Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [283]
I was also struck by the people’s pride in the old Hungary — which has since become the basis for the new post-communist one. At Szentendre I visited the local museum and art gallery which had a valuable collection of porcelain. I was shown round by a distinguished elderly curator, wearing well-cut but worn clothes, and immaculately polished but creased shoes. He had that indefinable air of someone who has known better days, as indeed he had. He was an aristocrat who had lost his property, but at the time of the communist revolution, rather than go into exile, he had remained to pass on his extraordinary knowledge of Hungarian history and culture to a new generation, who might otherwise forget it. Both from what he told me then of his country’s past and what I had noticed earlier in my discussions with Mr Ká dá r, all Hungarians — even the communist rulers — had a strong sense of their country’s identity.
The one surprise — and disappointment — of my visit was how far even Hungary was from a free economy. There were some small businesses, but they were not allowed to grow beyond a certain size. The main emphasis of Hungary’s economic reforms was not on increasing private ownership of land or investment but rather on private or co-operative use of state-owned facilities. I visited a housing project at Szentendre in which the British firm, Wimpey, was involved. I found, on asking the people that I met there, that though they could buy their own flats they could not sell them freely on the market but only back to the state — more or less the same policy, it must be said, that the Labour Party in Britain had adopted towards the sale of council houses.
I reported my impressions in a message to President Reagan:
[The Hungarian] economic experiment is conducted within very strict limits: the single political party, the controlled press, the sham Parliament, the state ownership of all but the smallest economic units, but above all the close alliance with Moscow. Kádár and Lázár made it perfectly plain that these things cannot change…. I am becoming convinced that we are more likely to make progress on the detailed arms control negotiations if we can first establish a broader basis of understanding between East and West. But I am under no illusions that it will be very hard to achieve that. It will be a slow and gradual process, during which we must never lower our guard. However, I believe that the effort has to be made.
In retrospect, my Hungarian visit was the first foray in what became a distinctive British diplomacy towards the captive nations of eastern Europe. The first step was to open greater economic and commercial links with the existing regimes, making them less dependent upon the closed COMECON system. Later we were to put more stress on human rights. And, finally, as the Soviet control of eastern Europe began to decay, we made internal political reforms the condition of western help. My visit to Hungary which began this successful diplomatic strategy had turned out to be altogether more significant than I could have imagined.
MOSCOW: ANDROPOV’S FUNERAL
Just a few days after my return from Hungary Mr Andropov was dead. Nevertheless the funeral, to which I decided to go, would give me the opportunity to meet the man who to our surprise emerged as the new Soviet leader, Mr Konstantin Chernenko. We had thought that Mr Chernenko was too old, too ill and too closely connected with Mr Brezhnev and his era to succeed to the leadership — and as events turned out we were more astute than his colleagues in the Politburo. But at least western commentators were unlikely to portray this ageing time-server as heralding an overnight transformation of totalitarianism into liberal democracy.
My party