The Modern Inquisition. Hugo Dewar 1953
A great State Trial is in progress in one of the Iron Curtain countries. The eyes of the world are focused on the scene in the court-room where the defendants are on trial for their lives. The prosecuting authorities have spared no trouble and no expense to make this trial an indictment of the regime’s enemies that shall resound throughout the world. It is a great and solemn occasion, and all the resources of the state have been mobilised to impress its seriousness upon the public.
However, when the principal defendant has given his testimony the interest of the press representatives gathered there from the four corners of the world flags: what follows has the air of an anti-climax, its news-value is not very great, and is consequently not subjected to the same keen scrutiny as has been given to the earlier part of the proceedings. Yet the testimony of the three members of the ‘vast network of spies’ that brings the case to a close is an integral part of the evidence against the chief defendant, Cardinal József Mindszenty, Prince Primate of the Catholic Church in Hungary, charged with conspiracy to overthrow the democratic order, with high treason, and offences against the currency laws. The testimony of these three men, which we shall now examine, is the keystone of the case for the prosecution.
Astonishment grows as we read it in the official report of the trial. Is it possible that the highest legal authorities of a state should take this seriously, and expect the world to take it seriously? Is it possible that all this legal machinery should have been set in motion simply in order to present us with this fantastic rigmarole? Is it possible that men can be tried for their lives on the basis of such ‘evidence'?
Let us consider the testimony of these alleged members of Cardinal Mindszenty’s alleged ‘espionage organisation’.
The accused Ispánky admits receiving two letters from abroad through the medium of a certain Madame Pomrelot, who is described in the indictment as Italian, but who is said in the evidence to possess a French passport. When she visits Ispánky she places this passport and a ‘fair certificate’ on his table. Why she does so is not explained and no one bothers to ask what her purpose might have been. The incident is perhaps intended to create an atmosphere of ‘circumstantial evidence’. On the next page of the official report (The Trial of József Mindszenty (Budapest, 1949), p 130), Ispánky takes from the mysterious lady all the letters — not just the two that he first said she had brought. ‘One of these was addressed to...’ The prosecutor cuts in quickly with the words: ‘József Mindszenty, the first accused!’ This is a statement, not a leading question: the prosecutor is evidently afraid that the accused will forget something. Another letter was addressed to Dr György Eszterházy Member of the Hungarian Parliament, and this Ispánky ‘immediately burnt, according to instructions’. He says nothing about its contents, nor does he say who gave him instructions to burn it, or why. And nobody bothers to ask. Still another letter (now making three instead of the original two) is addressed to the accused Miklós Nagy. But the president is not interested in the contents of this letter either. ‘Let us go on’, he suggests. ‘What happened next, what was in the package?’ So now, in addition to the letters whose number steadily mounts, we have a package, although the accused has not mentioned any package. But Ispánky understands: this is the clue to his next line: ‘The package contained two sheets of paper treated with chemicals, one for Dr György Eszterházy, and another for Dr Miklós Nagy.’
The president then enquires: ‘What else was in it?’ (Not — was there anything else?) And Ispánky replies: ‘Some chemical substance for developing the writing, two tubes of it.’ The president is still not completely satisfied; he has a suspicion that there must have been still something else in the package. Yes, agrees Ispánky, there was — two hundred dollars.
So far, so good. The Italian, or French, courier of the spy ring comes from Rome to present Ispánky with two letters (which later become three, and later still four) and a package containing two sheets of chemically prepared paper, two tubes of some chemical substance for developing invisible writing, and two hundred dollars. The question arises: what was Ispánky to do with those two sheets of paper and those two tubes of chemical substance:
She told me that if the two above-named gentlemen should come to see me, I was to tell them to use these chemically treated sheets... ['Louder, please’, the president urges him at this point] which had been simply treated with wax, so that writing leaves no visible marks on it; they may cover the sheets with writing, and if they make a chemical solution of the pills in hot water, and rub the sheets with the solution, the writing will become apparent.
The phrase ‘if the two... gentlemen should come to see me’ is peculiar. It might be supposed that if they did not come to see him he would go to see them. But apparently this was not so, because, after having gone to all the trouble to bring this material from Italy for the two gentlemen in question, the courier tells Ispánky to burn it (p 131) if they should not ‘report’. Ispánky could keep the money himself, however.
It is now noticeable that the two tubes of chemical substance have become, ‘pills’, and the chemically treated paper has been transformed into paper ‘simply treated with wax’, on which writing leaves no discernible marks. In spite of this, we then get the following:
President: ‘How did you send reports abroad?’
Ispánky: ‘By regular mail.’
President: ‘By regular mail, but written in chemical ink.’
Ispánky: ‘To be exact, on this waxed paper.’ [Author’s emphasis]
President: ‘On waxed paper, so that if anyone looked at it, they merely saw a neutral text, under which the real, hidden text could be called forth by the process described by the lady.’
Ispánky: ‘If some official organ should have checked it and found it suspicious, it would have been enough to draw a line across the letter with any kind of dye or acid solution, and the writing would have been discovered.’ (Ibid, pp 132-33)
‘To be exact.’ On this waxed paper (the two sheets?). Moreover, he now has to write on this waxed paper in chemical ink (about which so far nothing has been mentioned), although previously it was the nature of this ‘chemically treated’ paper itself that made writing invisible. Still more puzzling is the fact that a neutral text can be written on this waxed paper, on which writing leaves no visible marks; and in addition to this, the two tubes of chemical substance, or pills (whichever it was), were really quite redundant, since any kind of ‘dye or acid solution’ (the juice of a lemon, for instance) would do the trick just as well as the ‘process described by the lady’.
Later on the president seems to have felt that there was something strange in all this, for he very obligingly alters the testimony. ‘You wrote it on an ordinary sheet of notepaper, with some neutral text on it’, he informs the defendant, who seems only too willing to accept this new version of the matter. Neither of them is worried by the fact that this contradicts Ispánky’s earlier evidence. After all, what is another small discrepancy among so many?
The president asks Ispánky if he made copies of the espionage material he received.
Ispánky: ‘I did not. I received it all written up.’
President: ‘All written up?’
Ispánky: ‘Yes.’
President: ‘Did you write the report in your own handwriting, or on the typewriter?’
So Ispánky is sure that he received the espionage material ‘all written up’, and that he did not make copies of it; he is quite definite about this here. It might be inferred from this that the reports were received all ready for despatch. But since he has already said before that he wrote the reports himself on the waxed paper, there must be something wrong here too. And why should the president now suddenly bring in a typewriter, when it seemed that they had managed to agree that the reports were written on waxed paper that made ordinary writing invisible (first version), or on ordinary notepaper in chemical ink (second version). However, in spite of the fact that Ispánky received the reports all written up and did not make copies of them, his accomplice, the accused Tóth from whom he received the reports, says in his testimony that they were not ‘all written up’, but that some were in writing and some were given verbally. Again there is a discrepancy — and again nobody bothers to attempt to straighten it out.
Now in the indictment it says that Dr Béla Ispánky, ‘evading legal postal communications, on chemically prepared sheets’ sent secret data of a political and economic nature abroad. And in his final speech the prosecutor says that ‘Ispánky received from Madame Pomrelot the invisible ink, the various instructions and chemicals to make the invisible ink visible again’. It is, incidentally, nowhere suggested that any of the accused received letters from abroad written in invisible ink — they allegedly received all communications through couriers and no suggestion is anywhere made that a code or invisible ink was used: so it appears that, for some unexplained reason, the accused wanted to make their own invisible writing visible.
Let us attempt to sum up the above testimony. We are told of two sheets of paper, which is at one time simply ‘waxed’ and at another time ‘chemically treated’, on which writing will not show, but on which a neutral text can be written. We have the accused Ispánky at one time stating categorically that he wrote — ‘to be exact’ — on this paper, and at another time that he wrote on ordinary notepaper; we have him writing up the reports and yet not writing them up; we have them all written up beforehand and not written up beforehand; we have two tubes of chemical substance, which later become pills, to be used in the preparation of a solution capable of making visible the invisible writing on this chemically prepared — or waxed — paper, on which writing left no marks, although it was not necessary to go to the trouble of preparing this solution because any acid solution would serve the same purpose; and finally we have the espionage reports simply typed, and then again they are not typed but written in invisible ink that was missing from the package brought by the Italian lady with the French passport and the ‘fair certificate’.
It must be admitted that, for fear of trying the patience of the reader, not all the absurdities and contradictions in this testimony regarding the ‘network of espionage agents’ has been given here. However, the above is sufficient to give a good idea of what passed for evidence at the trial of József Mindszenty and his ‘accomplices’. And we are expected to take all this rigmarole seriously!
Incredible as it may seem, this really was an integral part of the evidence upon which Mindszenty was condemned to penal servitude for life in February 1949.
Note the way in which the president has to put Mindszenty’s name into the mouth of the accused Ispánky. Note also that Mindszenty was not once questioned about the alleged activities of these three members — Béla Ispánky, László Tóth and Miklós Nagy — of the ‘espionage organisation’ acting under his instructions; and this in spite of the fact that the prosecutor in his final speech asserts that:
Mindszenty went so far that he was not deterred from actual espionage. He supported a systematic network of an information service working through hired agents... It is to this group that Miklós Nagy, Dr Béla Ispánky, László Tóth and all their accomplices belong.
Nor were any of these men questioned about their relations with Mindszenty.
The truth is, of course, that there was no network of spies, or if there was, it had no connection with the activities of these three accused or of Cardinal Mindszenty. A man known to Mindszenty, a member of the church hierarchy, had fled to Rome, where he set up a news agency. He wrote to Mindszenty, not with chemical inks or on waxed paper, but in the way people normally write to one another: a typewritten letter asking quite openly for news of the situation in Hungary. Undoubtedly this man Mihalovics was opposed to the new Hungarian regime and was in all probability engaged in spreading anti-Communist propaganda. He asked Mindszenty to send him information. ‘He asked for data, but I never sent him any’, said the cardinal (ibid, p 108). The prosecution accepts this denial, but tries to make out that Mindszenty did not reply because he knew that the letter had been intercepted by the police. ‘I wonder, if you had not suspected that, whether in that case the Mihalovics group would not have obtained the same kind of information that the American minister did obtain?’, says the prosecutor. However, the American minister is alleged to have received from Mindszenty information ‘on the Hungarian political and economic situation and on the democratic parties’ (ibid, p 26); that is to say, he received in essence precisely the same information that Mihalovics received through Ispánky, Tóth and Nagy, the members of Mindszenty’s ‘espionage network’. So according to the prosecution, Mihalovics both did and did not receive the same information as the American minister.
The only thing that emerges clearly from all this muddle is that Mindszenty expressed his views, verbally and in writing (the very naïveté of Mindszenty’s letters shows that he had not the remotest connection with any espionage activity), in the hope of obtaining support against the Hungarian Communists, who themselves leaned heavily on Russian support. For propaganda purposes — and in order to overawe and intimidate — it was necessary to picture his activities as espionage. All this nonsense about waxed paper, chemical substances, invisible inks and so on, was necessary to give some colour to the picture. It was felt that this ‘circumstantial evidence’ would have a really telling effect on the Hungarian masses for whom the trial was primarily staged. Subjected to sober analysis it leaves only the impression of a crudely written scenario. When such an obvious concoction is introduced as ‘evidence’ in a state trial how is it possible to take it seriously? — how is it possible to regard the whole as anything more than a political show for the edification of an audience regarded by the stage managers as not particularly bright? However well staged the rest of the show may be, the introduction of such manifest nonsense entirely discredits it.
What puzzled many observers of this trial was the attitude of Mindszenty. The world press reported that he stood up in court and ‘confessed’ to everything, and the general impression given was that he had accepted the justice of all the charges laid against him without any qualification whatever. Thus the official Hungarian propaganda report was able to quote The Times correspondent as writing that: ‘He pleaded that he had committed all the acts of which he was accused.’ (Ibid, p 10) Yet on page sixty-five of this report Mindszenty’s words are:
To the extent that I did commit a considerable part of the activities charged against me in the indictment... to that extent, I feel guilty... Of course, that does not mean that I accept the conclusions of the indictment. For example, with regard to the offences mentioned in Section A, I do not deny one or another part of it, but I do not subscribe to the conclusion that I might have been involved in the planning of the overthrow of the democratic state order and the republic, even less, as the indictment states, ‘that I might have played a leading role’.
In other words, Mindszenty admitted some of the acts ascribed to him, but denied the interpretation put on them by the authorities. He ‘feels guilty’ only to the extent that he did engage in certain of the activities set down in the indictment, but it was not true to say that these activities amounted to a conspiracy to overthrow the state order. He is thus in this statement denying the main charge against him. Nevertheless, Mindszenty’s attitude in the dock was so different from that expected of him by his friends abroad that it was generally interpreted as complete surrender. It was felt by his supporters that such an attitude could only be explained by reference to physical torture and possibly also to the use of some mysterious drug. In order fully to appreciate the profound shock that Mindszenty’s attitude administered his supporters it is necessary to cast a brief glance over Mindszenty’s role on the Hungarian scene prior to the trial.
Post-'liberation’ and postwar events in Hungary followed a familiar pattern. Just as in Bulgaria, the presence of Soviet occupation forces was the decisive factor in the rise to power of the Communist Party, acting as the native political representative of the Russian government. As an admirer of the People’s Democracies has put it:
Thanks to the Soviet Liberators the way was now open for the workers and their allies the peasants, and all democratically-minded people, to carry out the unfinished task of the 1848 revolution — the democratic transformation of Hungary — and to lay the foundations of something which was as yet only half-conceived: the people’s democracy. (Neil Stewart, Background to the New Hungary (Fore Publications, 1950), p 8)
In none of the Eastern European countries — with the sole exception of Yugoslavia — had the Communists sufficient strength to enforce their rule without the backing of Soviet military force. In Hungary the whole machinery of government and administration had broken down. Neither the Communist Party nor the occupying forces could by themselves find the necessary personnel for the task of bringing order out of this chaos. The first task was therefore to revive those political organisations capable of supplying the required personnel and of mobilising the people for the task of reconstruction. The Stalinists therefore immediately set about re-establishing those political parties that could be used for this purpose. A secondary consideration motivating this action was, of course, the need to conceal beneath a ‘National Front’ the ultimate aim of one-party rule and the permanent domination of the country by Soviet Russia. The controversy around the personality of the well-known Hungarian Marxist writer and literary critic György Lukács arose from Lukács’ inability fully to understand this manoeuvre. Worth studying on this question is the attack on Lukács by József Révai (Lukács and Socialist Realism, Fore Publications, 1950) which unwittingly exposes the double-dealing nature of the Stalinists’ postwar policy. It is enough for our purpose to quote the following words from this pamphlet:
We do not reproach him for having proclaimed a ‘literary united front’ in 1945-46 and for calling for the alliance of democratic Hungarian writers. The criticism levelled at Lukács’ views would be incorrect and a leftish deviation if it were to reproach him for not having announced the slogan of socialist realism in 1945. If the party did not put forward the slogan for an immediate political and economic struggle for Socialism in the political and economic fight it could not, of course, call Comrade Lukács retrospectively to account for not having fought directly for Socialism on the literary front in 1945. It is a question of perspective. The party, too, avoided provocation of the right wing of the Smallholders Party in 1945-46, and was not willing to declare in the 1945 elections... that the struggle was for Socialism, but at the same time it did not deny the struggle for Socialism, did not give up the perspective of this struggle for Socialism, and, in its everyday struggle, it increased its attack on the capitalist elements in politics and economics... It thus led the changing situation in Hungary in a socialist direction and developed the People’s Democracy into the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. (p 4, emphasis in the original)
If one translates, as one of course must translate, the words Socialism’, ‘socialist realism’ and ‘struggle for Socialism’ in the above extract into the ‘struggle for Stalinist dictatorship’, the point at issue will become even clearer to the reader. He will then understand why Lukács fell foul of the party machine, by failing to drop quickly enough the disguise of the ‘united front’ and address himself wholeheartedly to the task of making Soviet domination palatable to Hungarian writers and their public by proclaiming the cultural supremacy of the Soviet Union.
So — keeping ‘the question of perspective’ well in mind — the Stalinists first of all set up a ‘National Front’ of the four main political parties — the Smallholders Party, the Social-Democratic Party, the Peasant Party, and their own. Behind this façade of brotherly unity, the Stalinists, as soon as their immediate purpose had been achieved, proceeded to undermine the positions of their allies by the use of every possible combination of force and fraud (see Hugh Seton-Watson’s The Revolution in Eastern Europe for a detailed account of the methods employed).
The fact that in Hungary the Communist Party had been banned for many years was also of great assistance to it: for not only had this given its members a thorough training in underground activity, but it had also compelled it to use the Social-Democratic Party as a cover, and infiltration into this party had gone so far that its eventual elimination was already only a matter of choosing the appropriate moment. One by one the leading figures of the Social-Democratic Party, having served their purpose, were condemned as ‘right-wing’, squeezed out, compelled to resign, arrested or forced to flee the country. The same process broke the resistance of the Smallholders Party. An example of the pressure to which those who attempted to pursue an independent path were subjected is seen in the fate of Béla Kovács, leading member of the Smallholders Party, who was arrested by the Russian police and either executed or beaten to death — the exact circumstances of his end are not known.
While the process of virtually eliminating opposition parties was proceeding the Stalinists were faced with what they conceived to be a serious threat from another quarter: the Catholic Church, which had links with political parties, especially the Smallholders Party, since the majority of Hungarians were Catholics, but which was also itself an independent entity capable, so the Stalinists thought, of providing a rallying point for opposition elements. Cardinal Mindszenty, as the leader of the Catholic Church in Hungary, and as the most outspoken opponent of the Communists left in the field, was regarded as a dangerous enemy who had at all costs to be silenced, and if possible also morally destroyed. At the same time, the Communists were anxious to come to some agreement with the Catholic Church, since it represented a force that could not be eliminated overnight. In removing Mindszenty they were therefore removing the chief obstacle to an agreement between church and state, and giving a clear warning to any lesser opponents to such an agreement. The real victory of the Communists in the Mindszenty trial was the fact that they succeeded in making the cardinal withdraw his opposition to an agreement. How did they manage this?
Before his arrest Mindszenty had written a letter stating that in the event of his arrest no credit should be given to any confession he might subsequently make, since a confession would be no more than the result of human frailty. After his arrest, however, he withdrew this letter. On page 138 of the trial report the president refers to it. In reply to the question: ‘Were you influenced in your confession or forced to make statements?’ Mindszenty replies: ‘No, I was not.’ Later he adds:
When I wrote the letter just read [it is not reproduced in the report, only a few lines are cited] I did not see many things which I see today. My present attitude is expressed in the letter written to the Minister of Justice, read out by your honour at yesterday’s session. I consider the letter just read invalid.
Mindszenty’s letter to the Minister of Justice read:
I beg the Minister of Justice to consider my announcement, or rather my request. For some time, publicly and repeatedly there has been raised against me the complaint that I stand in the way of an agreement between the state and the church, and that my attitude is hostile to the present order of the state. As for the former, it is a fact that I always emphasised the prerequisites. Now I want to contribute to an improvement in the general situation. Before the trial, which is soon to open, I voluntarily admit that I have committed the acts I am charged with according to the penal code of the state. In the future I shall always judge the external and internal affairs of the state on the basis of the full sovereignty of the Hungarian Republic.
After this admission and declaration, the trial regarding my person does not seem to be absolutely necessary. Therefore, not because of my person, but considering my position, I ask that my case be exempted from the trial on 3 February. Such a decision, more than anything else, would facilitate a solution, even more than the wisest judgement of the court.
After thirty-five days of constant meditation, I also declare that apart from other reasons, it may have been due to me, to my attitude as described above, that reconciliation has been delayed; and also that I consider the establishment of a true peace between the state and church necessary as long as it has not been made. I, too, would take part in the realisation of this reconciliation, according to the teachings and laws of the church, were there not complaints against me in just this respect. But in order that I should not be an obstacle to reconciliation... I declare hereby, of my own accord, without any compulsion, that I am ready to withdraw for a time from exercising my office...
It appears from the above that Mindszenty was under the definite impression that his statement of submission was all that the authorities required of him, and that he would not be put on trial. If he regarded this ‘admission and declaration’ as a confession of espionage and high treason, how could he possibly have believed that ‘the trial regarding my person does not seem to be absolutely necessary'? During those thirty-five days of ‘constant meditation’, what arguments were put to him to make him support an agreement that he had hitherto opposed?
For unquestionably this statement marks a fundamental change of viewpoint on the part of a man who had at one time charged in a pastoral letter (18 October 1945) that it was ‘a disgrace for Hungary that last year our leaders, out of sheer weakness, assisted a foreign power of occupation to commit acts of violence in their own country’, and who had urged the people to vote against the Communists.
With our understanding of the technique employed, it will not be difficult to appreciate how Mindszenty’s thirty-five days of constant meditation (the words have a truly ironic ring) helped him to change his mind.
It seems to us incorrect to say that Mindszenty did not appreciate what he was doing in making this declaration and in acting as he did before his accusers. Nor do we think it correct to argue that he was simply afraid for his own skin — although, knowing the methods employed, we should not care to condemn anyone on this score. It is true that he argues above that he does not believe his trial necessary in the circumstances, but he adds — ‘not because of my own person’. And in the trial record we find justification for believing that he was quite sincere in saying this. When it was sought to make him implicate another person, not in the dock, he says: ‘Please, I am the accused... Please, in any case, I take the blame myself for all that has happened.’ (Ibid, p 110) It is, however, clear from Mindszenty’s letter to the Minister of Justice that he believed he was doing no more than making a concession, a compromise. His examiners tricked him into thinking that that was all they required. They gave him the impression that he would not be tried; made him think they agreed with him that a trial of his person would aggravate and not soften the conflict between church and state. They persuaded him that a compromise was in the best interests of all concerned; persuaded him that it was necessary to admit having committed acts contrary to the penal code, in order to ‘contribute to an amelioration of the situation’. But they did not tell him that these acts would be interpreted as ‘conspiracy to overthrow the state order’, did not tell him that he would be tried on such a charge. On the contrary they made him feel that he would not be tried at all. He was undoubtedly genuinely convinced that he was acting for the best in taking the blame on himself for the failure of the church to reach an agreement with the state. It is necessary, however, to bear in mind the circumstances in which he meditated. To enable Mindszenty to rationalise his submission, there must have been some strong arguments used by the examiners, other than the arguments of a general political nature.
If we turn to that part of the indictment concerning the alleged spy Ispánky we find a major clue to what these other strong arguments were. Ispánky is there found guilty of selling two hundred dollars on the black market, and thereby he is said to have ‘gravely damaged the interests of the economy’. This is rather a small sum to ‘gravely damage’ the economy of the country. But according to Decree 8400 of 1946, Article 20, Paragraph 2: ‘The penalty shall be death if the act has gravely damaged the interest involved in the stability of the Hungarian forint.’ (The same penalty applies under Article 17 of this Decree.) It is therefore clear why the words ‘gravely damaged’ are employed in the indictment, even although the sum is so small. (We leave aside the fact that in sending this two hundred dollars from Italy, Mihalovics apparently forgot that he had thousands of dollars at his disposal in Hungary, and that he told his alleged agents in Hungary that they could draw on this at any time — if one accepts the confession of another ‘agent’.)
The fact that even Ispánky was thus brought under threat of death is important to an understanding of Mindszenty’s attitude. There cannot be the slightest doubt that during his ‘thirty-five days of meditation’ the situation of his fellow-accused was forcibly brought home to him. ‘Please, I take the blame myself for all that has happened.’ But they were not prepared to let him do so. Upon the attitude he adopted depended the fate of these other men; he had to decide whether they lived or died. An argument of this nature would, we believe, prove decisive for a man like Mindszenty, who in no way gives the impression of a political fanatic indifferent to the fate of individuals so long as he achieved his objective. For, in fact, Mindszenty had no clearly defined political aims; his political views — if such they can be called — could hardly have been more muddle-headed and unrealistic. His sole concern was to preserve the influence of the Catholic Church. His idea that it would be possible to do this by restoring the Hapsburg Monarchy is the kind of pipe-dream that well indicates his naïveté, his complete divorce from the realities of the situation in Hungary and the rest of the world. On this score there is no evidence at all of a ‘conspiracy’. How could there be? The idea itself is politically so unrealistic that it is hard to believe it really was seriously entertained. Certainly Mindszenty displayed a remarkable lack of energy in furthering Legitimist aims. But in any case it is quite ridiculous to suggest that a man who could believe in the restoration of the Hapsburgs was ‘the last bulwark of reaction’ in Hungary. (The truly effective reactionaries, the Arrow Cross, had strongly opposed Legitimism.) As a political opponent Mindszenty was even less effective than Tikhon in Russia during the early years of the revolution; and Tikhon was permitted by the Bolsheviks to live out his days in peace. But of course the prosecution makes the most of this, not in order to show how simple Mindszenty was, but in order to remind the people of their situation under the Hapsburgs and make it appear that Mindszenty wanted a return to those conditions. It could hardly have been difficult for his interrogators to demonstrate to him the uselessness of continuing opposition along these lines, particularly when the fate of his fellow-accused depended upon his seeing reason. In these circumstances he could be convinced, and we believe that he was sincerely convinced, that it was necessary to yield to superior force, to effect a compromise that would permit the continued functioning of the church, although with a greatly restricted sphere of influence, until conditions were more favourable. He was therefore ‘ready to withdraw for a time’, as he says in his letter to the Minister of Justice. In those very words we have an indication of the bargain he believed had been made. As the Reverend Stanley Evans wrote in the Daily Worker (quoted from page 12 of the trial record): ‘He thought that even in the court-room, if he offered to make a deal, the government would accept it...’ He did not understand that it was not at all a question of ‘withdrawal for a time’, but his complete elimination as a factor in social and political life. Once the authorities had his declaration, once they had his partial admissions (which they could then proceed to puff up into a charge of treason, conspiracy, espionage), once they knew that he was not prepared to sacrifice his fellow-accused — then they knew that they need not be bound by any agreement, implied or explicit, on the part of the examiners. Yet the evidence that Mindszenty considered that such an agreement existed stares one in the face. And certainly Mindszenty could not have doubted his accusers’ readiness to inflict death sentences.
We are not here concerned with defending Mindszenty’s politics, any more than we are concerned with defending the politics of any of the accused in these trials. We are concerned with the purpose of these trials, and the technique employed to obtain the cooperation of the accused in that purpose. Those who are indifferent to the demands of justice in the Mindszenty case, simply because they consider the Catholic Church a reactionary force, are themselves reactionary: for to allow one of these frame-up trials to pass unchallenged is to be party to others, to condone totalitarian methods and to support totalitarian ‘justice’. Let those who are inclined to notice injustice only if it is on their own doorstep ponder the question: ‘If there breathe on earth a slave, are ye truly free and brave?’
That the trial of Mindszenty was motivated purely by political considerations has been admitted by the Hungarian authorities themselves. Mindszenty was regarded by them as one of the most outspoken opponents of their regime; he openly inveighed against the Stalinist policy, which was bringing Hungary under the iron heel of Russian despotism. Against the overwhelming weight of Russia and her fifth column, under which individual political leaders were being crushed and their parties smashed, he appealed for redress to America. But his real crime was that he inspired an organisation with nation-wide means of countering Communist propaganda; that he led an organisation thought capable of serving as a rallying centre of resistance. He had to be crushed, if only as a demonstration of Stalinist ruthlessness and as a lesson to others; and the manner of doing it had to strike terror into those who were left and create the atmosphere necessary to the process of subordinating the church to the state machine. Thus, immediately after the sentencing of Mindszenty, the Hungarian government announced that the way was now open to an agreement between church and state.
Before his arrest there was the usual preliminary campaign of ‘spontaneous’ resolutions, identical in content, attacking him. In response to this ‘expression of opinion on the part of the populace’ the Stalinist leader Rákosi stated:
This mass movement demands that we change our policy of tolerance in regard to the reactionary and fascist leaders of the Catholic Church, in the first place, in regard to Mindszenty. We must therefore modify the policy carried out by our party up to now.
In making this statement he admits that the policy of the party and the policy of the government are one and the same. Noteworthy, too, is the admission that the party is capable of ‘tolerating’ fascists and reactionaries.
The campaign against Mindszenty prior to his arrest was in accordance with the normal tactics employed in these manoeuvres. The flood of resolutions attacking him also reflected the Communists’ genuine, if grossly exaggerated, fear of this man, and it was obviously not on account of his Legitimist views that they feared him. They were perfectly aware that the conditions simply did not exist for the creation of an organisation based on such a platform. But they could not bring him to trial for the real reasons for which they feared him, which were, as the record shows, that ‘he for years has used his clerical activities (sermons, pastoral letters) to make open or covert attacks against the democratic order and the republic’. They could not openly admit the real basis for the attack on him, because they did not want at this juncture to make an open attack on the church as such. They followed the well-tried policy of all imperialisms: ‘Divide and conquer.’ But by dragging into the trial such ridiculous evidence on the ‘espionage network’ as we have examined earlier in this chapter, they not only discredited the whole of the proceedings, but also made plain their underlying motive. So thin is the conspiracy case against Mindszenty that they have also even dragged in the fact that he had at one time or another given expression to anti-Semitic views. This may, or may not, have been true, but it has absolutely no relevance to the charges brought against him. The prewar fascist Arrow Cross movement was also anti-Semitic, but it was equally definite in its opposition to the Hapsburgs. So whether Mindszenty was anti-Semitic or not has no bearing on his Legitimist views, or his activities in relation to those views; activities which, according to the evidence of the trial itself, amounted to no more than one or two conversations, and certainly never developed into any organised movement. He was not charged with having anti-Semitic views, nor was he, at any rate ostensibly, charged with holding Legitimist opinions. He was charged with organising a conspiracy to overthrow the regime and restore the Hapsburg Monarchy, and the evidence in support of this appeared a little less ridiculous than the evidence of the ‘agents’ of the spy ring only because Mindszenty, when under examination by the president, did not defend himself on the basis of his statement that: ‘I do not subscribe to the conclusion that I might have been involved in the planning of the overthrow of the democratic state order and the republic.’ We know the basic reason why he did not boldly challenge the purely arbitrary interpretation given to his actions by the president. There were the currency charges that, if the rest failed to stick, could be pressed home and bring death sentences for all of them.
There seems little doubt that from the purely legal standpoint the authorities had the whip hand here. Yet here, too, everything was not above-board. We have already noted the care taken by the prosecution to emphasise that the small sum of two hundred dollars exchanged on the black market came under the heading of actions ‘gravely damaging to the economy’. This fact alone suggests that the currency charges — of very minor importance from the propaganda viewpoint — were the cement holding the entire structure in place. However, it appears that the authorities had turned a blind eye to the matter two years beforehand. The attack from this angle came just before Mindszenty’s arrest. ‘Then in November last I asked my man about this when we were attacked for this reason... I think it was on 27 November. I was then reassured I need have no fear on account of the foreign currency.’ (ibid, p 109), says Mindszenty in his testimony. Is it not manifest that Mindszenty, knowing full well the precariousness of his position, would not have been party to transactions that would have given such a terrible weapon into the hands of his enemies? That he would not have countenanced any such transactions if he had not been given very solid and absolutely convincing reasons for thinking that everything was in order? The amount of money involved was in this instance sufficiently large and the persons involved numerous enough to make concealment from the authorities highly improbable. The Hungarian forint was extremely weak at the time, and the government’s need for foreign exchange was so desperate, that it is reasonable to believe that they would have encouraged every means of obtaining it. This is borne out by the statement to the International News Service by Finance Minister Nicolas Nyárády. According to Nyárády, the Supreme Economic Council gave permission in the spring of 1947 for different churches and their charitable organisations to change foreign currency at higher than the official rate of exchange. ‘The object of that decision, taken by the Communist majority, was to facilitate the influx of foreign currency to Hungary. This the Catholic Church, like the Protestant and Jewish Churches, could sell at rates equal to those of the black market.’ (Quoted from Témoignage Chrétien, 18 February 1949) Does anyone believe that it would not have been possible for the Hungarian authorities to bring charges of infringing the currency laws against members of the Protestant and Jewish Churches, had they so desired?
One has a strong suspicion that when Mindszenty was ‘reassured’ he fell into a trap. We repeat, it is impossible to believe that he was not aware that every activity of the church and of individual church functionaries was closely scrutinised; impossible to believe that he would in these circumstances have placed his cause in jeopardy by knowingly and deliberately engaging in black-market operations. He must have been absolutely certain in his mind that the transactions were in no way illegal. Who gave him that certainty, of which he speaks in his testimony?
But whether he fell into a trap or not, the fact remains that the authorities had in their hands a weapon they could use, bringing pressure to bear on him through the threat to his fellow-accused. It was this weapon that finally broke Mindszenty’s resistance during his ‘thirty-five days of meditation’. That is why he said at his trial that ‘although I did not give direct instructions for this, yet in face of the situation, I take the responsibility for it in the same manner as if I had given direct instructions’ (ibid, p 111). In this way he could save the lives of the others. But, as we have seen, his enemies required more than this: they also required him to give his blessing to an agreement between the church and the state, and not to ‘worsen the situation’ by defending himself against the prosecution’s interpretation of all his past actions. At the same time they held out to him the possibility that, if he would give them his cooperation, it might not even be necessary to bring him to trial. These are the basic elements of the preliminary interrogation technique — the threat and the promise, a great fear and a little hope. Mindszenty, just like the other accused, was a victim of this technique.
Space does not permit examination of the trial of Archbishop Grósz in June 1951; however, it did not differ in any essential from that of Mindszenty, its objective being the same — destruction of the social influence of the Catholic Church.