Hungary Breaks Ranks : Tilt to West Germany Eyes the Future, but at Great Risk

As the exodus of East Berlin tourists to the West through Hungary’s dismantled Iron Curtain continues, another kind of drama is unfolding behind the closed doors of the Comuunist world’s foreign ministries and party headquarters.

Hungary’s decision to offer refuge and unrestricted transit to the West for tens of thousands of East German citizens has been a courageous but extremely risky move. The Budapest leadership is taking a tall chance against the likelihood of adverse Soviet reaction and certain negative response from East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania to its unilateral breach of the Warsaw Pact states’ rules of the game.

If the Hungarians have guessed incorrectly, immediate political, and far more damaging economic, retaliation could be the price that Hungary will have to pay for choosing to honor its commitments to protect victims of political discrimination in other states, including communist countries.

What is behind Hungary’s decision to break ranks with its communist neighbors on the highly sensitive issue of human rights? A closer look at the Hungarian scene suggests three explantions.

The first might be called the “imperative of reforms.” Since the collapse of the Kadar regime in May, 1988, Hungary has been rapidly progressing toward a “post-communist” democratic multiparty political system. This has become an irreversible process. The early October congress of the Socialist Workers’ party will be the scene of a decisive showdown between party conservatives and radical reformers.

Unless Moscow intervenes in the next three weeks, the reformers are certain to win. Their foreign-policy platform calls for an open economy, open borders and rejoining the West European community after 44 years of semi-colonial status in the Soviet empire. To win national support, Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth, leading reform ideologue Imre Poxsgay, party Chairman Rezso Nyers and “hero of the hour” Foreign Minister Gyula Horn, are committed to rescuing Hungary from the impending economic collapse of Eastern Europe and to the renegotiation of the terms of Hungary’s ties to the Warsaw Treaty Organization.

The “window of opportunity” argument is the second reason for breaking ranks with the communist bloc. Although everyone in Budapest is rooting for Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the top policy-makers are far from certain that the Soviet reform program will succeed. If they fail and Gorbachev is replaced by a conservative, the best Hungary can hope for is a “hold” on all planned reforms.

The worst-case scenario would include economic retaliation (Soviet exports support 1 million jobs in Hungary) and the revival of the Brezhnev doctrine. Therefore, the time to act is now, before Gorbachev goes under.

Third, there is no love lost between Budapest and East Berlin. The most recent issue of the Hungarian party’s ideological journal relates the story of East German demands in 1957 that “at least 20,000” people be executed for their role in the 1956 revolution. Twelve years later, so it is claimed in Budapest, it was East German, even more than Soviet, pressures that coerced Hungary into participating in the invasion of Czechoslovakia.

In any case, in the last 20 years the regime of Erich Honecker has been the most vociferous critic of Hungary’s attempts to reform the economy and, since 1988, the political system as well. As the Hungarian reformers see it, the time has come to settle old scores with East Berlin.

For the first time in the postwar era, the hopes of a reformist East European government lie not in the United States, but in Western Europe, particularly the Federal Republic of Germany. The United States is seen as too deeply entangled in the web of bilateral superpower diplomacy and too apprehensive of offending the Soviet Union to do more than offer lip service and token economic support to Poland and Hungary.

On the other hand, a grateful West Germany seems to have the will and certainly the necessary resources to lend a hand to all prospective and deserving “tenants” of a “common European house.” With Honecker on his deathbed and Moscow in temporary disarray as to an appropriate response to the East German exodus, the Hungarian gamble might just pay off.