Fraternity-Testvériség, 1962 (40. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1962-12-01 / 12. szám
FRATERNITY 11 groups. The figure usually given for Soviet troops in Hungary ranges from 50,000 to 60,000, but to the traveler they seem legion. They are everywhere, everywhere, except in Budapest, the focal point of the 1956 revolt.” Kádár’s explanation for the presence of such a large Soviet force in Hungary has been that the dangerous international situation has required the Soviet shield to help to protect Hungary’s security. The strictly controlled Hungarian press, however, has presented ample evidence to show that the real reason why Soviet troops have never been withdrawn from Hungary — in fact, that they have been reinforced — is the continuing resistance of the Hungarian people against the Communist system of totalitarian tyranny. It is a resistance both against the domestic system and against Soviet domination, which it serves. Resistance manifests itself in many ways, in youth’s adherence to the religion of their forebears, in workers’ refusal to pay attention to speakers at meetings they are forced to attend, in the peasants’ half-hearted work in the collectives, in the silence of the writers. Exhortations addressed to Party members and the Communist youth organizations reveal their reluctance to spend time on ideological indoctrination and to serve as informers. Peasant resistance forced the regime in March 1962 to admit that, though 89.5 percent of the country’s arable land has been collectivized or is state-owned, 10.5 percent of the arable land held by individual peasants yielded 63 percent of the total farm production in the country in 1961. The figures released by Deputy Minister of Agriculture János Keserű explain why Hungary, once the breadbasket of Central Europe, fell so far behind Poland, where individual farming has been largely restored since 1956, only one percent of the arable land remaining in collective and state-run farms.
