"I Know the Story"

When Communist Chief Janos Kadar told Hungary's Party Congress in Budapest last week that Soviet troops would remain in the country "as long as the international situation demands it," the guest of honor pulled off the earphones through which he had been listening to a translation of the speech. Asked by a neighbor if there was something wrong with the set, Nikita Khrushchev replied: "I know the story."

The story of Hungary three years later is still that of puppet rulers holding power only by the presence of 60,000 Russian troops. The Soviet troops are not deployed as a field force against international danger, but scattered in "penny packets" outside each Hungarian town to guard against uprising.

Premier Khrushchev's own speech to the first Hungarian Party Congress since the 1956 revolt held up Hungary as a lesson for all Communists. The "disturbances" of 1956, he said, were "largely due to serious mistakes committed by the former leadership, especially Matyas Rakosi (now in Soviet exile), which undermined the party's authority." Said Khrushchev, in what sounded as if it might be a warning hint for Peking: "If the leadership of this or that country becomes conceited, if we distort the doctrines of Marxism-Leninism in the building of socialism and Communism, these mistakes may be exploited by the foes of Communism as they were in 1956. This cannot be allowed."

Later, breaking away from the droning Congress speeches to tour a Budapest engineering works, he told factory hands: "Czar Nicholas did not hesitate to send troops to put down the Hungarian revolution of 1848 . . . How could we, the working people of the Soviet Union, suffer our troops to look on indifferently in 1956 when the best sons of your people were being hanged? If we had not come to your aid, we would have been called fools, and history would not have forgiven us this foolishness."

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