JÁNOS KENEDI:

Small master singers. Some thoughts on the excuse of Miklós Kun´s book

János Kádár, general secretary of HSWP and György Aczél, secretary of the CC of HSWP wanted to make intellectual elite accept the legend that Hungary joined the military invasion of Czechoslovakia exclusively under pressure from the USSR. The participation in the intervention however depended on the resolution of the Politburo of HSWP and on Kádár´s personal decision, as it had been a political initiative from the Hungarian side and not Soviet pressure which had insisted on the execution in 1958 of Imre Nagy and the other martyrs. Dictators usually prefer having the appearance of a victim, instead of an offender and this is what János Kenedi shows us in his essay which recovers the fiasco of the lip service through the examples of an indipendent poet and of a writer unable to join the guided influencing of public opinion.