Hungary Picks Deputy to Kadar, 72

The Hungarian Communist Party, in an apparent effort to ensure an orderly succession of power, Thursday named a deputy for the first time to 72-year-old Janos Kadar, who has ruled Eastern Europe’s most prosperous nation since 1956.

Karoly Nemeth, 62, a member of the Politburo and an associate of Kadar since the 1950s, was named deputy general secretary at the end of a four-day party congress. As expected, the Congress ratified Kadar’s continued leadership and set policy guidelines for Hungary’s development over the next five years.

Voting unanimously, in keeping with the Soviet style of Communist Party meetings, the session’s 1,016 delegates reaffirmed Hungary’s commitment to liberalizing economic reforms that have given the nation’s farms and factories wide scope to manage themselves and allowed small private enterprises to flourish.

“The byword is continuity,” one Western diplomat said, in summing up the congress.

Genuinely Popular

Kadar, the only Soviet Bloc leader who can lay claim to genuine popularity, appears vigorous and relatively healthy, and diplomatic observers said he has shown no indication of stepping down in the near future. However, he has been expected to begin delegating some of his responsibilities, partly to ease his workload and also to ensure the eventual transfer of power to a trusted ally who would continue his economic policies.

Nemeth moved into the party’s Central Committee in 1956, the same year the Soviet army crushed a nationwide anti-Communist insurrection and installed Kadar as party leader in place of Imre Nagy, whom the Soviets executed.

After a period of harsh repression, Kadar gradually won public confidence and respect by loosening ideological controls and moving away from a highly centralized, Soviet-style economy to one that has brought Hungary a markedly improved standard of living.

Hungary’s successful reforms in a country of 10.5 million people have in turn encouraged China, with its population of more than a billion, to embark on a sweeping program of economic modernization. The Soviet Union has gone along with Hungary’s reforms.

Headed Farm Unit

Over the years, Nemeth, the new deputy party leader, has served as head of the party’s agriculture committee, its economic policy committee and most recently as head of party organization and personnel. While there was no direct indication that Nemeth is to be groomed as Kadar’s successor, his appointment as deputy appeared to put him in an advantageous position, analysts said.

The closing session of the congress removed three members of the party’s 13-man ruling Politburo and added three others, including Karoly Grosz, 55, a hard-liner who is thought to hold ideological reservations about the country’s liberal economic direction. Only three months ago, Grosz, a blunt and hard-driving bureaucrat, was named to the highly visible and prestigious post of party chief in the capital of Budapest, home for one-fifth of Hungary’s population.

Western diplomats said Kadar was clearly orchestrating all these changes as part of maintaining a balance of political viewpoints in the leadership, one of the methods he has used to reassure Moscow of his loyalty during his 29 years in power.

Youth organization leader Csaba Hamori, and Istvan Szabo, who heads the principal farmers’ organization, were also named to the Politburo. Valeria Benke, 65, a hard-liner; Mihaly Karom, an armed forces expert, and Lajos Mehes, a trade union functionary, were removed from the Politburo.

Poor Pensioners

The major policy issue taken up by the party congress, largely behind closed doors, was Hungary’s problem of persistent poverty amid general prosperity. While many Hungarians have benefited from new opportunities to supplement their incomes through private business, as much as 20% of the population--half or more of them pensioners--have slipped below the official poverty line in the past several years as the cost of living has risen.

Hungarian economists say that aid programs for the poor are the country’s top priority this year. But Kadar, in a closing speech that paralleled the views of fiscal conservatives in Western countries, warned that it would be unwise to promise more than the state’s resources could deliver.

“We should make it a priority order first to build up the resources, then grant the requests,” he said. “If we do it the other way around, we are building castles in the air.”