The Smooth Surface

Like a mask that hides the agony of the face beneath it, an uneasy calm has settled over the surface of Hungary: somehow, the people and their hated government are managing to get along. Last week TIME Correspondent Edgar Clark went to Budapest for a firsthand look at what life is like 16 months after the revolution. His report:

On the fringe of Budapest, smoke pours steadily from factory chimneys, and in the city, movie houses disgorge streams of blinking customers (Marty and Trapeze are sellouts). In bars (where only foreigners and party bureaucrats have cash enough to drink regularly) U.S.-make jukeboxes squawk the raucous normalcy of rock 'n' roll. But the iron fist looms through the shoddy substitute for velvet: at a Budapest restaurant, a grey-haired old waiter is seized by security police, vanishes. His crimes: he has a young relative who is studying to be a priest, and he has been observed chatting with foreigners in scraps of languages picked up when he worked abroad years ago. He is deported to his native village. The old waiter's place is filled by a young man who learned his languages under party supervision.

Such banishments are commonplace in post-revolution Hungary. The police knock, and later a Western visitor notices that some person he has known has disappeared. Most Hungarians tapped by the police leave when ordered, and quietly; the alternative is jail. In the nightclubs patronized by foreigners, the bar girls are new, placed there by the police to watch and listen.

No More Pep. Dosed with large shots of Russian and satellite credit, the economy creaks, but it functions, and wages have not been cut. The collective farms, heavily subsidized by the government (private farmers get no help, are gradually losing out), produce enough food for most of the population.

The regime has saved its greatest wrath for the Communists who put their loyalty to Hungary above party discipline and joined the rebellion. They have been purged, and some have been exiled to the hinterlands. The ironic result is that the regime has been forced to hire nonpolitical technical and professional men for the choice jobs formerly saved for party members. The purge brought at least one other improvement: an end to the tedious weekly Communist pep talks formerly required in every factory and business establishment. The party rank and file, presumably, is still too weak to be entrusted with propagandizing.

Hidden Bitterness. Hungary's gallant and bloody bolt for freedom brought more repression; Poland's limited nonsanguinary revolution brought less. In Poland, Western newspapers are to be had, and citizens complain about the government with something approaching freedom. In Hungary only newspaper offices and high officials get printed news from the West, and the people keep their bitterness to themselves. In Poland fearless Cardinal Wyszynski goads the administration; in Hungary Cardinal Mindszenty hides in the American legation. The Hungarian writers who inspired and helped lead the revolution seldom dare to write even sly gibes (though they regularly and stubbornly send delegations to demand the release of Novelist Tibor Dery, intellectual leader of the revolt).

But calculated repression and artificial prosperity have produced an outward semblance of order. Last week things were running smoothly enough for the government to announce that 17,000 Soviet troops would be gone by the end of the month. Moscow will still have an estimated 100,000 troops left in Hungary--just in case.

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