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June 26, 1989

Hungary: Reformers Take Over Party Leadership

An analysis of the Hungarian government's leaders and their movement toward political pluralism.

April 26, 1989

Hungary: Grosz Increasingly Isolated

An analysis of the future of the Hungarian political system and its principle actors.

April 22, 1989

Hungary: Leadership Proposes Sweeping Reforms

An analysis of Hungarian Politburo actions that reduce Party control over politics and the economy.

December 6, 1989

Rezső Nyers’s Typed Notes to Miklós Németh on Gorbachev’s Briefing on the Malta Summit on 4 December

An official report by Nyers about the Malta Summit prepared for Prime Minister Miklós Németh.

December 4, 1989

Rezső Nyers’s handwritten Notes on Gorbachev’s Briefing on the Malta Summit at the Meeting of the Warsaw Pact Leaders in Moscow on 4 December

Unofficial hand-written notes by Rezső Nyers, President of the Hungarian Socialist Party, taken took during a briefing by M. Gorbachev at a Soviet Bloc summit in Moscow on 4 December, just a day after the meeting with President Bush at Malta.

July 25, 1989

Report of the President of Hungary Rezso Nyers and General Secretary Karoly Grosz on Talks with Gorbachev in Moscow (excerpts)

President of People’s Republic of Hungary, Rezso Nyers, and General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, Karoly Grosz, report on their talks with Gorbachev in Moscow, 24-25 July, 1989. The excerpts contains economic reformer Nyers’ assessment of the political situation in Hungary, and first among the factors that "can defeat the party," he lists "the past, if we let ourselves [be] smeared with it." The memory of the revolution of 1956 and its bloody repression by the Soviets was Banquo’s ghost, destroying the legitimacy of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, just as 1968 in Prague and 1981’s martial law in Poland and all the other Communist "blank spots" of history came back in 1989 to crumble Communist ideology. For their part, the Communist reformers (including Gorbachev) did not quite know how to respond as events accelerated in 1989, except not to repeat 1956.

April 7, 1970

Minutes of the Meeting of the Political Committee, April, 1970

Discussion of the political situation in China; border issues with the Soviet Union; foreign relations, such as those with Albania, Japan, the GDR and Bulgaria; the political isolation of China; and the organization of the political party in China.

May 5, 1970

Minutes of the Meeting of the Political Committee, 5 May 1970

Discusses Chinese-Hungarian Foreign Relations, their history, trade, and issues a resolution for future interactions between the two states.

January 31, 1989

Minutes of the Meeting of the HSWP CC Political Committee

Minutes of the meeting of the HSWP CC Political Committee on the Historical Subcommittee of the Central Committee’s description of the events of 1956 as a people’s uprising rather than a counterrevolution.

Editor's note: On 23 June 1988, the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party Central Committee established a committee to analyze Hungary’s political, economic and social development during the preceding thirty years. The panel, headed by Imre Pozsgay, 5 a politburo member and minister of state, included party officials and social scientists. After several months of examining pertinent archival documents, the Historical Subcommittee (one of four working groups) completed and discussed its final report at its meeting on 27 January 1989. Most sensationally, the report described what occurred in 1956 in Hungary as not a “counterrevolution” (as Moscow and the regime it installed in Budapest headed by János Kádár had long insisted) but a people’s uprising. This very point was announced by Imre Pozsgay in an interview on both the morning news program and the next day, on the most popular political journal of Hungarian Radio, “168 hours,” without any prior consultation with the political leadership. The issue triggered a serious crisis in the Party and eventually served as a very important catalyst in the transition process. The following excerpt reflects the first reaction of the Politburo members.
(EXCERPT)

February 18, 1969

Hungarian Politburo Minutes of the meeting of the Political Committee on 18 February 1969

One of the main agenda items during this meeting was a discussion of the China question and a recent memorandum on the issue. It is debated whether the memorandum embellishes the isolation of Mao and his group, both internally and internationally. Participants also make predictions of how the situation in China will likely develop.

Pagination