The Ideological Struggle

Militarily and economically, agreed the few Western newsmen in Budapest last week, the Hungarian revolution was at an end. After eight weeks of valiant resistance, the nation's patriots, intellectuals, youths and workers were finding the Communist police system too much for them. Guerrillas were leaving the frost-whipped hills and woods. Factory workers, stood over by Russian "production police," were reluctantly facing their machines.

Western observers, however, were careful to qualify judgment of the incredible Hungarians with such statements as "morally and psychologically, the revolution is as strong as ever." Something like that was acknowledged by Premier Kadar in an interview with Communist East German correspondents. Said Kadar: "The military defeat has been completed. It will be the ideological struggle that will be the most important."

By ideological struggle, Kadar obviously meant his failure to persuade the people that his regime was good for them. In several areas the workers' councils refused to accept his decree outlawing them. According to Kadar's official Nep Szabadsag, Heves county, northeast of Budapest, was virtually a rebel stronghold whose villagers "just jeer at the order and carry on their activities ..." But Kadar's biggest headache was the coal miners. Less than half of Hungary's 100,000 miners were at work, and coal production was down an estimated 70%. Last week those coal miners who had not either fled or fallen in the fighting sent Kadar a spunky, three-point ultimatum demanding 1) his immediate resignation, 2) withdrawal of Soviet forces to their barracks, 3) free elections.

This was the miners' answer to a Presidential Council decree re-establishing the old Stalinist internment system, by which the police may arrest and hold without trial "persons whose activity or behavior endangers public order." The decree was accompanied by a burst of government publicity defending the new police force and denying that it was identified with the old AVH or would use "former criminal methods."

But the new AVH acted exactly like Rakosi's old bullyboys. In one day they arrested 400 "rebels and criminals." Five of the arrested were condemned to death and one executed, said Radio Budapest, hinting at mass trials to come. Western sources gave a grimmer estimate of AVH efficiency: over a period of "several days," Western diplomats reported, 241 persons had been executed by summary courts-martial, 170 of them in Budapest.

The new AVH shared headquarters with the joint Soviet-Hungarian Police Committee (probable chairman: Soviet Police Boss Ivan Serov). To Hungarians this was proof that while it might suit the Russians to appear to be withdrawing, leaving Premier Janos Kadar to work out his own solution, they were, in fact, still in control.

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