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BOX-FOLDER-REPORT: 32-2-99
TITLE:             Tibor Dery Back in Print
BY:                
DATE:              1962-9-20
COUNTRY:           Hungary
ORIGINAL SUBJECT:  Hungarian Unit
THEMATIC SUBJECTS: Hungary--1956-1965, Hungary--Literature, Personalities

--- Begin ---

"E" DISTRIBUTION - 650 20 SEPTEMBER 1962

RFE TARGET AREA RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS

Background Report
(Hungarian Unit)

TIB0R DERY BACK IN PRINT

The August 1962 edition of the Hungarian literary
journal "Uj Iras", contains a short story "by Tiber Dery. This
is the first time Dery has appeared in print since the
Hungarian Revolution. The story is called "Szamadas" ("The
Reckoning") and is set in the period immediately after the
revolution.

The following paper contains first a brief
biographical note on Dery followed by a summary, with excerpts, of the
story itself.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Tibor Dery, one of Hungary's foremost novelists, was
born in 1894 in Budapest of a wealthy middle class family. As
a child he suffered from tuberculosis of the bones and until
he was 10 was continuously in and out of Swiss and Austrian
sanatoria. After finishing secondary school Dery went to the
Academy of Commerce and then worked in his uncle's business.

It was the beginning of 1918 that Dery joined the
Hungarian Communist Party. During the Commune in 1919, he
became a member of the Writers' Directorate but played no
political part in the short-lived Soviet republic. But it was
during this period that he really began his career as a writer,
beginning with some short stories. After the fall of the
Commune he went to Vienna, then lived for three years in Paris
and finally spent one year in Italy. It was during this period
of exile that he wrote his first novel.

In 1926 Dery returned to Hungary and began his close
friendship with Gyula Illyes, the greatest living Hungarian
poet. But he did not stay in Hungary long. In 1931 he went to
Berlin where he wrote his short novel "Face to Face" which
dealt with the Berlin Communists' fight against the Nazis who,
by then, were forcing their way to power. In 1932 he left
Berlin for Vienna; thence to Spain where he began to write his
long, over 1,000-page novel, "Unfinished Sentence" which

[page 2]

HUNGARIAN BACKGROUND REPORT, 20 September 1962.,

examines the reasons why a wealthy Budapest lawyer, disillusioned
with the world, Joins the illegal Hungarian Communist Party.

In 1937 Dery returned to Budapest and was sentenced to
three months imprisonment for a travel book he wrote on the Soviet
Union, During the war, Dery carried out illegal Communist Party
work in Budapest, his younger brother was executed by the Germans,
but he himself escaped.

The books he wrote before the war were published for
the first time in Hungarian only in 1945. Dery was a Party
member from the beginning "but never dealt with the daily routine
political questions. After the war he started to write a series
of novels of which the first two volumes entitled "The Answer"
were published. He also wrote two film scripts and one satire.

Dery's Political Role

Throughout his literary career, Dery has always stood
for the more humanistic Communist view against the so-called
Zhdanovism, For a long time, the Party did not dare to attack
him as he had very good connections not only in Hungary but also
in the West. (In this respect he held a position similar to
Gyorgy Lukacs.)

It was only in 1952 that an attack was mounted against
him. This was when the first part of his novel "The Answer",
was published. In this part he had paralleled descriptions of
the life of a child of a worker and that of a university professor
between the two wars in Hungary. Jozsef Revai, who as Minister
of Education was the literary dictator in Hungary, attacked the
novel sharply in "Tarsadalmi Szemle". According to Revai,
the novel underrated the part played by the Communist Party in
Hungary between the two wars and moreover, the novel's chief
characters were imbued, not with Communist morals, but with some
kind of "bourgeois ethic". Dery, however, was unwilling to
exercize self-criticism and chose to withdraw from public life
until 1953, when the Nagy "new course" policy "began. He and
Nagy were old friends and Dery supported Nagy from the very
beginning. After Nagy's first downfall (February 1955) he
continued to reflect the "new course" in his writings. He became
the leader of the writers' movement, which from fall 1955 on,
fought against the Rakosi leadership.

The first real action in this struggle took place in
October 19 55, when the Writers9 Union approved a memorandum
demanding a radical change in the political leadership of the
country, This memorandum was condemned at the December 1955
meeting of the Party Central Presidium and Dery was severely
reprimanded for "being unwilling to submit himself to Party
discipline".

But Dery stubbornly and courageously persisted. After

[page 3]

HUNGARIAN BACKGROUND REPORT, 20 September 1962,
the 20th Party Congress, he became the open leader of the
"writers' revolt". From that time on, it was not only within
the Writers' Union that he voiced his demands on Rakosi's
immediate removal, the revival of the People's Front, freedom
of press and Imre Nagy's complete rehabilitation; he did it
publicly at the 27 June 1956 meeting of the Petofi Circle before
an audience of 6,000. Among other demands, Dery called for a
radical change in the political line. He demanded the return of
Imre Nagy into political life and the departure of Rakosi; the
abolition of censorship. The following are excerpts from his
famous address:

"... There are economic, spiritual and material
troubles... How did these get there?... The true
trouble does not lie in the personality cult,
dogmatism or the lack of democracy. It lies in the
lack of freedom... Unfortunately the debaters are not
aware of the fact that they can debate because
permission has been given from above. We pass from one
debate to the other, approximately always the same few
thousand people. The single branches pour out their
woes and believe that they have regained their freedom
of speech and ideals. In the meantime the practical
facts changed..."

After this, the Central Presidium again condemned Dery
and the activities of the Petofi Circle in a Party resolution of
July 1. This, however, did not mean much at the time. Rakosi
was forced to resign on July 18 and at the September general
assembly of the Writers' Union, the faction led by Dery carried
the day. The Stalinists were ousted from the leadership which
was taken over by the faction supporting Nagy. (Dery, Hay,
Zelk, Gyula Illyes, Peter Veres et.al.)

The Revolution

On the afternoon of October 23, before the outbreak
of the revolution, Dery made a speech to a demonstrating crowd
of youths. He spoke in the name of the Writers' Union in front
of the Petofi statue on the banks of the Danube. On October 31
he went to see Colonel Pal Maleter, the commander of the Kilian
barracks, at his headquarters and thanked him for what he had
done for the country and the heroic youth.

On November 1, Radio Kossuth broadcast the manifesto
of the Writers' Union, which Dery also signed. The manifesto
called upon everyone to preserve the purity of the revolution
and that people should avoid taking the law into their own
hands.

The second November special edition of "Jrodalmi
Ujsag", organ of the Writers' Union,published Dery's manifesto

[page 4]

HUNGARIAN BACKGROUND REPORT, 20 September 1962,

"My Friends". In this manifesto Dery sides with the revolution,
"the greatest in Hungarian history", and advises for solidarity
and cautions against revenge. The full text is worth reprinting:

My friends,

It is a hard decision for me to speak. When the first
rifleshot was fired, the blood rushed to my head: you,
too, are responsible for this? You have spoken, incited
people to action; how are you going to account for the
dead? The corpses waiting for burial are piling up in
the streets: go out and restrain the hands of the
murderers! I cannot accept it without question that no
revolution is possible without a sacrifice of blood.
After every rifleshot, I felt completely dazed as though
I had pressed the trigger. I believe in the human
conscience and I place myself in the dock.

My friends, I accept the responsibility. I am happy
and proud that, together with my fellow-writers, our
profession made us the first listeners and reporters of
the nation's voice. This, the greatest revolution
since the beginning of recorded Hungarian annals, was
not incited and carried out by individuals, by political
groups, by ideas and opinions, but by the will of the
people. 1 realize in horror something we have only
suspected and felt vaguely for long years, to which we
could only make fragmentary allusions. Deeply shaken,
I can only now assess the deadly cruelty of the pressure
exerted upon the people - so that they replied to it
with such universal accord, with bare hands against the
tanks. The revolution of striplings, they said! From
today onwards this word is sacred to me. For years I
have watched Hungarian youth in despairs it was silent
as if in a coma. On October 23rd, it rose and restored
the nation's honor. Deeply moved and with respect,
I salute them. Just as I wished and hoped: after the
youth of 184-8 there arose for the fatherland the youth
of 1956.

I speak to them first and foremost, as today the fate
of the revolution is in their hands. I am an old man,
over 62, and I have taken part in two unsuccessful
revolutions. In 1945 1 believed that workers, peasants,
all of us, who had been excluded from the nation, will
find a new country. But during ten years the country
has been stolen inch by inch from under our feet. We
thought we would be able to build socialism: instead
of which they put as behind prison walls built of blood
and lies. I feel myself responsible, too, because my
eyes were opened late. And when they were opened,
I could not strengthen my voice or my silence to such
an extent that all should understand their meaning.
But we, Hungarian writers, have one excuse % even if

[page 5]

HUNGARIAN BACKGROUND REPORT, 20 September 1962,

rather late, we opened the fight against tyranny.

My friends, if you give any credit to my words, listen
to me: guard the revolution! Until now it had a
dignity which only truth can give to ideas and men.
Let us watch one thing now: it isn't the hour of
vengeance that has struck but that of justice. Whoever
was guilty, must be brought to trial. But let not
those who erred be tortured: for we must not forget
that hundreds of thousands erred because they were
misled.

The revolution has triumphed but if we do not grant
it time to gather strength it can fail again. Those
whose interest it is, might still cheat us of it. Let
us unite: we have one country and one life. If my
word carries any convictions let us hold fast, let
us not fight against one another. Let us trust the
strength and honesty of the people.

Let no more blood be spilled!

Let us pay homage to the dead.
("Irodalmi Ujsag", 2 November 1956)

Suppression and Arrest

After the suppression of the revolution Dery became
a member of the Revolutionary Council of the Hungarian
Intellectuals. In April, however, a notification of the Ministry of
the Interior announced his arrest. But rumor had it that his
arrest had in fact occurred much earlier. At the same time as
the notification of his arrest, the Writers Union was also
dissolved. The People's Council of the Supreme Court sentenced
Dery to nine years imprisonment for conspiring against state
order in November 19 56. Because of his bad health (heart
trouble and arteriosclerosis) he spent part of his sentence in
the prison hospital. He was allowed to continue writing
without, of course, any chance of publication. From the very
moment of his arrest, intellectuals in the West were roused to
action on his behalf. Presumably this pressure from the West
had a bearing on his sentence since it had been feared in Western
circles that he would be condemned to death. Aside from his bad
state of health, the constant intercessions of Western writers also
must have played their part in inducing the Hungarian authorities
to set Dery free on parole under the terms of the 1960 amnesty.

Release

After his liberation, Dery never made a statement, nor
were his works published. But in October 1960 Kadar himself
spoke about Dery. He said: "I also know the opinion of Tibor
Dery, who has regained his place in everyday lifts, I know that

[page 6]

HUNGARIAN BACKGROUND REPORT, 20 September 1962,

he condemns the false presentation of his case "by the West and
the fact that so much commotion was made around him. As a
writer he wants to work for socialism."

In May 1962, Jozsef Darvas, president of the Writers'
Union, said the following about Dery in "Szulofoldunk", a
transmission directed to the West: "He is the only one among the
noted writers who has not published anything lately. (This was
not correct as Gyula Hay, for example, had not published either
- Ed.) But as I myself and we all know, he is working on a
novel and also on short stories and I believe that he also will
soon appear in the periodicals and in book-form.55

* * *

Darvas's confident prediction has now come true in
this 20-page story in "Uj Iras". We do not know when this story
was written during or after Dery's imprisonment. Doubtless the
kadar regime will claim it as a great triumph and will use it
in its propaganda both at home and in the West. There are in
fact several interpretations which could be placed on "The
Reckoning". But the important fact is that a writer who was one
of the chief personalities in the 1956 Writers' Revolt, and
even in the whole revolution, has now appeared in print, has
been allowed to appear in print, with a story about the
revolution which neither condemns it nor offers a self-criticism for
the part the author played in it. The thoughts and sentiments
of the professor in "The Reckoning" are obviously the thoughts
of Tibor Dery himself. They are thoughts for which he still
does not think it right or fitting to apologize.

A SUMMARY, WITH EXCERPTS, OF "THE RECKONING"

The story begins on a December evening, a few weeks
after the suppression of the 1956 revolution. The main
character, an elderly professor at the Medical University, is
visited by Feri Kovaes, one of Ms favorite pupils. Kovacs is
hiding a machine gun under his coat. He is seeking refuge with
his beloved professor late in the evening, shortly before the
curfew. A heated discussion starts between the two.

"You disgust me, my young friend," said the professor.
"Even if for some unknown reason you would suppose
that I agreed with your dangerous meddling, your
compelling me to give my connivance requires impertinent
tactlessness. In addition, you not only squeeze this
confession out of me against my mood and taste, you go
as far as to demand, not only my approval, but also my
support, personal participation, assumption of risks,
my opposition to the law, my imprisonment and finally
even my martyrdom. I haven't expressed myself
adequately; he not only demands but forces me, invoking
some intangible and stupid moral laws, to go to prison

[page 7]

HUNGARIAN BACKGROUND REPORT, 20 September 1962,

or the scaffold! All this happens just one minute
before house-gate is locked and in my own apartment...!"

"Don't you have eyes for nuances, my young friend?", the
professor went on. "Can't you differentiate between
approval and identifying oneself? Don't you know that
if a 62-year-old man agrees with a 20-year-old man the
consequences for the two of them are different? Don't
you realize that something that's proper for you might
not be proper for me and that the task of a young man
is to act, that of the old man only to judge? Did the
passion for the game rob you of your reasoning to such
an extent that you cannot differentiate any more
between the duties of youth and the rights of age?
What a miserable picture you must have of the world if,
with an easy conscience, you empower yourself to
sacrifice my life or simply to risk it for your empty and
monotonous 20 years. This is the truth; in vain do
you stare at me with your stupidly sparkling eyes. Do
you dare to exchange with a gay glance, cut without
thought, a well earned reward with a handful of
promises? What is the guarantee that you will fulfill
these promises?..."

The professor pulls the machine gun from Peri's hands.
throws it into a corner of the vestibule and orders Feri out of
the apartment. The following week passes in a struggle between
the professor and his cleaning woman; the professor flatly
refuses to hide the machine gun or to remove it from the
apartment. He does not even let her cover it with a blanket or to
hide it under a coat,

In his old years the professor was unable to tolerate
even the most tactful, forms of untruth, simulation,
secrecy and concealment, He was veritably consumed 'by
the pressure of the past few years. If, for example,
he now imagined that the had to smuggle the machine gun
out of the apartment, at that time 15 years' imprisonment
was the mildest sentence for the illegal possession of
firearms. if he imagined he was taking the machine gun
out of the house hidden under his coat, in the evening,
after darkness when he would meet a few pedestrians
only -- yet before the gate was locked so that the
janitor should not see him -- driving through deserted
side-streets to the banks of the Danube where he would
be on the watch, turn here and there, look around
whether people were not watching him behind a pile of
stones or a window behind his back, if he imagined
himself in this manner with a hunched neck, fluttering
eyelids, sneaking like a thief: if he imagined all
this, he was overcome by a strong physical nausea, and
started to retch and on one occasion threw up the

[page 8]

HUNGARIAN BACKGROUND REPORT, 20 September 1962,

potato soup cocked by his cleaning woman. Did he
throw up his past or his future?...

"If you conceal this weapon once again from my
conscience, you will set foot no more in this apartment."

After such a quarrel with his cleaning woman, the
professor leaves the apartment. In this part of the story, Dery
gives a moving account of life in the ravaged city immediately
after the revolution. Of the silent masses of people, following
each other and moving in a dense unbroken flow, pressed together
in fog and mud; of the people standing in queues, of the street-
hawkers.

In spite of the cold and wind, the market was in full
swing all down the Rakoczi street. The people
continued to live with touching spirit. They bought
secondhand clothes, costume jewelry, pots and pans, stockings
from the obliging hawkers camping in the doorways, who
also wanted to go on living. We are tough as bed-bugs
reflected the old man grumpily -"but much more clever!

The professor arrives at the Kelenfold station (suburb
of Budapest) and immediately boards a train.

"He hurried in order to avoid a decision"

The train is heading for the Western border and crammed
with passengers, most of them planning secretly to cross the
border. Dery gives a detailed description of the passengers,
their conversation full of tension and dramatic incidents. Their
sole subjects clandestine border crossing. Two of the passengers
have no intention of fleeing to the West. One of them, a
Communist, persecuted by the Rakosi regime, spent 62 months in
AVO custody and in prison. Now, he supports the new
post - revolutionary regime with all Ms strength. During the
conversation in the train, he bursts out indignantly:

"All those good-for-nothings with nothing better to do
now than to go abroad. Why don't they stay at home?
Why don't they help to put right the damage they have
caused?..."

"Now, when every decent man is trying with all his
might to create order in the country, you stall for
these crazy peoples for the strikers who cause millions
in damage for the country daily? For the former
gendarmes and district administrators who want to bring
back the landowners and Jewish bankers? Open your
rheumy eyes, for Heaven's sake... don't you understand
that you are playing with your own necks?"

[page 9]

HUNGARIAN BACKGROUND REPORT, 20 September 1962,

"I believe we know each other comrade," said a thin,
bitter-faced man. "We know each other, don't we?
You worked with the police in Gyor, true?... In 1952
or '53?" The gray-haired man does not answer.

"Or was it before '52? In '50 or '49?"

"Neither in '49 or later," answered the gray-haired
man. "Under the Rakosi regime you could have met me
only at the Andrassy street prison or the concentration
camp, where I spent 62 months, comrade, no more no
less, to be exact. And still I am not escaping to the
West, although half of my lungs and one of my kidneys
suffered in consequence..."

Another passenger, unwilling to flee to the West, is
a young man able to compromise and with plenty of gumption.

"Why don't you want to escape, mister?"

"I am alright in this little country," answered the
young man, smilingly. "I have no quarrel with anyone
either from the top or the bottom. But those who want
to go, should do so."

"What is your occupation, if you do not mind my asking?"
asked the professor.

"This and that," answered the young man with a pleasant
smile. "I am on my own. One has to respect the
authorities, mister, but also abroad, the same as here.
On the other hand, if I already understand the language
of bigwigs here, why should I go to a country where
they are unable to prepare a decent veal stew even?..."

Before the train arrives at the frontier zone, the
professor leaves the train. He comes to a small inn, a so-called
hitch-hike inn. Here he spends the night. He meets an
acquaintance of his, a fat doctor from Budapest who offers to smuggle
him across the border in a Belgian Red Cross car. The professor
declines the offer. He does not wish to become indebted to the
fat doctor who is a representative of the opportunist
intelligentsia. There follow excerpts from the dialogue between the
professor and the doctor. The professor says the following;

"I do not accept your offer because I have a mean
nature, and I don't wish to take part in quieting
your conscience, even in the little soothing that it
needs. Furthermore I do not accept it because I do
not share your opinion that one should accept from everyone,
without discrimination, what that person has to offer.

[page 10]

HUNGARIAN BACKGROUND REPORT, 20 September 1962,

Nor do I wish to strengthen your belief or experience
that you can exploit someone indefinitely."

The doctor says the following:

"You "blame me for falling in the diabolical trap of
the Rakosiite propaganda-machine , Who did not? The
whole nation fell into the same trap. Or do you blame
me, that in my rightful indignation I drew the obvious
consequences and went over to the opposition for a
short time? Qrmaybe because now 1 accepted a position
at the Ministry of Health, prompted by the conviction
that at last order should be restored in this country?"

In the morning the professor is taken to the frontier
zone by a truck, after paying 1,000 forint. Then he continues
by a regular bus, which however gets stuck in the snow. With a
group of escapees, and after losing his way, his finally
arrive at a farm house whose owner smuggles escapees over the
frontier on a professional basis. It costs 2,000 forint per
head. The farm itself is near the Austrian border, amidst the
swamps of the Ferto lake. The life and death struggle of the
escapees, through snowstorm and icy wind, is brought strikingly
to life by Dery, The aged professor falls behind the group and
sits down for a rest. Here he meets a young girl who is following
the escapees at a distance. She was not accepted with the group
as she was unable to pay the 2,000 forint fee. It turns out
that the girl, a student at the faculty of liberal arts and the
fiancee of Feri Kovacs, the professor's favorite student, knows
him. A dramatic dialogue takes place between the two:

"For Heaven's sake, professor, why are you escaping
to the West?" asks the girl, lowering her voice
instinctively. Her mouth trembled. "At your age? But
you did not do anything wrong, professor."

"Of course, I did," answered the old man. "I hid a
machine gun.

"Don't laugh at me," said the girl, "It was Feri who
hid it at your place,"

"I should have reported it," said the old man.

The girl pressed her stubborn lips together, her eyes
flashed with anger.

"Listen, young lady," said the old man. "Master Feri
knew very well why he hid this nasty thing in my place:
because Master Feri is neither blind or deaf or a fool.
Why did he hide it with me, why not with my colleague
Mr. 'Grin-and Bear-it' or Mr. 'Petty Spy'or Mr. 'Lie-Low"?
Because he lives in my neighborhood? Because he knows

[page 11]

HUNGARIAN BACKGROUND REPORT, 20 September 1962,

that I like him? Nonsense. The reason for his act was
his, doubtlessly correct and motivated conviction,
that I agree with him."

"But you, professor..."

"Shut up," said the old man sternly.

"Do you claim that I did not use that machine gun?"
asked the professor. "It is as if I had used it. If
I did not do so, this only happened because it does not
befit my age, because I do not know how to handle it,
or because it is against my taste. Potentially, I have
used it, do you understand? I used it with all my
concealed thoughts, every unuttered word and with all
that was in me. By right of a hidden agreement the
machine gun was used by others for me. I am responsible
for its misuses in the same way as you, Mr, Feri, you,
young lady, and everyone in this country is responsible
for the happenings, the events of the past and the
future, not only the little bald one is responsible."

"Responsibility must be assumed, young lady. Yet am I
to go to the police with a ridiculous machine gun under
my arm and denounce myself in order that they should
forgive me and send me home? They should not forgive me!"

"But the professor really did not do anything," said
the girl in despair.

The old man laughed sarcastically. "I did not do
anything?" he repeated. "This is why I am escaping to the
West."

"Professor, get up!" cried the girl. "Your face is
already blue."

"Don't tire me, young lady," said the old man impatiently,
"Go ahead, we will meet later in the Tyrolean mountains. "

The girl continues to stand in front of him. The moon
started to shine again. The wind stirred the reeds which
made a small noise, then it became still again.

"Don't incommodate me, young lady," said the old man.
"Please leave me alone. What right have you to interfere
into my life? Decency, love of humanity, you say? You
want to make up on me, a ridiculous example, what a
whole nation omitted to do for a century? No, my young
lady, these people have not, expiated for the past nor yet
in the future. Do you suppose that by dragging me across
the frontier with your frostbitten, dirty hands, that you

[page 12]

HUNGARIAN BACKGROUND REPORT, 20 September 1962,

are atoning for anything? Or that I, myself, will be
able to remedy anything over there, across the border?
Maybe I don't even want to? Nothing can be chanced,
my young lady, nothing. The dead cannot be resurrected,
wounds appear only to be healed. One has to live decently,
not to amend. Or do you think that it will not; be possible
to live decently here sometimes.'

The professor asks the girl to leave him alone.

He waited till the slim form of the girl disappeared among
the reeds, then he got up and started slowly on his way.
He stumbled about for an hour, or two. His upturned coat
collar, renched and then frozen stiff, chafed his skin
till it bled. Then he fell again, he must have been near
the frontier, maybe only a couple of hundred stops away,
as he saw some kind of yellowish, foggy shimmer above
the snow, from. which he concluded after lengthy and vague
speculation that it was the light of a very large
Christmas-tree It was Christmas right, a white Christmas.
He lay still for, a time With exertion, he could have
crept on his hands and knees to the Christmas tree, but
he was not in the mood for this shameful show. Let us
stay in this little country of ours! Shots could be
heard from a great distance, then, from nearer, the passing
sound of a motor-cycle. The old man staggered up, turned
his back toward the frontier and then, as if symbolically,
took a few steps back, toward the inside of the country,.
He sat down near a snow-filled ditch. He was very tired,
but hardly felt the cold anymore."

Dery concludes his story with the professor diagnosing his symptom
as death by exposure approaches.

End

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