András Kovács. <i>A Kádár-rendszer és a zsidók</i> [The Kádár system and the Jews]

Recent scholarship has done much to deepen our understanding of the lives of Jews in state socialism and the twisted course of antisemitism through the postwar history of socialist states, and of the operations of the party bureaucracy and security services and their social effects. András Kovács’s study uses official documents and their analysis to bring these two areas together, illuminating at a granular level, both in Hungary and in intra-Bloc coordination, the system’s practices and discourses, in the context of historical prejudice, conflicting impulses and interests, and Soviet pressure and countervailing attempts at national autonomy. Kovács’s oeuvre forms one of the pillars of scholarship on Jews and antisemitism in postwar Hungary. This volume is a revised Hungarian-language version of his 2016 Communism’s Jewish Question: Jewish Issues in Communist Archives;1 the introductory analytical texts have been rewritten, and the selection of documents is slightly different.Eastern European state-socialist politics regarding Jews and Jewish issues can only be understood in the context of both Bloc-wide relations and particular national contexts. Although good work has been done collecting, analyzing, and publishing documents for Poland and Czechoslovakia, Kovács argues, a general overview for Hungary—the most important satellite, given its much larger Jewish population—has been missing.After the suppression of the 1956 Revolution, having seen the threat of nationalism, coded as “neo-fascism,” the new regime endeavored to create the “maximum” (10) of liberalization toward Jewish organization, and of autonomy from Soviet dictates; but this maximum had its limits. The various political organs developed a “mechanism” (33) to coordinate these policies within the (constantly shifting) limits. But although avoiding “open political antisemitism and occasional antisemitic campaigns,” the need to keep “Jewish matters” on the agenda was self-evident in the party-state apparatuses. As the documents show, the “framework of ideas and language, constructed from historical stereotypes and antisemitic discourses . . . despite changes in ‘Jewish politics’ over the postwar decades, remained unchanged until the end” (10).2An introductory chapter gives an overview of contexts, issues, and positioning in the postwar period. Kovács asserts that social-science studies by such scholars as Viktor Karady, claiming the emergence of a basic structural transformation after the horrors of war and Holocaust, were “too optimistic” (16). The ubiquity of Jewish issues (restitution, war crimes trials, etc.) in the immediate postwar years pushed the newly empowered but legitimacy-challenged Communist parties to fall back on at-hand fears and resentments, and become convinced that the interests of the majority diverged from those of the Jews. Old antisemitic tropes were reinvigorated: “the Jewish party secretary took the place of the Jewish banker” as an expression of “Jewish power” (20). Though Jews hoped to no longer be defined by their Jewishness, stereotypes such as “Jewish rootlessness, secret solidarity, and ‘double loyalty’” (25) infused Communist discourse (and were deployed in intra-party struggles, e.g., against Stalinists after 1953, even by such as Imre Nagy). The regime stifled open antisemitism and avoided public anti-Zionist campaigns, but in exchange the Jewish community had to accept a purely religious representation: cooperation on the basis of “neither Jews nor antisemites” (38).Particular lodestars were relations with Israel and the issue of emigration; propaganda against the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), especially after its agreement with Israel on reparations and consequent improvement of relations between the two states, in view of the continuing Soviet line that the FRG’s political ranks were filled with unreconstructed Nazis; and, especially with the economic crisis of the 1970s, the prospect of economic benefits resulting from an improvement of relations with Israel. The interplay of these and other factors led to a delicate dance between the East European states to carve out latitude for their own policies without the Soviets interceding.The body of the book divides the documents and their analyses into five chapters. The first, “Israel and Hungarian Politics,” explores the unstable ground on which bilateral negotiations and discussions took place. The relatively large size of remaining Hungarian Jewry, itself exerting a certain push, and the attraction of potential material benefits (enhanced by fantasies of “Jewish wealth”) confronted a Soviet pivot toward the Arab states after the 1956 Suez Crisis—and again on the heels of the 1967 Six-Day War. Israel was one of the first countries to recognize and reestablish relations with the post-1956 Kádár regime, which was eager to remedy its diplomatic isolation; the Israelis were most interested in increasing the flow of emigration.The core of the chapter revolves around the “smuggling affair” that emerged in the spring of 1957. Allegations that an employee of the Israeli embassy was accepting money and valuables from Hungarian citizens approved for emigration, to be reimbursed upon their arrival in Israel, led the Hungarian state to demand reparations: in addition to its laws being broken, it had suffered the loss of the hard currency that would have been exchanged for embassy expenses. Israel admitted no responsibility, but stated its willingness to negotiate restitution. Neither side welcomed the impression that Hungarian Jews were being “sold off,” but both were clear on the linkage between the substantial no-interest loan offered to Hungary and an improvement in the approval rate for emigration applications. The Hungarians were especially concerned that the talks not come to the attention of the Arab states. Other interests mentioned in the documents were better access to Hungarian citizens of Israel and the chance to influence Israeli politics, primarily through the Israeli Communist Party (ICP).Chapter 2 deals with the 1961 (Adolf) Eichmann trial, in the lead-up to which seemingly dry international legal questions took on symbolic and political weight. The first was whether and how much to acknowledge Israel’s jurisdiction in the case: recognition that Israel had the right to speak for all Jews threatened the Hungarian—as other East European—states’ claims on their Jewish citizens. The related issue of whether to request Eichmann’s extradition, on the principle that crimes should be prosecuted where they occurred, was finally decided in the negative. That of whether and how much to cooperate in providing documents to the Israeli court provoked similar concerns and was solved by releasing them by way of officially nongovernmental organizations, such as the National Committee of Those Persecuted by Nazism in Hungary (Nácizmus Magyarországi Üldözötteinek Országos Bizottsága). The satellite regimes were caught between the need as true anti-fascists to support the case and the imperative to advance the propaganda line opposing a budding Israeli–West German Zionist–neo-fascist alliance.3 A path of least resistance was finally agreed on; though press coverage of the trial itself showed considerable variation across the Bloc, with Soviet and Czechoslovak official media keeping ideology foremost, while Polish and Hungarian reports were by and large “objective” (109). At this juncture it appears that Hungary preferred negative Soviet reactions to the prospect of social tensions stemming from being seen as sabotaging a landmark case with great public interest, and to the risk of strengthening antisemitic tendencies.The 1967 war, the subject of chapter 3, put Hungary in a similar bind. Israel’s attack on the much more populous Arab allies of socialism demanded a robust response; but Hungarian Jews refused to accept that Israel was the aggressor, and even Kádár himself was mired in anti-Arab prejudices—blaming their defeat on the illiteracy and “cultural backwardness” (169) of their soldiers. At an emergency Bloc summit meeting to formulate a common response, Romanian leader Nicolae Ceauşescu refused to sign a statement blaming Israel as the aggressor, while Yugoslavia’s leader Josip Broz Tito refused to sign any that didn’t; Kádár sought a middle way.The final two chapters move the scene more firmly into the domestic sphere, treating respectively Hungarian Jewish organizations’ relations with international Jewish bodies and Israeli diplomacy (chapter 4) and direct surveillance, manipulation, and repression of those organizations and the Jewish community as a whole (chapter 5). The primary focus of the apparatus was the World Jewish Congress (WJC) and its attempts to enlist full Hungarian participation in its structures. Its interests lay in addressing the repression of the massive Soviet Jewish community and in creating divisions within the Soviet Bloc. The Hungarian government’s interest was in deflecting the focus of international Jewry toward the West, to tracking down Holocaust perpetrators, to the dangers of neofascism, and, later, to pushing political declarations for peace, against nuclear war, and validating the Soviet line on the Mideast. Significant successes in this direction in the 1970s were not enough to avoid criticism by Bloc allies and the ICP for “supporting Zionism” by working with the WJC. The other international connection causing the most concern was that with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (Joint). Even during the most adverse periods, the Joint was able to maintain a widespread network in Hungary distributing substantial material aid to Jews in need. Their inability to penetrate this network or exercise control over the resources involved was a constant thorn in the side of the security services. The Joint’s Hungarian partner, the (nongovernmental) Central Social Committee (Központi Szociális Bizottság), was thus able to “preserve partial autonomy even in the most difficult times” (315).The National Jewish Theological Seminary (Országos Rabbiképző Intézet) also managed to do the same, at least as long it was headed by Sándor Scheiber (he was eventually pushed out), who had his own sources of funding that the State Religious Authority (Állami Egyházügyi Hivatal) tried in vain to bring under its control. The documents give a fascinating and very specific account of the constant efforts, both through official and “unofficial” channels, by the party to exercise influence on these and other Jewish organizations through persuasion, enticements, admonitions, threats, and—as a last resort—“administrative action” (54).The harsher end of the spectrum was mainly employed against small informal groupings of rabbinical students and their friends, who met in cafes and private apartments to discuss Jewish identity and pro-Israel and Soviet-critical politics under innocuous names like “Tuesday Circle.” Surveillance, including by “technical means” (320), led to the enforced expulsion of two rabbi candidates just before their scheduled ordination and the suspension of a third. Despite repeated claims that the groups had been “de-organized” (380), they continued to sprout through the post-1967 period; one of the expelled candidates was later tried on political charges and sentenced to a 16-month prison term. The party’s most ambitious plans—such as to use the memory of the Holocaust to turn Hungarian Jews against the FRG, and by association against Israel and its improving relations—repeatedly failed; but its efforts were able to prevent the Jewish community from developing any substantial or significant autonomy.Kovács’s volume offers a considered and nuanced evaluation of complex contexts, while providing a cogent overall narrative of Hungarian Jewish policy; its accommodations and resistances to Soviet dictates and international politics; its discourses, processes, and methods; and the effects on and perseverance of the Jewish community. It is useful both for its authoritative analysis and for the opportunities the many documents—which are filled with intriguing tidbits and references, on both the domestic and international fronts, beyond those treated in the summaries—provide for further analysis and thought. Though not highlighted in the analysis, the documents show the fluidity between ideological and practical considerations on the part of the party-state, and between accommodation and the need to control. It is most present on the terrains of party-political and organizational practice and international relations. While these were presumably in large part dictated by the available documents, one might wish for more on cultural and intellectual aspects—e.g., Holocaust memory, literature, and efforts outside established Jewish organizations in the broadening nonofficial samizdat circles of the 1980s.

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