The Unvanquished

In Vienna one day last week a Telex machine, ominously silent for almost a week, suddenly sprang to life. Slowly and with much stuttering an unknown keyboard operator in Budapest hammered out the following message:

BUDAPEST IS IN FERMENT TODAY. HUGE MASS DEMONSTRATION HANGS OVER CITY. TEN THOUSAND WORKERS FROM INDUSTRIAL AREAS ARE MARCHING ON PARLIAMENT. RUSSIAN AGENTS TRIED TO STOP THEM BUT HAVE BEEN BRUSHED ASIDE. THEY BLOCK ALL BRIDGES AND SPECIAL PATROLS ARE AROUND PARLIAMENT BUILDING.

From a dozen other sources, as the day went by, came confirmation of the astonishing news that Hungary, far from lying down under martial law, was alive and kicking its Soviet bosses. The mighty Red army had been unable to halt the paralyzing general strike of the incredible Hungarians, who abandoned street fighting after perhaps 25,000 Hungarians lost their lives, but found other ways to resist.

Both sides faced the other with harsh alternatives. Said a Soviet commander, listening to a Budapest workers' committee presenting its demands: "We approve of the right to strike, but we have many ways of bringing it to an end." Soviet field police seized the bank accounts of struck firms, arrested leading Hungarian journalists, imposed tight electric-power and food controls. Strikers had their own methods of enforcing the strike: they fired shots in front of buses that resumed running, and with hand grenades drove back workers who appeared at one factory.

At the great Csepel iron and steel works, strike leaders told the Russians they had mined all the factories and that if the Russians began shooting workers they would blow up the whole industrial area. At Miskolc (pop. 200,000), coal miners set up a volunteer organization to keep order, mined only enough coal to keep kindergartens and hospitals heated. At Gyor, when some workers said they would go back to work, the town's bakers told them there would be no bread.

Workers' councils, mindful of shortening supplies of food and the lack of heat, met with Soviet commanders. A return to work, under certain conditions, might have been arranged but for the news which flashed through Budapest one day last week: the Russians were deporting Hungarians. Soviet police had been seen going from house to house arresting young rebels. Now the grapevine reported that at least 180 boxcar loads of Hungarians had been deported in a few days. Notes dropped by young deportees along the railroad tracks had been picked up. One of these, copied and circulated all over Budapest, read: "We are 1,500 and we shall be transported to Russia."

The news incensed Hungary. On this day even the diehard Communists producing the party newspaper Nep Szabadsag went on strike. Even though the Russians had brought railroad workers from Russia to run the trains, the trains were stopped.

A group of rebels raided a railroad station, released 1,000 young students.

Promises. It was the fearful news of the deportations--the classic Siberian solution for troublesome minorities--that sparked the great workers' demonstration. In orderly ranks, but grim and determined, 10,000 men from Ujpest, Kispest and Csepel surrounded Parliament house. Here, protected by seven huge Soviet tanks, a dozen armored cars and Red army infantry, was the only piece of ground which could correctly be said to be controlled by the government. Workers' leaders went up to the Presidential Council chamber on the second floor to see Janus-faced Janos Kadar. They found a weary, bug-eyed

Premier, who swore that only the young "firebrands" had been seized and would be held in camps inside Hungary only until "strengthening of the People's Democracy can be accomplished."

To get his wretched regime working, the desperate Kadar was ready to promise almost anything. Free elections? He was willing to take a chance on that. Multiparty government? "Find Bela Kovacs [onetime Secretary General of the Smallholders Party] for me, and I'll gladly cooperate with him." He was already negotiating with representatives of the Peasants' Party. Imre Nagy? "Bring him back, because this job is a burden to me." Only one thing Kadar could not promise, for it was not in his power. He would not order the Red army to quit Hungary.

That night the Telex in Vienna spelled out a broken message:

IN BUDAPEST THERE WERE BATTLES THIS NIGHT . . . FOUGHT FOR 74 MINUTES AFTER MIDNIGHT SHOT . . . NOBODY COULD . . . GUN FIRING . . . HUNGARIAN JOURNALISTS HAD MEETING AND ALL PROTESTED . . . THATS ALL AT THIS MOMENT . . . SORRY MADE MISTAKES BUT MY HAND WOUNDED . . .

Soviet tanks were out in the streets again. But the Soviet soldiers, Asian faces from faraway Mongolia and Kirghizstan, seemed utterly confused. Some asked whether the river Raba, which runs through Gyor, was "really the Suez Canal." At Kobanyia a Russian officer "sold" his tank to rebels for 44 Ibs. of bread. One reason the Soviet Union was not hitting harder may have been provided by a report that 5,000 to 6,000 disarmed and untrusted Soviet soldiers were being held in a camp at Satoraljaujhely. Other refugees reported 200 to 300 Russian deserters fighting on the side of 8,000 Hungarian guerrillas in northwestern Hungary.

Soviet Presidium Members Anastas Mikoyan and Mikhail Suslov were said to be in Budapest working out a "solution." One solution that now appeared possible was one that a week ago seemed utterly improbable: the return of deposed Premier Imre Nagy. From his hideout in the small greystone two-storied Yugoslav embassy in Stalin Square (where a Soviet tankist a week earlier had killed the embassy's First Secretary Milenko Milov-nov), the intransigent Nagy sent word that he would have no dealings with Kadar. But Budapest's workers insisted that he was the only man they would trust to "ensure the achievements of our Revolution." Said a member of the Csepel workers' council: "We respect Nagy and we are anxious for him, and we wish that he remain in the Yugoslav embassy. First, there is no guarantee that the Soviets will not arrest him when he leaves and, second, what is the use of his taking over when he can't achieve the withdrawal of the Rus sians?" Defiant, but sensible of their lives, some of the workers' councils insisted that they wanted no armed help from the West, which might jeopardize their fight; they were confident they could win alone. The fact is, that for all their tanks, the Communists were bereft of one necessary ingredient of Soviet control, a trustworthy party apparatus among the people themselves, able to spot and block trouble.

At week's end Janos Kadar, party secretary without a real party, in a final desperate effort to end the general strike, issued a back-to-work ultimatum. To back up Kadar's stand Soviet Major General Grubennyik said that a further 20 Soviet divisions, comprising 200,000 men, were entering Hungary. Kadar assured the workers' councils that, once the strike had ended, the Red army would withdraw. No one trusted Kadar, but the Central Workers' Committee of Budapest, after a stormy debate at the Fisvek Club, agreed to try him out, reserving the right to strike again if he failed in his promise. The question was whether the workers, like the miners, who threatened to flood the pits rather than accept Kadar, would heed the bidding of their committee or Grubennyik's threat. If they did not, said the unknown Telex operator, the only thing left to the Soviet leaders was to bring Nagy back. Clattered irrepressible Budapest's irrepressible ghostwriter:

THE RUSSIANS WON THE BATTLE BUT THEY HAVE LOST THE WAR.

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