Borvendég Zsuzsanna: Fabulous Spy Games. How international trade networks with the West developed after 1945 - A Magyarságkutató Intézet Kiadványai 24. (Budapest, 2021)
‘FABULOUS’ IN HUNGARY - Sympathetic journalism
'FABULOUS' IN HUNGARY Sympathetic journalism Emil Hoffmanns second official visit to Hungary was postponed due to the outbreak of the revolution. At the time, the new political situation presented the Revolutionary Worker-Peasant Government with new challenges, as legitimising its power both in Hungary and abroad became a key concern. Over the year after the revolution, seven books in German were published about Hungary in West Germany alone, which unanimously struck a condemning tone on Kádár s seizure of power on the back of Soviet tanks - at least this is what was revealed by a report by the Hungarian Embassy in Berlin.342 In August 1957, Hoffmann promised, as we indicated earlier, to write an objective’ report on the situation in Hungary for the leadership of the FDP, a promise he kept, and that resulted in the Hungarian leadership giving him a vote of confidence for the future. Hoffmann arrived in Budapest in November 1957 with an offer to write a book on the situation in Hungary. He had previously attracted the attention of the secret services of the Eastern Bloc by publishing a book entitled West-Ost-Handel im Zwielicht? (The Twilight of West-East Trade) in 1955, which was met with approval from the Soviets. The leaders of the Communist superpower reckoned that the book painted a favourable picture of the internal conditions of Socialist countries, promoting deals on the other side of the Iron Curtain for western firms. It was generally believed that this book turned the general view of the Socialist Bloc around, although we have learned in previous chapters that there were already companies and persons active prior to 1955 who could not care less about grand political ideologies and Cold War conflict. Against this background, the Kádárian apparatus was happy to welcome a book expressing similar views that would specifically focus on the Hungarian perspective. The Foreign Affairs administration even assisted him in collecting 342 ÁBTL 3.1.5. 0-12344/1-a 275/31 Report by Egon Forgács, embassy adviser, 30 November 1957. 127
