Musatov in the tragedy of Imre Nagy. Imre Nagy: biography. The execution of the royal family

A.S. Stykalin

IMRE NAGY: A TIMELY BIOGRAPHY

Since the beginning of the 1990s, Russian historians were able to take a more differentiated approach to assessing the Hungarian "national tragedy" of 1956, abandoning the previous simplified scheme of "counter-revolutionary rebellion supported by world imperialism", disputes around the personality of Imre Nagy have not subsided. , the central figure in the political life of Hungary in those dramatic days. Moreover, a number of persistent myths have been formed, through the prism of which this tragic character of modern Hungarian history is perceived by the Russian historical consciousness. According to the most extravagant of these myths, Imre Nagy, a recent Austro-Hungarian prisoner of war who joined the Bolsheviks during the revolution in Russia and served in the organs of the Cheka, was allegedly directly involved in the execution of the royal family 1 . The righteous anger that seizes Russian patriots at the mere mention of the rude interference of foreigners in the drama of the Russian people is quite naturally projected onto I. Nagy, an employee of the Cheka. Even in the case when one has to accept as a given a simple historical fact: in the summer of 1918 Imre Nagy was in Transbaikalia, thousands of miles from Yekaterinburg, and therefore could not have had anything to do with that bloody massacre 2 .

MI archive Imre Nagy

The activities of Imre Nagy during the period of emigration, in Moscow in the 1930s, are also covered in legends. In 1989, at the initiative of the then chairman of the KGB of the USSR, V.A. Kryuchkov, documents on I. Nagy’s connections with the NKVD bodies were extracted from the archives, and on February 27, 1993, they were first published, making a lot of noise, by the Italian newspaper La Stampa 3 . Despite the fact that Kryuchkov was clearly pursuing momentary and not too pure political goals - compromising the reformist wing of the Kadar HSWP, inclined to rehabilitate I. emigrant communists, who became in 1937 - 1938. victims of Stalin's repressions. This delicate topic was reflected in the literature about I. Nada (primarily in the works of J. Reiner). True, when reading the works of J. Reiner (and some other leading Hungarian historians), it is difficult to get rid of the impression of the desire to avoid the existing sharp corners as much as possible 5 . Sometimes it even turns out that the information that came to the authorities from I. Nagy was attached to the investigative files, as if against his will. Meanwhile, the Russian diplomat and researcher V.L. Musatov, who devoted many years to the study of Hungary in modern times, cites I. Nagy’s autobiography, written on March 20, 1940, as indisputable evidence, which stated: “I have been cooperating with the NKVD since 1930 On instructions, I was tied up and dealt with many enemies of the people” 6 .

On the other hand, statements sometimes found even in serious scientific publications that 15 or more people were shot or died in the camps precisely on the denunciations of I. Nagy seem too peremptory 7 . “The writer Antal Gidash said that he sat down on the slander of Imre Nagy. The world-famous philosopher György Lukács and the economist Jenö Varga also ended up on the "hit list" because of Imre Nagy," we read in the article by a qualified journalist who worked as a correspondent for Pravda in Hungary for decades 8 . So, if we do not limit ourselves to the rumors spread among the Hungarian communist emigration in the USSR, but go deeper into the topic, referring to archival primary sources, serious questions arise. In the late 1990s, the author of these lines, together with the famous translator of Hungarian literature Vyacheslav Sereda, at the request of the heirs, received access to the investigative case of Gyorgy Lukács, one of the greatest Marxist philosophers of the 20th century. was arrested in June 1941 and spent two months in the dungeons of the NKVD. As a result, book 9 was published. Let's say right away: in the entire multi-page investigative file there is not the slightest mention of Imre Nagy's denunciations - a fact that certainly speaks for itself. And even if it is possible to prove the direct involvement of I. Nagy in the destruction of some party comrades, it should be recognized that the above-mentioned documents, although important for compiling a complete picture of Imre Nagy as a person, at the same time, do not in themselves provide any grounds for revision, reassessment of its role in the social and political life of Hungary in the mid-1950s and the revolution of 1956. 10

Another common legend: Imre Nagy is the man of L.P. Beria. Janos Kadar seems to have adhered to this version as well. True, it is not known how sincerely, but he spoke about this to M.S. Gorbachev in September 1985. an attempt by some historians and especially publicists to see in the activities of Beria in the spring and summer of 1953 plans for far-reaching systemic reforms, to present him as a failed reformer 12 . Involvement in the Beria team is sometimes explained by the “new course” proclaimed by the government of I. Nagy in Hungary since the summer of 1953 - the rejection of forced industrialization, the softening of collectivization methods, and the transfer of the center of gravity to the production of consumer goods. Meanwhile, it is enough to study the record of the meeting of Soviet and Hungarian leaders in June 1953 to see: the figure of I. Nagy for the post of prime minister was by no means imposed by Beria against the will of others, it did not arouse objections from any member of the Soviet leadership 13 .

Finally, in the domestic literature of the last decade (most often in the literature of a strictly defined ideological and political orientation), another controversial version was in circulation: the return to the Hungarian political Olympus in October 1956 of Imre Nagy, who by that time had firmly established the reputation of a “right deviator ”, is associated with the pliability of A.I. Mikoyan, who did not see a hidden “enemy” in I. Nada and convinced his colleagues in the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee to bet on him 14 . The role of Mikoyan is sometimes exaggerated (although they use a completely different optics) in Western literature - not only because of the habitual desire for a number of political science schools to identify their “hawks” and “doves” in the political elite of any country, but also because that the special position of A.I. Mikoyan in the Hungarian issue is mechanically projected onto the attitude towards I. Nagy: he was the only member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU who consistently opposed the Soviet military intervention. By the way, the Hungarian biographer Imre Nagy J. Reiner somewhat simplifies, as it seems to us, the real picture when he writes that Mikoyan proposed to reinstate I. Nagy in the party, expelled from it at the end of 1955 on charges of factional activity.

Meanwhile, whatever the subjective position of A.I. Mikoyan himself, at a meeting with the leaders of the Hungarian Working People’s Party (HPT) on July 13, 1956, he, speaking on behalf of the entire Soviet leadership, expressed an opinion that hardly makes it possible for such an unambiguous interpretation: we “considered and still consider it a mistake to expel Nagy Imre from the party, although he deserved it with his behavior. If Nagy had remained in the ranks of the party, he would have been obliged to obey party discipline and carry out the will of the party. By excluding him from the VPT, the comrades made it difficult for themselves to fight him. Nagy should have been frankly told that by fighting the party he is blocking the possibility of returning to its ranks. The path of fighting the Party is the path that inevitably leads him to prison. On the contrary, if he changes his behavior, then he can count on his reinstatement in the ranks of the party. Thus, according to Mikoyan, at least self-criticism on his part should have become a necessary condition for the restoration of I. Nagy in the party.

Given the abundance of myths and controversial versions, it should be recognized that the translation into Russian of the book by the famous Hungarian historian J. Rainer and its publication on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian events of 1956 and the 110th anniversary of the birth of I. Nagy are quite timely 16 . This book will make it possible to discard obvious myths, to revise in some cases insufficiently substantiated versions, to create in the minds of the Russian reading public a real, full-blooded image of the Hungarian politician, to present his true role in the events of half a century ago. The publication in the 1990s of a two-volume biography of Imre Nagy became an event in Hungarian historical science - all the more significant because in his homeland the personality of this politician (which is quite natural) much more than in Russia became the subject of speculation and political speculation. In his works, based on vast factual material, J. Reiner had to refute established stereotypes, argue with some controversial points of view that exist in Hungarian and Western historiography, where there was never a unity of opinion about I. Nadya, there was a wide range of assessments. However, the complete demythologization of a particular historical figure is an impossible task for a historian, especially when it comes to a statesman who concentrates the significant political trends of modern times, a person whose legacy continues to be in demand even today's political consciousness.

Disputes about Imre Nagy are periodically revived in Hungary, especially on the days of the next anniversaries of the events of 1956. And sometimes diametrically opposed opinions are expressed. Two important trends can be identified here. On the one hand, the tragedy of the fate of the Hungarian prime minister, who was executed in June 1958, casts a light on all his actions and deeds, right and wrong; martyrdom disposes historians, and even more so publicists and broad public opinion, to apologetics, gives scope for the idealization of Nagy's personality, and approaches obvious mistakes and miscalculations less critically. This is characteristic, by the way, of a large part of Western historiography, which seeks to recognize the merits of Nagy post mortem, as if to compensate for the amazing myopia in assessing his political face, which Western public opinion demonstrated throughout the entire Hungarian revolution. While welcoming W. Gomułka's coming to power in Poland, they stubbornly continued to see Nadya as an ordinary Stalinist, even when there were less and less grounds for this.

In recent years, however, something else has often been observed. Participants in disputes often do not set out to get to the bottom of historical truth, pursuing momentary political goals. Speculation on the memory of the dramatic events of the "Budapest autumn" in order to settle scores between competing parties has long become a reality of the political life of modern Hungary. It is sometimes surprising to see how politicians born after 1956 appeal to the history of the national revolution, mainly in order to compromise their peers in the eyes of the electorate. In the unfolding struggle for the “legacy of 1956” (and Imre Nagy remains the central figure here), everyone is participating: from militant nationalists to moderate socialists. Journalism and memoirs of a conservative-nationalist orientation have become a particularly noticeable phenomenon in recent times. It belittles, and even completely discredits the role of Imre Nagy and his entourage - all those who did not separate national interests from the ideals of a society of social justice.

A veteran of the party, who had passed the Comintern training and worked for many years in the USSR, I. Nagy was at the same time not a completely typical figure in the communist environment. “A fragment that broke away from our Moscow granite,” his irreconcilable opponent M. Rakosi once said about him. The peculiarity of I. Nagy was also striking to people far from the Communist Party - this is recalled, for example, by the author of the preface to the English edition of the biography, the well-known American historian of Hungarian origin Istvan Deak. The opinion of the prominent political scientist I. Bibo is also indicative: I. Nagy stood out in the cohort of the communists around him, at least by the outward absence of messianic exaltation and that coming from fanaticism, frightening inhumanity, which was always paid attention to from the outside. An agrarian economist by vocation, willingly engaged in scientific studies and gladly lectured to students, Nagy was created more for a modest academic career than for professional political (especially underground revolutionary) activities, and in other conditions he could have ended his days as a respected university professor. .

As an expert on peasant policy in the 1930s at the Comintern's International Agrarian Institute, he proved to be the most suitable person to fill one of the vacant Communist Party seats in the first post-war coalition government, and became minister of agriculture. This allowed him to “get into the cage”, to be included for the next ten years in the new (leftist, and then exclusively communist) political elite of Hungary 18 . Unlike the vast majority of communist politicians of his generation, I. Nagy (a man from a very poor petty-bourgeois family, who was unable to receive a completed education due to the outbreak of the First World War and was seriously engaged in self-education all his life) was always drawn to the intelligentsia. Having fallen into disgrace in 1955, he took a step towards the writers and journalists who supported him, in which J. Reiner rightly sees an act characteristic of an intellectual rather than a party functionary. However, it would also be wrong to exaggerate the “specialness” of I. Nagy - he not only identified himself (and without reservations!) With the communist movement and Marxist-Leninist ideology throughout his entire conscious life, but was perceived in other camps as a foreign body - even by fellow communists from the leftist peasant parties. One of them, the writer and leader of the national peasant party J. Darvas, in the fall of 1947, during a trip to the USSR as part of a delegation of the Hungarian-Soviet Society for Cultural Relations, said to a Soviet interlocutor: I. Nagy (in 1945, Minister of Agriculture, and later a man , responsible for agrarian policy in the leadership of the Communist Party) did not live up to expectations, his theoretical knowledge is not connected with practice, he, according to Darvas, did not know the Hungarian peasantry 19.

A man who came to the communist movement in the years when the slogans of the world revolution were put on the agenda, I. Nagy was faithful to his choice until the end of his life. The "holy of holies" of the Bolshevik ethics, the unity of the party, was never an empty phrase for him, the last thing he wanted to give his opponents a pretext for accusations of factionalism and inciting young people dissatisfied with the regime against the ruling party. It is known that in the explosive situation of mid-October 1956, I. Nagy preferred to withdraw, as it were, outwardly and returned to active political activity only under strong pressure not only from close associates, but from the entire party activists. He, of course, was afraid of provocations that would prevent him from returning to the government and engaging in the implementation of urgent reforms. But his position was quite clear, he consistently adhered to the reform program that he did not have time to implement in 1953 - 1955, he wanted to make the communist regime more effective and was not at all going to introduce a multi-party system (even within the left wing of the post-war anti-fascist coalition), to promote the formation of a legal opposition, even if in the form of a faction of the ruling HTP. He was not inclined for a moment to join a movement that would question the political monopoly of the Communist Party. The program with which I. Nagy spoke on the evening of October 23 was so moderate that it seemed to millions of Hungarians (and was in fact) inadequate to the current moment 20 . The apparent indecisiveness and confusion of I. Nagy in the first days of the revolution (and the scope of his speeches really turned out to be unexpected for him) complicated his relations with more radical reformers from among the communists (in particular, M. Gimes) and had a negative effect on his popularity, undermined the faith of those who previously associated certain hopes with him 21 .

On the other hand, Imre Nagy, more than the vast majority of communists of such a high rank, was more aware of the contradiction between communist doctrine (and, moreover, Soviet policy), on the one hand, and national priorities, as well as real popular aspirations, on the other. He tried both in theory and in practice to promote their reconciliation. Repeatedly called upon by his nation at the sharp turns of history, he not only always showed sensitivity to national peculiarities, but had a deep sense of responsibility to the people and strove (with all the inevitable compromises) to place, as far as possible, at the forefront the interests of a non-narrow caste of party members, but the broad masses of their country. In the spring of 1945, as Minister of Agriculture, I. Nagy did a lot to carry out agrarian reform, which put an end to the remnants of feudal landownership and satisfied the demands of the Hungarian peasantry. Four years later, in 1949, he advocated a more moderate pace and, if possible, non-violent ways of cooperating the peasantry, which cost him a temporary expulsion from the Politburo and a strong reputation as a “right-wing deviationist” and a “Bukharinite” (these labels were hung on I. Nadia and in Soviet embassy reports) 22 . Nevertheless, four years later, in 1953, the catastrophic situation in Hungarian agriculture forced Moscow to entrust the key post of prime minister to the inveterate “Bukharinite”. In a sense, I. Nagy was lucky: as J. Reiner rightly notes, he was made responsible for pursuing a political line that, on the whole, did not contradict his convictions. On the other hand, he was unlucky: he inherited a heavy burden of the most acute economic and social problems caused by the disastrous course of turning Hungary into a country of heavy industry without taking into account its - the country - objective possibilities.

Even if there was some trust in I. Nagy, 23 he quickly lost it, because the reforms he started in Hungary (no matter how timid they may seem today) were perceived in the Kremlin as too radical. The stalled reforms failed to provide the country with an economic recovery, but at the same time they came into conflict with the new foreign and domestic political priorities of the USSR leadership. The label of the right dodger is attached even more tightly to I. Nagy. Nevertheless, in the tragic October days of 1956, the Kremlin realized (or, rather, instinctively felt) that the disappointment of the people in the current government is so great that of the entire Hungarian communist elite, only I. Nagy and his “right-wing deviationist” entourage can count on at least some support from below. Nagy again headed the government, which the Soviet leaders no longer interfered with. Meanwhile, the logic of his actions was increasingly at odds with the Kremlin's expectations. His unwillingness to go against the will of the people in their most fundamental, basic demands, and his inability to master the situation on his own, created a situation intolerable for the Soviet leadership. Fearing that the communists would lose power in Hungary, on October 31 (it must be said, after long hesitation 24 ) it decided to bring its ally out of obedience to reason by force. The uncompromising nature of Imre Nagy, which fully manifested itself precisely in the last year and a half of his life, his readiness to uphold his principles to the end, eventually led him to the dock, and then to the scaffold.

If in the first post-war years in Imre Nad a communist internationalist and a defender of the interests of the Hungarian peasantry coexisted and dramatically opposed, then in October 1956 he appears in another incarnation - as a Hungarian patriot. However, this turn was fully prepared by his entire previous spiritual evolution. In 1955, in his notes addressed to the party leadership and later made public, he radically revised some of Stalin's dogma - especially where it concerned the nature of relations between socialist countries: Nagy's unfailing sensitivity to national specifics logically led him to demand greater equality in Soviet-Hungarian relations. In the days of October 1956, he went further. If, shortly before the start of decisive events, in conversations with like-minded people, he fundamentally rejected the multi-party system from the standpoint of traditional communist orthodoxy, then later, taking into account the voice of the people, he came to recognize political pluralism, as well as demands for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary.

All previous attempts to reconcile the Bolshevik-Leninist concept of socialism with national interests, to create a socialism that meets not only these dogmas, but also specific Hungarian conditions, turned out to be utopian and were, in the October days, if not discarded, then abandoned for a while. In a situation where it was necessary to make a decisive choice, Hungarian patriotism prevailed over the deep communist convictions of I. Nagy, the old Cominternist turned into a Hungarian national revolutionary, a follower of the traditions of 1848. Moreover, without ceasing to be a communist in his soul, looking for ways to reconcile an idea close to him with national values ​​25 , I. Nagy became for many for the next few decades (here, probably, one can say: against his will) a symbol of anti-communist resistance in Hungary, and in the late 1980s, anti-communist reforms in their main content, aimed at replacing systems. More important, however, is something else. On October 28, having taken a decisive step towards rapprochement with the mass popular movement, I. Nagy crossed the line separating a party functionary, proceeding primarily from the interests of his movement, from a politician of a nationwide, nationwide scale.

The rapid evolution of the political face of I. Nagy in just a few October days of 1956 sometimes caused accusations of inconsistency even from some of his well-wishers (“yesterday he said one thing, today another” 26). Of course, one can evaluate the announcement of Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact in different ways from the point of view of the conformity of this measure with the principles of real politics 27 . At the same time, the sources of inconsistency in the statements and actions of I. Nagy from October 24 to November 3, 1956 were rooted not in the “opportunism” of his nature, as Moscow believed, but in the desire, being on the crest of events, to master the rapidly changing reality, to find a common platform for the heterogeneous political forces that manifested themselves during the days of the revolution and at the same time preserve the socialist content of the government program. Attempts turned out to be futile, it was impossible to master the situation 28 , there was not enough time to find ways out of the crisis - a new Soviet military intervention took place.

Janos Reiner analyzes the causes of failures, reveals mistakes and miscalculations, without idealizing his hero, who showed an obvious weakness in practical politics. At the same time, the actions of I. Nagy during the revolution are evaluated not only in political, but also in moral categories. According to the researcher, on the morning of November 4, at the moment of the decisive Soviet military action, Nagy was not at the height of the situation and the tasks he faced, his behavior marked a step back from fulfilling a national mission to narrow party politics. The well-known radio address to the people only disorientated many thousands of Hungarians, and the flight to the Yugoslav embassy not only dealt a blow to the legitimacy of the government, but was in itself a manifestation of human weakness.

In the same situation, one of the ministers in the government of I. Nagy, Istvan Bibo, behaved quite differently in the same situation, a man who had political ambitions to a lesser extent, but a thinker of a completely different international scale than Nagy, one of the largest Hungarian intellectuals of the 20th century. When at about 8 o'clock in the morning Soviet soldiers entered the historic parliament building on the banks of the Danube, they found only one minister of the current government there - it was I. Bibo. Before he was detained by the Soviet secret services, he tried to hold something like a press conference, to make a new appeal to the Hungarian people on behalf of the government - a matter of hours after I. Nagy, in his radio speech, assured the nation that the government was on its post, and after that he took refuge in the Yugoslav embassy. Still, Nagy avoided a moral fall by refusing to recognize the new government imposed from outside. And later, with his heroic resistance to attempts to force himself to play according to someone else's scenario, he redeemed (again in moral terms) his own mistakes made in a moment of weakness.

Imre Nagy was not just a typical Eastern European national communist of the mid-twentieth century, a product of the crisis of Soviet claims to complete control over the world communist movement (and this crisis was clearly revealed already in 1948, when Tito refused to obey Stalin). And not just (if you resort to a different optics of perceiving the same things) by a person whose active participation in the communist movement did not kill a politician devoted to national values ​​in him. The mode of action of I. Nagy in the conditions of the events of 1956 had its roots in the Hungarian historical tradition. 100 years earlier, during the revolution of 1848, Prime Minister Count Lajos Batthany (executed, like Nagy, after the defeat of the revolution) also sought to remain on the basis of the existing legality, the established legitimacy. Recognizing the legitimacy of the demands of the rebels, at the same time he did not advocate the immediate demolition of the old system, he was looking for ways to peacefully resolve the conflict.

However, as in 1848, in 1956 the inexorable logic of revolutionary action, the dynamics of events led further, and I. Nagy, who announced the withdrawal of his country from the Warsaw Pact, was in demand not only in the role of Battyani, but also of L. Kossuth, who went to a decisive break with his "suzerain", the Austrian emperor. The tragedy of Nagy was that he was not ready to play such a role - not only due to an objective combination of unfavorable circumstances, but, in part, due to subjective reasons. To a greater extent, the Polish communist leader W. Gomulka was, perhaps, ready to carry out a similar mission. The Polish leadership was able to make a decisive turn in time to upholding national priorities before the dictates of Moscow, which neutralized the most radicalist sentiments in society, which was extremely sensitive to inequality in Polish-Soviet relations, and prevented the development of events according to the Hungarian version.

However, V. Gomulka also turned out to be not at the height of the situation later. The relative success of the nationally oriented, reformist forces in Poland in October 1956 was not consolidated by a genuine reform of the system, which led to a clear reversal, a rollback to, although not too tyrannical, but still very inefficient administrative-bureaucratic model of socialism. And this, by the way, somewhat contrasted with the situation in Hungary, where the Kadar regime from the beginning of the 1960s developed along the path of liberalization, and in 1968 embarked on an economic reform, though not fully implemented due to external and internal factors 29 .

With the evolution of the Kadar regime, the formation of a specific Hungarian model of socialism, in which Hungary for 10 years turned from a burden for the USSR into a showcase of the "socialist community", Western political scientists had to compare the severely defeated idealist I. Nagy with the more successful, albeit cynical pragmatist Ya .Kadar, who, in the difficult situation that developed after the defeat of the Hungarian revolution, tried to put into practice, with an eye on Moscow, some of the reformist ideas of 1956. Sometimes the comparison even turned out in favor of J. Kadar, whose experiments with reforming “real socialism” in the early 1970s years attracted close attention in the West and inspired some people with unjustified illusions (disappointment came by the end of the 1970s). Of course, Kadar's reformist image was greatly harmed by the cruel reprisal against I. Nagy, and in order to make the image of the Hungarian leader look more unsullied, much, if not all, had to be attributed to Moscow 30 .

By the way, as a rule, the Western left did not doubt the decisive role of Moscow either. The mother of the famous Russian writer Viktor Erofeev, Galina Erofeeva (in 1958, the wife of a Soviet diplomat who worked in Paris) recalls in her memoirs how the greatest French communist poet Louis Aragon, having read a message about a court verdict in L'Humanité, ran to the Soviet embassy indignant to the depths of his soul: “wouldn’t you have enough lentil stew to feed Nagy until the end of his days!”, he angrily asked the cultural attache who received him 31 . The inertia of this approach lives on to this day - it is enough to pick up the sensational biography of N.S. Khrushchev, written by the American historian W. Taubman and published in Russian translation in 2005. 32 Meanwhile, this version has never been confirmed in the sources.

The current level of development of the problem (primarily in the works of Janos Reiner and Zoltan Ripp) gives grounds to assert that Moscow's position in the case of I. Nagy was not as unambiguous as it is commonly thought, changed over time and was, moreover, in close depending on the state of Soviet-Yugoslav relations. In early 1957, the Kremlin showed a rather tough approach, calling on Kadar to intensify repression. The judicial investigation in the case of I. Nagy was approved by the Soviet side, each new step in this case was agreed between Moscow and Budapest. At the same time, after the defeat in June 1957 of the inner-party opposition of Malenkov-Kaganovich-Molotov, Khrushchev significantly strengthened his position in the leadership of the CPSU, which relieved him of the previous need to continue to demonstrate extreme rigidity in the Hungarian issue in order to neutralize possible accusations of his opponents of indecision and inconsistency leading to the surrender of the positions of the USSR.

Much more than the opinion within his own party, Khrushchev now cared about the international response to his actions, and the trial was twice postponed at the initiative of Moscow - precisely on the grounds that the international situation was not entirely favorable for its conduct. In order to demonstrate the power of the USSR to the whole world, a satellite was now quite enough, the launch of which in early October became the main world sensation in 1957. The trial of Imre Nagy against this background, on the contrary, could spoil the image of the “country of Soviets” in the eyes of those who admiring the technical achievements of the USSR, in one way or another he was inclined to extend his sympathies to its political and economic system. Even more important, perhaps, was the fact that this trial could cool the Yugoslavs' determination to move closer to the Soviet camp, moreover, on the very eve of the international conference of the Communist Parties, scheduled for November 1957. 33

However, the fears of scaring off the Yugoslavs were in vain, or rather: the postponement of the process could not affect the position of the SKJ. Having familiarized themselves with the draft Declaration of the Conference of the Communist Parties of the Socialist Countries, the Yugoslav communists rejected it, seeing that the CPSU still wants to dictate its rules of the game to foreign communists. There has been a cooling in relations between the two communist parties again, and the holding of a trial of Imre Nagy could now turn out to be useful - if the Kremlin had chosen a setting for further escalation of the conflict. In Moscow in November 1957, J. Kadar met with the leaders of many communist parties and became convinced that the idea of ​​a trial of I. Nagy finds their support as an effective measure to intimidate "revisionism". However, even later the trial was postponed - in February 1958 - and again at the initiative of Moscow, which feared that the trial in the I. Nagy case would spoil the impression of the Soviet disarmament program addressed to the West.

Janos Reiner put forward the following version in the works of the 1990s. In his opinion, J. Kadar at the end of the winter of 1958 found himself in a situation of choice. He could postpone the trial in the case of I. Nagy "until better times", but he could hold the trial, as planned, in February, while mitigating the penalties for the accused, primarily refusing to impose death sentences. In 2003, a brief record of the meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU on February 5 was published, confirming this assumption. The essence of the Soviet position was summarized by only three words recorded by the head of the record keeping. by the general department of the Central Committee V.N. Malin: "Show firmness and generosity." As is clear from these words, in Moscow it was considered expedient, having brought the case to court, to the condemnation of the Hungarian "revisionists", nevertheless take the path of mitigating the sentences. The communist leader of Hungary chose a different path, deliberately not taking advantage of the opportunity for a compromise solution. The choice of J. Kadar (responsibility for which lies entirely with him) was, first of all, dictated by the balance of power in the leadership of his own party, and in order to understand the motives of his behavior, you need to better understand this alignment.

In the first months of the existence of the government of J. Kadar, his position was extremely precarious, the regime relied almost exclusively on Soviet military assistance. In conditions when the overwhelming majority of the population was in favor of the withdrawal of Soviet troops, the restoration of the government of Imre Nagy, the holding of free elections, the preservation of all the main gains of the revolution, J. Kadar, who became an instrument for implementing a policy of suppressing it, could find internal support primarily in the ranks of the Hungarian Stalinists nostalgic for the Rakosi regime. In fact, he acted as their hostage. In order to expand the field for political maneuver, he had to not only win wider support in society, but also strengthen Moscow's confidence in himself. As follows from the records of the meetings of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU on November 4 and 6, 1956, where N.S. Khrushchev defended the head of the new Hungarian government from Molotov’s attacks, dissociating himself from M. Rakosi at the same time, a serious bet was made on J. Kadar. At the same time, the latter could not but understand: if his policy does not satisfy Moscow, the question of restoring the former government may actually arise. Rakosi, Geryo and a number of other former leaders, in the hope of their early return to Hungary and taking up responsible positions, literally bombarded the Central Committee of the CPSU with letters sharply criticizing Kadar's "right-wing" mistakes. The question of their possible placement on the party-state Olympus remained to a certain extent open until April 1957, when the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU decided to limit M. Rakosi's contacts with Hungary, considering that his activities impede the strengthening of the Kadar regime.

In Moscow, they were, on the whole, satisfied with the course of normalization in Hungary, and the choice in favor of J. Kadar was made at that time finally and irrevocably - this was his first serious tactical success in relations with the Kremlin. But even after M. Rakosi moved to the USSR, in fact, to the position of a political exile, his potential supporters in the leadership of the HSWP continued to be a significant force. Their positions were only partially weakened by the Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1957, which dealt a blow to Khrushchev's opponents in the Presidium of the Central Committee, who spoke (primarily Molotov and Voroshilov) for a more active introduction of Rakosi's people to power in Hungary. Having shown the utmost rigidity in the case of Imre Nagy (generally not very characteristic of this pragmatic politician), Kadar in 1958 finally knocked out the weapon from his critics on the left - supporters of the complete restoration of the system, decisively rejected by the Hungarian people in October 1956. It must also be remembered that Imre Nagy until the end of his life would not only be a center of attraction for the opposition, but by his very existence would remind of the illegitimacy of J. Kadar's coming to power and, because of this, would be extremely inconvenient for the latter 34 . Thus, the Soviet proposal to show generosity did not find the support of the Hungarian leader. He preferred to postpone the process, but not to rewrite the already developed scenario, according to which Imre Nagy was supposed to be executed (To this we can add that after N.S. Khrushchev’s triumphal visit to Budapest in April 1958, the Hungarian leader could afford more autonomy in making domestic political decisions).

MI archive Imre Nagy in court

The moment for the process was chosen the most convenient from the point of view of the interests of the Soviet leaders. The peace initiatives of the USSR, which forced J. Kadar to postpone the trial, did not find the expected support in the West; neither the court itself, nor the verdict in the case of I. Nagy could in any way affect their fate. On the other hand, the state of Soviet-Yugoslav relations by May 1958 reaches the lowest point in the post-Stalin period. This was due to the adoption at the end of April at the VII Congress of the Union of Communists of Yugoslavia of a new party program, although it did not mark a turn in the policy of the SKY, but it brought into system many provisions of the Yugoslav concept of self-government, unacceptable to the leadership of the USSR. In addition, the new program of the SKJ in a number of points came into conflict with the Declaration of the Conference of Communist Parties in November 1957. As a result, Moscow unleashed a rather noisy anti-Yugoslav propaganda campaign, which subsided only a year later, in 1959. In contrast to 1948-1949, during the new campaign, criticism of Yugoslav leaders remained at the level of accusations of revisionism and nationalism and did not lead to a severance of diplomatic relations - we are already talking about "spies", "murderers" and "fascists" at the head of this country. did not come. Even taking into account the desire to “teach a lesson” to the “revisionist” Tito, the Kremlin did not abandon the task of maintaining normal partnership relations with the strategically important Yugoslavia, which made it necessary to refrain from excesses in criticism. Such was the foreign policy background against which, on June 15, 1958, Imre Nagy and his comrades-in-arms P. Maleter and M. Gymes were sentenced to death in a closed trial, and carried out the next day. G.Losontsi died in prison six months before the trial. J. Siladi was executed back in April. General B. Kiraly, who was in the United States, was sentenced to death in absentia. Other defendants in the case of I. Nagy received various terms of imprisonment (in the early 1960s, almost all of them were amnestied).

The massacre of Imre Nagy and his comrades-in-arms, which became the crown of a whole series of trials in the cases of participants in the 1956 revolution, caused a wide resonance throughout the world. For many, the inconsistency of the accusations against the former Hungarian prime minister was obvious, whose main “fault” was the consistent defense of the course for the sovereignty of his own country, which came into too sharp contradiction with the practice of relations within the Soviet camp that had developed under Stalin.

Be that as it may, June 1958, in a certain sense, put an end to the history of the Hungarian revolution and drew a line under a certain period in the development of post-war Hungary; the political situation in the country had stabilized by that time, and a change of tactics was necessary for the further consolidation of the regime - the tasks of intimidating the recalcitrant fade into the background, giving way to the search for ways to build bridges with the Hungarian nation. It is significant that the massacre of Imre Nagy almost coincided with the publication of the first documents that laid the foundations of Kadar's liberal-pragmatic model of socialism, which was perhaps the most flexible in comparison with other really embodied models.

1957 and 1958 left a black mark on the history of Hungary. The execution of Imre Nagy and a number of his associates, the arrests of many thousands of people became an indelible stain of shame for the Kadar regime. But since the beginning of the 1960s, there has been a turn towards a more liberal policy, many imprisoned participants in the uprising received an amnesty - having started reformist experiments, the Kadar authorities did everything to erase 1956 from the historical memory of the nation. But many years had to pass before Janos Kadar, by the policy of concessions and compromises, of which he eventually became an unsurpassed master, succeeded, giving the Hungarians the maximum possible freedoms under a one-party communist dictatorship, to win relative support in society and force their compatriots to recognize the regime existing in the country as, perhaps, the least evil on the way to building a "bright future".

Having become for some time a showcase of the "socialist community", the Kadar regime, like its kindred political systems in other countries of Eastern Europe, showed, in the end, its unviability. The change in the balance of power in the international arena, the cessation of Soviet control over the region contributed to its accelerated transformation into a different quality. The death of Janos Kadar in July 1989, symbolizing the end of an entire era in the history of Hungary, almost coincided with the reburial of Imre Nagy. The man who ruled the country for more than 30 years, even during his lifetime, was able to see the choice made by his nation in favor of Western models based on political pluralism alien to him. 33 years later, a paradox became apparent: I. Nagy, who at the end of the 1980s became the banner of those who advocated a change in the system of forces, who, unlike J. Kadar, was not a strong practical politician and had a less clear idea of ​​the limits of the possible, proved in absentia to Kadar his historical correctness. The main conclusion that you come to after reading the book by J. Reiner is this: the political mistakes of I. Nagy, his inability to master the situation in the tragic days of October 1956, do not negate the significance of the moral example he demonstrated in the last year and a half of his life, when he consistently defended the convictions, in their main, most significant moments, coinciding with the aspirations of the Hungarian nation.

Notes

1. The notorious author of historical bestsellers E. Radzinsky had a hand in the creation of this version in his biographies of Nicholas II, also published in the West. See also: Kuzmichev P. If you do not close your eyes // Literary Russia. 1991. December 20. pp. 22 - 23. See also the polemic with Radzinsky of the famous American historian C. Gati: Gati, Charles. Failed expectations. Moscow, Washington, Budapest and the Hungarian uprising of 1956. M., 2006. P. 45.
2. Note that Imre's biographer Nadia J. Reiner in his works does not even honor this version with attention as completely frivolous. See also: Makarkin A. Did Imre Nagy shoot the royal family? // Today. 1999. June 15.
3. See comments in the Hungarian press:
4. See comments in the Hungarian press: Népszabadság, 1993. március 2., március 5. In Russian, see: Agent Volodya. Unknown facts from the biography of Imre Nagy // Source. 1993. No. 1. S. 71 - 73 (See also: Motherland. 1993. No. 2. S. 55 - 57); Is Imre Nagy a provocateur? According to KGB archival materials // Sterkh. 1992. No. 2. S. 24 - 26; Musatov V. Who was Imre Nagy? // Browser: problems, analysis, forecasts. Digest. Specialist. release. M., 1993. S. 71 - 76; Musatov V. Who was Imre Nagy. The path from seksots to national heroes // Novoye Vremya. 1993. No. 19. S. 40 - 42; Nagy was an agent of the NKVD // Motherland. 1993. No. 3. S. 65.
5. In 1989, the leadership of the HSWP decided not to give these documents a go. See: Musatov V.L. The Tragedy of Imre Nagy // Modern and Contemporary History. 1994. No. 1. P. 164 - 173. See also V.A. Kryuchkov’s interview with the Nepsabadshag newspaper: Népszabadság, 1993, április 14.
6. Musatov V.L. Tragedy of Imre Nagy... P.167. Not as an excuse for I. Nadia, but, however, a natural question arises: what could be expected at the end of the 1930s if a person with a rather vague biography refused to cooperate with the NKVD - he had worked abroad for a long time and was expelled from the party.
7. There.
8. Gerasimov V. Hungarian October. What happened in Budapest on October 23 - November 4, 1956 // Nezavisimaya gazeta. 1998. October 29.
9. Conversations at the Lubyanka. Investigative case of Dyorgy Lukach. Materials for the biography. Editors-compilers and authors of comments V. Sereda and A. Stykalin (with the participation of R. Muller, A. Dmitriev, Y. Rokityansky). 2nd, revised and enlarged edition. M., 2001.
10. The question also remains open: why the documents of the 1930s from the archives of the NKVD, compromising Imre Nagy, were not used against him in 1957-1958. in preparation for the trial.
11. Musatov V.L. Tragedy of Imre Nagy... S. 165.
12. This trend in the interpretation of Beria's activities was manifested in a number of publications that came out of print on the days of his 100th birthday. See, for example: Bezirgani T. Lavrenty Beria: a hundred years and a hundred days // Nezavisimaya gazeta. 1999. April 3.
13. See the recording of the meeting made by the Hungarian side: T.Varga Gy. Jegyzőkönyv a szovjet és a magyar párt- és állami vezetők tárgyalásairól (1953. június 13 - 16.) // Möltunk. 1992. 2 - 3. sz. For English, see: The 1956 Hungarian Revolution: A History in Documents. Ed. by Cs.Békés, M.Byrne, J.M. rainer. New York - Budapest, 2002. P. 14 - 23. In Russian, for details on the content of the conversation, see: Musatov V. Harbingers of the Storm. Political crises in Eastern Europe (1956 - 1981). M., 1996. S. 18 - 21. See also the subjective testimony of the then leader of the Hungarian Workers' Party (VPT): "People tend to make mistakes." From the memoirs of M. Rakosi // Historical archive. 1998. No. 3.
14. The version that A.I. Mikoyan “trusted” I. Nadia and connected his hopes for political stabilization in Hungary with him is supported, for example, by the former chairman of the KGB V.A. Hungary). See: Kryuchkov V. Personal file. Part 1. M., 1996. S. 55.
15. Given in the presentation of Ambassador Yu.V.
16. The Russian edition (Rainer M.Ya. Imre Nagy - Prime Minister of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Political biography. M., 2006) is based on a revised English version of I. Nagy's biography, which is also published in 2007. The full version: Rainer M.J. Nagy Imre. Politikai eletrajz. Első kotet. 1896 - 1953. Bp., 1996; Idem. Masodik kotet. 1953 - 1958. Bp., 1999. Abridged version in Hungarian published in 2002.
17. Moreover, the attitude towards Imre Nagy was in clear contradiction with the proclaimed in Washington installation to rely not on non-existent (long ago completely ousted from political life) liberals, but on something more real - “Titoists”, supporters of national communism, able to distance themselves from Soviet policy.
18. Was I. Nagy really power-hungry or did he find himself on the Hungarian political Olympus every time only as a result of a special set of circumstances? By posing this question, the biographer avoids an unequivocal answer. In our opinion, I. Nagy's political ambition should not be underestimated. With outward passivity, all his actions in the conditions of a deepening internal political crisis in the summer-autumn of 1956 testify to a stubborn desire to return to the post of head of government in order to finally implement the reform program proclaimed by him in 1953. This was evident to both his political opponents and like-minded people. See Yu.Andropov's telegrams dated October 12 and 14 following the results of conversations with E.Gere and Z.Vash (The Soviet Union and the Hungarian Crisis of 1956. Documents. Editors-compilers E.D. Orekhova, V.T. Sereda, A. S. Stykalin, Moscow, 1998, pp. 300 - 304.
19. Archive of foreign policy of the Russian Federation. F. 077. Op. 27. Por. 43. Folder 124. L. 161. Darvas' review contrasted sharply with Rakosi's review of 1945: “Comrade. Nagy is well developed, has great influence and understands agriculture very well. He is essentially the only specialist who perfectly understands the issue, and our farmers sometimes asked with horror where you got a communist who even understands horses. This is completely incomprehensible to them. At a meeting in the department of international information of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on June 23, 1945, the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI). F. 17. Op. 128. D. 750. L. 211 - 212].
20. “Nagy, as a disciplined party member, made the crowd wait for two hours, and these two hours seemed to be enough for control over events - for the whole time or at least for several days - slipped out of his hands,” - so subsequently the events of that day were commented on by their active participant A.Gents, the future president of the post-communist Republic of Hungary (Gents Arpad. Budapest, 1956... // Novoye Vremya. 1991. No. 35. P. 30).
21. There were many such people. On July 12, a member of the Hungarian Writers' Union, critic and literary critic I. Kiraly told a Soviet diplomat that many Hungarians consider I. Nagy "the true spokesman for the aspirations of the people" (The Soviet Union and the Hungarian crisis of 1956 ... P. 149).
22. Shortly thereafter, in 1951, Nagy was forced to make one of the biggest compromises of his life. By the Jesuit decision of Rakosi, a man who consistently advocated a more benign pace and conditions for cooperation was appointed "by the will of the party" to be responsible for the seizure of products from the peasants throughout the country.
23. With regard to June 1953, it would be more correct to speak not about trust, but rather about what Moscow considered I. Nagy predictable, given the Cominform past, the tendency to compromise (manifested after 1949), and not least the fact that I. Nagy could only act surrounded by more reliable communists from the point of view of the Soviet leadership.
24. The fluctuations were reflected in the records of the meetings of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU, made by the head. General Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU V. Malin. See: The Soviet Union and the Hungarian Crisis of 1956... Section III.
25. Later, in a Romanian exile, Nagy wrote: “Countries and peoples will accept socialism only if it guarantees independence, sovereignty, equality, or if it becomes the starting point on the path to them. The essence of the Hungarian tragedy is that the idea of ​​socialism and the idea of ​​national independence came into conflict. The fundamental significance of the Hungarian uprising lies in an attempt by any means to eliminate this contradiction and restore the necessary harmony of these two ideas ”(Nagy Imre. Snágovi jegyzetek. Gondolatok, emlékezések 1956 - 1957. Szerk. Vidá István. Bp., 2006. 127. o .; op. .by: Rainer M.Ya. Imre Nagy ... S. 237). Remaining a committed communist, Nagy called a return to the multi-party system of the mid-1948 model and an alliance with non-communist parties not only a necessary and inevitable compromise in order to restore the confidence of the masses, but also a definite step back.
26. Approximately this is how the Minister of Culture in his government, the greatest Marxist philosopher D. Lukacs, assessed the actions of I. Nagy. On the position of Lukács, see in more detail: Stykalin A.S. György Lukács is a thinker and politician. M., 2001. Chapter 7. It should be noted here: on October 31, in a conversation with representatives of the National Committee of the Transdanubian Territory, Nagy said that independence could, in principle, be achieved within the framework of the Warsaw Pact Organization. However, a number of factors (published in Pravda on the same day, the Declaration of the USSR government on the foundations for the development and further strengthening of friendship and cooperation between the USSR and other socialist states, the continued entry of Soviet troops into Hungarian territory, contrary to official statements, and, finally, the incessant pressure of the rebels and broader public opinion forced him the very next day to come up with an initiative to break Hungary from the Warsaw Pact.
27. The same D. Lukacs, for example, not unreasonably saw this as a surge of emotions, not befitting serious politics.
28. “With all due respect to the goodwill and patriotism of Imre Nagy and his colleagues, recognizing that the first significant uprising against Soviet domination in Europe was the hardest and, perhaps, hopeless undertaking, one should not turn a blind eye to the ineptitude and clumsiness of the Hungarian revolutionary government,” notes in this regard, C. Gati (Gati C. Deceived expectations. P. 11). “The fearless, uncompromising behavior of Nagy at the trial that sentenced him to death in 1958 should not obscure the fact that, despite his good intentions, he did not possess the political skill that could have led the revolution to victory. In particular, he failed to lead the country between the maximalist expectations of the freedom fighters and the rather moderate demands of Moscow” (Ibid., p. 2).
29. A witness of the Hungarian revolution, the Polish publicist and poet V. Voroshilsky, in an afterword to his famous “Hungarian Diary”, written 20 years later, in the mid-1970s, had every reason to remark: “Over the years, the terror in Hungary weakened, and a historical paradox was revealed : while adored in October (1956 - A.S.) the "leader of the nation" Gomulka gradually drove the country into a state of increasing political and economic dependence on the USSR, growing oppression, poverty and lies - the hated (and rightly so) Kadar, as it were, was looking for ways out of the trap, quite successfully embarked on economic experiments, moderately liberalized regime, sought to come to an agreement with the people and their intelligentsia ”(Voroshilsky V. Hungarian Diary // Art of Cinema. 1992. No. 4. P. 145 - 146). Each of these two outstanding communist politicians named by Voroshilsky was, in the words of I. Deutscher, branded “Made in Stalinism”, and each of them was ready to stifle reforms if he saw them as a threat to socialism, as he understood it. However, the general trend in the evolution of the two regimes was captured by the Polish publicist quite correctly. And the question that V. Voroshilsky asked is quite logical: maybe “it was the uprising, although lost, that for a longer period created conditions in which the rulers consider it less risky to address the people with gestures of reconciliation than to forever tighten the screws?” (Ibid.).
30. See Shawcross W. Crime and Compromise as a manifestation of this trend. János Kádár and the politics of Hungary since revolution. London, 1974.
31. See: Erofeeva G. Neskuchny garden. Non-diplomatic notes on diplomatic life. M., 1998. S. 85.
32. Taubman W. Khrushchev. M., 2005.
33. At the same time, it must, of course, be borne in mind that, being in serious foreign policy isolation, the Kadar regime, like Moscow, was by no means interested in aggravating relations with the Yugoslavs, especially since Tito and his team, with their resistance to Stalin's dictatorship in 1948 - 1953 earned considerable respect in the international arena. That is why the Yugoslav connections of I. Nagy's group did not want to stick out in the indictment. However, in case the Yugoslav leaders protested against the conviction of Imre Nagy (contrary to the agreement not to bring him to justice), the compromising evidence collected against them was ready. A draft note was prepared to the FPRY government, which not only allegedly illegally granted I. Nadia and his group asylum in its Budapest embassy (in fact, informal Brion agreements between N. S. Khrushchev and I. Broz Tito, concluded on the night of 2 to November 3, 1956, they allowed this - however, only if Nagy voluntarily cedes power to Kadar), but also gave them the opportunity to conduct subversive activities against the Kadar government while in the embassy (which was generally a complete fiction).
34. In the first months of consolidation, J. Kadar attached great importance to the resignation of I. Nagy, because the international recognition of his government largely depended on this (A. Ketley, who left for the West back in early November 1956, showed considerable political activity as a minister " legitimate" Hungarian government). And a few decades after the events of 1956, J. Kadar tirelessly returned to this topic. According to some testimonies, he said: "If Nagy had resigned, he would have walked among us." See, for example, Aczel Gy. Közélkép Kádarrul // Rubicon. Bp., 2000. No. 6. 7 - 8. o. One can also recall how painfully J. Kadar reacted to the publication in June 1968 by the Czechoslovak literary weekly of an article on the 10th anniversary of the execution of I. Nagy, in which the latter was called the herald of democratic socialism. This publication decisively influenced the evolution of the Hungarian leader's attitude towards the Prague Spring. One can remember, however, something else. In his speeches during the “Prague Spring”, when many people had parallels with the initial stage of the Hungarian events 12 years ago, J. Kadar essentially admitted that I. Nagy became a “counter-revolutionary” (in his unequivocal interpretation) due to circumstances. So, in March, at a Dresden meeting of leaders of the socialist countries, he said that the logic of the development of events could lead to the camp of "enemies" and those who, like I. Nagy, were not initially "counter-revolutionaries." For more on J. Kadar's position, see: Huszár Tibor. 1968. Prague - Budapest - Moscow. Kadar Janos es a csehszlovákiai intervenciu. Bp., 1998; Stykalin A.S. "Prague Spring" of 1968 and the position of Hungary // Slavic Studies. 1998. No. 5.

Imre Nagy (1896-1958), who was executed by the communists for anti-communism, was in fact one of the veterans of the Hungarian and international communist movement. A participant in the Civil War in Russia, in the 1920s he was at party work in Hungary, in 1928 he emigrated and lived in the USSR, engaged in economic and scientific activities, at the end of 1944 he returned to Hungary.

Obviously, the return happened with the sanction of Stalin - Hungary passed into the zone of influence of the USSR, and it should have provided a pro-Soviet government. In subsequent years, I. Nagy held leading government posts: Minister of Agriculture in 1944-1945, Minister of the Interior in 1945-1946, Minister of Procurement in 1951, and Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers in 1952.

And then something happened that is commonly called "Khrushchev's thaw." Khrushchev's post-Stalin course had a great influence on Hungarian politics.

The harsh reprisal against Stalinism caused a shock in the leadership of the "fraternal countries". However, a huge number of people have been misled by this demagogy, thinking that the time has come for real freedoms.

Obviously, having decided that the Hungarian government misunderstood the “reform course” (or did not react to it actively enough), at the initiative of the Soviet leadership, Imre Nagy was appointed to the post of head of government, who was instructed to acquaint the general public with the new course. Imre Nagy, later called the "Hungarian Gorbachev", ardently advocated a radical break, a restructuring of the old, pro-Stalinist course.

The policy of the HTP did not suit Nagy, he saw that perestroika was only superficial, and not a complete change in the course of the country - economic and social, the government was torn apart by the ideology of new times and the methods of the old school.

Nagy became disillusioned with the party and increasingly relied on social forces independent of the party, acting, if not in addition to the party, then through its head and putting pressure on it from outside.

“The party is too far from the people,” Nagy argued. He participated in the creation of the Patriotic Popular Front, pinning great hopes on this organization: Nagy intended to make the front a political force independent of the party. Some even thought that Nagy had a plan to create a second party in Hungary.

At the end of 1954 - the beginning of 1955, Nagy's position as head of government was shaken, which was directly related to changes in the USSR. The plenum of the Central Committee of the VPT decided to remove Nagy from the Politburo for his anti-Marxist views and factional activities, and also to exclude him from the Central Committee.

The State Assembly recalled Nagy from the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers. In the second half of 1956, the battle cry of the opposition sounded louder and louder: to return Imre Nagy to the leadership of the party and the country. Nagy wrote a statement to the Central Committee with a request to reinstate him in the party in view of the need to rally the party ranks, and also in view of the fact that he was convinced of the desire of the leadership of the VPT to put an end to the mistakes of the past. The Central Committee replied that there was no question of bringing Nagy to the leadership.

The events in Poland played the role of a detonator for Hungary - the idea arose of demonstrating solidarity with the people of Poland. On October 23, a demonstration of solidarity, having met with resistance from the authorities, turned into an uprising according to the classical Leninist scheme - the telegraph, radio and other media were seized.

The situation in Budapest was rapidly getting out of control of the authorities.

On the night of October 23-24, 1956, a meeting of the Central Committee of the VPT took place, which decided that a "counter-revolution had broken out" in the Hungarian capital. It was decided to ask the Soviet Union to send Soviet troops stationed in Hungary to suppress it, in accordance with the terms of the Warsaw Pact, since it became clear that it would not be possible to suppress the uprising that had begun with internal forces. That same night, Soviet tanks entered Budapest. On the same night, the Central Committee included in its membership prominent oppositionists, among them was Imre Nagy. Nagy was recommended to head the government.

On the morning of October 24, the Council of Ministers informed the population by radio that the fascist and reactionary elements launched an armed attack and that the troops had been ordered to deal with the instigators to the fullest extent of the law. In the interests of restoring order, all gatherings, gatherings and demonstrations were prohibited.

Imre Nagy and Janos Kadar made personal addresses on the radio. Kadar emphasized the need to protect the power of the working class from the enemy and called on the communists and all working people to support the Soviet troops and the armed forces of the People's Republic. The participation of Soviet troops in the defense of the regime was perceived by many as outside interference in Hungarian affairs, with the result that the mood of the masses developed in an increasingly unfavorable direction.

The situation was completely exacerbated by the bloodshed that occurred on the morning of October 25 in front of parliament. Machine-gun fire was opened on the demonstrators gathered here from the roofs of the buildings adjacent to the square. These events, the news of which spread throughout Budapest and then throughout Hungary, inflamed passions and greatly complicated the position of the defenders of "people's democracy" and the adherents of appeasement.

In the meantime, having come to Imre Nagy, the delegation of the first Hungarian Workers' Council demanded that the government terminate the Warsaw Pact, achieve the withdrawal of all Soviet troops from the territory of Hungary by January 1, 1957, establish "equal and independent relations" with the Soviet Union, make the parliament "really the highest body of the country", and the trade unions - "independent organizations", create workers' councils at the factories, raise wages for low-paid categories of workers and employees and establish a maximum for highly paid categories, grant amnesty to the rebels and political asylum to Soviet soldiers and officers who have gone over to their side, create from the workers and other working people new organs of state security.

On the same day, October 26, Nagy proposed to the Central Committee that the uprising be welcomed as a "national and democratic movement", but did not receive the support of the majority. Only those who refuse to lay down their arms before 10 p.m. were called enemies of the people's power.

Declaring in a categorical tone the firm determination of the Central Committee and the government to defend the achievements of people's democracy and not yield one iota on the question of socialism, calling on the communists, workers and armed forces "to destroy ruthlessly those who have raised their arms against the state power of our people's republic, if they do not lay down their arms on time,” the appeal ended in a different tone: “Let national unity and reconciliation replace the era of fratricide!”

The Soviet government promised to urgently consider the question of removing Soviet advisers from the state, economic and military apparatus of the People's Democracies and to discuss the question of the presence of Soviet troops on the territory of Hungary, Romania and Poland. The declaration called the movement of the Hungarian people against shortcomings in the field of economic construction and against bureaucracy just and progressive, although it noted that the forces of "black reaction and counter-revolution" joined this movement shortly after it began.

In the highest instances of the USSR and other socialist states, the decision on new, radical and urgent measures of a military-political nature in Hungary these days crystallized as the catastrophic situation there was revealed and hopes that the defenders of "people's democracy" would be able to cope with by her own strength. It became increasingly clear that real power in the country was passing into the hands of anti-Soviet and anti-socialist revolutionary committees and soviets, that Hungary was leaving the Warsaw Pact system.

The immediate choice by the Soviet Union of a firm position was also to help end the confusion that had already begun to manifest itself in connection with the Hungarian events and in the international communist movement, threatening to shake the organizational and political foundations of foreign communist parties.

Meanwhile, Janos Kadar left for a meeting with the Soviet leadership, at which a decision was made to suppress the uprising.

At 7 pm Nagy announced on the radio that Hungary was withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact. He also said that Hungary had turned to the great powers - the USSR, Great Britain, the USA and France - with a request to guarantee its neutrality.

After midnight on Sunday, November 4, Soviet troops moved deep into Budapest and at five o'clock began to destroy

rebel strongholds. Imre Nagy at three o'clock in the morning convened a meeting of his cabinet, at which it was decided to offer armed resistance to the Soviet army.

Shortly thereafter, Nagy left the parliament building and took refuge in the Yugoslav embassy. Fighting began in Budapest. The city was badly damaged: the walls of many houses were damaged by shells and bullets, in some streets, entire neighborhoods were destroyed by artillery fire.

Pravda on that day published an editorial titled “Barring the Path of Reaction in Hungary”, which stated that Imre Nagy objectively became an accomplice of the reaction, that he could not and did not want to fight it, that his government had actually collapsed. Pravda wrote that the Soviet people were ready to help the Hungarian people crush the reaction.

Meanwhile, Nagy was applying through the Yugoslav embassy for permission to leave for Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav leaders ordered the extradition of the rebellious Hungarians. On November 23, Imre Nagy and the members of the party leadership formed with him in late October - early November (including D. Lukacs, 3. Vas, G. Tancos) and members of their families were arrested by Soviet officers when leaving the Yugoslav embassy and transported to Romania. The news of this caused a new aggravation of the situation.

On June 16, 1958, a closed trial of Imre Nagy and his closest associates was announced in Budapest. The court regarded Nagy's activities as a counter-revolutionary conspiracy and treason and issued death sentences for Nagy, Siladi, Gimes and Maleter and issued orders for their execution. (Lošonczi had died in prison by the time of his trial, and other defendants in the trial were sentenced to lengthy prison terms.) The Yugoslav government's protest against Nagy's conviction and execution was rejected by the Hungarian government.

On December 19, 1958, the UN General Assembly condemned the execution of Nagy, and the following year, by 64 votes to 10, it condemned the governments of the USSR and Hungary for ignoring the UN decision on the Hungarian case.

Imre Nagy(Hungarian Nagy Imre,; June 7, 1896, Kaposvár, Austria-Hungary - June 16, 1958, Budapest, Hungary) - Hungarian political and statesman. Supporter of democratic reforms in the Communist Party. Prime Minister of the Hungarian People's Republic in 1953-1955 and during the 1956 uprising, suppressed by Soviet troops.

Biography

Before World War II

During World War I, Imre Nagy was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army. In 1916, he was captured by Russians and was taken to the Irkutsk province, where, like many other prisoners of war from Austria-Hungary, he became a staunch Marxist. In 1917 he joined the RCP(b), during the Civil War he fought in the Red Army.

Imre Nagy returned to Hungary only in 1921. In 1924, he joined the VSDP, but was expelled for criticizing the leadership in 1925, when he joined the Marxist Communist Party of Hungary, where he dealt mainly with agrarian issues. In total, from 1921 to 1927, he spent three years in prison for political reasons. With the tightening of the Horthy regime and the ban on the Communist Party, he was arrested again, then emigrated to Vienna.

In 1929-1944, Imre Nagy lived in the USSR, working in the Comintern and the Institute of Agriculture of the USSR Academy of Sciences. On January 17, 1933, he was recruited as an agent (secret informant) of the GUGB of the NKVD of the USSR. Since he was on good terms with Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, after the first arrest of the latter, he was also arrested on the night of March 4-5, 1938, but was released a few days later. In 1939 he was reinstated in the ranks of the CPSU (b).

During the purges of 1937-1938, which resulted in the repression of Bela Kun and a number of other Hungarian communists, Nagy's cooperation with the NKVD allowed him to survive during the frequent purges. In accordance with the documents available in the archives of the KGB of the USSR, Imre Nagy actively collaborated with the NKVD and wrote denunciations against the Hungarian communists who worked in the Comintern. According to denunciations signed by Imre Nagy himself, dozens of people were arrested, of which 15 were shot or died in the camps. He had an undercover nickname "Volodya" and, as his superiors noted, he worked proactively, skillfully and disinterestedly, and did not receive material remuneration.

In 1941, he volunteered for the Red Army, but was never sent to the front. Until November 1944, he worked at the Moscow radio station Kossuth Radio, which broadcast programs in Hungarian for the inhabitants of Hungary, which was an ally of Germany in the war.

Postwar years

On November 4, 1944, Nagy returned to his homeland with the first group of communist emigrants. From the end of 1944, he held ministerial posts (mostly related to agriculture) in the Hungarian coalition governments. On March 15, 1945, it was he who proclaimed the government decree on land, according to which all peasants were endowed with their own land plots. Since 1945, Imre Nagy served as Minister of the Interior in the cabinet of Zoltan Tildy and Minister of Food in the cabinets of Ferenc Nagy and Istvan Doby, and was also introduced to the Central Committee of the Hungarian Communist Party.

In 1949, Imre Nagy was expelled from the Central Committee and removed from all posts on charges of opportunism. He was returned to the post of Minister of Agriculture after "repentance" in December 1950.

The failure of industrialization plans and changes in the USSR after Stalin's death led to the fact that at the plenum of the Central leadership of the HTP on June 27-28, 1953, Mathias Rakosi was criticized and replaced as head of government by Imre Nagy. The new head of government with his supporters took a serious position in the party. As head of government, this Hungarian politician carried out a number of measures aimed at improving the life of the people (taxes were reduced, salaries were increased, principles of land use were liberalized), and he stopped political repressions. An amnesty was carried out, internment was stopped and eviction from cities was prohibited on social grounds. Imre Nagy stopped the construction of many large industrial facilities. Investments were directed to the development of light and food industries, the pressure on agriculture was eased, food prices and tariffs for the population were reduced.

50 years ago, on June 16, 1958, Imre Nagy was executed. Even a few decades after his tragic death, the personality of this politician continues to be at the epicenter of controversy, attracting the attention of not only specialists, but also broad public opinion both in Hungary and abroad. Two biographies of Imre Nagy, published in Russian, by historians of different generations - Tibor Merai and Janos Reiner, will give the Russian reader new food for thought about the vicissitudes of the fate of this man who, without ceasing to be a communist in his soul, is looking for ways to reconcile his ideas with an objective reality and national values, has become for many Hungarians a symbol of change aimed at eliminating the monopoly power of the Communist Party.

The authors of biographies belong to completely different generations. Tibor Merai, born in 1924, joined the Communist Party in the 1940s, seeing in it, like many thousands of his compatriots, a force capable of radically renovating the country. In the early 1950s, he was already a successful journalist for the central party newspaper, Sabad Nep, and was awarded the prestigious Kossuth Prize for reporting on the Korean War. Later came the epiphany. “We didn’t fabricate the accusation and we didn’t pronounce the verdict, but we believed in a lie and repeated it ourselves,” Merai wrote on October 6, 1956, on the day of the solemn reburial of Laszlo Rajk, a member of the Communist Party, who became the victim of a trial in the fall of 1949, crafted from start to finish. Since 1953, Merai was one of the journalists who fully supported the reform program of the first government of I. Nagy, which cost him, after the rollback of reforms in 1955, expulsion from the party newspaper and other troubles. After the revolution, in Parisian emigration, even during the life of I. Nagy, he began to write a biography of a man whom he knew personally: the accuracy of eyewitness accounts and liveliness, imagery of presentation are combined in this, as in other works of Merai, with the skill of political analysis and deep knowledge of historical context many of his versions were not refuted, but, on the contrary, received documentary confirmation in the 1990s, when documents from Soviet and Hungarian archives were declassified. We are talking, among other things, about the motives that moved the Soviet leaders in making the final decision by force.

Another biographer of I. Nagy, Janos Reiner, was born a year after the revolution. In 1986, a young employee of the Budapest party archive published under a pseudonym in an emigre publication data on the number of those repressed for participating in the events of the “Budapest autumn”, which, even with all the relative liberalism of the Kadar regime, threatened with bars. Later he became a major historian, heading the Budapest Institute for the Study of the Revolution of 1956. Published in the anniversary year 2006, the book "Imre Nagy, Prime Minister of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956" is an abridged, revised version of his two-volume political biography of Nagy, published by in the second half of the 1990s. The release of this book was at one time an event in Hungarian historical science - all the more significant because the personality of this politician in his homeland constantly became the subject of speculation and political speculation.

You can, however, notice that not only at home. Since the beginning of the 1990s, Russian historians were able to take a more differentiated approach to assessing the Hungarian “national tragedy” of 1956, abandoning the previous simplistic scheme of a “counter-revolutionary rebellion supported by world imperialism,” disputes around personality of Imre Nagy, the central figure in the political life of Hungary in those dramatic days. Moreover, a number of persistent myths have been formed, through the prism of which this tragic character of modern Hungarian history is perceived by the Russian consciousness. According to the most extravagant of them (the well-known author of historical bestsellers E. Radzinsky also had a hand in it), Imre Nagy, a recent Austro-Hungarian prisoner of war who joined the Bolsheviks during the revolution in Russia and served in the organs of the Cheka, was allegedly directly involved in the execution of the royal families. The righteous anger that seizes Russian patriots at the mere mention of the rude interference of foreigners in the drama of the Russian people is quite naturally projected onto I. Nagy, an employee of the Cheka. Even in the case when one has to take a simple historical fact for granted: Imre Nagy in the summer of 1918 was in the Baikal region, thousands of miles from Yekaterinburg, and therefore could not have had anything to do with that massacre (biographer I. Nagy Janos Reiner in in his works does not even honor this version with attention as completely frivolous).

The activities of Imre Nagy during the period of emigration, in Moscow in the 1930s, are also covered in legends. In 1989, at the initiative of the then chairman of the KGB, V.A. Kryuchkov (in 1956, a Soviet diplomat in Hungary) documents about Imre Nagy's connections with the NKVD were taken from the archives and transferred to Hungary. The then leadership of Kadar's HSWP did not dare to publish them, not wanting to add fuel to the fire of the sharp political struggle of the period of "change of systems". Only in February 1993, the Italian newspaper La Stampa published the documents for the first time in pursuit of a sensation, causing a lot of noise. Despite the fact that Kryuchkov clearly pursued momentary and not too clean political goals - compromising the reformist wing of the Kadar HSWP, inclined to rehabilitate I. Nagy, the documents are by no means fake and, in general, leave no doubt about Nagy's certain involvement in the undercover development of some of those Hungarian communist emigrants who became in 1937-1938. victims of Stalin's repressions. This delicate topic is reflected in the literature about I. Nada. True, when reading some of the works of even serious historians, it is difficult to get rid of the impression of the desire to get around here, if possible, some sharp corners. Which, in general, is quite understandable, given the pressure of Hungarian public opinion on the person of Imre Nagy, who has become a landmark figure for many. Sometimes it even turns out that the information that came to the authorities from Imre Nagy was included in the investigative files, as if against his will. Meanwhile, the recent Russian ambassador to Hungary V. Musatov (not only a diplomat, but also a qualified historian) refers to the autobiography of I. Nagy, written in March 1940, which states: “I have been cooperating with the NKVD since 1930. On behalf of I was connected and engaged in many enemies of the people. (Not as an excuse for I. Nadia, but a natural question naturally arises: what could be expected at the end of the 1930s if a person with a rather vague biography refused to cooperate with the NKVD - he worked abroad for a long time, was expelled from the party?) On the other hand, the statements sometimes found in publications that 15 or more people were shot or died in the camps precisely on the denunciations of I. Nagy seem too categorical. “The writer Antal Gidash said that he sat down on the slander of Imre Nagy. The world-famous philosopher György Lukács, the economist Jenö Varga also ended up on the “hit list” because of Imre Nagy,” we read in the article by the respected journalist-country expert V. Gerasimov, who worked in Hungary as a correspondent for Pravda for decades and knew the country as little who else in Russia. So, if we do not limit ourselves to the rumors spread among the Hungarian communist emigration in the USSR, but dig deeper, referring to archival primary sources, serious questions arise. For example, in the multi-page investigative file of the philosopher Dyorg Lukach (the Russian Courier also wrote about his two-month stay in the dungeons of the Lubyanka in the summer of 1941) there is not the slightest mention of Imre Nagy's denunciations - a fact that certainly speaks for itself. And even if it is possible to prove the direct involvement of I. Nagy in the destruction of some party comrades-in-arms, it should be recognized that the above-mentioned documents, although important for compiling a complete picture of Imre Nagy as a person, at the same time do not in themselves provide any grounds for revision, reassessment of his role in the social and political life of Hungary in the mid-1950s and the revolution of 1956. The question also remains open: why the documents of the 1930s from the archives of the NKVD, compromising Imre Nagy, were not used against him in 1957-1958. in preparation for the trial?

Another common legend: Imre Nagy is Beria's man. Janos Kadar seems to have adhered to this version as well. True, it is not known how sincerely, but, according to V. Musatov, he spoke about this to M. Gorbachev in September 1985. Moreover, if for Kadar Nagy's imaginary involvement in the Beria team meant only compromising evidence and nothing more, in modern Russia this version can be linked with the newfangled attempt of some historians and especially publicists to see in Beria's activities in the spring and summer of 1953 plans for far-reaching systemic reforms, present him as a failed reformer. Participation in the Beria team is sometimes explained by the “new course” undertaken by the Nagy government in Hungary since the summer of 1953 - the rejection of forced industrialization, the mitigation of collectivization methods, and the transfer of the center of gravity to the production of consumer goods. But it is enough to study the recording of the meeting of Soviet and Hungarian leaders in June 1953 to see that the figure of I. Nagy was by no means imposed on the post of Prime Minister by Beria against the will of others, it did not arouse objections from any member of the Soviet leadership.

Finally, in the domestic literature of the last decade (and most often in the literature of a strictly defined ideological and political orientation), another controversial version was in circulation: the return to the Hungarian political Olympus in October 1956 of Imre Nagy, who by that time had firmly established the reputation of a “right-wing deviationist ”, is associated with the pliability of Anastas Mikoyan, who did not see a hidden “enemy” in I. Nada and convinced his colleagues in the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee to bet on him. However, even in Western literature, Mikoyan's special position on the Hungarian issue is mechanically projected onto the attitude towards I. Nagy - he was the only member of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee who consistently opposed Soviet military intervention. By the way, Reiner somewhat simplifies the picture when he writes that Mikoyan proposed to reinstate I. Nagy in the party, who was expelled from it at the end of 1955 on charges of factional activity. After all, whatever the subjective position of Mikoyan himself, at a meeting with the leaders of the VPT on July 13, 1956, he, speaking on behalf of the entire Kremlin leadership, expressed an opinion that was not so unambiguous: we “considered and consider it a mistake to expel Nadia Imre from the party, although he is his deserved this behavior. If Nagy had remained in the ranks of the party, he would have been obliged to obey party discipline and carry out the will of the party. By excluding him from the VPT, the comrades made it difficult for themselves to fight him. Nagy should have been frankly told that by fighting the party he is blocking the possibility of returning to its ranks. The path of fighting the Party is the path that inevitably leads him to prison. On the contrary, if he changes his behavior, then he can count on his reinstatement in the ranks of the party. Thus, according to Mikoyan, at least self-criticism on his part should have become a necessary condition for the restoration of I. Nagy in the party.
On the whole, Reiner's book will make it possible to discard obvious myths, revise insufficiently substantiated versions, create a real, full-blooded image of the Hungarian politician in the minds of the Russian educated public, presenting his real role in the events of 50 years ago. However, the complete demythologization of this or that historical figure is an impossible task for a historian, especially when it comes to a person whose legacy continues to be actively in demand in his homeland and today's political consciousness. And what a sin to hide: it is very difficult to impartially look at a person who has become a victim of a cruel, unjust judgment. Martyrdom disposes historians, and even more so publicists and broad public opinion, to apologetics, gives scope for the idealization of Nagy's personality. The latter, by the way, is also characteristic of most of Western literature, which seeks, by recognizing Nagy's merits post mortem, as if to compensate for the amazing short-sightedness in assessing his political face, which Western public opinion demonstrated throughout the entire Hungarian revolution. While welcoming Władysław Gomulka's coming to power in Poland in the same October 1956, it stubbornly continued to see Nadia as an ordinary Stalinist, even when there were less and less grounds for this. Moreover, the attitude towards Imre Nagy was in clear contradiction with the proclaimed in Washington installation to rely not on non-existent (long ago completely ousted from political life) liberals, but on something more real - “Titoists”, supporters of national communism, able to distance themselves from Soviet policy.

A veteran of the party, who had passed the Comintern training and worked for many years in the USSR, I. Nagy was at the same time not a completely typical figure in the communist environment. “A fragment that broke away from our Moscow granite,” his implacable opponent Matyash Rakosi once said about him. The peculiarity of I. Nagy was also striking to people far from the Communist Party - this is recalled, for example, by the author of the preface to the English edition of Reiner's biography, the well-known American historian of Hungarian origin Istvan Deak. The review of the prominent political scientist Istvan Bibo is also indicative: I. Nagy stood out in the cohort of the communists around him, at least by the outward absence of messianic exaltation and that coming from fanaticism, frightening inhumanity, which was always paid attention to from the outside.

An agrarian economist by vocation, willingly engaged in scientific studies and gladly lectured to students, Nagy was created more for a modest academic career than for professional political (especially underground revolutionary) activities, and in other conditions he could have ended his days as a respected university professor. . Only due to a certain set of circumstances, he, as an agrarian specialist, managed in 1945 to take one of the vacant places intended for the Communist Party in the coalition government, becoming the Minister of Agriculture (simply speaking, there is no other expert agrarian of such qualification among the Hungarian communist emigration in Moscow was). This allowed him to “get into the cage”, to be included for the next 10 years in the new political elite of Hungary. However, it is also hardly necessary to downplay the political ambitions of I. Nagy. It is difficult to agree with Merai, who writes: “He did not seek power. He lacked the ambition inherent in most politicians. In his return to power, he saw a burden that he would have to bear for the good of the party, the people and the whole nation. On the contrary, in the summer and early autumn of 1956, with all the caution of I. Nagy, his actions in the context of a deepening internal political crisis testify to a persistent desire to return to the post of head of government in order to finally implement his reform program proclaimed in 1953. This rushed into eyes and his political opponents, and like-minded people.

Unlike the vast majority of communist politicians of his generation, I. Nagy (a man from a very poor petty-bourgeois family, who, due to the outbreak of the First World War, did not manage to get a completed education and was seriously engaged in self-education all his life) was always drawn to the intelligentsia. Having fallen into disgrace in 1955, he took a step towards the writers and journalists who supported him, in which J. Reiner rightly sees a step characteristic of an intellectual rather than a party functionary. However, it would also be wrong to exaggerate the “specialness” of I. Nagy - he not only identified himself with the communist movement and Marxist-Leninist ideology all his adult life, but was perceived in other camps as a foreign body - even by fellow communists from the left peasant parties. One of them, the writer and leader of the national peasant party, Jozsef Darvas, in the fall of 1947, during a trip to the USSR as part of a delegation of the Hungarian-Soviet Society for Cultural Relations, told a Soviet interlocutor: I. Nagy, who is responsible for agrarian policy in the leadership of the Communist Party, did not live up to expectations , his theoretical knowledge is not connected with practice, he, according to the "people's writer" Darvas, does not know the Hungarian peasantry.

The "holy of holies" of the Bolshevik ethics, the unity of the party, was never an empty phrase for the convinced communist I. Nagy, the last thing he wanted to give his opponents was a pretext for accusations of factionalism and incitement of the youth dissatisfied with the regime against the ruling party. In his book, which was written largely in polemic with the indictment in the case of I. Nagy and his associates, Merai argued that there was no reason to attribute to Nagy the deliberate preparation of the rebellion, on the contrary, he behaved with extreme caution and restraint. In the explosive situation of mid-October 1956, Nagy chose to withdraw outwardly and returned to active political activity only under strong pressure not only from close associates, but from the entire party activists. Of course, he was afraid of provocations that would prevent him from returning to the government and engaging in the implementation of urgent reforms. But his position was quite clear, he consistently adhered to the reform program that he did not have time to implement in 1953-1955, he wanted to make the communist regime more effective and was not at all going to introduce a multi-party system (even within the left wing of the post-war anti-fascist coalition), to promote the formation of a legal opposition. “It is not the business of the party to create opposition for itself,” he argued with his young associates and was not inclined for a moment to join a movement that would question the political monopoly of the Communist Party. He also objected to free elections: “What if, after all the disappointments, the Hungarian people elect Cardinal Mindszenty as their leader? What then?

Nagy least of all fit into the events of the first day of the revolution. The program with which he spoke on the evening of October 23 was so moderate that it seemed to millions of Hungarians inadequate to the current moment (and was such in fact). Calls to peacefully go home and entrust the solution of all issues to the updated party leadership did not satisfy the audience. “Nagy, as a disciplined party member, made the crowd wait for two hours, and these two hours seemed to be enough for control over events - for the whole time or at least for several days - slipped out of his hands,” - so subsequently Arpad Göncz, the first president of the post-communist Republic of Hungary, commented on the events of that day. About the constant delay in making the right decisions, which made the Hungarian revolution "a revolution of lost 48 hours," Merai also speaks. The apparent indecisiveness of I. Nagy in the early days (and the scope of his speeches really turned out to be unexpected for him, however, not only for him, but for everyone) complicated his relations with more radical communist reformers and negatively affected his popularity among the people, led to to the disappointment of those who previously pinned certain hopes on him. Already on October 24, underground radio stations broadcast about Nagy's betrayal. However, even after that, for another 4 days, Nagy continued to lag behind the events, not realizing a clear account of the situation that had arisen, not fully understanding that he was isolated from the people and from everything that was happening on the streets of Budapest. As Merai writes, “It is quite obvious that Nagy mixed up different circumstances - his return to the leadership of the party and the role of the leader of the country in which he still had to prove himself. He saw a personal victory in the creation of a new party presidium of six people, and the people, meanwhile, were indifferent to this achievement. At that moment, there was no longer any question of inadmissibility of individuals. The whole party was unacceptable to the people!” It is true, perhaps, and another remark of the biographer. Nagy was not just a prisoner of his ideas for a long time, which did not give him the opportunity to take a decisive step towards revising the essence of events. Even in the midst of the revolution, he remained a man of science, he wanted to work out a program, the individual points of which would stand the test of objective and scientific analysis. But reality moved on, and at an accelerated pace.

And yet Nagy was not just a communist, sensitive to national peculiarities. He was much more acute than most party members of such a high rank was aware of the contradiction between communist doctrine (and even more so Soviet policy) and real popular aspirations. Throughout his life, Nagy tried both in theory and practice to contribute to their reconciliation, not forgetting the responsibility of politicians to the people, although not shying away from compromises (after all, politics is the art of the possible).

If in the first post-war years in Imre Nad a communist internationalist and a defender of the interests of the Hungarian peasantry coexisted and dramatically opposed, then in October 1956 he appears in another incarnation - as a Hungarian patriot. However, this turn was prepared by his entire previous spiritual evolution. In 1955, in his notes addressed to the party leadership and later made public, he radically revised some of Stalin's dogma - especially where it concerned the nature of relations between socialist countries: Nagy's unfailing sensitivity to national specifics logically led him to demand greater equality in Soviet-Hungarian relations. In the days of October 1956, he went further. If, shortly before the start of decisive events, in conversations with like-minded people, he fundamentally rejected the multi-party system from the standpoint of traditional communist orthodoxy, then later, by October 28, taking into account the voice of the people, he came to the recognition of political pluralism, as well as demands for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary. The choice, to be sure, was not easy, I had to break myself. As Claude Lefort, a left-wing French political scientist, writes in this connection, earlier Nagy “could not imagine that the place of historical decisions was not the party. Nor was he capable of realizing that mass actions had gone far and would find their way without leaders and without slogans. His reflexes were those of a partisan!” But by the end of October, with the entry into the political arena of independent public organizations, revolutionary committees, workers' councils, a new situation arose. The path of Gomułka and Dubček was closed to Nagy (even though it was created precisely for such a role!). “He wanted to be a good communist and a good patriot at the same time. It was impossible,” notes Merai. All previous attempts by I. Nagy to reconcile the Bolshevik-Leninist concept of socialism with national interests, to create socialism that meets not only these dogmas, but also specific Hungarian conditions, turned out to be utopian in the October days and were, if not discarded, then abandoned for a while. In a situation where it was necessary to make a decisive choice, Hungarian patriotism outweighed I. Nagy's deep communist convictions. On October 28, having taken a decisive step towards rapprochement with the mass popular movement, I. Nagy crossed the line separating a party functionary, proceeding primarily from the interests of his movement, from a politician of a nationwide, nationwide scale. The faithful "Muscovite" of the Comintern's training turned into a Hungarian national revolutionary, a follower of the traditions of 1848. In Merai's book, for the first time, the image of a bridge across the abyss that separates the party from the people sounded, and Nagy standing on this bridge, which later found artistic embodiment in sculpture on Kossuth Square.

The rapid evolution of the political face of I. Nagy in just a few October days of 1956 sometimes caused accusations of inconsistency even from some of his well-wishers (“yesterday he said one thing, today another”). Of course, one can evaluate the announcement of Hungary's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact in different ways from the point of view of the conformity of this measure with the principles of real politics - those who see this as an unjustified outburst of emotions with uncalculated consequences are not entirely mistaken, in our opinion. At the same time, the sources of inconsistency in Imre Nagy's statements and actions were rooted not in the "opportunism" of his nature, as Moscow believed, but in the desire, being on the crest of events, to master the rapidly changing reality, to find a common platform for the diverse political forces that manifested themselves in days of the revolution, and at the same time preserve the socialist content of the government program. Attempts turned out to be futile, it was not possible to master the situation, the search for further ways out of the crisis was thwarted by Soviet military intervention.

Imre's biographers Nadia T. Merai and J. Reiner analyze the causes of failures, reveal mistakes and miscalculations, without idealizing their hero, who showed an obvious weakness in practical politics. The respected American expert Charles Gati, like Merai, a refugee of 1956, is even more critical of I. Nagy (his new book “False Expectations” was published in the year of the anniversary of the revolution and in Russian). “With all due respect to the goodwill and patriotism of Imre Nagy and his colleagues, recognizing that the first significant uprising against Soviet domination in Europe was the hardest and, perhaps, hopeless undertaking, one should not turn a blind eye to the ineptitude and clumsiness of the Hungarian revolutionary government,” notes He. And on the next page he notes: “Nagy’s fearless, uncompromising behavior at the trial that sentenced him to death in 1958 should not obscure the fact that, despite good intentions, he did not possess the political skill that could lead the revolution to victory. In particular, he failed to lead the country between the maximalist expectations of the freedom fighters and the rather moderate demands of Moscow.”

All this may be true, but, as Reiner rightly believes, the actions of I. Nagy during the period of the revolution must be evaluated not only in political, but also in moral categories. According to the biographer, on the morning of November 4, at the moment of the decisive Soviet military action, Nagy was not at the height of the situation and the tasks he faced, his behavior marked a step back from fulfilling a national mission to narrow party politics. The well-known radio statement addressing the people only disorientated many thousands of Hungarians, and the subsequent flight to the Yugoslav embassy not only dealt a blow to the legitimacy of the government, but was in itself a manifestation of human weakness. In the same situation, one of the ministers in the government of I. Nagy, Istvan Bibo, behaved in a completely different way, a man who had political ambitions to a lesser extent, but a thinker of a completely different international scale than Nagy, one of the largest Hungarian intellectuals of the 20th century. When at about 8 o'clock in the morning Soviet soldiers entered the Parliament building, they found only one minister of the current government there - it was I. Bibo. Before being detained by the Soviet secret services, he tried to hold a kind of press conference to issue a new appeal to the Hungarian people on behalf of the government, a matter of hours after I. Nagy, in his radio address, assured the nation that the government was in office , after which he himself took refuge in the Yugoslav embassy. Still, Nagy avoided a moral fall by refusing to recognize the new government imposed from outside. And later, with his heroic resistance to attempts to force himself to play according to someone else's scenario, he redeemed (again in moral terms) his mistakes made in a moment of weakness.

I. Nagy was not just a typical Eastern European national communist of the middle of the 20th century, a product of the crisis of Soviet ambitions for complete control over the world communist movement (and this crisis was clearly revealed already in 1948, when Tito refused to obey Stalin). And not just (if you resort to a different optics of perceiving the same things) by a person whose active participation in the communist movement did not kill a politician devoted to national values ​​in him. The mode of action of I. Nagy in the conditions of the revolution of 1956 had its roots in the Hungarian historical tradition. 100 years earlier, during the revolution of 1848, Prime Minister Lajos Batthyani (like Nagy, who was executed after the defeat of the revolution) also sought to remain on the basis of the existing legality, the established legitimacy. Recognizing the legitimacy of the demands of the rebels, at the same time he did not advocate the immediate demolition of the old system, he was looking for ways to peacefully resolve the conflict.

However, as in 1848, in 1956 the inexorable logic of revolutionary action, the dynamics of events carried on, and Imre Nagy, who announced his country's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, was in demand in the role not only of Batthyani, but also of Lajos Kossuth, who went to a decisive break with his "suzerain", the Austrian emperor. The tragedy of Nagy was that he was not ready to play this role - not only due to an objective set of circumstances, but partly due to subjective reasons. To a greater extent, it turned out, perhaps, that the Polish communist leader W. Gomulka was ready to carry out a similar mission. The Polish leadership was able to make a decisive turn in time to upholding national priorities before the dictates of Moscow, which neutralized the most radicalist sentiments in society, which was extremely sensitive to inequality in Polish-Soviet relations, and prevented the development of events according to the Hungarian version. However, Gomułka also proved to be not up to the mark later on. The relative success of the nationally oriented, reformist forces in Poland in October 1956 was not consolidated by a genuine reform of the system, which led to a clear backward movement, a rollback to, although not too tyrannical, but still very inefficient administrative-bureaucratic model of socialism. And this, by the way, somewhat contrasted with the situation in Hungary, where the Kadar regime had been developing along the path of liberalization since the early 1960s, and in 1968 embarked on an economic reform, although not fully implemented due to external and internal factors. .

With the evolution of the Kadar regime, the formation of a specific Hungarian model of socialism, in which Hungary turned from a burden for the USSR into a showcase of the “socialist community” in 10 years, Western political scientists had to compare the severely defeated idealist I. Nagy with the more successful, albeit cynical pragmatist Ya .Kadar, who tried in the difficult situation that developed after the defeat of the Hungarian revolution, to put into practice, with an eye on Moscow, at least some of the reformist ideas of 1956. Sometimes the comparison even turned out in favor of Kadar, whose experiments with reforming "real socialism" in the early 1970s years attracted close attention in the West and inspired some people with unjustified illusions (disappointment came by the end of the 1970s). Of course, the brutal reprisal against I. Nagy harmed the reformist image of Kadar, and in order to make the image of the Hungarian leader look more unsullied, much, if not all, had to be attributed to Moscow. Only in the 2000s were documents from the archives of the Central Committee of the CPSU published, irrefutably testifying that in February 1958 Moscow gave Kadar a chance to finish the case without imposing death sentences, but he deliberately did not use this chance (“Russian Courier” wrote about this in September 2006). However, even now it is not difficult to face the inertia of the old stereotypes about Moscow's diktat. It is enough to pick up the biography of Khrushchev, written by the American historian W. Taubman and published in 2005 and in Russian translation. A sensational, Pulitzer Prize-winning book, but uneven in quality.

As for Tibor Merai, he goes to a different extreme. In an afterword specially written for the Russian reader, he gives Kadar such a characterization that can hardly be considered objective: a “fanatical, obsessed misanthrope” who makes “cannibalistic efforts”, who for many months could not come to terms with the fact that he could not manage to send Imre Nagy to scaffold, and yet waited for a convenient moment for Moscow and did his dirty deed. Not listening to the experienced Chinese communist Zhou Enlai, who advised not to execute the main figures of the counter-revolution, so as not to make martyrs out of them.

According to Merai, the idea to send Imre Nagy to the scaffold matured in Kadar in the very first weeks after coming to power. Not without reason, having “acquired” the prime minister who never resigned, who was detained on November 23 while leaving the Yugoslav embassy and sent to Romania, he exclaimed, rubbing his hands: “No resignation is needed, the job is done.” If so, then all Kadar's later statements in conversations with Western politicians that Nagy would have survived if he had left on time and made way for the new government are nothing more than the creation of mythologems. According to Merai, for three decades Hungary was ruled by "an inveterate, bloodthirsty, cynical, cold-blooded, prudent and power-hungry killer", and this "does not at all mitigate, does not compensate for the fact that later he deftly used the position of the Soviet leadership, which, fearing a new 1956, gave the Hungarians, this strange, neither Slavic nor Germanic nor Latin people, a little more freedom, a little more "liberalism" than the inhabitants of their other colonies. It does not compensate for this either by the fact that he pretended to be the "father of the people", a simple proletarian, nor by the fact that many Western "realist politicians" after some time not only considered him a completely decent person, but simply raced to look for his favor " - Thatcher, Mitterrand came to him, he was received by Giscard d'Estaing and Pope Paul VI. Thus, under the pen of biographer Imre Nagy, Kadar is not only demonized, he is criminalized.

But is it possible to evaluate the role of Kadar in modern Hungarian history only by how he showed himself in the I. Nagy case? Of course, the long-term leader of the HSWP cannot be relieved of heavy responsibility for the repressions committed after 1956. It is also true that Kadar skillfully exploited the image of a liberal communist-pragmatist that had developed in the West, taking advantage of the unavailability of documents about his true role in the massacre of I. Nagy. But something else is also significant. As soon as the threat to the regime was removed, Kadar immediately undertook a far-reaching amnesty. This already indicates that he was not a maniac killer, but a tough pragmatist. In addition, Kadar himself won from the Soviet leadership (in a sense, won) for his people greater freedom - in exchange for obedience in fundamental foreign policy issues. Throughout the entire 30-year epoch, objective conditions imposed restrictions on the man who was at the head of Hungary.

Any politician who wanted to do something for the country had to follow certain rules of the game in relations with Moscow, obey bloc discipline. Only people acceptable to the leadership of the CPSU could, after 1956, actively show themselves in the field of state activity. With his undoubted political realism, Kadar favorably differed from those who were inclined to call irresponsibly to the barricades. His position was in demand by the era, because it was a compromise in those conditions that met the interests of the nation, just like in 1867 the Hungarian political elite, headed by Ferenc Deak, compromised with the House of Habsburg, thereby providing optimal conditions for the development of the country during several decades. With his foreign policy loyalty to Moscow, Kadar won a field for himself to conduct a more independent domestic policy, to implement limited reforms, which nevertheless turned Hungary into a showcase of the social community for some time. So, we can talk about the political skill of a man who, from a protege of another state hated by the overwhelming majority of Hungarians, turned into the most popular Eastern European leader in his country in 12-15 years. However, it is also true that Kadar's compromise policy, although it made the change of systems less painful, at the same time by no means prevented the economic crisis and the subsequent political collapse of the Hungarian model of socialism. In 1958, Tibor Merai asked in his book the question: "what will be the final result of this system of government, resorting to this kind of means?" Kadar partially answered this question with the evolution of his system. But the finale was still not much different from how other communist regimes ended their days.

Having become for some time a showcase of the "socialist community", the Kadar regime, like its kindred political regimes in the countries of Eastern Europe, ultimately showed its unviability. The change in the balance of power in the international arena, the cessation of Soviet control over Eastern Europe contributed to its rapid transformation into a different quality. The death of Kadar in July 1989, symbolizing the end of an entire era in the history of Hungary, almost coincided in time with the reburial of Imre Nagy. The man who ruled Hungary for more than 30 years, even during his lifetime, could see the choice made by his nation in favor of Western models alien to him, based on political pluralism. From a distance of 33 years, a paradox became obvious: unlike Kadar, not being a strong practical politician and having a worse idea of ​​the limits of the possible, I. Nagy, who became the banner of the forces that advocated a change in the system in the late 1980s, proved in absentia to Kadar his historical rightness. The main conclusion that you come to when reading the books of J. Reiner and T. Merai is this: the political mistakes of I. Nagy, his inability to master the situation in the tragic days of October 1956, do not negate the significance of the moral example that he gave in the last year and a half life by consistent upholding of convictions, in their main, most significant moments, coinciding with the aspirations of the Hungarian nation.

Alexander STYKALIN

Published in 1958 in France, the book “13 days. Imre Nagy and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 "immediately became a bestseller, was translated into several languages, including Russian - in 1961 it was published by a New York immigrant publishing house. Merai wrote a special afterword for the new Russian edition and came to Moscow to present the book. For almost three decades, Merai edited the newspaper Irodalmi Uyshag, which continued the traditions of the Hungarian revolutionary press in the autumn of 1956 in exile. years at the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, famous for its historical traditions. This act was supported in their letter by 27 Nobel Prize winners. After a third-century separation, Merai first came to his homeland in the summer of 1989 to participate in the solemn reburial of the ashes of Imre Nagy, and, at the request of the family of the deceased, delivered a speech over his grave.