A confession

History is politics in past tense

I’m sure I am not alone living with moments of personal shame, I’m just the idiot who will talk about it.
As I was writing my post about the clueless political tribalism of my little sister, I wanted to illustrate the dangers of the left’s obsession with power. I wanted it to be just a little aside, a little insert in that post, but it is far more important than that. It is just a little aside in the history of communism, but a source of serious shame in my life. Because Politics is Personal. So is history.

Let’s start with that history.

Marx theorized that the communist revolution will happen in one of the most advanced, most industrialized countries of Europe, because those are the places where the proletariat is most likely to develop class-consciousness. When World War one made it clear that this is not going to happen, Lenin came up with an alternative theory and strategy suggesting that a communist revolution does not have to be global, it can happen in any country, regardless of the size of the proletariat. All is needed is a well-organized communist party to act as the vanguard elite of the revolution.
That is what lead to the October revolution in Russia in 1917. It was the repudiation of Marx’s prophecy, but it was successful. The Hungarian communists were right behind the Russians declaring their own soviet republic on March 21^st 1919. It turned into an ugly civil war. They asked for help from the Soviet comrades, but the Russians were far too busy with their own civil war. The Hungarian soviet republic (Tanácsköztársaság) lasted only 133 days.

After the fall, some of the communist leaders were killed, some jailed, some escaped. The escaped ones started organizing the underground communist party (with the lead of György Lukács).
The jailed ones, 415 of them, were released in 1921, as part of a prisoner exchange program with the Russian Soviet government. Some of those, in turn, were killed in Stalin’s purges in the 30s, some fought in the Spanish civil war, some (like Lukács) were moving back and forth between East and West, but after 1945, most moved back to Hungary to work on the country’s communist future.
The mother of my first girlfriend was born in the Soviet Union into that Hungarian communist diaspora.

A group of people in the underground communist/progressive movement bought a property in Horány, on the Szentendre Island in 1928 and created a little cottage community, called the “Vörös Meteor Telep” (Red Meteor Settlement). It was something in-between a co-op and a commune. It was very communal, communitarian and very clearly and decidedly communist community.
….and I am not trying to be facetious saying that. Not only was it a very close and cohesive community, they also took their politics very seriously.

This is where all this gets truly personal.
As I may have mentioned elsewhere, I grew up in a decidedly apolitical environment. My political awakening happened when I was 15. Like just about everybody else, I was a member of KISZ, the communist youth organization. At school, I was offered the opportunity for a one-week Summer-camp education, which I grabbed without hesitation. The Summer camp took place at the Vörös Meteor Telep.

What I found there was unexpected and, for me, transformational.
 I was born right in the middle of the baby boom. What I found in Horány, was a true community of about 40 kids, 3 years up and down from me. Their parents were the people who created the world I was living in. The first ambassador to Castro’s Cuba and his three kids all fluent in Spanish; the head of the Hungarian penal system, and these were just the ones I now know about.

This was NOT just a haphazard community of weekenders, they were devoted, committed communists; true believers of the idea and the nobility of the goal. Their children got the first taste from their mother’s milk. They were nice people. Parents and kids. Welcoming, open and helpful. Never before did I feel the spirit of community as I did there. Even though I was sticking out like a sore thumb with my messy background, I never felt more at home than there.

Talking about politics was also new to me. Discussing not just current events, but ideology. Comparing Maoism, Euro-communism and the romantic revolutionary communism of Che Guevarra and Castro. We were thinking about the future of communism. Everybody knew that the future belongs to communism. The only question was how to get there. Nobody knew what it will look like, but we knew that we have to fight for it.

When we were not talking politics, we were swimming in the Danube, playing volleyball and in the evenings, we were singing. I learned to play the guitar and I learned to sing the songs of Bob Dylan, Pete Seager and all the songs of the revolutionary movement. In the Summer, I was there whenever I was able to go.

To get to the place, we had to take a train, then a ferry to get over to the island. We all went there at different times, but the trip home on Sunday afternoons was always in a big group.

Once we got off the train, we were marching on the avenues and the boulevards of the city arm in arm, or arms over the shoulders being together in body and spirit. We were singing the songs of the movement, very much like the kids in Fényes Szelek.  

Jancsó and Hernády (director and writer) both came out of the NÉKOSZ movement, and the film is very much autobiographical. NÉKOSZ was a fascinatingly complex experiment, but when it was on its pinnacle, its attitude was a foreshadowing of Mao’s cultural revolution. ‘Fényes szelek’, the song, was a sort of anthem of the movement.

We sang the same songs. Sort of. Some with modified lyrics. In the movie, you can hear the carmagnole and Avanti Popolo in both Italian and Hungarian along with a whole bunch of others. Every single one of them was glorifying the struggle and violence or mocking the ‘enemy’. Who was the enemy? Anybody disagreeing with the communist goals. …..of the moment.

We sang some of these songs with modified lyrics. In the carmagnole, we asked
“what is flapping on our fringes? The soc-dems (the social democrats)”

In ‘Avanti Popolo’, after the line “… and the red flag will always be victorious” we finished with the suggestion that “and every rotten reactionary will hang – but where? – on the iron, on the iron lamp post – pull hard - pull high – so that the sun can smile on us”.
We sang songs about shaming the priests and the monks.  

And it all felt normal. Even better than normal: righteous and virtuous. Something the sun can smile upon.

My close connection with the group lasted only a few years, but I still consider it one of the most meaningful periods in my life. I have nothing but the warmest feelings for the people, their generosity, honesty and acceptance. But that still does not absolve me from my responsibility.
For the longest time, I was not even thinking about it, but from the distance of time, I cannot help but to see myself from the outside.
And I cannot help but to feel terribly ashamed.

None of us seemed to have any scruples about hanging the ‘rotten reactionaries’ or bother to define what exactly being a ‘rotten reactionary’ means.
Nobody seemed to have any problem with the suggestion that the social democrats – the ideological cousins of the communists - should be ‘eliminated’. Just for not being ‘left’ enough. Just because they wanted at least some rights and freedoms untouched.

As I picture ourselves on the street then, I see something seriously intimidating. Soccer hooligans with deadly ideological threats. We were the permanent revolution in practice.
And I was part of it. I was enabling it.

Living in a communist reality it was quick and easy for me to grow out of it, but I still have to live with my shame and the terrible conflict between my love for these communist friends and my vehement opposition to the inhumanity of communism that we were so callously promoting.

I hope I am not the only one who changed.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Notes

If you can, find the movie, watch it. I cannot point you to a reliable source to get it.

International Brigades - Wikipedia
Hungary History - 1945-1947 - Communist Takeover
Permanent revolution - Wikipedia

A little additional information

The Spanish inquisition is held up as a prime example of the horrors and intolerance of the Catholic church.
Would it surprise you to learn that the Spanish communists killed more clerics in the two years of the revolution than the total number of people tried and found guilty in the 350 years history of the Spanish inquisition? If you want to learn more about that, look at the following references:

Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War
Red Terror (Spain)
The Spanish Inquisition: Debunking the Legends : Strange Notions

…then ask yourself: How can this be ignored while mocking the ‘well deserved’ misfortune of the frocks?

My shame is great indeed.