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BOX-FOLDER-REPORT: 36-1-90
TITLE:             A Nonconformist Hungarian Novel Presents the Vision of a Humane Socialism
BY:                SK
DATE:              1976-5-14
COUNTRY:           Hungary
ORIGINAL SUBJECT:  RAD Background Report/107
THEMATIC SUBJECTS: Hungary--1976-1989, Hungary--Literature, Dissenters

--- Begin ---

RADIO FREE EUROPE Research

This material was prepared for the use of the
editors and policy staff of Radio Free Europe.

RAD Background Report/107
(Hungary)
14 May 1976

A NONCONFORMIST HUNGARIAN NOVEL PRESENTS THE VISION
OF A HUMANE SOCIALISM

By SK

Summary: The City Founder, the most recent novel by the 
controversial Hungarian author Gyorgy Konrad, was not allowed to
appear in Hungary, but it has been translated into French and
German and published in Paris and Munich. This paper reviews
the book, which sets forth the author's concept of socialism.

* * *

The City Founder, the latest book by Gyorgy Konrad, a nonconformist 
Hungarian writer, is the story of a disillusioned revolutionary. It was not
allowed to be published in Hungary, but a German version came out in Munich
last fall and a French one appeared in Paris a few weeks ago. [1] Konrad
granted interviews to two leading Western newspapers, Die Zeit (Hamburg) and
Le Monde (Paris), [2] in which he explained his nonconformist attitude:

I write what I want. Hungarian literary officials can, publish
what they want. If, however, I have an opportunity to publish
something abroad, I do so. In this respect I cannot abide by
the limitations of the law. If a writer adjusts himself to
such conditions he will find himself in diametric opposition
to the inner ethics of literature.

Until 1974 Konrad was known in the West only as a promising 3roung writer.
In the fall of that year, however, political considerations -- notably his
non-conformist attitude -- led to his arrest, and he was imprisoned for a short
time, an event that was not without precedent. In 1973 the HSWP CC had publicly
denounced a number of disciples of the late Marxist philosopher Gyorgy Lukacs
-- members of what was known as the Budapest School. They were accused of
 holding and expressing political and ideological views that did not accord with
Marxism-Leninism. Also in 1973 a young Hungarian poet and sociologist, Miklos
Haraszti, was brought to court for illegally distributing the manuscript of a

------------
(1) Per Stadtgruender (Munich: list Verlag, 1975); Les fondateurs (Paris:
Le Seuil, 1976). This paper is based on the German version.

(2) His interview with Die Zeit was published on January 9, that with Le
Monde on May 7.

[page 2]

book entitled Piecework and for "incitement" against, state institutions. Early
the following year he was given an eight-month suspended sentence, which,
however, did not prevent him from having his manuscript published abroad. [3]
Meanwhile, another of Lukacs's disciples, the philosopher Ferenc Feher, was
briefly detained on the charge of attempting to smuggle a manuscript abroad.

In October 1974 the police arrested Konrad and two of his friends -- Ivan
Szelenyi, a sociologist, and a young poet, Taigas Szentjoby. They were suspected
of hiding and illegally circulating the manuscript of Konrad's new book, The
City Founder, but since nothing could be proved all three were released from
detention and given the choice of leaving the country or facing trial. Szelenyi
and Szentjoby emigrated to the West, but after first saying he would do the
same Konrad changed his mind and refused to leave.

All in all, about a dozen intellectuals were subjected to party and police
harassment in 1973-1974. In terms of age, education, profession,
social-political background, philosophical views, etc., they constitute a fairly 
heterogeneous group. The things that seem to link them together are disillusionment
with Socialism and a tendency to criticize it from a radical leftist position.
They all take exception to what they regard as a cheap consumer mentality and
yearn for higher ethical standards. In the West the group's basic 
sociophilosophical orientation has been accepted as an Eastern version of what is called
New Leftism. Hungarian officials have attached the same label to it, and the
group's members have not protested. On the contrary, on several occasions they
have admitted that their views are fairly close to those of the New Left. For
instance, in an interview with the BBG Ferenc Feher declared:

Yes, it is a kind of label attached to us. I would not deny it,
and it is not a compliment in this country. We were deeply 
impressed by the wave of new left in Europe in the mid-1960s, with
certain reservations. We always refused the so-called terrorist
element. We also refused the elements which made a new text to
old music. But the mainstream of the new left which articulated
a new system of needs, was one of the most important impacts in
our ideological life. There is a certain kind of new left in
this country, though not in the form of an organized movement,
not even in the form of a political movement. What I would call 
new left in this country is a spontaneous dynamic of young people,
a kind of challenge to conventional life. [4]

Konrad prefers to speak of the "Left" instead of the "New Left," and feels
"closely related" to it. But in his interview with Die Zeit he also pointed
out a difference which, he said, works to the advantage of the leftists in 
Hungary: namely, that they know socialism from inside and are not "under any 
compulsion to mythicize distant events with [the help] of so-called objectivity."

Konrad has had several short stories and two books published in Hungary.
His first book, a small volume entitled A latogato (The Visitor) was translated
and published widely in the West. [5] It is the story of an urban social
----------------
(3) It appeared in German under the title Stuecklohn (Berlin: Rotbuch Verlag,
1975).

(4) The Listener (London), 12 February 1976.

(5) The Hungarian version was published by the Magveto Publishing House 
(Budapest) in 1969; foreign editions appeared in Denmark, England, Finland,
France, Italy, Japan, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the US, and West Germany.

[page 3]

worker (Konrad himself was once a social worker and a member of an institute
that dealt with urban affairs), and the reader is presented with an unexpected,
miserable underworld populated by modern outcasts, victims of various forms of
alienation and social conflict. It is not quite clear from the description
where the action takes place; it might be Hungary, perhaps Budapest, and the
presumption is that the events are byproducts of the new socialist system. The
main point is that there is not much difference between past and present; life
moves around in vicious circles and certain problems recreate themselves
"with statistical regularity." In a mood of despair, the social worker comes
to the conclusion that the only solution lies in full identification with his
clients. He gives up his job and takes over the nursing of an imbecile child,
but finds that the gap cannot be closed. He returns to his office with the
hope that he and -- implicitly -- all other "mediocre state officials" will
keep their eyes more widely open in the future. The story, which is really
nothing more than a crammed mosaic of staggering figures and episodes, is a
reminder to one-dimensional bureaucrats that life is a complex process whose
problems cannot be resolved by simple regulations.

Konrad's second book [6] was a joint effort -- its coauthor was Ivan
Szelenyi. Also, published in 1969, it is a study of urban development projects
undertaken in Hungary since the advent of the socialist regime. The authors
found that some degree of progress had been achieved, but urged that more
"organic" forms of urban development be introduced, and the practice of 
basing everything on a single model -- the isolated settlement -- be abandoned.
The key to the future is in the hands of the planning bureaucracy: will it
be flexible enough to take a more diversified approach to urban development?.
Konrad and Szelenyi left the question open.

As his first two books indicate, Konrad's preoccupation with social 
problems is a long-standing one. For many years he has been concerned with 
various aspects of urban life, with human relations under socialism, with the
bureaucratization of the revolution, and with the role of the planning 
bureaucracy. And similar problems are dealt with in his new book.

As in the case of The Visitor, it is not easy to pinpoint the setting of
The City Founder. There are vague references to Eastern Europe, to a country
"somewhat to the East of the center of Europe," to atrocities committed by
members of the Iron Cross movement; Hungarian names pop up, and in some 
chapters surroundings characteristic of Hungary are described -- so it is probably
Hungary that Konrad had in mind. It is beyond dispute, however, that the
story takes place in a small provincial town and under a socialist regime--
though again it is hardly a story in the accepted sense of the word.

The hero is an architect, like his father, and the revolution makes him
planning chief of the city in which he was born. He himself is not a 
revolutionary, but he has professionally revolutionary ambitions. He wants to
destroy the past of his city, which his father had created, and replace it
with a city of the future, a perfect organism drawn up in the planning bureau.
He soon begins to realize, however, that the revolution is succumbing to
bureaucracy. One of the first warnings comes from his own son: "You are a
technocrat.... Your overstretched technical logic is nothing but the cult
of production and economics, the city is nothing but a cheap, well-organized
----------------
(6) Az uj lakotelepek szociologiai problemai (The Sociological Problems of
New Housing Projects)(Budapest: Akademiai kiado,1969).

[page 4]

business concern, a decision of today becomes a routine tomorrow; the worker
is only a continuation of the machine, the tenant becomes a part of his 
apartment, the pedestrian part of the sidewalk. . ."(p. 149). The city founder
begins to perceive that creative work degenerates into a battle with 
bureaucracy, with selfishness, provincialism, dogmatism, with resurrected old fears
and conflicts. If changes do take place, they are mainly superficial. The
great ambitions of the early days are gone. The city founder takes refuge In
the belief that the social revolution of the Left, the emancipation of every
citizen, cannot be stopped. The book ends with a poetic vision: "Now the
feast has really begun, and tomorrow we will also celebrate, everyone loves
everyone else, this is a new reunion from which there is no escape. . . ."

Technically, the architect's confrontation with socialist reality and his
protracted struggle with his own conscience are presented in many seemingly
incoherent, fragmentary episodes, and painted in a symbolic-surrealistic style.
This style, rich in color and metaphor, is an interesting one, but it can
also become tedious if it is not kept under control. At one place Konrad 
compares the fragments of his story to "snapshots for a crammed photograph album."
And in fact, pictures of past and present alternate in the book, often so
quickly that the reader tends to lose his sense of time, and the empty space
between the pictures is filled with monologues by the city founder. It is
through these that Konrad raises the problems that bother him: the inevitable
bureaucratization of the revolutionary elan, the embourgeoisement of the
socialist revolution, the role of intellectuals in the socialist 
transformation of society, and the inability of city planners to come up with a new,
human urban project.

In the view of the city founder (and of Konrad himself), the most 
damaging thing that could happen to the revolution is that revolutionaries become
captives of the system they have devised:

We had no experience, we acted; we programed a system which then
programed us. . . . From inside it is easier to ascertain what
we have achieved: a society that redistributed goods centrally,
in which the greater part of the national income is poured out
through the state budget and bureaucratic decrees have replaced 
the free competition of private interests. Our environment was
gloomy but we were resolute: we decided we did not want to live
but to win. . . [pp. 110-111].

And so a new type of "revolutionary" has developed whose main job is to
write decrees that transfer everything to the hands of the state. It is easy,
it does not require much in the way of thought or responsibility. But 
bureaucratization leaves no room for the human element, for love. Even "Christ must
withdraw from a history whose rules are in the hands of the Inquisitor, who is
an exemplary planner." The city founder also became interested in the fact
that many of the new planners stem from the ranks of the new intellectuals --
he calls them "state intellectuals." He finds their performance fascinating
-- in a negative sense.

After the nobility and the bourgeoisie, it was we who grasped
the whips and cracked them over the horses of history. We
abolished the right to power based on family tree and property,
and thenceforth it was only appointment that entitled [a person]
to exercise power. We separated the rights of disposal and of
property from each other; property belongs to everyone, but

[page 5]

the right of disposal belongs only to the leading officials,
who know best what to do. . . Two hundred years ago every
twentieth person was a nobleman; today every twentieth 
person in a leading position is an intellectual [p. 133].

As the quotation shows, the city founder does not want to separate his case
from that of others, and his criticism of "those intellectuals11 is also 
selfcriticism. He frequently returns to the subject, and describes the role of
the group as "increasingly embarrassing." In his opinion the "state 
intellectuals" tend to identify the interests of the state with those of society,
and to view democracy as a vehicle that will help them to power. They 
(including the city founder himself) planned the future without knowing what it should
look like, and decided that everyone who loved the future had either to love
them as well or draw the obvious conclusions.

The city founder is stunned by how little certain sectors of social life
have changed. In the new system, he claims, many were elevated, many degraded,
and although there were more of the former than of the latter, "those who were
below ultimately remained below." This, he repeats several times, is 
particularly true of the workers. (Years ago the same conviction must have brought
the young Miklos Haraszti into a Budapest factory to study working and living
conditions. But as noted above, his final report, Piecework, was not allowed
to appear in Hungary.)

The city founder finds ultimate proof that the planners have failed in
the city plan itself and its disastrous consequences for both the population
and socialism. (Needless to say, the small provincial city is a symbol that
stands for all of society.) He becomes convinced that humanity's future 
cannot be decided by planning bureaucrats sitting in planning bureaus. There is
variety to life, an element of the unforeseen which escapes the Diktat of the
planners. Was it not his own son, the subject of his future concern, who was
among the first to point out the rigidity of the official concept of the
future? "Preferably," the son demurred, "you would even measure out freedom
as a network of public canalization, and you would prefer to translate human
contacts into a uniform language suitable for coding. . . ."

What, then, is the answer to the dilemma? Obviously, not another 
rigidconcept, which would hardly escape the fate of the first one. But there are
many lessons in the experiment which the city founder tries to translate into
guiding principles, most of which surface in the course of a dream:

I dream of a city in which change is the law of action, where I
have a right to my environment, where I do not exist for the
city but the city is for me, where my voice is listened to; . ..
where the spy has nothing to spy on, where everyone has access
to the minutes of public trials; where at a press conference 
I am free to express my private opinion; where I do not have to
look every evening at the door of my apartment to see whether my
nameplate is still there; ... I want a new city . . . which
is a present for its inhabitants, a place meant for discussion
and love, a place created for communication beyond its borders....
[pp. 165-168].

In sum, he is dreaming of a city where life again becomes an interesting
adventure.

[page 6]

In conclusion, it should be added that in his interviews with Die Zeit
and Le Monde, Konrad returned to the theme of his book and made a number of
noteworthy new points. For instance, in speaking to Die Zeit he emphasized
that the problems he dealt with in his book are not exclusively Hungarian,
or even exclusively East European: "To bring it down to a common denominator,
the question of whether socialism and freedom can meet is a question of 
worldwide interest," he stated, rightly. Then he went on to describe what he termed
the privileged position of the East European writers: if they criticize
socialism, they know what they are talking about.

We are not attacking the fortress from the outside, we have 
conquered it -- so completely that we have captured ourselves as
well. And now our task is to liberate others as well as 
ourselves. This perhaps explains why really authentic East European
literature must be such an embarrassment not only to the local
authorities but also to the West European Left, of which we are,
after all, friends and spiritual relatives. . . .

To Le Monde , Konrad talked mainly about the prospects of socialism. So far,
he said, it has seen two periods of development. The first was the Stalinist
era, in which the officials had an absolute monopoly of power. This was 
followed by the second, present period, which is grounded in a compromise between
the "intellectuals of the political bureaucracy" and the specialists. The
intellectuals made a mistake, however; they failed to maintain good contacts
with the workers -- in fact, there is a conflict between them -- and as a
result the cause of socialism suffered. But there is a new, third, period
approaching, which according to Konrad will bring about a "more highly 
developed, more mature socialism," "new forms of self-administration at places of
work, in communal cities," and -- most important -- an "ethical awakening" on
the part of the intellectuals. He reverted several times to the latter issue,
stressing that "without such an ethical awakening we cannot cross a certain
threshold"

When the Le Monde reporter asked whether this was not a new Utopia, 
Konrad's answer was, "Yes, perhaps. A Utopia and a program." One wishes he had
offered a more substantial explanation.

(050)

- End -

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