>Non sequitur.  Just because the hawks in the Soviet leadership were slow
>to wake up and there was some temporary confusion in the reaction, with
>hindsight it is clear that the invasion WAS inevitable.
>
>The proof to that is Czechoslovakia in 1968
>George Antony

Whatever  happened in Czechoslovakia in 1868 had little to do with the
decision in Moscow
in 1956. The conservatives in the Kremlin were not always winning after
1953. As long the Soviet leaders trusted Imre Nagy, who actually called in
the Red Army on October 24, 1956, there was a chance for the survival of
the Nagy government and indirectly the revolution. Only when Kadar and
his supporters signalled that communist domination was over did Moscow took
advantage that was offered by the Suez invasion. At that point, as you
suggest, invasion did become inevitable. What we need, in fact, is the
minutes of the Politburo.
P.I.Hidas

Peter I. Hidas, Montreal

Looking for Janos Somodi and daughter Kathy (Katie?) who left Hungary
after the Revolution. Kathy came to live with us in Ireland via the Red
Cross. She is about 40 now. He was an electrical engineer with Lucas in
England at some stage in the early-mid 1960's.
Janos rejoined his daughter in 1959-1960 or so.

John McMahon  ex ,Stonylane,  Ardee, Co.Louth, Ireland

Dear Colleagues,

This morning I received a proposal, which Dishop Tokes sent to President
Iliescu. This can be the basis of historical reconciliation between
Hungarians and Romanians. The Bishop will describe his compromise plan at
10:45 AM on Friday, the 3rd of November at 2172 Raybourn House Office Bldg.
in Washington.

Our duty is to give maximum exposure to this reconciliation proposal.

You can receive English or Hungarian copies on fax, by contacting Dr. Laszlo
Bollyty at 203-967-4845. Please indicate in your fax to Laci, which language
you desire to reduce his already substantial costs.

If you want to contact the news-media, you can get a complete
address/fax/E-Mail list of the 128 most important American papers from the
president of the Hungarian Anti-Defamation League, Dr. Andrew Simon at
.

If you want a complete list of all members of the US Congress, please write
to Odon Sandor, POB 750068, Forest Hills, NY 11375-0068

Only if we act together, will we be successful. Thanks for becoming an active
participant in the work of the Hungarian lobby.

Best regards: Bela Liptak

Dear LPO,

I was not accurate. Some of the victims died in Hungary after Szalasi was
installed as a German puppet. However, the vast majority didn't. I don't know
the exact figures, but considering the enormity of Hungarian losses (in the
neighborhood of 600,000) the gendarmes' role was relatively minor.


Eva Balogh

Bela Liptak writes:

>        The last meeting of the MEFESZ leadership, which I participated is,
>was held on the 17th of November, on Viranyos Street, in an AVH cottage
>temporarily abandoned by its owners.

It wasn't a cottage--it was a very, very fancy villa. I remember of wandering
around and seeing unknown (to me at least)  technical marvels. Everything was
extremely plush. So, it was on Viranyos utca--I didn't remember the name of
the street.

Eva Balogh

Forgive me if this doesn't belong here, please direct me ifI need more
appropriate area, or respond as you see fit.

As I read from this area, I'm acutely aware of the significant anniversary
to come.   Being so young, I have no experience with wars. And my mother
doesn't speak of that time...  My experience of "home" has been one of
peace, and loving people.

As a nieve?? greatful child of Hungarian herritage, I want to honor and
aknowledge this time... to my mother.... Is this something better left
unsaid???

Is there a group of peole united in the N.E. area?

With sincere thanx,
and respect,
KP

George Antony and Peter Hidas had the following exchange:

>>George Antony wrote:
>>> Russian invasion WAS inevitable [in 1956].
>
>Peter Hidas wrote:
>> In history few things are "inevitable. Moscow had several options in
>> October 1956. On October 30, in fact, they decided to recognize the Nagy
>> government. A major statement was issued the following day. China followed
>> suit. Decision to invade had been taken probably on the following day.
>> Decision reversed.
>
>Non sequitur.  Just because the hawks in the Soviet leadership were slow
>to wake up and there was some temporary confusion in the reaction, with
>hindsight it is clear that the invasion WAS inevitable.
>
>The proof to that is Czechoslovakia in 1968: even in a situation where
>international tension was much lower, with no other international crisis to
>distract the Western powers, in a country where the "socialist"
>system was much less threatened and where there was no bloodshed, the
>Soviet Union has invaded.  The only thing that made invasion in Cz more
>likely than in Hungary was the former's more strategic geographical
position,
>all the other factors made invasion less likely.  Sure, there was some
initial
>hesitation, more than in 1956, but the outcome was the same.
>


I am inclined to side with Peter Hidas. No, it wasn't inevitable. Just
because the Soviet Union didn't tolerate 1968 or the events in Poland ten
years later, that doesn't necessary mean that the Soviet response was
inevitable ten years earlier. Don't forget that we had a different cast of
characters in 1956: Khrushchev instead of Brezhnev, for example. I just read
a review of an article (appeared in Tortenelmi Szemle) about American foreign
policy concerning 1956. The American responses were based on wrong
assumptions about Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union which may have
contributed to Soviet reversal on the question of recognition of the Nagy
government. More about this article some other time.

Eva Balogh

Where are you?


I'm in Toronto and I have seen a copy at a local store recently. I also
have one myself but I'm not particularly crazy about it.


--

Zork (the) Hun
    X
   X X
 /_____

Liptak Bela in his reminicences wrote that the Israelis (together with the
British and the French) took advantage of the Hungarian uprising to attack
Egypt. Hidas Peter wrote that the Russians took advantage of the Suez crises
to attack Hungary. There seems to be a contradiction here. Which of the two
statements is true (or closer to the truth)?  Juhi

>Liptak Bela in his reminicences wrote that the Israelis (together with the
>British and the French) took advantage of the Hungarian uprising to attack
>Egypt. Hidas Peter wrote that the Russians took advantage of the Suez crises
>to attack Hungary. There seems to be a contradiction here. Which of the two
>statements is true (or closer to the truth)?  Juhi

The attack on Egypt was planned before 23 October 1956. There was an
agreement on provoking Egypt, Israel would attack and France and England
would go to the aid of the Israelis. The Hungarian
revolution was simply a convenient distraction.
Peter I. Hidas

Peter I. Hidas, Montreal

Eva Balogh wrote:

> I am inclined to side with Peter Hidas. No, it wasn't inevitable. Just
> because the Soviet Union didn't tolerate 1968 or the events in Poland ten
> years later, that doesn't necessary mean that the Soviet response was
> inevitable ten years earlier. Don't forget that we had a different cast of
> characters in 1956: Khrushchev instead of Brezhnev, for example.

Let's not make a white knight out of Khrushchev.  He may have been less brutal
than his predecessor, but he was just as Soviet in his outlook as his
successor.  His primary interest was to ensure that the SU survives, and the
existence of the tightly-controlled buffer states had been pivotal in Soviet
defence philosophy since WWII.

One must also take into consideration Khrushchev's position in the Soviet
power structure.  While the party boss is the most powerful person in a
Soviet-style system, he has no absolute powers.  As Khrushchev's own ouster
in 1964 has shown, if the politburo gangs up on him, he can be removed.
In 1956, Khrushchov had been in the supreme office for barely three years.
The removal of Stalin's men from the power structure took a fair portion of
these three years, hence he felt confident enough to hold his famous speech
only in this year.  It must have been obvious how much rancour the speech
and what it signalled would cause, and how much he would be attacked by the
orthodox section of the CPSU for his trouble.

Under such conditions, the last thing that he would have wanted to happen is
to be seen as weakening the SU's defence, just to be nice to some trouble-
some satellite nation.  Since Stalin, rightly or not, was considered in the
SU as the person who defended the country, the attacks on him from someone
who allowed the defence of the SU to be undermined would have been too much for
the political establishment.   In particular, allowing a one-time attacker on
the SU, directly bordering on the SU's granary, to go from an obedient buffer
state to neutrality or worse would have been fatal for Krushchev.  Hence, the
opportunity to demonstrate that he was keenly defending the SU externally even
though cutting back on the internal excesses of Stalinism was a clear godsend
for Khrushchev.

> I just read
> a review of an article (appeared in Tortenelmi Szemle) about American foreign
> policy concerning 1956. The American responses were based on wrong
> assumptions about Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union

Surprise, surprise

> which may have
> contributed to Soviet reversal on the question of recognition of the Nagy
> government. More about this article some other time.

Contributed: perhaps.  Determined: hardly.


Peter Hidas wrote:
> Whatever  happened in Czechoslovakia in 1868 had little to do with the
> decision in Moscow
> in 1956. The conservatives in the Kremlin were not always winning after
> 1953. As long the Soviet leaders trusted Imre Nagy, who actually called in
> the Red Army on October 24, 1956, there was a chance for the survival of
> the Nagy government and indirectly the revolution.

Exactly; as long as the Soviets could rest assured that Nagy would guarantee
the continuation of Soviet supremacy over Hungary, Nagy was safe.  However,
the events quickly proved that he could/would not even guarantee the personal
safety of members of the old establishment, let alone the monopoly power of
a Soviet-oriented Communist party.  I do not wish to buy into the debate
about the exact political orientation of the uprising, but it should be
agreed by all that the negation of Soviet domination was at the core.

> Only when Kadar and
> his supporters signalled that communist domination was over did Moscow took
> advantage that was offered by the Suez invasion. At that point, as you
> suggest, invasion did become inevitable. What we need, in fact, is the
> minutes of the Politburo.

The Soviets did not need Kadar to tell them the obvious.  There was sufficient
NKVD and overt Soviet dimplomatic presence in Hungary to suss out that Soviet
domination was fundamentally threatened.

All Kadar did was to give his name to the invasion that was, I repeat,
inevitable given the circumstances.

Hence, I would liken Kadar to Dr Faustus, not to Lucifer himself.

George Antony

1.      We demand immediate resignation of the government

2.      We demand termination of our bankloan-slavery. Lajos Bokros and
        Gyorgy Suranyi shall be removed from their posts immediately.
        Banks shall be screened if they squander public resources and
        those found guilty be punished

3.      Privatization shall be made public. Fraudulent transactions
        be made null and void. Those found responsible be punishe.

4.      The land of Hungary and its energy sector shall not be sold to aliens.

5.      We demand equitable, accountable and just sharing of public burden
        and there shall be a genuine market economy

6.      We demand economic, social, health-care and cultural policies that
        are aimed at the families and at the uplifting of our nation

7.      We demand proper representation in public life and economy of our youth

8.      We demand living conditions for our retired people that they deserve

9.      We demand a Hungarian National Television, a Hungarian National
        Radio and a decent Press serving Hungarians. We insist on our
Hungarian
        culture. We demand the appropriate support of "Duna Television".

10.     We demand a defense force able to protect our homeland. We demand a

        police force able to function efficiently toward restoring public
        safety. There shall be a national guard to protect us from
        organized crime.

11.     We demand an independent foreign policy to represent the true
        interests of our nation.

12.     We demand that Hungarian politics of all time shall support the
        granting of self-determination to those segments of our nation that
        have to live separate from us in the Carpathian Basin.

     *** THE INTEREST OF HUNGARIANS BE THE SUPREME LAW IN HUNGARY! ***

s difficult to listen and
now we are living apart.  There should be survival courses for
Westerners who must live
off the forint.
        But I am hopeful for a reconcilliation.  Have you ever noticed
how hopeful
Hungarians are?  In the long race, they never give up.  I bring Agi
two healthy meals a
day.  She had been eating cookies and magnum ice creams because she
had little time to
cook.  I help baby sit.  D_niel and I usually play in the fresh air of
the cemetary in the
shade of Hungarian giants in theartre, literature, the arts.  I really
mean it when I say my
blood pressure goes down if I play with D_niel.  He has a way of
soothing my soul.  Of
all things......his first words were Hungarian, while all we had
spoken was English.  He
must have roots in the Motherland from birth.  He is very advanced.
He can kick a ball
already, and he turns the light by the bed on or off to command.  So
he understands
English, too.
      Must turn lights OFF, OFF, good boy, clever boy, Dani.  Next
week I'll write you on
the latest from my E-mail yak-yak, a bulletin from Sillicon Valley
--"Hungary is Sueing
the World Bank and IMF."  I want to get to the bottom of the gossip on
this one.  It sounds
like a crank story, but who knows.  We have some cracker jacks in the
Forum and I am
sure I will be hearing from an Eva Balogh on this one.  The suit
assumes, I believe rightly,
that an expert is responsible for damages from his expert advice.
Much love...
Laci


--- MOMS 3.0

Kind readers,

I will be posting four short pieces called "Letters Home," from
Hungarian Radio about life in
 Hungary from the perspective of daily life --cost of living, child
rearing, Christmas memories etc.
My friends in the States say they give a more rounded perspective than
they can
get in conventional magazines or papers. They will air this month, but
I am enclosing them
in case you do not have short wave. I hope you find them enjoyable, as
well as in-
formative.

LPO

Dearest Gitta,
          Agi and I have separated.  It is true....I understand she
told you this already --what
she said to have you call me a LIAR, I just do not know, Gitta.  We
separated over money
problems.  The romance between us was quite strong, and our love
continues.  I see
D_niel daily and we go for long walks in Kerepesi Cemetary where we
are bound together
as infant son --named after the D_niel of the Old Testament, his
middle name after Uncle -
-a little robust boy and his father, coccooned by fresh air, bright
sushine, and the calm of
the dead.  D_niel pulls on the iron gates, closing off the section to
forgotten Russian
soldiers buried across heaving borders in a stange land......graves
decorated even now by
expensive, huge red flowers...... and the decor of strange engravings
for names few
Hungarians can read.
     Agi's and my problems are not at all unusual here.  The shortage
of money is critically
felt in the moment by moment transactions in life.  I do not make bad
money according to
Hungarian standards.....The average income.....well, around 22,000
forints per month.  I
bring home around thirty-five and Agi brings home another thiry from
Merlin.  Can you
imagine how much money that is, Gitta?  Sixty-five thousand
forints.....Over 20% of
Hungarians are below the poverty line of 13,000 forints.  But
still.....we just simply
couldn't make a go of it.  I eventually was reduced to writng down
every purchase in a
little notebook, when we finally decided the only place to save was on
the kitchen --food
and kitchen supplies, that's it.....we simply could not manage.....
including a sitter from
time to time, and the cost of utilities at an astounding  20,000
forints.  It's true.  I think I
told you that we could not get a phone.  Some people actually waited a
lifetime.  We tried
getting a phone even by way of a bribe, as had been recommended by our
landlady --the
one who collects the high hot water prices at 2000 forints per head.
We later learned that
the bribe was embarassingly small at 30,000 forints, so it was mailed
back with an
indignant note that the company was unbribable and we were to be
punished and our name
put at the end of the waiting list for phones.  So now we are
illegally hooked to another
line and have to pay a fee plus all expenses to the owner of the line.
 The neighbor,
Margit, said she would promise not to call her son in Australia.
Especially with the
brooding cackle of Hungarian mothers....that transcend heaving borders
and heaving seas,
I am sure she finds it tough temptation.  Tam_s, her son, just visited
here trying to resettle
and left in a huff.  So I guess temptation for Margit must be strong
not to be endlessly
beseeching even at the far corners of the globe.  A minute to the
States costs around $3.00,
three times that of call to Hungary, the other way around. Just our
phone costs around
15,000 forints a month.  Then take our hot water --2,000 forints per
head.....incLuding the
baby's LittLe curLy Locks.
       And all of this is in addition to the prices here.
Unimaginable, Gitta.  People have
repeated the cant so often that it is cheap to live in Hungary that it
only slowly comes to
awareness that......In fact......nearly everything is more expensive.
Agi's sister, Eva, sent
some Sunday advertisements and I was right.  From eggs to chicken,
averaging 1/4 more,
and some electric items double in price.  One WHOPPER for luxury --a
child
gate:Woolworth's $17, Erzs_bet Walk $150.
        The inserts from Becky were a real eye opener.  Do you
remember how father
always used to send us lists of prices from Budapest.  Remember how he
once got in
trouble when his mail was opened and he had claimed that a pair of
shoes was nearly a
month's salary --and that was without the bribe for the sales clerk to
find him the right size.
What a radical father was, bless his soul....A humanitarian during the
war, hero in 1956,
and then forced to ride the bus all day to work, and backagain, after
being court
marshalled. Well, I too, am tempted to leak such lists to the western
press.  Shoes are still
a month's salary!  Secret messages of  milk at $.66 a liter.  You get
it for $.45 a quart.
High profile new, canned beef here, $1.40 a can, in the states, $.56.
I feel so
good.....Such outcry...
       Agi and I made sinfully more money that the average Hungarian
and still, somehow,
we could not manage.  I think it was a matter of not being accustomed
to the extremeties
in belt tightening needed here.  Even men 100 kilos have wastes
strapped so tight they pass
for ballerinas.  One must do with the bare minimum.  I am learning
that I must always
decide in favor of essentials.....and forego most things that are
non-essential --especially,
restaurants and bars.  Twenty cent meals of spaghetti and butter, or
zsiros kenyer are back
to stay for me.  Father used to say that after such intense belt
tightening, the only place left
to save money was in the kitchen and so began our bouts with lard
sandwiches.  Do you
remember when I wrote about that?  They really weren't bad with some
seasoning and
yellow peppers but I am glad father tired of that ritual for lunch. I
just had some for
dinner.
        The simple fact is Agi and I could not adjust as Westerners
who had to live off the
forint.  And this led to stress, and stress led to arguments, and it
w