Word: rakosi
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Matyas Rakosi is the kind of old Communist revolutionary who left talk about civil liberties, land reform and the like to the parlor set. At 27 he was a hard-bitten commissar in the regime of Hungarian Red Terrorist Bela Kun; at 28 he was in Moscow as a secretary of the Comintern Executive, perfecting methods for smuggling agents into foreign lands, and capturing control of trade unions...
HUNGARY-Two cliques vied for Moscow favor after the war. Neither risked leaving the country when the Cominform was set up: little shots went instead. One clique was led by bullet-headed Matyas Rakosi, now 62, Soviet-trained and a seasoned jailbird. The other was led by Laszlo Rajk (rhymes with yoick), boss of underground Hungarian Reds during Nazi occupation. Two years later, Rajk was ousted from the party, "confessed" to being a spy, traitor and informer, and to plotting with Tito to overthrow the Communist regime. Disposition: hanged. Now boss: Rakosi...
...basic rule to follow in such a situation, Rakosi writes, is to keep the opposition split up, "perplexed and hesitating...
Join with non-Communists in a coalition and then proceed, by various methods, to take over." What methods? "Salami tactics," says Rakosi-"demanding a little more each day, like cutting up a salami, thin slice after thin slice...
...Rakosi is just as frank about the police-state goal at the end of Communism's road: "After the [World War II] liberation, we didn't clarify this problem before wide masses of the party but only in limited audiences. Any discussion of the dictatorship of the proletariat as our final aim would have caused great alarm among our coalition partners and hindered our efforts to win over a majority of the petty bourgeoisie-even of the working masses." In one field, Rakosi ignored salami tactics, insisting on the whole sausage right at the start: control...