János M.

Rainer

János Kádár and Kádárism: new perspectives

This paper has twin aims. First, it sets out to summarize and review the latest
historiography on Kádár himself – from the 2006 biography by Roger Gough to the
recent works of a younger generation of Hungarian scholars. Secondly, it moves on to
focus on the structural problems of Hungarian post-Stalinism.

1.
Only two appreciable books appeared before 1989 on Kádár as a person: a biography
by the English journalist William Shawcross in the mid-1970s,1 and an essay by the
Hungarian writer László Gyurkó in the 1980s.2 Each put forward a typical image of
Kádár during the successful Kádár period. One summarized the knowledge in the
well-informed West, while Gyurkó’s was a product of cooperation with György Aczél,
the most intellectual figure in the Kádárite party leadership, and the Kádárite, yet at
the same time moderately reformist intelligentsia of the time.3 Its task was to
enhance cohesion among the latter, which had already loosened considerably, and to
present Kádár as the pledge of the alliance between this group and the party elite.
The first scholarly treatment to appear in Hungary was Tibor Huszár’s two-
volume political biography at the beginning of the 2000s.4 Huszár, original a
psychologist and later a sociologist, described in great detail the youth and
preparatory years of Kádár, on which, however, very little relevant information
directly connected with his person had survived. Clearly his biography after 1956 was
more interesting, but on this Huszár thought to write only a series of analyses of
various natures, which are hard to piece together into a unified story. The case
studies remain obscure to those without knowledge of the internal personal relations
of the Kádár period, its parlance, its crosstalk, in a word, without some knowledge of
Hungarian Kremlinology. Huszár’s stance is considerate and analytical, and in the
final part of the book, to do with Kádár’s removal from office and rapid deterioration,
it is hard for him to disguise his emotion. He did not even attempt any systematic
description of the attributes of Kádárism, even though one of the key concepts in the
second volume of his biography is Kádárization.
The most successful Kádár monograph was written by the Englishman Roger
Gough, who is not Hungarian and not a professional historian, but an economist, the
research director of a British think-tank.5 Gough did extremely thorough research in

1 Shawcross, William: Crime and Compromise. János Kádár and the Politics of Hungary since
Revolution. New York, 1974, Dutton.
2 Gyurkó László: Arcképvázlat történelmi háttérrel (Portrait sketch with historical background).
Budapest, 1982, Magvető.
3 According to Gyurkó, the Oxford firm of Pergamon Press wanted to publish a Kádár autobiography,
or a biography of him. This proposal Kádár rejected, saying he would not write an autobiography
and he did not want a biography written. Finally, “a few co-leaders” thought it would do good to
have something appear about him, and the Politburo committed Kádár to spend a few hours talking
with Gyurkó. Gyurkó (1982) 8–9.
4 Tibor Huszár: Kádár János politikai életrajza. 1912–1956 (Political biography of János Kádár,
1912–1956). 2 vols. Budapest, 2001-2003, Szabad Tér Kiadó. On the main source publications and
on Huszár’s volumes, see the important essay by András Mink: A történelmi Kádár (The historical
Kádár). BUKSZ, 1/2002, 15–28.
5 Roger Gough: Kádár János, a jó elvtárs? Budapest, 2006, JLX Kiadó (= A Good Comrade: János
Kádár, Communism and Hungary. London, 2006, I. B. Tauris).
Hungarian archives and made a succession of interviews. His approach, in his own
words, was “unabashedly chronological”, his subject political decision-making, on
which he quotes the Cambridge professor John Dunn as calling “the reality of
improvisation, trade-offs, confusion, discomfiture and sheer fatigue.” Furthermore,
he establishes that Kádár “was a quotidian politician to his fingertips”, despite some
undoubted strategic sense. On Kádár’s “balance-sheet” he enters that his memory
lives on and is divided, and his moral responsibility for the deaths of many people
quite clear. His Hungary was “a point on the post-Stalinist spectrum rather than a
fundamentally different system.” Two persons (Rákosi and Nagy) and two
experiences (his own imprisonment in 1951, and the 1956 crisis) served him as
negative points of reference, from which he drew “a series of simple but fundamental
maxims.”
No biography appeared for the Kádár centenary, but a monograph did. György
Majtényi, having already written a book on the anthropology of the leading elite in
this country under the Soviet-type system, produced in 2006 one on János Kádár’s
daily life.6 He charted very precisely the first secretary’s weekday routine, home, use
of space, time schedule, and customs at work and at leisure. One very interesting side
concerned the number of points on which reality differed from Kádár’s consciously
shaped public image of a simple, puritan, “working” man. According to Majtényi, this
absence of a Kádár cult could itself be interpreted as a kind of Kádár cult.
Kádár’s person in Hungary today is a subject of nostalgia, although the
nostalgia for him personally is less strong than for the period.7 The latter is the true
source of the nostalgia for Kádár, although the Kádár image of the late Kádár period
has a hand in it as well.8 The image was built of mythical elements, yet not on some
heroic story, but rather on that of a leader of the masses without a cult surrounding
him, of a chosen man without any story of being chosen, whose most important trait
was not heroicism, but being one like us, with some minor differences, of course.
One important feature of Kádár’s image in the late Kádár period is almost total
absence of a time dimension. This is not the story of a life, for it lacks, for instance,
lacks the side of development. Two aspects essentially remain of Kádár’s personal
history: his origins and his sufferings. Kádár is a respectable Hungarian working
man, he himself is a worker, who toiled hard in the mill. He personally experiences
and suffers all the troubles and sorrows of working men. Some time between his
youth and the eternal present (or to put it more precisely, in the 1950s), Kádár
suffered greatly, as he was imprisoned unjustly. The important details of this (who
he was at the time, where he was confined, what he was charged with, when or how
he was let out again) were missing from the narrative. Other details, though, were
remarkably vivid: Kádár’s under torture had his fingernails were pulled out, and the
demonic state-security officer who interrogated him (the more initiated knew that
this was Vladimir, son of Mihály Farkas.),9 who urinated in his mouth.10 Then ’56

6 György Majtényi: Vezércsel. Kádár János mindennapjai (Leader’s gambit. The everyday life of
János Kádár). Budapest, 2012, Libri/Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár. “Leader’s gambit” is a literal
translation of the Hungarian for queen’s gambit in chess.
7 Surveys on Kádár put him as the most popular Hungarian politician of the 20th century. Mária
Vásárhelyi: Csalóka emlékezet (Deceptive memory) … More recent surveys show over 70 per cent of
the Hungarian population taking the view that the Kádár period was better than the period after the
change of system. Gyarmati-
8 This retrospective description rests on two basic sources: reports on the public mood and other
reports of the state security organization, and personal memories. Obviously the validity of both is
very limited.
9 [Mihály Farkas (1904–1965), a Hungarian communist from Czechoslovakia who joined the
Hungarian Communist Party leadership in 1945, served in the Interior and Defence ministries and
ensued and at the end of the hard times, Kádár came to power.
Several aspects of the prior story remained unclear. Kádár never spoke publicly
about what happened to him in prison. In fact he was largely silent about the whole
course of his life. There were a few occasions when he was obliged to talk about it, but
even then, he would edit his pronouncements himself. He used just the same motifs
in 1972, in a speech on his sixtieth birthday.11 He spoke of his tough boyhood and
youth (not even birthdays were marked), his sufferings in prison (not knowing what
was in store, or if he died, whether he would be seen as a traitor), and ’56, for which
he introduced at that time the concept of a national tragedy. The phenomenon of
constructed, falsified autobiography is familiar under every closed, totalitarian
system of rule, in which such a social stage production is almost expected and/or
extracted.12 Perhaps more interesting is the extent to which Kádár’s was a non-story,
just like that of the Kádár period and its people. Most members of Hungarian society
had no story to tell because they were not permitted to have one. The social self-
image that became an identity consisted of just two elements. One was background:
the vast majority of Hungarian society were descendants of working men. (Indeed,
whose forefathers could not be said to have worked?) The other was suffering:
Kádár’s tale of suffering was mirrored in a collective sense of misfortune that raised
no matters of participation or responsibility, stood unplaced in space and time, and
involved assuming no position. At most, people sorted through the episodes of
suffering in 20th-century Hungarian history for the period when suffering in that
sense could be described quite easily, without raising conflicts or issues in the present
day. This, in the 1970s, was to the greatest extent a “personality-cult period” – than
which any other period and the collectives to be derived from it would pose graver
problems. Kádár’s image matched perfectly with the collective self-image that anyone
might hold publicly under Kádárism.
The present sides of the Kádár image also derived from the current or past
experiences of Hungarian society. The greatest value attached, from the beginning of
the 1960s, to peacefulness, security, and a modest, but predictably improving level of
welfare – by the last was meant more than anything continual access to a range of
consumer goods. So Kádár too worked hard. The compass guiding him was welfare of
the people, and therefore (or nonetheless) he had many enemies. He had to attend
constantly to what was being said above, in Moscow. But Kádár was a smart fellow
with guts, always able somehow what he wanted out of the Russians. He wa s a
modest man, who made no personal gain from his work, though he might have done.
He lived in a well-situated house, but not too large or luxurious, and led a a simple
life. Many believed he kept chickens in his yard. He was a puritan, with no extreme or
expensive habits, but he liked to play ulti 13 and chess (so showing he had a head and
was a fine upstanding Hungarian). You could understand what he said and he did not
speak from notes (unlike all the others, who could not even read properly when it
was under their nose).
On one side Kádár’s everyday portrait drew on usually favourable comparisons
with formulaic personality traits ascribed to other historical Hungarian leaders of a

on top party committees, and was convicted and imprisoned in 1956 for illegal acts in the Rákosi
period. His son Vladimir was a colonel in the security police.]
10 Aczél and Méray (1986) 222–23; Shawcross (1974) 72. The torture legend, which according to Aczél
and Méray came from Kádár himself, had been denied by Gyurkó (1982) and several others later.
11 This appeared in the activists’ periodical Pártélet and in translation in the same year in the New
Hungarian Quarterly (No. 48. Winter, 1972). For the original, see Kádár (1975) 394–404.
12 Mark (2005); Mark (2010) 126–65.
13 [A popular trick-taking game played by three persons with a pack of 32 cards.]
similar time, and on the other on the self-image of society at the time. Kádár was
ultimately measured against pictorial and other impressions gained by Hungarian
society of similar East-European leaders around him. Only Kádár could win from the
frequent comparisons with Nicolae Ceauşescu, a Byzantine cult leader oppressing the
Hungarians of Transylvania, and a declining, senile Leonid Brezhnev.

2.
The nostalgia to be sensed in Hungary these days is primarily for the Kádár period.
How is the essence of the Kádárite exercise of power seen today? The first task is to
clarify whether the post-Stalinism of Hungary differed from that of other countries in
the region, and if it did, to examine the differences.
Political historians, economists and economic historians, and sociologists and
social historians, all focus on different things when they examine the post-Stalinist
phase of a Soviet-type system. The first tend to point to the end of mass terror, to
general “softening” of the dictatorship, growing expertise within the cadre-based
bureaucracy, and relative expansion of social freedoms. The economic approaches
stress rationalization of the planned, command economy, the reforms with an
admixture of market elements,14 the growing role of the informal/second
economy,15 and decreases in shortage and hardship. Social historians point to a
differentiating, yet still static social structure. This society cannot be dismissed just as
dual structures derived from the totalitarian paradigm, as Rudolf Andorka, for
example, put it.16 Nor can the “homogenizing” image of society found in the ideology
of the day be applied. Once the period of “forced social transformation” was over
(collectivization of agriculture in the early 1960s), Hungarian society showed the
marks of industrialization and modernization, the only significant differences being a
curious distribution of wealth (state ownership) and relatively low income
differentiation. Meanwhile social history points to signs of embourgeoisement in the
post-Stalinist phase. This meant attempts to adopt some superficial traits from the
West, mainly in consumption. There was a stronger resemblance in behaviour and
mentality with the petty bourgeoisie of the first half of the 20th century,17 against
which stood the norms and values of the official ideology. But it also strengthened the
cohesion of the system, as its ideal was not self-willed, enterprising, puritan
bourgeois, but obliging employees (state employees) who accepted hierarchical
conditions and could not amass real wealth.18 The sociology studies of the time
pointed out that ideology was influencing an ever-smaller area of society’s daily life.
Traditional values and value-judgements remained viable. Cultural and educational
historians pointed to the greater cultural openness and variety that followed the
catch-up in culture, while qualifying that by referring to taboos on open expression
and growing uncertainties surrounding the national dimensions.
Such tendencies had begun under the classical Stalinist system – in the
informal second economy, for example, and consumer attitudes – but as a whole they
were far more obvious in the post-Stalinist period. Although all Soviet-type countries,
even the Soviet Union itself, showed developments such as easing of the terror, social
differentiation, incipient consumerism, some cultural liberalization, and in the 1960s

14 Kornai saw the part of the Kádár period from 1963–68 until the end as an experimental shift from
the classical system towards “market” socialism. See Kornai (1993) and (2007). For more recent
debate on market socialism see Valuch (2008).
15 Germuska (2008) provides an overview of the literature on the second economy.
16 Andorka (1995).
17 For an analysis see Gyáni and Kövér (1998) 255–67 (text by Gyáni).
18 Gerő (1999) goes so far as to call this a “true national consensus”, a “kind of popular front.”
and 1970s, improvements in some indices of Western modernization, there were
quite wide differences among them on the narrower issue of whether to go for
rationalization or market reforms. Kádár’s Hungary did not differ strongly from the
pre-1956 period or from neighbouring countries in its system of institutions or its
coordination mechanisms: the post-totalitarian system was one of unchanged
structures and unchanged potentials, but a different mode of operation.
Yet Hungary certainly differed. One difference lay in the origin of Hungarian
post-Stalinism in the 1956 Revolution. It grew out of post-Stalinist experimentation
but led to general revolt against Stalinist and post-Stalinist forms of the system. The
experience of defeat (or capitulation) led to acknowledgement of a “ Kádárite deal” or
compromise. But the compromise was not clear or made between equal partners. It
was nothing other than a steadily developing body of practice based on recognitions
by the Kádárite elite itself.
Also specific to Hungary was its deeper, more radical economic reform. It was
no one-off adjustment, but a process lasting through several phases from the mid-
1970s to the collapse of the system.
Another feature specific to Hungary was the Kádárite outlook on the world,
which reflected the general mood in society. This was a rich system of relations and
comparisons in space, time and conceptuality. Its spatial basis was the entirety of the
Soviet-type countries, notably the Soviet Union and especially the neighbouring
countries, but its point of reference was the West: mainly Austria and West Germany
in Europe, but also the United States and Canada after the wave of 1956 emigration.
The prime source in time was the Rákosi period, but an earlier temporal comparison
was made with the Horthy period. Within this system lay the momentary 1956, with
its promises, both unkeepable and kept. The conceptual web of comparison operated
basicly with the concepts of capitalism and socialism. Identified within the former
was past capitalism – pre-war Hungary and Europe – while past-socialism meant
Stalinism and its variants, and current or existing socialism the general Kádárite
conditions. Existing socialism was better, more liveable and more humane than
Stalinism, and from many points of view than existing capitalism as well. Everybody
had work (or rather a work place) and received the welfare handouts from state care.
Of course existing capitalism (e.g. as the Austrians experienced it) was better still, but
of course Hungary stood closest, or at least closer than any other member of the
socialist camp. Dominant in these simple comparisons were the measures of material
living standards. Other factors included were the chance of travel and the accessibility
and affordability.19 The average was referred to in discourse during the Kádár period
as the working man. His living conditions had to be compared in terms of space, time
and socioeconomic system with those of his peers. The results could be used to
summarize the Kádárist public mood using the formula, “Things are relatively better
here now than....”
However, this public mood was a historical product of Kádárism that did not
mark the whole Kádár period. It gained a largely positive meaning when its material
bases were endangered. The Kádárite mood of the public also embodied fear of
sinking and dropping behind, a feeling about life that it might worsen at any time.
This, the experience of sinking and uncertainty that came with the change of system
and transformational recession, produced the ultimate, retroactive rating given to
the whole Kádár period. The Kádárite perception became fixed in its final shape in
the 1990s, after the event for the most part. It was altered to a significant extent by

19 The subject was analysed primarily in several contributions by László Lengyel, especially (1996) 4–
82.
the constructive processes of recollection.
Kádárism, probably like post-Stalinism as a whole, denoted at the same time
an interaction. The social existence of the time was a mutual organizing force based
on informality, concealment and pretence. Beside the visible world of formal
regulation, institutions, and norms derived from ideology stood another world of
behaviour, conduct and attitudes that likewise framed and controlled social existence.
This latent framework gave rise to its own language, in which non-disclosure was an
important element and nothing meant exactly the same as it did in formal (official)
parlance. Individuals, groups and institutions operating within the framework had to
use other rules and intermediaries alongside (or instead of) the formal mechanisms.
So the specific sense of the historical route and place of Kádárite Hungary was not
simply shaped by the public mood. It almost furnished the linguistic and institutional
spaces of the Kádárite world in which the actors of informality moved and discussed.
Post-Stalinism loosened the coherence of Stalinism, but this, up to the change of
system in 1989 never developed into a coherence of qualitatively different structures.
That never happened in Hungary, although Kádárism was where incoherence took its
most coherent form of existence.