Posted on 09/20/2006 11:25:37 PM PDT by MadIvan
OTTÓ GYEPES still remembers when corpses rather than protest posters were dangling from the lampposts of Budapest. As Hungary’s “goulash revolt” entered its fifth day yesterday and bandana-wearing youths prepared for another night of arson, the country was trying to break free from its memories of the incomparably more brutal suppression of a revolution 50 years ago.
Hungary is in the grip of a kind of exorcism rather than a mere power struggle. “There were terrible scenes then,” said Mr Gyepes, who was a 24-year-old lorry driver when the Hungarians took to the streets against communism in 1956. “There were burnt-out cars everywhere and burnt people, thousands of dead people.”
No comparison, then, with what is going on now — “There is no bloody Soviet Army, that’s the difference,” he said. He shares with other Budapesters a sense of outrage, of betrayal by the political class: by its cynicism, open admission of trickery and the thin moral basis from which it demands financial sacrifice.
The terror of 1956 still colours protest. “My mother was scared about me coming here. It was the old fears rising up again,” said Csilla Németh, a 35-year-old teacher, speaking at a rally against the Government of Ferenc Gyurcsány, the Prime Minister, whose confession that he had lied to the electorate sparked off the protests.
Police have blamed right-wing football hooligans for much of the violence, in which buildings and police cars have been torched. In two days 140 officers have been injured and 137 arrests made as police used water cannon to break up rioting mobs. Late last night, as 15,000 protesters gathered in front of Parliament, there were fears of fresh riots.
Mr Gyurcsány threatened to crack down on further protests yesterday, although opposition parties are planning demonstrations in the next few days.
Ms Németh said: “My father encouraged me to come — he never joined the Communist Party in the old days, so he never got promoted. Now we all want a kind of justice.”
It is as if the whole country were demanding payment for a bill that has been unsettled for half a century. “Hungary is still fundamentally divided according to what your grandfather did in 1956 — was he for or against communism?,” Sebestyén Gorka, the executive director of the Institute for Transitional Democracy, said. “This protest shows that there is a hunger for new discussion — after all, it took 35 years for children in Chile to ask questions of their fathers.”
The anniversary of the Hungarian Uprising falls on October 23, and for the protesters that sets a kind of deadline. “Will the leaders in there,” Mr Gorka said, pointing to the Prime Minister’s office, “really be able to come out and represent Hungary on its most important day of commemoration in modern times? What kind of role model is presented by leaders who are caught in lies and who are not willing to take the consequences?”
For Mr Gyepes October 23, 1956, is still as vivid as ever. “We joined the crowd in Andrássy Street, hundreds of thousands of them, shouting ‘Russians go home!’ Then we arrived in Heroes’ Square and started to demolish the statue of Stalin.” Motorbike messengers screeched to a halt next to Mr Gyepes. “They yelled at us, ‘Students are being slaughtered at the radio station’.” Mr Gyepes later fled. He spent 42 years in exile, mostly in the US, before returning to what he thought was a new, democratic Hungary. Like most other Budapesters he disapproves of the hooligan violence.
Mr Gorka sees three outcomes from the crisis: that the ruling Socialist Party dumps the Prime Minister; that the coalition parties desert him; or that the goulash revolt gets spicier and forces new elections.
“That’s what has changed in 50 years,” Mr Gyepes said. “A Hungarian leader cannot fall back on the Soviet Army.”
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
Many thanks for the ping. You know where my heart is, on this topic. :-)
As I said last night, there won't be any Red army tanks coming to their rescue this time!
I like goulash : )
Too busy covering Anna Nicole Smith, etc.
Please keep us informed if you get information.
Thanks, Jan
bump
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