’I think the Communist Youth League will have to take firm political action against unacceptable endeavours and it must isolate with a political work the occasionally formed groups of Fidesz’, Ferenc Gyurcsány wrote in a letter dated August 17, 1988, sent to party secretaries of academic institutions in Pécs (Janus Pannonius University, Pécs Medical University, Pollák Mihály College of Technology) signed with ’a comrade’s greetings’. The document in the possession of Magyar Nemzet has been referred to first time by Ágnes Hankiss in a programme of Hír TV entitled ’Between the Lines’.
Premier Gyurcsány was in August 1988 the secretary of the municipal committee of the Communist Youth League in Pécs but he became soon the secretary of the Central Committee. In his letter he promised to send confidentially the programme of Fidesz to help Communist Youth organizations in elaborating effective political tactics. Ferenc Gyurcsány does not mention the source of his informations but this is not the only document showing his resolution to fight the forming democratic opposition. At the end of January 1989 in another letter as the secretary of the Central Committee he gave a report about collecting data about opposition movements and their activities. ’In the enclosed booklet we have attempted to give a comprehensive survey of alternative organizations most frequently found in public life’, as he put it.
The documents throw light on the billionaire Premier’s views at a time when the change of regime was regarded avoidable and they show the interplay amond the state party, the Youth League, and the secret services. Other similar documents prove this like the draft resolution of Péter Varga, head of the administrative department of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party which urged police measures against Fidesz ’to polarize’ the organization – this was one of the subversive methods applied by the III/III department of the state security service.
Translated by Péter Szentmihályi Szabó
Csárdafesztivál
A Csárdafesztivál a Kárpát-medence legízletesebb magyar ételeit kínálja
