Writers' Revolutio]
By ZOLTAN SZABO AA YEAR ago, during the short but victorious .1,,.days of the Hungarian revolution, an A\ 0 (secret police) delegation appeared at the head- quarters of the Writers' Association. They re- quested to be allowed to lay down their arms in the courtyard of the building. In other words, the secret police felt that capitulation to the writers would grant them some sort of immun rY they could not otherwise hope for. Next day a lorry drove up to the same headquarters. It was full of poultry, and a sign proclaimed : 'The gift of the county of Zala to Hungarian writers.' These two episodes reveal the degree of authority and popularity achieved by men of letters in Hun' gary. What were the events, before the revolu- tion, which contributed-to giving the writers such an extraordinary role? And how did they live up to their responsibility after the revolution?
Although in Hungary writers are traditionally politically-minded, it was chiefly the Com- munists who created the conditions for their in' creased importance. They were responsible for the very existence of the Writers' Association, since it was 'the emigre writers, returning from Moscow in 1945,vwho brought back the idea that there was need for an organisation on the Soviet pattern, embracing all writers. They raised the Communist Party organisation of the asso- ciation to a platform of great importance, whose meetings and debates were discussed in every newspaper. During the Stalinist period the so- called Lukacs and Day debates were staged in order to subordinate literary creation to party aims. The utterly lifeless literature which resulted induced the party to reverse its former policy, and in 1952 writers were ordered to visit the villages and factories of the country to study life as it was lived in Hungary. It was, therefore, the party which was responsible for making even the blindest of writers notice the contradiction between fact and theory—the gulf between party and people. Since they were able to speak more freely after the death of Stalin and during the so-called 'New Course' introduced in 1953, the Writers, by depicting human conditions more and more truthfully, became increasingly the advo- cates of the people. This placed them in growing opposition to the Stalinist bureaucracy, the new ruling class, to which they themselves belonged, and of necessity it brought them closer to the non-Communist writers.
Their literary revolution at first merely con- sisted of writing about what they saw and not about what the party wanted them to see, but to a public unaccustomed to free speech this had the impact of revolutionary literature. Until 1955 they Were able to count on Premier Imre Nagy's support against the Stalinist bureaucracy, and after the fall of Imre Nagy the resistance of the writers against Rakosi's renewed dictatorship became united and unbroken. Thus, the unity which became nation-wide during the revolution was already manifest among the writers in 1955. After the twentieth Party Congress the party leadership, which had remained in Stalinist hands, grew increasingly more impotent under the sustained attacks of the writers, and, since a proper opposition had no opportunity to crystallise, it was necessarily the Writers' Asso- ciation which became a spokesman of the will of the Hungarian people. In addition, the coun- try's long-standing desire for free and secret elections was realised on a small scale by the Writer's Association on September 17, 1956, when the association elected a praesidium, half of which consisted of the country's best non-Communist Writers. Thus, the writers proved that within their own portals they were able to achieve that democracy desired by the people for the entire country. It was not accidental, therefore, that thirty-six days later the youth of Hungary, fight- ing in the streets, turned to them for guidance.
During the revolution the writers attempted to use their prestige to negotiate between Imre Nagy and the various revolutionary bodies, to moderate the people's thirst for revenge and to promote a peaceful solution. The writers, true to their Pre-revolutionary stand, immediately declared themselves on the side of the people. But the Most notable fact was that, reflecting the atti- tude of the people, they refused to accept the armed suppression of the revolution as final de- feat. In the 1,ast stage of the revolution, in the period of strikes and passive resistance, they Stood by the workers' councils. As late as Decem- ber 28, they declared in their manifesto that the Soviet Union committed a 'historic mistake' by its armed intervention. It was evident that neither the shelling of Budapest nor the inac- tivity of the West and the impotence of the United Nations could persuade them that the armed suppression of the fight for freedom neces- sarily meant the defeat of the revolution.
The behaviour of the writers ever since gives, I believe, as good an indication of the country's mood as it gave before the revolution. Their `strike,' their refusal to publish their works, lasted another eight months and only ended in Septem- ber, 1957, when they were made to sign a state- ment opposing the United Nations debate on Hungary. The authorities were only able to coerce the majority of the writers into signing it by taking as hostage one of the most eminent of them and by allowing new periodicals. Some writers who, owing to illness or absence, could have avoided signing the declaration, volunteered their signatures. The slogans were 'We all have td share in the shame' and 'If everyone signs it will have the same effect as if nobody has signed.' Thus, by jointly bearing the burden of this humiliation, they once again demonstrated their unity. The public trial in March of Gali and Obersovszky, on the one side, the very secrecy of the Dery-Zelk trial now on, on the other, proves that even those imprisoned do not betray either themselves or the people. Moreover, their sur- render was not unconditional; for they con- tribute only to those newly founded magazines which are not stained with having approved of the Russian intervention and of Kadar's interpreta- tion of revolutionary events. The contents of these new reviews imply that their existence is due to a compromise which is actually a form of resistance. The authors refrain from political themes. They are silent about the revolution. They have not reverted to the servile literature of the Stalinist era. They have reverted instead to the first stage of their literary revolution when they wrote of what they saw and not of what the party wanted them to see.
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