Borderland to Freedom

When Austria gets its independence, neighboring Hungary--once linked with Austria in the great Habsburg empire, but for the past 16 years a prisoner of various kinds of totalitarianism--will again have a 150-mile border with the free world.

The Russians are alert to the danger.

A month before their offer to settle the Austrian problem, they fired Hungary's Premier Imre Nagy, a "new course" man (TIME, March 21), and began an all-round tightening up of party and government discipline. Into the premiership last week went 40-year-old Andras Hegedus, who at 24 broke with his well-to-do farmer parents over his Communism and went off to Moscow. After a long talk with Russia's Nikita Khrushchev in 1953, he became

Hungary's Deputy Premier and Agriculture Minister. Ranking only thirteenth in the Politburo in 1951, his rise has been spectacular and he is now the youngest of the top Communist leaders. In his premiership speech, Hegedus laid down the new Moscow line for freedom-bordering Hungary: 1) tighter discipline for factory workers, 2) speedier Sovietization of agriculture, 3) mutual-assistance treaties with the Soviet Union and satellites. To back him up, Finance Minister Karoly Olt announced a 15% increase in police and security measures, and increased Hungary's defense budget. Toughness would be the ticket.

No mention was made of what would happen to the 30,000 Red army soldiers that Moscow keeps in Hungary on the excuse that they guard the supply route to its occupation forces in Austria. But few doubted that Russian soldiers would still be there, under some pretext or other, come freedom for Austria.

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