Consequences of dismissals among political dissidents

(XVI. International Oral History Conference. Between Past and Future: Oral History, Memory and Meaning)
Prague, 2010 July

Introduction

The Oral History Archive of Budapest has undertaken a project of making life interviews with those active in the so-called democratic underground of the communist regime, following a former project 'Other Hungary' which focused on the subculture of the same historical period. It has been decided to make 30-40 interviews in the short run recording for the future and for further historical researches segments of the past which otherwise are unaccessible by means of other traditional sources. Also the political history of the one-party regime is difficult to be studied by archival sources since informal decisions and measures were frequent and dominant in the political culture of communism. Party and state documents referring to the political underground are prejudicial political assessments. Moreover exactly the files hold on the most active period of the underground, namely the late seventies and eighties, have perished in the troubled monthes of the political turn in 1989. A great deal of interviews has been made certainly since then with those dissidents who entered the political elite. These interviews however focused on the institutions of the underground as well as on their political ideas and the mass demonstrations. The sporadic proofs of their activity, samizdat periodicals and documentaries, shed light also on the public side of their life. Our intention however was on the one hand  to collect the rememberings of both those who had chosen to hold off the political sphere under democratic circumstances and were successful in building their professional career and of those for whom democracy and liberty brought delusion together with financial ruin. (The later has been unfortunately under-represented in our collection. They usually shut themselves up and are unwilling to speak about their past.)
On the other hand according to our traditions our archive collects 8-12 hour long life interviews which cover from the origins of the interviewee's family through his course of socialization, his milieu to his activities several aspects of life. Consequently on the basis of these interviews we can, among other approaches, study problems such as who was the actors of the loose circles of the underground, the personal connenctions which led them to join the group, as well as forces and values which kept them together or we can have an insight into how they lived their dissident being.
This paper focuses on a so far undiscovered aspect of the ordinary life, namely the sphere of work and the possibilities of living on the basis of our interviews and a collection of interviews published on the political history of the democratic opposition.¹ I concentrate my interest on the years, the turn of the seventies and eighties, when the communist power challenged them resolutely exactly in the field of labour in response of their vigorous political activity. I am to show what sort of jobs the dissidents could get in a system which took pride in the full employment and how they could avoid the emigration. Further, I try to determine who were those who lived as punishment the dismissals in line with the aimes of the authorities, whether the ban on employment could serve as deterrence, and who were those who lived the lay off more positively, as gaining personal liberty.

In the course of the seventies the dissidents measured the limits of their possibilities, understood the reaction of the authorities. In the same time also the contacts and forms were developped by means of which the few dozens of opponents condemned to occasional jobs could earn their living and could live in relative freedom. (They couldn't obtain passport valid for capitalist countries, among others, but even this restriction was to change by the end of the decade.) They got used to the unceaseless control of the state security, but they understood that there wouldn't be harsh measures against them.⁸ In 1979 the dissident offended the old limits by rendering public their initiative. Those who foresaw that the letter of protests would be made public, counted on the possibility that they would be dismissed because of having signed the protest. They still remembered the example of those laid off after the military invasion of Czechoslovakia.
It was the main political body of the party which decided the counter-measures. The political committee of the HSWP reacted quite slowly to the activity of the underground, but after the protests accepted a resolution on the dissidents and charged the Department of Science, Puclic Education and Culture to elaborate proposals on the political life against the opposition. The report, the so-called "Report Knopp"  divided into four categories the dissidents and only in the case of the fourth category suggested sanctions proposing that "they wouldn't let work in working posts where their views could be listened and could influence the youth and the work of the given institution." That is to say the report of the cultural department didn't mention directly ban on employment, it suggested only transfering to new positions those who still had permanent jobs among the 'instrigators'.⁹ The report on the basis of the principle of 'divide et impera' proposed more moderate actions against those of the other three categories. It suggested to turn a blind eye to their participation as being decieved¹⁰ or considered them to be separable from the main group, if it is necessary by blackmailing them with their job. The deputy head of the cultural department who came from the same university milieu as the majority of the dissidents thought that harsher measures were unnecessary. The party leadership and the state security who transmitted the instructions of the political leaders to the employers were however more determined to act and to punish the majority of the participants. Although the technic of dividing the underground was adopted, in the end many were dismissed either for taking part in the protest or for having acted in other suppesedly inimical ways, ie. making contacts with the Polish trade union movement.
 

Reactions to the dismissals

Dismissals did not mean pushing the dissidents to the total uncertainty of subsistence. The paternalistic party ensured the possibility of living in terms of the principle of full employment, at least seemingly, offering less important posts and white-collar job. The point was to humiliate and to push them to the margins of society gradually besides deterring others.
A few of them chose the way of emigration instead of the blank professional future. However good contacts were necessary also for leaving Hungary. Similarly to the getting of occasional jobs trusted persons could help who undertook the pro forma employment in face of the authorities since the recommendation of the working place was indispensable for the passport.application.¹¹
The laid off generally did not accept the worse possibilities of employment offered by the party. In conformity with the logic of restriction of the rulers most of them tried to find new jobs relying on their own contacts. They sought jobs which let them to remain in their professional field even if less in the fore. This was certainly possibly with the tacit approval of the rulers and by the assistance of some, mostly party functionaries or prominent party members who took the risks of testing the limits.¹²
Some others didn't look for new possibilities of employment. Also others, the youngest, decided consciously that they would earn their living by occasional jobs since employment was incompetible with the active role in the underground because it meant possibilities of blackmailing.
In the seventies the modell of living as free lancers was being formed in the circles of the dissidents on the example of some prominent intellectuals such as János Kis, János Kenedi, Zsolt Krokovay etc. One could avoid the obligation of permanent employment if he/she was recognized as free lance journalist, writer, artist etc. by the authorities. Free lancers had to prove that they received regularly commissions in order to earn their superannuation fund.  The most characterictic forms of living for free lancers were developped in the seventies, too, such as translating, editing for publishing houses and documenting. The later meant the writing of shorter or longer summaries about mostly international social sciences literature for the party, university departments or the National Library.¹³ These works, even if didn't meet their special interest, kept them at a certain intellectual level and widened their horizons. Besides desk works a lot of dissidents were engaged temporarily in field works of sociological projects. They made interviews, filled in questionnaires. Some of them were specialized in encoding the forms. These were perhaps those activities where dissidents could easily masked their engagement and thus also their employers could contract them more freely. On the other hand the social activities of the sociological researches enforced the cohesion of the underground.¹⁴ Once the subsistence was ensured, one could live the situation as being liberty and appreciated this life form without constraints.¹⁵ On the contrary those who weren't linked with close ties to the different groups of dissidents or hadn't been yet involved remember their thriving in gloomy colours because they suffered the lack of continous work supply.¹⁶ Consequently by the time of the Charta protest the modell of living in a less bound way had been developped in the circles of the dissidents which mitigated the gravity of the dismissal and was set as an example to be followed.¹⁷
As we have already mentioned personal contacts with the intellectuals who were in positions were highly important for the dissident movement. Interviewees generally don't forget to remember with appreciation and gratitude those who thanks to their leading positions supplied them with labour possibilities. The execution of political instructions, the perception of the real and presupposed constraints, the fear for their individual ambitions depended on the personal calculation and decisions of these contact persons.¹⁸ The variety of the reactions to the party instructions were quite wide. There were institute chiefs who executed without a wink of the eyelid the order to get rid of the troublemakers, for example in the Institute for Sociology. Among his counterparts we can mention the director of the Research Institute of Cooperatives, a committed communist of a long background in the workers' movement, who with the individual, professional results in view overlooked that his institute was turning to be a stable meeting point of dissidents. Gifted researchers were taken up and defended by him. Between the two extremes there were a few leading intellectuals who passed by the dissident activity of their researchers and colleagues for a while, especially if those could give some acceptable explanation which they could transmit towards the authorities.¹⁹
Nevertheless on the turn of the seventies and eighties the situation changed considerably. The measures against the democratic underground coincided with the crisis of the planned economy. Fees and wages lost off the value, but the restriction of the labour possibilites hit the most severely those who preferred to live on occasional commissions. The dismissed dropped into harsher circumstances. On the one hand a great number of people lost their employment in a relatively short time, on the other hand great pressure was made by the authorities to induce the middle cadres to accomplish the instructions.²⁰ Party and state security control left narrower space of individul consideration of the limits. Those who had personal, political ambitions or who had already experienced the reprisals of the political power executed what they were told.²¹ Also those who earlier has assumed the risks of supporting dissidents, wavered feeling their own position in danger.²² The most determined manoeuvred, tried to find solutions, fulfilling in part the instructions,²³ but saving those who they appreciated. They had to be very determined to resist to the pressure and to tolerate the constant control which physically worn out also those leaders who were in safe positions.²⁴
The restriction of the way of subsistence urged the dissidents who were getting closer to each other during the common actions, to organize their own institutions. The so-called Research Institute for the Kicked Off made a survey on the conseguences of the protest registering the dismissed. Other initiatives were made to help them by organizational forms. One of these was the Research Intitute for Labour Search founded by Mihály Csákó or the other was the Association of Unemployed Intellectuals made by Mihály Hamburger. These agencies obviously couldn't offer research positions, only white-collar labours, ie. assistant with language command and thus they didn't succeed in assisting the dissidents who prefered to remain free lancers which was closer to their intellectual identity.
One of the reactions to the economic crisis was the liberalization of the private sector in the eigthies in Hungary. This enlarged the possibilities of labour for the underground since some entrepreneurs engaged in fashion industry had close ties with the dissidents. They supplied with labour the unemployed dissidents who had to dye clothes for the new fashion boutiques in their flats.²⁵ Others, mostly men who hadn't seen a hammer before, could work among others on the constructions lead by Bálint Nagy. These physical works gave them still more intellectual liberty than an eight-hour white-collar job.

The victims

Those who left the country put the emphasis on the complete impossibility of subsistence in their recollections. By doing this they subsequently justify their decisions. The situation could be considered unbearable compared to the personal ambitions, but was far to be tragic or definite. The circumstances undoubtly worsened but the community of the dissidents succeeded in helping its members. They either collected "scholarships" or find some way of subsistence.²⁶ It was a question of judgement made by a loose circle to what extent somebody was helped, or on the contrary closed off the solidarity.²⁷
Those who remained in Hungary became intensively involved in the political underground of the eighties, participation in dissident initiatives determined their life, while financially they could consolidate temporarily their living thank to the network of solidarity. They could foresee on the ground of previous experience and the dynamics of Kádárian power that sooner or later the restrictions would be loosened or lifted and their sphere of action together with the possibilities would be slacked. The active participants of the underground movement concur speaking about the consequences of the Charta protest when they don't recall 1979 as an event which ruined their life and broke their professional career. Neither those who definitely left the scholarly career ascribe it to the reprisals.²⁸ After some years of hardship also the decomposition of the communist power were evident. Some could return if not to their old jobs, to state sponsored researches, and they could publish again. Others got scholarships from the Soros Foundation and could continue their studies in the United States. They were pushed aside, but they could remain free intellectuals. They were "employed" by the institutions of the underground which grew more and more professional. Finally after the change of the regime in 1989/1990 they could capitalize exactly on their dissident background (and not on their role of victims) in order to get back to professional, social or political life which made them to forget their incidental grievences on the past.

Notes:
1 Csizmadia, Ervin: A magyar demokratikus ellenzék (1968-1988). Interjúk (The Hungarian democratic opposition (1968-1988), Interviews), Budapest, T-Twins Kiadó, 1995. See further as Csizmadia 1995.

2 "I used to be a real, political tight-rope walker, virtuoso of political survival. I had a certain feeling of palpating limits. Arrogantly stating I was perfect in the calculation of risks, I could judge quite well the point where I could still avoid being sacked." Interview with Miklós Szabó in Csizmadia 1995, p. 80.

3 "In communist systems you could find a few such cods everywhere and it was commonly known that there was something wrong with them and they were just put into those sorts of jobs." Interview with Zsolt Krokovay, OHA 863.

4 "My colleagues undertook jobs of translation in their own names for me. This ghost-writing was called "negro work". This went on for two or three years until the day a literary adviser in the National Library of Technical Sciences first dared to charge me with a translation by my own name... I always wanted to find a permanent job, but I used to get only occasional commissions which was not considered an ordinary labour relation or so. And I tried to get employed, I tried several times." Interview with Tibor Pákh, OHA 690.

5 "I had nothing else but the work. I received one after the other the translation commissions from German and Russian since 1971. I put in Hungarian a terribly deal of texts. It isn't excluded that also György Aczél's beneficence had endorsed it... Certainly, I must add that I translated texts of military science, economic, history, philosophy, yes, also of sexology, and I made it in most of the cases getting over my terrific, internal opposition. By the middle of the seventies I recuperated myself financially more or less, my wife found employment, too. I could realize my old dream and build a bathroom in our flat with the money I had earned with the translation of the World History Book published in the GDR, later on I could fit in the gas heating thanks to Marshal Tuckatsesky's writings of military history." Interview with György Dalos in Csizmadia 1995, p. 167.

6 "We thought that it hasn't any significane if we live here as dissidents... On the other hand, as for me, I've loved philosophy, it is philosophy that interests me, I like studying philosophy. I was not attracted by the prospect of signing two letters of protest per year until the end of my life which would be propagated by Radio Free Europe and accepting it as the main activity of my life, no, it didn't attract me at all. I wanted to remain a philosopher and I understood that I hadn't any possibility here at home." Interview with György Márkus in Csizmadia 1995, p. 24.
"I tried to do researches under covernames, but in 1976 I realized that I had no more possibility. I emigrated in January 1977 in order to publish at least abroad what I knew, what I thought about the Hungarian reality." Interview with István Kemény in Csizmadia 1995, p. 27.

7 "At the end of 1972 I lost definitely my job at the Institute for Sociology. Then I still had the possibility to sign a contract with the Institute for History by favour of Miklós Lackó and to lead a research on the workers. This research resulted in the writing of my book 'Hungarian Workers' which I finished in 1973. As a conseguence of it the party center ordered the Institute for History to break my contract. Contemporary to it I was banned to do any researches and to publish anything." Interview with István Kemény in Csizmadia 1995, p. 27.
"He was laid off the Institute for Sociology because they had protested against the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Then he was sent to the Telephone Factory, there were two sociologists there, and they were kept from meeting the workers. They certainly understood it and managed to make contacts with them. When they wrote about it in the local paper 'Telephone Factory Herald', he was kicked off. He was then put to the National Center for Manager Training. It was obviously a political attempt, it was a prominent post, top managers were trained there. It was obviously an attempt to integrate him and to distance him from the places where he could make strict contacts with workers." Anna Balajthy about Zoltán Zsille. Interview with Anna Balajthy, OHA 804.

8 "It was always a very interesting political game, they couldn't be mortified so much, because Radio Free Europe and the press abroad would make martyrs from them. They wouldn't let to die of starvation, but attention was paid not to let them paddle and flounce." Interview with Zsolt Krokovay, OHA 863.

9 "We laughed a lot about the report because  - Andriska Knopp  - the categorization of the participants obviously leaked off from the highest political level. They divided us in three groups as in the folk tales... We as the main organizers were certainly the worst. But me, because I took my degree at the University of Economics, in agrarian sociology, I was prohibited to be employed in a working place where sociology is made. And I was assigned to a working place at Sasad Cooperatives, to be assistant to the accountant, agrarian economist, in an accounting department, to do accounting assistant." Interview with Anna Balajthy, OHA 804.

10 "I don't remember whether I was admonished or reprehended verbally, but it wasn't very harsh, I usually received reprehensions and so it wasn't new for me. I wasn't threatened with dismissal. A social worker who is engaged in caring for the gipsies may well be kicked off, but who will then looking after them?"Interview with Anna Csongor, OHA 814.

11 "Nyers was very normal... He meet Zoli and told him that he would obviously ask the opinion of the comrades about him and the possiblity of contracting. Comrades obviously meant the Ministry of the Interiors. When they met for the second time Zoli asked him what he had been told about him. He said that he had got a very bad opinion but he would offer him a contract all the same. And then he really gave him a contract of  1100 forints monthly, it was a very ridicolous thing, but it meant a certain working relation and Nyers signed his application for a passport. And I think he was given the same passport which had been called in seven years before. My passport, I don't remember, perhaps Gyenes had signed it a year before." Anna Balajthy about Zoltán Zsille. Interview with Anna Balajthy, OHA 804.

12 "It was defined where you couldn't go, also in my case, and he fought it out at the 8th district party committee, because there was the Institute for Training Specialized Nurses, that I could be occupied in the training of nurses and so I actually taught sociology to middle cadres of health care. But I say I could do it in contempt of I was allowed to do. It was always so... it depended always on whether there were one or two gritty men, never mind if there were a sort of leading party functionaries, who didn't felt to obey to the most disgusting instructions, and this gave some air to those around him." Interview with Anna Balajthy, OHA 804.

13 "He worked a lot for the so-called Résumé Factory by Széchényi Library. They had to write a review on everything that was published... it could be longer than a short description, but you could do it laconically as well. I think these were excellent reviews. Sometimes I was engaged, too, when János brought home books on linguistics and I wrote reviews on them but only in a very limited number. He on the contrary did it regularly and constantly." Mari Pap about János Kenedi. The author's interview with Mari Pap for OHA, 2009, uncatalogued.

14 "Tamás Vekerdy was then at the Institute for Pedagogy, I filled in questionnaires for him, I made interviews in the project on the values of the headmasters of schools for training skilled workers, I worked everywhere in the country from Zalaegerszeg to Békéscsaba. If I remember well it was a very long questionnaire. I also worked for Zsuzsa Ferge in a survey, and I went a lot to the countryside. I don't remember precisely the title of Kati S. Nagy's project, she was then a very young researcher at the institute of Vitányi, it was on the visual ideas of industrial apprentices or something like that. I had to go to the Spinning Mill of Lőrinc and the spinner girls had to fill in the forms. There was a whale of work like that. Then, it was later when Bálint Magyar had a big survey together with Schiffer in Dunapataj, and it was published in a book." Interview with Zsolt Krokovay, OHA 863.

15 "I liked if I could decide when to get up and when to go to bed, when I can eat and when I take the dog for a walk and when I don't do anything at all. Free lance work was made for me. I liked to work, and I did work much, I don't say that I translated at a great pace... And I was satisfied with the works I received, I had to translate only very few rubbish things." The author's interview with Mari Pap for OHA, 2009, uncatalogued.

16 "I couln't find a job as a lawyer after the university. I made some attempts without any success. I was free lancer for a year and I earned my living with occasional commissions. The years 1976-77 were a very hard period of my life. I couldn't find a job because of my bad record. I tried at Gondolat Publishing House, at the Central Statistical Office, in vain because they didn't like my university background... Free lance work means that or you have a commission or you haven't, or you are paid or you aren't, that is to say if you say a bad word to a secretary, your work won't be paid for half a year." Interview with Gábor Demszky in Csizmadia 1995, p. 324.

17 "As a matter of fact I stepped out in May 1985, but it might have happened also in 1981, since my friends offered different forms of assistance and they suggested me to remain free lancer saying that some kind of work there would always be." Ágnes Hadházy's interview with Mihály Csákó for OHA, 2008, uncatalogued.

18 "My contract gave to Zsuzsa Ferge great trouble and she tried to treat the situation very carefully because she had been told at the Institute for Pedagogy not to employ these persons. And probably it was then when I worked for Vekerdy who was a very firm guy, one that you could't deter, and moreover the Institute for Pedagogy was a place which bore a lot of such things." Interview with Zsolt Krokovay, OHA 863.

19 "Pach called me for different reasons, but it was a recurring theme that I continued to give lectures in various flats. I replied that these weren't lectures, we simply met each others and talked. He accepted and he wouldn't pry into it anymore." Interview with Miklós Szabó in Csizmadia 1995, p. 80.

20 "It is sure that comrade Kulcsár ordered to stop it. He was the director of the Institute for Sociology... These researches all were done by the Institute for Sociology of HAS. Whether he got an instruction or there was a political resolution, I don't know, but these commissions was stopped at a certain point very drastically. The last was that of Ferge in connection of which there were already troubles." Interview with Zsolt Krokovay, OHA 863. "It was a very pleasant place because Gyenes was a very nice man. When he kicked me off, he called me and said: 'Anna, the comrades from the Ministry of the Interior visited and told me to choose whether I would retire or I would lay you off.' And I couldn't ask certainly that dear comrade Gyenes why we didn't choose the first." Interview with Anna Balajthy, OHA 804.

21 "Gazsó was completely broken, afflicted. He told me that he wouldn't have thought it about me, that I stabbed him in the back, and like that, so he was offended. And later when I was finally kicked off, he spectacularly avoided me... he had been once kicked after 1956, it was known about him, and he didn't want to be punished once more." Ágnes Hadházy's interview with Mihály Csákó for OHA, 2008, uncatalogued.

22 "It wasn't set what you could publish and what you couldn't. Everybody listened to his instinct, all the editors, and they seldom made a mistake. I am convinced that Vámos in that very moment understood that it was menacing his positions." Interview with Miklós Sulyok, OHA 794.

23 See footnote 19.

24 "When I am more intelligent than I used to be earlier, and now I am not so busy when I was as director, and my bosses don't annoy me anymore, although going to the institute on Mondays is very tiring, taking part in that great scene... and sometimes I have to fall my eyes because if I look at somebody and smile, I must smile and there are spies there and they report on me, they surely will report that Gyenes smiled." Interview with Antal Gyenes, OHA 23.

25 "When the boutique sector started up the dissident girls worked for it, I worked for a painter, a photorealist painter... he couldn't earn his living with making pictures as I couldn't with translations. He designed clothes, made them seamed, tailored, dyed. He made a network and there was the Blue Elephant and other boutiques and he supplied them with clothes. A lot of us worked in this industry... it was very prosperous and always more and more of us could work for him among other János Kis's wife, Zsuzsa Horváth, Csákó's wife. When I left for America, I devided my part, I passed over them and they devided it." The author's interview with Mari Pap for OHA, 2009, uncatalogued.

26 The poet György Petri was regularly helped financially by the underground. For the philosopher Zsolt Krokovay a certain amount of "scholarship" was given for a year, later he and also others worked under the name of the trade union leader Pál Forgách for the Institute of Trade Unions.

27 A typical case is that of Jenő Nagy who initially was the secretary of a wide project of documenting and he himself supplied with a lot of work the dissidents. However when later he lost his job, he fell out of the network of solidarity because he had abused the solidarity of his friends. See Csizmadia 1995, p. 297-300.

28 "My career, my scholarly career finished in 1979 and since that time on I was a free person, sometimes I earned a lot of money by dyeing clothes, sometimes I earned less with translations, but I was independent, and I could earn my living... I was eighteen when I began to get acquainted with these people gradually, and for me this environment, my friends, was the most important in my life. This was the first place where I found myself at home mentally and from every other points of view. This was my milieu and I liked it very much. I preferred it to my profession." The author's interview with Mari Pap for OHA, 2009, uncatalogued.