Much Is Ending in Hungary but Not Communist Rule

Almost every week in Hungary another symbol of the old-style East Bloc collapses. Within the past month the Soviets began to withdraw their troops, Hungarian soldiers started to dismantle the physical manifestation of the Iron Curtain--an electronic fence at the Austro-Hungarian border--and deposed party leader Janos Kadar, the man the Soviets installed to rule the country after the 1956 uprising, was stripped of all formal ties to the Communist leadership.

These changes come in a year in which Hungary has already made more than token moves toward democracy, steps that could theoretically allow the defeat of the Communist Party in free elections promised for 1990. But it would be a mistake to assume these moves will inevitably lead to an end to Communist rule.

To the contrary, a case could be made that the faster Hungary’s movement toward democracy, the better the chance that the Communists will prevail.

Under its Communist government, Hungary is rapidly moving toward a peaceful realization of the same demands for which hundreds of its people died in the failed anti-Soviet uprising of 1956. In contrast to last year, when dissidents were still being arrested, the government has now legalized freedom of association and assembly. Organized opposition groups have been allowed to form and begin recruiting members for transformation into legal opposition parties. Going far beyond Poland’s leaders in democratization, Hungary’s government is rewriting its constitution, a move that it claims will guarantee development of a multiparty democracy.

In the three weeks we were on assignment in Hungary this March for PBS’s “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour,” we saw the organizing conventions of three nascent opposition parties, the Social Democrats, the League of Free Democrats and the Democratic Forum. We also reported on the largest anti-government demonstration since 1956--an event the government not only facilitated by declaring the day a legal holiday, but also legitimized by devoting extensive coverage to it on state-run television.

Hungary’s reforms were not forced by the opposition. Rather, the government implemented radical reforms because of an economic crisis: Hungary can no longer afford to maintain welfare state socialism. Having been forced by circumstances to act, Hungary’s Communist Party moved quickly to seize the initiative, proclaiming itself a “party of reform” and trying to keep the public’s attention on democratization instead of on the painful privatization of the economy.

Western banks, owed more than $18 billion, have obliged the Hungarian government to move toward a free-market economy. But adopting capitalist features has proven to be a mixed bag. Hungary has instituted stock ownership and licensed half a million entrepreneurs. At the same time, austerity measures such as cuts in subsidies have resulted in a 20% annual inflation rate and pushed one-fifth of Hungary’s 10.6 million people below the poverty line. In addition, the country faces large-scale unemployment as state-run industries are put on the auction block.

Although Hungarians may be hurt in the pocketbook by such radical changes, they don’t seem to be backing away from the Communist Party. Opinion polls indicate that the most popular political figure is also the man spearheading many of the reforms, Imre Pozsgay, a member of the Politiburo.

So far, the Hungarian public seems to have little interest in alternative politics. The 30,000 or so opposition activists are mainly intellectuals and students. One dissident leader, environmentalist Judit Vasarhelyi, complained that the opposition is being hurt by the nimble theft of its ideas and slogans by the Communists. She worries that the relatively unsophisticated opposition could be outmaneuvered by a party with long experience in steering public opinion.

Right now, opposition groups are offering little alternative to the party’s program of radical reform. Rather than staking out clear ideological territories at this point, the various opposition organizations are propounding a vague potpourri of political thought. Gaspar Miklos Tamas, a leader of the League of Free Democrats, told us, half in jest, that his party follows the “two great traditions of liberalism, one of which is known in the United States as liberalism. The other of which is known in the United States as conservatism.”

In order to outflank the party, some opposition groups may be forced to move further to the right. But such postures are likely to backfire and play into the Communist Party’s hands. As a nation accustomed to full employment and social welfare faces unemployment and inflation, opposition parties that project Milton Friedman-like values are not going to be popular with voters.

The Communist Party has built up a degree of trust with the Hungarian people by delivering the highest standard of living in the East Bloc. Even though Hungary’s consumerist proclivities are being eroded by the government’s reforms, no credible alternative is emerging with a well-developed political platform. Unless it does, voters are likely to see the Communist Party as a reliable force of moderation.