The Sheila Variations

Hungary - Part III - 1989

This post is about the world-wrenching events of 1989, and Hungary's role in all of that.

HUNGARY - PART III - 1989

So now, wrenchingly, I skip ahead to 1989. We are now in the absolutely tumultuous and astonishing autumn of that year. Unbelievable ... the stuff that went down in a matter of 3 or 4 months. Truly incredible.

The Berlin Wall came down in November. But that mind-blowing development was created by a crisis in Hungary. A crisis for the Communist Party and for the Soviet Union in general.

Basically, the edifice of the Communist Party had been crumbling for awhile, and suddenly, in a matter of a year, there was no mask left. Nobody cared, nobody listened to them anymore. There was no belief in the power of the Communist Party. It was a paper dragon. The slaughter in Beijing, under the eyes of the visiting Gorbachev, had something to do with it, but it also was a fever which spread across the world, in all places at once. Lech Walesa and Solidarity, the massacre of demonstrators in Tbilisi ... every single country began to explode, and the Communist Party was completely ineffective in dealing with all of these crises. There would be no Prague Spring this time. No one listened to the mouthpieces anymore. No one feared the Paper Dragon.

And here is what the Hungarians did: Let me make sure I get this straight:

For decades, Hungary was a popular vacation spot for people from behind the Iron Curtain. It was a summer "resort" spot, with lakes and cabins (as opposed to a wintry Alp-type atmosphere.) Knowing the holiday season in Hungary is important because it was when everyone started returning home for their vacations in late August, early September 1989, that everything started changing, cracking, accelerating.

East Germans and West Germans would use Hungary (a relatively open and relaxed Communist country ... as opposed to the more Stalinist Romania, or the wacky militant Bulgars) as a meeting spot in the summer months. Families would be reunited, would have vacations together on a yearly basis, and then return to their respective homes, on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain.

For forty years, the Hungarian border guards were fierce about making sure that the East Germans returned to East Germany. The border with Austria was one of the toughest and most harassing in the world, because it was the place where you could escape. Austria represented Europe, and the West. Hungary was Communist, so the poor East Germans didn't have a chance to escape because everybody had their eye on them. First of all, they were hated because they were Germans, part of the country that started two World Wars. Second of all, they were from a divided country. They still had enormous family connections on the other side of the wall. Of course they wanted the wall to be taken down, so that they could be with their relatives again, see their families again. This was just the sort of tight family bond that the Communist Party frowned upon. And the situation in Germany was extremely volatile because of this. The Berlin Wall did not make things easier for the Communists. It made things worse.

So anyway. Back to Hungary.

Hungary had a treaty agreement with East Germany, signed in 1968, saying that they would not permit East German citizens to travel to the West via Hungary.

And then suddenly, in the early autumn of 1989, the foreign minister of Hungary (Gyula Horn) decided to ignore his treaty obligations. He did so without any permission from Moscow, without any discussion with the politburo. This is just incredible.

But here's what led up to that autonomous decision which changed everything. What is so incredible is how quickly the massive Communist structure toppled. The rot within was so extensive. The East Germany refugee crisis was in September1989, the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, and it all was over by summer of 1991.

Phenomenal.

Hungary decided to let some of the East German refugees pass through to the West with their families and the border guards turned a blind eye. At first. So this is in itself incredible, and goes to show you how much things had relaxed, how the power had been crumbling bit by bit - until in one fell swoop, it no longer existed. But what began as a small trickle of people exploded, and quickly, into a massive refugee crisis. Once people heard that you could get to the West easily through Hungary, they all basically packed their bags, left East Germany, and poured into Hungary. This was an incredibly embarrassing situation for the Communists in Moscow, and for the politburo in Hungary. What should they do? There were thousands and thousands of people suddenly crushing up against the border with Austria. Tens of thousands of refugees. And this was not a refugee crisis of the kind we are accustomed to - poor bedraggled people, huddled in tents on a windy plain. These people were young, educated, and supposedly the future of the Communist Party.

Here's a quote from Michael Dobbs' great book Down with Big Brother:

Unbeknownst to either man, the foreign minister of Hungary made a decision, in the privacy of his Budapest home, that led inexorably to the fall of the Berlin Wall less than three months later. Gyula Horn was grappling with the kind of excruciating moral and political dilemma familiar to many Communist reformers that summer. Over the past few months Hungary had been transformed into a holding pen for tens of thousands of East German refugees. Very few were political dissidents. For the most part they were young people, fed up with the austerity of life under communism and the never-ending snooping of the secret police. They had given up on their dogmatic Communist leaders, who seemed allergic to the very idea of reform, and were voting with their feet. From Hungary they wanted nothing more than safe passage to the bright lights of capitalism in West Germany. "There is no future for us in the East" was a common refrain. The foreign minister had to decide whether to let them go or keep them penned up in the Communist East.

Now this is amazing: Yes, Hungary had this treaty with East Germany. Hungary did fear that the hard-liners in Berlin, in Moscow, would come down on them fiercely if they broke this treaty and let the refugees go through. Czechloslovakia's "Prague Spring" in 1968 had been a warning to all Communist countries everywhere of what could happen if you started ignoring Moscow.

HOWEVER: a few months before Hungary filled up with East German refugees it had also signed an international agreement pledging freedom of travel, and also "humane treatment" of refugees.

So this was Horn's dilemma. He knew the whole world was watching his country's behavior because Hungary had signed this international agreement, stating its commitment to human rights. Hungary was a Communist state. Was it possible for a Communist country to protect the human rights of its citizens, as well as people "visiting" their country? Beijing was an obvious debacle in this regard. The world was still shocked, stunned, and devastated (one more descriptive term, Sheila??) by the massacre in Tienamen Square. There had been hope that the Chinese government was changing: allowing the students to speak out, allowing forums on democracy, etc. But once they were confronted by an actual revolution, they crushed it like a bug.

Would Hungary go the same way? Would Hungary reveal itself to be as hypocritical and as afraid as China? Would it honor its agreement with Moscow? Or would it honor its agreement with the world?

Horn (a hero in my book) decided, on his own, without getting permission from the powers-that-be in Moscow, to stand by the international human-rights agreement, and NOT the agreement with East Germany.

Another quote from Dobbs:

After a sleepless night, pacing up and down his sitting room, the 57 year old foreign minister made up his mind. He decided to abrogate the treaty with East Berlin and let the refugees go. Hungarian leaders had earlier taken the precaution of informally testing the waters with Moscow. The Soviets appeared to have no objection.

"There was no other way," Horn recalled later. "We had to look for the humanist solution, no matter what sort of conflict might arise. It was quite obvious to me that this would be the first step in a landslide-like series of events."

And he was certainly correct. East Germans fled their own country in droves. They piled into Hungary, poured out through Austria, and then poured into West Germany to be reunited joyously with their families. This directly led to the Berlin Wall coming down a couple of months later.

"We had to look for the humanist solution, no matter what sort of conflict might arise" said Horn. God bless him. He may have acted out of a sense of his own political survival, and not out of any lofty goal. But still - in an uber sense, he did the right thing.

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