Dominate or Be Destroyed

Out of the chaos of Hungary's first "five days of freedom," when everybody could plainly see that the Communists had no true strength anywhere in the country, sprang a new kind of organization, the "workers' councils." They were modeled on Communist Tito's workers' guilds. Their leaders were untrained in rebellion and unskilled in maneuver, but their strength was that they could genuinely claim to speak for the people. Ever since the Russians put Puppet Janos Kadar on the throne, he has sought by persuasion, threat and promise to undermine the workers' councils. He understood clearly, as did they, that he must dominate them, or be himself destroyed. Last week the test began in earnest.

In a month of hasty organization, the workers' councils were able to form a central executive, called the Central Workers' Council, with headquarters on the fifth floor of a building in Budapest's Stalin Square. Here, a fortnight ago, Chairman Sandor Racz, a radio and telephone-equipment worker, his second in command, Sandor Bari, and eight other members of the executive considered a sinister resolu tion passed by Radar's stooge Communist Party. The workers' councils, said

Kadar's men, were being used to take power away from legal branches of government and "must be stopped by arms." "This is a declaration of war against the workers," said one council member.

"Come Around." The Central Council decided to call a 48-hour protest strike. There was only one way the council could notify the scores of widely separated factory councils, without also tipping off the police: by radio. There were no longer freedom radio transmitters in Hungary, but the Central Council left, in a place where it knew members of the foreign press corps would pick it up, a resolution calling for a general strike. Then it went into hiding, trusting that the foreign correspondents would get the story out, and that Radio Free Europe, the Voice of America and the BBC would bounce it back into Hungary so that every factory council would hear it.

Unfortunately, the police got word of the coming strike. Kadar slapped martial law on the country, cut off all outgoing telephone circuits. Then he quietly took over the Central Council telephones in their headquarters. Factory and council representatives, mystified by rumors, called up asking, "What's the decision?" Kadar's men replied: "Can't tell you on the phone. Come around." One by one the factory-council representatives were arrested.

Then a break came. On a routine call from another satellite capital, Reuters news agency got through to Budapest by accident, picked up the strike story. All that day the world's free radio stations boomed the Central Council's strike resolution into Hungary. Next morning there was a complete general strike.

In the big industrial towns of Gyor,

Debrecen, Dunapentele and Szolnok, no wheel turned. The coal mines were deserted. At Salgotarjan 80 people were killed when police fired into a crowd of 10,000 workers who demanded the release of their workers'-council representative. But the most serious disturbances were at Miskolc, near the Czech border. Following a raid by Freedom Fighters who came down from the Bukk Mountains and de stroyed a Communist newspaper plant, Soviet soldiers retaliated by setting fire to a theater in which workers were holding a strike meeting. Later the Freedom Fighters descended from the hills again, fought a pitched battle with the Soviet soldiers and drove them out of part of the city which the rebels continued to hold. In the provincial areas there were increasing reports of Soviet soldiers deserting, joining the rebels, and supplying them with arms and ammunition.

In Budapest even the food stores were closed. An old news vendor had her news papers snatched away and torn to shreds. There was water, gas and electric power, but no traffic police. Some Soviet tanks stood roped off in planted positions, but armored cars patrolled continuously. In front of the National Theater, Sunday gathering place for Budapest, an old man, made brave by wine, smashed his empty bottle against a Soviet tank. Police rushed in, beat up the old man with rifle butts. This was too much for the crowd. They roughed up the police. The Russians fired a machine gun over their heads.

"Shame on You!" Reported an eyewitness: "The people seemed suddenly aware that the Russians would not kill them, as though an order had gone out that there were to be no shootings by military units. They surged around armored cars, crying, "What are you doing here? This is our city. Go home! Shame on you!" The Russian soldiers showed the strain of their position, shouted back at the crowd, waved their arms, guns. Then, to shift the crowd, the Russians got their tanks moving, wheeled and skidded them on the sidewalks--showing how much they had recently learned about maneuvering tanks in city streets--chasing people back and forth. But they never chased them away. Hundreds of people just kept dodging. Finally it was the blue-clad police, the real killers, firing burp guns, machine guns and pistols, who sent the crowd fleeing down the alleyways. Next day, as the strike continued, the crowd became even bolder. With a calm that chilled the spines of onlookers, a group of some 500 quietly stood their ground as a unit of Radar's militia advanced toward them, firing over their heads. Soon brown uniforms and plain working clothes were toe to toe, bare inches apart. There was a moment of silence; then the uniforms turned away amid jeers and cries of "Shame! Shame!"

Arrests in the Fog. Even Kadar's radio had to admit that the "workers' movement has never seen such a strike." That night there were many arrests. In the swirling fog, lanced by armored-car head lamps, the blue-clad police and steel-hel-meted Russian infantry cordoned off Bu dapest and went from street to street, door to door, demanding identity papers. In their gloved hands they held lists of names of wanted persons: members of the workers' councils, journalists, writers, poets, intellectuals who had backed the revolution and helped keep Hungary informed of events. That night the sound of a woman wailing as her man was taken away, or the sob of relief as a man went free, could be heard in any street. In some last desperate effort to hold power, Kadar (some said with Russia's Secret Police Boss Ivan Serov at his elbow) was destroying his last bridge with the people.

The only sanctuaries left in Budapest were the factories where armed workers stood guard. At one factory, Central Council Chairman Sandor Racz, called "The

Boss" despite his 23 years, was protected by bodyguards whose hands never left their weighted pockets. But now that the impact of the strike was being felt, people everywhere were saying, "What more can we do?" Their hatred for Kadar and the Russians had not diminished, but they had to eat, to find coal, panes of glass. There was no doubt in Racz's mind about the next step. Emerging from his factory sanctuary, he went, with Sandor Bari, to Parliament House, on Kadar's invitation "for consultations." That night the radio announced the arrest of Racz and Bari.

Racz had not gone innocently to his fate. Before he left the factory, he gave a statement to Italian Newsman Gabriele Benzan to be printed in case of his arrest. The government, said Racz, "is aware that the country is not behind it. It realizes that the only organized force in Hungary is the working class. Therefore, it aims at dismantling the workers' front. But the government will never succeed in crushing the will of the workers. The workers are prepared to die to defend their ideals."

Under Kadar's martial law, to die was the least Racz could expect.

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