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PARTISAN REVIEW
Similar tendencies were also observed in the Hungarian state security
police (AVO or AVH). According to one former victim and analyst of the
organization, the writer George Paloczi-Horvath:
The SP [security police
I
was constantly purged by General Peter [that
is, Gabor Peter, the head of it[. Many former SP officers were wi th us
in jail. They were arrested for the slightest sign of elementary decen–
cy. Wi th this method General Peter succeeded in finding in a few
years that criminal and potentially sadistic five per cent which is there
in any given population.
The idea that in every society there are groups of people who, for
whatever reason, possess, or develop a personality congenial for the activ–
ities repressive police forces require has been noted by many authors. The
Brazilian man of letters Antonio Candido observed that for these tasks" __ _
society needs thousands of individuals wi th appropriately deformed souls
. _. society draws from these people the brutality, the need, the frustration,
the depravity, the defect - and gives them the repressive function." The
Czech emigre writer Josef Skvorecky, perceived the hardcore supporters
of both Nazi and Communist systems as
... people scarred by private hatreds, grounded in deeply negative
personal experience ... [people] with physical or psychological mal–
formations ... haunted by a feeling of insecurity.... exploitlingl ideas
and movements to achieve a feeling of self-worth and to devalue
other people.
A connection between official policies and less than creditable human
trai ts was also noted by Luba 13rezhneva, the niece of Leonid 13rezhnev:
Continual official calls for crackdowns on the 'enemies of the people'
[in the 1930s, that is] had awakened the basest instincts, and searching
out enemies evolved as part of the national psychology ... Informers
were praised and held up as role models for the youths; they were also
given financial rewards and promotions.
Doubtless, many intolerant, vindictive, resentful and authoritarian
human beings found their way into the Communist political police forces
- institutions that provided a sense of entitlement and philosophical legit–
imation for indulging their impulses and inclinations. Erich Mielke, a head
