HUNGARY: Everyone Wonders

In the Communist world, which celebrates by the numbers, fall is a festive season. But between observance of the October (1949) Communist victory in China and the 40th anniversary of the Russian Bolshevik Revolution in November, the Reds this year must pause to mark a new anniversary. The date is Oct. 23, and it is no Red-letter day. On that day last year Hungary’s freedom rebellion broke out.

Last week, betraying a certain nervousness that the anniversary might touch off some kind of sorrowful and sullen demonstration, Minister of State Gyorgy Marosan told 5,000 members of the armed Red workers’ militia gathered in a soccer stadium: “Everyone wonders what will happen on Oct. 23. I can tell you—nothing. It will be a normal working day. Children will go to school. Workers will be in factories. We will see who is absent from his place. And if it occurs to anyone to gather on the street, then the workers’ power will be there in ten minutes and restore order.”

Two days later, Marosan, who more and more does the tough talking for the castrated Premier Janos Kadar, went to Budapest Polytechnic University, where a student demonstration set off last year’s revolt. “You may swathe yourselves in millions of meters of our national colors; you may sing the national anthem from morning to night,” but it will do no good, he said. His alert cops arrested 1,200 Hungarians in July, Marosan went on. At this point some students got up and left the hall. “Our ranks are becoming thinner, my young student friends,” said Marosan. “It is just as well that they depart, one by one, because it is quite hopeless for them to create a scene. I should like to tell my young friends that October 23 is to be a working and school day. I shall come personally to the university to see that it is.” With that, Marosan and Kadar, two bush-league traitors kept in power by the Red army, flew-off to Moscow to dine with their masters in the Kremlin, and then on to Peking for the Communist celebration season.