.

  The restoration of Leninist dogmas in the economy did not mean, however, a relapse into political terror. Even during the 1970s and early 1980s Hungary remained the least repressive of the Warsaw Pact countries. That tolerance was based on a fragile articulation of basically incompatible social interests, as would become strikingly clear in the 1980s, when the country’s economic collapse would create a state of general unrest and widespread discontent with the government’s ineptitude. The once acclaimed Kadar, the man who had been credited with a sense of political adjustment in the unfavorable circumstances that had permitted him to turn Hungary into the most livable barrack of the communist camp, had lost his maverick image. Instead, he was widely seen as the patron of a corrupt and blatantly inefficient bureaucracy. Far from being the guarantor of the country’s progress, Kadar was increasingly perceived as the main obstacle to his own party’s renewal.

  The political and social situation worsened in the 1980s, when large social groups started to question the validity of the Kadar policies. The old leader’s astute manueverings had ceased to pay off. Once Gorbachev gave the signal for a new liberalization and encouraged the search for reforms in the countries of the bloc, Kadar found himself increasingly out of touch with the new trends. The challenge to his authority came not only from opposition groups outside the communist party but also from within the communist elite itself. His political instincts, which had proved remarkably realistic during Brezhnev’s period, did not help him under Gorbachev. It was clear that Hungary was moving fast in the direction of political democratization, and Kadar was not the man to allow such a course to develop. He had been the one to preside over the post-1956 repression, and as the economic situation deteriorated, people began to remember Kadar’s role in the suppression of the Budapest uprising.

  In a political document published by the Democratic Opposition in 1987 and symbolically entitled “The Social Contract,” the failure of Kadarism was explained in light of the irreversible economic decline of the system and the refusal of the old leadership to recognize the magnitude of the social crisis that was already shaking the Hungarian system. According to the authors of that political platform, published in the samizdat journal Beszelö, the evolution of society in the thirty years that followed the suppression of the revolutionary upheaval of 1956 had made impossible the continuation of a compromise based on half-truths and self-delusions. The consensus personified by Kadarism had ceased to inspire confidence and support among the population. The document stated:

  Janos Kadar has been the symbol of the golden middle road in Hungary. He, in contrast with Rakosi, has not attempted to force on the people grandiose programs for society’s transformation. And unlike Imre Nagy, he has been unwilling to accept curbs on the Communist Party’s rule. Holding a monopoly of power, he has avoided encroachment of his interests by any group capable of voicing discontent. And he has allowed everyone to find compensation for one’s losses, wherever possible. The country … approved of Kadar’s policy of consolidation, longing for a secure and peaceful life. In exchange, it accepted that the party rules in the name of the people, and the apparatus rules in the name of the party’s rank and file. This was the so-called consensus.27

  Kadarism had led the country into a political and social dead end. The Democratic Opposition began calling for the immediate departure of the man whose name was inextricably linked to that system. But Kadar’s political elimination was not enough. Instead of the patronizing policies practiced by Kadar and his associates, the ruling party had to reassess its relationship with society dramatically.

  The policy of false consensus had to be supplanted by a strategy of national compromise. For such a compromise to be reached, society had to wake up immediately from its long-induced torpor and start to organize itself. It was not enough for a circle of heroic intellectuals to challenge the communist party’s domination. Criticism from below had to engage large social strata, including some within the reformist wing of the party, on whom pressure from the rank-and-file could be a catalyst to radicalize their stances in opposition to bureaucratic conformity. According to the Democratic Opposition, the power structure could enter into a dialogue only if it found that the intellectuals were not the only ones with whom it had to negotiate. Intellectual narcissism had to be abandoned in favor of a systematic building of grassroots nuclei of civic activism. Those nuclei, the backbone of the emerging civil society, would make demands for the radical transformation of the system. Their demands would include a long-term and a short-term agenda.

  In the long run, they would resume the legacy of October 1956 by advocating political pluralism and representative democracy in government; self-management in the workplace; local government in the settlements; and national self-determination and neutrality in foreign policy. Because those demands appeared too radical for the circumstances of 1987, the Democratic Opposition offered a compromise that would rapidly modify the relationship between the power structure and society. The principal slogans suggested by Beszelö for the coming stage of political revival were: constitutional checks on party rule; a sovereign national Assemby; an accountable government; freedom of the press guaranteed by law; legal protection for employees; representation of interests; freedom of association; social security and an equitable social welfare policy; and, as an all-embracing demand, civil rights.28 Written during the first stage of Gorbachevism, when the Kremlin had not yet made clear its new approach to East European political realities, the “Social Contract,” like Michnik’s new evolutionism, went on the assumption that the communist party’s leading role could not be successfully challenged. The purpose, there
fore, became to limit it, to place it under popular control and to create the institutional guarantees that would prevent communist bureaucrats from perpetuating their abuses. But events continued to gather momentum, and several months after the publication of this path-breaking document it appeared that there were significant groups within the communist elite who envisioned a redefinition of the party’s role in society. The factional struggle within the leadership and the meteoric rise of Imre Pozsgay as the symbol of a Hungarian version of Gorbachevism accelerated the erosion of Kadarism.

  The Kadar era came to an end in May 1988, when a national party conference replaced the old General Secretary with a four-member presidium chaired by Rezsö Nyers, the driving force behind the aborted economic reform of the late 1960s. The new General Secretary, in charge of everyday party operation, was Karoly Grosz, a colorless apparatchik whom Kadar had groomed for succession. The other two members of the foursome were the flamboyant reformer Imre Pozsgay and the dogmatic ideologue Janos Berecz, who had suddenly converted to pluralism. Initially, Grosz appeared to bid for control over the party apparatus and tried to keep the situation under control. But he could not exert real power; like Kadar he had been associated with the antirevolutionary repression after 1956 and had climbed the career ladder as an obedient party bureaucrat. Grosz was increasingly challenged by members of the radical reformist wing within the Hungarian communist party, headed by Rezsö Nyers and Imre Pozsgay. Pozsgay criticized the party leadership for its procrastination in restoring the truth about the 1956 revolution and rehabilitating Nagy and other victims of the Kadarist terror. He insisted that the communists come to terms with their role in the various phases of repression, if they wanted to continue to participate in a pluralistic Hungarian political system. He continued to defend the ideals of socialism that, according to him, had been viciously disfigured in the practice of Stalinism.

  Like Gorbachev, Pozsgay continued to stick to his Marxist beliefs while drawing a drastic line of demarcation between humane socialism and Stalinist totalitarianism. But his indictment of the existing system was more radical than anything the Soviet leader had ever said about systemic changes:

  This is a crisis of Stalinism. It has become absolutely certain that this system cannot be reformed because it has failed and has proven inadequate to give the experience and feeling of freedom to people. This system is unable to create internal driving forces in the individuals and citizens to accept something noble, and this system destroyed solidarity among people and cooperation among producers. Under such circumstances, the only decision we could make was that this entire Stalinist system should be discarded, complete with its ideology. I do not see the essence of this ideology in Marxism or in distorting Marxism, because it has nothing to do with Marxism.29

  Less than one year after Kadar’s dismissal Nyers, a former social democrat widely perceived as a man of decency and lucidity, replaced Grosz as party leader. In October 1989 a Congress of the Hungarian communist party (the official name was the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party) took place. The party decided to change its name to the Hungarian Socialist Party and renounced its Bolshevik ideology, including the claim to a constitutionally guaranteed leading role in society. A splinter group headed by Grosz and Berecz refused to accept that change and stuck to the old party name, while Pozsgay, Nyers, and Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth went out of their way to persuade public opinion that they had indeed internalized the principles of pluralism.30

  In the meantime the opposition organized itself. Several major political parties emerged in Hungary during 1988 and 1989. The Democratic Forum, a conservative populist group, was primarily concerned with the tragic degradation of the Hungarian countryside under communism, the decline in moral values, and the communist neglect of the fate of Hungarian minorities abroad. The Free Democrats were basically an intellectual party championing the values of a free economy and liberal society. They originated in the Democratic Opposition of the late 1970s and 1980s. The leaders of the Free Democrats were brilliant intellectuals who had organized the samizdat counterculture during the decades of social torpor and political apathy under Kadarism. Among their leaders was Laszlo Rajk, an architect and civil rights activist whose father had been hanged after the Budapest show trial in 1949; Janos Kis, a philosopher who had written a number of seminal essays on opposition strategies in Soviet-style societies; Miklos Haraszti, the author of such works as A Worker in a Workers’ State and The Velvet Prison; and Gaspar Miklos Tamas, a philosopher born in Transylvania, who had emigrated to Hungary in 1978 and had joined the samizdat opposition. For years these people had published the small independent journal Beszelö.

  In the summer of 1989 the Hungarian opposition organized a roundtable to engage in talks with the government, which was controlled by the communist reformers. During those negotiations between the Opposition Roundtable and the government an agreement was reached to organize free elections in 1990. The transition to a pluralistic order was accepted as inevitable by both the opposition and the dominant Socialist Party, but the relationship between the opposition parties was not always smooth. Actually, the Free Democrats resented the fact that representatives of the Democratic Forum had held earlier and separate negotiations with Pozsgay and his associates without inviting other political groups. For instance, a meeting took place in Monor where Pozsgay and the leaders of the emerging Democratic Forum analyzed possibilities for a future dialogue.

  In the summer of 1989 the political spectrum in Hungary was already diversified, ranging from the dogmatic communists rallying around Karoly Grosz, through the reformers who had adopted the language if not the ideology of social democracy (Nyers and Pozsgay), to the Free Democrats and the Democratic Forum. A uniquely Hungarian political party, with a flavor of anarchism in its rejection of the status quo and proud rebellion against the accomodationist values of the adult generation, was FIDESZ (Federation of Young Democrats), a political formation founded in the spring of 1988, which held its congress in the fall of that year. During its First Congress, FIDESZ fixed an age limit for membership that made possible entry into the party only for those between twenty-six and thirty-five. In its “Declaration of a Political Program,” adopted in 1988, FIDESZ proclaimed the need to fight for Hungary’s rapid reintegration into the European community. As it took an increasingly active role in Hungarian civil society, FIDESZ rejected any sectarian or conspiratorial activity. The movement was therefore part of the mounting East European wave of civil rights activism that refused to reduce the struggle to the strictly political dimension:

  FIDESZ distances itself from the idea that the seizure of state power is enough to create democracy. We do not believe that the fact of any new organization gaining power will of itself make the realization of human and civil rights possible. The safeguard of democracy, its ultimate guarantee, is not state power but a society with a democratic political culture. The existence of parties competing for the control of state life is a necessary but not a sufficient condition. We must not seize power, but should have the objective of fostering self-organization in the hope that the reborn society, built up from its communities, will be capable of electing its own government.

  Emphasizing its commitment to the idea of developing grassroots structures, FIDESZ made a clear point of its rejection of any form of violence or Jacobin dictatorial methods of coercion:

  We have reached the point where we must organize our defense quickly and without delay against policies of the authorities that are hostile to society. We profess that the most effective tools against the mistaken and self-interested policies of the authorities are a democratic way of thinking and organization. In our work for a society capable of building itself and of creating its own state power, the two most feared weapons, inner independence and moral convictions, as well as an invincible solidarity with each other, stand at our command.

  Echoing the moral philosophy of the Polish and Czechoslovak opposition movements, FIDESZ professed its belief that “no
social objective is of greater value than the guarantee of citizens’ peaceful, free and independent lives.”31

  During Imre Nagy’s reburial ceremony in Budapest, FIDESZ representatives had outshone other political figures with their unabashed anticommunist stance. According to Ferenc Köszeg, a sociologist who had been an editor for Beszelö and had become a member of the nine-member leadership of the Alliance of Free Democrats, this party could not be considered a mere intellectual club. Interviewed in June 1989, Köszeg declared:

  It is true that some of the best-known intellectuals are among our founding members, but we are able increasingly to recruit other people: qualified workers, for example …. Our membership is still only about 3,000, but it has been increasing during the last few months since we began to publicly discuss our programme. The Free Democrats are the main successors to the democratic opposition, which was highly respected by people who were really critical of the regime. I would say that the Free Democrats is both the party of radical intellectuals and the party of the angry people, those who really wish to see the implementation of some far-reaching radical changes.32

  According to Köszeg, the Democratic Forum recruited primarily among the disaffected middle class of the provincial cities, especially among those who had been denied social promotion because of their refusal to join the communist party, but who were nonetheless part of the establishment.