Verhovayak Lapja, 1955 (38. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1955 / Verhovay Journal
Journal PAGE 11 Moreover, the Hungarian farmer is heavily taxed. While the prewar 5-year average yield per acre was 850 kilograms of wheat, now a farmer owning 10 to 20 acres must surrende]', according to the 1953 schedule, 318 to 619 kilograms of wheat per acre or 38 to 73 percent of his gross yield. He must also pay a land tax and a land investment tax as well as deliver a compulsory share | of milk, poultry, eggs, and other products. Furthermore, the farmer feels keenly his exploitation because of a double price. For the major part of his harvest and livestock surrendered to the state, he receives only about one-fifth of the market price. The .margin between the farmer’s, price and the consumer’s price has never been so wide as under the present Communist state monopolistic distribution system, and this system of enforced inequity contributes to tensions between the rural and the urban areas. The [illeged “worker-farmer alliance” has been split into opposing camps. Caught in a scissors, the farmer. isj on the losing side, while in urban areas the people suffer from shortages and excessive food prices. Obviously such conditions are not conducive to thie creation of a satisfied citizenry. In fact, discontent thróugBbüt the country is so strongthat -outbreak.', of violence frequently occur, -although, constant surveillance' »by the police force together with the ever-present Soviet Army has; made organized resistance in any effective form almost impossible at the present time. Attacks on Communist authorities and the police are not always reported in the Hungarian press; but the publication of sentences for designated types of offenses provides concrete testimony, unwittingly to be sure, of the intense and hostile feeling widespread among various strata of Hungarian IV. THE life. So blatant has become interna! warfare between the ruling Communist minority and the discontented majority within the Hungarian villages that the Supreme Court, acting under Communist control, has felt compelled to pass increasingly more severe sentences in cases where defendants had attacked Communist, officials and members of the local armed forces. The attitude of the court has been justified in this manner: :: In the present phase of increased class warfare in the villages, the security forces of the Peoples’ Democracy are frequently attacked or threatened by class enemies and are 'seriously injured, as is shown by general experience and the frequency of the cases. The possible effects of these hostile attitudes imply incalculable! danger. ..Similar ..attacks against members of the administration may have unforeseen and far-reaching consequences from the point of view of state order and public security. Therefore, more effective methods must be used against these criminal offenders, especially, if they originate from the ranks of the class enemy. Punishment must be made so severe that it will deter any future attacks by hostile and alien elements. Thus, it is clear that rural life in Red Hungary is not a life of milk pnd honey. Harassed by oppressive administrative methods; compelled to suppress the desire to own one’s land; caught up in an unnatural economic relationship which provides for only the welfare of the Communist leaders and the Soviet overlord to the detriment of Hungary’s own economic well-being; reduced to virtual impotence by a rigidly imposed totalitarian system, the residents of the Hungarian countryside lave contributed substantially to thei heightening tensions within their country. WORKER Not only' have strikes been forbidden in Communist Hungary, but after 1949 both the Trade Union Council and the Central Statistical Office were forbidden to publish statistical data dealing with such topics as the cost of living, wages, and their relationship to prices. Publication of such data had last been made in May 1949. SURVIVAL OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY IN RED UNIONS As trade-union members continued, however, lo press for higher wages and better working conditions, they brought upon the unions the wrath of the Communist Party. In a resolution dated July 24, 1950, the party made the following critical comment on Hungarian trade unionism: Some old-fashioned trade-union leaders as well as trade-union organizations and plant committees are continuing activities regarding production, work norms, and wageswhich may have been justified under I the former exploiting system but which are absolutely intolerable and forbidden today. This is equivalent to weakening the power of the working class, sabotage of socialist construction, and the s’owing down of • improvements in the standard of living. The top leaders of the Trade Union Council and the individual trade unions are seriously responsible for the weakening of labor norms and causing cheating in wages and norms... . In spite of repeated and energeticwarnings from the party, they have neither admitted the existence of inimical activities in the trade unions, nor have they fought them. Instead, they have frequently covered and concealed the undermining activities, of the intruding enemy. They hav© not realized that rightwing Social Democrats, enemies of our country and the working people and mercennarie« of the warmongering imperialists, having been defeated in open fight, have now withdrawn into the trade unions.... The trade-union leaders... haw neglected the social protection of the workers, and have not cared for the improvement of local working conditions and for health protection, and for the e'imination of workers’ just complaints, as well as for the development of cultural and sport, life ... Frequently, old and experienced Communists trained in the once illegal fight for the party have come under the influence of Social Democratic opportunism, have become bureaucrats, have softened up, and lost their revolutionary Communist spirit.... (Instead,) they should continuously oppose any inimical opinion which denies the ro e of the party in the ‘rade unions and creates antagonism between the most important mass organization ot the workers and the chief of staff of the working class, '.he Communist Party, the dominating force of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Declarations, party resolutions, and active police measures directed ,against the survival of Social Democratic thinking- are deeply imbedded in the fabric of the Communist regime which, has been persistent in its efforts to destroy Hungarian Sociál Democracy. At the national con-.gress of Hungarian trade unions held on February 27, 1953, both the president and his-aid claimed that the enemy was stronger than ever before. In fact, József Köböl, one of the trade-union leaders, introduced several changes in the bylaws of the Hungarian trade unions in order to destroy the resistance of the workers. Köböl warned: The spirit of the social democracy in the trade unions is a more serious danger than in any other organization because the Hungarian trade unions had been led by rightwing Social Democrats for several decades. After the unification of the two workers’ parties, the right-wing Social Democrats receded into the trade unions, depending upon their experience and former friends in the workers’ aristocracy and relying on the hostile elements overflowing the trade unions. They have tried to bring the general ranks of the workers into opposition to our government and party in the question of wages and social conditions of the workers. ( to be continued I'D NEVER HAVE TO RECORD ANOTHER WAR Life for the worker in Hungary, like that of the farmer, has been fraught with oppression, frustration, and protracted anxiety. Communists purported to establish a worker’s paradise; but Communist practices proved to be hostile to the interests of the worker. Trade unions, the most effective organizational device to advance the worker‘s interests, have been virtuallydestroyed in Red Hungary. In 1948, Ödön Kisházi, the Social Democratic chairman of the Trade Union Council, was removed from office ;and replaced by a person servile to !the regime. In February 1953, István Kristóf, a Communist, was appointed to the post. Communists seized other leading positions in the spring of 194S when the Social Democratic Party was forcibly united with the Communist Party in the socalled Hungarian Workers’ Party. Additional measures, far reaching and more injurious to the real interests of the worker, were taken in June 1950 after Ernő Gerö, the No. 2 Communist of Hungary, announced the,May 31 resolutions of the Communist Party demanding- the elimination of — the actively hostile rightwing social democratic elements who act, jointly with the clerical reaction. as agents for the remnants of the bourgeoisie, as fifth column and as agents for foreign warmongering imperialists in order to disrupt the | creative work of the laboring masses, j On June 6 and 7, 1950, the regime | *\ tarrested approximately 4,000 trade union and Socialist leaders on charges of maintaining- contact with their Social Democratic colleagues in the free Western countries and of organizing- a movement against the Communist regime in the army, police force, and throughout the various party organizations. These leaders were deported, without formal trial, some to Siberia, others to labor camps, and others to unknown destinations. One of the primary objectives of 'the trade union in a Communist; state is to force workers to increase production and achieve higher labor norms. In fact, Antal Apró, the secretary general of the Trade Union Council, has openly admitted that — The function of the trade union is the increase of production, the organization of work competition, the strengthening of the leading role of 4he party, and in general, the successful development of the trade union as a conveyor belt of the people's democracy. BROTHERHOOD WEEK February 20-27 Sponsored by The National Conference of Christians and Jews HIGH TAXES ON FARMERS not keep pace with realities. In an open letter, Pál Szabó, peasant writer and winner of the Communist Kossuth prize, bitterly attacked the unbearable administrative methods prevailing in the country. “Our state,” he proclaimed, should not tolerate such bureaucrats whose maltreatment of the peasantry is worse than that of the village notaries and sheriffs .under . the Horthy regime. . .. Terrible language, terrible incompetence, terrible meddling. They plague our villages, like fire and hail. And he concluded emphatically by exclaiming: State! Koct out this infamous bureucracy!
