THE CRISIS IN COMMUNISM
THE REVOLT OF THE HUNGARIAN WRITERS*
On September 17, 1956, some 200 Hungarian writers held
a National Congress at which they outlined a new program for their
Union and, at the same time, elected a new executive committee. The
Congress was marked by a passionate spirit of intransigence of which
only a few echoes reached the Western press. Overriding the recom–
mendations formulated-with considerable tact and even respect,
it
must be admitted-by the Party representative, Jules Kallai, a former
Titoist and journalist of the Resistance who had recently been re–
habilitated and named chairman of the Central Committee's Department
of Cultural Affairs, the writers took a virtually unanimous position in
favor of the complete autonomy of their Union
vis-a-viJ
the Party and
government. And in order to implement promptly the meaning of such
autonomy, they elected a new executive committee from which were
eliminated all Stalinist, Rakosist, "sectarian," and dogmatist writers.
They excluded all those who, through the years of the Terror ( 1949-
1952), had manifested a special
z~al
in denouncing their more or less
heretical colleagues: Aladar Tamas, who, in his capac:ty as Secretary–
General of the Writers' Union (not elected, by the way, but imposed
from above by the Party leadership), had behaved like a little Stalinist
Caesar, treating the writers like so many subalterns, not deigning to
see them personally but communicating with them through his private
secretary; the incurably mediocre Alexander Gergely, who had satisfied
his vindictive feelings by drawing up indictment after indictment against
confreres so unlucky as to be guilty of originality or intellectual honesty;
Joseph Darvas, novelist, Minister of Propaganda, and in charge of
censorship; and others. Even the former editor of the
Literary Gazette,
Bela Illes, a colonel in the Soviet Army and a picturesque fellow, not
without talent, who was the most reasonable of the clan of onetime
*
This article, by a Hungarian writer now living in Paris, was written just before
the outbreak of the revolution in Hungary. The author could not have an–
ticipated the turn of events the past weeks would take, and the fate of· many
of the individuals he mentions is now uncertain, but his article is, so far as we
know, the first detailed account to appear in English of the role played by
Hungarian intellectuals in their country's bid for freedom.-THE EDITORS.
