|
Hungary Reaction to Political Dissent
As with the constitutions of the other Warsaw Pact
countries,
Hungary's Constitution grants rights to citizens but
qualifies
these rights so that they are meaningless
(see Constitutional Development
, ch. 4). For example, Chapter VII, Article 64
of the
Constitution gives citizens freedom of speech, press, and
assembly, yet Section 54 states that citizens' rights
"shall be
exercised in accordance with the interests of socialism
and the
people" and that these rights "shall be inseparable from
the
fulfillment of the duties of citizens."
Nevertheless, from the 1970s well into the 1980s
Hungarians
had a wider latitude to criticize their government than
did other
East Europeans. But most Hungarians developed a
"self-censorship"
in which they avoided publicly discussing such sensitive
topics
as one-party rule and Hungary's relations with the Soviet
Union
and the other Warsaw Pact countries. Hungarians thus
generally
avoided problems with the state, while the state gave the
appearance of tolerating dissent.
The development of samizdat in the early 1980s provoked
a
severe government reaction. In June 1982, several samizdat
editors were subjected to police surveillance, and later
in the
year one was fined 4,000 forints (for value of the
forint--see Glossary),
about the average wage for one month at that
time, for
publishing without official permission. In the following
months,
the police began to subject others associated with
samizdat to
both "light" measures (denial of permission to travel
abroad,
periodic house searches, detention, fines, or employment
difficulties) to those of outright oppression (beatings or
imprisonment). The regime even used psychiatric methods
such as
closed wards and electric shock therapy against
dissidents. In
1987 dissidents were still subject to house searches, and
in 1988
they were still denied passports.
To stop the tide of unofficial publishing, the
government
passed Decree 49/1984 (XI.21), which required that all
duplicating machines and photocopiers be registered with
the
state, and Decree 4/1985 (VII20), which allowed police
surveillance and even expulsion from the country for those
persons whose political beliefs the government considered
a
danger to the Hungarian People's Republic, its social
order, or
public security. The authorities also punished official
publishers when magazines touched upon taboo subjects. For
example, in in 1983 the editor of Mozgo Vilag
(World in
Motion) lost his job for defying parlty directives. In
1986 the
editors of Tiszataj (Tisza Country) were ordered to
resign
because of articles in their journal describing the
horrible
situation of Hungarians living in Romania
(see Mass Media
, ch.
4).
Rock musicians also felt the state's wrath when their
music
did not meet official approval. During the mid-1980s, the
Committee of Hungarian Radio censored records and songs
because
they were not "optimistic enough" or because they referred
to
drugs or to "red, white, and green" (the colors of the
precommunist Hungarian flag).
Unauthorized street demonstrations were also harshly
punished
in the mid-1980s. In 1986 the police brutally broke up a
demonstration held on March 15 to commemorate Hungary's
declaration of independence from the Habsburg Empire in
1848.
Unofficial peace and environmental groups were also
harassed when
attempting to meet publicly.
However, political reforms of the late 1980s softened
the
government's view of dissent, although its behavior
remained
ambiguous. In October 1988, street demonstrations
commemorating
the revolution were tolerated, and a relatively free press
arose.
The government spoke openly about liberalizing its
passport law.
Yet a Miskolc court in 1988 handed an elderly, disabled
pensioner
a one-and-a-half-year suspended sentence for writing an
open
letter to the HSWP in which he criticized "domestic
conditions
and certain leaders." Legal sanctions resulting from
involvement
in the Revolution of 1956 were lifted for twelve people
but
remained for another fifty-four.
Hence, as of 1989 the government's record on dissent,
as with
other aspects of the reform of the national security
system, was
mixed. To be sure, regime leaders repeatedly announced
their
intent to reform, and, indeed, many important steps were
taken in
that direction. But as Hungarian dissident Miklos Haraszti
reminded his audience in 1989, Hungary was still "a
country with
powerful bureaucrats, with the same armed forces, and with
a
political police."
* *
*
Unfortunately, few English-language sources deal with
the
past and present Hungarian military. English-language
sources for
Hungarian military history are almost nonexistent outside
of the
few standard surveys of Hungarian history, such as Denis
Sinor's
History of Hungary. A notable exception is Bela K.
Kiraly's Hungary in the Late Eighteenth Century,
which
sets forth detailed information about the
Hungarian-Habsburg
military structure of that time. Peter Weiss's "The
Hungarian
Armed Forces Today" provided the most current information
at the
time of this writing. An excellent overview of the HPA
since
World War II is given by Ivan Volgyes in his article
"Hungary."
F. Rubin's "The Hungarian People's Army" is also useful
but
dated. For information about the HPA's force strengths and
weaponry, no source is better than the International
Institute
for Strategic Studies annual The Military Balance.
Radio
Free Europe occasionally produces articles that treat
Hungarian
military matters. Some translations produced by the Joint
Publications Research Service and the Foreign Broadcast
Information Service concern questions of Hungary's
national
security. (For further information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of September 1989
|
