Child of Communism, by Ede Pfeiffer

[p034] Child of Communism, by Ede Pfeiffer (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 18s.) THIS book, as its author declares, is an account of personal experience, in childhood and adolescence, of life in a ‘people’s democracy’. Pfeiffer was nine years old when the Soviet army entered Budapest in 1945. During the next eleven years he was a witness and, on occasion, an unwilling victim of Stalin- ism in action. His account, like many of a similar nature, possesses all the attractions of graphic portrayal. Pfeiffer writes in realistic terms of the ‘political education’ carried out by the Stalinist youth movement, of the organized processions and demonstrations, of the deportations and im- prisonment of those suspected of hostility towards the régime. He also gives us, apparently with some authority—though not always without an indignation which is perhaps just a little too self-righteous—a disproportionately lengthy account of what might be termed ‘sex life on the communist campus’. Pfeiffer’s account of the events of October 1956 is intensely personal. He took part in the now-famous destruction of the Stalin statue and in the attack on the offices of Szabad Nép, he knocked out a Soviet tank with a Molotov cocktail and he raided the offices of the Budapest party secretary, abscond- ing with thick files of secret documents. Set against such a background the book cannot fail to be interesting. Interest, however, is not all. There have been other accounts of the events of the Hungarian October not less gripping, other descriptions of life in the Soviet belt not less revealing in their content. Pfeiffer adds little that is new. Politically, the approach is either naive or irresponsible. The Hungarian revolution appears to have been conjured up out of thin air without either preparation or programme. Once it took place, Pfeiffer took part in it. He knew what he was fighting against. Did he know what he was fighting for? He gives a bare mention to the revolutionary student programme. Why does he omit an account of its contents? He mentions the workers’ councils. Why is he silent about the ideas of those who set them up? He tells us that he trusted Maléter and Nagy. Was it only because they resisted the Russians? On this basis, he could have trusted Cardinal Minds- zenty as well! ; Pfeiffer’s omissions are largely the result of his individualis- tic approach. His determination, at one point, to commit suicide, his exclusion from university in turning against the régime, possibly even his final choice of flight to the West, are all revealing in this respect. Pfeiffer’s ideal lies not in the future but in what he calls ‘the earlier and better world’ of the past, a rather quaint description of Horthyite Hungary. There is no speculation about tomorrow. For the backward- looking Ede Pfeiffers of this world, tomorrow never comes. TREVOR PARK