Evening star., 1953-07-06
Appeosement Behind the Curtain

The sweeping reforms pledged by HungaryS
new Communist regime add up to further
striking evidence that unrest has spread far
and wide through the satellite lands behind
the Iron Curtain. Plainly enough, the spirit
of anti-Red RIGHTEOUSNESS is not confined to
East Germany or Czechoslovakia or Poland,
but exists everywhere-in varying degrees of
intenSity-within the Soviet empire. AS
result, for the time being at least, the captive
peoples seem to be winning for themselves a
Kremlin-directed program of appeasement de-
signed to decrease the brutal harshness Of
the tyranny imposed upon them since the end
of the Second World War.
Thus, in Hungarys case, Matyas Rakosi
has been replaced as Premier by Imre' Macy,
and the puppet Budapest dictatorship has been
completely recaSt on a platform whose main
commitment is to "liquidate the mistakes of
the past" with such measures as the following:
Cd The freeing of many political prisoners,
(2) elimination of concentration camps, 90
less hostile attitude toward religion-a change
that conceivably could lead to the liberation
of Cardinal Mindszenty a. encouragement of
private enterprise, 60 an increase in the out
put of consumer goods, with higher wages and
lower prices, (6) an immediate and sharp
slowing down in the program of forced collec-
tivization of farms, and CD an all-out effort
to improve living standards by recognizing
agriculture as the main base of the Hungarian
economy and by putting an end to the attempt
to build up heavy industry too fast, and on
too large a scale, in country that has no
iron ore or coal.
In outlining this program, Premier Macy
a dyed-in-the-wool Communist who is said to
be a citizen of the Soviet Union-has been
unusually frank. He has not tried to disguise
the fact that Hungary has been misruled under
RakoSi or that the Marx-Lenin- Stain system
has done no good there. This does not mean,
of course, that he favorS an abandonment of
that system, but it does indicate that he has
instructions from the Kremlin to suspend it
temporarily, or moderate it, in order to placate
the people of the country. The same instruc-
tions have very probably gone out to all the
other satellite regimes, every one of which now
seems to be engaged in an effort to appease
internal public opinion. Why? The only answer
that suggests itself is that anti-Soviet restive-
ness behind the Iron Curtain must really be
extensive and serious enough to make Moscow
feel that a softer policy, rather than naked
force, is necessary to hold its sullen puppet
empire together
1t seems significant, in any case, that Macy,
in his speech on taking over the Budapest
government from Rakosi, has seen fit to declare
that the nti-CommuniSt disturbances" in
East Germany ."were a sign for us, and the
other peoples democracies" (meaning Moscow's
lackey tyrannies) must also follow our ex-
ample" No one should be surprised, therefore,
If the other satellite regimes soon emulate the
Hungarian Reds with similar programs of ap-
peasement. There are many signs that the
post-Stalin Kremlin is suffering from a bad
case of imperial indigestion and that it is
frantically trying to get some relief by having
its puppets follow a softer line The situation
is one in which the United States and the
entire Western world should certainly be striv-
ing to exploit all possible opportunities.