International: Autobiography

To His Honor the Foreign Minister of Hungary, the peasants of Gyor county brought their finest gifts: flour, bread, wine and suckling pigs. They were proud that Laszlo Rajk, the second man to Matyas Rakosi in the Communist Party, should head the election lists in their district. Rajk thanked them with a simple speech, in calm and measured accents.

That was last May. Last week Laszlo Rajk (pronounced Royk) spoke again in calm and measured accents. What he said might have been a complete fabrication—but it made an interesting tale. For five hours, before the Hungarian People’s Court which was trying him for subversion and espionage, he told a closely detailed story of 18 years of double life as a police informer, traitor, spy and conspirator planted in Hungary’s Communist Party. He said that he had worked in succession for Dictator Horthy’s police, Hitler’s Gestapo, and U.S. Intelligence. This year he had engaged in a plot to overthrow the Rakosi regime by force, on orders of Yugoslav Marshal Tito’s Interior Minister, Alexander Rankovich.

The trial was held in the gaily decorated, red marble assembly hall of the metalworkers’ union, in which Rajk a matter of months ago used to appear with Rakosi to deliver political speeches. Rajk had been in jail since his arrest in June, but he looked fit. Avidly, he piled self-accusation upon self-accusation.

Slivovitz with Photostat. Rajk testified that in 1931, when he was 22, he had signed a paper enlisting in Horthy’s secret police, then run by Dr. Peter Hetenyi. Thereafter, as he rose in the Communist Party which he was supposed to destroy, this paper dogged him. Apparently everybody except the Communists had a copy of it. According to Rajk, the French Deuxieme Bureau, the Gestapo and U.S. Intelligence all used the paper to blackmail Rajk into serving them.

Last year he went to Yugoslavia on an official visit. At the beautiful beach of Abbazia on the Adriatic, Rankovich entertained Rajk. The Yugoslav Communist led the Hungarian into a small room. They had several glasses of slivovitz, and then Rankovich told Rajk that Tito planned to overthrow Hungary’s Communist-dominated government because it was loyal to> Stalin. Rankovich asked Rajk’s help. To make it clear that a refusal would be inadvisable, Rankovich drew a paper from his pocket; it was a photostat of the paper Rajk had signed in 1931.

Rajk said that he then agreed to join the plot against Rakosi and other Hungarian Communists. “Rankovich told me,”Rajk said, “to annihilate them physically; that is, in plain Hungarian, to kill them.”1

After Rajk, Lieut. General Gyorgy Palffy, chief of staff of the Hungarian army, stepped to the courtroom microphone. As he talked, listeners recalled last May Day when General Palffy, resplendent in dress uniform and riding a white horse, reviewed his troops in Hero’s Square. “Good morning, comrades,” Palffy had shouted. A thousand voices answered “Good morning, Comrade General.” Palffy had drawn his saber to salute the flag. The saber slipped out of his hand, clattered to the ground.

Later that day, he told the court, he sneaked down behind the reviewing stand where he met Rankovich. They discussed details of the plotted coup d’etat.

And Who Else? Rajk’s testimony and Palffy’s might be lies—in the familiar and baffling tradition of the Moscow purge trials. Or their stories might be true.

Probably the peasants of Gyor and of all Hungary would never know. The Communist Party, from its earliest days, has been wedded to conspiracy and treachery. Its quest for absolute power corrupts its members; none knows whether his comrade is a traitor. Maybe Rajk was a spy; maybe Rakosi is a spy, too.