Word: rakosi
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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...
With the Communists safely in power, Hungary's bullet-headed top Communist Matyas Rakosi decided the time had come to tell everybody how they got there.Writing in the party organ Social Review, Rakosi is cynically candid. In the free elections of 1945, the Communists polled only 17% of the vote while the democratic Smallholders Party polled 56.5%, a clear majority. But with the help of the occupying Russian army ("Soviet 'interferences' in internal affairs . . . were of great value in strengthening our party"), the Smallholders were persuaded to make concessions...
...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...