OSA / Guide / RIP / 1956 / RFE/RL Background Reports : Subjects | Browse | Search

The text below might contain errors as it was reproduced by OCR software from the digitized originals,
also available as Scanned original in PDF.

BOX-FOLDER-REPORT: 30-2-6
TITLE:             Criticism of "Revisionist" Imre Nagy: Agricultural Policies
BY:                (Leason)
DATE:              1957-12-19
COUNTRY:           Hungary
ORIGINAL SUBJECT:  General Desk No.42
THEMATIC SUBJECTS: Hungary--1956-1965, Hungary--1953--Nagy's New Course, 1954, Political Persecution

--- Begin ---

RFE NEWS & INFORMATION
EVALUATION & RESEARCH
GENERAL DESK - No.42

News Background

H - CRITICISM OF "REVISIONIST" IMRE NAGY:
AGRICULTURAL POLICIES	F-152

MUNICH, December 19 - (LEASON) - A paper read at the
Hungarian Academy of Science yesterday and reported by the Hungarian
News Agency MTI last night represents one of the most complete
criticisms of former Hungarian Premier Imre NAGY yet to appear.

The writer of the paper, Dezso NEMES, was also the author of
a "refutation" in the journal "Tarsadalmi Szemle" of Imre NAGY's
"political testament" which was published in the West this year,
TI said.

Labelling NAGY the "most important voice" of "revisionist"
views in Hungary, the paper also appeared to have two major aims:
first to establish that NAGY, along with RAKOSI, had been
responsible for the drafting of the "unrealistic" 1951-55 five-year
plan which included provisions for the despised "compulsory
delivery" system; and secondly to make one of NAGY's main
"revisionist" crimes his support of agricultural production "on a small
scale".

"He who idealizes goods production on a small scale also
deceives the peasantry, to whom the truth must be told and who
thus must be won over to co-operation" -- that is, to the
"socialized "Form of agriculture.

When NAGY became premier in 1953, his "new course" agrarian
policy resulted in a major exodus of peasants from the country's
collectives. When he lost the premiership early in 1955, the
trend was reversed by new collectivization drives. At the time
of the revolution of 1956, peasants again deserted the collectives.
The regime abolished compulsory deliveries. The latter have not
been re-instated by the KADAR regime, probably primarily because
a good harvest was essential this year.

There are continuing reports from BUDAPEST that NAGY is being
prepared for trial. If so, the NEMES paper would probably serve
the regime as an almost complete indictment of his "crimes".

+ + +

NEMES' indictment goes back to the 1947-48 period, within
the Central Committee of the Party, when "Imre NAGY had already
turned against socialist construction, saying it was not yet
timely in Hungary, where only a certain bourgeois democratic

[Page 2]

H - 1 ERITIEISM OF "REVISIONISM"--

NEWS BACKGROUND REPORT No.42	F-153

evolution was to be carried out.r9 His views at that time, NEMES
claims, "were not made public".

(The charge of favoring "bourgeois democratic evolution" is
one of the gravest which can be made against a Marxist. It implies
that NAGY was guilty of "reformism" or "revisionism" along
Bersteinian lines, the deviation which Western "Social Democrats" are
also supposedly guilty of. Attacks on Polish "revisionists" have
been made along the same lines by the Polish "Stalinist" theorist
A.WERBLAN).

NEMES then relates that in 1949, NAGY made a self-criticism
which the Central Committee accepted because it supposed it to be
sincere. Thus in 1951, NAGY was returned to the Politburo.

The mistake of the Party at that time was that "an open
ideological struggle should have been fought... against this petit
?ourgeois cowardliness". The Central Committee did not examine as
should have "the practical distortion and wrong application of
correct principles and thus all the questions of agrarian policy
were not explained as they should have been. "

(It is interesting to note that in the 1948-49 period, the
Polish Communist Wladislaw GOMULKA was also at odds with the Party
in respect to his agrarian policy. He lost all his posts in 1949,
after he had refused to forsake his position -- which was that
Polish "peculiarities" demanded a gradual transformation of the
countryside. At present the agrarian policy which GOMULKA backed
in 1948-49 is operative in the Polish countryside. Yet GOMULKA
has thus far managed to evade -- or perhaps put off -- charges
that he too is a "revisionist").

NEMES continued that NAGY, having been a Politburo member
since 1951, participated in the elaboration of the 1951-55
five year plan "which was augmented unrealistically. He was also
entrusted with the Ministry of Produce Collection. Therefore, he
not only directed in practice the erroneous policy of delivery
of agricultural produce but ideologically he also expounded that
policy in several articles in 'Szabad Nep'. Moreover, until June
1953, Imre NAGY remained a strong advocate of this five-year plan
with its excessively high objectives and with the agricultural
produce surrender system, which he directed."

In June 1953, the Central Committee analyzed past Party
mistakes and NAGY was made premier. "He immediately reverted to his
old opportunism". He revealed his character by the fact that in
his programmatic speech he spoke of past faults as if he had
uncovered them and as if he had had no part in committing them.

The Central Committee decisions of June 1953 were correct,
NEMES said, but they allowed room for left and right-wing wrangling.
NAGY formed a "faction" in the beginning of 1955. As a result he
was expelled from the Central Committee of the Party and
afterwards from the Party itself.

[Page 3]

NEWS BACKGROUND REPORT No.42

H - 2 ERITIEISM---	F-154

Again, these measures were not followed "by "the necessary
campaign of ideological explanation - the campaign being relegated
to the background "by administrative measures which were instead
implemented."

(Here it is interesting to note that if administrative measures
should have given place to "ideological explanation" in 1955, it
might be said to be equally true today. Writing in Nepszabadsag"
of December 15, however, Lajos MESTERHAZI admitted that
administrative measures had been taken against certain of the nation's
writers who have refused to back the Party line. Thus, the KADAR
regime, like RAKOSI's, is guilty of applying administrative
measures where "ideological explanation" should have been used).

After his exclusion from the Party, "Imre NAGY set about
composing a long series of political digressions which he had published
by his friends in the West in 1957." (The same is true of the
former Yugoslav Party leader Milovan DJILAS, now in jail in
Yugoslavia).

Finally, according to NEMES, NAGY professed himself to be a
partisan of the principle of "peaceful coexistence" but in fact
"set out on the road to secession from the socialist camp,
'forgetting' to mention that every weakening in the struggle against
imperialism is tantamount to increasing the danger of war. As for
his suggestion for a "Federation of countries adjoining Hungary,
which he wanted to place under the banner of a fight against blocs
in general, it is evident that it would have been only a bloc of
countries thrown back into the capitalist system, aligned with
the imperialists and against the Soviet Union."

NEMES concluded by saying that one of the characteristic
features of Hungarian "revisionism" is "nationalism" and that the
latter constitutes a common link between Fascists, members of the
bourgeoisie, liberals and the Imre NAGY "National Communists".
NAGY did not say that his plans demanded the subservience of the
"working class" to the "interests of other classes"; he preferred
to use the method of the "nationalists who always disguise their
aims under the well-known phrase 'the universal interests of the
nation.'" The poison of "nationalism" which spread widely last
year has still not been "totally dispersed", NEMES concluded.

+ + +

There has been no indication that the KADAR regime plans to
re-institute the system of "compulsory deliveries" but it has by
no means given up the idea of "transforming the countryside".
A speech by KADAR to collective and private farmers at BARCS
on December 13 contained high praise for the "collective" method,
pointing to the high yields attained by collectives in comparison
with private farmers. He said the "bulk purchase system" had
worked well this year; it assured supplies for urban areas and
at the same time good prices for the peasantry. The "produce

[Page 4]

NEWS BACKGROUND REPORT No. 42

H - 3 CRITICISM--	F-155

delivery system" did not function well, not because it was a
delivery system but because the delivery prices were not in
proportion to production costs..." KADAR said that agriculture can
be developed in a "scientific and economic sense only by means of
large-scale farming methods. But large-scale farming also has
various forms and methods."

A Radio BUDAPEST commentator speaking December 16 sharply
clarified KADAR's words. KADAR, he said, would have served no
one by "not saying that the goal is to set up large-scale farms,
socially to transform the village and agriculture. The Party and
the government do not hide the fact that while giving far-reaching
help to individually farming peasants, they give increased support
to the further strengthening of farmers' co-operatives."

The pattern of growth of the "collective sector" of agriculture
appears still to be erratic.

On January 1 this year there were 1,467 collectives, according
to official figures. But of this total, only 742 were in an
economically and politically favorable position. It was announced
that as of May 1, there were 3,490 collectives. But the BUDAPEST
paper "Esti Hirlap" said December 8 that there were at present
2,617 collectives functioning. The drop between May and December
can perhaps be explained by the fact that Communist regimes never
exert pressure for collectivization during the crucial summer and
fall harvest months.

The pre-revolution total was about 5,000.

End #120.15

  OSA / Guide / RIP / 1956 / RFE/RL Background Reports : Subjects | Browse | Search