Bela Kovacs was born in
Hungary
in 1908. He became involved
in politics and joined the Smallholders Party. It drew most of its
support from the peasants who formed more than 50 per cent of the
country. However, until 1939, the ballot had been open in rural constituencies,
and therefore large landowners were able to force most peasants to
vote for the government party. The leaders of the Smallholders Party
were mainly members of the middle class and their political views
varied from liberals to socialists.
The Soviet
Army invaded Hungary
in September 1944. It set
up an alternative government in Debrecen on 21st December 1944 but
did not capture Budapest until 18th January 1945. Soon afterwards
Zoltan
Tildy became
the provisional prime minister.
In elections held in November,
1945, the Smallholders Party won 57% of the vote. The Hungarian Workers
Party, now under the leadership of Matyas
Rakosi and Erno Gero, received support
from only 17% of the population. The Soviet commander in Hungary,
Marshal Voroshilov, refused to allow the Smallholders to form a government.
Instead Voroshilov established a coalition government with the communists
holding all the key posts. Kovacs became minister of agriculture (1945-46).
The Hungarian Communist
Party became the largest single party in the elections in 1947 and
served in the coalition People's Independence Front government. The
communists gradually gained control of the government and by 1948
the Smallholders Party ceased to exist as an independent organization.
Kovacs was arrested and charged with plotting against the occupation
forces. He was found guilty and sentenced life imprisonment in Siberia.
Matyas
Rakosi also demanded complete obedience from fellow members of
the Hungarian Workers Party. When Laszlo
Rajk, the foreign
secretary, criticised attempts by Joseph Stalin
to impose Stalinist policies on Hungary
he was arrested and in September 1949 he was executed. Janos
Kadar and other
dissidents were also purged from the party during this period.
Rakosi now attempted to
impose authoritarian rule on Hungary. An estimated 2,000 people were
executed and over 100,000 were imprisoned. These policies were opposed
by some members of the Hungarian Workers Party and around 200,000
were expelled by Rakosi from the organization.
Kovacs was released from
prison in 1956. The
Hungarian
Uprising began
on 23rd October by a peaceful manifestation of students in Budapest.
The students demanded an end to Soviet occupation and the implementation
of "true socialism". The following day commissioned officers
and soldiers joined the students on the streets of Budapest. Stalin's
statue was brought down and the protesters chanted "Russians
go home", "Away with Gero" and "Long Live Nagy".
On 25th October Soviet
tanks opened fire on protesters in Parliament Square. One journalist
at the scene saw 12 dead bodies and estimated that 170 had been wounded.
Shocked by these events the Central Committee of the Communist Party
forced Erno Gero to resign from office and replaced him with Janos
Kadar.
Imre
Nagy now went
on Radio Kossuth and promised the "the far-reaching democratization
of Hungarian public life, the realisation of a Hungarian road to socialism
in accord with our own national characteristics, and the realisation
of our lofty national aim: the radical improvement of the workers'
living conditions."
On 3rd November, Nagy announced
details of his coalition government. It included Kovacs, Janos
Kadar, George
Lukacs,
Anna Kethly, Zolton
Tildy, Ferenc Farkas, Geza
Lodonczy, Istvan Szabo, Gyula
Keleman, Joseph Fischer and Istvan
Bibo. On 4th November 1956 Nikita
Khrushchev sent the Red Army into Hungary
and Nagy's government was overthrown.
On 4th November 1956, Nikita
Khrushchev sent the Red Army into Hungary
and Nagy's government was overthrown.
Bela Kovacs, who remained
a member of parliament, died in 1959.
(1)
Leslie Bain's interview with Bela Kovacs appeared in the New York
Reporter on 13th December, 1956.
Late in the evening of
Sunday, November 4 - a night of terror in Budapest that no one who
lived through it will ever forget - I met Bela Kovacs, one of the
leaders of Hungary's short-lived revolutionary government, in a cellar
in the city's center.
Kovacs, as a Minister
of State of the Nagy regime, had started oft for the Parliament Building
early that morning, but he never reached it. Soviet tanks were there
ahead of him. Now he squatted on the floor opposite me, a fugitive
from Soviet search squads.
A hunched, stocky man,
with a thin mustache and half-closed eyes, Bela Kovacs was only a
shadow of the robust figure he once had been. Now in his early fifties,
he had risen to prominence after the war as one of the top leaders
of the Hungarian Independent Smallholders Party. Back in 1947, when
Matyas Rakosi began taking over the government with the support of
the Soviet occupation forces, Kovacs had achieved fame by being the
only outstanding anti-Communist Hungarian leader to defy Rakosi and
continue open opposition. His prestige had become so great among the
peasantry that at first the Communists had not molested him. But then
the Soviets themselves stepped in, arresting him on a trumped-up charge
of plotting against the occupation forces and sentencing him to life
imprisonment. After eight years in Siberia, Kovacs was returned to
Hungary and transferred to a Hungarian jail, from which he was released
in the spring of 1956, broken in body but not in spirit by his long
ordeal. After what was called his "rehabilitation," Kovacs
was visited by his old enemy Rakosi, who called to pay his respects.
Rakosi was met at the door by this message from Kovacs: "I do
not receive murderers in my home."
So long as Nagy's government
was still under the thumb of the Communist Politburo, Kovacs refused
to have anything to do with the new regime. Only in the surge of the
late October uprising, when Nagy succeeded in freeing himself from
his former associates and cast about to form a coalition government,
did Kovacs consent to lend his name and immense popularity to it.
I asked Kovacs whether
he felt the Nagy government's declaration of neutrality had aroused
the Soviet leaders to action. No, he thought that the decision to
crush the Hungarian revolution was taken earlier and independently
of it. Obviously the Russians would not have rejoiced at a neutral
Hungary, but so long as economic cooperation between the states in
the area was assured the Russians and their satellites should not
have been too unhappy.
In that regard, Kovacs
assured me, there was never a thought in the Nagy government of interrupting
the economic co-operation of the Danubian states. "It would have
been suicidal for us to try tactics hostile to the bloc. What we wanted
was simply the right to sell our product to the best advantage of
our people and buy our necessities where we could do it most advantageously."
"Then in your estimation
there was no reason why the Russians should have come again and destroyed
the revolution?"
"None unless they
are trying to revert to the old Stalinist days. But if that is what
they really are trying - and at the moment it looks like it - they
will fail, even more miserably than before. The tragedy of all this
is that they are burning all the bridges which could lead to a peaceful
solution."
How much truth was in the
Russian assertion that
the revolution had become a counter-revolution and that therefore
Russian intervention was justified?
"I tell you,"
said Kovacs, "this was a revolution from inside, led by Communists.
There is not a shred of evidence that it was otherwise. Communists
outraged by their own doings prepared the ground for it and fought
for it during the first few days. This enabled us former non-Communist
party leaders to come forward and demand a share in Hungary's future.
Subsequently this was granted by Nagy, and the Social Democratic,
Independent Smallholders, and Hungarian Peasant parties were reconstituted.
True, there was a small fringe of extremists in the streets and there
was also evidence of a movement which seemed to have ties with the
exiled Nazis and Nyilas of former days. But at no time was their strength
such as to cause concern. No one in Hungary cares for those who fled
to the West after their own corrupt terror regime was finished - and
then got their financing from the West. Had there been an attempt
to put them in power, all Hungary would haven risen instantly ..."
"What of the future?"
I asked. After some hesitation Kovacs said: "All is not lost,
for it is impossible for the Russians and their puppets to maintain
themselves against the determined resistance of the Hungarians. The
day will come when a fateful choice will have to be made: Exterminate
the entire population by slow starvation and police terror or else
accept the irreducible demand - the withdrawal of Soviet forces from
our country."
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