Gábor Havas

Gábor Havas: The history of the samizdat Beszélő encompasses the drawing up of the Social Contract, which was a particular product, as, although it started out insisting that „Kádár has to go” – which was the idea of Miki Haraszti, another pillar of the Beszélő editorial board – despite the radical nature of the opening sentence the text suggests that even at that point they couldn’t imagine the party state tumbling down or any of the things happening that actually did happen, or that a western style market economy and parliamentary democracy can be on the agenda. So, they tried to draft a program within this framework, including the bit naive concept of workers’ self-management as well as a certain amount of negotiation with the Party in order to gain certain favours and concessions. So in hindsight, it looks strange that not long before the change of the system the things that happened not too much later, seemed to be so unlikely. László B. Révész: How did the program take shape ? Gábor Havas: Well, if I may say, Jancsi Kis was obviously the editor-in-chief and Ottilia and Kőszeg were the co-workers. Basically, it was drawn up by the three of them. Ottilia articulated various concepts about the reshaping of socio-political allowances and about the ones that should be introduced so the poor could be given support in an effective way. And Kemény, who had been living in Paris for ten years by then, continuosly kept a keen eye on what was going on in Hungary, what’s more, he ven had some first hand information about it as well thanks to the co-patriots from Hungary calling on him. Kemény got hold of a copy of the Social Contract immediately and he kind of sent his comments back home on the FreeEurope Radio. While acknowledging merits of the document, he attacked the workers’ self-management and Ottilia, saying that her ideas are completely out-of-touch, simply aren’t feasible, and he argued very clearly backing up his statement with arguments. Ottilia was deeply impressed and she accepted Kemény’s views, she realised that you can’t be so out of touch with reality, cause it is unnrealistic and these are just pipedreams. Therefore, when we were working out the program for the change of the system together, and particularly the welfare section of the Free Democrat’s election manifesto, we were bearing all these commens in mind.