Gorbachev’s Volcano

When 10,000 Hungarians march through Budapest demanding democracy and calling for a free press and free elections, notice must be taken. Communist dogma has always held that such protests are unnecessary in a system in which the party has a monopoly on power, precisely because it embodies the national will; if the party is the people, the people have nothing to complain about. That at least is how things used to be explained before Soviet General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev began calling for more openness in political life, for more responsiveness to public needs, for economic reforms based on greater respect for market forces. Change, reform, liberalization--these can be dangerous words, because they get people thinking. Gorbachev clearly hasn’t set out to fan the flames of dissent in the Communist world--whether in Armenia or in Hungary--but his policies may well be making more dissent inevitable.

Two years ago police truncheons broke up an effort by Hungarian dissidents to parade on the anniversary of their country’s 1848 rebellion against Austrian rule. Last year, with official toleration, about 2,000 people marched to commemorate an event that Hungarians automatically link with the 1956 uprising against Soviet domination. This week, with little interference, up to five times that number took to the streets, the largest outpouring of protest in a generation. What the marchers heard was that “the time is over for self-appointed governments,” and that the time has come for real reforms. Once, not long ago, such ideas could only be whispered. Now they are shouted in the streets.

Dissidents, in Hungary as well as in the Soviet Union, are becoming bolder, perhaps because they are becoming increasingly frustrated. Will their demands have any effect? Gorbachev and other Communist leaders know that deepening national economic stagnation demands urgent reforms. But the parties from which Gorbachev and the Eastern European leaders draw their authority also sense that a loosening of economic restraints is sure to add to demands for a freer political system. Those demands were made explicit this week in Budapest. The authorities pretended not to hear. Next time, perhaps, the shouts will be all the louder.