Itt-Ott, 1982 (15. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)

1982 / 1. szám

learn this, too, in the light of history: that defeat and viele almost never absolute,

and that what may, at the time, seem like total catastrophe turn out, in due course, to have been a positive thing after all.

1956 represents the end of an era, the end of the world o. >talin, of post-war communism. The change did not start in Hungary, but the break became the sharpest there. What we believed in before, in a centrally controlled, monolithic, Soviet-dominated, communist empire, became a myth shattered by the guns of October. Hungary's case proved that only military intervention of the first magnitude, even if restricted to a small area, could thenceforth hold the empire together — outright war, that is, for what ensued in the first days of November, 1956, was nothing less than this. The Soviet Union felt obliged to hurl, against a disorganized, relatively small state, an armed force of such size as had been used by Hitler to subdue France and the British Expeditionary Force some sixteen years before. An operation of this size is not a peace-keeping or a police action, but war in the classical sense, no matter its duration and outcome. And although it won the war it had chosen to undertake, the first between socialist lands, as my friend and colleague, Prof. Bél a Király properly call sit, the Soviet Union succeeded only in demonstrating to all concerned that its own Marxistic-Leninistic principles were but a sham, that their dictatorship of the proletariat stemmed not from the will of the working classes, but from the barrels of mechanized assault guns.

The revelation started a process which we may safely call the slow disintegration of the Soviet empire. The myth of Leninist unity had come to an end. Internal mechanisms would no longer maintain Soviet hegemony from Hegyeshalom to Tientsin; indeed, that hegemony has been tested and overcome since then in one place after another. Though still communist lands, China, North Korea, Rumania, Yugoslavia and Albania have, each in its separate way, broken out of the empire's bounds,- Czechoslovakia nearly did so in 1968, while in Afghanistan it is the Soviet Union itself that seems to be failing in applying the methods of 1956 all over again. Other lands into which the Soviets attempted a quiet expansion, such as Egypt, have succeeded in simply kicking them out. The most important struggle currently taking place is of course in Poland, where the Soviet Union, knowing it can reimpose its will only by waging outright war once more, has chosen — so far, at least — to show almost total restraint. Why? Because no matter what we hear about Soviet strength nowdays, the Russians know that by engaging in open warfare they will risk creating a situation that could very quickly overtax their every available military and economic capacity. They learned a few lessons in 1956, too — as did the Poles, who have also shown great restraint in avoiding outright confrontation, while they go about restructuring their society, step by quiet step, into a form better befitting a great historical nation.

And Hungary? What we see there is the evolution of a stable modus vivendi with the Soviet Union. Soviet troops are omnipresent in Hungary, as well they must be, for it is still only their military force that keeps the nation in Moscow's orb. But Hungary's economic and social system today has little to do with that of the Soviet Union. Its standard of living is higher, its citizenry freer, than that of any other socialist country, the Soviet Union especially included. Let me refer to only one, again symbolic, example, the six pages of paid ads placed by Hungarian firms in the Wall Street Journal this October 2. Think of it — an allegedly Marxist country, advertising its wares in the most notoriously capitalistic publication in the world!

In the economic sphere and, to a lesser extent, in that of civil rights, Hungarians have

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