THE ASSASSINATION OF IMRE NAGY
8 What is striking about the assassination of Imre Nagy and his companions is the conditions of the trial and the justifications given in the 17 June 1958 communiqué alade or car lad ors. The in ced all testant had been disparaged by Khrushchev himself following upon the revelations in his speech against Stalin and the spectacular rehabilitations of Rajk, Kostoy, other men condemned on the basis of ignominiously extorted "confessions." What is more, it is stated in the ministry communiqué that the executed men pleaded "not guilty," and in any case had made only partial "confessions." It seems in reality that they were able to resist the physical and moral tortures and repeated the exploit of Kostov and so many others who never "confessed." In any case, a public trial of Imre Nagy, beside the enormous agitation that it would have caused in Hungary itself, in all the "people's democracies," and in the entire world, threatened to turn into the pure and simple accusation of the present responsible figures of the Hungarian government, notorious accomplices of Nagy during the 1956 events in Hungary - and Janos Kadar Will there be so soon forgotten the "compromising" declarations of Kadar, a minister in the Nagy government, and co-founder with him of a new Hungarian Communist Party? Was it not Kadar who on October 30th 1956 declared that he was "in full agreement with my friend Nagy"? And was it not also he who on November Ist 1956 before the microphones of RadioBudapest said the following?
The youth of the Petöfi Circle fought in the first ranks against the despotism of Rakosi and political banditism; we are proud of you who have taken your true place in the armed uprising. You were suffused with genuine patriotism and loyalty toward During the evening of November 2nd 1956, it was again Kadar who made a speech describing the Hungarian revolution as a "glorious upsurge," and adding that "those who prepared this uprising - writers, workers, peasants, students - come from our ranks." But other statements by Kadar concerning Imre Nagy's safety are no less compromising. On November 14th 1956, after the crushing of the revolution by the intervention of the Red Army, and his installation at the head of the government, Kadar, receiving a workers' delegation, declared :
Imre Nagy is not being held. He left parliament as a result of his own decision. Neither the government nor the Soviet troops wish to limit his freedom of movement. It depends on himself whether to participate in political life. Imre Nagy had taken refuge, as is known, in the Jugoslav Embassy at Budapest. The courageous protest handed by the Jugoslavs on June 23rd 1958 to the Hungarian government affirms that Imre Nagy and his
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL * Y companions had not at that period committed "any of the acts with which they are reproached" in the Hungarian ministry's communique. What was in question there ted, accusations that are "untrue and completely The same note of protest recalls that "the Hungarian government pledged itself to guarantee the sate return Lot Imre Nagy and his companions to their homes, and not to apply any sanction against them." A few days later, on December Ist 1956, the Hungarian government reaffirmed that the satety of these persons "will be assured and no sanction will be taken against them for the acts which they previously committed." There is Kadar - to use his own November expression - taken in flagrante delicto of "political banditism? In reality Imre Nagy and his companions were executed on the orders of the Kremlin at a given moment corresponding to a new stage in its policy. It is quite plainly a question of a premeditated act aimed at terrorizing the masses and the opponents of the Kremlin's neo-Stalinist policy in the "people's democracies" and to dam up the "revisionist" current. Khrushchev is allying himself with the "Molotivist" elements of the Soviet and the international Stalinist bureaucracy in order thus to consolidate his power. "Destalinization" as a line of gradual and partial "liberalization" could not but fail in face of a most explosive internal situation in the US SR, "people's and internationally. The whole dynamics of the situation were driving toward revolutionary reforms, effectively abolishing the bureaucracy's political power in those countries. For now some time already the Kremlin has been trying to slow down this process, to mark time, or even to take partial backward steps. It now finds itself forced to have recourse even to phyBut a complete return to the regime of Stalin is inconceivable without the use of terror on a colossal scale in the USSR itself and in the "people's democracies." It would be necessary in addition to run the risk of eliminating Gomulka in Poland and Tito in Jugoslavia through a possible war against those countries. Such an enterprise is gigantic in scope and runs counter to the strong basic currents of history at the present stage. Stalin was the monstrous Thermidorian caricature of Bolshevism. Khrushchev is the cynical caricature of senile Stalinism. To keep himself in power he dicated to compromises between concessions and repressions, until the revolutionary proletariat's next explosion, built up in the world he governs, and internationally. The most serious danger represented by the political regime of Khrushchev is that of war. The international Stalinist bureaucratic caste is indeed capable of seeking in the long run a way out from the contradictions that are ripping at and undermining its power, by taking a chance on conflicts that may set off a world conflagra-
Meanwhile his actions only help reaction and imperialism's war plans. The assassination of Nagy deepens the isolation of th
'ommunist Parties from the Socialist Parties and th
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL petty-bourgeois masses, as well as the disorientation of their own members. This murder, combined with the campaign against Jugoslavia and its economic blockade, furthermore largely destroys the efforts of the Kremlin's
9 campaign toward the "uncommitted" countries like
India, Egypt, etc. Once more the Soviet bureaucracy proves to be a major obstacle to the spread of the world revolution and even to the defense of the US S R.