Fraternity-Testvériség, 1962 (40. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1962-03-01 / 3. szám

6

FRATERNITY

Paul Nadanyi:

THE REVOLT THAT ROCKED THE KREMLIN

“We Hungarian writers are the voice of the conscience of the masses. We must reflect their sense of justice . .

Gyula Hay

3.

THE WRITERS’ REVOLT

Imre Nagy was still working on his memorandum when, in November 1955, another memorandum reached the Communist Party leadership. Signed by 59 prominent writers, composers, playwrights, journalists and actors, many of whom were holders of the regime’s highest awards, the Kossuth and Stalin prizes, the memorandum demanded a complete change of the regime’s cultural policies. “These policies prevent all creative work” — said the memorandum.

The memorandum brought the long-evident but still well-controlled ferment among intellectuals into sharper focus. The ferment actually started during the New Course of Imre Nagy’s first Government in 1953-54, when non-Communist and even some outspoken anti-Communist literary figures re-emerged from long-enforced obscurity, and such leading Communist writers as Tibor Déry and Tamás Aczél de-emphasized the party line. Other formerly doctrinaire Communists, like poet Lajos Konya and novelist Ferenc Karinthy criticized their own earlier w'ork as “falsely optimistic” and “sham”. Ferenc Körmendi in an essay, “Hungary's Rebellious Muse”, published in the May-June issue of “Problems of Communism”, relates the full story of this ferment and the regime’s measures to suppress it. Tamás Aczél and Tibor Méray in their