I RECALL a visit made to Eastern Europe some time ago. On returning, a CPGB member insisted that my observations could not possibly have been true! How easy is it, therefore, to understand Peter Fryer's experience in a book reprinted after 30 years.
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was particularly traumatic for those members of the CP who had to face up to events in Hungary. None more so than Peter Fryer, correspondent during the uprising in Hungary of the CP's paper, Daily Worker.
Fryer wrote what he saw. That truth was impossible for the British Stalinists who censored or omitted Fryer's despatches from the Daily Worker. No censorship could prevent the crisis of Stalinism highlighted by the Hungarian revolution, seen again in a different form in Czechoslovakia and Poland.
Such a slim volume cannot be expected to detail all the background to the uprising. Yet, the book reports most of the essential ingredients that precipitated the uprising — mainly discontent and the inability of the regime to advance any reforms and maintain control. In particular we are told of the hate for the AVH — the secret police and how ruthlessly they were dealt with.
As Daily Worker readers were told of 'counter-revolution', Fryer saw that in town after town there was no drive to restore capitalism. Instead we hear of democratic workers councils meeting in the towns and on the farms. Political revolution was on the agenda — Hungary was cleansing itself of its Stalinist bureaucracy.
Fryer understandably but wrongly characterised these developments as dual power 'divided between the Nagy government which had popular support of the people and the armed people themselves'. Unfortunately the Nagy government had no strategy. The armed people trusted Nagy and reform coming from above and therefore in that sense didn't take up the question of power. The workers councils did not develop into organs of state power. Nagy, being part of the bureaucracy, brought in during the crisis, could not provide that strategy. Dual power only has meaning if the bureaucracy was to be overthrown.
Despite the inability of this book to draw conclusions in relation to tasks facing the proletariat in deformed workers states, time has not devalued its valuable contribution and it is well worth reading.
• Hungarian Tragedy by Peter Fryer is published by New Park at £2.95.