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Hungary's Kádár: Death of a Cadre
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16785 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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9 / 1989 |
1,966 Words |
| Author
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Russ Braley
Russ Braley was a U.S. Navy mine disposal officer in the
Mediterranean and Pacific theaters in World War II. For
twenty years he was a foreign correspondent for the New York
Daily News. He is the author of Bad News: the Foreign Policy
of the New York Times (Regnery Gateway, 1984). |
The lid on the Budapest pressure cooker is unlatched at last, and Hungary is steaming. Those who have known Hungary in recent decades cannot believe what they see on Hungarian television and read in the newspapers as Hungary's glasnost challenges the Soviet Union's.
In 1988, no one could have imagined that former leader Imre Nagy and the late Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty would be retried or Otto von Hapsburg, heir to the throne--who married while kneeling on a sack of Hungarian earth--speak to cheers at the Karl Marx University in Budapest. Political parties thought long dead have been reborn and are preparing for real elections.
Almost as if to signify the end of this era, Kadar died. On July 5, at age 77, Janos Kadar passed on to another world, nearly as quietly as he had passed on politically. The ruler of Hungary for more than 31 years after Soviet troops and tanks brought him to power in November 1956, Kadar had been relieved of all posts by 1989. At first hated for his treachery, he was later perceived as indecisive, bumbling, ineffectual, but perhaps well-meaning; in essence, forced by the Soviets to rule.
Kadar presented himself as a reluctant ruler. In April 1958, for example, he complained of his politburo: "Why do they always come to me with their questions? Let them decide it themselves." Actually, Kadar made the decisions the Soviets did not make for him. He had his politburo abort the first program for reforms attempted by economist Rezso Nyers in the late 1960s. Instead, Kadar bought popularity with pyramid borrowing, until Hungary's per capita external debt became the world's largest. The country owed the West
... (1996 of 11615 Characters)
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