So the emotional cycle was complete: initial shock, embarrassment, reassurance, and finally a modest pride in traditional American generosity.
But the fact that America finally accepted its responsibilities in a time of great crisis must not obscure the more important fact that originally we were befuddled. We have got to rethink our attitudes in the cold war. A careful study of all messages broadcast by Radio Free Europe to Hungary fails to disclose any that incited revolution, but this radio did broadcast messages of freedom and is presumably still doing so. Are we now prepared to assume direct responsibility for these messages? How long can we broadcast such messages without assuming direct responsibility for our words? Why should officials of the United States government abdicate their appointed responsibility for the selection of immigrants and turn that job over to accidental groups who are then free to set up quotas reflecting their private beliefs and to apply moral and religious tests of their own devising? When a man has given proof in blood that he loves freedom, how many further tests must he pass before he is deemed worthy of entry into America? And how much of the rare quality of contemporary American life is due to the contributions of the great revolutionists of 1848—many of them from Hungary—who brought to our rather tired Anglo-Saxon heritage a burst of fresh, bold blood and a tradition of gallantry? Maybe we do need another transfusion of Hungarian blood.
In one respect the United States has already begun to rethink its attitude in the cold war, and for this clarification of our national policy we must thank the Hungarian crisis. The Eisenhower Doctrine puts the Soviet world on notice that communists cannot operate among the nations of the Middle East as they operated in Hungary. We still lack an announced policy covering similar contingencies in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania or Bulgaria, but no doubt one is evolving, and for this we must again thank Hungary, for the shock waves riding out from Budapest have affected America profoundly.
The hurricane that I spoke of as striking Asia could have far-reaching consequences. One of the main reasons why many Americans grew to feel, between 1948 and 1956, that any further effort on our part to co-operate with Asia was futile, was the way in which Asian leaders refused to accept facts. Common words were redefined out of their ordinary meanings, and intercourse became difficult, since no matter what the nature of a fact, it was always used to prove that Americans were scoundrels whereas Russians were the protectors of the weak and peace-loving nations of the world. The energy required even to keep up with such reasoning is immense, while the work required to combat it is herculean.
For example, recently an Asian student argued with me in impassioned words: “You must admit that America holds its empire together only by means of the imperialist hydrogen bomb, whereas Russia has united under her leadership a large group of friendly and peace-loving nations whose bond of union is not fear of the hydrogen bomb, but justice for working people. What a difference!”
“What American empire are you speaking of?” I asked.
“Japan,” he replied. “Formosa, the Philippines, England.”
“You’re convinced that we tell Japan and Britain what they must do?”
“Of course.”
“And you’re equally convinced that the iron-curtain countries are happy under Russian domination?”
“I won’t answer that,” he said. “You speak of iron-curtain countries. That implies that countries like Hungary and Rumania don’t want to remain with Russia, whereas obviously they do. You speak of Russian domination as if it were a fact. Russia doesn’t dominate any of its allies.”
The Hungarian revolution not yet having occurred, I was rather short of ammunition, but I asked, “Wasn’t the Russian occupation of Lithuania especially brutal?”
“That’s a capitalist warmongering lie!” he cried. “Apparently you haven’t read Stalin’s statement on Russia’s relations with its neighbors.”
“What did it say?” I asked.
“Stalin said”—and here he read from a booklet published in Moscow—“ ‘If you think that the people of the Soviet Union have any desire to alter the face of the surrounding States, and to do so by force, you are badly mistaken. I fail to see what danger the countries surrounding us can see in the ideas of the Soviet people, if these States are really firmly established.’ And that’s how Russia has behaved toward her neighbors. How has America behaved toward hers? Hydrogen bombs raining atomic dust on Japan.”
“I thought that dust came from Russian bombs,” I argued. “Don’t you think that Russia is exploding such bombs, too?”
“Yes, but she explodes hers only for peace.”
“Don’t you think that Russia uses her bombs to keep her subject peoples enslaved?”
At this my Asian disputant laughed. “You capitalist warmongers always use words like enslaved. Russia enslaves no one. In election after election, through all her friendly nations, the people have said they wanted communism and friendship with Russia by votes of about ninety-five to five.”
“And you believe those figures?” I asked.
“Of course,” he replied, and after many such discussions I found that every item of data used by the Asian communists about Rumania or Poland or Hungary came from Moscow.
In time, I found myself exhausted by this frustrating business of trying to argue against skillful propaganda without any hard-core facts that I could make my adversaries accept. Always they had Russian-imagined statistics and I had only logic and common sense.
I remember saying once in real anger, after a baffling session with some young Chinese who were trying to drag Singapore into communism, “I wish I could take those kids to some communist heaven like Poland or Lithuania. I’d like to have them ask Poles and Lithuanians what they thought of Russian communism.”
It is now possible to ask Hungarians. For Hungary exposes to the world’s eyes and to the world’s intelligence the way in which a total population rejected Soviet domination. The Hungarian evidence goes far beyond prejudice or clever deduction or wishful logic. It even transcends the reporting of individual witnesses. The Hungarian revolution says simply, “Nineteen out of every twenty Hungarians were nauseated by communism.”
This fact is incontrovertible, and if it could be reported to the people of Asia it could have a profound effect upon the history of that continent. For Asians pride themselves on their adherence to logic. They have penetrating minds and know how to handle facts when they are made available. An overwhelming majority of Asians wish their homelands well, for they are patriots, and it was largely due to this intense patriotism that Russia had an easy job planting, nurturing and reaping a propaganda harvest against the United States. Russia argued, “You Asians saw British colonialism in India, French colonialism in Indo-China and Dutch colonialism in Indonesia. Well, America is twice as large as those three nations put together, and her colonialism is twice as bad.” How great the Russian propaganda victory was, only those who had to combat it year after year can know. The intelligent people of Asia, having little other data to go by, often accepted the Russian logic.
Now there is a superior logic, the logic of Hungary, and it is imperative that the facts of Hungary reach Asia and penetrate to the farthest bazaar. And the facts that we must hammer are these: it was the intellectuals who led the revolution, because they had been defrauded by communism; and it was the workers from Csepel who supported it, because under communism they not only made no gains, they lost what they had previously enjoyed; and it was Russian tanks, crudely interfering in the government of a neighboring nation, that could make a difference.
But unfortunately, the effect of the Hungarian revolution in Asia cannot be determined, for just when it seemed as if Russian propaganda about her friendly relations with neighboring nations was punctured, Asia was looking elsewhere and the lessons of Hungary did not penetrate even to the capital cities, let alone the remote bazaars. For it was at this untimely moment that the democracies invaded Egypt.
Of course this action nullified any mora
l values the Hungarian revolution might have enjoyed in Asia. In the first flush of the Budapest revolt I wrote to several of my Asian friends and said, “I hope you have been reading what Hungarians honestly think about communism. Now do you see what I meant?”
But before my letters could reach their targets, Egypt was invaded and in their replies my friends never even mentioned Hungary. Something much bigger was on their horizon and they asked, “Now do you see what we meant by imperialism?”
When the history of the Egyptian adventure is finally written, the apportionment of blame will surely be much different from what we now see it to be. But surely, assessors of that extraordinary act will have to point out that the Egyptian crisis involved two unforeseen losses to the democracies. First, Egypt diverted the world’s spotlight from Hungary and condemned that brave nation to expire both in darkness and in silence. The moral precepts which could have been deduced from her heroic action were largely lost, and lost to those who could have profited most. Second, the repetition of classic imperialist invasion completely blinded Asia to the suddenly revealed characteristics of a greater imperialism to the north.
That these great losses should have been the consequence of a gesture that failed is bitingly ironic. I remember the summary of America’s role in this dual crisis made by a friend who was saddened by the moral collapse of his world. “When our secret agents can’t discover what our enemy Russia is going to do in Hungary,” he grieved, “it’s regrettable. But when our diplomats can’t discover what our allies have already done in Egypt, that’s appalling.”
It is possible that out of this catastrophe America may evolve a sounder foreign policy, and although the automatic values that should have accrued to us in Asia as a result of Hungary’s bold action were dissipated, we can nevertheless start patiently to talk with our Asian friends about the lessons of Hungary. We can say, with honest humility, I hope, that whereas we had to learn the hard way, we trust they will do the same. And we must never allow the main object lesson to be obscured: after eleven years, most Hungarians abhorred communism; but the Soviets, refusing to accept this judgment, sent in their tanks and destroyed a country.
There was another fact about the Hungarian revolution which applies to Asia, but it is of such staggering implication that I wish merely to mention it without according it the detailed discussion which it merits. I suppose that all nations concerned in any way with Asia are asking themselves these momentous questions.
If ninety-five per cent of Hungarians hated their brand of communism, what per cent of Red Chinese hate their brand? If Hungarian troops deserted communism almost to a man, what percentage of Chinese soldiers would remain loyal? If communism could be maintained in Hungary only by the exercise of brute force, is not a similar force required in Red China, and must not the people hate it? And, to extend the scope of the question somewhat, if one of the most striking facts about the Hungarian revolution was the number of North Korean visiting students who volunteered to fight the Soviets, how secure is communism in North Korea?
For the present these remain rhetorical questions, but we do not know when they may explode into real situations requiring national answers. For in such matters the entire world is interrelated and the answers we apply in Europe will commit us in Asia.
I am convinced of this interrelationship by the observations of a wise Hungarian who pointed out, “Some people argue that our revolution started in 1848 with Kossuth and Petofi and that it is destined to continue forever. Others reason that it began on October 6, 1956. That was the day when two hundred patriots marched past the grave of Laszlo Rajk. He was the nationalist-communist who was executed as a traitor by Stalin. His memory was cleansed by Khrushchev and his honor restored. But how? His widow was taken, on October 3, to a mass grave that had been filled in years before. The communist leaders said, ‘We are going to restore your husband’s good name. Pick out a set of bones that we can call his.’ It was these make-believe bones that we marched past, muttering in our hearts.
“It’s possible,” he continued, “that the emotionalism of the Rajk purification rites might have deteriorated into civil riots, but it seems more likely that our revolution started in 1953 when the East German uprising showed us what a civilian population could accomplish against an iron dictatorship. Then our determination grew when the Poles at Poznan proved the same facts. You see what I’m driving at? The East Germans who threw stones at tanks died without any reasonable hope of success, but they inspired the Poles, who did achieve success. I’m sure the Poles acted only as Poles, but their greatest effect was on us Hungarians. Now who can say where the lesson that we gave the world will end? We can’t foresee in what land our seed of revolution will mature, but it will grow somewhere. Even Russia is now liable to explosion. For we Hungarians, acting upon what the Poles taught us, who based their knowledge on what the Germans proved … we have shown the way.”
As we Americans contemplate our future responsibilities, we could well remember the women of Budapest. It was a cold sunny day in the ruined city. For six agonizing weeks the revolt had been under way, and still boys on the street and workers in Csepel defied the Russians. Budapest was known as “the suicide city,” since it seemed that the entire population was determined to resist communism to the death. The world marveled at such courage.
Then, on December 4, a full month after the overpowering return of the Russian tanks, the women of Budapest, dressed in black, marched to the tomb of the unknown Hungarian soldier to place flowers at his grave. Russians with machine guns and tanks tried to stop them, but they came on, waving small bunches of flowers and crying, “You have guns, we have only flowers. Why are you afraid?”
A Russian soldier panicked and shot one of the women through the leg. It had no effect on the women in black; they continued their solemn march. Another Russian soldier started shouting at the women to stop. When they ignored him, he grabbed one of the women by the arm. She pulled herself loose, stared at him in contempt, then spat in his face.
11
Could These Things Be True?
In two respects I was, perhaps, an appropriate writer to deal with this story. I am cautious in my evaluation of contemporary problems, and I have learned to be suspicious of anyone who tells me a good story about himself.
I am cautious because of my education. In 1925 I entered a small liberal Quaker college whose faculty was deeply chagrined that one of their graduates, A. Mitchell Palmer, had gained some notoriety as Woodrow Wilson’s wartime attorney general. Mr. Palmer, a good Quaker, had believed all he heard during the war and had allowed himself to be stampeded into certain unwise postwar actions which the government and the people of the United States later regretted. I have never forgotten the caustic reassessment that his legal moves suffered, not the least critical being the comments of his own former professors.
While in college I made a personal study of the servile work done by the George Creel committee on wartime propaganda, and again I was shown the perils into which a writer can fall if he accepts without using his own cooler judgment all that is told him in wartime. I followed this with an analysis of the Belgian horror stories and became one of the first American undergraduates to undertake a study of the revisionist theories of the historians who were beginning to cast honest doubt on some of the things we were told during World War I.
It was with this background that I approached the Hungarian story. If I have accepted lies, if I have unknowingly repeated them, and if I have been played for a fool by clever propagandists, I have only myself to blame. Both in knowledge of history and in awareness of precedents I have been forewarned, and if some superior critic should later prove that I was duped, I ought to be severely reprimanded if not publicly disgraced.
As to my suspicious nature where personal stories are concerned, I have found that most people are dubious sources when they speak of themselves. A favorite expression of mine, acquired from having checked a lot of likely stories is this: “I wouldn’t belie
ve him if he told me what day it was.” The translators who worked with me can testify with what patience we went over and over the same ground, not only with one Hungarian but with dozens. Four or five of us would sit around a big table in Josef Smutny’s restaurant near the opera house in Vienna and we would pursue only one problem for about four hours at a time. Then we would get another four refugees, and another, and we would endlessly go over the same material.
When I perceived what a staggering fact the Hungarian revolt was, I asked that a highly trained research expert, who spoke five languages, be sent to help me, and he without ever duplicating any of the Hungarians with whom I had talked, reviewed the same ground in a similar way with refugees whom he picked at random from the camps. Wherever my final account differed from his, we assembled four or five new Hungarians and put the differences before them. Each point was argued out to a final conclusion, and in almost every instance we wound up with specific photographs or documents proving that a given individual had been where he said he was, or corroboration from a third party. The most dramatic example of this came in my two-week search for proof of the incredible Major Meat Ball story. The most reassuring was to find, after a seven-week delay, verification of Mrs. Marothy’s extraordinary claim that Imre Horvath’s son had decided to escape with her.
When my final version of each incident was finished, it was reviewed by two fresh teams of Hungarian experts, working independently and checking each word written. Each such critic had been in Budapest during the time the events here described were taking place and in several instances was able to identify to the day and the hour both the occurrences and the people about whom I was writing.