Századok – 1996

Tanulmányok - Rainer M. János: A fiatal Nagy Imre (1896–1921) II/229

A FIATAL NAGY IMRE (1896-1921) 271 passion enchaînée. „II est indispensable de connaître et acquérir ce qui est nouveau: Cela exige du temps" - a-t-il écrit dans sa demande d'adhésion. Le pouvoir qui se met en scène avec la promesse de paix et de fonds de terre pour un prisonnier de guerre issu du milieu provincial vaut une expérience élémentaire par la suite des dégâts matériels et de la perte des valeurs d'une guerre mondiale. Б a „interprétée" déjà comme un intellectuel; à deux point dans sa demande d'adhésion il raisonne pour son adhésion par la mission humanitaire du communisme libératif „des peuples du monde". La même question a été traité par ses premiers articles écrits pour les prisonniers hongrois de guerre en Sibérie. Au printemps de 1921 suite de l'ordonnance du parti communiste hongrois il s'est rentrée, là un nouveau chapitre de sa vie est commencé. Imre Nagy a quitté la Russie de Soviets comme un „homme changé" à la veille de son 25e anniversaire. Ses premiers engagements politiques et sociaux probablement instinctifs, ont gagné à vie leurs caractères fondamentales pendant ces cinq ans. La volonté individuelle de se débrouiller et de se débarrasser des circonstances graves de vie de sa famille s'est transformée en prétention collective d'après la conception marxiste de lutte des classe. Ses idées ont pris des origines à la fois des principes théoriques (de „l'université" du camp) et pratiques ainsi que des éléments émotionnels (de la troupe internationale et de l'activité du parti à Irkutsk). Ces idées très contradictoires étaient recevables et enthousiastes d'une part, menaiant et étranges d'autre part. Il était fort probable que la prétention de l'homme jeune et réaliste de se déplacer de la constance et de l'attente désespérante de la détention a pris un rôle primordial. En plus le bolchevisme a promis non seulement cela, mais le déplacement de toutes les désespérances précédentes et — en cas de sa victoire — une forte mobilité aux individus et aux classes sociales inférieures. Les chapitres suivantes de sa vie — qui sont hors du cadre de la présente étude — pourraient démontrer ses liens solides et sa „conviction" messianistique gardés après sa rentrée. IMRE NAGY IN HIS YOUTH, 1896-1921 by M. János Rainer ( Summary) Imre Nagy was born at Kaposvár, in 1896. He came from a poor peasant family, but his parents had abandoned the land by that time and were employed in the county administration. His mother as a chambermaid, and his father as a carman, but later he became a postman. The father was a venturesome man, the type that wanted to rise socially (he even had a house with several flats built, but became ruined), and he intended that his son should do the same. According to the traditional rural scale of values, the rise of the oldest son was a hall-mark of the whole family. So Imre Nagy was sent to a grammar school, but at the age of fifteen he was forced to give up „owing to his poor achievement and the poverty of his parents". He was an apprentice for some years and even got journeyman' certificate as an engine fitter, but finally he was pursuaded to work as a civil servant in a lawyer's office and resume his studies. Imre Nagy never worked in agriculture for a considerable period, and was not an industrial worker, either, except for his years as an apprentice and yourneyman. The decisive years in his life were the nearly two decade he spent in his family in a small country town and with his rural relatives. In his later years as a Communist politician he still had the sense of a common faith with the rural population of Hungary. The teachings of the Reformed Church and the traditions of Hungarian independence, and the anti-IIabsburg sentiments of 1848-49 he was taught at school in his young years made their impact on him for the rest of his life. In contrast with his colleagues in the leadership of the Party, who had their roots in urban intellectual circles and in the world of labour, he considered the family and the nation as cohesive forces and parts of a living tradition very important. At the same time, he experienced himself that the conditions of life can be and should be changed. His early encounter with the workers' movement in the small town he lived at in his youth was not decisive for his future. His mentality was, however, determined by ways of life and spirit of the small town and the rural community. In 1915 he was enlisted to the army, and fought on the Italian and the Russian front, where he got wounded in July, 1916 and was taken prisoner. He spent years in a POW camp in Siberia, near Lake Baikal, which was a veritable university for him. As a more or less educated person, he lived in the barrack of the intellectuals and did not have to work. It was here that he met the Bolshevik movement, just like so many of his contemporaries and later comerades. In 1918 he first joined an „international" armed group, maybe only in the hope of getting out of the camp, and