Századok – 1996

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

272 RAINER M. JÁNOS he joined the Bolshevik Party in the same year. He took part in the fight against the Czech legion and the array of the Whites in the Far East, was taken prisoner again, and when the Soviet power scored its final victory in 1920, he remained in Irkutsk in the service of the Cheka. He became a functionary in the Hungarian organization there. He renewed his party membership, the laconic documents of which are very characteristic. He was not carried away either by the ideas, or by the force organizing under their banner. „It is necessary to get acquainted with anything new and identify myself with it. But that takes time," he wrote in his application for admission. As a prisoner of war with its roots in the countryside, he was deeply impressed by the power promising peace and land in the wake of the material and spiritual destruction of the war. He interpreted this as an intellectual, speaking twice of the liberating and humanitarian mission of Communism in his application as his motives for wanting to become member of the Party. He expressed the same ideas in his first articles written for the Hungarian papers of the prisoners in Siberia. In the spring of 1921, he returned home on the instructions of the Party, which opened a new chapter in his life. With his twenty-five years of age, Imre Nagy left Soviet Russia a different man. His earlier political and social commitments, probably instinctive at first, had taken their final shape in the five years spent there. The desire for personal success and for setting himself free from the difficult situation of his family had turned into a collective thought in the Marxian spirit of class struggle. His conviction was based on theoretical considerations (from the „university of captivity"), on practical experience, and on emotional elements (from the international brigade and the work in the Party in Irkutsk). These experiences were rather contradictory, some of them being understandable and inspiring, some awesome and strange. The ambition of the young man with common sense to set himself free from the stagnating life of the POW camp must have played a great part in his seeking ways and means. Bolshevism promised life instead of stagnation, hopes instead of hopelessness, and the possibility to rise for the individual and the social layers at the bottom of the ladder. Imre Nagy's strong commitment and deep, Messianic convictions he came home with could be the subject of another essay.