Tibor Fischer recenziója Roger Gough Kádár-életrajzáról („A Good Comrade”) és Charles Gati „Failed Illusions” című könyvéről, a Times Literary Supplement számára, 2006 decemberében. A szerzőt a Lobbi olvasói ismerhették: ő írta a BBC 1986-os Cry Hungary dokumentumfilmjének szövegét, és ő az Under the Frog szerzője. Az eredeti angol szöveget közöljük, ahogyan a Magyar Lobbi 2006. december 8-i akciólevelében megjelent.

Az évforduló

The fiftieth anniversary of the anti-Soviet 1956 revolution this October begat a veritable industry of commemoration in Budapest, something that had never happened before. Ten years ago, in comparison, there was hardly anything. This time there were dozens of books, several feature films, two dreadful monuments, innumerable wreath-laying ceremonies, and enough speechifying to fill the sails of a round-the-world yacht race.

Why is hard to answer. In 1996, the celebrations might have been muted because of Prime Minister Gyula Horn, who had a role (albeit a very insignificant one) in helping the Russians crush the revolution. Then the next Socialist Prime Minister Péter Medgyessy, a former KGB errand boy, was not a man to go big on commemorating those who had died fighting for independence. The current Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, who has studied spin at the feet of Tony Blair, has on the other hand thrown himself headlong into remembrance as if he had never been an enthusiastic participant in the Kádár dictatorship, installed by Moscow’s tanks in the autumn of 1956.

Kádár: monster or pragmatist?

From Shawcross on there was a tendency to pose the question: Kádár monster or pragmatist? Yes, he was put into power by the Soviet Union in 1956, crushing the popular anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary, killing thousands. Yes, he presided over the execution of hundreds of his compatriots who hoped for democracy and free speech. Yes, he is of course a dictator, but look at Hungary, they have decent restaurants and private boutiques where you can buy tasteful lingerie.

Kádár’s reign was the era of two great clichés: firstly „goulash communism” and the „happiest barracks in the Soviet camp”, phrases which were endlessly regurgitated by Western journalists spending a few days in Budapest. Like most clichés, they contained a great deal of truth. Stalinism perished in Hungary in an unresurrectable way in 56. […] and above all, unlike the fifties, in Kádár’s words „whoever is not against us, is with us”. If you didn’t cause trouble you’d be left alone.

It’s true that Kádár didn’t start out an opportunist. An illegitimate child, Kádár grew up in appalling poverty, became a failed typewriter repairman and joined the Communist Party in the thirties when it was illegal and inconsequential. […] He was a skilled chess-player and the story goes that there was no television on Mondays because Kádár deemed one day should be set aside for more cerebral activity.

Yet all this is utterly insignificant as mitigation for Kádár’s crimes. The Stalinist leader in the fifties, Mátyás Rákosi, is now pegged as one of the great villains of Hungarian history, but Kádár’s position as his willing lieutenant is often played down.

The victims in the footnotes

Gough does however highlight Kádár’s supervision in 1945 of the organisation headed by Gábor Péter, first called the PRO, then the ÁVO, later ÁVH and finally after 1956 known as III/III. […] On Kádár’s watch, Cardinal Mindszenty „drugged and tortured” was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Fischer here makes the point that gives the review its edge:

„It’s the nature of history books to concentrate on the big players, but […] it’s also the shame of post-war Hungarian history that it is the Communists who are always given pride of place, the chapters, the photos, while their victims tend to languish in the footnotes. Not just in Gough’s book, but in virtually every account the talk is of the executions of Rajk and Nagy, two Communists who were simply eaten up by the machine they helped to create.”

He names some of those in the footnotes: Imre Geiger and Zoltán Radó, hanged in May 1950 after the Standard Electric trial; and Ernő Lux, a 73-year-old pensioner, former manager of Hungarian Railways, hanged in 1950 „simply to boost the terror and cow the nation”. „Not all the killings were carried out with a sheen of bogus legality; some died during beatings before they got to court.”

He also recalls interviewing Vladimir Farkas, „the most notorious heavy in the ÁVO”, who commented that the Nazis were better than the Stalinists, because if you toed the line in the Nazi party you were safe. In Stalin’s world even a good Stalinist was in danger — as Kádár himself was about to find out.

„János the Shit”

On the central mystery — why Kádár, who was on record supporting the revolution, disappeared and returned as the Soviets’ quisling: „Only Kádár knew the full truth, but when you consider how prepared he was to betray and murder to survive and thrive, perhaps, finally, the mystery isn’t so great. He could see the Soviets were summoning disproportionate force […] and he had a simple choice to make: to be on the losing or the winning side.”

„The ÁVH considered Kádár to be the most miserable prisoner they ever had to deal with. They nicknamed him »János the Shit«. There’s considerable irony that Kádár’s thuggish former protégés should have summed him up so accurately and succinctly.”

On Gati’s „Failed Illusions”

Fischer is markedly cooler here. „It’s hard to review the rest of the book because so much of it is »what if« speculation. Gati’s contention is that the killing of several uniformed ÁVO in the Köztársaság Square on October 30th tilted the balance in Moscow towards intervention. Evidence? Well none, really. He also argues that Nagy […] wasn’t up to the job and that a more prudent mind could have negotiated with the Russians and avoided the brutal attack on Budapest on November 4th. This isn’t history, it’s opinion. What is history is that years later when the Czechoslovaks tried a timorous renegotiation of their vassalage, they were clobbered.”

And on the acknowledgements: Gati lists a number of Kádár’s cronies he interviewed, then „hilariously, he credits those he talked to »from the other side of the barricades« oblivious apparently that most of the names are of former Communists or their spouses”.

This leads to an observation directly relevant to this archive:

„An irony of the history of 1956 is that it has largely been in the hands of the »Left«, chiefly former Stalinists (Méray, Aczél, Molnár) who magnify the activities of communist intellectuals. The younger generation of Hungarian historians (László Eörsi and János M. Rainer for example) are balancing things up, but little of their work is available in English. Eörsi’s studies of the various fighting groups such as »A Széna tériek 1956« or »Corvinisták 1956« have given a face to those footsoldiers who took on the Red Army and for a while held them at bay.”

(Eörsi László Széna tér-tanulmányából a Lobbi ugyanebben az évben közölt interjút – lásd Széna tér 1956.)

„Democracy can’t be installed like a telephone system”

„The fiftieth anniversary of the revolution also saw the worst street disturbances in Budapest since 1956. As I watched one demonstrator, who was restrained by four riot policemen, being repeatedly kicked in the head by a fifth, it occurred to me that the commonplace that the revolution has had a delayed triumph is wrong.

There has been almost no attempt to punish the guilty, especially the ÁVH who massacred hundreds of unarmed, peaceful civilians during and after the revolution […] Those who fought in 56 and survived mostly have miserable existences as hard-up pensioners.

Fine, the Russians are gone, and there have been free elections (though fair would be debatable — the media is mostly in the clutches of the old comrades). Democracy can’t be installed like a telephone system. The damage done by forty years of dictatorship runs deep.”

He closes with an anecdote:

„Some weeks ago in Budapest at a conference on 56, when I pointed out that in an established democracy Gyurcsány would have been out of office in a matter of minutes, one of the organizers (a Hungarian) came up to me afterwards and screamed at me that I had no right to say that. He was from a local entity: the International Centre for Democratic Transition. I rest my case.”

Frissítés: Gati Károly válasza

A recenzió megjelenése után Gati Károly levélben fordult Lipták Bélához, és kérte, hogy a Lobbi közölje a könyvéről megjelent többi kritikát is. Lipták ezt megtette – a levélváltás egészében jellemző arra, hogyan kezelte a lista a saját anyagával szembeni ellenvetéseket.

„Egy közös ismerősünk tegnap továbbította a Hungarian Lobbyban újraközölt TLS online recenziót új könyvemről. Ez az általam ismert egyetlen negatív recenzió a Failed Illusionsról, hacsak nem számítom Gereben István hozzászólását az amazon.comon. (Több recenzió nem ért egyet egy-két konklúziómmal, de a könyvet ezek is dicsérik.)

A TLS újraközlése váratlanul ért, mert szeptemberben oly kedves voltál, hogy e-mailben – még olvasás közben – megírtad nekem, milyen nagy élmény számodra ez a könyv.

Megjegyzem, hogy a könyv ősszel a budapesti sikerlisták zömén az első helyen állt; értesüléseim szerint kb. 12 000 példány fogyott el az első három hónapban.”

Lipták válasza: „Lehozom, s egyben meg is ismétlem, hogy nekem nagyon tetszett könyved, s Magyarországon egyetemi előadásaimon sokszor idéztem is.”

A Gati Károly által mellékelt recenziórészletek

„The product of more than 15 years of extraordinary research and interviewing, much of it in Hungarian, [Gati’s] book highlights just how much we have to learn about key Cold War events and, more important, how we should go about learning it.” — Foreign Affairs

„Charles Gati’s Failed Illusions [is] a searching, scholarly account of the political calculations of the Kremlin, the White House, and the Hungarian Communist leadership.” — New York Times Book Review

„Failed Illusions sheds new light on American policy, especially the controversial role of Radio Free Europe as it encouraged the rebels.” — The Economist

„Charles Gati’s Failed Illusions is an outstanding work.” — London Review of Books

„…a brilliant exercise in the counterfactual, a catalog of the »what ifs« that should be considered when thinking about the creation and perpetuation of the Soviet bloc.” — Norman M. Naimark (Stanford), The Moscow Times

„Failed Illusions casts incisively a new perspective on three key dimensions of the historic drama that was the Hungarian Revolution: the unsavory background and the heroic epiphany of Imre Nagy […]; the confused, disruptive, and ultimately devious Soviet efforts to manipulate the Hungarian communists; and the impotent futility of US posturing which masqueraded as »the policy of liberation«. Riveting as a story, significant as a history.” — Zbigniew Brzezinski

„The main message on U.S. foreign policy in Gati’s book resonates with me. We’re forever spouting bullshit in foreign policy for domestic political reasons at great costs to people abroad, who take the bullshit seriously.” — Leslie Gelb, President Emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations

Gati hozzátette, hogy hasonló recenziók jelentek meg magyarul az Élet és Irodalomban (Varga László), a Népszabadságban (John Lukacs és Szigethy András), a Magyar Hírlapban (ahol „a hónap könyve” lett), a Magyar Nemzetben, és a Magyar Szemlében (Jeszenszky Géza hosszú méltatása); a szlovák kiadást Martin Bútora értékelte a Sme-ben, a lengyel kiadásról pedig Adam Michnik írt két teljes oldalon a Gazeta Wyborczában.

(Egy apróság a levélváltásból: Gati eredetileg „TSL”-t írt „TLS” helyett, Lipták pedig nem találta a recenziót a december 8-i számban – a hírlevél maga is jelezte ezt az elírást.)

Forrás: Magyar Lobbi, 2006. december 8. és 2006. december 15.; a recenzió a Times Literary Supplementben jelent meg.

Frissítés: Raymond Aron és a francia párhuzam (2007. január)

A recenzió közlése után egy „Gyula” aláírású listatag ezzel egészítette ki Fischer megállapítását arról, hogy 1956 története jórészt a „baloldal” kezében maradt.

„Érdekes a cikk, amit erről leközöltél. Jelezni szeretném, hogy Franciaországban ezt az elvakultságot analizálta az ismert francia politológus, Raymond Aron. A könyvének címe: »L’opium des intellectuels«, vagyis az intellektuelek ópiuma… Ennek az elvakultságnak az 1956-os magyar események vetettek véget: sokan otthagyták az addig erős francia kommunista pártot. Azóta se tértek magukhoz…”

— Ölel, Gyula

A megjegyzés Fischer tételét viszi tovább: ahol a recenzió a magyar 1956-historiográfia baloldali gondozásáról beszél, ott a hozzászólás a nyugat-európai értelmiség 1956-os szakadására mutat rá. Aron könyve 1955-ben jelent meg — vagyis egy évvel a forradalom előtt.