Revolution 1989 (47 page)

The dead men posed a dilemma for the Party, which almost broke apart amid agonising internal debates about how to confront the greatest trauma of Hungarian communism. Reformers like Imre Pozsgay were convinced that the silence and denial of the last three decades could not continue. ‘We had to face up to the issue,’ he said. ‘There was no way we could start anew, turn over a new leaf, without accounting for what happened in the past.’ Pozsgay put himself at the forefront of radical changes within the Party to forge a grand compromise with the opposition. He more or less
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the opposition, in the eyes of many old Party loyalists. He was partly motivated by ambition, imagining he could win power by presenting himself as the agent of change, and partly by conviction. He realised that communism was finished - and he could be well placed to pick up the pieces. Late in 1988 he established a Historical Commission of a dozen leading Communist academics and historians to study the Uprising. They were given unprecedented access to documents that shed a shameful light on the Party’s actions at the time.

Their report early in January 1989 turned on its head Party history, which had maintained that 1956 was a ‘counter-revolution’ and that the Soviet invasion was necessary to save Hungary from reactionaries and imperialists. The Commission concluded that it had been ‘a popular uprising against oligarchic rule that had debased the nation’ and that it had been entirely unjustified for the Red Army to crush it. This was not an esoteric question of Communist theory or mere symbolism. As the conservatives in the dwindling Party ranks could see, the new line acknowledged that Communist rule during the last three decades had been illegitimate and that the Russians were an occupation force. It jettisoned comfortable orthodoxy to which people had grown accus tomed, and the conspiracy of silence in which Kádár and his associates had maintained peace in Hungary. The other big issue was: how would the Soviets react? Pozsgay carried the day in a series of bruising Party meetings. This was the only way for the Hungarian Party to purge itself, he argued, and it would never regain credibility ‘unless we take this opportunity now’. There had been no official reaction from the Soviets. The statement on 1956 was a test of Gorbachev’s reforms and of the ‘Sinatra Doctrine’, he said. ‘Of course we watched for reaction from the Soviet Union and after we saw the lack of reaction, we would make another move forward. This was how we made our initiatives.’
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The government announced in March that it would allow the five bodies to be exhumed and a proper reburial to take place. Initially it had no idea of turning the occasion into a big public ceremony. The regime wanted a simple, private funeral, out of sight, which they thought could close the entire issue once and for all. But during the year, as the pace of change speeded up and the Party began visibly to die on its feet, Communist officials thought that a better way of dealing with it was to hijack the event. They had been holding informal talks with the opposition since mid-March. They had agreed that Polish-style Round Table talks would begin on 13 June, three days before the funeral. Party leaders insisted on being at the burial ceremony and making speeches. Though Vásárhelyi and the Nagy family were reluctant to let them, they felt they were in no position to refuse. Both the Committee for Historical Justice and the government appealed for ‘calm and dignity’ and asked that no political banners should be visible, only national colours or black flags. But the authorities were apprehensive that there might be unrest. And they were determined to use the occasion for their own political ends, as an extraordinary top-secret report by the Hungarian secret service shows. It reveals how the intelligence service had penetrated every opposition group and that its agents were active in persuading them to moderate their demands. ‘Among agents operating in various alternative groups,’ the report says, ‘agents “Knotweed”, “Passion Flower”, “Rhododendron”, “Agave” and “Sword Flag” will . . . exert their influence on these . . . [groups] to abandon the idea of initiating, or participating in a political demonstration . . . “Bellflower” will explore the plans and ideas of the Hungarian Democratic Forum and its participation in the mass rally . . . “Calla” will follow the co-ordination meetings of the Free Democrats’. Agents abroad will spy on the activities of expatriate Hungarian communities in the US and Europe and ‘deliberately use the media . . . to spread the suggestion that it will establish the maturity of the nation if the funeral proceeds in an orderly manner’.
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Stagehands and builders had been working for the last three days to turn Heroes’ Square into a giant theatrical set. It had all been designed with much style by the architect László Rajk, one of the country’s leading dissidents, whose father was the most prominent victim of the Stalinist show trials in the late 1940s. The columns were draped with black cloth. The grand façades of the buildings were covered with huge green, red and white tricolour flags, but with a hole in their middle, to remember the 1956 revolutionaries whose symbol had been the national flag with the hammer and sickle emblem hastily removed. On one side of the square, high on pedestals and flanked by tall flares, lay the six coffins. The extra one was an empty casket of the Unknown Insurgent. It was a powerful and moving ceremony. From the moment it began at 10 a.m., when the celebrated acter Imre Sinkovits read a letter to the Hungarian people from the Nagy family, emotions were raw. For two hours mourners filed past the caskets, while the names of every Hungarian who died in the revolution, and the cruel reprisals that followed, were read out. A large proportion of the 300,000 people who eventually attended were not even born in 1956.

The high point many remembered was the fiery speech delivered by the bearded, red-haired Viktor Orbán, twenty-six, wearing traditional dissident jeans. It was an inspiring performance which made him an instant name in Hungarian public life.
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‘Young people fail to understand a lot of things about the older generation,’ he said:

The applause and cheers rang around Heroes’ Square for several minutes. Even at this stage it was still daring at a big public event to call for the Soviets to leave Hungary.
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Among the mourners, Mária Kovács was moved to tears several times during the ceremony, particularly as she heard the cry through the square ‘Russzkik Haza’ - Russians Go Home. ‘I was cautious about these changes,’ she said. ‘We had seen reforms from Moscow before. We saw reforms in Central and Eastern Europe in 1956, in 1968, in 1980-81 in Poland. In all these cases . . . they began, to a large extent, in Moscow, or were permitted by Moscow, and continued for a while. Then, very suddenly, the reforms ended, sometimes violently.’ She was cautious because the same thing could happen again, Gorbachev could be removed from power, the process he began could be reversed.

‘And you must not forget the duplicity of the . . . funeral. It was staged by the Communists. They were the same people who just a few years earlier had no trouble condemning Imre Nagy as a traitor to the Soviet system and to socialism. All the people from the Communist side who stood on the podium at the burial were the people who had gone through the ritual of condemning 1956 just a few years earlier. It sent the message that these people could change their minds if an opportunistic moment turned up.’
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They included the Prime Minister Németh, Imre Pozsgay and the State President Mátyás Szüros. The Communists reminded mourners that they had a right to revere Imre Nagy as one of their own. Nagy had been a passionately loyal Party man all his life. His last words before he bravely faced the scaffold were to declare undying commitment to the party of the working class. It was not a message the thousands in Heroes’ Square wanted to hear.

At 1.30 p.m. a funeral procession comprising the families of Nagy and his four comrades, along with a few close friends, returned to Plot 301. The men were laid to rest for the last time at a short private ceremony, but now had a monument and gravestones.

 

Soon after the Nagy reburial Hungarian immigration officials began to notice a phenomenon they had not seen before. Hungary was a major summer holiday destination for East Germans. Many favoured Budapest, which had the restaurants and fleshpots that did not exist in dull and staid East Berlin. Most, though, would head for Lake Balaton, where they could sunbathe on sandy beaches or take the curative waters in the excellent spas dotted mainly around its southern shore. It was a place where many German families could be reunited, if only for a few days, as large numbers of West Germans also visited Balaton. Usually, the visitors would return home after a fortnight or so of vacation. This summer it was becoming clear, even by mid-June, that many of the GDR visitors were staying and new numbers were steadily flowing into Hungary through Czechoslovakia, clearly with no intention of returning home. The movement along the highways seemed to be one-way. It was not a serious problem, yet, for the Hungarians. A few thousand families were easily accommodated with generous Hungarian hosts. But the government was aware it could grow into a major crisis soon and turn into a row with the East Germans, which they would prefer to avert if possible. The Party leader Grósz, Prime Minister Németh and the Foreign Minister Gyula Horn decided to do little for now and wait to see what happened. They sought some advice from the Kremlin, but aides to both Gorbachev and Shevardnadze said it was Hungary’s decision, they would not interfere, and it was up to the comrades in Budapest to sort the matter out with the GDR.

The regime in Berlin was becoming uneasy. It was beginning to be noticed that many people were not returning to their homes and jobs after their summer holidays. It was a talking point everywhere, but never allowed to be mentioned in the press. The numbers increased considerably after items on television from China were screened, which regularly repeated the government’s statement that it ‘wholeheartedly congratulated the People’s Republic of China for its prompt action in dealing with disturbances in Beijing that were instigated by Western imperialist agents’.
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This was the start of the ‘Trabi trail’, when East Germans filled up their cars with as much as they could hold and drove to Hungary and, they hoped, ultimately, to freedom. Invariably they drove in the Trabant, the box-like, 2-stroke-engine cars, partly made of plastic, which spewed exhaust fumes and were a spluttering symbol of East German life and industry. The Trabi was not elegant, but it functioned with relative efficiency. Production did not conform to the laws of supply and demand: customers of the ‘people’s car’ could wait for seven to eight years for delivery, so when it arrived it was a prized possession. Six colours were supposed to be available, but only three were ever seen: white, a powder blue and beige. The speedometer went up to 130 kph but, in the great tradition of East German fib-telling, a motorist was lucky to get past 80. It belched out noxious fumes at four times the European average. East Germans told endless jokes about it. Yet most owners had an extraordinary affection for their Trabi. Seldom, if ever, was a single mode of transport more closely identified with its country of origin.

After the Hungarians began dismantling their section of the Iron Curtain on 2 May, East Germans thought that if they reached Hungary they were already halfway to the West. They qualified for West German citizenship automatically. The problem was getting into Austria. They could obtain a West German passport virtually on demand at any FRG consulate. But East Germany had agreements dating from the early 1960s with all the Warsaw Pact countries not to honour a West German passport that did not contain a valid entry stamp. The rule was that if you did not enter Hungary on a West German passport, you could not leave on one. That was enough to ensure East Germans remained in the Soviet bloc. Now many thought that if they simply stayed in Hungary, eventually the government in Budapest would allow them into Austria and thence into West Germany.

Most of those who took the Trabi trail were professional, middle-class people in their twenties or early thirties with young families. ‘It was no place to bring up children. There were no prospects, no hope. Just a sterile life of lies to look forward to,’ one of them said. But almost everyone complained of something similar. ‘We weren’t malnourished or maltreated physically. It was a grinding oppression and we had to get out. We did not think the Hungarians would send us back, though of course that was a possibility. We thought we could sit and wait.’

The East Germans asked the Hungarians to keep to their agreement and not to allow their citizens to leave. The Hungarians pledged to stick to their Warsaw Pact Treaty obligations. Then Berlin demanded the return of their citizens. The leadership in Hungary unanimously refused and said the GDR should negotiate an agreement with the West Germans about the fate of people they now called, for the first time, ‘refugees’. Berlin appealed to the Soviets for a ruling. Honecker met Shevardnadze for confidential talks in Berlin. The Soviet Foreign Minister refused to come down on either side and repeated the Kremlin line that the East Germans must reach a deal with Hungary. The East German dictator was furious and despaired of developments in the Soviet bloc. ‘We see what is happening in Poland, following the elections. It is . . . unsettling. Socialism cannot be lost in Poland. In Hungary the processes are probably unstoppable. I remember well the events of 1956. Many comrades in Hungary fear that . . . with the reburial of Nagy counter-revolution will break out again. Is it possible to prevent the splitting-up of the Hungarian Party? If not Hungary will split further into the bourgeois camp.’
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