Interview with Hungarian opposition leader
A. For the first time in the history of of questions, such as article of No. 5/6 of Beszelo, we put for- and Czechoslovakia.
ward a concrete program for reform. government's policy is disastrous. It says
The following interveiw with Miklos Haraszti, editor of the major Hungarian dissident publication, Beszelo (Discussion) was obtained in April. translated it from a German text.
At the beginning of April, the international wire services reported that the homes of a number of well-known oppositionists in Hungary were
What concretely has happened n March 29 and 30 all s mes in which samizdat is openly pr duced were searched.
The police proceeded in a very systematic way, confiscating a lot of books, manuscripts, and typescripts. place, the operation started at 2:30 a.m. and lasted until 4:00 a.m., when I was taken to the police station at Tolnai, where I was interrogated until 8:00 a.m.
There are continual identity checks. On the night of April 7, Laszlo Rajk and Gabor Demszky were stopped on the road by six police and finally threatened with pistols, when they refused to tell them where their manuscripts Both of them have made formal com-
On the following night, Demszky's home was searched again. after the search the night before, nothing
Unlike the searches last December, the police have gotten six indietments against us under the press law.
Q. Is this likely to lead to trials?
That is possible if we deny the charges or appeal the judgments.
Has it been possible to continue the sale of samizdat at Laszlo Rajk's new apartment?
A. Every Tuesday, there are so many cops in front of the place that people can hardly buy anything. In practice, it is hard to see how we can keep the Shop
To what extent have the police succeeded since December in restricting the circulation of samizdat?
The police must have been furious that we did not retreat. Issue 5/6 of
And a new magazine called AB Tajekoztato publication. However, on March 29, they confiscated everything that was on sale that evening, which was quite a lot -around 200 copies of Beszelo and a few hundred of AB Tajekoztato.
How has the discussion on the positions of the opposition developed in rethe Hungarian opposition, in the lead
This makes it impossible for the party leadership to claim that the democratic opposition is banking on a catastrophe.
We argued that no real economic reform is possible so long as the working class has no real representatives. There is no one with whom the government can discusss necessary price increases or cuts in the standard of living that are imposed by the world economic situation.
The sort of commandism that has prevailed up till now makes it impossible to test how much of a burden the working class is prepared to take.
Does that mean that you want in We have said that we want gradual progress. The leadership cannot get away with saying that what we are demanding today means a kind of Polish revolution or even a development that is unacceptable to Moscow.
The first phase that we propose is a democratization of the lowest levels of the trade unions. This could be tested for three or four years, and then the experiment could be re-discussed. urally, we also want a press reform, so as to clarify the status of periodicals such as ours, and so that all reform groups and discussion groups can disseminate in-
We do not want to take up questions such as the leading role of the Party or Moscow's role in our political life. What we want is a limited area of democratic reform in the interests of all. It would be in the interest of the bureaucracy because it would keep the economic crisis from sliding into a political catastrophe. It would also be in the interests of those who hope for a democratic future for
Q. Are there signs that such proposals are striking a chord among the workers?
A. I haven't heard anything about an organized movement. But it is clear that the sort of proposals we are making are popular, and that the major cause of the generally low work morale is the workers' lack of representation.
Q. How much influence does samizdat have outside the intelligentsia?
About a thousand copies of Beszelo are produced, and every copy is read by twenty to thirty people. we write does not represent an extremist point of view but expresses what the entire reform intelligentsia and large sections of the youth are thinking. development of samizdat, a whole area of critical culture has arisen, that the regime can no longer wipe out so easily.
Samizdat has taken up a whole series the Hungarian minorities in Romania
In this area, the nothing about these problems, and thereby fosters chauvinist and even irredentist
The TV and even the press is allowed to talk about the neighboring peoples they crack jokes about stuency can only be countered by open discussion, that may often be rather diffi-
Of course, it is also necessary to talk about the Gypsies, Romanians, and facilities for these minorities are by no means as good as the government claims.
In the West, the general picture people have of Hungary is one of a politically liberal and economically successful country. How can the democratic oppostion base its perspectives on the need to deal with a severe economic
A. Of course, Hungary still has a good credit rating. And this year that made it possible for us to maintain our balance of payments. But last November for the first time the government had to announce that the standard of living was going to go down.
With the present methods of economic management, it may be possible to avoid the sort of bankruptcy Poland and Romania have fallen into, but not a deadly stagnation that will last for long years.
The government knows that without a fundamental economic reform we will face such stagnation. By reform, I mean decentralization of the management in the big plants, a real market-oriented and not administrative management dustry, and an acceleration of the change in product mix (That is, in the introduction of new products - IV). government needs reforms; what is lacking is the political courage to undertake them and to accept the political conse-
Because it is impossible to undertake these reforms unless the workers and all those affected have the opportunity to express their interests freely and to negotiate on that basis.
Q. Have you drawn any conclusions about the increased repression yet?
A. In December, we thought that it was just a concession to Andropov and
That was obviously wrong. More is involved than than. It has been made physically impossible for the Shop to continue to function. It depends on Laszlo Rajk what the next step is there.
distribution determined not to stop existence of free expression as a national achievement. It represents a need for thousands who simply can no longer tolerate the culture of the big lie. The wider the sphere of free thought is, the greater the boldness of the official writers. in this way, we can help keep Hungary on the reform course and conterbalanace the government's deepseated instinct to resort to Stalinist methods to deal with