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PARTISAN REVIEW
at the fanciest McDonald's in Europe. Phone booths that work are
everywhere, taxis plentiful and easy to get, and one could go to
various cinemas to see
Rain Man, Midnight Run, Crocodile Dundee II,
or go to the theater to see
Les Miserables, Evita, Cats, Walt Disney
World on Ice,
or the local version
~f
the Folies Bergeres. (We did,
and it isn't up to par.) Signs of Communism, propaganda or slo–
gans, are virtually nonexistent. A fallen wooden red star, lying
unceremoniously on the street in front of the obligatory May
Day reviewing stand (sparsely attended at this year's festivities),
stands symbolically for the reputation of Communism in this
once Stalinist "people's democracy."
Given the exigencies of Hungary's location-a less strategic
consideration for the Russians-and the developments in the
Communist Party as well as the opposition, Hungary appears
closer to achieving multiparty democracy, true democratic elec–
tions, and the demise of Communist rule far ahead of its neigh–
bor Poland. Indeed, the once repressed opposition seems unable to
keep up with the reforms implemented by the Party reformers.
''They have opened a door we pushed against for years," one op–
positionist commented, "and now we're running to enter it."
Opposition reformers from the largest opposition group, the
Democratic Forum, met with us in their new makeshift offices in
a Quonset hut structure, equipped with furniture, phones, office
machines, and faxes. Claiming some twelve thousand members
in different chapters throughout Hungary, the Forum is an um–
brella opposition group, not yet a party, and seemingly confined
to an intellectual elite. Their leaders who met with us included
two professors (history and political science), a lawyer, and a
businessman; laborers or peasants seemed not to be represented.
Their goal is to refuse an offer for an agreement similar to the
Polish Roundtable between Solidarity and the Communists.
Rather, they favor a common framework behind which the op–
position can unite and then talk as one voice to the government.
Anxious to avoid violence or catastrophe, however, they realize
the need to reach a compromise that all sides can accept. A neu–
tral Hungary, in which they will be part of the Warsaw Pact in
the same way France relates to NATO, is one possibility they
hold out as a reality.
One of the leaders, a historian who taught recently at the
University of California at Santa Barbara, responded with the fol-
