The Rivalry of Exhaustion

It was a month to the day since the Russians returned to crush, by treachery and murder, the first nation ever to throw off a Communist regime. At a street corner near the Danube, two Budapest housewives raised the Hungarian tricolor aloft and shouted: "Any more Hungarians? Only women wanted this time."

Housewives, young girls, black-shawled old women, they streamed from shopping queues, broken buildings, rubble-strewn side streets. Then, 4,000 strong, the widows and sisters of Budapest marched for Heroes Square to honor the memory of their men. As they trudged through the rain, some bore flowers, but most carried only thin shoppers' bundles of bread, cabbages, onions. Threading past the wreckage of their city, they chanted the words of Sandor Petofi, poet of Hungary's 1848 revolt: "We shall never be slaves."

Pocketbook Clue. At the square, 30 beetling Russian tanks blocked their way. The Russians let a few women pass to put their flowers on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. But when others pressed forward, the Russian soldiers fired their Tommy guns. The women ran. One fell, shot in the leg.

Next day the women returned, bearing wreaths and black flags; this time Puppet Premier Janos Kadar's newly revamped security police beat them back with gun butts. When some of the women took cover in the British legation, a Russian tank lumbered up and stuck its gun into the open door. In his iciest Foreign Office manner, First Secretary Christopher Cope told the tank commander that he needed no Russian protection from "our Hungarian friends." Another delegation of women entered the U.S. legation a couple of blocks away, with a plea for U.N. help. Four Russian tanks roared up; Kadar's cops swung rifle butts, and legation staffers watched police carry off two truckloads of women. A Russian column charged up to a third group outside the Yugoslav embassy, pushed 15 to 20 demonstrators into armored cars, and made off. In a last despairing act, the women flung their pocketbooks to the crowd. From identification cards found inside, the Budapest Workers' Council made lists of the abducted women and protested to Russian and Hungarian authorities, both of whom professed innocence.

The march of the Budapest women was symptomatic of Hungary, where revolutionary fires were flickering again among the tortured and exhausted people. Tense and jumpy, they were obviously near the end of their endurance. Yet so was Premier Janos Kadar and his little gang of Soviet stooges. Seven weeks after the revolution broke out, there was still no effective government in Hungary, and throughout the country, especially outside Budapest, the revolution-born workers' councils were reaching out more and more for the local government functions that the Kadar regime was unable to perform.

But the prospect of a dual government was a challenge that Kadar's Russian bosses could not abide. Last week Kadar's newly revamped secret police began arresting leaders of factory workers' councils. Workers in a dozen plants struck in protest, and the roused patriots of Budapest tangled with Kadar's cops in the streets. Four died in one fight that started when Kadar forces paraded the Red flag past the West railway station. In the countryside scores were reported killed fighting against police and Russian soldiers --ten in the mining center of Tatabanya alone. The Budapest Workers' Council, chief spokesman for the rebels, posted word in factories that "if this keeps up, the workers will turn against the government for good, and the end will be a general strike, bloodshed and a new national tragedy." Next day the government released 69 of 200 arrested men, but Kadar told a delegation he would destroy all council leaders who opposed him as "counter-revolutionaries."

This week, as the Budapest Central Council ordered a two-day general strike to begin Monday night, the government dissolved all workers' councils, declared a state of martial law, and cut off all communication with the outside. The struggle for power went on in hapless Hungary.

At the rate of 2,400 a day, Hungarians continued to flee west over the Austrian border. Though well below last month's peak daily rate of 8,500, the arrival of more thousands left great numbers of people to be fed, cared for, and--with luck--moved elsewhere. At week's end there were some 73,786 refugees in Austria. In all, 121,504 Hungarians have crossed the frontier since Oct. 28. The U.S. has agreed to take 21,500. France, Britain and Canada have set no limits.

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