Ferenc Boros: 1968 and the Kádár policy

The author according to the newest research results examines the attitude of János Kádár, Secretary General of the Hungarian Socialistic Labour Party (his mediatory role”) to the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968, the so-called Prague Spring in a more wide political concept. It is not doubtful that the developing Czechoslovak and Hungarian reforms by their content meant to result the Stalin-type economic system, moreover, the Czechoslovak reform very quickly and radically was pushed to the political level. Therefore, their liquidation was by the Soviet policy considered to be of vital interest and sub-ordinated them to geo-political interests, after what Czechoslovakia gained an important role in the Soviet strategy. The author states that Kádár saw that the Czechoslovak reforms go beyond the acceptable boundary set by the Russians, then this movement can lead to a crush, as it happaned in Hungary in 1956, and that it can even seriously endanger the Hungarian economic reform started at that time. Therefore, Kádár tried to carefully support the Czechoslovak reforms (to the middle of August 1968), and then he called the attention of the Czechoslovak Party management to the dangers, referring to the unanimous turning off the socialism (to the end to July 1968), and finally (from August 1968) he agreed with military intervention, urging political solution. For a time he tried to mediate between the Soviet and Czechoslovak Party management, but he found no partners for this between the party leaders of other socialistic countries. Kádár’s whole life was characterised by duality” – the author cites historian Tibor Huszár, but he was a follower” as well. The multi-party system represented by the Two-thousand words was unaccaptable for him. Besides the objective reasons of accepting the military occupation perhaps also that the Czechoslovak press mentioned him the execution of Imre Nagy, and urged the necessity of examination the violation of the law.