Hungarian Opposition Writers Blossom as Press and Book Censorship Laws Fade

BUDAPEST, Hungary —  On Budapest’s busy Liberation Square, passers-by browse at a stand stacked with books and pamphlets chronicling the Soviet suppression of the 1956 anti-Kremlin uprising in Hungary.

At a nearby state-run bookstore, “The Gulag Archipelago,” the chilling account of Stalinist repression by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the exiled Soviet Nobel Prize-winning novelist, is on prominent display, along with the works of Hungary’s most gifted opposition writers.

“A year ago, we would have been hauled to the police station, interrogated, beaten and fined for this,” said Zoltan Kurdi, a dissident-turned-publisher who operates a small book stand on Liberation Square.

His selection contains memoirs of those who fought in the streets in the 1956 uprising, works critical of Hungary’s ruling Communist Party, and Western accounts of life and politics in Eastern Europe.

Buoyed by a new law that virtually eliminates all forms of press and book censorship, Hungary’s underground publishers have abandoned their basements and attics for the streets and storefronts.

They are being joined by an increasing number of private entrepreneurs trying to cash in on a new and unfettered market, with official publishing houses also eager to compete.

Even state-run firms freely tout interpretations of the 1956 revolt against Stalinism that contradict the long-held official view that it was a counterrevolution.

Instead of smuggling them in from the West, Hungarians need only walk to their neighborhood bookstore for copies of George Orwell’s “1984” or “Animal Farm” and the works of distinguished Hungarians that were published only abroad for decades.

“After 40 years of a controlled book culture, we are rapidly entering an era of open and free book publishing,” said Peter Inkei, general director of the Ministry of Education and Culture’s publishing division.

“Two years ago all this seemed like something that could only happen in the very distant future,” added Inkei, whose office once was responsible for red-flagging potentially troublesome manuscripts for Central Committee censors.

The changes, like the bold overall reforms that made them possible, have brought new challenges.

“For years, the people who published underground literature were risking their freedom to fight cultural repression,” said Kurdi, 24, whose group this year formed a limited publishing partnership.

“Now our biggest problem is to find ways of dealing with unscrupulous publishers and making sound business decisions to stay afloat.”

The publication of Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” has caused the most headaches for government officials and fledgling private publishers.

The Hungarian translation is a pirate edition, published privately without the author’s permission and in violation of international copyright laws.

“These people (the pirate publishers) are only motivated by greed,” fumed Kurdi, who said he and his friends had risked prison for years to bring out similar books at or below cost when there was no other legal outlet.

Inkei said publication of “Gulag Archipelago” put the government in a quandary.

“If we had tried to ban it at first, we would have been accused of trying to suppress it,” said Inkei, whose office is moving to prohibit sale of the book because it violates Hungarian marketing laws.

Inkei said his staff gets criticized by the 30 state-run publishing houses for allegedly favoring the 100 or so new private publishers, who in turn have not forgotten that his office was once responsible for “sniffing out trouble” in submitted manuscripts.

Inkei said his staff devotes its time to advising the government on publishing and tax laws and evaluating grant applications from government-owned and private publishers.

All could use the money.

“Right now we’re operating in the red,” Kurdi said, surveying the array of once-outlawed books at his book stall.