The Bridge at Andau

by James A. Michener

  At this point it is appropriate to consider the meaning of this general strike. There had always been, during the three stages of the Hungarian revolution, a chance that Soviet propaganda might eventually turn a crushing moral defeat into a shabby victory. They could claim that reactionary forces had led the revolution. They could tell uncommitted nations in Asia and Europe that broken-down nobility had tried to engineer a coup d’état. They could and did point to Cardinal Mindszenty’s speeches as proof that the Church was about to seize control of Hungary. And they could claim, legalistically but spuriously, that a legitimate Hungarian government—the Janos Kadar puppet regime—had specifically invited them back into Hungary to put down a counterrevolution. They could also claim, spuriously, that under the terms of the Warsaw Pact of 1954 they were not only entitled but also obligated to return. Finally, in order to explain away the participation of students, writers, youths and workers in the actual fighting, they could, and had already begun to, feed out the official line that the students were impetuous, true, but underneath it all really dedicated communists; that the writers were nervous types who didn’t know what they were doing; that the youth were misled by evil adults; whereas the workers acted on the spur of the moment out of hot-headed but understandable patriotism. I regret to say that such excuses would probably be accepted in India, parts of France, parts of Italy and Indonesia, where they would accomplish great harm.

  But no propaganda, no matter how skillfully constructed, can ever explain away the coldly rational, unemotional strike of the Csepel men. It was conceived by workers, and by workers in heavy industry. It was carried out without the aid of writers, students or churchmen. Of greatest importance was its duration and determination, proving that it was neither hastily conceived nor emotionally operated.

  The Csepel strike was a solemn announcement to the world that the men whom communism is most supposed to aid had tried the system and had found it a total fraud. Most of the leaders of this Csepel strike were members of the communist party. They had known it intimately for ten years and had, in some cases, even tried to help direct it along the promised channels. There was not, so far as I can find, a single excited intellectual or daring philosopher of freedom involved in this strike.

  This was communism itself, rejecting itself. This was a solemn foretaste of what communists in India or Italy or France or Indonesia would themselves conclude if they ever had the bad luck to live under the system. This was, for Soviet communism, a moral defeat of such magnitude that it cannot be explained away.

  When the world propagandists for communism have explained everything to their satisfaction, how will they explain the fact that of 15,000 workers in one Csepel area, only forty remained true to the system? How will they explain the fact that the other workers fought Soviet tanks with their bare hands? And how will they explain the behavior of a man like Gyorgy Szabo, who, when there was no hope of further resistance, was willing to stand forth as the leader of a general strike against the Soviet system?

  For example, what sensible man, knowing the facts of Budapest, could possibly accept the following explanation which the trade unions of Soviet Russia offered to fellow workers in Europe as an excuse for the massacre of a city? “You know, dear comrades, that Soviet troops upon the request of the Hungarian government came to its help in order to crush the counterrevolutionary forces and in order to protect the basic interests of the Hungarian people and peace in Europe. The Soviet armed forces could not remain aloof because to do so would not only have led to further bloodshed but would have also brought tremendous damage to the cause of the working class. The Soviet trade unions wish to bring to your attention the fact that the Soviet army has never fought for an unjust cause.”

  When such lies became intolerable to the man of Csepel, and when the puppet government dared to announce that all the trouble in Budapest had been caused by discredited members of the nobility who were trying to impose their will upon the simple communist workers, Gyorgy Szabo and his men could stomach the nonsense no further. They had posters made which announced, “THE 40,000 NOBLEMEN OF CSEPEL, EACH WITH A CASTLE NEAR THE RAKOSI METAL WORKS, AND WITH NUMEROUS SERVANTS, DEFY THE GOVERNMENT.”

  Then, to make their intention crystal clear, they announced, “We have mined the buildings in Csepel and if you try to take them over or to make us work, we will blow them to pieces.”

  The importance of the resistance in Csepel did not lie, however, in the unparalleled heroism of the workers. Rather it lay in the slow and methodical manner in which it was conducted. The world had time to hear of it and could marvel at the total rejection of communism voiced by these men of communism. Had there been no strike, the Soviets could have argued, as indeed they tried, that although there had been an unfortunate uprising, no real workmen were involved. If the revolution had ended abruptly or in obscurity, any reasonably logical interpretation could have been promulgated in Rome and Paris and New Delhi. But with men like Gyorgy Szabo doggedly striking, and in the very teeth of communism, day after day until the stoppage lasted a month, and then on into the second month—that could not be brushed aside as accidental. As this book goes to press, toward the end of January, 1957, the methodical, unemotional workers of Csepel are still showing the world what they think of communism. They have now entered their fourth month of protest.

  In my recent life I have witnessed many brave actions—in war, in Korea, in municipal riots, and one which I shall speak of later when I write of the bridge at Andau—but I have never seen anything braver than the quiet, calculated strike of the men of Csepel. I have long suspected that raw courage, like that required for blowing up a tank, is largely a matter of adrenalin; if a man gets a strong enough surge of it he can accomplish amazing feats, which the world calls courage. But courage such as the workers’ committees of Csepel exhibited is not a matter of adrenalin, it is based on heart and will. Voluntarily these men signed manifestoes, although they knew that their names were being collected by the Russians. Without protesting they permitted themselves to be photographed, although they could be sure that these photographs would be filed and used to identify strikers for later retaliation. They were willing to stand forth undisguised and to demonstrate their contempt for their Soviet masters. I call that the ultimate in courage.

  On November 22, when the strike was at its height, Gyorgy Szabo returned home from an exhausting meeting in which he had publicly argued for a continuation of the strike “no matter what the Russians do.”

  As soon as he entered his grubby home he realized that his wife was distraught. “Gyorgy,” Mrs. Szabo said in a trembling voice. “The Farkas boy was deported last night.”

  “Sooner or later we’ll all be deported,” he said, sinking into a chair.

  Mrs. Szabo twisted her hands nervously, then blurted out, “I think we ought to escape with the children to Austria.”

  Gyorgy said nothing. Dropping his head into his hands he tried to think. For some days he had known that this question was going to come up, and twice he had forestalled discussion of it. Now he said bluntly, “I’m a Hungarian, not an Austrian.”

  His wife’s voice rose in both pitch and intensity. “I am too. But I can’t bring my children up in Hungary.”

  “This is my home,” Szabo argued stubbornly.

  “Gyorgy,” his wife pleaded, her voice growing urgently gentle. “They need men like you in Austria. Today the BBC said America was taking refugees.”

  “I don’t want America—” he began.

  His reply was interrupted by a terrible scream. Mrs. Szabo had risen from her chair, her hands in her hair, and was shouting hysterically, “I can’t live here any longer! I can’t live here and listen with dread for fear an auto will stop outside our house at night and the police—” She fell back into her chair and sobbed, “Gyorgy, in a few days they’ll take you away.”

  One of the children, hearing his mother’s screams, had come into the room. “You must put your clothes on,” Mrs. Szabo said in grimly ex
cited tones. “And tell your brothers to put theirs on, too.”

  Gyorgy Szabo, the good communist, the trusted worker in heavy industry so dear to communism, looked stolidly at his wife. There was no arguing with her now, so he stalked into the cold night air.

  The scenes about him were familiar and warm. This was his Csepel. He had defended it against capitalists, against Nazis and against the Russians. He had grown up here as a boy and had grown to love the sprawling buildings and the things they produced. This factory in the darkness, he had helped to build it, helped to protect it against the Soviet tanks. Within its ugly walls he had known much comradeship and happiness. This was a good island and a good land. Maybe things would work out better … later on.

  A car’s lights showed in the distance, and instinctively he drew into the shadows, for under communism an auto meant danger. Only the police and the party bosses had automobiles, and such men usually meant trouble. Flashing its spotlight here and there, the car approached and Gyorgy could see the glistening rifles of police on the prowl. He remained very silent and they failed to spot him. Slowly the car went about its duty, and in the darkness Szabo acknowledged finally how terrified he was.

  “I was afraid,” he admitted later. “For many years I had been living in a world of bleak hopelessness. I had no chance of saving for things I wanted to buy. No chance at all. But worse was the emptiness inside. All the big promises that I had lived on as a boy were gone. Not one thing the communists had promised had ever been fulfilled. You can’t understand how awful it is to look into a hopeless future. At the start of the revolution lots of us were brave, but do you know why? Because we didn’t care whether we lived or died. Then we had a few days of hope, and we spoke of a new, honest system, but when the Russians came back I knew the bleak days would start again. That time I was brave because I didn’t give a damn about Siberia. It couldn’t be any worse than Csepel, because in Siberia you admit you’re in prison. That’s why, when I hid in the shadows afraid of the automobile and heard my wife’s screaming in my ears, I finally said, ‘If there’s a better life in Canada or Australia, I’ll go.’ I was afraid.”

  A man who had destroyed tanks by spraying them with gasoline from a hose, a man who had stood forth as the announced leader of the strike, beat his face with his hands and said, “I was afraid.”

  Using only the shadows, he turned to his home, where he found his wife and the three boys bundled up in all the warm clothes they could muster. Mrs. Szabo was no longer crying, for she had made up her mind to leave Budapest this night and walk to the Austrian border whether her husband joined her or not—to do anything to escape the terror under which her children had been living and would live for the rest of their lives if they remained in Budapest.

  Szabo looked at his wife, reached for his own heavy clothes and said, “We’ll leave right away.”

  So Gyorgy Szabo and his family left Hungary. They carried with them one small handbag of food for their children. After ten years of dedicated service to communism this gifted workman had as his worldly possessions one small bag of food and a legacy of fear. When he fled from Csepel to the mainland and then across the bridge from Pest into Buda, he did not bother to look back on the beauty of Pest, for he knew that it had been destroyed.

  8

  A Poem of Petofi’s

  Of every hundred Russian tanks burned up in the streets of Budapest, about eighty-five were destroyed by young people under the age of twenty-one.

  To appreciate the staggering impact of this fact, one must understand what the life experience of a twenty-year-old Hungarian youth had been. Born in 1936, such a child would have known no politics until the age of five, at which time the dislocations of World War II hit Hungary and life became a perpetual crisis. At eight the child experienced the rigors of Nazi occupation and at ten entered the relative calm of communism.

  It is important to remember this, for a twenty-year-old Hungarian could not, like some of his elders, look back nostalgically upon a happier world. His early years had been spent amid deep uncertainties, and communism brought security. In his early years he knew hunger, but communism brought food. In addition, since communist theoreticians based their state on the belief that a child properly indoctrinated will never defect from the system, communism made great efforts to ingratiate itself with children. More effort was spent on them than upon any other segment of the population, and children had every opportunity to become familiar with communism and to love it.

  For example, a ten-year-old boy was allowed to join the Hungarian equivalent of the Russian Pioneers, in which he was given a red scarf and two hours of indoctrination a week, long talks about how wonderful it would be to live in Russia, and free passes to propaganda movies. Many things which his family could neither afford nor find, like chocolate candies and oranges, would be freely distributed by the communists, always with the injunction, “This comes from your good friends, the Russians.”

  At fourteen he joined the Hungarian equivalent of the Soviet Komsomol, in which he studied the theory of communism. Special emphasis was placed on hating the west, and his instructors assured him that one day he would have to protect sacred Hungarian soil from American fascists who were waiting in Austria to destroy Hungary.

  Soon he moved into the Freedom Fighters Association, where he studied intensively such exciting subjects as military drill, how to use a revolver, how to break down a long rifle, and how to read a map. His instructors said, “You must know these things in order to destroy the American invaders.” Hating the west was a major requirement in this course, but there were also pleasant occupations like singing military songs and marching in formation. Promising boys, who proved that they hated the west and were ready to lay down their lives fighting America, were given a special course: how to destroy an American tank with homemade gasoline bombs.

  There were less grim subjects, like airplanes, camping, and sports, but even the last category provided training in such skills as target practice with a military gun, driving a military truck in combat, and fighting off paratroop landings. The future communist was taught that all Hungarian strength came from its friendship with the Soviet Union. One handbook described the aims of the youth organization as: “The education of the coming generation and of all working people in the principles of socialist patriotism, of devotion and love toward the Hungarian communist party, and of boundless loyalty toward the great Soviet Union in the spirit of militant revolutionary vigilance and battle preparedness.” A young man who did not rely upon the Soviet Union altogether was held to be a dangerous youth who would bear watching by the AVO.

  But it was in school that the pressure of communist propaganda became intense. In every class a boy’s teachers were required to indoctrinate him in communism. They gave lectures about the glory of Russia and instruction in the communist history of Hungary. They took their students to march in communist parades, to see propaganda movies and to protest against American imperialism. The teachers praised what communism said should be praised and damned its supposed enemies. From the first grade through the last, no child could escape this pressure.

  It was not applied by all teachers, for many were to prove themselves extraordinary heroes in the revolution, but rather by a few fanatics who were planted in each school by the AVO and who reported upon every fellow teacher to the secret police. Thus a teacher who might in his heart hate communism was nevertheless required by fear of these perpetual spies to indoctrinate his pupils with hatred of Britain and America and an unreasoning trust in Russia.

  One thing absolutely required of each teacher was that he keep prominently posted in his classroom three huge portraits of communist leaders. Marx, Lenin and Stalin were most popular, but some nationalist-minded teachers would use Lenin, Stalin and Rakosi. School children universally called these portraits “The Holy Trinity,” and there was confusion throughout the schools when Stalin’s huge portrait had to be hurriedly taken down, to be followed briefly by round-face Malenkov and
then by pudgy Khrushchev. Maps were skillfully drawn so as to magnify the glories of communism and emphasize the weaknesses of democracy.

  It was in textbooks, however, that the communists showed their greatest ingenuity. A geography book would accord Russia seventy-five per cent of its pages, and compress the decadent nations into the remaining twenty-five per cent. One atlas, reviewing World War II, summarizes the military contributions of England and America under the heading, “Breaches by the Anglo-Americans of Their Obligations as Allies.” Another heading reads, “Advances by the Anglo-American Armies in Second-Rate and Unimportant Theaters of War.” And in explaining how Japan was defeated, the only American achievements shown are minor victories at Midway and the Solomons in the early stages of the war. The final crushing of Japan was brought about, of course, by Russian armies.

  One of the most significant changes took place in the attitudes of students toward each other. “You must report any actions that might be harmful to the communist state,” students were constantly warned. As a result, no student was safe from the revenge of his fellows, for although most Hungarian students refused to spy upon their mates, there were always one or two who had been corrupted or dragooned by the AVO and sometimes their identity was not known, so that one had to be careful of everyone.

  Most dreadful were the occasional cases in which a son would gain approval by informing upon his parents’ love for religion or persistence in old-fashioned ideas. AVO teachers held this to be the apex of good communist behavior.

  Under AVO scrutiny, the school became a potential trap for every household. Teachers would ask their students, “Does your father keep a picture of Comrade Stalin in your home?” “What radio station does your mother like best?” “Does your father think that Comrade Rakosi is always right?” “Does your mother ever take you to religious meetings at night?”