Amerikai Magyar Hírlap, 1989 (1. évfolyam, 1-24. szám)

1989-06-16 / 15. szám

AMERICAN

Hungarian Journal

FINAL RESTING PLACE FOR IMRE NAGY

Speech of Béla Király, former commander-in-chief of the National Guard

"I wish there were a grave big enough for all Hungarians to stand around it,” wrote a Hungarian journalist in an "alternative" - that is, opposition - paper. He was thinking of the funeral of Imre Nagy, but the tragic vision of the romantic poet also flashed through his mind:

A sírt, hol nemzet süllyed el, népek veszik körül s a népek millióinak szemében gyászkönny ül.

(Around the grave of a nation peoples are standing guard, and millions of people have mournful tears in their eyes.)

The poet’s prophecy did not come true. The nation, instead of sinking into the grave, is rising at the grave of Imre Nagy. The mills of God grind slowly but surely. 33 years ago the Soviet tanks defeated the victorious revolution - yet the revolution triumphed. The demands of the Hungarian people are the same today as in 1956: liberty, independence,

withdrawal of the Soviet troops, and neutrality. The Hungarian revolution shook the Soviet Empire in its foundations and today, in a historical whirlwind, Imre Nagy is among as once more. They executed him, but the ideas of the revolution are still invincible today, in 1989.

Never since the glorious and tragic days of the revolution has Hungary been so much in the international limelight as now, at Imre Nagy’s funeral. General Pál Maiéter, Miklós Gyimesi, Géza Losonczy, József Szilágyi, hundreds of the executed and thousands of nameless freedomfighters stand beside Imre Nagy on this symbolic day, June 16, the 31st anniversary of their deat'

Imre Nagy was no ardent revolutionary, no robust Danton lifted up by the tidal wave of revolution. He was a Hungarian farmer with a wide face and moustache, attached to the land of his origins. He loved the land, and especially the lilacs. Whenever he went home to Somogy from Budapest, he always stopped by at the house of Béla Varga in Balatonboglár to pick up a basketful of lilacs. He was hurt by the suffering and humiliation of the Hungarian people. He turned against the "Gang of Four”: Rákosi, Gerő, Révai, Farkas. He was dreaming of a free, independent Hungary.

The Committee for Historical Justice invited General Béla K. Király to deliver an address at the funeral. Béla Király spent five years on death row under Rákosi’s reign of terror. During the revolution, at Imre Nagy’s request, he was commander-inchief of the National Guard, the Hungarian armed forces. Later he became a university professor, "Professor Emeritus," in the U.S. He published 42 books, among them an excellent biography of Ferenc Deák, in English. After 33years of exile, Béla Király flew to Budapest to deliver a speech of which the leitmotif was: "Let’s learn from our martyrs as we bury them.

He stated that Imre Nagy wanted agrarian reform but, unlike the Stalinists, he wanted to redistribute the land among the peasants. He wanted a strong, affluent, content peasantry. The Stalinists execrated him claiming he was a nationalist. During his first term as prime minister (1953-55) he was working on a school reform - he wanted to give "little Magyars" a better education. In 1956 "he became the apostle of national independence. Let’s learn patriotism from Imre Nagy."

Béla Király reminded us that Imre Nagy had opposed the Stalininsts in the matter of the agrarian reform as early as 1930, at the second congress of the Hungarian Communist Party. His enemies declared him a "revisionist" - a capital offence in those days. "I shall never stand attention to the Communist International," said Imre Nagy. Later he spent 15 years in the Soviet Union working for the International Institute of Agricultural Science, as a researcher, preparing for the time when the free Hungary can benefit from his knowledge. "Let’s learn from Imre Nagy: we have to work indefatigably for our nation, wherever destiny might guide us.

At the time of the turning point (1947-48) Imre Nagy protested against the grave violation of human rights, the disbanding of free trade unions and the elimination of traditional democratic parties. Again he fought Bolshevism and the Soviet system. During his first term as prime minister (1953- 55) he started to dismantle the Soviet system: opened the gates of internment camps, initiated the revision of political processes, allowed the peasants to quit cooperatives. Imre Nagy really "revised" Bolshevist ideology. "In 1956 Imre Nagy became the statesman of democracy and national independence. He taught us that the struggle for freedom is a never ending process and cannot stop as long as there is even one slave in this world.

"The Stalinists forced a Bolshevist system and ideology on Hungarians" - continued Béla Király. "They forged their ideology into handcuffs and shackeled the Hungarian nation

with irons. The Hungarian nation was pushed unto the brink of annihilation, like a sacrificial lamb. Imre Nagy transformed the ideology; in his eyes, doctrine was a tool to help people. Imre Nagy teaches us that content people make for social stability, and that social equality is everyone’s birthright.

1956

American Press Comments on the Hungarian Revolution

"One month ago today the Hungarian revolution began. It began as a peaceful demonstration of students and workers demanding redress of their grievances. It became a revolution when bullets from murderers in the uniforms of the secret police and of the Soviet Army slaughtered unarmed men, women and children. It continues as a revolution today, tough the general strike has replaced arms as the chief weapon. History contains no brighter chapter telling of any people’s heroic struggle for its freedom." {New York Times, Nov. 23)

...It is this mood which makes the great Hungarian rebellion of 1956 unique in history - more even than heroism and sacrifice which in the last fortnight mere words have tried vainly to capture. The patriots seem to have sensed from the very first that they were fighting not just for themselves but for the whole of the free world outside them. Furthermore, they seemed to feel that victory wouldn’t be today but in a better tomorroow to come. I met no responsible rebel leader who was convinced that basic aims of the revolt were certain of immediate fulfillment. The bursts of wild political optimism all came from abroad. Yet, despite such premonition of doom, the rebels fought on to the end." {Christian Science Monitor, Nov. 10)

"Why doesn’t the U.N. send an ultimamtum to the Soviet Union demanding evacuation of Hungary territory within a week and an immediate cease-fire? Why doesn’t the U.N. send a police forces to Hungary?... Is it for fear of a general war and the H bomb?? If so, why should the Soviet Union be less afraid then we? The Soviet Government cannot trust its own infantry... Can the West survive the revelation that the only non-Hungarians to fight for Hungary’s freedom have so far been the Russian deserters? Is the faith of the West in freedom so low that they do not see the hope of liberating the whole of eastern Europe and even Russia from communism if they make a stand now and prevent the murder of Hungary?" (Salvador de Madariaga, New York Times, Nov. 15)

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There are a large number of castles and castle ruins in Hungary today which have survived the vicissitudes of time and history. About 140 are listed in the official register of historical monuments. Among them are to be found keeps built in the thirteenth century, fortified castles with towers within them, or flanking towers dating from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, both regular and irregular in plan. And finally there are a fair number of castles reinforced with round bastions, and later on with Italian-type bastions, against the artillery which came into use in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in other words, fortresses rebuilt to meet new requirements of defense.

There were three great waves of castle building in Hungary. The oldest castles (in the Burgenland, now Austria) date from the eleventh and twelfth centuries and were built to repel German reprisals after attacks by the Hungarians. The second group is made up of those built by the Hungarians in the thirteenth century, following the destructive invasion of the Mongols, who descended upon the country from the north-east. And the third and final category contains the castles built during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for defense against the Turks advancing from the Balkans.

The expansion of the Turkish Empire across the Balkans and its subsequent advance into Central Europe made the modernization of the medieval castles of Hungary essential. The Hofkriegsrat in Vienna, set up in 1556 to stem the advance of large Turkish forces, well-trained and well-equipped, and to defend the Imperial cities of Vienna and Prague, summoned numerous military engineers from Italy, who introduced Italian methods of fortification, then the most advanced in Europe, throughout the country. The system of fortifications devised to repel the Turkish attacks consisted of lines of castles organized in depth and stretched throughout Hapsburg Hungary.

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the building of castles in Hungary was a royal privilege, i.e., the right to build castles belonged exclusively to the king. In the course of the Mongol invasion which swept over the country in 1241 and 1242, only a few of the hastily strengthened castles escaped destruction, and it was this experience that decided King Béla IV to grant the nobles the right to build castles for themselves, even to detriment of the royal authority.

The great majority of Hungarian castles lie in ruins today. Together with most of the walls surrounding the towns the bulk of the castles built by the king and the nobles during the Middle Ages were destroyed at the time of the Turkish conquest during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. After the final expulsion of the Turks from Hungarian territory in 1699 the Viennese rulers of the country looked upon those remaining as potential strongholds for resistance to Hapsburg absolutism, and in the first years of the eighteenth century they issued orders for their demolition. Traces systematic demolition by explosion have been found in many castles in the course of recent excavations. Happily the fact that the Austrian military treasury was permanently short of money proved an obstacle to their destruction on any large scale, and it is owing to this shortage of funds that a certain number of Hungarian castles have survived to this day.

In the havoc wreaked on the heart of Budapest - the town of Buda on the west bank of the Danube - by the fighting during 1944 and 1945, the group of Baroque buildings that made up the former royal palace was gutted by fire. As a result it became possible to undertake large-scale excavations on the site, the remains of the medieval royal palace and castle were unearthed, and in 1948 plans were put in hand for the preservation and partial restoration of these remains, and for their public display. From 1950 onwards these plans have gradually been put into execution. This restoration of those parts of the medieval castle of Buda which could be excavated was particularly important in that it focused attention on the general study of Hungarian castles. New interest was shown in the existence and condition of the castles scattered throughout the country, may of which lay in ruins and had been completely neglected up to that time.

The extremes of the Hungarian climate, with its frequently alternating ice and thaw, had done considerable damage to the stone walls, unprotected by roofs in the course of the centuries. This slow disintegration, as can be seen in the surveys and photographs which have accumulated in the files of the Hungarian Commission for the Protection of Historical Monuments since 1870, had increased at an alarming speed during the past few decades. The cracks in the walls had spread, the lime mortar leached by water and the soft lime and tufa stone, both very susceptible to frost, had begun to crumble rapidly.

As a result the Hungarian Commission for the Protection of Historical Monuments decided to devote increasing attention to the castle ruins of Hungary, till then completely neglected, as well as to the various public buildings, houses, and ecclesiastical, folk, and industrial monuments - as a rule well cared for by their occupants or users - which were their concern. This explains why castles as a whole and their conservation have played such a relatively important part in the work of the Hungarian organizations for the protection of historical monuments undertaken-and completed - since 1950.

The earliest fortifications, made of earth, came into existence with rise of prehistoric cultures, and developed with them.

(Continued)

1989. június 16.

CASTLES IN HUNGARY

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