Iron Curtain

by Anne Applebaum

  Nine months later, in October 1947, Mikołajczyk slipped out of Poland, made his way to the British zone of Germany, and flew to England. He said he had been covertly warned that he was at risk of immediate arrest. Though the British seemed to treat him as a mild hysteric, he was probably right. His Bulgarian counterpart, Nikola Petkov, the leader of the opposition Agrarian Party, had been arrested, tried, and executed in the summer of 1947. His Hungarian counterpart, Ferenc Nagy, leader of the opposition Smallholders’ Party, had been blackmailed into exile at about the same time. The PSL lived on in name, in the form of the phony “shadow” party created for the 1947 elections, but played no further role in real politics, and after its demise there would be no authentic legal political opposition to the communist party in Poland for more than thirty years.40

  In truth, the Polish communist party’s electoral failure could not have been totally unexpected, at least in Moscow: Stalin had few illusions about the political allegiances of the Poles. But the Soviet Union had much greater faith in the electoral appeal of communist parties elsewhere. In eastern Austria, where the Red Army was still stationed, he thought the communist party might perform well in autumn elections, and there were high hopes for Romania too. But nowhere were expectations raised higher than in Budapest.

  Indeed, the Hungarian communist party was absolutely confident of its success in the first postwar national elections, the first truly free and fair poll in Hungarian history. Full suffrage was extended to women, peasants, and the uneducated for the first time.41 Campaigning was open, conducted in the press and in public. Six parties put up candidates, each on a separate list: the Smallholders’ Party, a party that was, as noted, quite similar in its sociology and its philosophy to the Polish PSL; the social democrats; the communist party; and three smaller parties.

  Mátyás Rákosi personally expected a major triumph. Unemployment and discontent were such that it was easy to get angry, aggressive-sounding crowds out into the streets, and the party did so as often as possible. Across the country communist leaders staged mass demonstrations, shouted slogans, and put up posters. So overwhelming was their presence on the streets of Budapest that Rákosi confidently predicted victory for the left-wing coalition—the communist party plus the social democrats—even in the Budapest municipal elections that were held several weeks before the national poll. Together, the two left-wing parties would win “maybe 70 percent or maybe even more,” he told the Central Committee. General Voroshilov, then the highest-ranking Soviet officer in Hungary as well as the head of the Allied Control Council, suspected Rákosi was exaggerating, and complained to Molotov that the communist leader was overfond of mass demonstrations.42 True, Rákosi could get 300,000 people on the streets, but he had “not even begun meticulous educational work among his members.” Voroshilov also felt Rákosi wasn’t “focused” enough on the economy—a euphemistic way of saying that his economic policies were already beginning to fail.43

  Inside his party, few dared contradict Rákosi. Jenő Széll, who then worked in the communist party’s propaganda office (and in 1956 rebelled against communist rule), was put in charge of managing election propaganda in the town of Pápa, in western Hungary. In advance of the vote, Széll was invited to a regional meeting to report on progress. As he listened to one glowing account of mass support after another, he began to worry: “Everybody reported that the communist party is well ahead, the two workers’ parties will get an absolute majority … And I said to myself, ‘You unfortunate Széll, either you join the crowd and lie, or you tell the truth and get into trouble.’ ”44

  Széll screwed up his courage and an1swered honestly. He told the assembled activists that the left-wing coalition had little support in Pápa. The Smallholders’ Party was very strong there, and might even win an outright majority (as it eventually did). Rákosi dismissed this information, declaring that Comrade Széll was misled, that he had met only with reactionaries, that propaganda would be increased in Pápa, that the public would be brought around. Eventually, Comrade Széll would see that everything would be all right.

  But everything was not all right. The first shock came on Budapest’s municipal election night, October 7, 1945. As the results were read out, the communists learned that the Smallholders had received more than 50 percent of the vote. Rákosi, “pale as a corpse, sank into the chair without saying a word.” The national elections on November 4 went no better. As the results came in to party headquarters, Széll saw one senior communist “going white, going blue, going green, his lips becoming gray.” The counterrevolution was coming, the man declared, stumbling out of the room: “The White Terror will follow.”45 Rákosi, perhaps better prepared this time, reacted with more confidence. He entered the room, as Széll also remembered, “with a great smile, saying, ‘What news, comrades?’ ”

  We told him gloomily what news, and showed him the results. “Come on, comrades,” he said, “these are just a few districts, a few rotten reactionary districts, don’t be fooled by these results” … I realized then what a politician he was … He was completely aware of the fact that it was a total failure, but he played his role perfectly. He said he would go home, sleep, and “you comrades prepare a full overall report of the results by 6 a.m. tomorrow.” Good work, he said, and left, seemingly in a happy mood … I am convinced that the leadership started immediately meetings to find out how to correct the failure.46

  The Smallholders had won hands down, with 57 percent of the vote. The socialist party came second, with 17.4 percent. The communist party finished a dismal third, with 16.9 percent.

  Though they had suspected Rákosi’s optimism was exaggerated, the Soviet authorities in Budapest were alarmed by the scale of this defeat, and they looked for scapegoats. In his report back to Moscow, Major Tugarev of the Red Army’s political department blamed “the economic situation of the country”—inflation, coal shortages—as well as the “right-wing leaders” who had somehow contrived to make the communists responsible for these failings. He accused the Smallholders of using anti-Soviet slogans and violence, and dwelled at some length on the perfidious behavior of Cardinal József Mindszenty, primate of the Hungarian Catholic Church. Clearly, Tugarev feared the Red Army would be blamed—thefts, rapes, and deportations had taken their toll—and that there might be consequences for himself. Hungarians, he claimed, had “provoked” Soviet soldiers into bad behavior. They had given alcohol to soldiers, sent the soldiers to loot houses, and then taken the looted goods in exchange for food and more alcohol. The communist party, because of its close links to the Soviet Union, was then held responsible.47

  Voroshilov pointed more forthrightly at his allies. He told Stalin that the Hungarian communist party had been infiltrated by “criminal elements, careerists, and adventurers, people who previously supported fascists, or were even members of fascist organizations.” More to the point, Voroshilov explained somewhat euphemistically, “It is detrimental to the party that its leaders are not of Hungarian origin.” By this, he of course meant that there were too many Jews.48 Within a few years, Rákosi would unleash waves of terror against precisely the same scapegoats identified in Voroshilov’s report: the Smallholders’ Party, Mindszenty, the Church, and the Jewish communists, or at least some of them.

  Briefly, the Smallholders did try to benefit from their victory. Zoltán Tildy, the Smallholders’ Party leader, and Ferenc Nagy, now the speaker of the parliament, told Rákosi that the Smallholders wanted half the seats in the new cabinet—only reasonable since they had won more than half the votes—and that the other half should be divided among the other parties. They also tried to take the Interior Ministry away from the communists and put at least some of its functions under their own control.

  They lost both arguments. Voroshilov—acting under the instructions of Molotov in Moscow—told Rákosi to inform Tildy and Nagy that although the communists had received only some 17 percent of the vote, that 17 percent represented the working class, the “most active force in the co
untry.” Moreover, “the heavy burden of restoring the economy lies on the shoulders of the working class,” and thus the working class deserved a much larger role in government. Aside from that, he explained, Tildy and Nagy needed to understand that “Hungary is in a special situation. Although a defeated country, Hungary has, thanks to the greathearted Soviet Union, received the opportunity to rapidly rejuvenate itself on a democratic basis.” A strong presence of the working class in the new parliament was a “guarantee that Hungary would fulfill its obligations to the Soviet Union.”49

  In normal circumstances, no democratically elected political party would have paid any attention to such menacing nonsense. But by November 1945, Father Kiss had been arrested. The memory of the Red Army’s mass arrests was still fresh. The police had already begun to eliminate the youth groups, and communist propaganda had infiltrated the radio. The Soviet advisers were angry—and Tildy gave in. The communists received the interior ministry—one of their stars, László Rajk, now became interior minister—and Rákosi became deputy prime minister. Tildy became prime minister but held the job only until February, when he was replaced by Nagy.

  After that, the Smallholders’ Party began to unravel with impressive speed. Under constant pressure, its leadership made one mistake after another. In the following months the communists formed temporary coalitions with the other parties, attacking first one Smallholder politician or faction and then the next, using mass demonstrations as well as harsh language in its newspapers and on the radio. In early March, the left-wing coalition organized a media campaign and then a huge demonstration calling for the expulsion of “reactionary elements” from the Smallholders’ Party. Two days later, Nagy caved in and expelled these “reactionaries” to appease the mob. Later, another Smallholder faction, led by Dezső Sulyok, decided to carve itself off and rename itself the Hungarian Independence Party. Sulyok hoped to distance his colleagues from Tildy and Nagy, who had now become hate figures in the left-wing media yet were regarded as weak by their own colleagues. The arrests of Smallholder sympathizers, including the members of the former antifascist resistance and the youth leaders, accelerated throughout 1946.

  In the autumn, cryptic rumors of an impending police investigation began to circulate. At first covertly, then publicly, the newspapers, politicians, and finally the Soviet authorities in Hungary accused Béla Kovács, the party’s general secretary and a close friend of Nagy, of plotting a coup. After the Soviet ambassador described Kovács openly as a “conspirator,” Rákosi advised Nagy to sack him. But Kovács departed for a “vacation” in the country and the Hungarian police took their time about arresting him. And so the Red Army military authorities stepped in on February 26, 1947, and arrested Kovács themselves: “In his own house, they read to him the Military Commander’s order for his arrest; they searched the house, confiscated his files and took him away.”50 Kovács would remain in the Soviet Union, in prison, for eight years.

  Slice by slice, the Smallholders’ Party was then whittled away with “salami tactics,” as they later became known. After Kovács disappeared, others began to go voluntarily. Leaders of the Smallholders’ Party and of the other two legal noncommunist parties slipped out of the country one by one. In May 1947, Nagy himself joined them, though it has never been clear whether or not he really meant to leave. Somewhat curiously, he chose that politically tense moment, when his party was unraveling and his colleagues were disappearing into exile, to take a vacation. Equally curiously, he took his wife, but left his young son behind. Having extracted a dubious promise from Rákosi not to enact any new nationalization legislation in his absence, Nagy drove to Switzerland, ostensibly to examine Swiss methods of agriculture (“It was not my plan to loaf in fashionable resorts,” he explained in his memoirs).

  Almost as soon as he’d left the country, Nagy received a series of phone calls from Budapest, first ordering him to return and then warning him not to. His secretary was under arrest; he was being investigated for taking part in a conspiracy; he might not reach Budapest if he tried to get there, and “it is also possible that some misfortune might happen en route,” perhaps at the border. “Don’t take the situation so lightly,” Rákosi warned, when Nagy furiously called the conspiracy accusation “a filthy concoction.” After several days of agony, Nagy finally chose exile. He wrote a letter of resignation, which he handed over in exchange for his son: “At last, holding my child in my arms, I handed the Communist emissary my letter of resignation, the document they wanted so badly, to make their coup d’état ‘legal.’ ”51

  With Nagy out of the way—and with more politicians fleeing in his wake—the elections of 1947 were a foregone conclusion. Even so, the communists weren’t taking any chances. In advance of the vote, they struck thousands of people off the electoral rolls, not only “enemies” but friends and relatives of enemies, as well as people who had just returned from POW camps. During a campaign meeting in July, one leading activist laid out the party’s intentions plainly. Overall, he hoped to exclude some 700,000 or 800,000 voters. “Comrades,” he explained, “you should not be too law-abiding … We have to use whispering propaganda to disseminate that idea that the social democrats will merge with the communists after the elections. We must also spread the rumor that villages where the communist party wins a majority will have extra economic aid from the government.”52

  Others suggested that activists should “forget” to give registration documents to certain voters. In his district, Jenő Széll made sure that the communist party had the number one place on the ballot by asking a “trustworthy lady” to choose the party’s name out of a hat during a supposedly neutral selection process (the card was folded differently). Still others organized gangs of thugs to disrupt the meetings of other parties. Dezső Sulyok, now the leader of the Hungarian Independence Party, remembered what happened when he tried to speak at a public meeting:

  Loud shouting started: “Throw him out of the window! Beat him to death! Hang him! Traitor!” … When finally it was my turn, the attack of the crowd intensified. Since I could not say a word in that noise … we stood up and started to sing the papal anthem, part of the crowd started to swear; others were singing the “Internationale.” This was the chance for our escape. While the crowd was standing and singing the “Internationale,” we quickly left the podium … The crowd, however, noticed us and started to shout once again, “Don’t let them out, keep them back, throw them out of the windows …”

  Later he complained to the interior minister, Rajk, who was not sympathetic. “As a communist,” Rajk told him, “I can tell you that if it was up to me you would be all killed.”53 Sulyok soon fled the country too.

  By voting day, August 31, 1947, some 500,000 people had been eliminated from the voting rolls, about 8.5 percent of all voters. Another 300,000 never showed up, possibly because they were too intimidated. Just to be certain, the communists carried out one final fraud: they distributed tens of thousands of extra, blue-colored ballots to special voting brigades—allegedly these were voters not in their home districts because of a “vacation”—which raced from district to district casting multiple ballots. The brigades made little secret of what they were doing. They rode in Hungarian army trucks and even Soviet vehicles, laughing and singing, dashing from village to village, apparently happy to take part in this theatrical farce.54

  Inside the country there were a few protesters. One of them was Sára Karig, a member of the Social Democratic Party since 1943 and of the anti-Nazi resistance since 1944. As a friend and colleague of the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, Karig had helped hundreds of Hungarian Jews escape the ghetto, acquire false papers, hide their children in orphanages, and leave the country. She had also helped Hungarian communists acquire false papers. (Her Budapest apartment, in one recollection, had been a “birth certificate factory.”) After the war she remained politically active and in 1947, still a social democrat, she was named head of the election office of one of the central districts of Budapest.
In that capacity, she set up an informal telephone line designed to keep in touch with voting stations throughout the district, the better to keep track of how many people were voting. By the end of the day, she knew there had been fraud. She reported several cases of double voting to the police. The fraudsters—all communist party members—were arrested, then almost immediately released.

  On the following day Karig herself was arrested. She was picked up on the street without warning, dragged into a black Soviet limousine, and driven immediately to the Red Army’s headquarters in Baden, near Vienna. She was kept in custody for three months, interrogated and tortured, accused of spying, and finally told that although there were no charges against her, she was being expelled from the country as an “obstacle to Hungary’s democratic process.” She eventually wound up in Vorkuta, one of the most distant Soviet Gulag camps. Back in Budapest, her friends, family, and party colleagues were given no information about her. Rákosi and Rajk denied any knowledge of her whereabouts. Even the Soviet authorities in Budapest innocently said they knew nothing—perhaps she had emigrated to the West?

  Karig returned home only in 1953, after Stalin’s death.55 In the meantime, the suppression of Karig’s protest had been successful: within a year, the Hungarian government had dropped all real pretenses of parliamentary democracy. The Hungarian communist party ruled alone.

  Like their counterparts across the bloc, Ulbricht and his entourage believed the left could and would win a popular vote in Germany. In September 1945, Wilhelm Pieck wrote confidently that Germany’s workers not only “understand that Hitler [has led] to disaster” but also understood that the Soviet Union would ensure “strong growth and prospects for G[ermany].” Therefore, they would favor politicians who were close to the Soviet Union. A few months later, Pieck also argued that elections would certainly produce victory for “a proletarian regime.”56