INDEX ON CENSORSHIP 2 / 8 3 Hungary Miklós Haraszti et al News from inside The following text is the editorial which introduced the first issue of Beszelo, a new Hungarian samizdat publication launched in October 1981. Beszelo literally means 'the one who speaks', but it is also used to mean the occasion when a prisoner receives a prison visit, as well as the room where the visit takes place. It is often said that nothing of note ever happens in Hungary. People are quite happy to be left alone by politics; in their free time they build the family house, breed chickens, and amuse themselves. The intellectuals cultivate their cultural gardens, leaving the business of politics to the politicians. The . churches work happily together with the state. The old-time reactionaries and the bourgeois democrats are now extinct; the Communist revisionists have never regained consciousness since their defeat in 1956. The authorities now and again bring out their iron fist but, on seeing that no one is really running wild, they are quick to put it back in their pocket. At most it's just the occasional hooligan or drunken ruffian who gets struck down, and when that happens the public are often found encouraging them to strike even harder. Only a handful of oppositionists try to shatter the social peace — and without much success. It is not only the country's leaders — who are always happy to interpret political apathy as active support for their policies — who see things in this way, but for the most part their adversaries too, who can't bring themselves to keep repeating for ever that silence is not the same thing as consent. But in fact everybody — either from their personal experiences or from everyday gossip — has heard of events that are out of the ordinary run of things. It's true that in Hungary over the last 10-15 years there's hardly ever been a strike in which the entire workforce of an enterprise took part. Yet strikes do take place in smaller groups, at the level of the workshop or factory section. It's true that the press is for the most part held well in line by the self-censorship practised by both editors and authors. But it does happen that some journal occasionally publishes an unpublishable manuscript, and seeks to defend its publishing policy. It's true that intimidated leaders stand at the heads of the churches, some of them blackmailed, others bribed. But even the collaboration of the earthly powers with the church leaders cannot prevent the emergence of indepen- BE:S2E dent religious movements, both within and between the churches. It's true that every election result is fixed in advance, behind the scenes, that the voters' task is just to raise their hands at the given signal. But there are examples of co-operative, youth league, party or union organisations, whose membership revolts and throws out the official nominee. And there's the enormous number of young people, willing to make sacrifices, who travel regularly in Rumania and Slovakia, collecting information about the fate of the Hungarians living beyond our borders, and helping them in any way they can — in defiance of the by no means inactive disapproval of the authorities. And there are always the independent seekers after truth, who will never reconcile themselves to the idea of the state being the stronger... Yet despite all this, when we think of public affairs in our country it is not these examples that come to mind. Many of them are stories of just local interest, which word of mouth does not carry very far. They also remain out of the news as reported by the mass media. In this way each individual catches only a passing glimpse of the many different squares that go to make up the overall mosaic. Certainly not enough to see a clear picture before him. And what he hears by word of mouth remains at the level of unacceptable and unintelligible rumour. 'In Csepel the workers carried around a coffin, on the side of which was written "Profit-Sharing". In the hand of the Lenin statue in front of the works entrance they placed a slice of bread and dripping.' (Who did? How many were they? How long did the demonstration last? Did the police turn out? Who knows. There are some who say that nothing happened at all. According to others, the whole thing was just a carnival prank by the trade union.) 'In the Economics University they set up the FISZ.' (The initiated know that the initials stand for Independent Youth League. The better informed, however, also know that the event in fact took place at the Technological University.) 'In Miskolc leaflets were being distributed.' (Rumour has it that they were in support of the Polish workers. But others said it was Polish guest-workers themselves who gave them out. Someone else heard from an eye-witness that they were using leaflets brought from home to parcel up the goods they bought on the black market. Clearly, they're even out of wrapping paper.) In the majority of cases even the person who's telling the tale isn't sure whether what he says is true or not. But one shouldn't cause trouble by asking sceptical questions. And above all, there's no point to it. The purpose of such rumours is that in the course of exchanging them, people share with each other their unrealisable desires and unresolvable anxieties. No one thinks they could have anything to do with changing their practical conduct. The very same person who, in the morning, presumes to know about the mass demonstration in Csepel, will by evening, without blinking an eye, be asserting that nothing like that which took place in Poland in the Summer of 1980 could ever happen in Hungary. It would be interesting to know what people really think about the jumbled accounts they manage to put together from the confused mixture of everyday rumours, the half-truths and half-lies of the mass media, and the unreliable information from Western radio stations. If it were possible to carry out independent studies of public opinion, we might in principle get to know this, at least after a fashion. But even in principle the question is unanswerable, as to what people think about the facts that are covered up by this confused jumble. It's more than likely, however, that they don't know of them. Why don't we try to collect these facts and make them more widely available? At least 8