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BOX-FOLDER-REPORT: 32-2-153
TITLE:             Mr. Nemeth's Journey
BY:                Urban
DATE:              1962-6-6
COUNTRY:           Hungary
ORIGINAL SUBJECT:  Research and Evaluation
THEMATIC SUBJECTS: Hungary--1956-1965, Hungary--Literature, Personalities

--- Begin ---

X CURT - MR. NEMETH'S JOURNEY - a view F136

Munich, June 6, 1962 (Research and Evaluation - Urban)--

A work of art need neither be good nor well received to
be politically significant. In some historical contexts it is
indeed the ambivalence of art that expresses the spirit of the
age. When M. Sartre speaks of the spiritual void in which no code
of values applies, adjuring us at the same time to remember that we
are responsible for our actions, he is reacting against the
de-personalization of our age. Laszlo Nemeth's play[l] is ambivalent on
a different level. For East Europeans, and especially those who
Vanquished their captors but suffered defeat at the hands of their
, friends, the existential nexus operates between national values
and ordinary human decencies on the one hand, and the continuing
though less offensively obtrusive presence of Soviet power on the
other.

In 1956 the issues were clear cut. The cruelty and
cynicism of Stalin have certainly earned him a place among Hungary's
benefactors, for a people once split and turned in upon itself,
diffident of its strength, and deficient in self-respect, was
cemented overnight into a monolith every bit as powerful as Stalin's
and, as events showed, stronger. In the national confrontation (for
the 1956 revolution was essentially that) there was no need and no
room for ambivalence.

The last three years, however, have seen a
liberalization from above which makes it more difficult for Hungarians to
indulge in the spiritual comfort of ignoring or rejecting Kadar and
his works. In October 1956 the Hungarians could say with perfect
Justification that they had nothing to lose but their chains. But
when the chain-breaking was over and retribution had run its course,
Kadar and his Government began to veer back to the concessions of
1955-56, not only because they were under public pressure, but also
because they realized that in their bid for the support of Hungarians
Stalinism was their worst enemy. The kind of national unity that
could be had under Rakosi was not the one they wanted.

Of all varieties of Communist policy with which Hungary
has had to contend since 1945 Kadarism is, without doubt, the
smartest and, some would say, the most insidious. For what we now
have in that country lends itself neither to "the worse the better",
nor to any other black  and white presentation. Kadar is, to use

--------------------------------------------
(1) "The Journey", Kortars, May 1962.

[page 2]

X/250 CURT

MR. NEMETH'S JOURNEY (l) F137

Mr. Churchill's (as he then was) colorful phrase, a puzzle wrapped
inside an enigma. Or is it that our minds are so conditioned to
the composite image of lie-monger, crook, generalissimo and
marathon orator that the home-spun phrase and ordinary low cunning of
a former metal worker send us scurrying about looking for some
mysterious key to his actions whereas, in truths it is the
simplicity that deceives? However this may be, the treachery of the
man in 1956 is almost forgotten and there is a very vocal feeling
both inside and outside the Party that, given the historic
situation on 4 November 1956, worse could have happened. The reasons
for this feeling are too well known to need repeating here. The
point where they coalesce and matter for our present purposes is
that they inhibit the flow of robust responses to which we have
been used since 1947, and invite others of a more sophisticated
kind.

Kadarism presents a choice of evils, for the question
is no longer whether the nation should cooperate with its rulers,
but what form that cooperation should take and how much of Hungary's
interests and integrity may be preserved until such time as Communism
will have receded and independence restored to Eastern Europe.

It would probably be an exaggeration to say that the
Hungarians feel that their situation is hopeless, but it needs no
special empathy to see the world, and especially the political
preoccupations of the Western world, as they see it. For the plain
truth is that in the Hungarian view no operetta princeling is too
quixotic and no tribal king too versatile in his loyalties but to
take precedence over the fate of a hundred million Europeans. No
wonder that they have closed the shutters on their political
window looking west. If light they cannot get, they may be forgiven for
hoping that they can keep the noise out.

There is, of course, no question that the Hungarians have
suddenly decided to go Communist or to turn their backs on their
spiritual heritage which is entirely Western. Indeed the opposite
is true. The books they read, the plays and films they see (and
are allowed to read and see) display an almost childish anxiety to
escape from provincialism and pile up reserves for a protracted
siege. Nevertheless the political alienation is there, more in
regret perhaps than in anger. The search for a formula of
coexistence has begun and Mr. Nemeth's play poses all the vital questions.

x x x

[page 3]

X/250 CURT
MR. NEMETH'S JOURNEY (2) F138

Before going into the ambivalence of "The Journey" a
word ought to be said about the danger of Kadar's policy to Kadar.
For it would be idle to imagine that the regime's bid for
respectibility and its effort to bring Communism in through the back door
are not strewn with pitfalls. There is more than superficial truth
in the sectarian argument, sternly rejected by Kadar, that if the
regime succeeds in securing the cooperation of the majority of
Hungarians and gives them access to the levers possibly of power
but certainly of administration, the Party will be fatally diluted
and "socialism" will regress to the amiable reformism Imre Nagy had
in mind minus the coalition parties Given the small number of real
communists and the size and temper of their wards it is difficult to
see what else could happen.

From the national point of view, on the other hand,, it is
easy to see Kadar as a sly seducer who far from wishing to elope
with the object of his desires, dupes the stand-offish parents into
a drowsy acceptance of an otherwise highly ineligible suitor.
Undoubtedly the danger exists. Although they correspond to popular
feeling, the regime's concessions are imposed and not. as far as one
knows, elicited by conspiratorial writers and critics at the lower
flights of the hierarchy. This need not invalidate them or make
them less useful but it does, on this showing, give rise to the
timeo Danaos kind of anxiety. Further, it is possible to argue that
as soon as Hungarians of the decision-making caliber can be persuaded
to accept responsible posts in the national machinery, their fortunes
will be inextricable tied to those of Communism. In short, if the
country goes along with Kadar accepting Ms concessions and toeing
his line there is a real danger that in ten or fifteen years' time
smiles and bonhomie will have smuggled Communism into a land which
proved impregnable to the frontal assault.

How does Kadar stand to all this? As he sees it his
courtship of the Hungarian people has been no more than an exercise
in astute dialectics. Did the 1956 revolution not demolish
Stalinism -- a trifle too thoroughly perhaps, but relieving the regime of
the necessity of going through the painful motions of a Zhivkov?
Did the Government not decimate the ranks of the revisionists and
the class-enemy in 1957-58? Was it, therefore, not right and
politic to produce a synthesis and cause such winds to blow over
Hungary to which the people in their disappointed mood could be
reasonably expected to trim their sails?

Having suffered torture and imprisonment under Rakosi and
burnt his fingers in 1956, Kadar is persuaded that, barring a return

[page 4]

 X/250 CURT
MR. NEMETH'S JOURNEY (3) F139

of Stalinism, the principal mistake that has to be avoided is giving
way under pressure, then too late and too little,, Hence the
paradoxical spectacle of Hungary's ace traitor foisting reforms on a
recalcitrant Party, not, to be sure, anything that might jeopardise
the long-range interests of Communism, but enough to neutralize
resistance and allow the Government to get on with the job.

To the dogmatist argument that playing to the political
gallery will engulf the regime in disaster, Kadar seems to answer
with every appearance of sincerity that the alternatives would be
so much less pleasant to contemplate. If (so he may argue)it is wrong
for the Government of a "peoples" democracy to play to the people
which is the gallery, what else is there for it to do but return to
Stalinism? Kadar has never publicly admitted that a dilution of the
Party and a dissipation of his program may be inherent in his
policies. How could he? But this is, in fact, What they amount to
certainly in the short view, some would say more permanently. His
hope is obviously that the watering down will be slight and that the
cooperation he can purchase with it well worth the price. But will
they?

x x x

It is at this point that Mr. Nemeth's play assumes
significance whether we look at it from the dogmatic, the
nationalist or the Government 's point of view. For the question uppermost
in the minds of thinking Hungarians is simply: is it now possible
to sup with the devil, and if so, how long should one's spoon be to
make the experiment profitable.

Nemeth leaves the question open but not without having,
first, shown the importance of trying, and then reminding us that,
sincere as his hero's (Karadi's) search may be, the people's wounds
are still too fresh and its distrust of dona ferentes too acute to
make an understanding nationally acceptable.

For Karadi's journey has no happy or unequivocal ending.
He leaves Hungary on a tour of good will representing a class that
had most to suffer from Communism but is sophisticated enough to
see, personally to hate, but historically to applaud the forces which
caused its nemesis. This is the hub of the play and the spring of the
existential situation The signs are reversed, for here, unlike in
Sartre's plots, the world has meaning, only the individual is
driftwood if he happens to be on the losing side of history. Yet he is
responsible for his actions because, once he has recognized the law

[page 5]

X/250 CURT
MR. NEMETH'S JOURNEY (4) F140

which is larger than his own. interests, death itself must be
fashioned into a final confirmation of the march of history.
This is Karadi's, and one may presume. the regime's message.
But the tale does not end here.

Upon his return from Soviet Russia Karadi is met with
incomprehension. He is an outcast in a society on which Communist
rule has made no impact other than that of alienating it. His crime
is that he accepted an invitation to visit the Soviet Union, but
this is enough to undermine the respect he enjoyed in his community,
and for some of his friends to question the soundness of his mind.
Although he prevericates on this point in his postcript, Mr. Nemeth
is probably speaking from experience.

But he is also driven to desperation by the support and
care of his freshly (and unwittingly) acquired well-wishers -- the
two hacks on the local Party journal and the Party secretary.
Unable to perceive the delicacy of Karadi's conversion, they kill him
(symbolically speaking) with their kindness. A performing flea on
the rostrum of the local club of intellectuals, Karadi is expected
to go through the motions of kowtowing to his hosts and praising
their country. But he collapses in the performance having neither
glorified nor debunked what he had seen, but simply spoken the
revolutionary thing: the dry but truthful commonplace.

Did the Moscow railway station impress him? Not really;
it was very much like any other old-fashioned terminal, a bit 19
century, a bit shabby, all right as stations go but neither cleaner
than most nor more covered in dirt. Did the Moscow teachers'
committee receive them well? Oh yes, considering that the poor devils
were being visited upon by so many delegations. Did he think that
the skyscraper in which he was being put up was the last word in
architecture? He had no views on the matter; someone in the
delegation thought it was stupenduous but their Russian guide said quite
unceremoniously that he could think of no better target for a
three- ton bomb.

Here the play culminates and the denouement which follows
Karadi'a stroke carries the practical burden of Nemeth's message:
reconciliation with the over-zealous, the middle-cadres and
dogmatists is impossible, but there is. via the person of young Mircse,
a way open to a more tolerant and humane view. That the vehicles of
this view are Kadar and his entourage coming, possibly, close an
authorized version of Nagyism -- of this we are left in no doubt.
For Mircse puts forward a heretical thesis round which any Communist

[page 6]

X/250 CURT 

MR. NEMETH'S JOURNEY (5) F141

critique of "The Journey" must in future revolve:

I owe you the greatest thing on earth, Professor? my
double insurance. Most of us have just one belt round
our waists by which we hang suspended from the power.
Round my waist there is a second one by which the people
sends me up like a mountain climber into the world of
action to investigate its (the people's) possibilities.

This is Nagyism, written large, for Mircse's source for
his second mandate is Karadi in his earlier and mildly progressive,
but by Communist standards entirely reactionary, state. The popular
element in his reinsurance which makes him feel so much safer on
his expedition derives from what he learnt at the feet of this
specimen of a presumably rotten and disappearing race.

In any case the antinomy itself is heretical. To postulate
a powerful party and a powerless mass of ordinary people; an oligarchy
which, rules by remote control and a nation which is only now and only
very tentatively beginning (in the play) to provide the second and
vital part of Mircse's double equipment, challenges the work of the
Hungarian Communist Party at its most sensitive point. Protesting
that Mr. Nemeth's image bears no relation to reality, "Nepszabadsag"
said on 20 May 1961s "The Communists are not simply the
representatives of power but the best of the people which is in power. They
live deeply embedded in the people and not above it."

But this is not Mr Nemeth's or (presumably) Hungary's
reading of the situation. If the Karadis can come to terms with the
men who speak for Communism, it will be only with this twice insured
kind. But The compromise Mr. Nemeth envisages is very far from being
full or convincing. When in Karadi's sick-room Mircse offers his
former history master a post which would take him away from the scene
of his tribulations and repair some of the injustices he suffered
under Rakosi, Karadi refuses to go. The mind may be willing, but the
body of the nation to which he belongs demands his presence in his
home surroundings. The hand Mircse proffers in the name of the Party
is not finally rejected, but time is needed to heal the wounds and to
"dispel the fog in which my journey has enveloped me."

The therapeutic formula eludes the playwright, but by
showing that the search need neither be dishonorable nor unprofitable,
he holds out a hope for an understanding with the man who has two
belts round his waist. Considering Hungary's heroic stance in 1956

[page 7]

X/ 250 CURT

MR. NEMETH'S JOURNEY (7) F143

Kadar and of the maturity of the public that the play has produced
no trouble of the kind it would undoubtedly have sparked off in
1955 or 1956. If this is a safety valve, we should have more of
It, for when letting off steam becomes a habit it is a very tricky
operation to turn the screws on again.

There is, nevertheless, a point of major, and one is
inclined to say, ugly concession in Mr. Nemeth's play which
transcends the limits of legitimate experiment and bears no
confrontation with his own views of 1956. On the penultimate day of the
Hungarian revolution Mr. Nemeth published a moving and unequivocal
article in "Irodalmi Ujsag", "A Nation on the Ascendant". A country,
he argued, need not be completely free to bring out the best its
people has to offer. Horthyism, be wrote, with its paternal rule
provided the right amount of irritation to help the nation produce
its pearls. Bartok, Kodaly, Babits, Kosztolanyi and a host of
others were reared in this atmosphere and even the country's economy
had made remarkable progress. The 1956 uprising added the one
missing element without which Hungary's nationhood would have been
fatally lopsided: a sense of cohesion and self-respect. "Sitting
behind my typewriter", he wrote, "I'm thinking of the young girl
who fought from the roof-top of a block in Kalvin Square. One by
one all her male comrades were killed off, but she went on fighting
until her young head fell lifelessly to one side... This girls is
my muse now and it is she who is telling me 'Go on you old candidate
for the graveyard. If I could sacrifice my young life, what should
prevent you, shadow of a man, from doing your duty?'"

Karadi's words in "The Journey" are a far cry from this
messages:

KARADI:	"...there is also another way of looking at things. As
		a whole! ...Whether the nation rises or not in that
		framework...

ADMIRERS	"And does it rise in this?"

KARADI:	"If we subtract and add up everything, I think, on the
		whole9 it does. At least I shouldn't have the courage
		to allege, as you do that it doesn't."

This, coming after the suppression of the revolution
and the judicial murders that followed it, weakens Mr. Nemeth's
whole moral He does not, to be sure, condemn the uprising

[page 8]

X/250
MR. NEMETH'S JOURNEY (6) F142

this may not be an elevating program, but it has a long, though
often abused. pedigree in the nation's history. It does certainly
not put Mr. Nemeth on the side of those who would sell out to the
Russians or so weaken the nation's moral fibre that she would
stumble into. their embrace,, Consistency in resistance is a luxury
no land can, or should be asked to, sustain for long. Nor would
this seem to be the most profitable way of bringing an unwanted rule
to its knees. Both in 1943 and in 1956 the men who caused the
influence of Hitler and of Moscow to be diluted were men close to
the levers of power. There is no reason to think that now or in
the foreseeable future any other method would be successful.

x x x

What then is the lesson of Mr. Nemeth's play, and of the
publication and staging of Mr. Nemeth's play? It is simply that,
given the present' openings, it is possible to widen them provided
that the regime, too, has something, or is led to believe that it
has something, to gain in the process. And what does it appear to be
gaining with this play? A response to its open-door policy from
the class whose cooperation it needs and covets most. This is no
mean achievement for the spectacle of a class-alien school master
overcoming his prejudices and subordinating his interests to the
force that will ultimately crush him is, from the national point
of view, no small price to be paid for the freedom of printing and
staging all the things which must, on the Government's balance sheet
of Mr. Nemeth's play, decidedly figure on the debit side. If one
takes out Mircse with his Kadarite language but Nagyite undertones,
it is impossible to feel anything but contempt for all Mr. Nemeth's
Communist characters. Blind, vile, opportunist or plain stupid
they provide in their togetherness the portrait of a party which is
incapable of attracting any but the scum and riff-raff of society.
And has the isolation of the party and of Communism anywhere
(in Eastern Europe) been depicted in more scathing terms than Mr.
Nemeth depicts them in the first and second acts of his play? Had
Karadi contracted leprosy on his tour of Russia he could hardly
have been more effectively quarantined.

For the ordinary reader and the nightly audiences who
watch the play in the Katona Jozsef  Theater these are the most
telling aspects of Mr. Nemeth's comedy. Add to this the abuse of
the Soviet Union and the beating the AVO and even collectivization
take a couple of times in the dialogue, and you have the makings
of an explosive situation. It speaks well for the courage of

[page 9]

X/250 CURT
MR. NEMETH'S JOURNEY (8) F144

At one point in the last act he comes, indeed, close to suggesting
that Mircse himself had something to do with the fighting. But to
assert as he does that "if we subtract and add up everything" the
nation is still on the ascendant, is a slap in the face of the
people whose sons and daughters made the sacrifices, and of Mr.
Nemeth himself. However large their perspective, few Hungarians
would agree with the author that when all is said and done, there is,
on the account of Communist rule in Hungary, more to be added up than
to be subtracted. Socially, morally and in her economy. Hungary
would be incomparably better off if she had been allowed to fend for
herself as a free and democratic country. On this one but important
point Mr. Nemeth has come dangerously close to betraying his trust
and playing havoc with his reputation.

x x x

As a play Mr. Nemeth's effort leaves much to be desired
but it is superb as a documentary. One thing his critics will not
be able to say of him is that he has fought shy of tackling things
as they really are in Hungary. Here is matter that should keep
Hungarologists and sociologists busy for a time and provide
ammunition for almost any argument.

With all its faults and equivocations "The Journey" is
a milestone. For the first time since 1945, Government and people
can go to the theater and Walk out feeling satisfied that justice
has been done to their problem. On balance there is no doubt, at
least in the present writer's mind, that the trend of which this
play is the outstanding example is virtually irreversible. The fear
that if the present thaw is allowed to continue long enough the
nation, too, will melt away with it? would seem to be more than
outweighed by the prospect that once they are inside the precincts
of power, the Karadis and their class will propel the country as
far in the direction of a tolerably free society as the present
international equation will allow. This may not be very far, but far
enough to safeguard Hungary's vital interests and keep an equitable
scale of values alive.

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