Goulash communism
As goulash communism (of Hungarian. Gulyás ) was in Hungary the local liberalized form of state socialism designated as reflected in the ten to twenty years after the Hungarian uprising in 1956 emerged.
term
The term goulash communism supposedly goes back to Nikita Khrushchev , who wanted to highlight the economic developments in Hungary. The term was then used in the West as a synonym for the Hungarian policy of political loyalty to the line in connection with economic relief.
Hungarian popular uprising of 1956
The extreme repression under Communist Party leader Mátyás Rákosi (1944–1953) was followed by a temporary reform phase under Imre Nagy in the course of the first “ de-Stalinization ” , which ended abruptly with the suppression of the Hungarian people's uprising in 1956 by the Soviet Red Army . While Nagy was still negotiating a special status for Hungary with Moscow, his young deputy János Kádár had already asked behind his back for a Russian military action against the uprising.
When the Soviet Army regained control of the situation, János Kádár became the new leader of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party and initially also Prime Minister . As party leader he held the fate of Hungary in his hands until 1988. After three years of extreme hardship, which meant prison or death for 20,000 Hungarians and culminated in Nagy's execution in 1958, Kádár gradually allowed relief. When they also brought small private business opportunities at the end of the 1960s, the word "Gulyás- communism " was created in the old tradition of Austria-Hungary .
János Kádár
The great majority of the population saw the new ruler Kádár as a traitor to the people and their revolution - all the more so since he officially admitted himself to the Soviet Union to invade on November 4, 1956 on behalf of his "Revolutionary Hungarian Workers and Peasants Government " to have. The Soviet Union cited this request for decades in order to preserve the appearance of legitimacy under international law . The Warsaw Pact was signed by the eight Eastern Bloc countries on May 14, 1955 - exactly one day before the Austrian State Treaty . But the “Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance” was rejected in Hungary as incapacitating. The then Prime Minister András Hegedüs had to sign it in the German version of the GDR because a Hungarian version did not even exist.
The situation was somewhat alleviated by the withdrawal of the Soviet occupation troops from Austria in autumn 1955 , which only one year later had taken in 200,000 refugees . The stay of Soviet troops in Hungary appeared superfluous, but it was not until 1957 that a stationing agreement was concluded with the USSR .
Rejection of the new rule
Initially, neither the revolutionary students , nor the intellectuals, and certainly not the workers' councils established during the revolution, were ready to accept the so-called “workers government”. Kádár and his secret police responded to the resistance with draconian severity: around 20,000 people involved in the uprising went behind bars, hundreds of trials ended with the predetermined death sentence , and the secret trial of Imre Nagy, who had become a national hero, with his execution by hanging in June 1958 Cardinal Mindszenty, who persevered in the asylum of the US embassy, became a second symbol of the Magyar will for freedom.
Towards the end of 1958, however, János Kádár made it clear that he did not want to return to a dictatorship in the sense of Stalin or Rákosi. It is true that the CP did not move an inch from its monopoly of power, which is fundamental to the Eastern Bloc, nor from its "unbreakable loyalty" to the Soviet Union and its "brotherly" relations with neighboring countries. Nevertheless, Kádár and the party tried to loosen the distrust of the population by opening up and at the same time to give the economy the urgently needed impetus.
Careful relief
After several years of harmonization and "pacification" policy, Kádár was able to obtain some freedoms from the Soviet Union . They mainly concerned the cautious introduction of a modest private economy - such as the cultivation and sale of vegetables or small services - and aimed at improving the supply of the population after the economic crisis of the 1950s under Rákosi and at the same time creating a little sense of freedom .
The regime also began - more than in the " brother countries " - to explain its intentions to compatriots. About what moved him, Kádár once said: “There are situations in which you have to do what only a few understand. But you have to do it in the hope that the reasons can be understood in retrospect. ” With regard to the relationship between the regime and the population, he was satisfied with the motto: “ Those who are not against us are with us. ”
In the course of this relaxation and cautious reforms - some of which went back to Imre Nagy's “communism with a human face” - a certain amount of tourism also got going . Individual trips to the West were granted to politically unobjectionable people, although the family members had to stay at home first. It was possible for recognized scientists to attend foreign congresses , even if initial surveillance by the secret service was suspected. The reverse route was easier, however, and from 1975, for example, the participation of Western researchers in the Interkosmos programs was very welcome. A little later, the visa requirement was lifted for neighboring Austria ( it was longer for Switzerland and Germany ), which made small border traffic with western Hungary possible and boosted its economy.
Relationship with the Catholics
If these economic reliefs were quickly approved, it was all the more difficult to reduce the distrust of the Christian population after the years of repression . Still was pastoral exclusively Marxism hindered in schools taught geklittert history. Until about 1980 most of the dioceses were vacant and the few bishops were hindered in their duties. Therefore, the peace agreement with the church that the KP was striving for was a unilateral wish that would have required clearer signs of openness.
Only when a few new bishops had better contacts with the regime - and they were immediately said to be a servant - the relationship slowly improved. In 1971, Cardinal József Mindszenty was persuaded to exchange his 15-year asylum in the US embassy for a trip to Austria . Under Cardinal László Lékai (from 1976) the climate between Catholics and Communists relaxed noticeably and he was able to secure some freedom for the church 20 years after the popular uprising .
Résumé
The increasingly granted freedoms - and also those that the regime had won against the Soviet Union - made it easier for the Hungarians to take the risky decision in the spring of 1989 to dismantle the Iron Curtain , to allow countless holidaymakers to flee from the GDR across the green border in the summer and the following September to allow GDR refugees remaining in Hungary to travel to West Germany via Austria.
Like the Hungarian uprising , goulash communism was encouraged by Poland's consistent resistance to communism, long before Solidarność . Both countries, as well as the policy of détente and other developments in Central Europe , contributed significantly to the political change in 1989.
literature
- János Kornai: The price of goulash communism. Hungary's development from an economic policy point of view . In: Europäische Rundschau 25 (1997), pp. 75-113.
Web links
Footnotes
- ^ Reference to Khrushchev as the originator of the term in Kurtán, Sándor / Liebhardt, Karin / Pribersky, Andreas: Ungarn , Munich 1999 (Beck'sche series; 880; Länder), ISBN 3 406 39880 4 , p. 117.