HUNGARY AFTER GLASNOST
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formed . Your journalists are in Budapest, and you can read about us
in
The New York Times.
I want to recall, first of all, that in 1956 we had an uprising
against the Stalinist regime . You know all about it, and that at that
time, that is, thirty-two years ago, there was a regime connected with
the name ofJanos Kadar, an ambiguous historical figure who estab–
lished a party system that had many good things. In 1956, this re–
gime was changed for another one, which is also a Communist re–
gime but which has attempted to change things for the better. This
effort to change has very deep roots, and Hungarian leaders now are
somewhat sluggish as well as proud in some way that they preceded
Gorbachev in introducing changes. Now, everybody who was in
charge or who was not in charge says that things went wrong, that
the ideology was wrong, the conception was wrong, that we have to
change for the better, that we have to revitalize and liberalize, but
that we have to conserve the establishment. So there are some con–
tradictions : there should be pluralism, there should be a multi-party
system but the power should stay with one party. That is not clearly
stated but it is the situation . Yet since last spring there has begun a
new rivalry for power. First of all, it is a rivalry inside the party, in–
side the government. Things are not at all clear, but there is some
sort of struggle for power, inside and outside. All those oppositional
people who were underground, who were persecuted, now have be–
gun to organize legally but there are not yet parties . There are clubs;
there are other named organizations that are something like prepar–
ties . They have journals, and what half a year ago was illegal now is
legal. Some members of the Hungarian Politburo are on the verge of
advocating a new regime, and I might be exaggerating when I say
that these new organizations are very good and that they should be
larger and better organized. The important fact is that for the pres–
ent there is no outstanding politician in Hungary. At the moment,
we do not have any group of men or women who could mastermind
the situation. At the same time, people are very tense, and the eco–
nomic situation is very bad . The Hungarian state is in debt. The
state owes eighteen billion dollars to the Western banks . This is very
much ; so far as I know it is the highest per capita debt among the
East European countries. And it has to be paid back, through eco–
nomic reforms that are twenty years late. In 1968 economic reforms
were projected, but they didn't really begin. We should change our
bureaucratically-oriented economy for a market-oriented one, a
nonbureaucratic , free one . It is very difficult to speak about this in
