TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/102389/10238900.035

Text File | 1990-09-22 | 6KB | 112 lines

WORLD, Page 46

HUNGARY

Now You See It . . .

The party sheds Communism, but will voters buy the switch?

By John Borrell/BUDAPEST


    On the concrete wall of an underpass on Rakoczi Street in
Budapest, someone has scrawled in black crayon DOWN WITH
COMMUNISTS. Two years ago, such a sign of opposition would have
been quickly removed by Hungary's Communist rulers. Now the
graffiti not only survive, but the Communists are saying much the
same thing themselves.

    Such is the pace of political change in Hungary these days that
last year's political blasphemy is this week's new truth. In
keeping with the wholesale undoing of the past, the ruling party,
formerly known as the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, is no
longer officially Communist. At a five-day congress that ended in
Budapest last week, 1,274 delegates voted overwhelmingly to take
the Communism out of socialism and become the Hungarian Socialist
Party. They also sent hard-line General Secretary Karoly Grosz into
political oblivion and repudiated much of four decades of Communist
rule, including the suppression of the 1956 uprising by Soviet
troops.

    The switch is the most complete undertaken by a Communist Party
in Eastern Europe. Not even in Poland, where a Solidarity-led
coalition has been governing for nearly two months, have Communists
subjected themselves to so radical a purge of their political
philosophy. In Hungary it marks the end of the party-state, the
Marxist concept of a fused identity that still underpins
governments in Beijing, Havana and Bucharest. The party will even
examine ways of divesting itself of property acquired during the
40 years in which it and the state were virtually
indistinguishable.

    Such concessions were too much for some of the party's
hard-liners. They set about forming their own political groups,
each claiming to represent the ideals of the old Communist Party.
"We will soldier on as a Communist Party," said Roland Antoniewicz,
leader of the Janos Kadar Society, one newborn hard-line splinter
named after the party's longtime leader who died in July.

    Yet the party may not have gone far enough -- for its own sake
or for the sake of most Hungarians. "This is just a new label on
an old bottle," complains Gyorgy Ruttner, an opposition leader who
heads the Social Democratic Party. Aware that the bottle's contents
might seem familiar and sour, the more radical reformers among the
Communists wanted an even sharper break with the past, including
expulsion of Old Guard hard-liners. In the end, moderates led by
Rezso Nyers, 66, who was elected party president, stitched together
a compromise that held the party together but may jeopardize its
chances in the next elections.

    Much of the impetus for reform flowed from the fact that early
next year Hungary is to have the most open balloting in the East
bloc in four decades. At least a dozen parties will be competing
with the Hungarian Socialist Party for the 374 seats in Parliament.
Reformers within the Communist ranks contended that without a fresh
image, they stand no chance at the polls. In four recent
by-elections, the Democratic Forum, which has only 20,000
registered members, in contrast to the 700,000 claimed by the
Communist Party, has easily defeated candidates put up by the
ruling party. The liberal, nationalistic Forum could continue its
winning streak.

    "The new Socialist Party will get 20% to 30% of the vote at
the most," says Istvan Hegedus, an official of the radical youth
group Young Democrats. Some opinion polls are predicting that as
little as 15% of the voters will cast their ballots for the new
party. Even such a low figure would not rule out a political role
for the onetime Communists, since the Democratic Forum, expected
to win a plurality, says it favors a grand coalition involving all
political groups.

    The Socialist Party will get a reading on the electorate's mood
in late November, when presidential elections are scheduled. Its
candidate is Imre Pozsgay, a former Politburo member who has
emerged over the past year as the Communists' leading reformer.
Opinion polls suggest that he has an attractive public image. Thus,
as a Western diplomat in Budapest observes, "if Pozsgay can't pull
it off, the new party is doomed right away."

    As of now, Pozsgay faces no official challengers, although the
Independent Smallholders Party, which mainly represents farmers,
enlivened the political debate when it proposed Hungary's last
crown prince, Otto von Habsburg, as its presidential candidate. The
son of Emperor Karl I, who ruled the Austro-Hungarian empire from
1916 until its collapse in 1918, Von Habsburg, 76, retains
Hungarian citizenship despite being a resident of West Germany and
holding a seat in the European Parliament. Von Habsburg, a popular
figure in Hungary, seriously considered running but at week's end
revealed that he had decided against it. "I can currently do more
in the European Community for the return of Hungary into the
community of free peoples," he said.

    The Democratic Forum says it will field a candidate, but
Pozsgay probably has stature enough to win a five-year term as
President under a constitution -- soon to be approved by Parliament
-- that is expected to invest considerable powers in the post. The
revamped party's prospects in parliamentary elections, however,
look less promising -- not necessarily a cheering development for
the cause of political reform in general in the East bloc.

    Although hardly a consideration for more than a handful of
voters, a Pozsgay victory and a good showing by his party in the
general elections could be a boost for glasnost everywhere. It
would show hard-liners in the bloc that change need not be the
first step toward political suicide and might even suggest that
those deft enough to amend their ideology will not necessarily be
cast aside in open elections. The opposite applies as well,
however: if the reformed Communists are savaged by the voters, the
Old Guard everywhere will be digging in its heels. If in the
electorate's eyes there is no such thing as a good ex-Communist,
why become one?