RUSSIAN SINCERITY can be measured by watching What is happening
to Imre Nagy in Hungary. Russian instructions to the puppet Hungarian government on what the people ought to think about Nagy have been ludicrous in their contra- dictions. On November 11, 1956, just after the revolution had been suppressed, Kadar said in tt broadcast to the nation, 'I must openly state that to the best of my knowledge neither Imre Nagy nor his political group meant knowingly to sup- port the counter-revolution,' and he referred to him as his 'much respected countryman.' But on January 5, 1957, Khrushchev and Malenkov visited Budapest, and Nagy suddenly ceased to be respected. Two months later he was denounced as an imperialist agent : in The Truth about the Hungarian Trade Unions, a document published in Budapest, he was referred to as 'the traitor Nagy, who in full harmony with the western imperialists prepared the counter-revolution.' But this view makes nonsense of Pravda's announce- ment on October 24, 1956, that the first Russian intervention took place solely because Nagy, who Was Prime Minister, invited the Russian troops in. A traitor working assiduously for a counter- revolution against the Russians would be unlikely to call the Russians in to suppress it.
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