HUNGARY: Budapest: One Year Later

A little less than a year ago, TIME Correspondent Edgar Clark watched Soviet tanks crawl into Budapest, dodged bullets in Budapest’s Szena Square when 2,000 students overturned streetcars to use as fragile barricades against the Russian guns. Last week, back on a brief visit granted by the Communist government, Correspondent Clark reported on Budapest one year after:

In Szena Square only a rare pockmark remains. On the corner where the fighting was most savage, an old woman stands, basket in arm, selling hens. On the surface normalcy has returned. Grass and flowers now surround the tree where an AVH (secret police) colonel once hung. Gone from the parks and squares are the temporary graves of the Freedom Fighters. The Russians have made a tremendous effort to dress up the country. As a result, Hungary has been provided with the highest standard of living behind the Iron Curtain—the well-traveled say Budapest lives better than Moscow itself. Food is cheap and abundant. Stores are full of Russian refrigerators and Danish kitchen equipment. The battle-torn Csespel Island steel mills are rebuilt and going full blast. In fact, Hungary has probably made greater strides in rebuilding in the year since the revolution than in all the ten years before.

The trains run on time, nightclubs have reopened, and little boys and girls scamper along the cobbled banks of the Danube. Just now, the country swarms with Austrian and German hunters who pay up to $1,200 for the privilege of shooting at the local stags. But at the airport Hungarian troops are all over the place. And Hungarian troops certainly are not the only ones around the city. The Soviets are still there. The invaders’ tanks and heavily armed soldiers no longer man the streets and bridges. They are camped now in the hills of Buda and not far from the American legation in Pest. Only a few are seen on the streets. But their presence is felt—most directly by arrests. More than 100,000 people are estimated to have been arrested since November. The visitor finds that old friends are simply not around any more, and it is unwise to ask about them except in the most discreet terms.

The workers’ councils, the only democratic institution in Hungary since the Communists took over, have been dissolved. It was simple: the leaders were arrested and replaced with Communists. Then, with Communists in the majority, the councils obligingly voted themselves out of existence.

The wooden double doors of Josef Cardinal Mindszenty’s Episcopal Palace are locked now, and shutters are drawn over the windows where candles flickered briefly last year, for the first time in years, on Allhallows’ Eve. But from his refuge in the American legation, Mindszenty remains a symbol to the Hungarian people. The regime would be happy to have him leave the country.

The survivors of the revolution maintain a grim sense of humor. “Have you heard that the new Hungarian calendar has only eleven months?” asks the first Hungarian. “Yes,” replies the second. “Premier Kadar has eliminated October.”

Just in case Kadar has not succeeded, the regime has launched a new wave of arrests to head off any threat of trouble on the Oct. 23 anniversary of Hungary’s rebellion.